SINS OF THE MOTHER | Former Gloucester Stage Company artistic director Israel Horovitz returns to direct this new, expanded version of the one-act he presented at Gloucester Stage back in 2003. The setting is, yes, Gloucester, and Douggie Shimmatarro is back in town, after an absence of 10 years. But the three lumpers who turn up at the fish plant to have their unemployment cards stamped don't exactly roll out the welcome mat. Then they remember who Douggie's mother was. They knew his mother, all right. All the men in town did. Francisco Solorzano, Sean Meehan, David Nail, and Robert Walsh make up the cast. | Gloucester Stage Company, 267 East Main St, Gloucester | 978.281.4433 | August 27–September 13 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Fri | 3 + 8 pm Sat | 4 pm Sun | $32-$37
NOW PLAYING
ALEGRÍA | This Cirque du Soleil 10th-anniversary show, which made its Boston debut at Marine Industrial Park in 1995, has been reconfigured for indoor performance and is back out on tour. It's spiritual as well as spectacular, its populace of sleek, white-clad androgynes and heavy-haunched grotesques more angelic and unearthly than the madcap, Fellini-esque denizens of CdS's previous show, Saltimbanco. Even the clowning is poignant. "Alegría" means "happiness" in Spanish, and that's apt to describe your state when you see it. | Agganis Arena, 925 Comm Ave, Boston |www.ticketmaster.com| Through August 30 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs | 4 + 8 pm Fri-Sat | 2 + 6 pm Sun | $45-$95; students, seniors $25
THE DONKEY SHOW | The Diane Paulus era at the American Repertory Theatre kicks off with this 1970s-disco gloss on A Midsummer Night's Dream that she concocted with writer husband Randy Weiner in 1998 and set to the dance-fueled anthems of Donna Summer and Sister Sledge. The show, which ran for six years Off Broadway and has become a signature of the Obie-winning director's propulsive, audience-immersive style, will play in the newly christened nightclub Oberon (formerly known as Zero Arrow Theatre), and Paulus compares it with a trip to the Bard's stomping grounds. "The audience, very much like in the Globe Theatre, is standing like groundlings, watching the action. There are VIP boxes, just like there were in the Globe, if you prefer to sit and watch. You have kind of royalty side by side with the working class, which was also very Studio 54. It was considered democracy on the dance floor; you could be a kid from Queens dancing next to Elizabeth Taylor." And you will get to dance at The Donkey Show. You will also get to drink, socialize, and text your digits off if you feel like it. | Oberon, Mass Ave + Arrow St, Cambridge | 617.547.8300 | Through October 31 | Curtain 8 pm Tues [September 1] | 8 pm Wed [September 2, 16, 23] | 8 pm Thurs [no August 27] | 8 + 10:30 Fri [late show September 18, 25] | 8 + 10:30 pm Sat | $25-$49
