In 1965, not long after the assassination of Malcolm X, a major championship prizefight is about to take place at a shabby arena in Lewiston, Maine. It is the infamous rematch between former heavyweight champ Sonny Liston and current champ Cassius Clay, who’s just recently announced he’s changing his name to Muhammad Ali. The fight is being held in such an out of way location because of Ali’s connection to the Black Muslim movement, and with Malcolm X’s death rumored to have been at the hands of the Black Muslim’s, every other sports venue turned the fight down for fear of being caught in a shootout.

As if things aren’t tense enough in the locker room, Ali has just reached out for some advice from an unexpected source, summoning to the locker room the disgraced African-American actor Lincoln Perry, best known as the controversial Hollywood movie character Stepin Fetchit, aka “The Laziest Man in the World.”

The real-life friendship between Ali and Perry is the subject of hip-hop playwright Will Power’s electrifying and entertaining play "Fetch Clay, Make Man," now playing at Marin Theater Company in Mill Valley.

Like Ali in the ring, Power’s energetic script throws punches in every direction, ducking a few story-problems here and there by tossing off fast-paced banter and lyrically outrageous dialogue, including a fair number of Ali’s famous hyperbolic rhyming antagonisms.

As Ali, stage actor Eddie Ray Jackson effectively conveys the youthful physicality and playfully preening attitude, while television actor Roscoe Orman plays Fetchit/Perry with a compelling combination of watchful self-protection and wily grace. Orman, best known for forty years of playing Gordon on ‘Sesame Street,’ has made a side-career of playing Lincoln Perry, having toured the globe with the eye-opening one-man-show "The Confessions of Stepin Fetchit."

The main attraction in the Mill Valley production of "Fetch Clay, Make Man" is the expert chemistry between Orman and Jackson. As scripted by Power, we never know what’s going to happen next, and as these two iconic characters trade verbal punches - and find a powerfully moving common ground - the electricity extends to the rest of the play’s vibrant cast of characters, including Ali’s canny wife Sonji, his Nation of Islam handler Brother Rashid, and - in a series of telling flashbacks to the Golden Age of Hollywood - the cagey studio executive William Fox.

The script, while always compelling, is not perfect, making a number of breathtaking leaps that are a less than believable, as when Sonji transforms from a demure, veiled possession into a sexy woman of the sixties, in little more than a few minutes. But this is theater, and Power has a lot of ground to explore in a short period, so if the script tries a few too many tricks of time to squeeze it all in, at least the playwright has given us plenty of verbal razzle dazzle and truly fascinating conflicts to distract us.

In "Fetch Clay, Make Man," directed with style and humor by Derrick Sanders, there is as much going on below the surface as above it, and as a depiction of a tumultuous time in American history, this philosophical meeting-of-two-historic-minds is, faults aside, a stirring, emotionally satisfying knockout.

"Fetch Clay, Make Man" runs through September 7 at Marin Theatre Company, marintheatre.org.

