POSTE RESTANTE | They Gotta Be Secret Agents, a/k/a Bonnie and Tim Gallagher, present this “madly inventive mix of acrobatics, paper, laughter, dance, flight, puppetry, longing, and film . . . all stuffed neatly into a box.” The segments include “Return to Sender” (Tim attempts to stuff Bonnie into a box and mail her), “Air Mail” (stop-motion animation tracks the delivery of a love letter via origami postal bird), “The Last Mile” (Bonnie and Tim struggle with distance and awkwardness as they dance impossibly close), and “By Lamplight” (a sentimental table lamp prods Bonnie into responding to a love letter). | Charlestown Working Theater, 442 Bunker Hill St, Charlestown | 866.811.4111 | May 6-8 | Curtain 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | 8 pm Sun | $20; $18 students, seniors
NOW PLAYING
ACT A LADY | Theater on Fire closes its season with this farce by Seattle playwright and Brown University grad Jordan Harrison. “When the men of a small Prohibition-era town decide to put on a play dressed in ‘fancy-type, women-type clothes,’ the whole community is affected: gender lines blur, eyebrows raise, identities explode, and life and art are forever entangled.” Who’d have guessed! The cast includes Lisa Caron Driscoll, Craig Houk, Crystal Lisbon, Greg Maraio, Chelsea Schmidt, and Chris Wagner; Darren Evans directs. | Charlestown Working Theater, 442 Bunker Hill St, Boston | 866.811.4111 | Through May 1 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Sat | $15 Thurs; $20 Fri-Sat | $10 students, seniors
THE BLONDE, THE BRUNETTE AND THE VENGEFUL REDHEAD | “A cheating husband, a meddling neighbor, and a dropped ice cream cone combine to shatter Rhonda Russell’s quiet, suburban life. Seven very different characters offer their own perspective of the day Rhonda went berserk.” That’s the set-up for this 2004 work by Australian dramatist Robert Hewett; the catch is that all seven characters are played by one performer — in this case, former American Repertory Theater company member Karen MacDonald. Emerson College performing-arts chair Melia Bensussen directs this regional premiere. | Merrimack Repertory Theatre, 50 East Merrimack St, Lowell | 978.654.4MRT or merrimackrep.org | Through May 16 | Curtain 7:30 pm Wed-Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 4 + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7 pm [no evening May 16] Sun | $26-$56
EDWARD II | The Provincetown Theater Company gives us Christopher Marlowe’s underperformed study of the 14th-century English king whose predilection for male favorites proved his undoing. Look for a more sympathetic portrait of this ruler — who was, like Marlowe, probably gay — than the one Mel Gibson created for Braveheart. Anthony Jackman directs. | Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St, Provincetown | 508.487.7487 or provincetowntheater.com | Through May 2 | Curtain 7:30 pm Fri-Sun | $22; $18 students, seniors
