Shepard and Albee Take the Stage and Screen at Guild Hall

Guild Hall audiences have become accustomed to seeing simulcasts of operas from the Met and encore screenings of recent performances from London’s National Theatre. BroadwayHD will join the venue’s entertainment menu on Friday, Nov. 17, at 7 p.m. with a screening of the New Group’s 2016 revival of Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Buried Child.”

Like much of Shepard’s work, the play exposes the fragmentation of the American nuclear family and the demise of the American Dream. Ed Harris and Amy Madigan play a couple barely hanging on to their farm and their sanity while looking after their two wayward grown sons. The arrival of their grandson and his girlfriend sets off chaos and confusion centered on a dark family secret. Tickets are $18, $16 for members.

The National Theatre’s current production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” by Edward Albee, like Shepard a recently deceased giant of the American theater, will have an encore screening at Guild Hall on Saturday at 7 p.m.  

Albee’s Tony Award-winning black comedy, first staged in 1962, takes place during one long, drink-fueled evening when a middle-aged history professor and his wife invite a younger couple for a drink after a faculty party and proceed to vilify, abuse, and humiliate each other and, eventually, their guests. Tickets are $18, $16 for members.