Two brothers -- Austin, a successful Hollywood writer, and Lee, a scruffy house thief who disrupts Austin's equanimity -- face off in their vacationing mother's L.A. kitchen in this latest production in the whopping 45-play festival of Sam Shepard's oeuvre from the Michael Chekhov Theatre Company. Ironically, these seemingly polar opposites are actually more alike than they know, and proving it are two terrific leads, Peter Picard and , the former all mild-mannered rationality as Austin, the latter cocky, taunting, and wily, a potential powder keg as Lee.

As the play progresses, it becomes clear that each brother envies the other's lot -- an adventurous existence in the desert for one, a cushy high life for the other -- and Picard and Pavey adeptly convey the vulnerability beneath the envy and antagonism. Though much of True West plays like a two-hander, there are two other characters: Mark Stevens is appropriately slick as Saul, the Hollywood agent who (surprise) chooses Lee's hokey story outline -- which Saul rates a true contemporary Western -- over Austin's artfully plotted love story, and Frieda Lipp is their mother, who is aghast at the wreckage but only mildly bewildered by her sons' violence.

Austin disparages Lee's hokey outline, with its "grown men acting like boys," and refuses further collaboration; by the second act, roles are reversed, with the frustrated, illiterate Lee futilely typing away, and the increasingly soused Austin now the belligerent one.

Despite the company's modest resources, the technical elements are excellent, down to the pervasive cricket sounds that threaten to push Lee even more over the edge and the fairly elaborate tiled kitchen set (by Pavey) equipped with -- for arguably the play's most absurd moment -- working toasters.

Orchestrating all the mayhem, director Ann Bowen satisfyingly brings out all the mordant humor of a play that, in the Chekhov's hands, continues to confirm its stature as a modern classic.