Buried Child by Sam Shepard at the English Theatre, Luftbrücke Platz, Berlin, 1st May 2010
Buried Child by Sam Shepard at the English Theatre, Luftbrücke Platz, Berlin, 1st May 2010
There´s a fundemental distinction in all art, poetry, film, theatre between showing and telling. Perhaps ´Buried Child´ crosses the line, becoming too didactic as any work made in a time of economic depression tends to (John Steinbeck´s ´The Grapes of Wrath´, echoing in itself ´The Battle Hymn of the Republic´ which more or less goes ´the Lord will smite those our enemies down with much wailing and gnashing of teeth...´. There´s a deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth in ´Buried Child´ though.) An aged patriarch, Dodge, decays on the sofa pickling himself with a conveniently hid bottle of whisky. His sons are: the imbecile Tilden who gathers vegetables from the fields, Bailey who has been left crippled in an agricultural incident. So there´s paralysis, emasculation and a buried child. I mean why would anyone bury a child? Children are born in order to be loved by their parents. The clue to all this is the context of the play, the economic depression of the 1970s. Sam Shepard can be heavy-handed, trowelling on the symbolism and to some extent the sentiment, but for all that the dialogue simply crackles along.
This Pulitzer Prize winning play is about a playwright learning his writing skills yet for all that the freshness of vision and to a large extent its naivety are endearing, essential attributes rather than deep flaws. The reason for that is also the quality of this production. The acting is simply the main point of the play. The mis-en-scene is reduced to the barest essentials, but it is the acting that grasps the audience in some kind of flurry of emotional attractions. The artistic director intends a certain interaction between cast and audience, but this production is more on the side of Stanislavsky than Brecht. The fourth wall placed between the actors and the audience is broken mysteriously or mischieviously by the percussionist who also plays the role of Father Dewis, a Protestant minister who is also having an unconcealed affair with Halie, Dodge´s wife. Dodge malingers on the sofa as everything falls about him, I mean, what else is there to do? The characters are ensnared in a crisis seemingly not of their own making, but as the play intimates, much of what is happening has been brought on by their mistakes which are all part of a surrounding booze-fuelled haze. Dodge´s grandson Vince arrives with his girlfriend Shellie, at first all sobriety and tact, but descending into anarchic humour, some bottle throwing later on.
Tilden is the most pitiful character, clearly implying the character of Lennie Small in John Steinbeck´s novella ´Of Mice and Men´, eventually bearing a potato-shaped bundle to the back of the stage. The breakdown of the economy is echoed in the breakdown of family structures with the resultant incest and murder creating a portrait of bleak disillusionment with American mythology and the American Dream.
Paul Murphy, Berlin
There´s a fundemental distinction in all art, poetry, film, theatre between showing and telling. Perhaps ´Buried Child´ crosses the line, becoming too didactic as any work made in a time of economic depression tends to (John Steinbeck´s ´The Grapes of Wrath´, echoing in itself ´The Battle Hymn of the Republic´ which more or less goes ´the Lord will smite those our enemies down with much wailing and gnashing of teeth...´. There´s a deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth in ´Buried Child´ though.) An aged patriarch, Dodge, decays on the sofa pickling himself with a conveniently hid bottle of whisky. His sons are: the imbecile Tilden who gathers vegetables from the fields, Bailey who has been left crippled in an agricultural incident. So there´s paralysis, emasculation and a buried child. I mean why would anyone bury a child? Children are born in order to be loved by their parents. The clue to all this is the context of the play, the economic depression of the 1970s. Sam Shepard can be heavy-handed, trowelling on the symbolism and to some extent the sentiment, but for all that the dialogue simply crackles along.
This Pulitzer Prize winning play is about a playwright learning his writing skills yet for all that the freshness of vision and to a large extent its naivety are endearing, essential attributes rather than deep flaws. The reason for that is also the quality of this production. The acting is simply the main point of the play. The mis-en-scene is reduced to the barest essentials, but it is the acting that grasps the audience in some kind of flurry of emotional attractions. The artistic director intends a certain interaction between cast and audience, but this production is more on the side of Stanislavsky than Brecht. The fourth wall placed between the actors and the audience is broken mysteriously or mischieviously by the percussionist who also plays the role of Father Dewis, a Protestant minister who is also having an unconcealed affair with Halie, Dodge´s wife. Dodge malingers on the sofa as everything falls about him, I mean, what else is there to do? The characters are ensnared in a crisis seemingly not of their own making, but as the play intimates, much of what is happening has been brought on by their mistakes which are all part of a surrounding booze-fuelled haze. Dodge´s grandson Vince arrives with his girlfriend Shellie, at first all sobriety and tact, but descending into anarchic humour, some bottle throwing later on.
Tilden is the most pitiful character, clearly implying the character of Lennie Small in John Steinbeck´s novella ´Of Mice and Men´, eventually bearing a potato-shaped bundle to the back of the stage. The breakdown of the economy is echoed in the breakdown of family structures with the resultant incest and murder creating a portrait of bleak disillusionment with American mythology and the American Dream.
Paul Murphy, Berlin
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