Their reflections are often amusing and frequently hilarious, particularly in the absurdist inadequacies of the parents. But there's usually little relief to be had from the comedy. In fact, the most fraught moments of this show come in the juxtaposition of humor with the dark stuff underlying it. Howard as the bearish Baylor is a particular master of this effect, berating his obliging wife's helplessness, even as he cannot put on his own socks, and complaining about the inconveniences of having shot Frankie, who has come looking for Beth. Watch him comically dress down Mike for misusing the American flag (as a yoke for Jake), and go on to devote far more care to folding it than he has thus far shown to any human being.
What this play and production achieve most poignantly is the sense that all of these people are on their own. Language fails to connect even those who still have their speech centers intact, and they all populate landscapes of their own perceptions, haunted by their own lost things. This play gives the lie — a sick, sordid, sad one — to that gloried Western ideal of independence.
Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com.
A LIE OF THE MINDby Sam Shepard | Directed by Dana Packard | Produced by The Originals | at the Saco River Grange Hall in Bar Mills | through November 15 | 207.929.5412
Related:
Rash relations, Use your delusion, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, More 
- Rash relations
The Pain and the Itch will make you wince if not scratch — your head, that is.
- Use your delusion
Fool for Love is pure Sam Shepard, as the playwright packs in an explosive blend of myth and Eros, ambiguity and knee-in-the-gut certitude, boiling it all down into less than an hour of existential essence. The current rendition at Roger Williams University Barn Summer Playhouse will impress even demanding theatergoers with its emotional confidence and finesse.
- Patti Smith: Dream of Life
This collage of a documentary emanates from an 11-year collaboration between punk poet/rocker Patti Smith and her filmmaker friend Steven Sebring.
- Catharsis + rebirth
My own backward gaze over the last decade of local theater only takes in the second half of it, so I've consulted a few veterans.
- Mixin' it up
First on my dance card this fall is the Good Theater's The Little Dog Laughed (September 17-October 11), a scathing comedy about Hollywood, a closeted actor's indiscretions with a hustler, and his agent's desperate clean-up duties.
- Running onward
Two doomed lovers meet — not for the first and surely not for the last time — in Sam Shepard’s dark romance of love and the American West, Fool For Love.
- Gray cowboy movie
Wim Wenders can drive me nuts.
- Outer limits
Conscience pushes people to extremes in Sam Shepard’s Simpatico .
- Balloon moon
Sometimes less is more when imagination rules.
- To Hell in a handbasket
The epic poem The Wild Party is most famous for inspiring two musicals that appeared in the same millennial year.
- T Bone Burnett
The follow-up to Burnett’s 2006 masterpiece The True False Identity (Sony) is a dark, cynical, vaguely futuristic song cycle triggered by a Sam Shepard play.
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Sam Shepard, Sam Shepard, Michael Howard, More
, Sam Shepard, Sam Shepard, Michael Howard, Jamie Grant, Bar Mills, Jennifer Porter, Jim Roberts, The Originals, Less
