We study the deformation of the classical Szegő curve \(\gamma _0\) given by \(\gamma _t = \{ z\in \mathbb {C}: |z\, e^{1-z}| = e^{-t}, |z|\le 1\}\) , \(t\ge 0\) from three different viewpoints: an electrostatic equilibrium problem, the dual hydrodynamic model, and a random matrix model. The common framework underlying these models is the asymptotic distribution of zeros of the scaled varying Laguerre polynomials \(L^{(\alpha _n)}_n(n z)\) in the critical regime where \(\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }\alpha _n/n=-1\) , for which the limiting zero distribution is supported on \(\gamma _t\) , where the deformation parameter t encodes the exponential rate at which the sequence \(\alpha _n\) approximates the set of negative integers. We show that the Schwarz functions of these curves can be written in terms of the Lambert W function, and that in this formulation the S-property of Stahl and Gonchar and Rachmanov can be explictly written as the Schwarz reflection symmetry. We also discuss a conformal map of the interior of the curves \(\gamma _t\) onto the disks \(D(0,e^{-t})\) and the harmonic moments of the curves.