Dramaworks has returned to the kind of play that is right
in the theatre company’s wheelhouse, Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize winning, Buried Child. It fits perfectly with many
of the family-focused plays the company has produced in the past, works by
Edward Albee, Thorton Wilder, Horton Foote, Lorraine Hansberry, and Arthur
Miller, to name but a few. I see
parallels to particular Dramaworks productions, their 2007 revival of Frank D.
Gilroy’s The Subject Was Roses also a
Pulitzer Prize-winning play and its superb 2011 production of All My Sons by Arthur Miller, both of which
involved sons returning to families that harbored secrets or strife.
Buried Child is
an edge-of-your -seat riveting drama, perhaps the best of Dramaworks’
season. It is a drama which will have
you thinking about it even when you don’t want to think about it, and the
acting brings you right into the work, the audience never knowing where the
explosive anger of the unpredictable characters might lead. Throughout its three acts the audience is just
waiting for something, well, unspeakable to happen.
Sam Shepard |
The works of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams laid a
path for Shepard’s works as well. But in
an interview with the “Paris Review” almost twenty years ago he said he mostly felt
the influence of Pinter and Beckett on his work, saying. “The stuff that had the biggest influence on
me was European drama in the sixties. That period brought theater into
completely new territory—Beckett especially, who made American theater look
like it was on crutches. I don’t think Beckett gets enough credit for
revolutionizing theater, for turning it upside down.” Shepard brings an absurdist, surrealistic
spin to his work and of all the playwrights I mentioned, his is the darkest
view of the American family, and thus the American dream.
The drunken, damaged father of his plays comes from his
own life experience. His relationship with
his father was doomed when Shepard was young.
He describes him as “boozed up, very violent and crazy.” When asked whether his father ever saw Buried Child, Shepard said, “he went to
the show smashed, just pickled, and in the middle of the play he began to
identify with some character, though I’m not sure which one, since all those
characters are kind of loosely structured around his family. In the second act
he stood up and started to carry on with the actors, and then yelled, 'What a
bunch of shit this is!’ The ushers tried to throw him out. He resisted, and in
the end they allowed him to stay because he was the father of the playwright. “
At the heart of Buried
Child is the concept that you are only as sick as your secrets. In this case, a monstrous one – murder and
incest -- one that corrupts the family although
we’re constantly reassured by the clueless Protestant minister, Father Dewis,
that the family is well thought of by the community. The family consists of the helpless though
extremely toxic alcoholic centerpiece, the father, Dodge, the psychologically
damaged son, Tilden, the physically (and psychologically) maimed son, Bradley,
and, finally, the prodigal grandson, absent for six years, Tilden’s son, Vince. These impaired men have to deal with their
mother, Dodge’s wife, Halie, a hardened, embittered woman who hypocritically spouts
piety holding on to her companionship with Father Dewis who tries,
unsuccessfully, to keep the peace.
Finally, there is the “outsider”, Vince’s girlfriend, Shelly, the person
who is closest to being “normal” whatever that might mean in this play.
Shepard leans heavily on symbolism, juxtaposing the
family’s breakdown to the corruption of the American Dream itself. Here he further develops themes expounded by Arthur
Miller and Edward Albee. The barren
backyard in which the secret is harbored is also a surrealistic source of
bountiful crops of corn and carrots.
Perhaps it is Shepard’s statement of what might have been: reality vs.
illusion, one of the drama’s leitmotifs.
The relatively brief first act establishes the setting, a
run-down Illinois farmhouse in 1979 which is inhabited by Dodge, a wretched alcoholic,
married to his flighty wife, Halie. They
carry on a dialogue which sets the themes, and establishes the hopeless
shambles of their lives. Dodge lies on
the couch in disarray, watching TV, uncontrollably coughing, but mostly
drinking and hiding the bottle. Halie,
who speaks mostly unseen from upstairs, is getting ready to go out with Father
Dewis, fleeing her feeble husband, and their two sons, the mentally challenged
Tilden, who has returned from New Mexico after a long absence (with the
implication of prison time) and who is now a dependent, and Bradley, who
bullies Tilden and Dodge. Tilden wanders
in – the spitting image of Lenny from Of Mice
and Men – with corn from a field in back which is known to be barren – not
having yielded crops since 1935. Tilden
begins to husk the corn, leaving the shells on Dodge who has finally fallen deep
asleep on the couch. Tilden exits as
Bradley enters, limping, seeing the corn husks all over the place saying, what the hell is this? He pulls out hair clippers, takes Dodge’s hat
off, and cuts off his hair, leaving bloody scars. This leads to a brief
intermission, necessary to clean the stage, but unfortunate as the audience is
already being held in the grip of the play’s tension.
