am Shepard totally rules. As a Pulitzer-winning playwright, an Oscar-winning actor, whatever, the man rules. You should go see “A Lie of the Mind” just because he wrote it. (You should go see it anyway, because it’s a damn good play.) Shepard’s work plays with the ideas of the Old West, mixing them with pop culture and seeing what happens. “A Lie of the Mind,” set mainly in Montana, is no exception. People go hunting and drink whiskey straight from the bottle, but there’s a modern-day pathos about it all, an examination of the way family relationships form and unform, and what holds it all together.

In “A Lie of the Mind,” two families occupy the same stage, telling two different stories intertwined by abuse, neglect and love.

Characters cross between the two sets freely, they use the same wall, they exchange furniture and at some points characters from one family seem to be watching the other.

The play opens with Jake (Josh Iley), who confesses to his brother Frankie (Whit Hertford) that he thinks he killed his wife Beth (Alyssum Hutson). He is mistaken, he has only put her in the hospital, where her brother Mike (Sean Kazarin) cares for her.

Jake is obsessed with the thought of Beth; he haunts her with the memory of what happened. Their parents and siblings revolve around them, each forced to examine his or herself as they try to care for Jake and Beth. As is to be expected when this sort of thing happens—and as the play’s title suggests—mental breakdowns abound. The play stops being about Beth and Jake and starts being about everyone coming to terms (or not) with their own past. It seems the deeper in the characters get, the less able they seem to communicate with others, until at times they seem to be talking just to themselves. And the presence of both families on stage sometimes makes it feel as if this could all be one of Jake’s fantasies, a lie of his mind, if you will.

This all sounds very vague and intellectual, like something a play critic would write to fill space. The truth is, there’s not a whole lot to really talk about. Somebody gets shot and at one point someone else is walking around in his underwear with an American flag (gasp! Not our national colors) draped around his shoulders. This is not what the play’s about, though. But what the play is about is hard to talk about. Follow? And, since it’s Sam Shepard, it rules.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s the Lab either. Be forewarned, it’s sort of a tight fit. However, we should all love the actors just for their ability to remain on stage, relatively motionless, for extended periods of time. We should all also love the actors because their performances remain so strong throughout the long (two hours and 45 minutes, and not one but two intermissions) production.

We should especially love Courtney Young and Leah Dutchin for being Jake’s and Beth’s respective mothers—one is overbearing, one is timid; one’s husband frightens her, but she remains devoted to him, the other’s nearly destroy her.
And did I mention Sam Shepard rules?
bobbi@red-mag.com