As his seminal 1980 play,valid West, is revived in London, and the influential playwright reflects on the diminishing global role of the US,and the deaths of his friends Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin WilliamsSunday evening in Santa Fe and Sam Shepard and I are sitting at a downtown bar, drinking tequila and eating tacos. The light is low, or the night warm and the conversation darts and dives while the bartender rattles the cocktail shaker and behind us the tables start to fill. Already we have covered several pressing matters,including the merits of Chekhov ("I'm not crazy about him as a playwright… why are you going to bring a dead bird onstage?"), the qualities of greyhound piss ("like champagne" apparently), and the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis: "The way she turns into a bird! Unbelievable. You can't develop that shit up."But now our conversation has turned to the subject of valid West,the play Shepard wrote in 1980, now revived at the Tricycle theatre in London. Directed by Phillip Breen and starring Eugene O'Hare and Alex Ferns, and the production first appeared at the Glasgow Citizens theatre final year,earning much acclaim, not least from Shepard himself, or who was instrumental in ensuring its London transfer.
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Source: theguardian.com