The real dramatic action begins with the second act when
Vince returns to see his family after such a long absence, Shelly in tow, only
not to be recognized (or acknowledged) by his grandfather or even his own father,
Tilden. An amusing exchange between
Vince and Dodge establishes the estrangement:
VINCE: You haven't
seen me for a long time.
DODGE: When was the
last time?
VINCE: I don't remember.
DODGE: You don't
remember?
VINCE: No
DODGE: You don't
remember. How am I supposed to remember if you don't remember?
It is a rude awakening given the idealized family that
Vince wants to remember (and introduce his girl friend to). But when Shelly
first sees the house, it is indeed the idealized image that fills her mind:
SHELLY: I don't
believe it!....It's like a Norman Rockwell cover or something.
VINCE: What's a’
matter with that? It's American.
SHELLY: Where's the
milkman and the little dog? What’s the little dog’s name? Spot.
Spot and Jane. Dick and Jane and
Spot.
Cliff Burgess |
Dodge is perhaps the saddest, most reprehensible protagonist
in contemporary American drama. He makes
Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons
look like a saint. In fact I think of Buried Child as being a grotesque Arthur
Miller version 2.0, ratcheting up the corruption of the American Dream to a new
level. Dodge is a dying, drunken provocateur,
lashing out at anyone in earshot. One
senses that the “secret” he keeps has eaten at him from within, but he is
nonetheless able to express the “truth,” frequently with a kind of black humor
which permeates the play
HALIE: You sit here
day or night, festering away! Decomposing! Smelling up the house with your
putrid body! Hacking your head off till all hours of the morning! Thinking up mean, evil, stupid things to say
about your own flesh and blood.
DODGE: He's not my
flesh and blood! My flesh and blood’s
buried in the backyard!
Rob Donohoe |
Rob Donohoe gives an inspired performance as Dodge. It is particularly amazing that he completely
inhabits the character having just completed his outstanding leading-role performance
in the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s production of Glengarry Glen Ross. Rob
Donohoe has performed in other Dramaworks productions as well but this is his
first breakout and well deserved leading role.
Rob Donohoe and Paul Tei |
David Nail, another new face at Dramaworks, plays his
brother, Bradley -- a difficult role because Bradley is not only immersed in a
seething ugly anger, bullying anyone he can, but he is also physically non- functional,
having cut off his leg with a chain saw, his artificial leg passed around like
a hot potato, immobilizing him in the third act to the point of his having to
drag his body around the stage like an injured reptile, the leg always just out
of his reach. Until that point he is the
most menacing of the characters in the play, one who the audience fears may
commit some unspeakable act.
They once had another brother, Ansel, who died in a motel
room on his honeymoon. Halie has
idealized Ansel as their imaginary savior, if he had only lived. His greatness (to her) knows no bounds. And according to Halie, he was the only real
man in the family, something that cuts deeply into Dodge, Tilden, and Bradley:
HALIE: Ansel
would've stopped him [Speaking of Dodge].
Ansel would've stopped him from telling these lies. He was a hero. A man. A whole
man. What's happened to the men of this family!
Where are the men!
Indeed, where are the men?
Halie, however, is the quintessential hypocrite, trying
to keep up the illusion of propriety, with the help (and perhaps more than that)
of spindly Father Dewis, so convincingly played by Dan Leonard -- while keeping
Dodge in check with the pretense of concern on the one hand, but constant
criticism on the other. Everyone else is
to blame, even the “Catholics” like the one who married Ansel. Angie Radosh is the consummate actress, well
known to Dramaworks devotees. She carries
a Blanche DuBois quality of imposing her own fantasy as reality. She has brushed aside that reality to imagine
what might have been, constantly fantasizing about Ansel (who no doubt would
have turned out to be just like the other men in the family):
David Nail and Olivia Gilliatt |
Shelly is played by a rising young actress, New York
based, the striking Olivia Gilliatt. She
is like a ray of sunshine in the play, a sign of hopefulness. She has been duped coming along with Vince
for this visit, and yet as the only authentic character in the play, cautions
Vince about leaving her alone in the house, even for a moment:
SHELLY: I don't
want to stay here in this house. I thought it was going to be turkey dinners
and apple pie and all that kind of stuff….I just as soon not be here
myself. I just as soon be a thousand
miles from here. I’d rather be anywhere but here. You're the one who wants to
stay. So I’ll stay and I'll cut the carrots. And I'll cook the carrots. And
I'll do whatever I have to do to survive. Just to make it through this.
