Buried Child

I wish Miguel Mota had decided to assign us this instead of True West. Not only because it's better (which, no disrespect to True West, it is), but because it's deeper and richer and puts out more of a sense of existing in a real world. Vince and Shelly walk into this house that joy forgot and sure, everything's going to go insane and Theatre-of-the-Absurd later on, but for the moment, they are emisaries of a real world of grass and light and era-specific cultural references. You can read her as Lydia Lunch or as Patti LaBelle or as Stevie Nicks.


The second thing is that we already read Pinter's The Homecoming, and as far as I can see this is just a lusher, creepier, more interesting take on the same themes: familial hatred; psychosis; show more sexual betrayal; the betrayal of one's self by one's emotions; basically what the Scientologists would sum up as "bloodsexcrime." But where the Pinter is like a horrible day in a horrible life, this one floats--creepy, ugly, but oneiric. Ludic? Because of the greater feminine presence, with Shelly and Halie? How awful is that?


And hey, the Bradley character is a bracing reminder that we haven't gotten over all our quiet fears about the twisted and damaged, haven't completely separated and sanitized them into the (laudable) recognition of the true bravery and humanity of the disabled. God, sometimes all this play wants is a lobotomy dude in the corner. Tilden?


I read people talking about the breakdown of the American Dream in connection with this story and I think fuck off. The decay of the traditional family? The mortgaging of the future to pay for the present? These are universal human processes and I am so sick of fucking America. Anyway, my students would have gotten a lot out of it. Maybe I'll bring in a passage for to discuss. Also, on stage, this could be devastating. I smell Pulitzer! show less

One of my favorite plays. A portrait of the archetypal dysfunctional midwestern American family, in all its bizarre barbarity. The part with the corn and carrots works beautifully on stage.

With enough symbolism to keep a literary student happily busy for weeks, Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play throws you into a surreal world grounded in the decay of the American Dream. The family centered in the drama is dysfunctional, to put it mildly, and is a microcosm of the hopes and eventual destruction of those hopes in America. The action plays out like a combination between American Gothic and Frida Kahlo - based in reality, but little bits here and there remind the audience that they are not in a world structured realistically. Shepard has stunning skills in the way he paints pictures with words. The only gripe is that the motivations of Halie, the matriarch of the family, are never fully developed or explained. Perhaps show more Shepard's intention was to keep emotions and feelings as buried as the title implies. show less

This was a very solid family drama that completely explored the unit that this assemblage of characters were functioning in. I viewed it, essentially, as an in-depth character study and I was rewarded in kind. Overall, there are some parts where it waves, ever so slightly, but the foundations are strong and push this play towards its conclusion.

3.75 stars.

Can you say dysfunctional? Yet another example of dramatic writing that pounds you in the face. Effective for what it is, but I prefer a degree of subtlety in character and storytelling. All of the characters were incredibly unlikable. I just can't bring myself to care about them or their situation. The buried child was the lucky one to get away from these creeps.

Excellent play, would have been better without the vegetable harvest and dead child being pushed too hard.

A play that deals with the idea of the family and the expectations and frustrations between its members. Dark and sobering. It address familiar issues but turned up to 11.