Curse of the Starving Class
Sam Shepard’s popular Curse of the Starving Class in a New Group revival thematically resonates with hunger, spiritually, psychically, emotionally. First appearing at the Public Theater, the play won an Obie for Best New American Play during the 1976-1977 season. Since then, Shepard’s sardonic comedy has been revived a number of times. Currently at the Pershing Square Signature Center, the production with its fine cast extends until the 6th of April. This is a must-see for its performances, and for the timeliness of Shepard’s insights into American culture and society, through the anatomy of a dysfunctional family.
Shepard often chronicled his family history weaving themes in and out of his “Family Tragedies.” His dynamic, intimate, humorous and intensely dark works hover between tragedy and surreal moments of comedy. The titular play reviewed here, Buried Child (1979), True West (1980), Fool for Love (1983), and A Lie of the Mind (1985), comprise his most autobiographical work.
Curse of the Starving Class is characteristically Shepard
With searing poetic elements and unusual twists, Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class like his other plays feature violent, hurtful, dysfunctional familial relationships. The emphasis on the destructive nerve endings of the human condition makes them devastatingly ironic. The characters reflect the dark aspects of human nature. On another level father Weston (Christian Slater), mother Ella (Calista Flockhart), son Wesley (Cooper Hoffman), and daughter Emma (Stella Marcus), represent family archetypes. Instead of unifying with love to stand against a demoralizing society with tainted values about success, they fight each other and themselves.
In the inner soul of the individuals, there is the same fear, want, loneliness and isolation that make them tragic and human. At times their behaviors shock and mitigate the empathy we might feel for them. For example, son Wesley urinates on his sister Emma’s art project because he feels she wastes her time. Mother Ella’s sanguine response to his lack of respect in the abusive act also shocks. As the youngest, Emma responds to the hateful act rebelliously. Shepard’s characterization “logic” and the family’s individual reckless choices reveal their isolation and deprivation of love and care for each other.
Introducing the broken-down Tate family
The Tate family, rooted in farming and the land in rural California, has seen better days. Throughout the play we watch them attempt to manifest their dreams, only to bring the inevitable failures that follow. Director Scott Elliott envisions the Tate family’s devolution aptly with the help of Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenic design. At the top of the play, we note remnants of hope in a once lovely kitchen, neglected and allowed to go to ruin. The blinds over the sink hang broken, flapping. The sliding doors have been smashed with glass everywhere on the floor. Disorganized, unkempt, the backyard contains a mountain of junk. The refrigerator’s dents indicate it’s a receptacle of violence, abused for its “emptiness,” as a key symbol of unfulfilled promise.
This shared space associated with family and food is a place they inhabit together briefly. We discover that they find no sustenance with or in each other. Though Wesley and Emma complain about the empty refrigerator, when Flockhart’s Ella and Slater’s Weston do bring groceries and prepare food, Emma and Wesley refuse to eat it. Wesley especially declaims that he starves, an irony in that he is tall, proportioned, and looks well fed. Ella questions their intimated reference to their family’s condition. She insists that they are not poor, nor do they belong to the “starving class.” She misses their other more profound levels of impoverishment and does little to help satisfy their interior needs.
The kitchen as a symbol in Curse of the Starving Class
The dilapidated, messy kitchen as the core of the home symbolically represents the drained, starved soul of the family. Flockhart’s Ella has given up trying to provide a nurturing, warm “hearth” for her charges. She fears and despises alcoholic husband Weston (the superb Christian Slater). Her interactions with the shambling Wesley and strong-willed, impulsive teen daughter Emma tend toward criticism not encouragement.
Wesley attempts to fill in the gaps where his parents have given up or allowed rancor to guide their actions. When Wesley sweeps up the glass, Ella says Weston must clean what his father damaged. In a violent alcoholic rage Weston smashed the doors to get in because Ella locked them. When she counters that she warned Weston she’d lock him out if he came home late, we recognize the cycle of provocation and destruction in their marriage. This negatively impacts their children, and at one point Emma becomes convinced Ella will leave with another man. Most probably this situation happened before. Lonely and overcome, Ella complains that Weston is never around and as a drunkard, will kill her in a fit of rage.
