43
Strong performances fill dark ‘Buried Child’
By STEPHANIE OTTEY
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown Playhouse’s Griffith Adler series offers a new vein of intimate theatrical stylings to its patrons this year with a widely dark and unconventional season. The drama continues with Sam Shepard’s 1979 Pulitzer Prize winner “Buried Child.”
“Buried Child” introduces us to a Midwestern family struggling to cope with a sordid past. An alcoholic man, his delusional wife and their two emotionally disturbed sons share a deep secret that has isolated them from the outside world and each other. When an estranged grandson arrives unannounced, their world is shaken and the dirt crumbles away from their buried past.
Shepard’s script is meaty; packed with unique and delicate characters, deliberate and multipurposed dialogue, and a harshly real setting. The playwright, however, leaves many questions unanswered and left to interpretation.
Director Mary Ruth Lynn embraces Shepard’s open-ended approach, choosing to leave the loose-ends loose. In doing so, she invites viewers to take part in the creative process as they reach their own conclusions and take what they want from the twisted play.
Though the script remains vague, Lynn and her creative team display a keen attention to detail.
Jimmy Lybarger’s set is a solid representation of Shepard’s world, and the mystery prop designer polishes that set with surprisingly functional items that add a harsh reality to “Buried Child.”
Kerri Rickard’s special effects make-up design is equally detailed. Rickard’s design of grandfather Dodge’s scalp wounds is realistic, even in the intimate Moyer Room. She fleshes out the pounding rain beautifully, saturating the hair of the appropriate characters subtly and believably.
The cast is just as attentive to their characters.
Sam Perry plays the tormented veteran, Dodge, calmly and honestly. Perry clearly shares the panic, fear, and boredom brewing inside of Dodge while maintaining an air of ambivalence that leads the audience to question his sanity.
Molly Galano creates an eerily positive and delusional Halie as a counterpart to Perry’s Dodge.
Johnny Pecano is startling as the one-legged tyrant, Bradley. He commits to the anger-driven character emotionally and physically, transforming into an amputee with conviction. Between this role and his performance in “The Elephant Man,” it’s clear that Pecano has an unmatched knack for creating beliveable, physically impaired characters.
David El’Hatton stands out as Tilden in a subdued performance that resonates in its simplicity. There is a palpable cloud of sadness around El’Hatton, exposing the sensitive nature of his role despite the allusions to Tilden’s questionable past. His performance is gripping.
The remaining cast members enhance the derangement of these four in their normalcy. Kate Starling is snarky and expressive as Shelly, Ryan Newell displays a constant air of confusion as Vince, and Bill Finley is a contrastingly bubbly Father Dewis.