Haunting Family Drama Comes to FTE Stage

“This is the only place it's raining. All over the rest of the world, it's bright, golden sunshine,” laments Dodge, an aging Illinois farmer, in Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Buried Child. The Fredericksburg Theatre Ensemble will bring Shepard’s searing exploration of the failings of an American family and the mirage of the American Dream to the stage downtown beginning July 7.

Set in the 1970s in rural Illinois, Buried Child introduces us to Dodge, an embittered alcoholic, and his wife Halie, a woman with a dark secret in her past and a present complicated by conflicting expressions of adultery and religious piety. Dodge sneaks whiskey from a bottle hidden in the couch despite being sick, while Halie tries to deal with the disappointments in her life through an affair with the local minister. Both Dodge and Halie have complicated relationships with their two surviving adult sons Tilden and Bradley. They also both still feel the pain of the death of their son Ansel, who died on his wedding night under mysterious circumstances.

Shepard skillfully blends laugh out loud one-liners with a story that gradually reveals the family’s dreadful secret. That shocking revelation, a visceral contradiction of the ideals of family life, can both destroy those involved and begin the difficult path to recovery for this shattered clan.

FTE veterans Jackie Picariello and Heather McIntosh are the co-directors of the show. According to Picariello, “working on a Sam Shepard show is like winning the theatre lottery. She described the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner as a “complicated, sincere, hilarious and just all around beautiful work.”

FTE will present Buried Child at the Allstate Community Theater, 810 Caroline Street in downtown Fredericksburg, on July 7-9 and July 14-16. Tickets are $20 and are available at https://www.fredericksburgtheatre.org/.