True West - Vaudeville Theatre

They must have had a bit of a shock when TBITB started!

Has anyone ever exchanged tickets through Nimax? I’ve booked for True West but ideally would like to exchange for the following week. I’ve seen online that the exact same seats are available on the new date so there’d be no price difference, but my confirmation email says ‘tickets cannot be exhanged or refunded’.

I've exchanged tickets booked through Nimax for the Branagh season a few years ago - booked online but did the swap in person at the theatre box office. They were very helpful, even to the extent of swapping two cheap tickets for one more expensive one rather than doing a direct exchange.

Excellent taster for this today at the Royal Court Sam Shepard gala, Kit and Johnny showed enough to make me happy I booked.

A great afternoon, all the actors were exceptional and made the material come to life from nothing. As always in the Royal Court most hung around in the bar afterwards, us Courtiers only making slight eye contact of acknowledgement, whilst never lowering ourselves to disturb their conversations.

Obviously, in a few years (months) time the stories of the afternoon shared with Indira Varma, Miranda Richardson, Kate Fleetwood Stephen Rea, Toby Jones, Kit Harrington et all will be legendary.

I have to admit when I served Kit Harrington at the bar afterwards I went a bit weak at the knees. Was so glad that all of the people listed above are genuinely friendly and lovely people!

I do hope he was undecided as to what he wanted to drink and you were able to say "you know nothing Kit-off!".

Loved it. Don't expect too much of the plot, and hopefully you'll love the characters, actors, humour and themes as much as I did. Harington and Flynn are great together, amusingly bouncing off each other, evolving their characters in tandem, with a loveable lived-in chemistry that climaxes wonderfully. A must-see of the season, for me.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I love this play, but I do warn that Sam Shepard doesn't tend to tie off his plots with a ribbon, because quite a few in the audience didn't seem to realise it was over when it was over, with only a directorial flourish cuing them that it had ended. I think that's the point, as Shepard didn't really like endings, only new beginnings, I recall him saying.

So, like life, the show is about the ride, and in this play, it's also about the chemistry of the actors, the evolution of their characters, and Shepard's exploration of authenticity, the "True" part of the title.

There is a very meta element to this play, as Kit Harington plays a screenwriter, and Johnny Flynn is a wannabe screenwriter, and their discussions about writing, about character and place, apply as much to themselves, as characters in a play, as to life itself. The question of who or what is ever "authentic" elevates the play from being merely about sibling rivalry, into an existential search for whether there is any there there in anyone or anything.

To digress, at the Sam Shepard Celebration at the Royal Court two weeks ago, it dawned on me just how much this quest for authenticity preoccupied Shepard. My favourite sketch of that afternoon was Shepard's short piece, "Gary Cooper or the Landscape," in which Miranda Richardson's Swedish woman, who loves Westerns for their primitive authenticity, was challenged by Toby Jones (standing in for Shepard himself) which she preferred, Gary Cooper or the Landscape? Of course, both the "vulnerable" persona of Gary Cooper and the Western movie backdrops are fictitious to a degree, so the whole back and forth between Jones and Richardson about which is more authentic was highly comedic.

Kenneth Cranham reminisced how Shepard looked for the essence of character in song, giving himself and Bob Hoskins and Stephen Rea a defining song each in "Geography of a Horse Dreamer" at the Royal Court. Cranham spoke with wonder at the ease with which Hoskins assumed the role of an American gangster, while he himself futzed around with giant eyebrows, looking fir his character, only to be accused by Hoskins of looking more like Dracula.

Much less funny was Shepard's first wife, O-Lan Jones detailing how Shepard's quest for his essential artistic self led him to drop her suddenly, without warning, like a ton of bricks. She sang the song "I miss the Mississippi and you" in Shepard's memory, which seemed to put both Gary Cooper and the Landscape on equal footing, both indefinable, both precious.

In "True West," Shepard's quest for authenticity in both people and places continues. Both Harington and Flynn capture the fluidity of Shepard's characters, their essential inessentialness. Disproving his naysayers, Harington discards Jon Snow's stoicism, and embraces the role of a wound-up neurotic, hiding frustration and fear behind glasses and a moustache. Flynn comes on in denim and boots, a cowboy version of the dick in "Hangmen," which for my money is his most essential performance, hilariously uncontained and needling. And from there, both characters interact beautifully, a marvellously entertaining double act, in which each pushes the others' buttons, evolving as they do. These are essential, memorable and funny performances.

This is in early previews, and will only get better as the actors become even more comfortable with the most physical parts of their performances. But even as it is right now, I think Shepard would love this. It is dramatic, funny, and searches desperately for the essence of people and places.

4 and a half stars.

All 10 parts here: 

Nimax website says 2 hours, including interval. 

I've been hearing good things about this and the relationship between the leads. I have especially enjoyed seeing photos from the set in its full 1979 colour pallet. Top marks to the person who dressed the set, but I am going to have to check next time I go to my parents' house to see if anything has gone missing. 

I don't think I could add anything else to this assessment. I loved the double act between Kit and Johnny.

One thing though... I had a look at the play text before I went to see it, and the stage set instructions say "NOTE ON SET AND COSTUME: The set should be constructed realistically with no attempt to
 distort its dimensions, shapes, objects, or colors." The house set was somewhat skew-whiff, and I thought the desert background reveal was a bit gimmicky. Maybe that's just me, though. 

I was on the end of row A, which is the third row, tonnes of leg room as no one in front but restricted view of the set due to the funny alignment, would think all high numbered stalls seats to be similarly restricted. Didn't miss any action though as that was almost all up front.

Having had a day to think about it, my view hasn't changed much. I did like the thick carpet and always enjoy actors cooking real food on stage.