Director David Lear always knew we would somehow make his latest dream happen, and as of last weekend, his mission was officially accomplished, as Shakespeare’s "Romeo & Juliet" opened a month-long theatrical run at a brand new open air performance space in downtown Santa Rosa. Under the umbrella of Lear’s new Vacant Lot productions - staged with a crowd-pleasing blend of urban-grunge and Ren-Faire bawdiness - "Romeo and Juliet" kicks off the inaugural season of Shakespeare in the Cannery. The shows are taking place inside a brand new performance area Lear and a small army of volunteers have constructed, tucked just inside the ruined remains of the old cannery building at the edge of Railroad Square. The historic site, which in recent years has devolved into a debris-choked homeless encampment, has now been transformed into an one-of-a-kind open-air park, with a multi-level wooden stage erected at the center of the lot, the brick walls of the old cannery bracketing the truly atmospheric performance space. On opening night, armed with lawn chairs and blankets, about fifty theatergoers gathered to witness Lear’s Kot Takahashi, as Romeo, fall hard for Juliet, played by Carmen Mitchel. Staged with an eye to fill the sprawling outdoor space with sound and action, Lear’s version puts a lot of emphasis on the spectacle, oversized emotions, and not-so-vaguely-inappropriate sexuality in Shakespeare’s tale. In telling the story of two doomed teenagers from feuding families, Shakespeare used soaring poetry and some over-the-top plotting that Lear takes full advantage of. With a kind of street-smart commedia performance style, the cast is costumed in a blend of modern dress and old world finery, tennis shoes paired with doublets, bring something new to a very old tale, much the way Lear and his unstoppable dream have taken a vacant lot most others saw as lost, and somehow transformed it into a field of dreams few others thought possible. Building something new out of nothing is, of course, a big part of what makes theater exciting, and just a few dozen yards from the cannery ruins, in the studio at 6th Street Playhouse, 18-year-old actor-playwright-director Dezi Gallegos has just launched his newest project. "Hamlet’s Orphans," created by Gallegos with a team of kids aged 9 to 14, is a truly ambitious, idea-packed drama launched from the true-life stories and struggles of the members of the fearless, supremely talented young cast. Unlike any other youth theater production I've ever seen, "Hamlet’s Orphans," is over-reaching, overwrought, and sometimes a little too bursting at the seams with ideas - but at the same time, it is deeply moving, riveting, frequently jaw-dropping in its skill at putting so many competing ideas into one story. The result is a tense, philosophically tricky examination of the meaning of goodness and evil, played out as a group of students rehearse a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. On a spare set decorated with dozens of scrawled “rules” of good behavior, Gallegos and his troupe of young artists work out a bold, daring, unruly tale of love, obsession, and longing to make the world a better place. As exciting as a theater built from scratch out of a vacant lot, "Hamlet’s Orphans" rides on a wave of enthusiasm and commitment to making something that, rough around the edges or not, no one has quite ever seen before. "Romeo and Juliet" runs Friday & Saturday through Aug. 23 at The Cannery - shakespeareinthecannery.com. "Hamlet’s Orphans" runs Thursday-Sunday through July 27 at 6th Street Playhouse - 6thstreet playhouse.org

It’s an all-time classic of an opening moment, the sun setting over the hills, a rolling vineyard visible just over and beyond the stage. By the time the show ends, the moon will have fully risen over the stage, casting a glow that is both otherworldly and beautiful earthbound.

These are not above average special effects were talking about.

When Transcendence Theater Company takes the stage, they use the actual sun and moon as members of the cast. Yes, the primary draw of Transcendence Theater’s annual "Broadway Under the Stars" shows, running all summer long in Glen Ellen, are the dozens of Broadway performers on loan from New York and Hollywood - but it’s not surprise that the best-dressed co-star of the series is the setting itself - Jack London State Park.

A program titled "One Singular Sensation" was the highly entertaining musical revue that kicked off the summer’s line-up of spectacular song-and-dance extravaganzas, and if that first one was any indication of things to come, then after three years in Sonoma County, Transcendence Theater Company has definitely hit its stride.

It’s really rather amazing, what these performers can pull off using only a bare stage, a few props, stools, chairs, a bowler hat or two, and no fancy stage effects beyond the aforementioned slow-fade from dusk to dark. That said, incorporating real horses into a performance of "Fugue for Tinhorns," from Guys and Dolls, comes pretty close to being a special effect.

Horses make any trip to country better, with or without show tunes.

It has been three years since Transcendence set-up shop in the old winery ruins at Jack London. Just when a person might begin to think that magic can’t keep being pulled out of the same hat, Artistic Director Amy Miller is demonstrating, here at the opening of the new season, that she still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve.

Of course, repeat audiences are beginning to notice certain “traditions” beginning to evolve, from Miller’s opening recitation of Jack London’s famous “meteor” coda, to the inclusion of one or two non-Broadway songs presented in surprising ways - and at least one clever, comedic cameo by co-executive director Brad Surosky.

Though he is a major behind-the-scenes force for the company, Surosky’s brief but memorable appearances on stage are becoming to Transcendence what John Ratzenberger’s voice is to a Pixar film.

There is a sense of consistency, also, to the way the ever-changing cast of performers always includes a few staunch regulars - Stephan Stubbins, the other co-executive director, singer-songwriter Carrie Manolakis, the superb Lexy Fridell, and the ever-surprising Leah Sprecher.

The specific shows change titles and tunes throughout the season. Next up, after the annual "Fantastical Family" show, TTC launches a two-weekend program called "Music of the Night," and a one-night open-air concert featuring the legendary Ben Vereen, plus a whole bunch of smaller shows, concerts and mash-ups spread around at various theaters and wineries. Though the names and faces and songs might change, one thing remains consistent: Broadway Under the Stars is amongst North Bay’s best, most delightfully exuberant on-stage theatrical experiences - with or without an actual sunset.

