Burying Buried Child

I don’t exactly know how to define Buried Child, but realism is definitely NOT the label I would use.

Buried Child introduces a number of confusing and overall just weird elements. Each one has a very specific purpose to the play, but to treat them as if they were realistic would just be wrong. The first of these is the backyard. The magical backyard that grows things but has been barren for years, but has a baby in it, but is a wonderful paradise. We hear the backyard called so many things during the play, and none of the characters ever seem to agree on a concrete description.  Since we never see the backyard, this isn’t exactly a derivation from realism (I.e. we don’t know if any of them are correct), but the simple idea that you can live in this house for years and not know what your own back yard looks like is not illusionistic. An audience cannot readily accept that fact, unless the script is written to make us accept it. This one is not.

Another piece that “breaks” the realism is the reaction people have to certain events. Dodge dies. On the floor. Just dies. And nobody panics. Nobody goes to call an ambulance. Hardly anyone even moves to cover him up. This is not realistic. Again, it is not a ghost flying through the room, but I can’t buy that we are aiming for realism with responses like that. The sane thing to do would be to react in some way, to feel horror or glee or indignation. We also have to think of the manner of his parting. He just dies. He isn’t shot, or even hits his head somewhere. He just dies. Like he decided it was time. I never got the impression that he was too extremely old, so I don’t think natural causes took him. He just decided “yea, I’m done.” And popped off.

This play. Is not. Realism.