Curse of the Starving Class, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Star rating: **** American playwrights love a family affair, and there are few as extreme as Sam Shepard's 1978 free-associative dissection of the Tate clan's battle for personal and economic survival in a predatory consumerist world. All are looking for a way out of the door-less shack they call home, be it through Weston's binges or Ella's aspirational dalliances, while daughter Emma's academic idealism conflicts with her brother Wesley's inarticulate rage. Authority figures who step into their world, be they lawyer, cop, cowboy-club owner or a debt-collecting double-act, are representatives of an encroaching property boom about to sweep out the mess of the old world like a hurricane.