Review: True West ***

How can such a brilliantly performed, fantastically written show earn only three stars? When it's staged in the wrong place.

Paul Miller, associate director at Sheffield, will direct John Simm in Hamlet here later this year.

He gets a practice run on the refurbished stage of the Crucible in this production of Sam Shepard's blistering play of sibling rivalry.

The Crucible is a special stage, one of the most extraordinary in the country. It has defeated better directors than Miller.

The problem with the production is that it seems to forget that it is in the Crucible. Once given access to the amazing space, a director has to acknowledge it. Not to do so is a waste of a precious platform.

True West sees Shepard put two grown-up brothers in their mother's house, looking after it while she is away. Austin is a successful Hollywood writer and his brother, Lee, a drifter who makes a living from stealing.

John Light and Nigel Harman, two physical actors, alternate the roles, playing Lee on one night and Austin the next.

Whichever way it is done, the muscular language of the play is well served by these two actors who let rip.

Light's undercurrent of violence is often excruciating to watch, and Harman confirms the expectations, based on his performance in The Caretaker, in Sheffield a couple of years ago, that he is one of his generation's finest actors.

But the stage, the stage.

The production, given a static set, looks like it has been created to fit in a studio and plonked in the middle of the Crucible. It would have actually worked much better in the studio theatre round the corner, the pressure-cooker environment been better exploited by the close proximity of the audience to the action.

The performances still make it a production worth seeing, but if only it had made proper use of the stage.

To June 5.