The team behind two sell-out seasons of the three-time Matilda Award nominated Sex With Strangers, bring their next must-see theatre event, True West to Brisbane Powerhouse from 17 August 2016 for a strictly limited season.
Written by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Sam Shepard, this play embodies his own experiences of growing up on the border of the Mojave Desert, where alcoholism ran deep and the women were tough. This modern masterpiece is a physical and psychological showdown of sibling rivalry played out in two hours of the most gripping theatre you’ll see this year.
Brotherly love this ain’t. When a sly ‘gentleman’s agreement’ is made between Lee and a Hollywood producer on the ninth green, Lee’s brother Austin allows bitterness and resentment to erupt. In a hilarious and devastating struggle set against the heat and howls of their desert surrounds, the brothers challenge what it means to ‘win’ in life, how this is measured and who really cares.
Director Marcel Dorney (co-writer of La Boite’s most recent success The Tragedy of King Richard III and one of Queensland Theatre Company’s National Artistic Team) has recreated a heady combination of desert heat, suppressed rage and unspoken regret in a work that has previously starred award-winning talent including Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Malkovich and David Wenham.
Brisbane’s Lord Mayor’s Young and Emerging Artist winner Thomas Larkin returns to the Visy Theatre as the desert drifter Lee and Julian Curtis plays his clean-cut academic brother Austin. It is one hell of a reunion, with Queensland’s darling of theatre Christen O’Leary joining the lads as their Mother, in her most adventurous role to date.
Set Designer Genevieve Ganner (Awesome Ocean Party, Several Words Associated with Revenge) leads a stellar creative team, including Jason Glenwright (Lighting Designer) and Dane Alexander (Sound Designer) from the acclaimed Sex With Strangers team who between them, have worked with every major and independent theatre company in Queensland and have received numerous accolades both locally and nationally.
Sex With Strangers was described as “one of the most thrilling events on Brisbane stages” and True West promises to be no different; it is a remarkable play in its achievement of being equally hilarious and deeply unsettling.
“A bare-knuckle brawl between old myths and new illusions, civilisation and savagery, creativity and commerce, played out in sibling strife of nerve-jangling violence.” – The Times
Director: Marcel Dorney Featuring: Thomas Larkin, Julian Curtis, Christen O’Leary, Charles Allen Set Designer: Genevieve Ganner Lighting Designer: Jason Glenwright Sound Designer: Dane Alexander Stage Manager: Kyle Berry Assistant Stage Manager: Domi Prince Producers: Troy Armstrong, Thomas Larkin & Annette Box
True West
Visy Theatre – Brisbane Powerhouse, 119 Lamington Street, New Farm (Brisbane)
Season: 17 – 28 August 2016
Bookings: www.brisbanepowerhouse.org
For more information, visit: www.truewest.biz for details.
Image: Thomas Larkin and Julian Curtis star in True West (supplied)