Set in America’s heartland, Sam Shepard’s powerful Pulitzer Prize-winning play details, with shocking hilarity, the disintegration of the American Dream. When 22-year-old Vince unexpectedly shows up at the family farm with his girlfriend Shelly, no one recognizes him. So begins the unraveling of dark secrets. A surprisingly funny look at disillusionment and morality, Shepard’s masterpiece is the family reunion no one anticipated.
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Reading the text and comparing it to the production at A Noise Within is enlightening and helpful. In all, the powerhouse performance of Strang's Halie and Dukakis's subtle approach to Dewis, bring their characters fully to life.
If you listen closely, you’ll hear warnings for today and every day in A Noise Within’s production of Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child,” a tragicomedy about a house full of emotional horrors in rural Illinois...
Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott has created a cozy little nest of passive-aggressive unpleasantness even as the absurdity of some passages will elicit laughs.
If the brilliance other minds have ascribed to Buried Child somewhat escapes me, there’s no quibbling whatsoever about the terrific revival it’s being given at A Noise Within. Then again, based on SoCal’s premier regional classical theater’s track record, this should hardly come as a surprise.
BURIED CHILD is absorbing. It’s not what we understand as comedy, but it makes you chuckle because it’s clever and it makes you remember the quirks of your own tribe. Because of that, it hits every viewer differently and it makes for great after-the-fact conversations.
Ultimately, this is the type of story most will either love or hate. The absurd style is not for everyone, nor is the exceptionally dark humor. It can be exhausting to watch pretty terrible people dance around what will obviously be a big reveal for nearly two hours, and some moments, particularly the final scene, are hard to watch in a way that teeters on the border of challenging and gratuitous.
It’s a comfort to see A Noise Within’s resident artists bring such clarity to Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, his most quintessentially absurdist play. The playwright plops young Vince (Zach Kenny) and his girlfriend, Shelly (Angela Gulner), into the midst of his tight-knit and quite eccentric farming family, headed by patriarch Dodge (Geoff Elliott) and his wife, Hallie (Deborah Strang). A great deal is remarked about the fact that corn has not been planted out back since 1935 (It’s now the 70s). As behaviors get stranger, and Vince settles into his family’s rhythms, Shelly finds her inner housewife.
In this second time around, Director Julia Rodriguez Elliott, teases the humor out of the grotesque, ever mindful to highlight the play’s sense of nostalgia. The actors’ created eccentricities seem so organic, we almost feel we’ve stumbled into a time warp.
Bolstered by several strong performances, this revival does do justice to Shepard’s play, but a couple of missteps keep the production from reaching its full potential...
Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott gets high-quality performances from her cast, and if she chooses to focus more on the comedic aspects of the play more than the dramatic, it’s a valid choice and the production still succeeds.
Ever-excellent Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott now couples it with Sam Shepard’s dark family drama Buried Child, set in rural Illinois, amongst a family you’ll likely be glad not to join – but you should go watch them from the safety of the audience.
The action in the story takes place in the past and the audience watches real-time as the characters slowly and painfully fail to keep it a secret. I get it. And I enjoy it when this happens in mysteries as a way to keep up the suspense. But in a drama with vague inferred tones, it lacked for me. I’m less interested in seeing the moments in the therapist’s office and more interested in seeing the traumas that it led to therapy.
That said, A Noise Within’s production of Buried Child is strong and if you are a Shepard fan, this should not only satisfy but impress.
For this production, A Noise Within Artistic Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott returns to Shepard’s revised script, which the company performed in 1997. This time around, her staging moves briskly through material that could easily clock in at three hours. The lively pacing tends to emphasize the play’s absurdist humor over its creepiness, and some levels of character weirdness could be further explored.
Nevertheless, there’s no mistaking this for “All in the Family.” The production gets all the fundamentals right, and opportunities to see Shepard’s masterpiece done this well are few and far between.
