STAGE REVIEWS : Depth Falters in Fullerton’s ‘Curse,’ Golden West’s ‘Rain’

Cal State Fullerton’s “Curse of the Starving Class” misses the beat in finding a rhythm between Sam Shepard’s wigged-out characters. And without that, this perverse, problematic black comedy can turn into a lot of sound and fury signifying little.

“Curse,” written in 1978, is considered one of Shepard’s most autobiographical works, supposedly reflecting his early life in rural San Gabriel Valley in the 1950s. If so, young Sam had a very rough time of it.

Instead of the Shepard family, we have the ominous Tate clan, all living on an avocado farm gone to seed, in a ramshackle house that’s more war zone than home. There’s Weston (Christopher K. Hull), the drunk and raging father; Ella (Karlie Cook), his desperate wife; Emma (Sylvia Biller), the savvy 15-year-old who dreams about going to Mexico, and Wesley (Christopher Huskin), the only son who is too much like his father for his (and everybody else’s) own good.

This is a nuclear family imploding all over the place. Loyalties are damned and it’s everybody for himself or herself. Day-to-day life is made up of both petty and major struggles, the biggest being who’s going to profit off the sale of the farm. Both mom and dad have grand ideas--Weston wants to take the money to make a getaway to Mexico, Ella wants to go to Europe. As usual with Shepard, these are subversive high jinks dipped in blood.

To connect with these people and to understand fully what Shepard is getting at (the taint of generational guilt, the impossibility of intimacy), we have to grasp almost intuitively what they mean to each other. That requires direction that doesn’t wander much and acting that is pointed and revelatory.

We don’t get that at Cal State Fullerton. Alvin Keller’s direction is too sporadic, especially in the pacing. At times this production picks up the energy Shepard intended, but more often it plods along, letting us drift from the dynamic at hand.

The cast, with the possible exception of Cook, seems lost in interpreting these characters. Cook has an idea of how the situation has paralyzed Ella and plays her with a relatively tight focus.

But Weston is little more than bluster, a man of noise without much motivation shown for all the racket. Huskin’s handling of Wesley is even less revealing. It’s the most difficult and demanding role, for sure, but Huskin doesn’t give him any tautness or depth. Here, he’s sort of whiny, which belies the fact that this is a character beset by the darkest internalizing.

Biller has the tough task of playing a precocious adolescent and she responds with a bunch of cliched and unconvincing mannerisms.

On the technical side, Todd Muffatti’s set gets the job done well enough but it could have given more of an idea of a world in decline--it’s all a little too neat. Susan Hallman’s lighting is effective.

‘CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS’

A Cal State Fullerton production of Sam Shepard’s play. Directed by Alvin Keller. With Christopher Huskin, Karlie Cook, Sylvia Biller, Kevin Bossenmeyer, Christopher K. Hull, David Michael Long, Brett Shuemaker, Ron McPherson and Tim Keogh. Set by Todd Muffatti, Costumes by Gail Liston Lennox. Lighting by Susan Hallman. Makeup by Gary Christensen. Plays Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the campus’s Recital Hall, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Tickets: $5 to $6. (714) 773-3371.