ROMEO AND JULIET | Shakespeare & Company starts off its 2009 season with this abbreviated production of the Bard's romantic tragedy that's been touring schools and theaters in the Northeast since January. The non-Equity cast of seven — Paul D'Agostino, Ben Brinton, Kaitlin Henderson, Alyssa Hughlett, Kelley Johnston, Sean Kazarian, and Daniel Kurtz — take multiple roles; there's original music composed and performed by Marc Scipione, and Jonathan Croy directs. | Shakespeare & Company, Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | Through June 7 | 3 pm Thurs | 7:30 pm [May 29] or 8:30 pm [June 5] Fri | 3 + 8:30 pm Sat | 8:30 pm Sun | $12-$48
SHAPESHIFTER | Laura Kepley directs this Trinity Repertory Company world premiere of a new work by Laura Schellhardt. Set on Scotland's Orkney archipelago, Schellhardt's play is about creatures — a dragon, a seal, a swan — who morph into women. All of the transformers are here portrayed by one actress, the balletic Rachael Warren, who, whether one spirit or three, represents female selfhood sacrificing part of its essence for human love and domesticity. But the play is less about its shape shifters than about the only child on the archipelago, Midge, who must reconcile her strange, instinctual gifts and agitated grief with an embrace of life and community. That doesn't mean that the cryptic plotting and triple-casting aren't confusing. Nonetheless, Trinity rises to the play's lyrical, otherworldly occasion. | Trinity Repertory Company, 201 Washington St, Providence, Rhode Island | 401.351.4242 | Through May 31 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs-Sat | 2 + 7:30 pm Sun | $20-$60
SHIRLEY VALENTINE | Next for Shakespeare & Company, in its "Diva Series," is Willy Russell's monologue about the Liverpool working-class housewife whose life changes after that fateful holiday in Greece — and who could the diva be but S&C's own director, Tina Packer? Jenna Ware directs. | Shakespeare & Company, Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | Through May 31 | Curtain 8:30 pm Thurs | 3 pm Fri + Sun | $16-$34; $11-$29 students, seniors; May 31 $34-$60
INDEFINITELY
BLUE MAN GROUP | The Drama Desk Award–winning trio of cobalt-painted bald pates begin their delightful and deafening evening of anti–performance art beating drums that are also deep buckets of paint, so that sprays of color jump from the instruments like breaking surf, and end by engulfing the spectators in tangles of toilet paper. | Charles Playhouse, 74 Warrenton St, Boston | 617.931.ARTS | Indefinitely | Curtain 8 pm Tues-Wed + 2 pm Wed [May 27] | 5 pm [May 14, 28] + 8 pm Thurs | 7 pm Fri | 2 + 5 + 8 pm Sat | 1 pm + 4 pm + 7 pm [May 24, 31] Sun | $48-$62; $30 student rush
SHEAR MADNESS | The dramatis personae of the audience-participation whodunit (which is now the longest-running non-musical in American theater history, having run 29 years in Boston) continue to comb Newbury Street for the murderer of a classical pianist who lived over the unisex hair salon where the show is set. | Charles Playhouse Stage II, 74 Warrenton St, Boston | 617.426.5225 | Indefinitely | Curtain 8 pm Tues-Fri | 6 + 9 pm Sat | 3 + 7 pm Sun | $42; $31.50 with AAA discount; half-price college-student rush, one ticket per college ID, at the box office, one hour prior to curtain
