Nat Wolff turns to the dark side in 'Buried Child'

NEW YORK (AP) - Actor and musician Nat Wolff couldn't resist agreeing to do a darkly weird off-Broadway play about a strange family. After all, he's got a weird family connection to it.

Wolff, 21, is starring this month in Sam Shepard's "Buried Child," the same Midwest Gothic comedy his mother, Polly Draper, starred in 37 years ago at Yale Repertory Theatre. It even turns out he's the same age she was back then.

"It's going to be probably a trippy experience for her," said Wolff, a rising star whose film credits include the adaptation of John Green's coming-of-age novel "Paper Towns" and playing a blind teen battling cancer "The Fault in Our Stars."

"Buried Child," which won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for drama, features three generations of a family torn apart by the past. There's a boozy, cantankerous patriarch, an unkempt mother, one son who is a one-legged psychopath and another who has lost the will even to communicate.

Wolff plays a grandson who arrives with his girlfriend, played by Taissa Farmiga. His real-life mom, who went on to find fame in the TV series "thirtysomething," played the girlfriend role in 1979 with another soon-to-be star in Tony Shalhoub. They would often reminisce about "Buried Child."

"While doing the play, I will randomly remember different things that I heard growing up about it," Wolff said. "Of all things that I've gotten to do, for my mom, it's the most exciting."

The play, which also stars Ed Harris, Larry Pine and Amy Madigan, represents Wolff's professional off-Broadway debut, though the New York native was in plays at the cozy downtown Flea Theatre when he was 8 and 12.

The darkness of the new work didn't scare him off. "I've always liked the darker stuff," he said. "Besides being one the darkest, grossest, most tragic families in the history of American theater, I think it's also darkly funny."

He and his younger brother, Alex, became famous in 2005 after starring in and providing song and lyrics for the musical-comedy film "The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie." That led to a spin-off TV series from 2007-09.

The brothers still collaborate on music despite their hectic acting schedules and the fact that Alex is still in high school. (Alex is in the new "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2").

Their bond keeps them grounded: "I think it's been really special to have my brother going through it with me because it keeps me sane and for me to keep him sane," Nat Wolff said.

For "Buried Child," Wolff has jumped into his character by keeping the family theme going - he's focusing on his father, Michael Wolff, a jazz pianist and composer.

He's raided his dad's record collection of Miles Davis and John Coltrane tunes. He's dusted off his old saxophone, which he hasn't played since the fifth grade. And he's even grown a wispy beard like his father in the 1970s.

"I've modeled a lot of my character off my dad," Wolff said.

Up next for Wolff is the film "In Dubious Battle" about migrant workers in apple orchards in 1930. It's directed by James Franco, adapted from a John Steinbeck novel, and stars Bryan Cranston, Selena Gomez, Robert Duvall and Zach Braff.

Wolff also will be exploring more dark stuff in "Death Note," in which he plays a student who discovers a supernatural notebook that allows him to kill anyone simply by writing the victim's name. And he'll be in "Rosy," where he kidnaps an actress.

"My patchy facial hair came in handy for that one, too," he said, laughing.

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Online: http://www.thenewgroup.org/buried-child.html