Ah, the Heartland in decline. There’s nothing quite like a romp through the rotting fruited plain. Shattered Globe Theatre’s “Buried Child” is a tragic look at “good” people with bad secrets.
Vince (David Dastmalchian) and Shelly (Helen Sadler) arrive at his family home to a family that can’t recognize him; the couple proceeds to dig through their sordid past. The ensemble’s bench is deep; Gerrit O’Neill makes troubled son Tilden’s pain palpable and Maury Cooper’s Dodge is a sour slice of lemon. Linda Reiter’s Halie frantically pursues the bourgeois trappings due her; Reiter has cornered the market on slappable shrews. Steve Scott’s direction keeps the show from mucking around in melodrama and makes rebirth seem possible.
Radical personality shifts in some characters are never explained, but it’s Sam Shepard, so who cares? The man puts the English language in a death lock; he knows how to express the inexpressible. (Lisa Buscani)
Buried Child at the Shattered Globe Theater at the Greenhouse Theatre Center, 2257 N. Lincoln. Through July 17.
Stiff Upper Lip: A Review of "London Road" at Shattered Globe This British musical seems to pull off the impossible. The mesmerizing but highly complex score requires singers and musicians who can manage its intricate rhythms with precision and still act their songs in the guise of the mostly-lower-middle-class English city dwellers they portray.
