"Carousel," the second musical created by the legendary Rogers & Hammerstein, is noted today for two major things. One - it’s the show from which we gained the songs "June is Bustin’ Out All Over," and "You'll Never Walk Alone," sometimes alternately known as "When You Walk Through a Storm," a song without which funerals, church services, graduations, and high school music recitals would have been a very different experience over the last 70 years. The SECOND Thing "Carousel" is usually noted for is, well, the plot of the 1945 musical is kinda weird and sort of unsettling, But Hey, at least it’s got that 'Storm' song. And didn’t Elvis have a huge hit with that song? Yes, he did. In truth, "Carousel," a huge hit when it first spun onto Broadway with John Raitt and Jan Clayton in the leads, has a LOT of great songs, some of which you might even have heard before. "June is Bustin’ Out All Over," for what it’s worth, has been bustin‘ into movies, Bugs Bunny cartoons, and major league baseball commercials ever since it first hit the stage. Then there’s, "If You Loved Me," covered on record albums hundreds of times by everyone from Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como to Art Garfunkel, Chad & Jeremy and Sammy Davis Jr. And of course, though it has no lyrics and almost no one knows its name, this piece of music, "The Carousel Waltz," is one of the most famous pieces of circus music ever written, gracing zillions of music boxes for seven decades. Less famous, but worth noting is "Real Nice Clambake," which gave us the indelible lyric, "This was a real nice clambake/we're mighty glad we came/the vittles we et/were good, you bet/the company was the same." Man, that’s poetry. Actually, all kidding aside, that IS poetry. Rogers & Hammerstein’s commitment to capturing the vernacular of their characters was unheard of on the Broadway musical stage before R&H arrived with "Oklahoma," "South Pacific," "The King & I," and "Carousel." Oh, by the way, the reason I’m talking about it is that Spreckels Performing Arts Center is currently presenting a delightfully stripped down production of "Carousel," putting the music front and center along with the orchestra, which is right there on stage with musical director Janis Wilson. Billed as a staged concert, it’s more of a fully staged musical with minimal sets, and an orchestra you can actually look at during the show if you want to. But with gorgeous costumes, snappy choreography, and some truly magnificent singers and actors, you'll soon stop noticing the musicians and be pulled into the story. Or not. The truth is, "Carousel" DOES have a kind of a weird, conspicuously dated story, in which the residents of a turn of the century New England mill town deal with everyday problems: love, poverty, death, spousal abuse, class divisions, what to do when you've died with unfinished business, and timeless issue of finding a suitable rhyme to the word ‘vittles.’ The music is lovely, and it weaves in and out of the dialogue like a river along a gentle mountainside. Directed with fondness and a staunch refusal to ‘fix’ any of the stories outdated ideas, this "Carousel" but putting focus on it’s most notable attribute, the music, is as pleasant and laidback as a lazy ride on a merry-go-round - or a summertime clambake amongst friends. "Carousel" runs through March first at Spreckels Performing Arts Center - spreckelsonline.com

Twelve years ago, journalist and playwright Doug Wright unveiled a new one-actor play with a curious name: "I Am My Own Wife." As a member of the Tectonic Theater, which had earlier premiered the ground breaking play "The Laramie Project," Wright was fully adept at the process of creating documentary style theater, a play that built from actual interviews with people who lived the experiences being recreated on stage, actors performing real-life characters using the actual words collected in the interview.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and travel was permitted into East Berlin for the first time since 1961, word began to spread about a woman named Charlotte Von Mahlsdorff, an elderly antique dealer who ran a museum in her home. Charlotte was an openly transgender woman; people then referred to her as a transvestite. When Doug Wright learned that a transgender woman had somehow survived not only the communist regime of East Germany, but the Nazis before that, he set out to build a play around her experiences, using actual interviews, which he taped face-to-face over the course of a few years.

Wright decided to emphasize the play’s tale of isolation and endurance by having all 40 characters, including himself and Charlotte, played by one single actor.

