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In a play that summons up mythical images of America’s past, Sam Shepard relies strongly on evocations of the theatrical past – primarily but not exclusively his own. The opening image of a vast desert landscape marked by an open grave, piles of dirt, and a very large dead horse calls to mind not only Shepard’s earlier plays of the west but also Beckett’s stark landscapes and the graveyard scene from Hamlet. (The picture-perfect set is designed by Brien Vahey, who did an impressive job with the equine corpse). The allusions establish a self-consciously mythic atmosphere for the play’s sole character (well, not quite sole, but more on that below), one that is immediately undercut by his first words: “Fucking horse. Goddamn.” We will spend the play listening to the explanations, justifications, rants and fears of Hobart Struther (the fine Irish actor Stephen Rea), an art dealer from New York who has planned a “ground sojourn” in the west. Predictably, his scheme goes horribly awry. Instead of moving towards his goal he is stuck, lost and alone.
Struther aims to reconnect with the authentic, the real. His money was made selling art depicting the old west, and he keeps reminding himself that he once lived and worked in the west, before he turned to hawking its cultural legacy. The play keeps circling back to the question of who and what Struther really is. His self-questioning (and berating) alternates with moments of physical action: digging the grave, trying to move the horse carcass, throwing his own goods in the hole, peering out at the audience through binoculars (again recalling Godot), and attempting to set up a tent. Most of the time he is hopelessly conflicted about his actions, and fails at what he is trying to do. The language and action of the play all keep pointing towards conflict and contradiction. Why, for instance, is Struther so keen to bury the horse, which has literally let him down? It is at once a Quixotic act of respect (he can’t leave his mount to the buzzards) and a sign of a metaphorical desire to be rid of what it represents (his failure, and perhaps a larger failure). Stephen Rea, dusty and wild-haired, looks the part of the would-be cowboy. He doesn’t always sound the part, however, and at times I was distracted by his migrating accent, suggestive of a tour of America (with occasional stops in Ireland). By the end of the play I began to connect the dislocation in Struther’s voice to his larger problem of authenticity and the search for self – at one point the character admits that he’s “not exactly sure which voice to use.” And it’s hardly an arbitrary choice to make him an art dealer, a peddler of images.
The contradictions extend to tone. We get highbrow allusions, but much lowbrow action. It’s as though Shepard, all too aware of the potential for easy solemnity and grandeur in Struther’s quest, got the jump on potential critics and undercut himself. Some of the stage business comes straight out of vaudeville. As the title suggests, the recalcitrant dead horse is destined for some kicking – a lot of kicking, actually – and every time Rea lands a boot we get a comic, gong-like sound effect. The horse is pushed and prodded upright (all four hooves in the air), and then, of course, rolls back over (cueing another sound effect). A bit in which Struther wrestles with a tent is positively Chaplinesque. Rea is at his best in his comic fumings at such moments of failure, but the play’s veering and tacking between serious and parodic elements ultimately grow wearying, even puzzling. There are stretches of verbal rambling -- including commentary on Struther’s troubled marriage, the fate of Crazy Horse, and the sins of George W. Bush’s America -- before an inevitable return to comedy. Shepard’s drama has often worked on multiple levels, and such plays as Tooth of Crime, True West, and Buried Child offer both homage to and mockery of our notions of heroism, family, and national character. But here the comic moments have all the energy, and the deeper, darker sections seem weak and half-hearted. A tell-tale moment occurs when Struther, in one of his harangues, badgers himself into tossing his saddle, bridle, and pricey cowboy hat into the open grave; a contemplative pause follows, and then a barefoot young woman in a slip (Elissa Piszel, making her Broadway debut in a thankless role) emerges with slow majesty from the grave wearing the hat, turns, and repositions it gently on Struther’s head.
If you think this might be a sign of redemption and second chances, you’d be wrong. The gesture, as it turns out, is no favor; indeed it sets up the play’s final cruel joke. The movement from the portentous appearance of the symbolic female rising from the earth to the malicious concluding gag in which everything ends up, willy-nilly, in the grave conveys a rather gleeful rejection the whole enterprise. The hostility and futility suggested by the title are on ample display, and we can all too readily agree with Struther on one thing: the journey hasn’t ended well.
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