Juliette Lewis is the Hollywood A-lister having her turn on the London stage here, as the gawky, pouting May, in a slinky red dress and black heels. She’s staying in a shabby motel room somewhere on the edge of the Mojave Desert, somewhere that “used to be Mexico”, although it’s still a better life than back in “that idiot trailer... waiting around for the butane to arrive”. May’s expecting the arrival of her new man, but instead she’s had an unexpected visit from an ex-boyfriend, Eddie.
On the same stage but in a separate world, glazed and half-drunk with booze and memories, sits their father, played by Larry Lamb. Yes, their father. May and Eddie are both lovers and half-siblings: a whopping great cliché of trailer-trash American life. But this setup has none of the claustrophobic horror of Greek tragedy, although it is trying very hard. It comes across simply as a portrayal of a melodramatic, high-volume relationship between a vulnerable, needy girl who keeps going for the wrong guy with doomed consistency, and the wrong guy himself, who will remain a mess of seething jealousy, shoutiness, tequila and, annoyingly, incendiary sex appeal.
Eddie is in fact a cowboy Heathcliff, and, played by the rangy New Zealander Martin Henderson, he dominates the stage. Although Lewis plays May nicely enough, those long legs and twisty little-girlish feet highly expressive of her little-girlish torment, it is Eddie who commands your attention: a bawling, blustering hulk in faded blue denim, swigging liquor straight from the bottle and putting on his spurs (“hooks”) midway through, as if donning his armour for the coming fray. Comically, though, he insists he’s gentle: “My feelings are easily damaged.”
There is little movement for the first half, as these two work out their internal agonies on each other. As often with Shepard, the shouting, drinking, door-slamming and outbursts of bloodless scuffling are often a tired substitute or shorthand for genuine dramatic tension. Only with the arrival of May’s new man, Martin (Joe Duttine), do things become more interestingly triangular.
Martin has driven a couple of miles to see May, whereas Eddie has driven 2,480, as he loudly reminds her: much like Heathcliff bellowing after Cathy that he has more love for her in his little finger than Edgar Linton will ever have for her in his life. There is more much-needed humour with Martin’s added presence, but the thinness of Shepard’s characterisation is also revealed. Eddie is All Bad But Sexy, whereas Martin is unchangeably Mr Nice Guy, thoughtful, kindly, anaemic and passionless. Neither has a speck of the opposite in his make-up. Despite the decent acting and the occasional rough lyricism, the whole remains thin and unconvincing. There is no resolution to the fate of Eddie and May, but not much to the play, either.
Advertisement
Shepard has established himself as the prime purveyor of grimly down-at-heel portraits of white-trash America to a largely admiring middle-class audience, whether English or American, who take it on trust that these scuzzy vignettes are gritty and authentic. But I can’t help feeling the real Americans who inhabit this desolate no-comfort zone might be more complex and unpredictable. I’d rather read Cormac McCarthy or listen to a Jim White album any day.
Fool for Love, Apollo, W1, Two stars