The result, "I Am My Own Wife," is as much Wright’s journey as it is Charlotte Von Mahlsdorff’s, something much deeper, richer, complex and mysterious than a mere survivor story. It premiered on Broadway in 2003, winning the Tony for Best new play, and going on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

In 2006, working with director Jennifer King, North Bay Actor Stephen Abbott tackled "I Am My Own Wife" at Sonoma County Repertory Theater, a brilliantly-staged performance that played sell-out crowds. Four years later, Abbott and King remounted the show at Spreckels Performing Arts Center, with similar results. And now, nine years after first playing Charlotte Von Mahlsdorff, Abbott is doing it once again, this time at Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma.

While it seems impossible to improve upon perfection, Abbott is doing just that. He is once again working with director King, who recently visited Germany and toured the real-life home and museum of Von Mahsldorff, who died in 2002 at the age of 74. That up-close-and-personal touch has only deepened the show, King introducing tiny details on which Abbott builds his characters, each one a bit more real, more clearly defined and complicated than ever.

Regardless of how one ultimately feels about Von Mahlsdorff, and the questions of how she actually survived her years under brutal totalitarian regimes, this is an impressive work of art. Was she telling the truth with stories of killing her Nazi father with a rolling pin and turning a beloved gay friend over to the communists at his request? Did she really operate a gay brothel under the eyes of one of the most oppressive governments in history? Some of her stories are easier to swallow than others. Perhaps it was her ability to tell tall tales, to spin the truth her own way, part of what allowed her to survive in such an impossible set of situations? Either way, Abbott fully embodies the heart and soul of this extraordinary human being, showing her from the inside out, along with scores of the family, friends, soldiers, neighbors, customers, journalists and visitors she met along the way.

As an extraordinary feat of first-rate theater, "I am My Own Wife" is a must see. As an inspiring, true-ish tale of living as your heart guides you, existing by your own rules, it could even, for some, be nothing short of life-changing.

"I Am My Own Wife" runs through February 22 at Cinnabar theater, cinnabartheater.org.

In Victorian England, the unhappy wife of a repressed doctor yearns to feel alive - and finally takes matters into her own hands. In an imaginary steam-punk version of Victorian England, a band of brave, opera-singing women similarly yearn to be happy, free - and a little bit naughty - and they make it happen through the power of song. In East Berlin, Germany, a mysterious woman with a powerful secret survives against impossible odds, ultimately becoming an inspiration to a young American journalist. She survives through the power of her own belief in herself. In three productions either currently running or about to open in the North Bay, the concept of “gender” is just the tip of the iceberg in stories that challenge us, the audience, to look beneath the surface of some amazing human beings - some real, some fictional - all with something to show us we might not be expecting. Let’s start with "Heroines," opening tomorrow night at Sonoma State University. This one is a brand new original musical review featuring classic operetta tunes from the likes of Bertolt Brecht, Franz Lehar, Gilbert & Sullivan and others. It was created by musical director Lynn Morrow and stage director Jane Irwin Hammett, who appropriately titled their piece, "Heroines." Set during a time of radical change in England, when women were demanding the vote and a whole lot more, the piece pulls famous females from out of other stories and throws them all together. Due to a magical twist of time, these women from various centuries join forces to express their feelings through indelible songs borrowed from shows like "The Threepenny Opera," "The Merry Widow," and other musical masterpieces, and number from the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. In a fantasy version of London, these iconic characters come together in a city blending visuals from Dickens with ideas from Jules Verne, joining their hearts and voices in a revolutionary effort to break the shackles of tradition and inequality. Sounds fun, huh? New shows deserve our support, and SSU, in recent years, has made a strong effort to present at least one original show a year. And with voices recruited from SSU’s Departments of Music and Theater Arts & Dance, this is a production that probably will sound like a blast of pure operatic dynamite - and then some. Meanwhile, At Cinnabar Theater, Doug Wright’s Pulitzer-winning one-actor drama "I Am My Own Wife" introduces audiences to a different kind of heroine: the real-life Charlotte von Mahlsdorff, a transgender woman whose courage - and possibly a bit of treasonous duplicity - allowed her to escape Hitler’s concentration camps, and survive, in her own way, operating a small museum under the noses of her enemies, all during the communist party’s decades-long reign of suspicion and terror. I’ll be reviewing it in full next week. And finally, there’s Sarah Ruhl’s eye-opening drama, "In the Next Room," subtitled, "The Vibrator Play." This is a daring move for the usually fairly reserved Raven Players. The play looks at the marriage of a late Victorian woman and her husband, a doctor specializing in the treatment of hysterical women. He has been using a new treatment, made possible through the power of electricity, which seems to leave his patience extremely happy, and eager for their next appointment. It only his wife could become the focus of his attentions, she - and maybe even he - could find what is missing in their lives. Gorgeously written by Ruhl, it’s a love story with a jolt of raw truth, another story of what happens when strong women are given the power they need to take control of their own destinies, their own happiness, their own world. "I Am My Own Wife" runs February 6-22 at Cinnabar Theater, cinnabartheater.org. "Heroines" runs February 5-15 in the Evert B. Person Theater at Sonoma State University, Sonoma.edu. "In the Next Room" (or the Vibrator Play) runs through February 14 at Raven Theater, Raventheater.org

