KNICKERBOCKER | Williamstown Theatre Festival artistic director Nicholas Martin opens the 2009 Nikos Stage season with the world premiere of this play by Jonathan Marc Sherman in which Jerry, who apparently never saw the I Love Lucy episode in which Ricky and Lucy "prepare" for the arrival of Little Ricky, grows increasingly anxious as the birth date of his son approaches and he wonders whether he's ready to be a parent. Not sure where that title comes into it. | Williamstown Theatre Festival Nikos Stage, 1000 Main St, Rte 2, Williamstown | 413.597.3400 | Through July 19 | Curtain 8 pm Tues-Wed | 3 + 8 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 4 + 8:30 pm Sat | 2 pm Sun | $35-$37
THE LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS | Gloucester Stage continues its 2009 season with this 1969 Neil Simon comedy. Gloucester artistic associate David Zoffoli directs and stars as the middle-aged and married Barney, who's hoping to join the sexual revolution; ART stalwart Karen MacDonald plays the three women he tries, and fails, to seduce. | Gloucester Stage Company, 267 East Main St, Gloucester | 978.281.4433 | Through July 19 | Curtain 8 pm Wed-Fri | 3 + 8 pm Sat | 4 pm Sun | $32-$37
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 | 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
OTHELLO | Like its Hamlet, this is a Shakespeare & Company "encore presentation," from last August, with John Douglas Thompson as Othello, Michael Hammond as Iago, and Merritt Janson as Desdemona, all from the 2008 production, and Tony Simotes again directing. Cuckoldry, real or imagined, is a potent thing in the very masculine world of this Othello, and it strands Janson's Desdemona as an island of innocence. And though the actors' tongues race as swiftly as the production does, you hear every word, and the imagery sticks deep. | Shakespeare & Company, Founders Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | Through September 6 | Curtain times vary | $16-$60
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY | New Century Theatre serves up Jerry Sterner's 1989 comedy, in which Larry the Liquidator casts a greedy eye toward floundering New England Wire & Cable, whereupon the company's founder hires a hot-shot lawyer to stop him in his tracks. Keith Langsdale directs; Ed Jewett, Marianna Bassham, Dick Volker, Manfred Melcher, and Jean Koester are in the cast. | Theatre 14, Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts, Smith College, Northampton | 413.585.3220 | Through July 11 | Curtain 7:30 Thurs | 8 pm Fri-Sat | $28; $26 seniors
