SINCE THE FRIDGE IS EMPTY,
HOW ABOUT A GIANT BOWL OF GRIT?
There’s no place like home. Mom calls the cops, convinced Dad is going to kill her—he’s drunker than usual and literally breaks down the door. The next morning, she yells at her son for sweeping up the shattered pieces. He yells back. Daughter storms in with posters for a school project and rages about her missing chicken. Son, unimpressed by her artwork, expresses his disdain in the least subtle way possible—by urinating on the posters. More yelling. The refrigerator is nearly empty; they yell at the refrigerator. A large, live, woolly sheep trots into the kitchen and stays a while. Daughter threatens to run away (or rather, ride away—on horseback). Nobody’s happy, and Dad is MIA. Oh, and did I mention the live sheep on stage? Welcome to the intense world of Sam Shepard’s unflinching Curse of the Starving Class, the 1976-77 Obie-winning drama, the revival of which opened last night at the Pershing Square Signature Center, presented by The New Group and staged by its artistic director Scott Elliott.
Christian Slater
Cooper Hoffman
A blistering mix of dark comedy and domestic distress, the play—originally three acts, now condensed into two—runs two hours and forty-five minutes (including intermission). At times, it’s a turgid slog as the characters slam both each other’s opinions and the refrigerator door over and over, bemoaning its barren interior. The relentless recriminations and vitriol eventually extend to the father (Christian Slater, in a bellowing, thoroughly threatening performance that takes an unexpected turn later). Initial sympathies may fall with his long-suffering wife (Calista Flockhart, with some lamentation and mettle, and lines growled through gritted teeth) and their children (Cooper Hoffman and Stella Marcus) by default—after all, a raging, jobless alcoholic isn’t winning any popularity contests.
Christian Slater and Calista Flockhart
Cooper Hoffman, Christian Slater and Stella Marcus
But don’t expect the rest of the family to be much more charming—there’s plenty of mean-spiritedness to go around. At first, some not accustomed to Shepard’s style–and who are prone to impatience and claustrophobia—may curse the non-terse Curse, which lacks variety in pace, making it less gripping than grueling, leaving viewers starving for someone to care about and root for. My vote went to the son, a character trapped and tested by circumstance, who at least shows glimmers of patience and familial forgiveness (though that whole peeing-on-the-posters stunt cost him points). But likability isn’t the goal here as human sympathy creeps in for the distasteful and distancing kinfolk—for their poverty, desperation, despair, and the sheer exhaustion of living with an unstable alcoholic. Shepard, after all, knew this terrain well—his own father’s struggles with alcohol likely seeped into the play’s DNA.
Cooper Hoffman and Christian Slater
Cooper Hoffman
The plot thickens incrementally. Enter Taylor (Kyle Beltran), a figure who might be saving the family, swindling them, or seducing the wife. The looming sale of the family home and land is debated, dangled, and decided with dramatic results but it does sometimes feel like a long, lugubrious, lumbering time for some things to unfold. Curse is replete with repetition. A program note warns of violence, loud noises, a strobe light, and nudity (a quick moment of a performer’s entrance, bare-assed, in lieu of the assets of the costumes designed by Catherine Zuber), so expect the unexpected. Yet more than once, you may be numbed and almost zone out. When a character collapses into deep sleep stretched out on the kitchen table, a pile of laundry serving as a pillow, there’s no warning that you may feel inclined to do the same. Still, in the second act, the director and the cast pick up the pace, keeping first-timers to the play on their toes.
Calista Flockhart
Jeb Kreager, Cooper Hoffman, and Calista Flockhart
Watching a Shepard play isn’t like being a fly on the wall—you can’t predict the chaos from the writing on it. His dialogue is laced with pith and poison, surprise and suspense. The experience hinges on whether or not you appreciate the acting choices, the tension, the absurdities, and the raw irony of it all. And then, of course, there’s the emphasis on food—or the lack of it, indicated right off the (batty) bat by the word “Starving” in the title: artichokes are tossed about as freely as the insults; a simple home-cooked breakfast seems to be a prized gourmet pleasure; and there’s talk of making a meal of the scene-stealing sheep (played with surprising charisma by Lois, with Gladys stepping in for select performances).
Jeb Kreager and David Anzuelo
Christian Slater and Cooper Hoffman
If you’re craving a towering tragedy seasoned with absurdist humor, take the plunge into the chaos of Curse of the Starving Class. Just don’t expect it to go down easy. And if you’re searching for metaphorical gravitas beyond a grotesque tale of an eagle stealing the testes of castrated animals mid-air while battling a cat—well, good luck with that.
Christian Slater and Calista Flockhart
Christian Slater
photos by Monique Carboni
Calista Flockhart and Kyle Beltran
Curse of the Starving Class
The New Group
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theater
Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd St
2 hours and 45 minutes with intermission
ends on March 30, 2025 EXTENDED to April 6, 2025
for tickets, visit The New Group
