True West

April 2027

Somebody has to invent the West. Hollywood has done it for a century. Shepard hands the job to two brothers in their mother’s kitchen, and each wants to be the other.

Austin has the screenplay, the manners and the keys to the house. Lee has the desert, a gift for taking things, and a Western he has just sold over a round of golf. By the second act the writer is drinking and stealing, and the thief is learning what a blank page does to a man. The kitchen goes with them.

Shepard wrote it in 1980. It is built like a trap: funny for as long as it can be, then not. Two men carry it. The rest is toasters, typewriters and the sound of coyotes.

The ending belongs to Shepard. We won’t describe it, and we wouldn’t change it.