Riveting Showdown in ‘True West’

In his 1980 play “True West,” Sam Shepard held a funhouse mirror up to America and dared people to take a look. Against the backdrop of a once-heroic West reduced to stifling suburban sameness, he told a story of brother against brother in the crazed pursuit of prosperity.

Last summer, a theater group in the small town of Hailey, Idaho, revived the play, making national headlines. The hoopla surrounded the fact that Bruce Willis, who has a home near Hailey and owns the theater building, was directing and co-starring in the production. A taping of that venture is being shown tonight at 8 on Showtime. People will tune in to see Willis but will come away having seen a crackling presentation of one of America’s best plays.

Willis plays Lee, who shows up at his mother’s suburban Los Angeles home to find her away and his brother Austin (Chad Smith) using the place while in town to pitch a screenplay.

Lee, who lives hand to mouth, wears filthy castoffs. He sports a black eye and scratches at various colonies of parasites residing on his body. Austin, on the other hand, is Ivy League educated and neatly groomed. He’s trying to type notes for his screenplay while Lee, with a wild look in his eyes, taunts and physically provokes him.

Eventually, they trade places--realizing, in the process, that Austin’s life is the one to be avoided at all costs. But not before locking in combat like professional wrestlers, slipping on a floor slick with spilled beer in the wreckage of Mom’s once-orderly kitchen.

Directed for television by Gary Halvorson, the taping zooms in for close-ups but doesn’t try to be flashy. Willis is manically mesmerizing, but the revelation is Smith, a Hailey local, who should have Hollywood at his doorstep Tuesday morning--signaling the very success that Shepard cautions against.