In one of the more revealing images of Sam Shepard's Seduced, the mind in pursuit of an idea is compared to a bird of prey swooping down on a rabbit. The image is both homey and disturbing, typical of Shepard in its physicality, its seeming innocence, and the hidden terror it carries: A simple cowboy lost in our insane urban society, at heart he may be more frightened than anyone else by the sensitivity of his perceptions, the lucidity of his thoughts. The tension in Shepard's paradoxical self—the mind of a Kafka trapped in the body of a Jimmy Stewart—probably explains the triumphant success of his screen persona in Days of Heaven….

The paradox Shepard embodies in Days of Heaven is the subject of Seduced…. Seduced is a chamber piece, a meditation on the theme of power and innocence that might be better trimmed slightly and...