by Rafael Gallegos
Daily Lobo
The Cell Theatre, an up-and-coming creative Downtown hotbed, is presenting an excellent night of drama.
The play "Buried Child," by Sam Shepard won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1979 and is still fresh and haunting 23 years later.
Director Jacqueline Reid has a perfectly pitched cast to help her along the story's very rocky road of family dysfunction.
Something has happened in the past that drives most of the action of the play. Yes, that is almost every narrative storyline, but despite the title of the play all but giving that something away, the audience stays interested because of Shepard's brilliant characterization.
Dodge, played by John Hardman, the patriarch of the family, sits on the couch watching television most of the play.
Paul Ford's Tilden is the visiting son who has committed some atrocious act in New Mexico.
Now at his ancestral home, he can barely maintain his sanity and his boiling vulnerability is tangible.
Bradley, played by Tim D. Janis, lost his leg and has a tendency to take out his rage on his father via a pair of hair clippers. In the second act we meet Vince, Tilden's son, effectively portrayed by Malcolm Sharbutt, and his girlfriend, Shelly, played by an extremely magnetic rabbit-fur-wearing Kerri Morrigan.
Vince has stopped home on his way to visit his father. Blinded by past unspeakable events, Dodge and Tilden do not recognize or even acknowledge Vince's existence. Things fall apart, as they always do in a Shepard play.
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This "Buried Child" is a highly satisfying evening at the theater and The Cell has certainly raised the bar for other theaters in town. Watching UNM acting professor Ford's Tilden is a semester's worth of acting classes in one evening.
Morrigan is so electric as Shelly, I wanted to watch her the whole time she was onstage.
Hardman's Dodge was his best character work I've witnessed. Sharbutt has proved he is a key player in this taxing role.
One complaint is that the stage at The Cell is so wide and shallow that it's hard to watch all action on the stage. It felt like a tennis match at some points. One side of the audience was a little neglected.
The Cell Theatre and its in-house company Fusion certainly live up to their mission stated as "rooted in conviction that theatrical arts nourish and renew community through the dialogue expressed in storytelling," and their dedication to professionalism.
If you can afford the $15 student price, go see a master playwright and superb actors at their best.
Shepard seems content in a life lived on the screen and in literature, so opportunities to see his stage work may be dwindling.
"Buried Child" runs for two more weeks, Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 for students and Actor's Equity members and $20 for the general public.
Ten-dollar rush tickets will be available for students on Thursdays. A student ID must be presented.
