Curse of the Starving Class

Abbey Theatre, Dublin Until Sep 10 7.30pm (Sat 2pm) 13-40 01-8787222 abbeytheatre.ie

“See, I always figured on the future . . . I was banking on it getting better.” So says Weston Tate, a man so wreathed in a fog of alcohol and violence that he is generally unable to figure on a closed front door without kicking it down.

Sam Shepard’s play, first produced in 1977, marks the fifth production of the cowboy poet’s work at the Abbey in five years, making him a more regular programme fixture than Friel or Shakespeare. Director Jimmy Fay lets the echoes of the Tate family’s curse resound in the cavern of our recent history – a recklessly stoked appetite for acquisition and easy credit that leads, finally, to bare fridges and insatiable hunger. But the play itself is hard to control.

Curse of the Starving Classmarked a departure for the experimental playwright as he first tried out the structure of Eugene O'Neill-proportioned naturalism; here it inspires design and performances that struggle to accommodate both modes. An impressively abstract set is paired with a moodily realistic score, while Joe Hanley is viscerally explosive as the shambling paterfamilias hectoring his son Wesley (brave Ciarán O'Brien) into a heavily over-signalled fate.

It’s a striking production of an uneven play, with a message that, right now, feels like a kick in the teeth.

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