Since its first appearance in 1978, ‘Buried Child’ has been universally acclaimed as a work of extraordinary vision and force. In 1979, the play won the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a work premiering off-Broadway. Kevin Kelly of The Boston Globe spoke in 1980 of the play's "full, dazzling, almost blinding glare," and Ben Brantley, reviewing Steppenwolf Theater Company’s production of the revised play in Chicago in 1995 affirmed ‘Buried Child’’s status as "a bona fide classic: a work that conveys the mystical, cannibalistic pull of family ties even as they unravel.” ‘Buried Child’ represents the best of an iconic American playwright.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Dodge (in his 70s): Dodge is the centre of the story, the patriarch. He is sick, a grandfather, annoyed by his watchful and nagging wife, sometimes concerned for Tilden and protective of him, sneaking his whiskey and cigarettes, remembering his joy in baseball; sometimes he dissociates from his present and his past, and is full of caustic bitterness. 

Halie (Dodge‘s wife, mid-60s): Halie as a woman and mother, keeps herself apart from her family, maintaining a pleasant facade most of the time, ignoring the harshness and nastiness around her and reliving or imagining a better past, dreaming of the past glories of her sons. She represents the old-time chauvinistic portrayal of women being part whore, part saint. She is a hypocrite, wearing a veneer of religion, yet has affairs with the minister and at least one other man. 

Tilden (their oldest son): Tilden, an idiot-savant, has had a complex relationship with both his mother and his father. Once possibly a sports star, and the pride of his parents, he is now burned out, a husk of a man, almost a child.  He got himself in trouble in New Mexico, was banned from the state, and has come home, where he is safe, but restless, drawn to the backyard where the body of his son is buried.  He has apparently had an incestuous affair with his mother.

Bradley (their next oldest son, an amputee): The incomplete one-legged bully, Bradley, the second son, is another caricature, vicious, incapacitated, and in his helplessness, abusive toward those whom he can hurt.

Vince (Tilden’s son): Vince is the Prodigal son, looking for his roots and meaning, returning to find himself unrecognized and unacknowledged.  He is the rock and roll cowboy with a beautiful girlfriend, and is in need.

Shelly (Vince‘s girlfriend): The audience needs Shelly as an anchor to reality. She is the outsider in the play, representing Everyman and normalcy.  She is at first amused to discover the Norman Rockwell painting-like promise of Vince‘s home, but discovers that the charm of the home is a veneer.

Father Dewis (a Protestant minister): Father Dewis represents organized religion, and is a hypocrite, having an affair with Halie. He is inept, cowardly, immoral, unable to cope with the outbursts and needs of the family, and unwilling to even try. He represents the immorality and helplessness of the church.