Bad Blood

By T.E.K.

CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS by Sam Shepard

What distinguishes Sam Shepard from a score of promising and prolific young U.S. dramatists is that he is our most persistent social critic. Not that he indulges in the finger pointing that characterizes post-Watergate morality. Always in sorrow and never in anger, he exposes the dry rot that has eroded the faith and commitment of Americans to the triple pillars of society--God, family and country. His style varies from surrealistic to naturalistic to pop, and all of his plays contain an unsettling mixture of wild humor and harrowing revelation.

In Curse of the Starving Class, Shepard's symbol is a refrigerator devoid of food; his theme, the aching emptiness of U.S. family life. Each member of this rural family is poisoned by sour dreams.

Behind her husband's back, the wife (Olympia Dukakis) wants to unload the house and property to a smarmy, carnally inclined real estate operator and then flee with the land shark to the cultural dreamland of Europe. The husband (James Gammon), a complicated victim of drink, anger and despondency, wants to shed the property and escape to Mexico alone.

In a blacked-out stupor, he is bilked of his home, and gangsters lie in wait for him. The son (Ebbe Roe Smith), a touching fool-in-Christ figure, simply wants to hang onto a place that is already lost, and the daughter (Pamela Reed) plans to retrieve the loss by becoming an efficient criminal.

In the final segment of the play, the son's hands are crimsoned by the blood of a lamb he has just slaughtered. He has not been washed clean in the blood of the lamb, for the animal was maggoty, like the family. Despite this strained symbolic ending, Shepard has fashioned a play of eloquent intensity, whirlwind farce and resonantly poignant insight. The cast all get A's. The ensemble work they do can not be matched off-Broadway.

-- T.E.K.

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