Sam Shepherd's Buried Child at Actor's Theatre

Buried Child could be a requiem for Edward Albee not winning the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Like Albee, Shepherd explores the repercussions of trying to forget the past and bury secrets. Shepherd mixes elements of Southern Gothic for a more lighthearted version of Albee’s masterpiece. In 1979, Buried Child was the first off-Broadway play to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and deservingly so.



Directed by Christian Phillips & Jennifer Welch, the script is eclectic, gripping and barely lucid, but also surprisingly funny. The cast for the Actors Theatre does justice to Shepherd with excellent leads and a resonating atmosphere.



Jack Halton portrays Dodge, the main character, languishing in the basement drinking whiskey and watching TV. When the curtain goes up he’s coughing violently between arm exercises. Halton plays Dodge like a “what if” scenario of Randle McMurphy, if he’d stayed in the Cuckoo’s Nest without a lobotomy. Dodge is a broken man, but Halton allows the likable, blue collar wise-ass to show for a few genuinely humorous moments.

Meanwhile, his smug wife Halie, played by Margel Kaufman, is carousing with the town’s equally demoralized pastor Father Dewis, played by John Krause. Dodge and Halie communicate by yelling at each other through the doors and walls of their degrading house.

Dodge’s son Tilden is a local hero-turned imbecile. Dean Shreiner characterizes Tilden like a recovering amnesiac. In somnambulist meandering, eyes half open, Tilden cradles the vegetables picked from the family’s forbidden backyard. He interacts with others like they are the phantoms of his dreams. Shreiner is the real talent here.

After a four year absence Tilden’s son, Vince, performed by Michael Carlisi, stops by the house with his girlfriend Shelley. He’s shocked that no one recognizes him. To get on Dodges good side, Vince runs off to buy whiskey. Shelley, played by Phaedra Starr, stays behind reveling in family antics you’d expect at Bellevue Hospital. Everything spirals out of control as Shelley tries piecing together what has happened to the household in Vince’s absence. The rest of the cast delivers, though they may not be as fun to watch as Dodge or Tilden.

Local band, Howells Transmitter, provides music to the production. Their songs are sparse and sonic in eerie anachronism with the old house and post WWII era. Piano is the primary instrument and there is no apparent harmony. It’s haunting and perfect. Shepherd’s writing is at its peak. Dark veins run throughout the dialogue blurring fact and fiction. It is one big crescendo: it has a patient, humorous beginning and keeps picking up momentum until Shepherd ultimately drops the bomb.