Black and white, Cain and Abel, yin and yang – the dichotomies of life have always intrigued Sam Shepard. In True West, his concentration is on the dualities of personality and the notion that personality is not immutable but can flip at any time, depending on circumstance.

True West, part of the Shepard trilogy that also includes The Curse of the Starving Class and Fool for Love, plays through July 15 at New Village Arts Theatre’s lovely, air-conditioned new space in Carlsbad.

In an unnamed suburb “40 miles east of Los Angeles,” the neatly dressed, Ivy League-educated Austin (Joshua Everett Johnson), a 30-something aspiring screenwriter, slaves over a hot typewriter on a “simple love story” he hopes to sell to film producer Saul Kimmer (Jack Missett). A husband and father, Austin has left his family to house-sit while his mother is on vacation in Alaska.

On the kitchen floor to his left sits his scruffy brother Lee (the nearly unrecognizable Francis Gercke), just returned from several months of a nomadic existence in the desert with a pit bull for company. Undereducated and without apparent goals or life plans, Lee drinks a great deal and survives by petty thievery, taking what he wants and suffering no evident ethical remorse. The brothers have not seen each other in five years.

Austin and Lee – the natural man and the “civilized” member of society – circle each other uneasily, like boxers or caged animals. Each expresses contempt for the other’s life choices, yet each also realizes how they complement his own psyche.

Austin lends Lee his car, more out of a desire for peace and quiet than kindness. A few minutes after Saul arrives to discuss Austin’s screenplay, negotiations are interrupted by Lee’s early return. Seizing the opportunity to move in on his brother’s world, Lee bulldozes his way to a golf date with Saul while mentioning casually that he too has an idea for a screenplay.

When Lee returns from the golf game with the news that Saul has elected to pursue his project rather than Austin’s, the scene is set for the psychological flaying of Austin’s psyche that will eventually lead to violence.

Kurner is lucky to have two of the city’s best actors playing Austin and Lee. Johnson’s player of the social game doesn’t really understand his brother’s “I’ll take what I want” attitude, but shows a certain grudging admiration for his brother’s chutzpah even though he’s furious about Saul’s betrayal.

Gercke, transformed by stance, face fur and a lisp, has an inexhaustible storehouse of menacing gestures that make even the audience take a psychological step back. It’s a tour-de-force performance and one of the year’s best. The unscripted addition of the lisp only adds to Lee’s “outsider” identity.

Shepard is an acquired taste, his plays providing not entertainment but a searing examination of the human psyche. If you’re up for it, True West will not disappoint.

True West plays through July 15 at New Village Arts Theatre’s new space at 2787B State St. in Carlsbad. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday at 3 and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 760-433-3245 or visit www.newvillagearts.org.

Life has not worked out as expected for Lola (S. Epatha Merkerson), former belle of the ball, and husband Doc (Alan Rosenberg).

Doc gave up his dreams of medical school and a comfortable life and settled for a chiropractic practice when the 18-year-old Lola got pregnant. Since the heartbreak of their stillborn baby (and Lola’s resulting sterility), life has been one of regret and disappointment for them both. Doc escaped into the bottle for a while, but has quit and is about to celebrate one year of sobriety.

Lola, unable to adjust to the loss of youth, the baby and her little dog Sheba, has put on weight and lost interest in everything, including keeping the house clean.

William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba concludes an extended run on July 22 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Michael Pressman directs this fine production boasting James Noone’s terrific dual-level set, excellent performances from TV veterans Merkerson (Lt. Anita Van Buren on “Law and Order”) and Rosenberg (“The Guardian,” “Chicago Hope”) and a fine supporting cast.

Doc and Lola live vicariously through the exploits of their pretty young roomer Marie (Jenna Gavigan) until the sadness that invokes leads to an explosive situation.

Broken dreams and stunted lives, loss and loneliness were common themes for playwrights in the ’40s and ’50s. Lola and Doc have a lot in common with Amanda Wingfield, Blanche duBois and the later George and Martha.

Come Back, Little Sheba is an American classic, and this is as good a production as you will see.

Come Back, Little Sheba plays through July 22 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 213-628-2772 or visit www.centertheatregroup.org.

Poor old Carmen. Prosper Mérimée brought the high-spirited gypsy to the reading public in 1845, and people have been appropriating her for their own purposes ever since.

Bizet did it best, combining great music with the spectacle of toreadors and the bullring, the Spanish underworld of smugglers and a doomed one-sided love story that could only lead to death in the afternoon. The opera has it all – passion, seduction, murder and the romance of the corrida.

Now La Jolla Playhouse presents a new musical Carmen, “re-imagined” and directed by Cirque du Soleil’s Franco Dragone, director of O, which I consider to be the best Cirque show ever. Carmen plays through July 22 at the Mandell Weiss Theatre.

Alas, Cirque style has lost out to what passes for musical comedy these days.

Cirque’s trademark soaring, death-defying acrobatics have been replaced by Sarah Miles’ leaden choreography, and Cirque’s usual new agey music is supplanted by John Ewbank’s banal score. The single element reminiscent of Cirque is the suspended bull mask seen at the beginning and end of the show.

Miles’ script matches the choreography (she also wrote the book) – occasionally interesting but mostly desperately dull. Except in the second-act flamenco, her dancers stomp around with military precision but little heart or imagination, and Ewbanks’ score – redundant, forgettable and ear-splittingly overmiked – does not help.

But spectacle is the name of the game here, and the Playhouse’s usual arsenal of spiffy stagecraft is on display, with set pieces that rotate and levitate. There’s even a small pool near the footlights where Carmen takes a dip while on break from the cigarette factory. Odd, unexplained elements show up from time to time (a skeleton, a hanged man, a mysterious veiled woman). Christopher Akerlind’s lighting is saturated, and there are lots of red, spotlights and candles to arrest the eye. Suzy Benziger’s clingy costumes add to the visual interest.

The whole is, well, busy and exhausting, but I left asking myself “Where’s the beef?” This Carmen is dangerously close to that other classic bastardization, Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida.

Don’t blame the cast. Janien Valentine’s Carmen is a little redheaded dynamo with a pop voice and a fearless approach to dance (especially in a gang-rape scene in which she is tossed from one man to another).

Ryan Silverman is excellent as the hapless José, who really doesn’t get it until it’s too late. The rest of this talented cast does what it can, but you can’t add meaning where there is none.

I can’t say Carmen is dull; just that it’s loud, flashy and lacking in heart.

Carmen plays through July 22 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 1 p.m. For tickets, call 858-550-1010 or visit www.lajollaplayhouse.com.