Bye Bye Birdie In the wrong hands, this 1960 homage to/parody of Elvis Presley and that awful “music” all the kids are listening to can seem very dated indeed. It was, after all, written to entertain old farts (my parents among them) who considered 50s rock ’n’ roll a mere fad. Thankfully, director-choreographer Tammy Mader is a clever woman who respects the material enough to find the comedy in the show’s gentle send-up of middle America while also moving us with the glorious, albeit prerock, score. Of course, you need a high-caliber cast to do this, and for this Drury Lane production Mader has brought out lots of big guns, among them Michelle Aravena (dynamite as a sad-sack songwriter’s girlfriend/secretary) and Leryn Turlington (who sizzles as the young teen who wins the right to kiss the Elvis stand-in, Conrad Birdie, before he goes into the army). —Jack Helbig
The Mutilated You’ve probably never heard of this 1966 Tennessee Williams one-act, but you’re sure to recognize it all the same. Set in late-1940s New Orleans, just a streetcar ride from Stella and Stanley’s tenement, it’s sown with familiar Williams types: lowlifes, sailors, and damaged, desperate women of a certain age. Trinket and Celeste both come from money, and both have fallen very far—Celeste because of her alcoholism, Trinket due to a disfiguring surgery. They were friends until Celeste made a characteristically clumsy attempt to leverage the secret of Trinket’s “mutilation.” Now each has arrived at her dark Christmas Eve of the soul. Williams treats the pair with a brutal grace. Dado’s staging for A Red Orchid Theatre couches them in a kind of Brechtian surrealism full of strange, comic sights. Jennifer Engstrom’s brassy Celeste and Mierka Girten’s defensively demure Trinket make them heartbreaking. —Tony Adler
Transparent Early on in Kellye Howard’s energetic and brutally honest one-woman show, she gestures to the pile of her teenage journals onstage and urges audience members to run the other way if they encounter anyone with half as many physical manifestations of their “crazy.” Less a cohesive narrative than an ever-changing stand-up dramedy set, Howard’s show covers her search for “normal” in everything from race (is she more Cosby Show or The Wire?) to parenting to mental illness. Her marriage to an Asian man who’s shorter than her teenager—and her paranoid underwear sniff tests and other detective work following his infidelity—provides particularly moving and relatable fodder. Although uneven at times, Howard’s exploration of her personal struggles with marriage, illness, and death exposes admirable vulnerability and strength. —Marissa Oberlander
