A strong 'Buried Child'

"What's it like down there?"

"Catastrophic."

That answer pretty much sums up the state of things in Sam Shepard's Buried Child, which won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize. It is a riveting, unsettling (if overlong) drama about madness, murder, incest, mutilation, secrets, and the self-righteous lies so-called good people tell themselves. And Temple University's production is strong (if uneven).

The play's family, and by extension the American family, and by extension American society, is in a "catastrophic" state, although Shepard's allusive, elusive indictment is not always clear from this staging. Much of the grotesque humor and the rhapsodic language are muffled, so the play loses some of its peculiar power.

Dodge (the outstanding Gregg Almquist) is lying on a sofa almost as beat-up as he is; his wife, Halie (Nancy Boykin), talks at him incessantly from upstairs; that there is no upstairs in this awkward stage space, but only an offstage, not only makes her words hard to understand but also renders moot the whole point of an upstairs as opposed to a downstairs.

Into the couple's realistic nonconversation comes their middle-aged son, Tilden (Rob Kahn, moving as a man profoundly ruined), with an armful of corn. But, Dodge says, there hasn't been corn out back for 35 years. Has there been a temporal shift?

"What's the meaning of this corn, Tilden!" his mother asks. "It's a mystery to me," he replies.

Emasculations follow one another. We learn that Tilden's brother Ansel was murdered long ago by the mob. Another brother, Bradley (Steve Kuhel), managed to cut off his own leg with a chainsaw.

Enter Tilden's son Vince (Julian Cloud, who sounds like an airline announcer). No one recognizes him. Is he the buried child? His girlfriend, Shelly (Jasmine St. Clair, who is way too loud), is the object of all the men's attention.

Although director Dan Kern tries to compensate for the oddly configured playing arena, the lack of a clear physical point of view denatures the play's images, muddying meaning because of the lack of a real set. This is further confused by the off-kilter lighting, which calls attention to itself.

Before Shelly and Vince enter we hear her laughing voice saying, "It's like a Norman Rockwell cover or something." We should (but don't) see and feel this classic Americana that Shepard, the self-styled, sophisticated cowboy playwright, eviscerates in Buried Child.

Temple University Repertory Theater, Randall Theatre, 13th & Norris Streets. Through July 31.

Tickets: $25.

Information: 215-204-1334, 1-800-838-3006, or www.temple.edu/theater/TRTEndText