1996 production of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child

The 1996 production of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child truly gives life to such dark themes present in the play, through not only a humorous lens but a psychoanalytic and emotional one as well. It’s clearly focused on a disorientated family who speak to the reality of American Life, leaving the American Dream as a dream. Each character seems to embody a type of a flaw which they’ve left define them leading to their own deterioration whether it be health or mere human morals. And the play is directed in such an intimate way where the audience is pulled into the life of this family. Having it be set in one setting it compels the audience to pay attention to little details such as the holes in the blanket, the worn down couch and lamp, stained wallpaper, and this portrays their financial status and care to the home. The one setting also gives this feeling of claustrophobia, confinement a frustration, having to be trapped in such a chaotic environment and this subjects the viewer to the abuse the characters impose on one another. Additionally seeing the play visually made me notice things I wouldn’t have otherwise, for example, Dodge barely moves from the couch and he’s just as immobile and helpless as his power is in the house.  We barely see Halie in much of the play paralleling to how she’s not as present in the life of her family either. Even when she’s in the house the viewers barely see her too, all she is is a voice from the stairs. Tilden does the most incomprehensive things, putting corn on Dodge, bringing random vegetables and just as we don’t understand him, he doesn’t seem to understand himself either but this mental burden goes unnoticed by a mask of humor, and we see his family members do the same. Just like many of the other characters we see Bradley run away from reality, it’s clear he’s handicapped but is also depicted as the most powerful that is until his leg is taken away from him and it’s like a slap across the face for him. Now they say family is the biggest support system and the most influential, for this family support doesn’t seem to be in the dictionary but influential most definitely. It’s clear that their deterioration is brought upon themselves because they’ve influenced each other that way. When the two “strangers” come in, Vince and Shelly it doesn’t take them long for their actions to mirror the rest of the family’s. Vince and Shelly do attempt to make sense of the situation and bring order to the house but get buried under the same disconnection. The play stands to amplify the absurdity of the American Dream, how pressurizing yet unattainable it is to achieve all aspects of it, and he brings this idea through Ansel. Ansel who is meant to present the ideal man is dead because just like the ideal man he doesn’t exist.