"Broadway Under the Stars" runs throughout the summer at Jack London State Park. For information check out BroadwayJackLondon.org

The best dark comedies start small - especially comedies about family. Beginning simply, they first establish the broken dynamic between just two or three characters, before gradually layering in the rest of the bickering, disjointed extended family.

Then, in most cases, an outsider slips in, someone new to the tribe, and suddenly ... everything gets worse.

Yes, occasionally, the opposite happens, the stranger actually makes things better, reminding everyone how much they really love each other, bringing them all miraculously together again.

But where’s the fun in that?

In the play "Becky Shaw," directed with wicked glee by Barry Martin and playing one more weekend at 6th Street Playhouse before moving to the Napa Valley Playhouse for two more, playwright Gina Gionfriddo takes both of those approaches, the destructive stranger and the savior stranger, and mashes them all together into one disturbingly riveting, weirdly funny story unlike any other play I’ve seen, all while adding some of the most scathingly hilarious dialogue in recent memory.

Suzanna is an aimless college student wrestling with existential angst.

Her late businessman father apparently squandered the family fortune, her mother Susan has taken up with a much younger man, and she’s just had a one-night stand with her adopted brother Max.

Things are, to say the least, complicated.

Urged by Max to take some time to find herself, she impulsively meets and marries the amiable Andrew, a good guy with a need to save people and fix them, clearly attracted by the fixer-upper that is Suzanna’s life.

Andrew works with a fragile but somewhat interesting woman named Becky Shaw, whom he thinks might be a good match for Max, and when she arrives for the blind date, awkwardly overdressed in a fluffy pink dress Max derides as looking like a birthday cake, it is clear that things are about to go seriously south.

For one thing, Max is feeling territorial about sharing his sister-lover with Andrew.

For another thing, something is clearly very wrong with Becky Shaw. Whether she is emotionally unhinged or merely pretending in order to wheedle her way into this not-so-stable family is the question the play slowly, gradually explores.

There are two ways to play a character like Becky.

Some would make her as normal as possible, at first, and then gradually drop little hints as to exactly how weird - and potentially dangerous - she might be. Others will let you know from the first entrance that we are looking at a mad woman. That’s the approach actress Taylor Bartolucci takes, and she runs with it, giving Becky a wildly entertaining series of ticks and jitters that will delight some while possible making others wish she’d taken the more subtle, gradually unfurling approach.

That is just one of many juicy topics audiences will want to debate after catching "Becky Shaw," a play packed with ideas, written with a brilliantly spot-on understanding of how families work, and sometimes stop working. The actors have a great time with this material, especially Bartolluci and moillie boice, who as Susan, the matriarch, gives another in her series of magnificently ballbusting performances.

Whatever you end up deciding about Becky Shaw the person, it will be difficult to deny that "Becky Shaw" the play - among the best new dark comedies to come along in recent years - is deeply challenging, charmingly infuriating, and painfully hilarious.

"Becky Shaw" runs Thursday–Sunday through July 13 at 6th Street Playhouse, 6thstreetplayhouse,com, then runs July 18 through 27 at Napa Valley Playhouse, napavalleyplayhouse.org.

An all-female version of one of Shakespeare’s most notoriously misogynistic comedies? Sounds complicated. Sign me up!

Shakespeare’s "Two Gentlemen of Verona" is one of three new shows to arrive on stage at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this summer, joining seven others already playing on three stages in the tiny, impossibly pretty town of Ashland. Stay tuned for reviews of OSF’s lavish unleashing of Sondheim’s "Into the Woods," a new stage adaptation of the beloved science fiction novel "A Wrinkle in Time," and a dastardly good staging of the enjoyably upsetting history "Richard III."

Today, let’s talk about men behaving badly.

"Two Gentlemen of Verona" is one of Shakespeare’s early plays. People rarely do it, and some experts will say that’s because, for a comedy, ‘Two Gentlemen’ is never very funny - but then, neither is "Measure for Measure" and people do that one all the time. They do both have one thing in common - women are not dealt with very well in either, the female characters subjected to rather unspeakable treatment from the men, with an expectation that, knowing their place, these women will just, you know, stay in their place. To get even a tiny bit of respect, women in Shakespeare plays seem to have to dress up like men.

