GREY GARDENS • Max & Louie Productions

In 1975, a documentary by Albert and David Maysles related the story of two cloistered, interdependent, eccentric residents living in a wealthy East Hampton neighborhood. After years of prosperity, the ocean of money slowed to a trickle for Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale (the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), yet they persevered within the walls of a dilapidated, 28-room mansion named Grey Gardens. Though this once glorious, now filth-ridden estate had become overrun with cats, raccoons, fleas (the filmmakers had to wear flea collars), and had practically no running water, Big and Little Edie remained there, in secluded squalor, for over 50 years. The film won acclaim for its “direct cinema” styled rendering of these two fascinating women, and in 2006, this material was adapted into a musical by Doug Wright (book), Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie (lyrics). Max & Louie Productions seems to have gotten all of the right people in all of the right places to make this St. Louis premiere soar.

COMPANY • Insight Theatre Company

When Company opened in 1970, it was considered a “concept musical.” Abandoning a linear narrative, its vignettes center around a milestone birthday for Robert, a single guy living in New York city. Bobby, as his friends call him, is the favorite third wheel among his "good and crazy" married friends, and though he extols the virtues of the single life (much to the envy of his male buddies), the attempts to set him up with a nice girl to settle down with, the frustrations of the women he's dating, and the reflections that always come with turning a year older, shake the comfort of his bachelor status.

ATOMIC • New Line Theatre

The origins of the atomic bomb don’t initially sound like your typical musical theatre fare. But Danny Ginges and Philip Foxman’s Australian import about the unleashing of the world’s first nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII, along with the lead up to it, provide plenty of cloudy emotional fallout, and in that respect, it’s right up New Line’s alley. Spanning a period of time from the 1930’s to the end of the 50’s, this story looks at the moral complications that come with creating of a weapon of annihilation -- born from science, but ending with massive human casualties, and heavy consciouses.

Zachary Allen Farmer, in an imposing and compassionate performance, is Hungarian born Jewish physicist Leo Szilard, who flees Germany to escape the looming shadow of Hitler’s Nazis. After winding up in America with his long-time girlfriend Trude (Ann Hier, impressive in a juicy role), he meets and collaborates with other brilliant physicists in a World War II arms race. A passionate Reynaldo Arceno is Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, Sean Michael gives a strong performance as the obnoxious “father of the hydrogen bomb,” Edward Teller, and a fittingly harsh General Groves.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM • Shakespeare Festival St. Louis

Royal nuptials, a romantic mis-match, an amateur theatre troupe, and a band of mischievous fairies in an enchanted wood. What could happen, right? You’ll find out in Shakespeare Festival St. Louis’s delightful production of one of the Bard’s most accessible comedies, happening now in Forest Park, and it’s got all of the elements to entertain folks of all ages.

The action is connected through the imminent wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens (Paul Cereghino) and Amazonian Queen, Hippolyta (Jacqueline Thompson), along with a pair of mixed up kids in love. And not in love. Hermia loves Lysander, but an arrangement has already been made promising her to Demetrius. Hermia couldn’t care less about Demetrius, but her bff Helena has eyes only for him. What a hot mess.

BROKEN BONE BATHTUB • That Uppity Theatre Company & The Drama Club Stl

Siobhan, in a cast after injuring her hand in a bicycle accident in Brooklyn, finds taking showers too cumbersome, so she’s been taking baths in the houses of friends, and in this uniquely intimate production, you are among those friends. That Uppity Theatre Company and The Drama Club Stl have come together to present a St. Louis premiere, created and performed by Siobhan O’Loughlin, that dares to get to the crux of what theatre’s all about. Not an escape, but a connection.

YENTL • New Jewish Theatre

This is not your aba’s Yentl. Probably most closely associated with the 1983 vanity project movie musical -- directed, co-written, co-produced, and starring Barbra Streisand, this version is not that. This adaptation, like the film, is based on Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer’s 1975 play, but supplemented with original songs by singer-songwriter, Jill Sobule (“I Kissed a Girl”). The result is a modernized rendering that complements the original story with contemporary hues.

Yentl (Shanara Gabrielle) feels choked by her restrictive shtetl in late 1800’s Poland. To the dismay of her father (Terry Meddows), Yentl values learning and the study of the Talmud over “girl things” like cooking and working on finding a husband, but intellectual pursuits of religious texts were forbidden for women. Yentl wasn’t even allowed to say Kaddish for her father’s funeral, not that that stopped her. Gabrielle plays the title character with full range, delivering the more heartfelt of Sobule’s songs with honest appeal. To quench her thirst for knowledge, Yentl dresses as a man and calls herself Anshel to attend a Yeshiva in Bechev. She quickly becomes friends with Avigdor (Andrew Michael Neiman), a bright fellow student who’s been recently dumped by his ex-fiancee, the town’s local beauty, Hadass (Taylor Steward). Yentl finds herself attracted to both. The “platonic-plus” attraction between Yentl and Avigdor is palpable, but never really addressed, and Neiman relays his character’s love for his friend with a subtle thread of conflict that plays wonderfully. The attraction Hadass feels for Yentl is softly delivered in Steward’s performance while she anxiously watches Yentl eat, or enjoys deeper conversations that are usually off-limits, never realizing at the time that she's disguised as a man.

