Theatre in Review: Buried Child (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)At first glance, it looks like Scott Elliott's production of Sam Shepard's family evisceration is going to be a memorable one. When we enter the theatre, the lights are already up on Derek McLane's set, as vivid an articulation of depression as you are ever likely to see. It's not just the lack of humanizing décor, the badly worn and mismatched furniture; it's that the entire house has faded to the same nondescript brown hue. We can't see much outside -- at first, a torrential rain is falling -- but somehow one knows that the aura of neglect must extend to fields that are brown with neglect. On the couch is Dodge, the patriarch of this blighted clan; the normally vigorous Ed Harris hasn't just taken on a couple of decades -- he appears to have collapsed inward. He's a grizzled, wasted specimen of uncertain age, his eyes rheumy and his chin covered with scraggly bits of beard. He continues to smoke, in defiance of his racking cough, and there is a pint of booze hidden under the pillow. His face is lit primarily by the light of the television screen. Shepard has given us many such father figures, bullies and sadists who have withered away to nothing, and Harris appears to embody them all. One's hope is further fanned at the sound of Amy Madigan as Dodge's wife, Halie. In contrast to Dodge, Halie is a figure of almost terrifying vitality, and, rather than bringing her on stage right away, Shepard gives her a long offstage harangue, delivered from upstairs -- almost as if we can only accept her in stages. The fact that Halie is a pillar of the Catholic Church doesn't stop her from being ruthlessly self-involved, always ready to declare that black is white, and filled with venom for anyone in her way. Annoyed by one of Dodge's remarks, she snaps, "That's the kind of statement that leads people right to an early grave." Also adding to the play's blackly comic atmosphere is Paul Sparks as Tilden, arguably the more damaged of Dodge and Halie's sons, who keeps appearing with large bundles of vegetables, despite Dodge's fierce insistence that their land hasn't been tilled in ages. Fitted out with a dozen or so ears of corn, Tilden proceeds to shuck them, scattering the leaves on the body of the passed-out Dodge, as if preparing for a funeral before the body has died. But before the production has passed the half-hour mark, it becomes apparent that something is critically, possibly fatally, off. If Elliott's company has a pretty firm grip on the play's humor, they are fairly hopeless at conjuring the menace, the all-devouring rage that also lurks inside Shepard's characters. Madigan makes an attention-getting entrance, smartly fitted out all in black, ready for an evening out with the priest who is the true object of her affection, but the scene that follows is missing any tension; you can practically feel the air slipping out of the room. Rich Sommer, as Bradley, the malevolent, one-legged son, spreads some shudders, for example, when he sneaks into the house while Dodge is sleeping and gives him a hair-cutting that is close to a decapitation. But Nat Wolff, as Vince, Dodge and Halie's grandson, and Taissa Farmiga, as his girlfriend, Shelly, speak so quickly and with such lack of affect that they sound like actors speed-running their lines during a slow moment in rehearsal. Farmiga's performance is particularly distressing, since Shelly's attempt at befriending Dodge constitutes the main event of the play's middle section. Harris holds up his end of the bargain ("You're all alike, you hopers," he tells her), but Farmiga seems to suffer from some kind of disconnect. All of these wildly uneven performances -- including that of the great Larry Pine, who also seems uncertain as Halie's clerical friend -- must, I think, be laid at the feet of Elliott, who hasn't found a way to stylize the performances in a way that synchronizes with Shepard's bleak, absurdist humor and his depiction of the family as a quagmire of dysfunction and slow-burning rage. Instead he seems to be taking an almost naturalistic approach, as if he has confused Shepard with, say, William Inge. His approach is especially undermining when it comes to dealing with the family's darkest secret, referenced in the play's title. If anything, Shepard should be played rather like Harold Pinter; his characters are distinctively American and are defined by such iconic American ideas as the frontier and the cowboy, but they inhabit a Pinterian landscape of dread and menace. A line like "Tilden? He got mixed up" should reverberate with teasing, unspoken meanings; here, it sounds like just another line. Under Elliott's guidance, Buried Child suddenly seems like a much weaker play, a sketchy situation comedy crossed with a surprisingly mundane domestic horror show. The best moments tend to come and go almost before you've had a chance to take them in: Bradley sticking his hand in Shelly's mouth, as if taking possession of her; Tilden pathetically petting Shelly's rabbit fur coat; Bradley in a fury being deprived of his wooden leg; various family members shrinking from Vince's embrace. (They insist they don't recognize him -- unless, of course, they're playing an elaborate game. With this bunch you can never be sure.) The rest of the production is assured, including Susan Hilferty's costumes (Halie's monochromatic, highly accessorized outfits are among the evening's funnier offerings), Peter Kaczorowski's skillfully understated lighting, and Jeremy S. Bloom's sound design, which makes one feel in the middle of a rainstorm. But if this production fitfully captures the bleak humor in Shepard's dialogue, the darker notes are left mostly unstruck. The final moment (again, see the title), should make the audience gasp in horror; instead it comes off as a bit of business with an actor and a particularly grisly prop. -- David Barbour 
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