Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre, 539 Tremont St, Boston | April 12–May 11 | $10-$38
6_BEOWULF — A THOUSAND YEARS OF BAGGAGE
American Repertory Theater welcomes back Beowulf — A Thousand Years of Baggage, a raucous songplay by Banana Bag & Bodice (with script by Jason Craig and music by Three Pianos co-creator Dave Malloy) that drags the slashing hero of the anonymous Old English poem into the modern world, traversing a thousand years of literary pontification and music genres from jazz and pop to techno, rendered by a seven-piece onstage band. Given that the venue's within roaring distance of Grendel's Den, expect sympathy for the villain.
Oberon, 2 Arrow St, Cambridge | April 16–May 5 | $25-$45
7_TROJAN WOMEN (AFTER EURIPIDES)
ArtsEmerson hosts director Anne Bogart and her rigorous SITI Company in the Boston premiere of Jocelyn Clarke's Trojan Women (After Euripides), an augmented adaptation of the great antiwar drama, featuring live original music. The production premiered in 2011 at the Getty Villa in LA and was deemed "essential viewing" by Variety.
Paramount Center Mainstage, 559 Washington St, Boston | April 17-21 | $25-$75
8_PERICLES
Actors' Shakespeare Project takes on PERICLES, Shakespeare's dizzyingly peripatetic late romance in which the Prince of Tyre logs many storm-wracked miles on an improbable journey toward reunion and rebirth. Allyn Burrows directs a cast that includes Paula Plum, Bobbie Steinbach, and Johnny Lee Davenport.
Modern Theatre, 525 Washington St, Boston | Through April 17–May 12 | $28-$50
9_PIRATES OF PENZANCE
Chicago-based troupe the Hypocrites visits the American Repertory Theater with its 80-minute "exotic excursion" into the world of Gilbert and Sullivan. Their irreverent adaptation of Pirates of Penzance by Sean Graney and Kevin O'Donnell boasts a banjo-strumming Mabel (all of the actors play instruments) and pirates in short shorts.
Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St, Cambridge | May 10–June 2 | From $25
10_RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN | Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Peter DuBois reprises RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN, his Off Broadway production of Gina Gionfriddo's post-feminist comedy in which two 40-something women, one an academic hotshot, the other a wife and mother, consider the roads not taken. The title comes from a Courtney Love song, but the unmistakable whiff in the air is Wendy Wasserstein.
Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St, Boston | May 24–June 22 | $25-$80