Then they become instant favorites.

The story of ‘Two Gentlemen’ follows a pair of friends, Valentine and Proteus, who each fall in love with different women, until Proteus meets Valentine’s intended, throws over his own fiancé (she’s the one who starts cross-dressing), and starts a plot to push his buddy out of the way so there is no competition. Women dress like boys. Men act like boys. There is a band of banished gentlemen outlaws living in the forest, some very cruel behavior toward the ladies, and even an attempted rape (Ha! Ha! Shakespeare!), all ending, as Shakespeare comedies often do, with everyone repenting, forgiving each other, pairing up and getting married - which to a modern audience, makes the show more of a tragedy, for the women, anyway.

To make all of this a little less . . . bad . . . director Sarah Rasmussen has done something incredibly bold. She’s assembled a cast of women to play all the parts, including those of the men. By introducing some actual feminine energy into this masculine pissing match of a play, perhaps - the theory must have been - the men won’t seem quite so piggish and the women not quite so willing to settle for pigs.

The result, unfortunately, is a surprisingly bland play.

It turns out that "Two Gentlemen of Verona's" unpleasantness was the most interesting thing about it, and the gender bending - except in a few cases - is just sort of confusing.

Add to that the director’s decision to cast the excellent K.T. Voght - one of the OSF ensemble’s best character actresses - in two parts. She’s excellent in both, but because one character appears in a very important second-act comedy scene right before the other character appears in an important dramatic scene - with a lengthy costume change between - that first scene is plopped down right in the middle of . . . the intermission! Stop your wine drinking, people! You folks in the restroom line? Drop everything and rush back in here! Because here’s a really funny scene! Okay, all done, go back to your lines - but be back soon ‘cause Act Two starts in five minutes.

I don’t know. Maybe it looked feasible on paper. Here it’s just jarring and weird. And not in a good way.

The final truth is that OSF’s "Two Gentlemen of Verona," for all the inventiveness and chance-taking the cast and director were willing to throw at it, still turns out to be an interesting but disappointing failure.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival runs Tuesday–Sunday through October. Times and prices vary. For information about the full line-up of eleven shows, visit www.osfashland.org

"Grease," the musical - written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey - is a modern miracle of the stage - a show that retains its popularity after over 30 years, despite the fact that, aside from a few good tunes here and there, "Grease" is a fairly terrible play.

It’s true. Which is to say, that’s my opinion.

Or visa versa.

Anyway, how about a little ‘Grease’ history.

When "Grease" first appeared in 1971, it was a different play than the one we see on stage today. It was ... interesting. It was raunchy, edgy, scandalous - a dangerously subversive attempt to show that our nostalgic view of 1950s teenage innocence was all smoke and

mirrors. For one thing, that teenagers smoked.

"Grease" put a lot of cigarettes in the mouths of teenagers.

Scandalous.

That part doesn’t seem so scandalous anymore, because ... well, now we KNOW that teenagers smoke. The most scandalous thing

about the average production of Grease these days is how badly the actors handle the smoking. There’s an ash-wielding visual style that experienced smokers have, and when it’s not present, when actors pinch their fake cigarettes as if they were toothpicks that might develop teeth and bite them, it just ruins the effect, not to mention any hint of scandal.

Anyway.

Since that very first version of "Grease," the show almost instantly began losing coolness and edge, beginning with the play’s move to Broadway in 1972, where it was seriously toned down, all the way through to the hit 1978 movie, and a series of subsequent revivals. What remains, in the current version of Grease available to community theaters and schools, is less a play than a series of broadly sketched vignettes fill of cartoonish teenage stereotypes, each scene interspersed with fifty’s-style ballads and high-energy song-and-dance numbers that, depending on how well they are executed, are often the only reason to see a new presentation of

"Grease."

Which brings me to the current production at 6Th Street Playhouse.

Using one of the latest script dilutions, the sprightly, effervescent

cast - under the direction of choreographer-director Staci Arriaga -

does a very good job with the material, putting emphasis on the best

elements of the piece, unleashing a first rate bee-bop-a-doo-wop

dance show, supported by some outstandingly good singing voices. The group numbers particularly, with inventive dance moves and

attractive performers giving out everything from back-flips to the hand jive, are consistently fun, engaging, and occasionally thrilling.

