Sam Shepard’s fiercely funny, OBIE award-winning play returns to the stage. With their family home on the verge of collapse and the creditors closing in, the Tate family white knuckles to their past, while scratching and clawing their way towards a better future. Told through a contemporary biting lens, this classic story dismantles the American dream in its look at a family fighting to stay alive.
It takes a long time for Cooper Hoffman’s Wesley to admit he is starving. While his sister Emma (newcomer Stella Marcus, who masterfully handles Shepard’s style) is eager for the rest of her family to wake up to reality, their parents insist in front of an empty refrigerator that they are not poor.
Scott Elliott’s direction fails to fit all the seemingly disparate vocabulary of Shepard’s work into a coherent stage language. Throughout the play, the characters randomly break out into monologues that seem taken from a lucid dream state. ... These speeches then feel didactic in a way Shepard’s script never does, their fourth-wall-breaking execution making the play feel disjointed and self-consciously stagy — which is also a problem with the performances.
1978 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
1985 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
1997 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2019 | Off-Broadway |
Signature Theatre Off-Broadway Revival Off-Broadway |
2025 | Off-Broadway |
The New Group Off-Broadway Revival Off-Broadway |
Videos