Shepard’s ‘Hell’ sparks controversy

SAM SHEPARD’S play “The God of Hell,” now at the Geffen theater, is a vision into a terrifying future wherein America, under the control of people like Bush and his crowd, has become a fascist society.

At the performance I attended, a man jumped up from his seat and screamed at the actors: “Pigs!” “Lefty bastards,” and other enraged epithets, continuing his tirade as he stomped out into the night. Although he was clearly one of them, he was exercising a civil right that we and Shepard are trying to protect for him. Irony, thy name is democracy.

JOEL RAPP

Los Angeles

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I’M sorry to say that I didn’t get the message from friends to avoid Sam Shepard’s “The God of Hell.” It is too bad that in the country that has been so good to the playwright and the actors, they have to manufacture some idiot plot to obtusely criticize our government. The actors should pack up their phony suitcases and electrical gizmos and go live anywhere else.

DEAN BERKUS

Encino