Those musical numbers - easily the best I've seen in a community or college-level production - are so good, I found myself longing for the next one to begin during the play’s many “story sequences.”

"Grease," of course, is the story of tough guy Danny Zuko and his on-again-off-again courtship of good girl Sandy, as they make it through a year of high school in a Chicago suburb.

The characters, though amusing, are now so over-the-top they make the kids from Scooby Doo look like something from an Arthur Miller play. Fortunately, at 6th Street, Street, the Actors know how to sing, and popular local actor Anthony Guzman, as Tony, reveals an

amazing falsetto I didn’t know he had in his vocal toolbox.

Supporting players include an outrageously good April Krautner as sex-kitten Marty, an acrobatic Trevor Hoffman as the car-loving,

gang-fighting delinquent Kenickie, and Sidney McNulty as the endearing drop-out Frenchy.

And with strong musical direction by Nathan Riebli and a sensational band, the show soars every time it sings, which thankfully, is often.

"Grease" runs Thursday–Sunday, through July 6 at 6th Street Playhouse. 6thstreetplayhouse.com

One of Shakespeare’s most entertaining histories, an all female version of his most notoriously misogynistic comedies, a massive staging of a magical Sondheim musical, and the world premiere of a new stage adaptation of a beloved space hopping children’s novel. These are the newest four shows to open at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, as the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theater - note the new name - open up in the idyllic mountain town of Ashland. With five other plays already up and running, and a few more still to come, the season seems to carry an emphasis on family drama, from the power of love that holds some families together, and the corrupting power of jealousy and revenge that tears some families apart.

Richard III

One of Shakespeare’s most indelible and bloodthirsty villains, king Richard III of England has been defended by historians who claim the real fifteenth century monarch wasn’t half as bad as Shakespeare painted him to be - and probably not quite as physically deformed. If so, that’s disappointing, because, as described in the bard’s poplar history play, Richard is one exhilarating hunchback, and in OSF’s new production, Dan Donohue makes him as funny, frightening and outrageously watchable as he is truly, deplorably, unredeemably evil.

- 4-1/2 stars

A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L’Engle’s much-adored, 50-year-old novel A Wrinkle in Time has been adapted for a deeply flawed television miniseries in 2003. Even with the infinite resources of Walt Disney pictures, the project fell fall short of capturing the magic and beauty of the book. So what chance has a stage version got? Limited by earth-bound effects and the limitations of stagecraft, how can a cast of eight, and a handful of props

- 3 1/2 stars.

Into the Woods

Compared to The Tempest, Shakespeare’s much earlier A Comedy of Errors, directed by Kent Gash, is crackling with cleverness and sheer spirited fun. With the action set during the Harlem Renaissance, Gash fills the story of two long-separated sets of identical twins into an eye-popping, music-filled romp that is clever, funny, sexy and satisfying.

In Shakespeare’s play (believed by many to be his first attempt at comedy), the towns of Ephesus and Syracuse are at war, declaring death on anyone from the opposed town. In Gash’s staging, it’s New Orleans, Louisiana against Harlem, New York, where the action is set. In OSF’s small Thomas Theater (If there is a better spot for intimate, innovative interpretations of Shakespeare on the West Coast, I don’t know where it is), the story plays out on a slab of faux concrete emblazoned with the names of Harlem landmarks of the 1920’s, with a tall clock tower over looking everything from one corner.

Wandering into town are the wealthy Antipholus (Tobie Windham) and his servant Dromio (Rodnety Gardiner), both of New Orleans. They have been wandering for years, searching for their lost twin brothers, who for some reason bear the exact same names. Separated in childhood by a storm at sea (Shakespeare did like his storms), they’ve arrived in Harlem. Unbeknownst to them, their grown-up twins also live in Harlem, where Antipholus (also Tobie Windham) is a

respected businessman and Dromio is his wise-cracking, much-put-upon assistant.

Nothing that happens afterwards quite makes sense, but the fun of this staging is how entertainingly Gash and his energetic cast keep all of the various plates spinning.

- 5 stars

Two Gentlemen of Verona

From Shakespeare’s first comedy to the Marx Brothers’ first full-scale musical. One thing about OSF, they do keep their seasons varied. The Cocoanuts, energetically directed by David Ivers, reassembles the original details of the Marx Brothers’ show, which made the brothers famous in 1925, and was later turned into the film of the same name.

