[The plot of Buried Child] is a little too reminiscent of Pinter's The Homecoming. The funny, bitchy family infighting may owe something also to Edward Albee. The mother sequestered upstairs, who at play's end apostrophizes the sun, may be derived from Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman and the Osvald of Ghosts. But Buried Child has a strong visual life on stage, and the images do make a kind of sense. We get only adequate dialogue: sometimes wryly funny, sometimes menancing, often despairing, but never distinguished. The visual images, however, have a powerful presence for which the words are a sufficient underpinning.

Clearly, the land, the back yard, pushes the past back up into the present; the corn, under which Dodge is metaphorically buried; then the carrots, which first terrorize Shelly, then steady her nerves. And finally the baby—the ultimate, horrible truth. Meanwhile one generation forgets about the next...