The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Sam Shephard’s Curse of the Starving Class
By Ross
He walks in, agitated and disheveled, taking over the space as the lights dim and the country music plays. This is all as it should be in a Sam Shepard play, and here, in his Obie Award-winning and much-worshipped Curse of the Starving Class (especially by all those young male thespians in acting schools back in the day), the mismatched clan, who we bear witness to, fight for survival every day of their soiled lives. We watch them claw at the skin of everyone around them, hoping the act of selfish self-preservation will lead them to salvation and keep the malnutrition of their mortal souls far far away, maybe buried out somewhere in that desert amongst those foul-smelling artichokes.
It’s a play that has fascinated actors for years, thanks to the pseudo-realism of Shepard’s writing which layers metaphoric cowboy posturing with poetic abstractions that feel rough and as American as rural violence and desperation. Their empty stomachs are filled to the brim with that satirical Western poetry that made playwright Shepard (True West, Fool For Love) and this Curse so starvingly iconic. The cast, as fractured and beaten down as can be, rises up to that heightened level of itchy ease, attempting to perform at an intense level of anger and alertness to detail. It’s a complicated balancing act that, for the most part, falters into a one-note tense range that hangs around the border of something interesting but fails to fly the full framing forward in the hypnotic way required.
The play, as directed by Scott Elliott (TNG’s The Seven Year Disappear), tries its best to live and breathe in the squaller and ignorance of the Tate family home, designed imperfectly by Arnulfo Maldonado (Broadway’s Yellow Face), who creates island obstacles that get in the way of our connective engagement, cutting us off and keeping the clan at a distance. Standing in the background, blocked and banal, is an empty fridge that basically is a supporting character within this desperate family, yet hidden from full view. The members of this complex familial unit constantly shuffle over trying to satisfy a primal hunger, opening the door, and peering inside with a desperate hope for some much-needed nutrition. Many long conversations are had with that inanimate object, begging and pleading with it for some surprise sustenance, only to slam the door, frustrated with a world that has only served them up basically nothing to speak of on that cluttered claustrophobic Signature Theatre stage.
The dirty cowboy boot sharpness of tongues that are generally the core of a Shepard play, stomps forward, attempting to find connection within the overly long first act (that combined the original Act 1 with Act 2 of 3). It’s not solidly represented here, although there is something wilily and wild within the mother character of Ella, portrayed fascinatingly by a very game and convincing Calista Flockhart (Broadway’s The Glass Menagerie). Donning the too-tidy costuming by Catherine Zuber (Broadway’s Moulin Rouge), Flockhart’s Ella walks into the mild shambles of what her hurricane husband, Weston, forcibly portrayed by Christian Slater (West End’s GlenGarry Glen Ross), had brought forth earlier this morning. “Of course, I called the cops“, she states with appropriate frustration, before telling her son, Wesley, portrayed by Cooper Hoffman (Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza“), “He’s the one who broke it down – he can clean it up then“.
It’s a subtle one-layered type of chaos created here within this production, hanging a little too hard on anger and serious realism when a more stylistic and comic approach might have served the space better. With the destruction from last night left for their dimwitted son, Wesley to take care of, and their daughter, Emma, intelligently and casually portrayed by Stella Marcus (“When We Were Old“), to basically ignore and defend against, the initial scene personifies all that is Shepard, with his sly and hungry poetic bite, gnawing at the darkly agonizing and destructive energy that lives rotting in their open starved mouths, yet it remains blocked from entering our collective conscious. It hangs out in that space between the working stove and the fridge, somewhat hidden from view and not so accessible to the viewer.
“Talk is cheap,” Emma says defensively, babbling on and on, too distastefully dark to swallow, regardless of how starving they actually are. But it’s not food they are hungry for, beyond that surprising piss and binge scene both by the impressively game Hoffman. It’s some other farfetched idea of gaining love, support, and security that will fill up their empty souls and save them from oblivion. That is in short supply in the opening and closing of the Shepard’s fridge door. And it’s an exhausting long drive, leaving one in need of a good dead-like nap on a hard surface. “I see“, is the only thing lawyer man Taylor, portrayed cooly by Kyle Beltran (Atlantic’s Blue Ridge), can say to all that. Much like us.
The dual character-playing cast members; David Anzuelo (ATC’s Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven) as Malcolm/Slater, and Jeb Kreager (Broadway’s Oslo) as Ellis/Emerson, show up at that door-less entrance, separately and then together. At one point, the two actors, playing two very different men offer a way out or something more akin to a back-breaking drive-by. The level of threat and potential violence never really registers though, and the two remain somewhat removed from the complex drama being played out in that kitchen.
The men are the ones to be wary of in Sam Shepard’s branding world of lost boys as men driving around in the desert dying of thirst while being drunk as a skunk,. His brand of poetry doesn’t exactly resonate on every surface within these fragmented walls, even as these souls stand beside that maggot-infested sheep farm fiasco, with a real-life Lois, the sheep, staring at the ridiculousness that surrounds her. Lois listens, yet she also distracts us from paying attention, as the individuals of this family talk and cry about escape and glorified rebirth somewhere far away, like most of Shepard’s characters. But we know that the road is dusty and full of dangerous potholes, and this particular family’s blood is filled with poison and bored neglect that will always get in the way of true salvation.
The New Group’s Curse falters in spirit, flaying around a bit too much in the anger and madness, while never really finding the poetry of the moment. Even when the lighting by Jeff Croiter (TNG’s Black No More) and the sound design by Leah Gelpe (Broadway/MTC’s Mary Jane) focus in on their singular internal monologues, the poetic effect is generally lost inside its drunken or disconnected inauthenticity. Lucky for us, this is not a civilized household to behold, but one filled with determined actors as tomcats, trying desperately to bring the hungry eagle down by scratching hard at the flying carnivore’s underbelly. It’s their automatic reaction when captured and caught in its sharp talons. They fight a useless fight, with angry assurances, even if it means death for the tomcat as well as the eagle.
I was never convinced of the need and the desire for this particular production by The New Group. It feels like a vanity project, brought on by a long-held desire to play a Shepard character but not exactly finding the fuel and the point of view to deliver it with the much-need focus. So this Curse of the Starving Class hangs there, without the required angle of dark comedy and biting satire, with overt anger and frustration matching the hunger we all have for something more.
A limited Off-Broadway engagement of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class produced by The New Group is now slated through April 6 at The Pershing Square Signature Center. For information and tickets, click here.