Well, last Sunday night, the Tony Awards took place, and for many of us, the annual celebration of Broadway musicals and plays is about as close as we will get to actually seeing a show on Broadway - until we download an original cast album or catch a local staging of one of those award-winners, of course.

As is so happens, there are some spectacular Broadway-themed

musical exhibitions on the horizon here in Wine Country, so today I

thought I’d point out a few of them, so we musical fans can make a

few plans to get a taste or two of that tantalizing Broadway Razzle

Dazzle.

On Friday, June 27, Transcendence Theater Company returns to the old winery ruins in Jack London State Park for another season of shows featuring Broadway singers and dancers performing under

the stars. The season opens with a two-weekend run of a revue

called ‘One Singular Sensation,’ focusing on the rousing production

numbers that make Broadway Broadway. The rest of the summer will

bring another “Fantastical” family friendly show, a program called The Music of the Night (I bet there’s going to be something from Phantom of the Opera in that one), and in between, the Transcendence folks

will be bringing some true star-power out to shine under our Sonoma

County skies, with a performance by the one-and-only Ben Vereen.

The full schedule can be glimpsed at BroadwayJackLondon.com

Meanwhile, a few hit Broadway shows will get the Summer Repertory treatment as the Santa Rosa Junior College launches its new season with ‘A Chorus Line,’ ‘La Cage Aux Folles,’ and ‘Nine to Five: The Musical.’ Summerrep.com has the full schedule. Other Broadway favorites will be hitting the local boards, too, including ‘Les Miserables,’ opening June 27 at Raven Theater in Healdburg, and this weekend, 6th exuberant staging of the Broadway hit ‘Grease.”

And finally, Kelly Brandeburg, local singer-actress - and future Broadway Star, I predict - will be kicking off a celebration of the

Glaser Center’s ten year anniversary with a tasty dinner-and-a-show

event on Saturday, June 28. Kelly - that’s her singing a few of her

favorite Broadway songs - will be presenting a program of other

ballads, love-songs and timeless favorites, after dinner whipped up

by worth our weight. Options for the full dinner and show, or just the show only, are available.

Whether you like your Broadway tunes served up indoors, outdoors, or both, this summer will be rich with opportunity to be dazzled by great performances of some of the most spirit-lifting music every written for stage, screen, or outdoor ruin. Until your next trip of Street Playhouse takes us back to the 50s with an New York, we’ve got plenty right here to keep a Broadway song in our hearts, and if that’s not the name of a Broadway song, it should be.

Comedy. First used in the 14th century, the word originally meant, "A drama or epic story with a happy ending.” How comedy evolved to include jokes, pratfalls, and witty pronouncements about the madness of politicians is, in itself, an epic story, but suffice it say that today, comedy is one of society’s favorite sauces on the bland relentless pasta of everyday life - and comedy, like pasta sauce, comes in many different flavors.

Over the next few weeks, North Bay theaters are offering a buffet of comedic choices, from the crude to the classy.

Pegasus Theater - housed in a nicely compact space in a corner of the historic Rio Nido Lodge, a few miles past Santa Rosa in the lovely rivertwon of Rio Nido - is currently presenting "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)," which takes some of the greatest literature of all time and squeezes into a funny, flatulent whoopee cushion of a show, as three bold but clueless actors attempt to perform 37 plays in 97 minutes. Directed by Nick Christenson, and featuring Matthew Cadigan, Clint Campbell and Freddy Lambert, the loosely constructed show has been a sure crowd-pleaser since portions were tested out at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in the early 1980s. There is no plot, and even the plots of the plays they attempt to perform are reduced to mere set-ups for punch-lines, which is to say . . . it’s a blast. The cast’s unflagging energy and knack for off-the-cuff improv makes watching the show a bit like watching caffeinated monkeys dance blindfolded on a tightrope.

'Complete Works' runs one more weekend at Pegasus Theater, pegasustheater.com

At Cinnabar Theater, in Petaluma, there are two very different flavors of comedy on the menu, one old and one new. Not that comedian Will Durst is a spring chicken or anything, but his new one-man-show "Boomer-Raging" is definitely younger than Mozart’s "The Marriage of Figaro." Both are on stage this weekend, and both are hilarious.

