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.
To breathe theatrical life into this wild clan—and Shepard’s scorching dialogue—demands a degree of intensity that Scott Elliot’s production just can’t provide.
The intensity of Shepard’s writing—which segues dazzlingly from brutal to whimsical to extravagantly operatic—is matched in director Scott Elliott’s impressive staging in one of Signature’s smallest spaces. You feel as if you’re being held hostage by what unfolds before you in this theater; the harm and dysfunction afflicting and being dished out by the Tates is the most vicious of vicious cycles, and dangerously, physically close, accentuating our discomfort.
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 |
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