It’s awards season, and everyone’s talking about who got nominated and who didn’t. And no, I’m not talking about the Oscars. Last week, the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle announced the nominees for its upcoming 29th annual awards ceremony, to be held Monday March 9, at the Victoria Theater in San Francisco. After decades of neglect from the Circle, which simply has had a majority of writers working and watching shows in the City, the East Bay and South Bay, the poor North Bay, and especially Sonoma County, has recently been enjoying a gradual shift in attention from the Circle, of which I am a member. Last year, there were actually a fair number of wins for a few surprised actors, directors and stage artists from North of the Golden Gate.

With this year’s announcements though, it’s as if some sort of theatrical earthquake has hit the area, changing the geography so much that even Main Stage West, in far-from-the-Bridge Sebastopol got a number of well-deserved nominations.

The reason for the change?

It’s a mix of factors, one being simply that more North Bay theater critics have joined the circle of late, at the same time that the ranks of the circle have been declining due to attrition and other factors. So the odds once stacked impenetrably against Sonoma County theater artists are, for the time being, somewhat in our favor. There are, in fact, too many local names to mention all of them here, though I will point out a few highlights, and let you look for yourselves, if you find yourself curious. I’ll give the link to the Critics Circle web site in just a minute.

Focusing primarily on Sonoma County, congratulations are due to Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater, snapping up 22 nominations, including a Best Director nod for Sheri Lee Miller, for last year’s spectacular "Of Mice and Men," which also got nominations for Samson Hood for best Principle actor in a play, who played Lennie in the production also nominated for best show and best ensemble. Cinnabar was also awarded several nominations for its production of "The Marriage of Figaro," and for "Fiddler on the Roof," the latter snapping up a nomination for best principle actress for Elly Lichenstein and Best principle actor for Stephen Walsh.

Nineteen nominations were awarded to Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse including several for choreography in a musical - congrats to Stacie Ariaga and Joseph Favalora for their work on "Grease" and "Victor/Victoria," both for Stacie, and "Thoroughly Modern Milly," that one for Joe.

6th Street also several got nominations for acting, including a much-deserved nomination for Abbey Lee, stealing every scene and dazzling audience with her hilarious strip-tease seduction in "Victor Victoria," and Larry Williams, doing the same thing, sort of, with exhausting-to-watch energy in the comedy "Boing Boing." Other acting nominations include one for Trevor Hoffman who played Kinicki in 6th Street’s production of "Grease."

Other companies honored are Spreckels Performing Arts Center, with a whopping 25 nominations, including acting nods for members of "The Book Of Matthew Liebowits," "Annie Get Your Gun," "Oliver!," and "Bell, Book and Candle," and "Scrooge the Musical". Then there’s Main Stage West, with fourteen nominations, including one for Mary Gannon Graham for her work in "Mother Jones in Heaven," directing nods for Sheri Lee Miller for "T.I.C. Trenchcoat in Common" and Beth Craven for "Yankee Tavern," and acting nominations for Sheri Lee Miller (a good year for her) for her work in "Other Desert Cities," which also got nominations for Sharia Pierce.

