Explore the vast range of titles available.

Austin, a well-educated writer, is at his mother's modest house near the Mojave Desert, working on the movie script he hopes will change his fortunes.

STAGE REVIEW TRUE WEST PLAY BY SAM SHEPARD. DIRECTED BY ROBERT WALSH. SET, JANIE E. HOWLAND. COSTUMES, MOLLY TRAINER.\\ LIGHTS, LINDA O'BRIEN. SOUND AND MUSIC, CAMERON WILLARD. PRODUCED BY NEW REPERTORY THEATRE. AT: ARSENAL CENTER FOR THE ARTS, THROUGH NOV. 20. 617-923-8487. Walsh is particularly good at underlining the sense of displacement that hovers over all of Shepard's characters. When their mother comes home early, she finds the kitchen torn apart and eventually threatens to leave. \"This is where you live,\" Austin protests. \"I don't recognize it at all,\" she replies, referring to more than the mess they've made of her kitchen. (Both M. Lynda Robinson as the mother and Stephen Epstein as the Hollywood producer are first-rate in the two lesser roles.) At times, Shepard feels a little too facile. Austin's metamorphosis into a bad boy always feels a bit unearned, for example. When the production, even under Walsh's accomplished fight direction, turns violent, you wonder where someone like Austin got the ability to turn into a street-fighting man. This production doesn't dismiss those concerns. It just puts them on hold and allows us to bask in what Shepard does particularly well in this play create a situation that's entertaining on the surface but unveils greater meanings and ironies the deeper we go.

These challenges might not be why Keegan has taken an unusual approach with Sam Shepard's \"True West,\" but its twist on the violent, character-driven drama does play well here. \"True West\" is archetypical Shepard, a study of family dysfunction combined with frustrations caused by the erosion of the American frontier ideal and the constrictions of an ordered society. It's fairly uncomplicated, but it has a bizarre undertone that director Susan Marie Rhea successfully exploits to turn this ominous tale of brotherly conflict into dark comedy. Keegan regulars Eric Lucas and Mark Rhea portray seemingly mismatched brothers who might have more in common than is immediately obvious. Lucas is Austin, a tidy, mild- mannered screenwriter who is borrowing his mother's home while she vacations in order to finish up a script and finalize the deal with a Hollywood producer. Austin's brother, Lee, a thuggish drifter Rhea plays with tightly coiled intimidation, rolls in unexpectedly and trashes Austin's sedate world.

Last summer, a theater group in the small town of Hailey, Idaho, revived the play, making national headlines. The hoopla surrounded the fact that Bruce Willis, who has a home near Hailey and owns the theater building, was directing and co-starring in the production. A taping of that venture is being shown tonight at 8 on Showtime. People will tune in to see Willis but will come away having seen a crackling presentation of one of America's best plays.

Bailiwick's Deaf Artists is a pioneering program that places deaf and hearing actors on equal footing in a kinetic theatrical environment. During the last few years, the initiative -- spearheaded by Bailiwick's artistic director David Zak and directed by Ronald Jiu -- has resulted in stirring productions of \"Our Town,\" \"Equus\" and world premieres by deaf playwrights.

Austin, to borrow from the play's imagery, is the housebroken cocker spaniel digging under the fence to escape; Lee is the rangy coyote who wouldn't mind the pampered life of a house pet every once in a while amid \"warm yellow lights, Mexican tile all around, copper pots hanging over the stove.\"

\"True West\" ultimately proves too daunting for this cast, which treats [Sam Shepard]'s vivisection of the remains of the American family like an acting exercise for graduate students. Scruffy Nick Rhoton (\"Killer Joe\") is an obvious choice for the part of [Lee], the beer-swilling petty thief whose sole purpose in life appears to be terrorizing his buttoned-up screenwriter brother, Austin (Matthew Myers). Rhoton's playful instincts --- he's a slowly ticking time bomb who'll eventually exact his revenge on a typewriter, telephone and a small army of toasters --- are all but wasted on Myers (\"Take Me Out\"), whose approach to this two-headed role is surprisingly leaden and one-dimensional. (Particularly for an actor who's built a reputation on nervous energy and boyish excitability.) During the first act, Myers does little more than run his lines; during the second, he doesn't make a persuasive drunk or bully.

[Paul Noble]'s smart enough to stop short of Malkoviching it up. He and director Geoff Button know that way lies potentially tiresome madness. The funny thing is, [John Malkovich] realizes it too: In \"Lost Land\" Malkovich is doing his best to portray a conflicted liberal idealist. Better than anybody, Malkovich knows he can't \"Do Malkovich\" when it doesn't make sense. Otherwise he'd end up playing Lee in \"True West\" no matter who he was playing.

[Sam Shepard]'s play is a rewrite of David Miller's 1962 western Lonely Are the Brave, which sees ex-con cowboy Kirk Douglas finding that the horse is no match for sheriff Walter Matthau's Jeep and helicopters. Heavy-drinking thief Lee is pitted against younger brother Austin, the embodiment of the American dream with his wife, kids, Ivy League education and successful career as a screenwriter.