Papa Was a Rolling Stone: The Late Henry Moss

Written by Sam Shepard
Presented by St. Louis Actor’s Studio
Actors love Sam Shepard. He’s the theatrical equivalent to an indie rock band whose fans are mostly other musicians, college radio DJs and record store clerks. It occurred to me while watching St. Louis Actor’s Studio’s production of ”The Late Henry Moss” that, without even trying, I’ve probably seen more Sam Shepard plays than any other living playwright. Muddy Waters Theatre recently dedicated an entire season to him, and if I’m not mistaken, in 2000 there were two local productions of “A Lie of the Mind” that practically overlapped.
“The Late Henry Moss” is one of Shepard’s most recent works and it reads like a greatest hits collection of the playwright’s favorite tropes. The battling Moss brothers are the spiritual cousins of Austin and Lee from “True West.” Theirs is a dysfunctional family haunted by a past it dare not confront as in “Buried Child.” There’s even the bizarre, recurring Shepardian image of a grown man crawling helplessly on the floor and eliciting no sympathy.
“The Late Henry Moss” is a play about truth, lies and memory. In act one, we meet the estranged Moss brothers, Ray and Earl, who have traveled to their recently deceased father’s New Mexico home to settle his affairs. The play begins with Earl leafing through a scrapbook trying to match names and dates to photos as if trying to rebuild a lost family narrative. He and Ray argue and contradict each other over family memoires. As Ray tries to piece together the circumstances of their father’s death, much of the play will consist of conflicting versions of the same tales. When a hapless cab driver casually mentions his family history to Ray, Ray angrily accuses him of lying or simply repeating lies he’s never bothered to verify. Once again, Shepard’s concern is the myth of the American family and whether we choose to believe those myths or live with uncomfortable reality.
Director Milton Zoth sure-footedly leads a cast of accomplished actors swiftly through Shepard’s three act narrative. David Wassilak as Ray, the younger Moss brother, is stiff and disconnected in act one, but gets better as the show progresses and Ray grows more sadistic towards his brother and the hapless cab driver played by John Pierson. As Ray’s brother Earl, William Roth (whose performance was one of the few things worth recommending in the Actor’s Studio’s previous production, “The Waiting Room”) once again takes a pedestrian role and creates the most believable and compelling character on the stage. Earl Moss is trying to take the horrible history of his troubled family and rewrite it as something akin to normal, but his brother won’t let him. Through Roth’s subtle and nuanced performance, you feel Earl’s pain, even when it’s almost drowned out by all the sound and fury of Shepard’s script.
Acts one and two begin with lusty dance numbers between Kevin Beyer as Henry Moss and Brooke Edwards as Henry’s mysterious Native American lover, Conchalla. Both numbers give the play needed shots of adrenaline to hold us over before the fireworks of the third act. Beyer and Edwards both do well with their flamboyant characters, but they, as much of the cast, are undermined by Shepard’s dialogue. The characters talk in circles and play the kind of semantic games that David Mamet and David Rabe do so well, but here are just maddening and repetitive.
Respectively, Larry Dell and John Pierson provide much needed comic relief as Henry’s Mexican neighbor and Esteban, a cab driver known only as Taxi. Both spend much of the play as foils for Henry and/or Ray’s abuse and are easily the most sympathetic characters in the show. In the end, they were the characters I identified with the most because they represent the audience: innocent bystanders trapped in a small space with some of the most unpleasant people one could imagine. Watching “The Late Henry Moss” is like being stuck in room with a couple having a violent domestic dispute in which you don’t care who’s right or wrong, only how soon can you get to an exit.
In the end it’s hard to recommend “The Late Henry Moss.” It’s a fine production of a frustrating and annoying play.
“The Late Henry Moss” runs through April 20th at St. Louis Actor’s Studio. For more information visit www.stlas.org
David Noble Dandridge can be reached at: radiclwraith-theatre@yahoo.com