Whew! These names are just the tip of the iceberg.

To read them for yourself, and get info on how you can attend and cheer on our local heroes, go to the website at SFBATCC.ORG, those being, of course, the initials of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle. Check it out.

I saw an amazing performance last weekend, but I have no clue how to properly describe what I saw. I could start by talking about Wallace Shawn, the playwright of "The Fever," which was first performed in 1990 or so, was turned into a provocative film in 2004, and is now being performed by actor and author Elliot Fintushel, most commonly in other people’s living rooms.

Occasionally their backyards.

And for one more weekend . . . in an actual theater, Main Stage West in Sebastopol to be specific.

But I was talking about Wallace Shawn.

He’s best known as the voice of Rex the lovable plastic dinosaur from the Toy Story movies, or as the villainous Vizzini in "The Princess Bride," yeah the guy who says, "Inconceivable." You might even know him as the other guy at the dinner table in ‘My Dinner With André,’ the one who wasn’t André.

Anyway, Shawn is also a playwright, and while his films are often light and airy and fluffy and mostly positive, his plays - including things like "The Designated Mourner" and "Aunt Dan" and "Lemon" - are not. An avowed socialist, Wallace writes plays about the world at large, about politics and oppression and the plight of the poor and dangers of fascism and hypocrisy of the ruling class.

But of course, he’s also a millionaire. The website celebritynetworth.com estimates Shawn’s fortune at about eight million. So as a socialist, Shawn feels sort of conflicted about that.

Which is why he wrote "The Fever," a stunningly effective, frequently lyrical, inescapably uncomfortable, and occasionally very, very funny ninety-minute monologue, which Shawn originally performed for his rich Hollywood friends in their own living rooms, which made them uncomfortable, which was exactly Wallace Shawn’s intention.

How do we in the west deal with our position of privilege, how do we who enjoy relative wealth and luxury compared with all of those third world countries where people have literally nothing actually make ourselves okay with that?

Told as if it’s just some guy at a dinner party telling a story about a recent trip abroad, the wildly stream-of-consciousness monologue traces the storytellers gradual existential crisis, made vivid while suffering a strange fever that keeps him on the bathroom floor of a hotel in a small country currently engaged in violent revolution.

It’s an astonishing piece of writing, and in Elliot Fintushel’s hands, a wholly remarkable act of high-risk performance art. At Main Stage West, you can sit on stage with Fintushel if you like, perched on a comfy couch, though you may also sit out in the darkened theater if that’s too intense for you. Either way, what you will witness is the theatrical equivalent of Philippe Petit's famous tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in New York. Barely moving from his own chair at center stage, Fintushel takes his audience on a journey through what it means to be human being in a world where only a few share the wealth while the majority go without. It's powerful,

challenging, important, sad, funny, beautiful, and (though definitely not exactly light-hearted theater) DEFINITELY an experience you are not likely to regret, or easily shake off . . . on your way home.

"The Fever" runs this Thursday through Sunday at mainstage west, mainstagewest.com

One need not have ever seen Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun to appreciate the setup - or laugh at the jokes - in Bruce Norris’s brilliant 2012 Pulitzer-and-Tony-winning comedy-drama "Clybourne Park."

Taking place immediately following the events of the original, Clybourne - running through January 25 at 6th Street Playhouse - is a smart, insightful, baldy frank and frequently hilarious examination of the racial divide in America.

Hansberry’s play - which gave many theater-going white folks their first glimpses into the lives of Africa-American families - takes place in a poor, Southside neighborhood of Chicago in 1959, where the African-American Younger family is preparing to move to a house they’ve just purchased in the all-white neighborhood of Clybourne Park. At the end of that play, Karl - a nervous, white representative of Clybourne Park - visits the Youngers, attempting to bully, cajole or outright bribe them into selling the house back - something they ultimately refuse to do.

In "Clybourne Park," directed with expert comic timing, gripping intensity and escalating drama by Carl Jordan, the action now takes place in the Clybourne Park house the Youngers have purchased.