A Noise Within mounts a chilling and powerful presentation of Sam Shepard’s 1979 Pulitzer Prize winning drama. It’s a production so strong that you’ll taste the sweet corn, smell the rain, feel the need to wipe mud of your shoes after it’s over, and thank the Lord that your family is not as dysfunctional as the one in the play.
Reading the text and comparing it to the production at A Noise Within is enlightening and helpful. In all, the powerhouse performance of Strang's Halie and Dukakis's subtle approach to Dewis, bring their characters fully to life.
If you listen closely, you’ll hear warnings for today and every day in A Noise Within’s production of Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child,” a tragicomedy about a house full of emotional horrors in rural Illinois...
Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott has created a cozy little nest of passive-aggressive unpleasantness even as the absurdity of some passages will elicit laughs.
If the brilliance other minds have ascribed to Buried Child somewhat escapes me, there’s no quibbling whatsoever about the terrific revival it’s being given at A Noise Within. Then again, based on SoCal’s premier regional classical theater’s track record, this should hardly come as a surprise.
BURIED CHILD is absorbing. It’s not what we understand as comedy, but it makes you chuckle because it’s clever and it makes you remember the quirks of your own tribe. Because of that, it hits every viewer differently and it makes for great after-the-fact conversations.
Ultimately, this is the type of story most will either love or hate. The absurd style is not for everyone, nor is the exceptionally dark humor. It can be exhausting to watch pretty terrible people dance around what will obviously be a big reveal for nearly two hours, and some moments, particularly the final scene, are hard to watch in a way that teeters on the border of challenging and gratuitous.
It’s a comfort to see A Noise Within’s resident artists bring such clarity to Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, his most quintessentially absurdist play. The playwright plops young Vince (Zach Kenny) and his girlfriend, Shelly (Angela Gulner), into the midst of his tight-knit and quite eccentric farming family, headed by patriarch Dodge (Geoff Elliott) and his wife, Hallie (Deborah Strang). A great deal is remarked about the fact that corn has not been planted out back since 1935 (It’s now the 70s). As behaviors get stranger, and Vince settles into his family’s rhythms, Shelly finds her inner housewife.
In this second time around, Director Julia Rodriguez Elliott, teases the humor out of the grotesque, ever mindful to highlight the play’s sense of nostalgia. The actors’ created eccentricities seem so organic, we almost feel we’ve stumbled into a time warp.
Bolstered by several strong performances, this revival does do justice to Shepard’s play, but a couple of missteps keep the production from reaching its full potential...
Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott gets high-quality performances from her cast, and if she chooses to focus more on the comedic aspects of the play more than the dramatic, it’s a valid choice and the production still succeeds.
Ever-excellent Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott now couples it with Sam Shepard’s dark family drama Buried Child, set in rural Illinois, amongst a family you’ll likely be glad not to join – but you should go watch them from the safety of the audience.
The action in the story takes place in the past and the audience watches real-time as the characters slowly and painfully fail to keep it a secret. I get it. And I enjoy it when this happens in mysteries as a way to keep up the suspense. But in a drama with vague inferred tones, it lacked for me. I’m less interested in seeing the moments in the therapist’s office and more interested in seeing the traumas that it led to therapy.
That said, A Noise Within’s production of Buried Child is strong and if you are a Shepard fan, this should not only satisfy but impress.
For this production, A Noise Within Artistic Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott returns to Shepard’s revised script, which the company performed in 1997. This time around, her staging moves briskly through material that could easily clock in at three hours. The lively pacing tends to emphasize the play’s absurdist humor over its creepiness, and some levels of character weirdness could be further explored.
Nevertheless, there’s no mistaking this for “All in the Family.” The production gets all the fundamentals right, and opportunities to see Shepard’s masterpiece done this well are few and far between.
A Noise Within mounts a chilling and powerful presentation of Sam Shepard’s 1979 Pulitzer Prize winning drama. It’s a production so strong that you’ll taste the sweet corn, smell the rain, feel the need to wipe mud of your shoes after it’s over, and thank the Lord that your family is not as dysfunctional as the one in the play.
