Buried Alive

Synopsis

Stewart, a photo-journalist, is being interviewed by Ammy, an ambitious young reporter out to make a name for herself. Famous for his hard-hitting photography, Stewart travels the trouble-spots of the globe to get his picture. Ammy is determined to find out why he puts himself in constant danger for a living and why she can't find out anything about his past. Pressurised by her editor to get a sensational story she starts digging and, after discovering Stewart's real name, unearths the truth about him and the tragic family he never mentions. Buried Alive is a thriller which never goes in the direction you'd expect. As the action snaps between 1979 and 1999, Stewart's life and the horrific truth about his family are pieced together. Buried Alive contains strong language and brief nudity.

Our Review:

23 April 2001

The title of Philip Osment's dark, disturbing new play, Buried Alive, resonates throughout its dense but deep dramatic landscape. A photojournalist, Stewart (Paul Higgins), has won an award for his picture of a state execution in Afghanistan in which two men, found guilty of buggery, are buried in gravel and left to die a lingering death: "the authorities wanted them to have time to think about their perversion while they died," he explains to Ammy (Michelle Joseph), who has come to interview him for a profile she's writing on him and his work.

As the play cross-cuts between the present (at Stewart's Suffolk house and in Edinburgh) and past (to Stewart's childhood in late 1970s Edinburgh), this is not the only instance of being buried alive that the play demonstrates. In an early flashback scene, the young Stewart and his two sisters, Kate and Liz, find an injured seagull on a beach, but their merciless mother, Margaret, covers it in sand.

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 12 May 2001:

Is a photojournalist fair game for an exposure on his private life by a print journalist? That's the premise on which Buried Alive begins its journey into events from the tortured life of a news photographer. A son he can't relate to, a fellow journalist who he seduces while she digs for the past, and a family history of abuse are the central plot lines. The cleverness of this play is the way that the present and the past are weaved together so easily. In one scene, a character falls down in despair, only to begin a normal conversation as he rises. This could easily have been clumsy, but the skill in the writing and directing turns it into a stunning piece of stagecraft. The beginning of the second act brings in an even more clever device, that you wonder no one has thought of it before. There are strong performances throughout, with the central figure of the mother acting as a catalyst for all the pain the family endures. The plot is entirely believable throughout, with only perhaps the relationship between the photojournalist, and his son not explored fully enough, compared to the rest of the action. You feel the pain of the characters, and such is the skill of the writing you don't know how they will end up resolving their difficulties. The only real minus with this production was that the imaginative use of the past and the present wasn't reflected in the set. It may not have distracted from the action, but neither was it used to enhance the high standards of the rest of the production. ...

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