By Joel Applegate
Buried Child is a production that will be talked about and remembered by theatre folk. Hilarious and dark, it features a cast in sync with each other and the material. It was a great night to be a playgoer. Earth is a metaphor and a scent. The land that sustained the family of Dodge and Halie now hides its most damaging secret.
Andrew Maizner’s Dodge is the crumpled heart of this production. His bearing – even though he sits most of the time – is immediate. Secretly drinking from a bottle stashed in the couch cushions, his caustic character counters Halie’s string of righteous bromides. “Nothing gets me excited,” Dodge is cantankerous, but smart, thanks to Sam Shepard’s wiser-than-it-seems prose. Maize’s whiskey-shout barks and coughs, sounding perfectly real. “Don’t go outside. Everything you need is here.” Dodge’s world is the couch, safe from the secret in the cornfield.
Barb Gandy as Dodge’s wife, Halie – first heard rather than seen – is the disembodied voice of morality. “Let her babble,” says Dodge. Her spitting out of “the Catholics” places us in a region of the Bible Belt where American “exceptionalism” clings to the idea that true Christianity was born on American soil. But she, too, conspires to keep Dodge’s secret buried in the dirt.
Who sees reality? This family is not aware of the world around them anymore. Their sins have isolated them from the world and each other. Tilden, the youngest son (Justin Bruse) is a man-child digging in the garden. “My flesh and blood is in the back yard.” And after the rain, Tilden says, “it’s like the ground is breathing.” He tells Dodge “you gotta talk or you’ll die.” Silence is a poor substitute for secrets. Dodge bullies Tilden to stay out of the yard, but the damage has been done. Bruse as Tilden is achingly gentle. He has the character right, but I believe his vocal-craft needs a little boost – it was just a little hard to hear him in the first act.
The spare set by Michael Rideout evokes an empty house on an isolated homestead. The sound design by Michele Case Rideout is perfectly measured to the action as rain, wind, and thunder accompany distant traffic – or a train? It underscored the foreboding as another son, Bradley, and a long-absent grandson, Vince, arrive separately at the farmhouse, peeping through the dusty screens.
Vince and his girlfriend, Shelly (Aaron Kramer and Natalie Keezer), comprise the awkward couple; “chalk and cheese” according to Dodge. Does Dodge recognize his grandson or not? Does he want to? The couple from New York thinks they’ve encountered a madhouse, but soon the house infects them, and they are acting crazy themselves. Vince knows “this is not how it’s supposed to be,” but he can’t change it. Bradley, played by a powerfully focused Stein Erickson, bumps on with a prosthetic leg and shaves Dodge’s head while he sleeps.
Tilden thinks about the “face inside his face” while Shelly peels the carrots he compulsively takes from the ground. “I had a son once, but we buried him.” Tilden mimics Shelly’s work while getting a “sensation of myself” and demonstrating how he can hold a tiny baby in one hand. Keezer’s Natalie drops the party girl who came in with Vince and affectingly wonders about her “feeling that nobody lives here.” Dodge’s instinct for disaster keeps him trying to divert the conversation to his needs: “Get me a bottle!” “Who cares about bones in the ground?”
There was a time that it was effective in lowering serum sugar cialis online without prescription levels and its effects lasted for more than 10 hours. 4. For instance, let us say a bike shop performs a retrofit and Bob, the cyclist, smilingly pedals away on his newly reconstructed machine feeling secure and pain-free – Life is good… or is it? Unfortunately, if Bob is one of many “flexion-addicted” Americans with a sedentary job that keeps him glued to the computer terminal day-after-day, gravitational exposure will eventually drag http://amerikabulteni.com/2018/01/07/dunyanda-en-fazla-kar-yagan-10-buyuk-sehir/ cialis pills wholesale his body into a. This calming agent could be used from discount viagra the traditional way, through drinking the tea or it is possible to opt to take the easy way out by self medication. Try out home remedies like drinking of mint juice or glassful of tender coconut water, cold milk or buttermilk, juices of watermelon or cucumber or eating curd rice etc. 16. cialis generic 10mg
What’s normal here?
The third act continues the excellent pacing set by director Lane Richens and barrels ahead with all players on scene. This cast delivers a marvelous night of theater that mature audiences should not miss. Sam Shepard’s script is timeless – there is nothing in it that dates issues or cultures – nothing here has slipped into irrelevance. Buried Child maintains its power – a 1979 Pulitzer Prize winner of extraordinary metaphor and earthiness. Even though this tightly written play is over 35 years old, there is nothing temporal in the play. It is not dependent on a particular period of history for its universality. Buried Child is lodged in a psychological space and dislodged from time.
Buried Child has a short run with only nine performances! Better get tickets before it ends on October 25th.
+++++++++++++++++++
Buried Child by Sam Shepard
Silver Summit Theatre Company at Sugar Space Arts Warehouse, 132 S. 800 W. (Jeremy St.), Salt Lake City.
Running time: 105 minutes – no intermission.
Oct 9th – 25th, Fridays at Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 4 pm.
Box Office: $18 at the door or online
Sugar Space: 888-300-7898
Facebook
0 Comments