THE HANGOVER REPORT – Ed Harris leads The New Group’s solid revival of Sam Shepard’s BURIED CHILD

26s-Sparks_Harris_MadiganLast weekend, I finally had a chance to take in The New Group’s revival of Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic Buried Child at The Pershing Square Signature Center. If Mr. Shepard’s surreal meditation on the toxicity of home isn’t quite the shocker that it once was, it’s still quite the head trip. After revisiting this seminal play (without its influence, I doubt that plays like Tracy Lett’s August: Osage County would have come into existence), I’m convinced that Mr. Shepard remains the definitive “bad boy” of American playwriting. Even today, no one comes close to the urgent ferocity of his plays.

Artistic director Scott Elliott’s dutiful staging stays within the parameters of previous productions (Buried Child was last seen in a major New York production on Broadway 20 years ago via Chicago’s venerated Steppenwolf Theatre Company). As such, it’s hard not to experience this production without feeling that it’s a bit of a museum piece. No matter, especially if you haven’t seen Buried Child before – what you’ll get in this vividly detailed production (Derek McLane provided the pitch-perfect living room set) is a close proximity to what Mr. Shepard had in mind when he wrote the play. Not every revival need be an Ivo van Hove overhaul. Ed Harris, as the patriarch of the rotting (meant both literally and figuratively) family, leads a solid cast that carefully mine the multifariousness of Mr. Shepard’s text. My only complaint is that some of the performances – particularly the younger roles of Vince and Shelly as embodied by Nat Wolff and Taissa Farming, respectively – lack the danger and risk-taking antics that mark truly great productions of Sam Shepard plays. Still though, the play’s final images still get under the skin, and stay there.

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BURIED CHILD
Off-Broadway, Play
The New Group at The Pershing Square Signature Center
1 hour, 50 minutes (without an intermission)
Through April 3

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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