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"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." Vince's girlfriend, Shelly, is speaking in Sam Shepard's searing dissection of family, "Buried Child," being revived by Silver Summit Theatre Company in a production that captures the intensity of its playwright's vision.
Shelly is the outsider, the voice of reality, who is desperately trying to make sense of the chaotic family dynamic Vince has unintentionally thrust her into. "I'll do whatever I have to do to survive," she announces, and she succeeds. Vince, however, is ultimately sucked into the whirlpool of churning family feelings.
Shepard penned "Buried Child," which won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, before dysfunctional families became a cliché in contemporary American drama and created the archetypal model. Its world perches somewhere between naturalism and Theatre of the Absurd, which means its gritty outlook on family life is laced with dark humor. This family would be funny if its members weren't locked into self-destructive behavior.
Patriarch Dodge (Andrew Maizner) is old, sick and bitter, slinging philosophical barbs at anyone within range. His chief target is his wife, Halie (Barb Gandy), who fires them right back. Halie claims to be a Christian, but she uses the religion's tenets chiefly as a weapon against the multitude of people she hates. Son Tilden (Justin Bruse) is a broken man who has crawled back home after getting into unspecified trouble, but he is a nurturer, the opposite of his brother, Bradley (Stein Erickson), who accidentally sliced off his leg and enjoys sneaking into the house to cut his father's hair when he's sleeping. Along with Shelly (Natalie Keezer), grandson Vince (Aaron Kramer) drops by to visit, but neither his grandfather nor his father, Tilden, seems to recognize him, and the two newcomers struggle to figure out what's going on. The play's final character is Father Dewis (Michael Croker), a clergyman friend Halie drags home who is completely out of his depth.
The family farm is in the American heartland, but nothing has grown there for years. However, Tilden consecutively extracts from it a crop of corn, a crop of carrots and the buried child of the title, the source of the family secret. We are left to ponder whether the secret itself or suppressing it all these years has cursed this family. Perhaps it's both. Dodge says, "Everything was canceled out by this one mistake," and memory — its presence or absence — is a constant refrain throughout the play.
This production seethes with expressed and unexpressed emotion due to Lane Richins' taut, well-paced direction and the cast's perfectly aligned performances. Richins has also done a good job casting: Bruse, Erickson and Kramer are all big men who could be members of the same family. Gandy's Halie carps and criticizes to cover her continual disappointment. As Tilden, Bruse conveys the tenderness and isolation of a sweet-tempered man bested by life, and Erickson's Bradley is a manipulative liar but pathetically ineffectual. Kramer's Vince moves from early affability to volcanic outbursts that acknowledge his heritage. Keezer proves more resilient and courageous than even she thinks possible as Shelly, and Croker creates a dazed and confused Dewis.
But the core performance comes from Maizner as Dodge. Like a cornered animal, he defends his territory, and the nonsense he spouts makes more sense than most of what everyone else says. He is subtly, but consistently, in command of the situation.
Michael Rideout's disheveled living room set and Danny Dunn's dim lighting vividly depict a family in decline. The oppressive rainstorms of Michele Rideout's sound design intensify the characters' sense of entrapment.
"Buried Child" is Sam Shepard at his best: earthy and insightful with flashes of ironic humor. This production reveals why he remains one of America's most iconoclastic and iconic playwrights. —
'Buried Child'
Tight direction and perceptive performances unleash the power of Sam Shepard's archetypal "Buried Child" in this Silver Summit Theatre Company production.
When • Reviewed Oct. 9; plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4 p.m. through Oct. 25
Where • Sugar Space Warehouse Theatre/River District, 130 S. 800 West, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $18; discounts for students and groups; BuyYourTix.com, 801-541-7376 or silversummittheatre.org
Running time • One hour and 45 minutes (no intermission)