Buried Child & Seduced & Suicide In Bb

by Sam Shepard

Original hardcover. Won 1979 Pulitzer Prize; 155 pages.

Genres: Plays, Drama

155 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Sam Shepard was an American artist who worked as an award-winning playwright, writer and actor. His many written works are known for being frank and often absurd, as well as for having an authentic sense of the style and sensibility of the gritty modern American west. He was an actor of the stage and motion pictures; a director of stage and film; author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs; and a musician.

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to my GR friend Tajma, I read Buried Child shortly after Pinter's The Homecoming so the parallels, especially through the first two acts, were obvious; though in the third act the plot takes a different turn, especially as to the fate of the homecoming son. Buried Child won the Pulitzer in 1979 and it's well deserved for all facets of its brilliant writing, even the almost-monologues which sound natural and not merely expository, though one comes close. The dialogue and action are often funny, though in a very dark and sometimes absurd way. The horror at the heart of this family (ironically thought to be Norman-Rockwellian by an outsider before she enters the abode) is revealed slowly and complexly. As with my favorite writing of any kind, not everything is explained and I'm still thinking about it.

In the second play of this volume, Seduced, the character of Henry Hackamore could've been one of Tennessee Williams' eccentrics. I quickly realized that Howard Hughes is the obvious inspiration and not only because they share the same initials. Though Seduced had its moments and, as with Buried Child, speaks to the hollowness of the so-called American dream, it was easily my least favorite of the trio.

To continue my comparisons to other playwrights (limited as my knowledge is), the first two characters we encounter in Suicide in B Flat immediately brought to mind the bumbling pair of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and later the duo of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Suicide in B Flat quickly becomes more though, as characters seem to change places with each other and repeat actions and themes in the manner of jazz improvisations, a major motif. Shepard seems to be attempting, as one of the characters says, "visual music." When the twist arrives (along with the mysterious musician Niles) it is both unexpected and obvious.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh look, a play featuring a bunch of dysfunctional people won the Pulitzer. How very shocking.

Buried Child, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize, underlines my belief that the Pulitzer Committee should stop recognizing plays about dysfunctional families for a decade or two. I get it: families are weird. They were weird in the ’60s with A Delicate Balance. They were weird in the ’80s with Crimes of the Heart. And hey, they were still weird in the 2000s with August: Osage County. For that matter, they were weird way back with Hamlet and that whole Ghost Dad thing.

Weird, dysfunctional families can work in drama, but they need to be the side dish and not the main course. There needs to be a bigger conflict, a bigger tension than “families are weird and let’s watch messed-up people talk at each other for two hours.” Proof is heck of a play, partially because the dysfunction underlines a story about mental illness. Side Man is another one that prominently features a dysfunctional family but uses it as a springboard into a deeper story. And, hey, Hamlet also uses the dysfunctional family as the backdrop rather than the primary focus, which should perhaps be a lesson to playwrights.

Buried Child teases the idea of a bigger story, but it never gets there. In fact, that’s the shortcoming of all three plays in this collection. They feel like the scribblings of a college freshman who wants to be thought terribly brilliant but doesn’t feel like taking the time to revise. All three plays have potential, but all three are also trapped by the modernist, deconstructionist tendencies of mid-century American theatre. Intellectually and artistically, I get the desire that playwrights had to push the boundaries and structures of drama. It’s just not an exercise that I think withstands the test of time. Not recommended.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how many times I've read "Buried Child." Easily over a half dozen. Yet this play always feels fresh to me. This last go-round, Vince's girlfriend Shelly was especially vivid and the mystery around the buried child's identity didn't strike me as cryptic at all. I'd definitely rank this as one of my favorite Shepard plays, an epic as important to the American theatrical canon as "A Streetcar Named Desire" or "Long Day's Journey Into Night." As for the other two pieces included in this collection, each brings forth very specific memories. "Suicide in B Flat" takes me back to my sophomore year in college when I was cast as a hyperventillating gumshoe. Some many monologues with exclamation points! I also specifically remember carrying a hard-boiled egg around in my mouth, navigating an oddly raked stage, and that the two detectives likely get their names from the composer Luis de Pablo. As for "Seduced," that one recalls a former friend of mine who played the Howard Hughes role in a Houston production despite only being in his 20s. I never saw that. And I never see him anymore either.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Suicide in B Flat*

A fascinating permutation of Shepard's increasingly fascination with the synthesis of talent, legend, and myth. Not quite as successful as "Angel City," largely due to over-staying its welcome (this is one of his longer one-act plays, I think), but it's just as indicative of Shepard's maturation as a dramatist.

[Jules Beech · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buried Child---5
Suicide in B---3
Seduced------2