ELVIS: THE KING AND ME | Jay Stewart, a former Ringling Bros. clown, does this original one-man show explaining “how the music of Elvis Presley helped him survive the horrors of first love.” | Harwich Junior Theatre, 105 Division St, West Harwich | 508.432.2002 x 4 | Through September 6 | Curtain 8 pm Fri-Sat | $22
FAITH HEALER | Berkshire Theatre Festival opens its 2009 season with Brian Friel’s story about the Irish faith healer who tours Great Britain with his wife and his manager, a story that’s told entirely through monologues. Colin Lane has the title role, David Adkins is Teddy, Keira Naughton is Grace; Eric Hill directs. | Berkshire Theatre Festival Unicorn Theatre, Main St, Stockbridge | 413.298.5576 | Through July 4 | Curtain 8 pm Fri-Sat | $15-$44
GOLDA’S BALCONY | Annette Miller reprises her Elliot Norton Award–winning portrayal of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in this one-woman play by the late William Gibson that’s set during a single evening during the Yom Kippur War. Daniel Gidron directs. | Shakespeare & Company, Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | Through July 3 | Curtain 8:30 pm Thurs | 3 pm Fri | $16-$34; $11-$29 students, seniors
HAMLET | Shakespeare & Company reprises its 2006 production, a family affair, with Jason Asprey as Hamlet, S&C artistic director Tina Packer as Gertrude, her son, Jason Asprey, as Hamlet, and her husband, Dennis Krausnick, as — no, not Claudius, that would be a bit much — Polonius. Nigel Gore is back as Claudius, and Eleanor Holdridge again directs this dark, muscular production, in which the jarring metallic sounds that signify Hamlet’s synaptic twitching also suggest the clanging shut of doors in the prison that is Denmark. This is a clear, compelling, if hardly transcendent reading, with a few twists that work — like Hamlet’s passing out scripts of The Mousetrap to Gertrude and Claudius and having them play it like an amateur theatrical. With Elizabeth Raetz as Ophelia. | Shakespeare & Company, Founders Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | Through August 28 | Curtain times vary | $16-$60
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING | Without Shakespeare’s romantic comedy about the bickering Beatrice and Benedick, would we have Sonny and Cher, or Sam and Diane? Whatever, theater companies love it, and this month it makes its way to the Cape. | Cotuit Center for the Arts, 4404 Falmouth Rd, Cotuit | 508.428.0669 | Through July 19 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Sat [no July 4] | 4 pm Sun | $20; $18 seniors; $10 students
NOISES OFF | Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater mounts Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce about a hapless provincial theater company trying to stage a door-slamming sex comedy called Nothing On. There’s chaos on stage and intrigue backstage, and in the second of the three acts, we get to see the goings-on as if we were backstage. John Hancock directs; some lovely who probably won’t be Nicollette Sheridan will be running about in her undies. | Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Julie Harris Stage, 2357 Rte 6, Wellfleet | 508.349.WHAT | Through August 1 | Curtain 8 pm Tues-Sun | $25-$32
