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Town Hall theatre, GalwaySteppenwolf’s staging at Galway International Arts festival has a smart political and racial awareness as it unpicks the American mythSam Shepard’s story of two warring brothers was first produced in a celebrated production by the Chicago-based Steppenwolf company in 1982. Although Shepard said that his drama of “double nature” was not intended to be metaphorical, it is difficult not to read into Steppenwolf’s new production the divisions in the US today, heightened during the Donald Trump presidency.Conflicting desires coexist in Austin (Jon Michael Hill), an Ivy League graduate and Hollywood screenwriter, and his brother Lee (Namir Smallwood), a drifter and crook who has recently returned from the Mojave desert. When Lee crashes into their mother’s California home where Austin is house-sitting, they come into direct and intensely physical confrontation. Continue reading...