Indeed, Shelly is a survivor.
As the tension mounts she has the temerity of confronting
Dodge after seeing family photographs hanging upstairs, the clear juxtaposition
of the idealized life of the past to the despair of the present:
SHELLY: You never
look at the pictures up there?
DODGE: What
pictures?
SHELLEY: Your whole
life’s up there hanging on the wall. Somebody who looks just like you. Somebody
who looks just like you used to look.
DODGE: That isn’t
me. This is me. Right here. This is it. The whole shootin’ match, sittin’ right
in front of you.
SHELLEY: So the
past never happened as far as you're concerned?
DODGE: The past.
Jesus Christ. The past. What do you know about the past?....
SHELLY: There's a
picture of a farm. A big farm. A bull. Wheat. Corn.
DODGE: Corn?
SHELLY: All the
kids are standing out in the corn. They're all waving these big straw hats. One
of them doesn't have a hat.
DODGE: Which one is
that?
SHELLY: There's a baby. A baby in a woman's arms. The
same woman with red hair. She looks lost standing out there. Like she doesn't
know how she got there.
DODGE: She knows! I
told her one hundred times it wasn't gonna be the city! I gave her plenty a’
warning!
SHELLY: She's
looking down at the baby like it was somebody else's. Like it didn't belong to
her.
DODGE: That's about
enough out of you. You got some funny ideas. Some damn funny ideas. You think
just because people propagate they have to love their offspring? You never seen
a bitch eat her puppies? Where are you from anyway?
But Shelley sees the truth clearly:
DEWIS: There's
nothing to be afraid of. These are all good people. All righteous people
SHELLY: I'm not afraid.
DEWIS: But this
isn't your house. You have to have some respect.
SHELLY: You're the
strangers here, not me.
HALIE: This is gone
far enough!
DEWIS: Halie, please
let me handle this.
SHELLY: Don't come
near me! Don’t anyone come near me. I don't need any words from you. I'm not
threatening anybody. I don't even know what I'm doing here. You all say you
don't remember Vince, okay, maybe you don't. But maybe it's Vince that's crazy
maybe he's made his whole family thing up. I don't even care anymore. I was
just coming along for the ride. I thought it would be a nice gesture. Besides I
was curious. He made all of you sound familiar to me. Every one of you. For
every name I had an image. Every time he’d tell me a name I’d see the person.
In fact, each of you was so clear in my mind that I actually believe it was
you. I really believed when I walk
through that door that the people who lived here would turn out to be the same
people in my imagination. But I don't recognize any of you. Not one. Not even
the slightest resemblance.
DEWIS: Well you can
hardly blame others for not fulfilling your hallucination.
As she makes her escape, leaving Vince and the rest of
the family behind, she states the central theme in the play:
SHELLY: Don't you
usually settle your affairs in private. Don't you usually take them out in the
dark out in the back?….. I know you've got a secret. You've all got a secret.
It's so secret in fact, you're all convinced it never happened.
Although the title of the play is indicative of the
ending, I will not go into details so they can unfold before you as they did before
me, sitting on the edge of my seat. Note
the short, staccato sentences, especially the monologues from some of the
quotations I used. This moves the play
along to a certain beat, almost like music.
Dramaworks veteran Resident Director, J. Barry Lewis, carefully
balances the dramatic tension with the abundant black humor (yes, there is
laughter in this play). There is not one
dull moment, but only moments of anxious expectations. A deft hand is in command of a thoroughly
professional group of actors and technicians.
The scenic design by Jeff Modereger captures the
dilapidated farmhouse, so symbolic of the interior lives of its residents and
the costume designs by Leslye Menshouse portray the characters in all their
sordidness – except for the women, Halie, the belle of the ball, and Shelly,
the sexy young woman who helps to stir up the lives of the family. I liked the “otherworldly” sound design
during scene changes by Richard Szczublewski that captured the surrealistic
nature of the play. Lighting Design is
by Kirk Bookman, his first effort for Dramaworks although a veteran (the
lighting of the fantastic New York Philharmonic version of the Sondheim’s Company with Neil Patrick Harris was
managed by him), is “spot on” in this production, capturing the somber mood of
the play’s content while illuminating the focal points and providing lightening
during the outside rainstorm of the first two acts.
Buried Child
may be one of the most unsettling but deeply satisfying plays you’ll see in
South Florida this season.