Buried Child by Sam Shepard. EgoPo Classic Theater, through November 10, 2019 at the Latvian Society, 531 N 7th St, Philadelphia.
What’s happened to this family?
That’s what these characters ask. Indeed, it’s the heart of Sam Shepard’s play.
Buried Child goes further and also asks what’s happened to religion? And what’s happened to the American way of life? Basically, it’s all gone to hell as the family farm lies fallow, with a buried child in its back yard.
Shepard wrote this disturbing play in 1978 when he was 34, revealing what Shepard later called “whacked out…broken-off America.” In the spirit of that quote, it’s a crazy mash-up of farce and tragedy that illustrates the breakdown of traditional family values. Repeatedly, Shepard shows his male figures as crippled, negated and emasculated.
The play is set in Illinois and its characters are usually seen as middle-class whites. In this EgoPo production, however, it’s a black family, indicating the universality of the story.
Dane Eissler directs a production that starts forbodingly with Dodge (Damien J. Wallace), a decrepit elderly man, thrashing about on a couch, obviously drunk. The home looks tattered and its electrical system is in need of repair; the lights keep blinking during a rainstorm.
Dodge’s unseen wife Halie (Cathy Simpson) calls down from upstairs, berating him. Their prolonged invisible conversation underlines the distance between them in their marital relationship.
Their eldest son arrives after a twenty-year absence. He is the burned-out, simple-minded Tilden (Walter DeShields), and gradually the family’s dark secret begins to come into focus. Halie had an incestuous affair with Tilden and bore his child. Dodge murdered the child and buried it in the back yard. The emasculated patriarch is ashamed of Halie’s conceiving the child and is ashamed of killing it.
Later we meet the second son, the clumping Bradley (Carlo Campbell) who has been emasculated by the removal of his leg and its replacement by an artificial stump. He looms over his sleeping father and shears off his hair.
Like a breath of fresh air, two new people arrive at the home. Vince (Mark Christie) announces himself as Dodge and Halie’s youngest son, but none of his family seem to recognize him. Worse; they carry on conversations as if he’s not there. This is a violation of any person’s strongest need, to be known — accentuating the family’s inability to see and hear each other.
(A similar theme is at the core of the play The Height of the Storm, now on Broadway. See our review: https://theculturalcritic.com/height-of-the-storm/)
Vince is traveling cross country with his girlfriend Shelly (Merci Lyons-Cox) who forthwith takes command of the household. As ugly truths come out, a minister who’s having an affair with Halie sputters unproductively. He clearly represents the hypocrisy of organized religion.
Eissler brings out the surrealism in Buried Child, like a scene where Tilden carries into the house fresh ears of corn from the garden that hasn’t produced any crop in years. The infertility suggests how Tilden has emasculated his father, and the presence of the corn reminds us that Tilden had sex with his mother and fathered their child. In a script where Shepard shatters American myths, he echoes the old Greek myth of a corn god who is sacrificed each year by being broken up and buried.
The cast is strong. Wallace (who starred in EgoPo’s Master Harold…and the Boys last season) has an innate charm that makes us root for him in his arguments with his wife and sons — in contrast to the negativity of that character’s irresponsibility and alcoholism. It’s an endearing alternate presentation of Dodge.
DeShields and Campbell are menacing as the elder children, and the young actors Christie and Lyons-Cox are charismatic in their roles. I look forward to seeing much more of their work. When I say that Davey Strattan White is ineffectual as the minister, I mean it as a compliment; he’s supposed to be monumentally impotent. The veteran Simpson is aggressively relentless as Halie. I wish she showed more nuance. .
Eissler’s direction veers rapidly from farce to drama, which surely was Shepard’s intent. The scenery by Colin McIlvaine, lighting by Molly Jo, and sound by Chris Sannino strongly enhance the experience.
Buried Child is the first production in an EgoPo season titled Shepard Country. This is an apt play on words, because Shepard often is described as depicting western, or rural, or country life. Actually, he wrote more broadly about American life — about what’s happening in all of our country. The unsettling season continues with Shepard’s Fool for Love in February and Curse of the Starving Class in March.