Word: squalore
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...about young middle-class students like myself, who are able to take off a few weeks, months, or years to work with poor people while living under the poverty line themselves--though all the time with the knowledge in the back of their mind that they can leave the squalor when they can take it no more...
...decision to hold its population conference in Mexico City could hardly be more appropriate. In all its splendor and squalor, the Mexican capital is the archetype of Third World megacities that are climbing to the top of the list of the world's major urban centers (see following story). Says Allan Rosenfield, director of Columbia University's Center for Population and Family Health: "We in the West haven't done very well managing our big cities. How Indonesia, India, Mexico and other Third World countries can handle them is beyond my comprehension...
Today's offer of amnesty reflects America's justifiable concern with controlling its 2,000 mile border with Mexico. Estimates put the number of illegal immigrants between four and six million, with about 60 percent of them coming from Mexico alone. Furthermore political upheaval, population growth projections, and economic squalor promise a continuing influx...
...That squalor, the play's major motive force, makes the production worth squirming for. Shepard's tools for inducing that Squirm aren't much subtler than the "starving class" metaphor of the title, which, despite numerous references in the dialogue, never surpasses the self-conscious (they're emotionally starving, you see). Emma (Molly White) the younger of the two gawky adolescents, is having her first period, as the mother constantly reminds father and brother to excuse her behavior. Wesley (Steven Gutwillig), her brother, urinates on a heap of Emma's painstakingly drawn posters. Shepard isn't one for the soft...
THAT REACTION comes through loud and clear, helped by some strong actors and a director who sticks cautiously to a few basic note--squalor, loneliness, weired twistings of communication, and a creeping, gradually dominating mistrust. Cutler lets the cast carry Shepard's heavy messages, but he doesn't add much dramatic shape or thrust. Too ofen, the dialogue sags unbearably under the weight of its pregnant pauses; at other times, mostly in Act One, the actors lose track of their speeches meaning and say everything with the same flat air of significance...