A Lie Of The Mind

I don't actually know if Hillman was right on this one, as she has been before. It certainly is a very good play, among his best. My dismissal of it as a "minor work" was completely off-base. I think the thing that makes A Lie of the Mind special is that it may be the best melding of The Two Shepards.

On the one hand is The Angry Young Shepard: his early, experimental work that plays with the nature of language and reality. That Sam Shepard is a Lobster Man rock 'n' roll savior, with words and images spilling out all over the stage. Then there's the other Shepard, the True Man Of The West who cultivated the Hollywood persona of a melancholy John Wayne and whose plays celebrate the death of the cowboy and the frontier. It's in A Lie Of The Mind that there two strains in his work and life come together most completely. His constant theme of lives lived on the edge mixes with the death of language and the mythology of the open spaces, and the result is an epic play that seems like Fool For Love's grown-up brother.

It's also a wonderfully sprawling, messy epic of American Families and American Love. It's also a bit of a shaggy dog story, especially in the latter half of the play at the pieces have been set in place and the ensemble starts to really come to life. The scene study opportunities here are incredible, dripping with language and emotion.

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In other news, I'm so achingly glad the New York Times agrees it's a great thing to read a play.