OPENING
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 | April 16–May 1 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Sat | $15 Thurs; $20 Fri-Sat | $10 students, seniors
ARMS AND THE MAN | MIT’s Dramashop essays George Bernard Shaw’s satirical romance set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 and involving a young Bulgarian girl, her posturing war-hero fiancé, and the Swiss mercenary who bursts into her bedroom brandishing chocolates instead of cartridges. MIT faculty member Michael Ouellette directs. Kresge Little Theater, 48 Mass Ave, Cambridge |http://dramashop.mit.edu/tickets| April 8-16 | Curtain 8 pm Wed-Sat | $8
LE CABARET GRIMM | The Performance LAB launches its inaugural season with this world-premiere experimental musical by former Boston Theatre Works honcho Jason Slavick that’s based on the tales of the Brothers Grimm and promises “a live band on stage, masks, large puppets, dance, and a punk sensibility.” Cassandra Marsh composed the original score and Boston Conservatory faculty member Michelle Chasse did the choreography; the cast includes Austin Auh, Rachel Bertone, Becki Dennis, Jamie Lee, Nick Peciaro, Haley Selmon, Lee Skunes, and Ally Tully. There’ll also be an opening act called “The Hubbub” that on the first weekend (April 8-10) will comprise Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys, Jojo the Burlesque Poetess, and Madge of Honor. | Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre, 539 Tremont St, Boston | 617.933.8600 or BostonTheatreScene.com | April 8-24 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri-Sat | $35; $20 students
CATS | If you’ve suspected that cats don’t really have nine lives, well — you’re right. They have many more. The unlikely Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is back, with Growltiger, Macavity, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, Gus the Theater Cat, Old Deuteronomy, and, of course, Grizabella and “Memories.” | Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston St, Boston | 800.982.ARTS or BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com/Boston | April 13-18 | Curtain 7 pm Tues | 7:30 pm Wed-Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7:30 pm Sun | $37.50-$82.50
EDWARD II | Provincetown Theater 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 | April 16–May 2 | Curtain 7:30 pm Fri-Sun | $22; $18 students, seniors
