QUARTERMAINE'S TERMS | The Williamstown Theatre Festival concludes its Mainstage season with Simon Gray's bittersweet 1982 comedy about detachment and broken dreams. Set during two years in the 1960s, it takes place in the staff room of the Cull-Loomis School of English for Foreigners in Cambridge, England, where seven instructors including St. John Quartermaine try to make sense of their lonely lives. Maria Aitken (Tony-nominated for The Thirty-Nine Steps) directs; Jeremy Beck, Ann Dowd, Morgan Hallett, John Horton, Simon Jones, Stephen Kunken, and Jefferson Mays (Tony winner for I Am My Own Wife) make up the cast. | Williamstown Theatre Festival Mainstage, 1000 Main St, Rte 2, Williamstown | 413.597.3400 | Through August 23 | Curtain 3 + 8 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 4 + 8:30 pm Sat | 2 pm Sun | $45-$59
TWELFTH NIGHT | "Some comedies are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them." We're putting Shakespeare's Illyrian comedy of cross-dressing and thwarted love in the first category. And the complete cast has now been thrust upon us: Merritt Janson as Viola, Jake Waid as Sebastian, Duane Allen Robinson as Orsino, Elizabeth Raetz as Olivia, Robert Biggs as Feste, Ken Cheeseman as Malvolio, Johnny Lee Davenport as Antonio, Nigel Gore as Sir Toby Belch, Corinna May as Maria, and Ryan Winkles as Andrew Aguecheek. Jonathan Croy directs. | Shakespeare & Company, Founders Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | Through September 5 | Curtain times vary | $16-$60
WHERE MOMENTS HUNG BEFORE | Boston Actors Theater presents this Joey C. Pelletier play about a birthday party and a funeral taking place at the same time and in the same place. The funeral is for Jasper Kelly, a gay man who was only in his early 30s; the birthday party is for Lucy, whose mom, Morgan, was Jasper's sister. Morgan's hoping the birthday part will make everyone feel a little better, but Lucy's not exactly thrilled, since it seems everyone's thinking about Jasper and not her. BAT artistic director Danielle Leeber is at the helm. | Boston Playwrights' Theatre, 949 Comm Ave, Boston | 866.411.8111 | Through August 16 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Sat | 2 pm Sun | $15; $10 students
INDEFINITELY
BLUE MAN GROUP | The Drama Desk Award–winning trio of cobalt-painted bald pates begin their delightful and deafening evening of anti–performance art beating drums that are also deep buckets of paint, so that sprays of color jump from the instruments like breaking surf, and end by engulfing the spectators in tangles of toilet paper. | Charles Playhouse, 74 Warrenton St, Boston | 617.931.ARTS | Indefinitely | Curtain 8 pm Tues-Thurs | 7 pm Fri | 2 + 5 + 8 pm Sat | 4 + 7 pm Sun | $48-$62; $30 student rush
SHEAR MADNESS | The dramatis personae of the audience-participation whodunit (which is now the longest-running non-musical in American theater history, having run 29 years in Boston) continue to comb Newbury Street for the murderer of a classical pianist who lived over the unisex hair salon where the show is set. | Charles Playhouse Stage II, 74 Warrenton St, Boston | 617.426.5225 | Indefinitely | Curtain 8 pm Tues-Fri | 6 + 9 pm Sat | 3 + 7 pm Sun | $42; $31.50 with AAA discount; half-price college-student rush, one ticket per college ID, at the box office, one hour prior to curtain
