Horror in the Heartland

Buried Child – Writers Theatre

 

The rain falls steadily, nonstop, relentlessly on the gray roof of an old, dilapidated house on a failed plot of farmland in downstate Illinois. Inside, Dodge, an old, sickly, corpse of a man lies on a couch, sneaking a swig of whiskey now and then from a bottle he’s hidden in the sofa cushions. He coughs and hacks, growls and grimaces, while his younger wife Halie carries on a nonstop monologue from her room upstairs. She screams criticism, questions and directives at her husband from above, while dressing to go out. 

Halie continually eulogizes and praises the accomplishments of her beloved, deceased son, Ansel. Once a star athlete, he’d been the Golden Boy of the family, their American Dream. The audience naturally assumes that Ansel is the “Buried Child,” but by the end of this horror in the heartland they’ll learn the truth of  a long-guarded secret. Halie would like a plaque or statue erected in Ansel’s honor, and she plans to speak to Father Dewis about it. Eventually Halie heads out to church in the unrelenting rain, leaving her eldest son, Tilden, to look after his father.

Dodge keeps wheedling Tilden to buy him another bottle before Halie gets home. However, the old man is shocked when his simple-minded son returns from their muddy, rain-saturated pasture cradling an armful of sweetcorn. The farm has been barren of any life since the Great Depression, but inexplicably Tilden keeps finding all kinds of vegetables growing out back. As sick as he is, Dodge wants to be sure Tilden doesn’t leave his sight; the young man got into some kind of trouble with the law while he was living out in New Mexico. Now Tilden’s back home in Illinois, safely living with his parents once again. 

Dodge is frightened of his other son, Bradley. Disabled, since somehow cutting off his leg with a chainsaw, Bradley is also emotionally unhinged. He’s got severe anger management issues, venting his ill temper on everyone around him. Bradley takes out his hostility toward his father by sneaking into the house at night and savagely shaving Dodge’s head with a pair of electric clippers. For protection, Dodge always wears an old baseball cap, in case Bradley enters unannounced. 

Vince, Tilden’s estranged, grown son, and Dodge’s grandson, enters this strange, rural world with his girlfriend, Shelly. He hasn’t seen his grandparents in six years and doesn’t know that his dad has returned to the family home from New Mexico. Both young people are equally surprised to find that neither Dodge nor Tilden recognize or even remember Vince. Tilden comes in from the muddy fields with a bundle of carrots, which he gives to Shelly to peel. Although neither man seems to remember Vince, Dodge is able to convince his grandson to take some money and go fetch him another bottle. While he’s away, Bradley arrives, clomping into the house with his artificial leg, threatening Shelly and assaulting her. He throws her rabbit fur coat over Dodge and makes himself comfortable on the sofa for the night. But not even these horrifyingly strange events can prepare the audience for the unexpected bizarre and surreal developments of Act III.

Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama from 1978 feels fresh and new under director Kimberly Senior’s guidance. Her production, which is quite different from Steppenwolf’s 1995 offering, focuses more on Dodge and Tilden. She’s also honed in  on Shelly, the outsider, and the audience’s representative, who’s ever in the theatergoer’s thoughts. We worry about and empathize with her as she walks through this cloudy lookingglass and into a world of hidden secrets and perverted morality. Ms. Senior has fashioned a truly mesmerizing production that makes your skin crawl but defies you to look away.

The cast is incredible. The magnificent Larry Yando doesn’t just play Dodge, he becomes Dodge. The actor’s known for his many outstanding performances on Chicago stages, particularly as Ebenezer Scrooge in the Goodman Theatre’s annual “A Christmas Carol.” Here, Yando is austere and commanding, a rural King Lear grasping at what’s left of his deteriorating kingdom. He’s matched by Mark L. Montgomery as Tilden, in one of this fine actor’s best performances. His gentle giant is simple, but kinder and elicits more empathy than in most productions. His towering presence is at odds with the docile, almost mellow manner in which his Tilden inhabits the farm.

Arti Ishak, making her Writers Theatre debut, is honest and caring as Shelly. She’s the one realistic character in this surrealistic, nightmare world. We know her, worry about her wellbeing and care what will happen to her. As Vince, Shane Kenyon is strong, cocky and a macho man gone wild. At first the audience sympathizes with his inability to make his presence known; but, by the final scene, we realize he’s found his home. It seems that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Timothy Edward Kane does a nice job with the villainous role of Bradley. He softens a little in the end, becoming a whiny, spoiled brat of a man child when he can’t have his own way. And Shannon Cochran is a shrill harpy of a wife and mother as Halie. We can only imagine what will happen to her as the audience watches Tilden, covered in mud, carrying his bundle of sins up the stairs to her room, as the lights finally go down on this horror story.

Supported by Jack Magaw’s detailed, yet almost expressionistic, haunted farmhouse, perfectly lit with gray and gloom by Heather Gilbert, and coated with a realistic sound design by Mikhail Fiksel, this production will be talked about for years to come. Mieka van der Ploeg’s realistic costumes help us add a layer of additional understanding to each character. But it’s Kimberly Senior’s way with Sam Shepard’s frightening nightmare of a script that will make this drama haunt theatergoers’ dreams for a long time to come.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas  

     

Presented May 16-June 17 by Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe, IL.

Tickets are available at the box office, by calling 847-242-6000 or by going www.writerstheatre.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.