Holed up in a seedy motel on the edge of the Mojave Desert, two former lovers unpack the deep secrets and dark desires of their tangled relationship, passionately tearing each other apart. Beaten down by ill-fated love and a ruthless struggle for identity, can they ultimately live with, or without, each other? Led by director Daniel Aukin (Back Back Back at MTC; 4,000 Miles), Tony Award winner Nina Arianda (Venus in Fur at MTC, Born Yesterday)and Sam Rockwell (A Behanding in Spokane, The Way Way Back) bring an explosive intensity to Sam Shepard's (Buried Child, True West) landmark myth of the new Wild West.
Daniel Aukin's production...is also sensationally acted...Arianda vividly embodies the conflict between May's sensuality and shame as she bounces from the bed to the bathroom to the front door of the shabby motel room...(The way she wields her long blond hair, which covers her face when she's disgusted and furiously flies in all directions when her violent temper has been stoked, is something to see.) But the revelation for me was Rockwell, who sheds new light on Eddie...Eddie is often portrayed as a Marlboro Man, a last holdout of the iconic West. Rockwell shows that he can lasso furniture as adroitly as any carnival cowboy, but there's a charming clumsiness to his characterization. He's fleshy and clownish -- qualities that intensify the violent threat.
...it's a welcome shock to see the actor stripped of all that allure in the opening tableau of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, in which Arianda plays bucking bronco to Sam Rockwell's dusty cowpoke. Slumped on a motel bed in unflattering, baggy clothes, head slung low, this is Arianda as a broken doll, as trashed as the grubby room around her. She may spring to life with a furious attack and eventually pour herself into a little red number, but Arianda's May is not the glamor fest one expects. Just as surprising is Rockwell's Eddie...here he seems to dig deep into painful places for Eddie, a tight-lipped fellow whose leathery exterior hides a frightened boy...Daniel Aukin's painterly diorama production benefits from key support from a fine Tom Pelphrey as May's bemused beau and Gordon Joseph Weiss as a spectral old-timer who may have fathered both fractious lovers (there's a whisper of Greek tragedy amidst the tumbleweeds). But it's Rockwell and Arianda who most strike the sparks, blow on the embers and get the fire raging.
1983 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2015 | Broadway |
Manhattan Theatre Club Broadway Revival Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Nina Arianda |
2016 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Sam Rockwell |
2016 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play (Broadway or off-Broadway) | Fool for Love |
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