Durst, best known for his sharp-witted political commentary, is now looking for laughs in the fact that the Baby Boomer Generation is aging, and not always gracefully. The show includes inspired bits about all the inventions and practices younger folks will never get to experience, which the Baby Boomers did, including the indispensible art of rewinding a cassette tape with a pencil. He describes the process of evolving from someone who once knew where all the 24-hour-restaurants were in the area to the guy who has no idea what’s open late but does know where all the public restrooms are within a twenty mile radius of his home.

"Boomer-Raging" runs just twice this weekend, on Thursday and Sunday nights.

And on Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday afternoon, director Elly Lichenstein has unleashed one of the best operatic productions in Cinnabar’s recent history, which is saying something. "The Marriage of Figaro," by Mozart, is not just packed with gorgeous music, it’s got sex, too, and lots of it, everything from erection jokes and spanking to smutty rhymes, cross-dressing and randy servants, served up in four acts that make three hours and fifteen minutes seem like binge-watching a great comedy series in a single afternoon.

The cast of singers are also first-rate comedians, and it’s all presented in English so you will get every joke.

"The Marriage of Figaro" runs through June 15 at Cinnabar Theater,

cinnabartheater.org.

Who owns the story of your life?

You do, of course, but then . . . your story does intersect with the life stories of others, doesn’t it? Your family, your children, your friends. So, if you decide to write a book or a play about your life, and you include the stories of those other people, haven’t you strayed into telling their story - or at least a piece of it?

Do you own those stories, or do they?

And … what if your view of things isn’t the same as those other people? What if, in fact, what your believe to be true about your life, isn’t? What if the ‘whole story’ you grew up believing is, actually, only a slice of a much bigger pie, much of it hidden from you all those years you grew up thinking you knew your own story, thinking you held the right opinions about it, had the right to tell it the way you saw fit?

That is a heapin’ helpin’ of questions for any one play, and at times, Jon Robin Baitz’s ‘Other Desert Cities’ strains beneath the weight of it all. The 2012 Pulitzer winner, largely because of the weight of those questions, has suddenly become the most popular new play in America, with theater companies large and small lining up for their chance to bring it to life. Later this year, not one but TWO companies in Sonoma County will be staging the play at the same time, less than 15 miles from each other, and you can be sure that

other productions are coming soon.

First out of the gate, though, in the North Bay, is the Ross Valley

players, in Marin County. Though deeply flawed and unevenly acted, the power of the play is impossible to deny, and if you don’t want to wait till November, when Main Stage West AND Pegasus Theater tackle the show, this troubled but still frequently engrossing production is worth a look, if only to see what all the fuss is about.

Brook Wyeth is a novelist - and she’s a mess. After stints in a mental

institution and a lifetime of suicidal tendencies, she’s broken a years-

long case of writers clock by producing a memoir. In it, she tells her version of the story of her family, her rich, Republican parents with deep Hollywood connections - they were personal friends of the Reagans - and her infamous older brother, who is the sixties was linked to a U.S. terrorist bombing, after which he killed himself.

Brooke blames her parents for not doing more to save him, and the

imminent publication of her memoir threatens to excavate plenty of

old wounds, old questions, and old secrets. Caught in the middle are

Brooke’s younger brother Trip, and her unstable on-the-wagon aunt

Silda.

Over the course of a very rocky Christmas Eve in Palm Springs, this deeply troubled family will take turns reading the book - and basically coming apart at the seams. There will be plenty of drinking, and lots and lots of yelling.

Too much yelling, actually.

Here’s the thing that director Phoebe Moyer lost a grip on: people who yell are instantly unsympathetic, even when they are in the right.

As an audience, it’s hard to side with Brooke, Trip and Silda because

they often obscure their own positions by arguing them so loudly, while the actors playing the parents - who in some productions would be the villains of the piece - are so even and measured you can’t help but feel a little sorry for them.

Which of course, is part of the playwright’s intention, to have us switch sides throughout the play. But the most powerful moments are when the kids just . . . talk. Quietly. Intimately. Beautifully.

That’s when Ross Valley Player’s production of Other Desert Cities

shows why everyone wants to tell this story. Because some stories,

some secrets, whoever it is who owns them, are just better when they are shared softly, face to face, in a whisper.

Other Desert Cities runs through June 15 at Ross Valley Players,

rossvalleyplayers.com.