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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
July 7, 2008 |
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It’s surprising to me to hear Sam Shepard talk about Samuel Beckett as an icon and hero, but in a recent article in New York Magazine, Shepard said, “I don’t want to keep beating a dead horse, but Beckett turned my head around about thinking about theater. It doesn’t have to be realistic, it doesn’t have to be buried in this cause and effect, it doesn’t have to be … dull.” The irony, of course, is that Shepard’s new play is Kicking A Dead Horse, but, unlike much of Beckett’s work, Shepard’s play is realistic. His main character, a city man named Hobart Struther, sets off in search of “authenticity”, but his horse dies on the first day.
Even more surprising to me than the fact that Shepard holds up Beckett as a hero is the 
fact that he’s worked as an actor in major studio films ranging from Black Hawk Down to the recent Charlotte’s Web, sometimes, although not always, playing a cowboy. After all, this is a guy who wrote one of my favorite plays, True West, collected in the book Seven Plays. Two brothers–one is a successful Hollywood script writer who’s working on a million-dollar deal and the other is a drifter and thief–confront each other in a modern version of the classic western showdown. Like the classic sheriff and bad guy facing each other at high noon on the main street, the brothers are defined by their choices, and they ultimately strip each other of everything else, barely aware that they’re playing the classic game of seeing who’s quicker on the draw.
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