A Lie of the Mind

Sam Shepard is intense. I think his work can be rather overt and when good, very surprising and awakening. Mostly I find it heavy handed and too ambitious in its attempts to be THE next great expression of the American experience. I found that true of A Lie of the Mind. I was mainly attracted to the play given the superb cast. They did bring breath and life to the words and actions but the story just flounders in the mid-west setting and absurdest variations on rural stereotypes of Americans including the percieved love of guns, destruction, and violence.

Jake (Alessandro Nivola) is a very big guy with a very big anger management problem that resulted in the hospitalization of his wife Beth (Marin Ireland). At the start of the play, Jake is talking with his brother Frankie (Josh Hamilton) and it becomes clear that Jake believes he has killed Beth. Later we find Mike (Frank Whaley) in the hospital with his sister Beth and it is clear she is suffering severe brain damaging affects from the beating. Jake and Frankie's mother Lorraine (Karen Young) is scarily doting on her sons, particularly Jake, to the detriment and neglect of her daughter Sally (Maggie Siff). Frankie goes to Beth's parents' (Laurie Metcalf and Keith Carradine) home to find news about Beth only to be shot by her brother, Mike. Thus the wheels of slow decay begin turning.

Acts of neglect, non-cathartic tantrums, and strange physical moments of dependent servitude roll about the stage. While all the performances, with the exception of Karen Young, are fascinating and engaging with surprising compassion for their relatively nonredeemable characters, I almost wished they would break from the written word and action and show them to be more than mere puppets and tonal exaggerations of American dysfunction. Karen Young, however, just seemed shrill and annoying as Lorraine which is sad given that her character is suppose to bring redemptive, re-birthing via a fire. Instead this final act of release seems sad and pathetically drowning instead of freeing. Perhaps that was the intent, given the destructive and dying nature of Beth's home. In the end, Jake and Beth deliver a story of horrors without any new perspectives given as to this sad tale. It left me more squeamish and filmy than entertained or engaged.

The director, Ethan Hawke, was in attendance that performance and I couldn't help notice his audible laughter behind me during certain scenes. My laughter bubbled up sometimes more from an act of release at awkward moments of discomfort but I perceived Mr. Hawke's laughter was suppose to align with some sense of dark humor in the writing that I somehow missed. Now I love sick humor and laughed hysterically, almost peeing myself, during the Broadway performance of The Lieutenant of Inishmore but I know Martin McDonagh was very intentional in this approach to the play. I'm uncertain how Sam Shepard expected humor, if any, to present itself as either release or comedy in A Lie of the Mind. Thus this contributed to my unease with the work, again. Ah well, perhaps I just don't get it. I'm just not theater-smart enough to hang with such a cool playwright and director. I do love Carradine and Metcalf and would be happy to see most anything they're in.