Simpatico is one of Sam Shepard’s later works. Although he wrote for the stage until the year of his death—his final play, A Particle of Dread, was produced in 2017—when Simpatico premiered in 1994 Shepard had already forged three decades’ worth of cryptic messages and weird interludes. So perhaps the playwright is enjoying a well-earned laugh at his own expense when, early in the first scene, one of the play’s two protagonists turns to the other and asks, “Do you wanna talk or do you wanna be cryptic and weird?”