Curse of the Starving Class

First staged in 1978, Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class is a dark farce turning on the dysfunctions of a debt-ridden family in rural southern California.

Weston, an alcoholic who has kicked in his own front door, has failed his family and symptomatically believes that anything suggested to him must bring progress.

Ella, now a shell of a wife and mother, is overwhelmed with disappointment and similarly obsessed with any notion of escape. Emma, their young teenage daughter and Wesley, their nearly adult son grapple with their own futures as their parents single-mindedly pursue their destructive cross-purposes and con-men, loan sharks and other spectres threaten their security.

It is not hard to imagine what the curse or curses of the Tate family might be, and these at times find slightly heavy-handed expression in the play. Looking at where we are today and the age of this piece it might be suggested that we would do well to repeatedly scream some of its apparent social comments, and the actors do just that. The play’s most prominent idea, however, of the uselessness of self-knowledge in the face of an irrational hunger, is hardly one of hope.

Shepard has used a casual approach to characterisation and an unconventional mix of styles, freely employing slapstick sketches of criminals in contrast with motionless and highly stylised soliloquies.

Without the play’s comic energy, the characters would be quite hard to engage with as Shephard presents us with few details and some fairly sudden and radical character shifts. During the performance, I was only seriously interested by the experience of one character, and unfortunately my interest greatly diminished as the character changed towards the end.

Some may find the play a little quirky and slightly awkward but the experience is certainly worth the many comic moments that are well delivered by the artful staging and performances.