‘Shane’ @ Dallas Theater Center

Photos by Jordan Fraker

—Martha Heimberg

A tall figure in black clothing walks slowly from the far corner of the broad, deep Kalita Humphreys Theater stage, lights falling on the tones of sandy earth and raw lumber. We hear a distant guitar, and see a young boy, his eyes glowing with excitement, watching beside his parents at their kitchen table, stage front. We instantly lock into the child’s wide-eyed curiosity. Who is this man, and what is he coming for?

Dallas Theater Center presents the regional premiere of award-winning Mexican-born playwright Karen Zacarias’ 2023 adaptation of Shane, Jack Schaefer’s 1949 novel—and the basis for the famed 1953 film starring Alan Ladd as a hired gunslinger trying to walk away from his past.

The 90-minute play is a taut, sometime comic, racially diverse retelling of the classic western tale, set in 1889 during the violent range wars in the Wyoming Territory. Struggling homesteaders work 160-acre plots, and try to push back against a ruthless rancher who wants to cut those fences down, run off the farmers, and get rich running cattle on the grasslands.

Highly stylized, with rhythmic choreography, slow-motion barroom brawls, and some intense, moving performances, Shane reminds us that —then as now—the powerful forces of violence and greed demand from us the personal courage to stand our ground and fight for the values we believe in, and sometimes for our very lives.

Director Blake Robison (who also directed the original production of this Shane at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis) and scenic designer Lex Liang successfully moe this big sky Western indoors by emptying the stage and shifting focus to grandiose orange horizons; the spare interiors of a warm kitchen or a blue-lit small-town bar can’t overwhelm the presence of the landscape itself.

Lighting designer Pablo Santiago creates magical distant skies, as well as the harsh light of a sudden showdown. Sound designer Matthew Nielson wrote the original score, which features the narrative cry of a sliding guitar, and an occasional voice singing a remembered tune. Trevor Bowen’s handsome costumes are beautifully detailed and perfectly fitted, from long coats and top hats to homespun dresses.

In her program notes, Zacarias says she loved the book as a sixth-grader, but by 20 years later had realized the American West was never as lily-white as depicted in Hollywood versions of that and other stories. In reality, half the cowboys were Black or of Mexican ancestry, and many homesteaders were from Mexico as well. Here, Shane is a former Black slave, one of the gunslingers hired by the cattle baron.

She also wanted to address the tragic impact of the various Homestead Acts on Native Americans—and the complicity of the homesteaders in settling on lands taken from indigenous tribes by the federal government. (By one estimate, the land distribution eventually totaled 270 million acres.) This historic tragedy is touched on here through the complex friendship forged by a Native interpreter and the Mexican American wife of a white homesteader, two women providing a nurturer’s warmth to each other in a masculine world.

As in the novel, the story is narrated by Bob/Bobby Starrett (Esteban Vilchez, as both young and old Bobby) recalling “the happiest summer of my life” on his family’s five-year-old homestead—the summer the mysterious Shane rode into their lives one fine day, and stayed on to help with farm chores. Vilchez is an exuberant kid, clearly enthralled by the strong, quiet man in black, a perfect masculine model for boyish hero-worship. He is also a thoughtful adult version of Bobby, as he explains the effect that Shane had on his mother and father: “They were more alive, more vibrant” when Shane was present.

Shane (a taciturn, confident Nathan M. Ramsey) plays the character with just the right kind of strength and humor to avoid cliche. He clearly appreciates Marian’s hot apple pie and the bedtime stories she tells her son. Shane tells her of his enslaved mother’s sale when he was four, and how he wishes he had met a woman with Marian’s wise and loving nature earlier in his life. Rumor has it Shane is a hired gun who just killed three men in Cheyenne, but he tells Marian, “I want to be a good man like your husband.”

For her part, Marian is kind to Shane and supports her husband making this stranger part of their farming household. Less convincing in the play is the relationship between Winona Stephens (a forthright, slightly frowning Stephanie Lauren Delgado), a Native American interpreter introduced into the story by the playwright. She explains to Bobby that yes, her people were warriors who “did not give up without a fight” when her people were driven off their land.

Marian too speaks of her own background as an indigenous native of Mexico. She feels guilty that she is part of the massive movement of settlers pushing Winona and her people off their land, yet all she can do is offer white tea. What are we offering to this day?  

Bobby’s dad, Joe Starrett (a work-muscled, good humored Blake Hackler) is a pretty good role model himself. He’s the resolute voice of his fellow homesteaders in refusing to sell out or be run off his claim. He’s gentle and loving to wife Marian (quietly smiling Tiffany Solano) and forms a bond with Shane in a funny scene in which the two men work non-stop, grateful for each other’s strength, to remove a huge stump where the garden will go. Joe knows Shane is dangerous, “but not to us,” as he tells his son.

Hackler’s Joe takes a determined stance in his face-off with the land-hungry rancher Luke Fletcher (Bob Hess at his sneering, villainous best), provoking pouting Fletcher to bring in a hired gun to get these stubborn settlers off the range, dead or alive.

True to the promise of the genre, the play continues to build tension through physical threats and shouted confrontations to a final showdown, played out with swaying bodies, frozen lights and tightly synchronized dramatic action. (Kudos to fight director Sordelet, Inc.) When Shane confronts the hired gun, as he must, I held my breath for a long moment, though I know the story and saw the movie.

Heroes win. And, yes, everybody in the theater cheered loudly when the villainous rancher was dispatched. Down with villains everywhere!

WHEN: January 31-February 16, 2025
WHERE: Kalita Humphreys Theater
WEB: dallastheatercenter.org