In a theatre season that has seemed veritably littered with upbeat, lively fare meant to distract from your woes Actor’s Bridge Ensemble’s Nashville premiere of Sam Shepard’s “Simpatico” is a welcome change of pace—not to mention a bold and ambitious choice for the troupe. It must be pointed out that any Sam Shepard piece bears with it a certain gravity that almost guarantees from the outset a difficult at best production to even the most seasoned performers; witness modern classic “True West” and the lesser known “Buried Child” for evidence of such. “Simpatico” faces an even bigger burden due to its mind bogglingly slow build and twenty-year arc of discovery from which Shepard wrings out details in a convoluted layer-upon-layer plot that can cause even the staunchest of theatre goers’ eyes to glass over about a quarter of the way through the first act. All this added to the fact that the 1999 movie based on the play boasted the star power of Nick Nolte, Jeff Bridges and Sharon Stone and despite that met with middling reviews and a weak box office are no small portents.