The place is half-empty, its contents mostly packed into cardboard boxes standing here and there on the nicely detailed set by Ronald Krempetz, as its white residents Bev and Russ prepare to move out of the area. When Karl, the white guy from Raisin in the Sun, appears - having just come from failing to bribe the Youngers - Russ stubbornly digs in his heels at the suggestion he should assist the neighborhood in keeping the black family out.

It turns out Russ has some grudges against his neighbors, in part for the way they treated his son after the Korean War.

The escalating conflict, which pulls in the young minister Jim and Karl’s deaf, very-pregnant wife Betsy, takes place in the presence of Russ and Bev’s longsuffering black housecleaner Lena and her husband Albert, who gradually insert their own opinions about the callous racism they are witnessing.

Decisions are made. Words are exchanged. Lives are changed. Then, in the play’s boldest move, the story suddenly leaps fifty years ahead.

In Act 2, the Younger’s home is now a condemned wreck covered in graffiti, the property about to be demolished following years of drug-enhanced neglect in the once depressed, all-black but now mixed-race and rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The same, supremely strong flexible cast appears again, this time as contemporary characters, gathering at the house to discuss the details of what kind of structure can be built on the same spot. IT being a historically valuable neighborhood, there are rules how big, and how tacky, the new owners are allowed to make any new building. The witty dialogue is riveting, raw, and real, as the marvelous cast shows us the prejudices still lurking below the surface, demonstrating with humor and candid transparency that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

"Clybourne Park" runs Thursday–Sunday through Jan. 25 at 6th Street Playhouse. 6thstreetplayhouse.com

It’s a new year, and as the North Bay theater community prepares to launch its first shows of 2015, Cinnabar Theater, in Petaluma, has already unveiled its newest show, and I mean new. "Edith Piaf: Under Paris Skies" is an original commission, assembled from scratch for Cinnabar Theater, and though its creators are better known as performers than authors, I predict their clever, moving, raunchy, mysterious, funny, sad and seductive little musical theater piece will

definitely have a life beyond Cinnabar, or should, if there is any justice in the world.

Written by Michael Van Why and Valentina Osinski, with additional work by translator Lauren Lundgren, "Edith Piaf: Under Paris Skies" is primarily a musical revue, blending many of the legendary French cabaret singer’s best-known songs with a number of obscure treasures from the far reaches of her repertoire. The songs are sensitively and cleverly blended with biographical vignette’s, adapted mainly from the memoir’s of Piaf’s sister Simone, played with world-weary panache by Melissa Weaver, who also directs the shopw with endlessly entertaining creativity. Simone appears as a kind of narrator/spirit guide through the show, commenting on but also interacting with Piaf. In the show’s most interesting artistic choice,

Piaf is played by four different performers - two female, two male - each embodying a different aspect of Piaf’s character.

Osinski, for example, is Reckeless Piaf, while Van Why plays Jaded Piaf. Joining them are Julia Hathaway as Romantic Piaf, and Kevin Singer as Traditional Piaf.

Piaf’s life was a rough one, and the script does not shy away from that, with language and sexual references that are suitably appropriate to the kind of hard-drinking, hard-hitting life she rose from, and eventually fell back to. That the creators of the show chose not to turn Piaf into a singer-makes-good saint is one of the strengths of the show. Through the four aspects of Piaf’s personality, demonstrated through songs that chart her growth as a writer and as a defiant, love-struck, frail but also fearless human being, we get a better sense of who this woman was and what she achieved than any traditional biographical piece would do.

The music, performed by a tight stage band under the direction of Robert Lunceford and Al Haas, is sensational, all of it arranged by the directors, who had almost no printed sheet music to work with.

The first act is perhaps a bit too long, with a few too many songs crammed in, but the second act, which includes the stories of Piaf’s doomed love affair with a prizefighter and her stint in an asylum. Flies along on a wave of dramatic power, aided by some of the show’s strongest musical pieces, including Piaf’s signature song La Vie en Rose. That song, a sweet and melancholy description of love in all its openhearted vulnerability, has lasted for decades, pretty much defining Piaf’s commitment to the kind of love she dreamed of but never found. Here’s hoping that audiences will find "Edith Piaf: Under Paris Skies," and that it will have a life as rich and memorable as the woman who inspired it.

