By the time Austin maniacally polishes the toasters he's stolen we're into the penultimate scene of Sam Shepard's True West. Earlier in the play the neat, Ivy league college graduate screenwriter compulsively mops up after his grungy, beer swilling older brother Lee who's dropped in unexpectedly at their absent mother's suburban Los Angeles home. Austin who lives in the East is there to keep mom's plants watered and to discuss a new screen project with a Hollywood producer. It seems that as Austin has on occasion dreamed of living his brother's carefree life in the desert, Lee lives in the desert only because he can't make it elsewhere. Austin, now expected to help Lee, has hit the bottle as steadily as big brother pops open his endless cans of beer.
Scene one begins with an almost excruciatingly long Pinteresque pause.
There are more meaningful pauses in the conversation. Despite the laughs it becomes clear that we were right in sensing tension in the air during those first silent moments. Harold Pinter's influence on True West is present not only in the pauses which often speak louder than words but in its two protagonists who are reminiscent of the two brothers in The Homecoming . It's a revival that seems to have been waiting for Phillip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly to duke it out and to stamp the psychological battle all the more authentic by mastering and alternating each brother's role. I should state at this point that their alternating roles unlike their characters' no-win battle, is not a who's best contest.