buried child review – ed harris is brutrd's dark drama ...6/20/2017 buried child review – ed...

6/20/2017 Buried Child review – Ed Harris is brutally compelling in Sam Shepard's dark drama | Stage | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/dec/01/buried-child-review-ed-harris-sam-shepard-trafalgar-studios-london 1/4

Michael Billington

Buried Child review – Ed Harris is brutally

compelling in Sam Shepard's dark drama

Trafalgar Studios, LondonHarris impresses as a whiskey-soaked old wreck in Shepard’s gothic story of

loveless inertia and poisonous guilt in a dysfunctional family

Thursday 1 December 2016 18.00 EST

It is good to see Hollywood veteran Ed Harris and his wife, Amy Madigan, gracing the Londonstage for the first time in Sam Shepard’s 1978 slice of American gothic. Shrewd casting alsobrings us the youthful Jeremy Irvine from Steven Spielberg’s War Horse and Charlotte Hope

from Game of Thrones in their West End debuts. Yet, haunting as Shepard’s play is, a faint air ofportentous reverence overhangs Scott Elliott’s production.

What fascinates me is Shepard’s ability to play variations on the classic US family drama. Down ona decaying farm in Illinois, the patriarchal Dodge is an old wreck slugging whiskey and gazingfixedly at the television. His wife, Halie, is a sanctimonious babbler who dreams of erecting atown statue to a dead son. Of the pair’s living progeny, Tilden is a sad halfwit and Bradley a one-legged sadist. It is a sign of the general dysfunction that when Tilden’s son, Vince, turns up with



his Californian girlfriend, he goes unrecognised. The family is palpably paralysed by some past

event involving the buried child of the title.

You could easily list the influences at work on Shepard: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman,

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and even Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. You

also feel Shepard shrouds the play in symbolism: why the sudden fecundity of the mysterious

field at the back of the house? But what keeps one riveted is Shepard’s attack on the familiar

household gods. The close-knit American family, long cherished as a political ideal, is shown to be

filled with dark secrets, poisonous guilt and loveless inertia. It is also, Shepard suggests, an

institution from which there is no escape.

Much as I admire the piece, the detailed naturalism of Elliott’s production downplays the comedy

that Matthew Warchus found in his 2004 National Theatre revival and slows the pace: every leak

in the roof and overhead footstep is minutely registered. But at least there is ample time to dwell

on the performances. Harris is totally compelling as Dodge. He captures the second childishness

of old age as he pummels the sofa in a tantrum demanding another bottle of whiskey.

Harris also catches perfectly the contradictions of a man who denies the past – claiming the

present is “the whole shootin’ match” – while being oppressed by it. It is a fine performance that

Sanctimonious babbler … Halie (Amy Madigan). Photograph: Johan

Persson

Strong performances … Jeremy Irvine as Vince and Charlotte Hope as

Shelly. Photograph: Johan Persson



TopicsTheatreSam Shepardreviews

suggests a once-fruitful titan reduced to a hollow-eyed husk.

Madigan as Halie deftly mixes self-delusion with downright flirtiness in the presence of the localpastor. The young actors also impress: Irvine is all angry perplexity as Dodge’s unacknowledgedgrandson and Hope, as his girlfriend, wittily conveys the bafflement of the outsider who suspectsshe has wandered into a madhouse. Barnaby Kay as Tilden has a touch of the pathos of Lennie inJohn Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Gary Shelford is suitably brutal as Bradley, even if youwonder precisely what led him to hack off his leg with a chainsaw. But that is one of the touches ofgrotesquerie that are part and parcel of Shepard’s vision. Loving as Elliott’s production is, you getthe anguish without the absurdity that for Shepard is inseparable from family life.

At Trafalgar Studios, London, until 18 February. Box office: 0844-871 7627.

buried child review – ed harris is brutrd's dark drama ...6/20/2017 buried child review – ed...

Documents