The Parish Players did an excellent job with Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child,” a strange play about masculinity, family and a forgotten America. I saw the play in Thetford, Vt., on Aug. 3 and was struck by the quality of the acting and the poetry of Shepard’s writing.
The play, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979, is a staple of contemporary theater that catapulted Shepard to playwriting stardom. It’s about Dodge, an alcoholic who is slowly dying, his nagging wife Halie and their adult son Tilden.
It becomes clear that they aren’t just a regular bickering family when Tilden’s son Vince comes to visit with his girlfriend Shelly. No one recognizes Vince, leaving Shelly confused and questioning whether they are in the right house. The play becomes absurd. There is no common reality. It seems like the characters are living inside their delusions, all making sense of some secret history unknown to the audience.
At the end, Shelly — a rambunctious and annoying millennial-type — gets the story out of Dodge. Halie had sex with Tilden and gave birth to his child. Then Dodge killed the baby. Once the truth comes out, Dodge dies. Vince takes over the house. He realizes his masculinity in an oft-quoted monologue about watching the faces of his male relatives reflected at him in his car’s windshield as he drives through the rain at night. So it goes.
At times, the play felt like some deranged male fantasy. It’s a dark oedipal story that left me wondering, why? Its eye-rolling focus on men follows in the footsteps of Shepard’s “True West.”
Still, Alan Gelfant shone as Dodge. It was very clear that he was a seasoned actor. He accomplished the difficult task of winning me over emotionally, despite the fact that his character is ultimately evil.
The female characters were two-dimensional and just annoying — which I attribute to Shepard’s writing. Halie should have been the most complicated and interesting character: she birthed her son’s child, and her husband then killed the baby. But she spent the whole play frantically buzzing around, nagging her husband and flirting with her minister. I wish the script gave her more depth.
Shepard doesn’t give Shelly much life, either. I thought this production faltered in Shelly’s costuming, which only worsened the problem. It confused the time period to have someone dressed as a 2010s Brooklyn transplant, in high boots and black leggings, when the play is set in the 1970s. Plus, she enters next to a swaggering Vince, well-fitted in bell bottoms and a long leather blazer.
I thought Erik Gaetz was a haunting Tilden. He had a man-boy quality about him, as though he was stuck at the age when his father killed his child. It was a fascinating subversion that the Oedipus character, who undermined his father’s health and masculinity, could be so meek, so unobtrusive.
The play was an interesting study of America. It was like a photograph by Robert Frank, capturing everyday American life but forcing the audience to peer at a strange and twisted truth.
At the beginning of the play, Tilden marches in with an armful of corn. Dodge accuses him of stealing it, claiming that crops haven’t grown in their backyard for decades. At the end, Halie calls down to her corpse of a husband, “Is that you Dodge? Tilden was right about the corn you know. I’ve never seen such corn. Have you taken a look at it lately? Tall as a man already.” Right before the lights go out, it becomes clear. The corn, the land, the house and the nation all represent male sexual vitality — and underscore male obsession with dominance.
“Buried Child” can be seen for the next two weekends at The Parish Players’ Eclipse Grange in Thetford. The upcoming performances will be held on Aug. 8 through 10 and Aug. 15 through 17 at 7:30 p.m., with matinee shows on Aug. 11 and Aug. 18 at 3:00 p.m. Tickets are available for purchase online at The Parish Players’ website.
Rating: ★★★★
