Curse of the Starving Class – 22 February 2025

Curse of the Starving Class off Broadway produced by The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center tells a chilling story of how men become animals when their basic needs aren’t met, and how in moments of extreme stress, it is difficult to focus on protecting anybody but yourself. The show features Wesley (Cooper Hoffman) and Weston (Christian Slater) as the seminal examples of the threatened and the threat, but also introduces female family members Ella (Calista Flockhart) and Emma (Stella Marcus) as pillars of strength and defiance. Add in the side characters, played by David Anzuelo, Kyle Beltran, and Jeb Kreager  (and a very talented sheep with an equity card from Vidbel Animal Actors) and we’ve got ourselves a story.

One commonality shared by these otherwise deeply divided characters was feeling exploited/taken advantage of. Weston, who borrowed money thinking he was the one taking advantage; Wesley, who cleaned up his father‘s messes and fought to defend him, despite literally starving; Ella, whose alcoholic husband scared her senseless, to the point where she had to go behind his back to feel any sense of autonomy; and Emma, who had to hide her dreams and intellectual brightness and remain in a home where her hard work was (literally) pissed all over. From these moments, it’s easy to see how something – anything else might be attractive to these characters: a plot of land, a real pride in one’s home, a lawyer who can get one to Europe, a career as a mechanic who sees the tangible results of time and energy…

Part of portraying all four of these family members as both strong and weak was about setting up foils for a conversation about gender. All four had moments of absolute strength and bravery, and at times each was a provider when in other moments they desperately needed to be provided for. In a way, it took masculinity down from its pedestal. Emma, who was young enough to be getting her period for the first time (though Stella Marcus really looks too old for this to be plausible – maybe this was an intentional statement about trauma aging a person?) goes out on horseback with a rifle and shoots up a club, landing herself in jail overnight. There’s not much maternal about Ella– she’s indifferent to her starving children and determined to get a better world for herself. She seizes this opportunity when she meets Taylor (Kyle Beltran) – even though he turns out to be a con artist, her dogged determination is admirably fierce. In contrast, the men are unable to earnestly understand their dreams, let alone chase them. Weston is an alcoholic, and Wesley is shrouded in silent rage, for the most part, speaking out of spite in the moments when he is able to turn the tide of a conversation. In the end, this rage manifests as blind aggression. Like his father, he is incapable of a real accomplishment.

The end of Curse of the Starving Class splits up this family in a violent and dramatic way. Despite their panic and ruin, a fresh start seems like the best possible outcome, at least for the time being. The design elements have all been building toward the seismic explosion – the lighting (Jeff Croiter) letting everyone speak freely to the audience for a moment stoked the metaphorical fires, the sound (Leah Gelpe) fanned the dramatic tension to the flames, the costumes (Catherine Zuber) added logs as markers of who was put together and who was falling apart, and this scenic (Arnulfo Maldonado) explosion was the powder keg taking us to a biting, yet healing conclusion.

Sometimes something can’t be salvaged and has to be destroyed and rebuilt to be better. The hopelessness of starting at the bottom when things already can’t seem to get much worse is the true curse of the starving class.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Seven17PR.