"Edith Piaf: Under Paris Skies" runs through January 18 at Cinnabar Theater. Cinnabartheater.org

You all know the story.

Cinderella can’t get a break. She dreams of love, of a life where she will be treated the way she deserves, maybe a big house where she isn't forced to be the servant for her selfish, unloving family.

Then some magic happens - a fairy godmother, a pumpkin, glass slippers, a prince. And it’s a one-way-ticket to Happily Ever After.

Well . . . times have changed, and in the capably revisionist hands of The Imaginists Theater Collective, Cinderella has been transformed into a dark, moody fable where the magic is in the inventive staging, where the inherent downbeat tone of the tale is almost a character unto itself.

In "Crumbs: A Cinderella Story," here’s our heroine as an exhausted, terrified, beaten-down member of the 99%, working her fingers to the bone to provide luxuries for her spoiled step-sisters, who love to get things they clearly don’t need, or even much want.

Cinderella and her animal friends, required to work day and night sewing and baking, must live off the crumbs left over from her sisters daily servings of birthday cake.

Having earlier this year turned Euripides "The Trojan Women" into a heartrending meditation on the endless cycle of war in the world, The Imaginists now unleash a modern fable for the post-Occupy age.

"Crumbs" was developed by the actors through a process of improvisation and experiment over a two-and-a-half month period, and result, though not tightly written or always consistent in its tone, is quite a wonder to behold, inventively and passionately performed, with the twelve-actor ensemble taking turns playing musical accompaniment for the occasional songs - yes, it’s a musical, sort of.

"Crumbs" blends elements of dark-comedy, political satire, and horror story, with frequent flashes of gruesome violence, and breathtaking beauty.

It’s not exactly pleasant, but then, why should it be? This, at its core, is a story of how greed and money turn people into monsters, with even the open-minded characters so locked in their palaces of safety and privilege they can’t recognize the misery right outside their door.

Make no mistake, while "Crumbs" contains plenty of princes and slippers and magic spells, this is no Disney story, the occasional F-bombs and savage cruelty just the tip of the iceberg.

Packed with striking imagery - a tree made of rags, a mountain of cast-off clothes, a butchered goat made of shredded red ribbons - this is definitely more nightmare than fairytale.

But as a powerful, poetic, deeply angry critique of greed and consumerism, it’s quite effective, and thoroughly haunting, a story in which happy endings - if they are possible at all in a world where so many are living on the crumbs tossed away by so few - those happy ending definitely don’t come without a cost.

"Crumbs: A Cinderella Story," runs Thursday through Sunday through December 21. Find out more at the imaginists.org.

"Prepare yourself for face-melting adorableness!”

That was the note I got from lighting designer Robin Deluca, upon learning I was on my way to see Raven Players new production of Barbara Robinson’s "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." A warm slice of big-hearted, made-for-the-holidays confection, the play was adapted from Robinson’s 1971 novel of the same name - and as it turns out, Robin was right. “Face-melting adorableness” pretty much sums up this show.

The show is presented through the holidays at the Raven’s Windsor Theater, just off the Town Green. The venue is a former church, which lends a bit of additional authenticity to the story of a church nativity pageant gone terribly wrong, but strangely right, too.

Directed by Steven David Martin, this is the definition of community theater - a play for the community, filled with members of the community, in a story about the power of community.

That story, though a bit dated in its simplicity and innocence, still carries a lot of charm, and the cast of local performers, most of them spirited kids, know how to nail the laughs in the script.

And there are a lot of them. This may be an amateur production, but I can’t remember laughing this much during any other show all year.

As the local church prepares for its annual nativity pageant, the kids of the town know it will be the same as it always is, the same boys and girls cast as the same characters in a story they know so well they are all bored to tears by it. When the director breaks her leg and Grace, one of the town’s parents, takes over, she makes one change that threatens to destroy the pageant: she allows the Herdman kids to participate.

