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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
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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
2/4
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
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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
3/4
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.
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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
4/4