STAGE REVIEW : SHEPARD’S ‘CURSE’ IN FULL FOCUS

In staging “Curse of the Starving Class,” UC Irvine has embraced two of playwright Sam Shepard’s most salient features--unpredictability and excess--to good advantage. The results may unnerve some, but there’s little doubt that this is compelling, explosive theater.

Shepard’s often depraved, sometimes comic vision of the American family is in clear focus here. Director Mary Anne McGarry is not interested in a sanitized version of “Curse” (which continues at the Fine Arts Concert Hall today, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.) and instead meets it unflinchingly head-on, employing all of the play’s graphic devices. We get--steady now--on-stage urination, full nudity, a slaughtered lamb and enough blood to bring on the woozies in the front row.

This is typical Shepard--sensational, indulgent and ambiguous, but it works at UCI. McGarry has mounted a production that may be short on revelation, but its incendiary emotional context is provocative indeed.

“Curse,” written in 1978, is considered one of Shepard’s most autobiographical works, reflecting his early life in rural San Gabriel Valley in the 1950s. Let’s hope it’s merely suggestive; nobody should have to live through this.

On an avocado farm gone to seed, living in a ramshackle house that’s more battlefield than home, is the ominous Tate clan. There’s Weston (played by Rob Ornellas), the drunken and ravaged patriarch who rules through blustery intimidation; Ella (Janice Lee), his bitter and desperate wife; Emma (Leslie Gray), the precocious 15-year-old daughter who fantasizes about opening an auto repair shop in Baja, and Wesley (Steve Ingrassia), the maturing son trapped by the farm’s hopelessness.

As with so many of Shepard’s plays--particularly true for “Buried Child” and “Fool For Love”--it’s the final act that goes a little haywire, and the audience is asked to accept much without question.

There are also last-minute plot contrivances that are too murky (Weston’s dealings with the underworld aren’t fully explored or explained) or simply farfetched (Weston’s spiritual rebirth after spending a night on the kitchen table comes out of left field).

Still, there’s no arguing with the often lyrical power of “Curse” and its black magic conjuring of feelings. UCI capitalizes on that, even in the uneasy last act.

Much of the production’s success can be traced to fine performances by the principals. Ornellas’ Weston is a monstrous force, a self-destructive alcoholic who threatens violence with every look and word. He has a formidable adversary in Ella, whom Lee inhabits completely, instilling her with a nervy self-reliance and comic edge that makes the character all the more accessible.

Stuck with playing a teen-ager who often talks with the cynical breeziness of a graduate student, Gray’s Emma is a resilient, tough little cookie--the “let’s cut the crap here” foil Shepard intended Emma to be.

As the closest thing to the play’s conscience is Ingrassia’s Wesley. Ingrassia slips a little early on, making the character too smug but by the second act has tapped into Wesley’s turbulent undercurrents.

The right atmosphere is evoked by Gail Futch’s set, a cold, charmless kitchen planted on the barren soil of the Tate farm. A forlorn windmill, seeming like it would topple with one blast of fresh air, stands in the background.