07/09/2024
We’re so humbled by this pearler of a review from Colin Mockett at Entertainment Geelong!! 🌵☀️ ONLY 5 SHOWS LEFT!!
“A little over a year ago, Jules Hart starred in Torquay Theatre Troupe’s production of Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West, a story of two middle-aged brother’s corrosive relationship in their parent’s remote Irish cottage.
Now here he was in Geelong Rep’s Woodbin, starring in Sam Shepard’s True West – a story of two middle-aged brother’s corrosive relationship in their mother’s small remote home in California’s Mojave desert.
The similarities go well beyond the two play’s titles and sibling rivalry plotlines.
They probably say much about Jules Hart himself.
For this True West was never destined for Rep’s West Geelong venue. It was a last-minute inclusion when Rep’s intended production fell through.
In his programme notes, producer Derek Ingles described this staging as a ‘once in a blue moon opportunity… Because Jules already had a play in mind, set designed, marketing plan and a stellar group of creatives at the ready’ for when the theatre vacancy occurred.
Further in the programme, Jules is credited as being part of the play’s production and set designers, as well as marketing and digital, lighting and sound designs.
And as the play credits its director as ‘the ensemble and Derek Ingles’, it’s probably fair to count Jules as taking a big part in that, too.
But not as big as his principle role as Austin, a successful middle-class Hollywood screenwriter working in quiet solitude on a script while house-plant-sitting for his mother who was on vacation in Alaska.
Austin found his concentration broken by a surprise visitor – his polar-opposite brother Lee, who’s a homeless drifter and opportunistic petty criminal.
Lee was played with an intense, smiling, surpressed-violence menace by Calvin Langley.
It turned out that Lee’s complex sibling rivalry extended to having developed his own idea for a movie script, and he managed to convince executive Saul, played by Todd J. Curtis, to replace Austin’s script with his own.
This mostly occurred on an off-stage golf course, for this production of True West was, for the most part, a two-handed play built around that highly toxic sibling relationship.
The brother’s mother, played by Sue Rawkins, made only a brief final-scene appearance surveying her devastated kitchen.
For, during the play’s progress, the many clashes between Jules and Calvin had destroyed and wrecked Jules’s cleverly designed and skilfully worked set – along with his cosy American-dream lifestyle.
So what Sue surveyed was a trashed ruin, broken by her sons’ long-buried hostilities.
This True West was a triumph for both lead actors whose portrayal of their complex characters was as intense as their mastery of playwright Sam Shepard’s stark language.
That understanding included a depth of family emotions that referred back to the effects of their father’s own addiction and personality flaws.
But mostly, this True West was a huge triumph for the multi-talented Jules Hart.
As an actor, he was excellent last year in The Lonesome West. He was then memorable in Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert and now here he is outstanding in September’s True West.
But still my abiding memory from this play was the amount of frustrated fury – and outright menace – portrayed by Calvin Langley as his brother. This appeared frighteningly real.
I guess you could say that the most remarkable winner from this True West was Jules Hart and his team of Geelong acting and theatre creatives.
For they really did, quite literally, get their act together in record time.”
https://geelongartscentre.org.au/whats-on/all-events/sam-shepards-true-west/
