Sam Shepard's newest play Kicking a Dead Horse, now getting its American premiere at the Public Theater, springs directly out of his top drawer, but that vaunted status may not be apparent from the current production, starring the Irish actor Stephen Rea as an East Coast art dealer named Hobart Struther.

The 80-minute virtual solo slow -- which debuted to great acclaim at Dublin's Abbey Theatre last year with Rea in the lead -- is about death and, more than that, about the death of the American Wild West myth. It's a macabre piece, to be sure, but it's indisputably intended as black comedy and should come off as hilarious. Ultimately, Shepard, who has directed the work, simply may not hav[...]