THE TWO CHARACTER PLAY • The Midnight Company

“The Two Character Play,” one of the many offerings during this year’s inaugural Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis, is one of Williams’s later works, and performed in The Learning Center on Westminster Place, formerly known as the Wednesday Club. In the late 1930’s, the Wednesday Club's stage was the home of the Mummers of St. Louis theatre troupe, where a few of Tennessee’s early plays were debuted. It’s poignantly fitting that this play is performed in this creaky old house, where Williams found his beginnings.

Felice (Joe Hanrahan) and Clare (Michelle Hand) are siblings and actors, preparing to perform one of Felice’s own works to, possibly, an audience, in a run-down theatre in a nowhere town. Abandoned by their company, with no home except for the theatre, it doesn’t take long to see signs of damage between these two. Their ex-colleagues called them “insane.” After Felice goes through what seems like a long-practiced ritual of preparing his sister for a performance, the play-within-the-play begins -- about a dysfunctional brother and sister, no less. In the play’s play, the siblings are survivors of a shared childhood trauma that leaves them constantly on a precipice, where the prospect of just leaving their house brings on a burden of apprehension. In some of the humorous moments that are sprinkled throughout, their characters’ lines are forgotten and improvised, and aside from a southern dialect put on for the “performance,” the line between the characters’ plight and the actors’ realities is razor thin to the point of invisibility, with looming shadows left by a confined, stress, drug, and alcohol-addled existence.

TRASH MACBETH • ERA

Equally Represented Arts is back with another enveloping, innovative production that places Shakespeare’s Macbeth at its spine, and includes excerpts ranging from Emily Post's Etiquette and 1950's advertisements, to Sun Tzu's The Art of War, with a little Book of Revelation thrown in for good measure. Whaaa?! And you know what else? It works. Created by an ensemble of theatre artists and accented and complemented by ERA’s trademark movement and choreography, these dissimilar texts are carefully and shrewdly woven through one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies, resulting in a surprising harmony between the Bard’s story of murderous ambition, and our modern, media-soaked, consumer-driven world of consumption. It’s also quite a blast.

Welcome to the Macbeth’s for a dinner party that you won’t soon forget.

IVANOV • St. Louis Actors' Studio

Nikolai Ivanov, and most of his countrymen, are suffering from numbing boredom. But Ivanov is not only bored as hell, he’s irascible. He disparages just about everyone who crosses his path, he neglects his sick wife in favor of socializing with friends, and he’s up to his nose in debt. St. Louis Actors' Studio closes its ninth season with an excellent production of Anton Chekhov’s first full-length play, written in 1887 and set against the cold, rural Russian countryside. With dreary outlooks spiked with humorous satire, it feels like a prototype for his trademark themes, and there’s a visible gun. So you know what that means.

Drew Battles plays Ivanov with a palpable fatigue -- languishing under a weight of self loathing he can’t figure out. His depression never seems to damper the mood of Borkin though. He manages Ivanov’s mostly barren farms, always coming up with schemes to make money, and Dave Wassilak lends a comically inflated confidence to every plan he hatches. Adding to the humor is Ivanov’s penniless Uncle, Count Shabelsky (Bobby Miller), who lives with Ivanov. In between his grumbling, he’s just about the only one who shows Anna (Julie Layton), Ivanov’s wife of five years, withering from tuberculosis, any compassion. Anna’s doctor, Lvov (Reginald Pierre), is also an Anna advocate. Lvov is disgusted by Ivanov’s treatment of her and exasperated at the very mention of him. While Lvov insists that he is an honest man, Pierre’s cagey portrayal keeps you guessing at his motives, and his patient, keenly portrayed by Layton, is affectingly tragic.

BRIEFS: A Festival of Short LGBTQ Plays • That Uppity Theatre Company and Vital VOICE Magazine

That Uppity Theatre Company and Vital VOICE were back again last weekend for "Briefs: A Festival of Short LGBTQ plays,” presenting eight works selected from over 200 nation-wide submissions. Presented by Pearl Vodka and celebrating its 5-year anniversary, the festival’s cornerstone of diverse subject matter has attracted a wider net of St. Louis talent and also widening LGBTQ and racial diversity. The plays were varied in tone, but there was a thread of family, love and acceptance that seemed to run underneath many. Max Friedman, playwright of “The Grind,” directed by Gad Guterman, was the winner of this years’ second annual Ken Haller Playwriting Competition for LGBTQ and Allied Youth.

