Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class is packed with action and absurdity. “It’s got explosions and tirades and flying artichokes and a saloon shoot-out,” the critic Sara Holdren wrote in Vulture in 2019. But the real drama lies in the play’s fractured relationships. In this production, directed by Scott Elliott, Calista Flockhart is the overburdened Ella Tate and Christian Slater is her volatile, alcoholic husband. Cooper Hoffman, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, plays their teenage son, while Stella Marcus portrays their daughter. Members of the Tate family are struggling with one another over control of the crumbling family farm, and each faces a choice: leave in search of freedom or stay in pursuit of stability. —Jeanne Malle