Review Roundup: BURIED CHILD, Starring Ed Harris, Opens Off-Broadway

The New Group presents Sam Shepard's BURIED CHILD, opening tonight, February 17, and playing through April 3, 2016 at The Pershing Square Signature Center (The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street).

Directed by Scott Elliott, this production features Ed Harris as Dodge, Amy Madigan as Halie, Rich Sommer and Paul Sparks as their sons Bradley and Tilden, respectively, Nat Wolff as their grandson Vince, Taissa Farmiga as Vince's girlfriend Shelly, and Larry Pine as Father Dewis.

Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play BURIED CHILD returns 20 years after its last major New York production. Dodge and Halie are barely hanging on to their farmland and their sanity while looking after their two wayward grown sons Tilden and Bradley. When their grandson Vince arrives with his girlfriend Shelly, no one seems to recognize him, and confusion abounds. As Vince tries to make sense of the chaos, the rest of the family dances around a deep, dark secret. This wildly poetic and cuttingly funny take on the American family drama gleefully pulls apart the threadbare deluded visions of our families and our homes.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: Scott Elliott's uneven revival may be performed in a lower key than the usual interpretations of this American gothic masterwork. But Mr. Elliott and his starry cast give us a thoughtful, lucid presentation that's absorbing enough to remind us of why it's always worth revisiting Mr. Shepard's haunted mansion. "Buried Child" is as effective a portrait as exists of the profound, torturing ambivalence with which we all regard where we come from...The greatest strength and weakness of Mr. Elliott's production...lie in its determined prosiness. It wants us to listen to Mr. Shepard's characters as if they truly were members of our own family, so that (just like our own family) they can sucker-punch us when we feel most unguarded. But it lacks the crackling, macabre glee of Steppenwolf's 1996 Broadway production, and the breathlessly sustained tension of Daniel Aukin's fiery revival of Mr. Shepard's "Fool for Love" on Broadway earlier this season.

Jennifer Farrar, Associated Press: Although Shepard rewrote the play for its 1995-96 Broadway debut, which was nominated for five Tony Awards, his trademark mordant humor, absurdism, primal metaphors and resonant themes of identity and lineage remain. Scott Elliott applies discipline in directing a wild ride of a harrowing revival for The New Group...Ed Harris is sublimely cantankerous and engrossing to watch as Dodge, the dying, couch-ridden patriarch...Amy Madigan is restrained, taut perfection as Halie, whose nostalgic, often delusional pronouncements in a high, sweet voice belie the vicious barbs she launches when feeling threatened by outsiders...Shepard's complex ambiguities leave some matters unexplained, while the waning of American resilience, independence and family values is keenly reflected in the lack of affection within this family.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: Seeing Sam Shepard's Buried Child again, 20 years after its last major New York production, is akin to one of the principal themes of the play: you can't go home again. What once seemed so provocative, so daring in its assault on the American family and society in general, now comes across as windy and pretentious, willfully obscure and ponderous with symbolism. At least, that's how it plays in the New Group's off-Broadway revival...for Buried Child to have the desired impact, it must be presented with a bracing theatricality that this tame production never musters. Director Scott Elliott gives the work a naturalistic treatment that only emphasizes its strained aspects, failing to make even the horrifying final image register with much force. The performances are somewhat disappointing as well. Although Harris is very amusing with his droll delivery...he's too vital to suggest the ravaged figure he's playing.

Marilyn Stasio, Variety: The way Harris plays Dodge, there are still vestiges of strength in the old reprobate. He looks harmless, sprawled on the couch and half-smiling to himself while the commotion of the household buzzes around him. And there's something hypnotic about the quiet self-containment of Harris's performance. But whenever the old lion snaps back at his wife or roars at one of his sons, you can feel the will of a man who did some pretty awful things in his day...In general, the actor seem all too aware that they're acting in a seminal 20th century work about the collapse of an agrarian economy, the breakdown of the family and the death of the American Dream. They should keep a closer eye on Harris, who's just playing a dirty old man who thought he'd gotten away with his sins.

Linda Winer, Newsday: This may say something scary about us. But Sam Shepard's "Buried Child" doesn't feel as upsetting or as comically monstrous as it once did...Despite the insightful, ever-challenging presence of Ed Harris and Amy Madigan as the bedridden drunken Dodge and his pious, hypocritical wife, Halie, however, director Scott Elliott's much-anticipated revival at his New Group has a matter-of-factness that undercuts both the mythic and Gothic delights of the dark tragicomedy. Elliott, a knowing and daring director, may well be pushing to make this bizarrely broken Midwest family seem more normal and relatable...

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: Oscar nominee and stage vet Ed Harris brings such grubby, lived-in authenticity to the role of Dodge, a dilapidated farmer, family man and murderer in "Buried Child," that you can practically smell the decay. Harris's unforced and potent performance in the New Group's revival of Sam Shepard's Pulitzer-winning 1978 drama makes this engaging but unevenly acted production worthwhile...Cast against type by director Scott Elliott, "Mad Man" alum Sommer effectively taps his dark side as Bradley. Sparks, as always, is magnetic. Madigan and Farmiga need to dig deeper to make their characters less one-note. "Buried Child" isn't exactly subtle but it still grabs and sends shivers.

Matt Windman, AM New York: Some of its shock value has worn off, but "Buried Child"...remains a gritty, mysterious, often engrossing portrait of domestic life gone to hell, as demonstrated by Scott Elliott's well-acted Off-Broadway revival on behalf of the New Group...The production's intimacy, intense physicality and seamless flow keep it vivid and visceral, even when the dialogue gets slow or confounding twists pop up. Harris is especially absorbing as a father who is essentially a shadow of his former self, alternating bouts of coughing with slugs of alcohol. He is so resigned to powerlessness that, in one of the play's most arresting images, he is buried in corn husks.

Jesse Green, Vulture: In the New Group's revival of "Buried Child"...Shepard's gift for language is captured in the play's opening scene with the pitch-perfect performances of its two lead actors...Under Scott Elliott's otherwise flawless direction, "Buried Child" could use an intermission after Shelly's violation instead of being performed straight through. The other much larger problem is Farmiga's performance, which doesn't make the transition to the play's second half. Her staccato, perky delivery is irritating when we first meet her. It's all wrong later, when she's meant to be seen as a civilizing force, ready to take over from Hailie.

Robert Hofler, TheWrap: As Dodge, the dying alcoholic head of a Midwest farm family that has long since stopped farming, Ed Harris, all gaunt charisma, brings specificity and gravity to a role that can sometimes seem merely symbolic: He is the failure of American manhood. And as Halie, Dodge's wife, Amy Madigan imbues that chatterbox harridan with an angry dignity that helps balance the tale even if it does not always seem authorized. That the pair also seems definitively enmeshed is a tribute to their attachment onstage - and off, as Harris and Madigan are married in real life...Once we get past Dodge and Halie, though, the production starts to wobble...It's tempting to blame the director, Scott Elliott - and certainly the unaligned acting styles count against him...But I wonder if something else is also going on.

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