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH • Stray Dog Theatre

Stray Dog’s latest production has every bit the vibe of a rock concert when you walk into the theatre. The band, typically secluded somewhere behind the set, is front and center, warming up before the show. Rob Lippert’s scenic design features TV screens and speakers galore. The bar, usually out in the lobby, is in the house on the floor against the stage, with a pair of Stray Dog alums (the night I went) serving as bartenders. So grab a drink and buckle up -- you’re about to be entertained by the song stylings of Hedwig, a genderqueer rock singer from East Germany, and her band, The Angry Inch.

Hedwig (Michael Baird) is in town for a St. Louis engagement, and during her roughly 90-minute show, we’ll hear about her younger years as Hansel Schmidt, her travels, misadventures, heartbreaks and her surgically fucked-up sex change operation that leaves her with, what Hedwig has titled, an “angry inch” -- her band’s namesake. A cheeky, tortured and fiercely funny Baird is in full command of this diva, carrying the titular headliner on his shoulders, holding the audience, and making the most of John Cameron Mitchell’s improvisational book. At times full of cavorting swagger and at other times slowing heartbreak, Baird physically and vocally handles numbers like, "The Origin of Love,” "Wicked Little Town" and “Midnight Radio” assuredly.

OLD WICKED SONGS • New Jewish Theatre

Jon Marans' Pulitzer Prize-nominated play offers a lot of layers underneath a facade that seems, initially, predictable. Stephen Hoffman is a 25 year old piano prodigy who’s burned out, and though he’s a “superb technician,” he’s lost touch with his passion. He has traveled to Vienna, Austria to study accompaniment with a Professor Schiller, but learns, much to his irritation, that he must first spend three months with Professor Mashkan to study singing.

Why singing? Well, by Schiller’s reckoning, before sitting in front of those black and white keys, an accompanist has to experience the other side of the equation -- the singing part, for a broader understanding of that connection. As portrayed by Will Bonfiglio, Hoffman’s a tense, walled-off young man from the minute he steps into Josef Mashkan’s studio -- flinching at the threat of a hand on his shoulder and impervious to Mashkan’s natural charm. Jerry Vogel is perfectly cast as Professor Mashkan, who feels deeply, musically and otherwise. Intimate, grumbly and funny, with an anti-jewish veneer he displays like a shield, he tries to urge Hoffman to tap into the emotional side of the music -- a probing that peels away the layers of both characters.

MOLLY’S HAMMER • The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis (Studio Theatre)

In the 1980’s, the threat of nuclear war hung heavy over the country like radioactive ash. That threat, and Liane Ellison Norman's book, Hammer of Justice, inspired Tammy Ryan’s play, receiving its world premiere, thanks to the Rep’s Ignite! New Play Festival last season.

The story follows Molly Rush, a member of a group of peace advocates called the Plowshares Eight. In 1980, they entered the General Electric Re-entry Division in Pennsylvania, damaged nuclear nose cones and drenched blueprints and documents in blood. Ryan’s play focuses in on Molly Rush, a mother of six whose faith drives her and others to do what they feel is a moral responsibility, and Nancy Bell beautifully holds the center as Molly.

Fourth Annual St. Louis Theater Circle Awards • Skip Viragh Center for the Arts

Another St. Louis Theater Circle Awards ceremony has come and gone, and the award recipients, as well as the impressive bevy of nominees, are a testament to the talent we’re lucky enough to have in “the Lou.” Here’s the list of the nominees, with the award recipients in red. Congrats to all! And a huge thanks to those who attended, watched at home, and came out to see the enormous variety of theatre on offer each and every year.

Yay, theatre!!!

(If you missed it, you can stream the show courtesy of HEC-TV.)

Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy

Bad Jews, New Jewish Theatre

Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, R-S Theatrics

The 39 Steps, Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Wild Oats, St. Louis Shakespeare

AMERICAN IDIOT • New Line Theatre

The fury that simmers within generations of young adults is nothing new, but New Line’s current production of Green Day’s American Idiot, adapted from the band’s 2004 concept album of the same name, is painted in sharp-edged, pop-punk strokes that strike a familiar chord, particularly now. With the country in the midst of a divisive political season, Billie Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer’s rock opera about coming of age in a post 9/11 world of uncertainty, taps into an angry restlessness that’s as palpable today as it’s ever been.

The show’s opening sets the tone with an eruption of its title number, “American Idiot.” Three disillusioned twenty-somethings, Johnny (Evan Fornachon), Tunny (Frederick Rice) and Will (Brendan Ochs), are sick of the monotony of suburbia, and plan to head off to New York City, answering a call in search of... something. Anything. As long as it’s away from where they are now.