Mixed Emotions About "A Lie of the Mind"

I should love Sam Shepard. His plays are filled with all kinds of highly theatrical things like eccentric misfits, smart-alecky allusions to pop culture, earthy dialog, and eruptions of violence so over-the-top that they careen into the comic. And he has written such modern classics as Buried Child, True West, Fool for Live and A Lie of the Mind, which currently can be seen in the New Group’s high-wattage revival at The Acorn Theater on Theatre Row.  And yet, I have to confess that I have a tough time getting into Shepard.

Maybe it’s that his work is too macho for me or that its nature is too bleak but the play of his that I’ve liked best is his most recent, Ages of the Moon, which is playing at the Atlantic Theatre through March 21 (click here to read my review) and most people consider that somewhat more gentle and slightly more optimistic work to be atypical Shepard. Still, I can’t help admiring the man. He helped pioneer the off-Broadway theater movement and set a dramaturgical template that scores of others have been inspired by ever since.  So when my theatergoing buddy Bill asked me if I wanted to see A Lie of the Mind, I said yes.

As so many Shepard plays do, this one tells the story of families in conflict.  This time, the fireworks are set off when a man named Jake tells his mother, brother and sister that he has beaten his wife Beth to death.  He hasn’t.  That’s not a spoiler because the audience sees her in the next scene, lying in a hospital bed and so severely wounded that she has become brain damaged. The narrative—although I’m not sure that’s the right word to associate with a Shepard play—follows how the couple and both their families deal with the consequences of this act and with others from the past that have engendered it. 

That past is visible in the centerpiece of Derek McLane’s metaphorical set: a wall of furniture and other objects jumbled against one another in the same way that the play’s people are. And its emotional devastation is underscored by the original music written and performed live by the brothers Shelby and Latham Gaines, who are placed stage left, just outside the area of the play’s action. 

But what kept my attention was the knock-out cast that includes Keith Carradine, Josh Hamilton, Laurie Metcalf and the astonishing Marin Ireland, who brings an inner steeliness to the role of the recovering Beth that undercuts the annoying cutesiness or sentimentality that so many actors use to play disabled people. Guiding all the performances with a sure hand and an obvious love for the work and the actors who bring it to life is the show’s director Ethan Hawke (click here to read New York Magazine’s terrific profile of him).

Unlike many Shepard interpreters, Hawke plays down the symbolism and his more naturalistic approach allows the characters to come across as people that audiences might relate too, although you still wouldn’t want them to be your relatives.  He also cut what I’ve read is the play’s usual four-hour running time to a less arduous-to-watch three.

I can’t say that I walked out of the theater with a newfound love for Shepard’s early work.  Even he told the New York Times that “I see my older plays as clunky relatives to the ones I’m doing now.” (Click here to read the rest of that interview.) But I can say that I’m glad I got to see it.

The Fine Old Men in "Ages of the Moon"

New York seems to be in the midst of an undeclared Sam Shepard festival.  A revival of the playwright's 1980 classic True West opened at The Lion theater on Theater Row a couple of days ago. And a starry new production of his 1985 play A Lie of the Mind, with Keith Carradine, Josh Hamilton, Marin Ireland, and Laurie Metcalf under the direction of Ethan Hawke, is scheduled to open at The Acorn in the same theater complex on Feb. 18.  But there’s also a new Shepard work in town.  It’s a small one-act play called Ages of the Moon and it opened at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater on Wednesday night.

Over the years, Shepard and David Mamet have been in an arm-wrestling contest for the title of America’s most macho playwright. But Shepard, now 66 and four years older than Mamet, seems to be mellowing. Although Ages of the Moon has the usual share of drinking, cussing, sex talk and, of course Shepard’s trademark outbursts of violence, there’s a tender ruefulness to this play that affected me in a way that his other works haven’t. 

Ages of the Moon deals with aging, death, the ambiguity of memory and the hope that love can ease the inevitable approach of the final eclipse. Its protagonists are two old-time friends who reunite in an isolated hunting cabin where Ames, played by Stephen Rea, has summoned Byron, Seàn McGinley, to console him after Ames’ wife has thrown him out following his fling with a 23 year-old.  

The two men sit on a porch and reminisce, fall out, make up, fall out again. They’re the literary and spiritual sons of Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, only Shepard’s guys are backed up by a soundtrack of country music. The song “Have You Ever Been Lonely” is playing as the audience enters the theater.

Shepard wrote the two-hander, which premiered last year at Dublin’s Abbey Theater, for McGinley and Rea and these splendid actors make entertaining company, even if Rea mugs a little too much at times. Irish director Jimmy Fay, an old-hand at Shepard plays, nicely mines the humor and the pathos in the text. And the creative team is top shelf too. I got a particular kick out of the appropriately ridiculous two-toned shoes costume designer Joan Bergin found for Rea even if they made his feet look as big as a pair of Mini Coopers.

This isn’t a major Shepard work—the play runs barely 75 minutes—but that doesn’t mean it's an insignificant one.  Maybe it’s the fact that like Shepard, I am growing older and have become more tolerant.  Or that I saw Ages of the Moon with Ellie, my oldest friend with whom I’ve survived bouts of falling out and making up too numerous to count.  But I left the play, which is running through March 21, comforted by its message that even the scariest night can be tempered by the grace of friendship.