The Herdmans, all six of them, are the town terrors. Delinquents who’ve long terrorized the other children, they smoke, drink, shoplift - and have never set foot in a church - where they intrinsically understand they would not be terribly welcome. When they learn that there are free snacks served at pageant rehearsals, the Herdmans show up - and are instantly bedazzled, and a bit shocked, to hear the Nativity story for their first time.

When director Grace reluctantly allows them to audition, the other kids are too frightened to compete, and the major roles - Mary, Joseph, the three wise men, and the angel of Lord - all go the Herdman kids, ultimately pitting Grace against the rest of the church, who want the Herdmans out.

The rehearsals - in which young Imogene, Claude, Ralph, Leroy, Ollie, and Gladys try to wrap their head around what’s happening - are hilarious, the kids getting odd ideas about the wide men’s gifts, mistaking the words "swaddling clothes” for “wadded up clothes,” and taking serious offense at the idea of a baby being bound up in cloth and crammed in a food trough.

“Where are the protective services people in Bethlehem?” They want to know. “Those people are at our house every five minutes!”

The resulting pageant is both hilarious and heartbreaking, as the true meaning of the Nativity tale - that of a child whose worth is noticed by few - is understood better by the Herdmans than the members of the congregation.

It’s an irony that stings hard, and touches deeply, in between laughs, that is. With charm to spare, despite some rough edges and a few unpolished performances, there is much to love in this "Christmas Pageant." Prepare to have your faces melted.

"The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" runs through December 21 at Raven Theater Windsor. Ravenplayers.org.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Palm Springs, California, where the wealthy Wyeth family has gathered to celebrate, and will end up with one more Christmas present than they expected.

Welcome to Jon Robin Baitz’s brilliantly crafted "Other Desert Cities," a Tony winner in 2012, and a short-lister for the Pulitzer that same year. In the buzz-worthy comedy-drama, the elder Wyeths, Polly and Lyman - aging GOP leaders and one-time Hollywood royalty - find themselves pitted against their liberal adult kids, the mellow television producer Trip and the psychologically frail Brooke, a freshly unblocked novelist. Also home for the holidays is Silda, Polly’s loose-cannon screenwriter sister, recently sober after her latest stint in rehab. On Christmas Eve, in between tennis games and dinner at the country club, Brooke suddenly unveils her brand new memoir, a scathing exposé, examining a divisive and deeply painful event in the family’s past.

Merry Christmas everyone! Ho! Ho! Ho!

It is not unusual for a play as popular as "Other Desert Cities" to be staged by two or more theater companies in the same area - but it’s far less common for them to take place simultaneously. As it currently the case at Pegasus Theater in Rio Nido and Sebastopol’s Main Stage West. Well, it’s Christmas, right? The more the merrier, I say.

And anyway, a play this good deserves as many stagings as possible, and the twofer gives theater fans a rare chance to see close up how different choices on stage can affect the same material.

The Main Stage West production does have a bit of an edge including includes some of the best - and best-known - actors in Sonoma County, giving some of the finest work you’ll see on stage this year. Directed with grit and grace by Beth Craven, with flawless attention paid to pacing and the power of the pregnant pause, the Main Stage West production is like a master class in acting and directing. As Polly and Lyman, Sheri Lee Miller and John Craven are stunningly good, playing all the notes of their characters like a pianist playing Tchaikovsky, surrounded by first-rate performances from Laura Jorgenson as Silda, and the sensational Sam Coughlin and Sharia Pierce as Trip and Brooke.

Though there may be less “star power” in the Pegasus production, director Jacquelyn Wells keeps the action of the story and the emotions of her cast luxuriously rich and real as the story moves through a series of twists and head-turning confessions. As Polly, Sheila Lichirie is an electric fence, beaming softly until sparked into fury. As Brooke and Trip, Saskia Baur and Lito Briano are likably raw and honest, backed up by deeply felt work from Terry Kolkey and Jana Molina.

Despite a few ragged edges here and there, this is the best show I’ve ever seen at Pegasus. Looking for a good show? Here’s one you can catch twice.

"Other Desert Cities" runs Thursday–Sunday through December 20 at Main Stage West. Mainstagewest.com AND Friday–Sunday through Dec. 21 at Pegasus Theater. Pegasustheater.com