A NIGHT AT THE ROCK OPERA | Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra, a Boston-based group "committed to bringing the best of classic rock to life for those who've never had a chance to hear it LIVE in 3-D," reprises its evening-long orgy of the Who, David Bowie, the Beatles, and Queen — and threatens to throw some Led Zeppelin into the mix. | Stuart St Playhouse, 200 Stuart St, Boston | 800.447.7400 | Through June 27 | Curtain 7:30 pm Sat | $39.50
PIRATES! (OR, GILBERT AND SULLIVAN PLUNDER'D) | Pirates of the Caribbean? Yes! The Huntington Theatre Company has taken G&S's Cornwall-set musical and moved it to the New World, leaving the music intact but altering the book in the hope of putting a little zing back into the political satire. Can't wait to see what they do with "I am the very model of a modern major general." Gordon Greenberg, who directed earlier versions of the piece at the Goodspeed Opera House and the Paper Mill Playhouse, is at the tiller; the cast includes Anderson Davis as pirate apprentice Frederic and Farah Alvin as his beloved Mabel, a role she previously played at both Paper Mill and Goodspeed. | Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston | 617.266.0800 | Through June 14 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues | 2 pm [June 10] + 7:30 pm Wed | 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7 pm [evening May 31] Sun | $20-$82; $5 senior, military discount; $10 BU community discount; $25 patrons 35 and younger, with ID; $20 back row of balcony; $15 student rush, two hours before curtain, with ID
ROMANCE | David Mamet's utterly injudicious courtroom farce is a very funny valentine to political incorrectness and the seeming impossibility of the peace process. And it's scrawled across the American Repertory Theatre's Loeb stage with the playwright's signature staccato rhythms and nose-thumbing panache. Moreover, propped up like some addled American eagle at the center of Mamet pal Scott Zigler's production is the sublime Will LeBow as easily the most ridiculous judge since The Tonight Show fielded the Dancing Itos. Yes, the play is a slow starter, and that seems particularly ungenerous in a show lasting only 95 minutes (which includes intermission). Yet once it achieves warp speed, in the more cohesive second act, Mamet's legalistic trip to nowhere, an amalgam of Kafka, Queer Eye, and the Marx Brothers that leaves no epithet unturned, would probably have Golda Meir and Yasser Arafat laughing together in the dark. Romance won't win Mamet any awards other than one for picking an even more baffling title than he did for Oleanna. But it may give its audience, suspended between outraged affront and guilty laughter, a new respect for contempt of court. | Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St, Cambridge | 617.547.8300 | Through June 7 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues-Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7:30 pm Sun | $25-$79; $10 discount seniors; $25 students; $15 students day of performance; 50 tickets @ $15, day of performance at noon, in person, at the box office