The Tate family curse
A curse within each of them spreads damage. This debility provokes the family members’ sadism and condemnation toward themselves and each other. Their torment and abuse acts like a slow poison. Slater’s Weston discusses this in a riveting aria to Hoffman’s Wesley. The generational curse (alcoholism, inability to follow through on dreams, the isolated self), Weston wittingly or unwittingly embraced from his father. He corrupts and soils every potentially good thing in his life, including his farm and family, whom he doesn’t adequately provide for, especially emotionally.
The Tates try to escape themselves and each other
To escape his self-loathing Weston anesthetizes himself with drunken marathons, doesn’t pay his bills, abuses Ella or Wesley who chide him. Desperate for a change, he allows himself to be scammed by a shyster to buy worthless land. Toward the last section of the play Slater’s Weston sobers up and tries to make amends to Ella and Wesley. We note his kindness and attempts to care. However, It is too late. He realizes how deeply “he’s in hock” to everyone. Wesley encourages him to escape the thugs who show up moments after Weston leaves for Mexico where, “no one speaks English.”
The failure of their dreams to escape
Without sustenance from her husband, Ella tries to escape with other men which never satisfies her. She enacts her plan to leave Weston and take the family to Europe by selling the farm. Ella’s and Weston’s desperation to escape blinds them to the reality of their impossible dreams. Because of their inner turmoil, they cannot discern the treachery of con artists. When Ella tries to sell the farm behind Weston’s back, scam artist Taylor (Kyle Beltran) prepares papers to sign away the farm.
The “lawyer” already scammed Weston to purchase worthless desert property. When Taylor discovers Weston already sold the farm, he threatens to declare Weston incompetent for the sake of his “deal” with Ella. We note that the family becomes prey to vultures in the carnivorous, devouring society. They can only survive if they stick together in unity and not brutalize each other. They learn this lesson too late.
Even Emma fails at her attempted “escape.” Emma’s efforts creating her project indicate that she has ambition and the determination to “be somebody.” She believes she must get away from the destructive family and dead-end farm to do it. After her brother shows his vile disrespect, despite Ella’s warning, she runs away on an untamed horse. She returns in humiliated desperation. The horse (as wild as her family), threw her off and dragged her “through the mud.” By the conclusion Emma’s impulse to escape leads her to her own ironic destruction. The same may happen to Weston who leaves for Mexico. The question of how Ella and Wesley can survive destitute and without shelter concludes the play.
Moderating Shepard’s humor sometimes becomes problematic for the actors with the somber tone of the production. Perhaps this is due to Elliot’s direction of various character’s monologues. For example, Wesley sits at the edge of the stage and addresses his feelings about his father to the audience. Elliot has lighting designer Jeff Croiter place him in a spotlight. The effect of breaking the fourth wall throws off the momentum in a heavy-handed way. When Beltran’s Taylor gives his speech about corporate development taking up the land and “leaving people behind,” (a truism), the same occurs.
Elliot emphasizes a current theme. Sometimes understatement creates more power than “waving a thematic flag,” as the spotlight does featuring the characters’ monologues. When the cast nuances the irony effectively at other times, the humor emerges. Slater embraces Weston’s ironic character exceptionally, authentically in the last section of the play. Flockhart’s turn comes at the beginning. The other actors ping the humor during various heightened moments.
Kudos to Catherine Zuber (costume design), Leah Gelpe (sound design), and the creatives already mentioned for bringing to life along with actors one of Shepard’s great works. Special kudos to the sweet sheep whose described fate drew gasps from the audience. Shepard’s point about inner hunger unrecognized, unsatisfied, and dangerous is impeccably reinforced especially by the conclusion.
Curse of the Starving Class runs two hours forty-five minutes at the Linney, the Pershing Square Signature Center. https://thenewgroup.org/current-season/
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