REVIEWS

If the downbeat aspect is a given, so too, is the expected brilliance of Iron Age Theatre's production, currently on stage at the Center Theater of the Montgomery County Cultural Center.
Iron Age continues to avoid the plague of mediocrity by reinforcing its vision yet again with a piece that challenges the audience within an inch of its life.
Directors Randy Wise and John Doyle crack open this explosive, eccentric drama about a farming family on the fringe of destruction in the midst of a changing, rapidly developing America with three acts, as the narrative crescendos to the point of no return for all concerned.
The author ultimately leaves all conclusions about these people up to us, but in true Shepardian style, the only unmediated aspect of "Curse" is the depth of humanity that he assigns his characters.
The father, West Tate (Steve Hatzai), is not merely cartoonized as a temperamental drunk responsible for his family's demise, but an aggressively sympathetic character with a tragic flaw.
He is poisoned, just like his father and his father before him, and his son, by an unnamed primal unrest which portends that every intent through eyes that are wild with crushing rage one through eyes that are wild with crushing rage one moment, and helpless abdication the next.
Amanda Schoonover delivers a creepy and complex performance as the creepy and not so complex daughter Emma.
Maryann Elder's portrayal of the mother, Ella, equals Schoonover's in intensity, as does Christian Lisak's. As the son, Wesley, he adds the most visible sense of existential melancholia to the hazy equation working itself out on stage.
Gary Puleo
The Times Herald

Under the direction of Randall Wise and John Doyle, the Iron Age production at Montgomery County Cultural Center taps into the edgy weirdness and energy of the piece....
Steve Hatzai's raging, drunken Weston could be more terrifying (he's better sobered up), but generally he and Maryann Elder (Ella) hold their own in their portrayals of the parents of this destruction-bound clan.
Douglas Keating
Philadelphia Inquirer