West is best

There is a certain dynamic some actors have and most don’t.

Such actors project a sense of dichotomous danger – you never know if they want to kiss you or kill you and you can never tell for sure what they are going to do next. To witness this in theatre, in particular, can be electrifying. Better still when this indefinable dynamic within an actor is then placed inside a play that is similarly dualistic and torn right down to its soul.
Such I suspect will be the case in relation to Aidan Kelly’s role in Sam Shepherd’s True West, which opens on March 28 at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin.
Indeed Kelly “absolutely” agrees with my point about that “indefinable something” some actors have. Even though he is too modest to say whether or not he has it, he certainly suggests that he has “become even more incendiary” since the days he appeared in plays like The Barbaric Comedies and Philadelphia Here I Come.
Kelly, incidentally, is well known for his roles in television programmes, such a Bachelor’s Walk, Proof, The Clinic and Making the Cut.
“And one of the reasons I probably am more incendiary now is that acting probably is the only place I get to express myself at all these levels,” he says. “But, you’re right – you’ve gotta never know what’s coming next when you are watching someone on stage or in a movie, or whatever. Yet I think this is a male thing as well, ultimately. A lot of movies or plays are written by ‘boys’ and allow men and boys to really furrow into those parts of their psyche and even to show off the aggression and the anger so you do never know ‘is he going to kiss her or kill her’? But there also are many female actors and you never know if they are going to kiss you or give you a kick in the balls and when theatre is working at that level it is fantastic, even for the actors. And in this play Declan Conroy is playing the other brother and we are constantly trying to find that spark, so the audience never knows where things are going to go.”
Aidan also believes that True West itself captures two opposing sides of playwright Sam Shepherd’s nature. In the play that split is transposed into those two brothers. So what’s it all about, basically?
“Well, you’ve got one brother who has a modicum of success as a screenwriter in Hollywood and his brother turns up on the scene, who is this foul character who’s come out of the desert where he’s been for five years and he looks like a tramp and doesn’t seem to have anything going for him,” Kelly responds.
“But he has this story he manages to convince his brother’s producer to make for him, at the expense of the brother’s project so there is that tension between the two of them throughout the whole play. And I really do believe that Shepherd in a way is both brothers and this, ultimately, is what the play is about. His problem with being a writer seems to be that he is both this craftsman and this wild man and he’s asking if you can harness the wildness and turn it into something of worth, whether it is a play, a story or a piece of art.”
That said, Aidan Kelly believes “Shepherd takes a very dim view” of this whereas he himself thrives on that battle royale.
“Sure, even having to work as hard on this play – which I’ll be following straight afterwards with Howie the Rookie at the Peacock – keeps me from staying out drinking every night and being hung-over the next morning!” he jokes. “Besides I really can’t be carrying on like that now that I have a daughter and there is another child on the way!”
Indeed.