Playwright: Sam Shepard. At: Shattered Globe Theatre at The Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln. Tickets: 773-404-7336;. www.shatteredglobe.org; $30-$35. Runs through: July 12
Buried Child has received generally favorable reviews so mine will be a minority opinion. Every show can have an off night, and perhaps that's what I encountered. The performance I saw seemed superficial and never fully-realized, with acting all over the map. One consequence was that the apparatus of the play—sometimes clumsy and generally telegraphed far in advance—became all too obvious.
Buried Child is set in the present on an Illinois farm, blighted for years due to a curse upon the owners, the now-aged Dodge and his wife Hallie. Their semi-catatonic adult son, Tilden, has returned home and soon Tilden's son, Vince, returns as well, for the first time in six years, with a girlfriend in tow. However, the family—not even Tilden—doesn't recognize Vince. In a seeming miracle, a torrential rain leads to the resurrection of the farm as Tilden brings in armfuls of corn and carrots. All the while, a dark family secret—source of the curse—is hinted at time and again before the final revelation.
Buried Child has the trappings of a realistic play about an eccentric dysfunctional family with a family mystery or secret, and that's just how it's presented as directed by generally-reliable veteran Steve Scott. But playwright Sam Shepard is an American absurdist, not a realist. Buried Child is an absurdist dark comedy with a mystical element. Mystical, not mystery. What's missing here is a potent sense of the supernatural.
Admittedly, finding the correct stylistic path isn't easy. Shepard enjoys theatrical tricks, filling the play with goody comedy and red herrings such as Vince and his girlfriend. Unrecognized by his family, Vince undergoes a sea change between Acts I and II and returns to the farm in warrior mode to claim his family heritage. It's a great warm-up for Shepard's slightly-later play, the manic True West, but it's not the core event of Buried Child, which is about confession and redemption centering on Dodge and Tilden. On the other hand, Shepherd draws almost self-consciously on classical sources, among them the The Flood, Oedipus and the Theban plague, and woman as seductress. Although spiritual, Shepherd resolutely rejects organized religion as symbolized by the weak and lustful Father Dewis.
Ultimately, Buried Child must come down on the side of the mystical and primal; not merely the physically primal—which this production achieves—but the spiritually primal as well, which this production lacks. Without that extra element, the explosive Act II action seems disconnected, overdone, and even silly although highly theatrical.
There are excellent people at work in Buried Child—among them new Shattered Globe Ensemble member David Dasmalchian as Vince—but they don't blend. Everyone seems to be acting in his/her own universe, which is unusual for this ensemble and this director.