BASH | Theatre on Fire opens its fifth-anniversary season at the Charlestown Working Theater with Neil LaBute’s triptych of one-acts in which characters reveal their most horrendous acts to unseen interlocutors. In A Gaggle of Saints, two Boston College students in evening dress recount a trip to New York for a “bash” at the Plaza Hotel that ends in a different kind of bash, the beating-to-death of a gay man. Iphigenia in Orem finds a Utah businessman cornering a strangely inert stranger in a hotel lobby at a convention for the purpose of talking his ear off. And in Medea Redux, a woman who’s been convicted of murder tells how at 13 she was seduced by her high-school English teacher. Darren Evans directs. | Charlestown Working Theater, 442 Bunker Hill St, Charlestown | 866.811.4111 | Through October 17 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs-Sat | $20; $15 Thurs
CABARET | Willkommen! Trinity Repertory Company opens its 46th season with the Kander & Ebb musical based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin stories and made famous by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey. They won’t be coming to the Cabaret in Providence but Trinity is hoping that at least one of your tomorrows will belong to Rachael Warren as Sally Bowles, Mauro Hartman as Cliff Bradshaw, Joe Wilson Jr. as the MC, Phyllis Kay as Fräulein Schneider, and Stephen Berenson as Herr Schultz. Trinity artistic director Curt Columbus is at the helm. | Trinity Repertory Company, 201 Washington St, Providence, Rhode Island | 401.351.4242 | Through October 11 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs-Sat | 2 + 7:30 pm Sun | $20-$65; $10 12th-row bench
THE CARETAKER | Nora Theatre Company opens its 2009–2010 season with Harold Pinter’s 1960 enigma, in which Aston, who’s had electroshock treatment, brings the homeless and difficult Davies back to his ramshackle apartment and the two fence with each other, Aston trying to please Davies while the audience wonders why. It gets still more complicated when Aston’s younger brother, Mick, enters the picture. With John Kuntz as Aston, Michael Balcanoff as Davies, and Joe Lanza as Mick; Daniel Gidron directs. | Central Square Theater, 450 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 866.811.4111 | Through November 1 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri-Sat | 2 pm Sun | $35; $25 seniors; $20 students | Carolyn Clay’s review on page 28
THE DONKEY SHOW | C-dust pinch-hits for fairy dust in The Donkey Show, Diane Paulus & Randy Weiner’s disco-set riff on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an hour-long work set in the Studio 54–inspired environs of Club Oberon (formerly Zero Arrow Theatre) and framed by episodes of Saturday Night Fever in which you may or may not choose to star. The dramatis personae include Dr. Wheelgood, a gold-lamé-clad Puck on roller skates; club owner Mr. Oberon, who’s out to humiliate his haughty diva girlfriend, Tytania; desperately yearning or cockily dismissive lovers Helen, Dimitri, Mia, and Sander; and a twin couple of ruffle-shirted, Afro-coiffed dudes both named Vinnie. Ingeniously double-cast, sexily supple, and screeching into headsets, they join the paying crowd (a small minority of whom occupy tables in a cabaret area that also sees action) for an immersive night of hedonism and hustle driven by the pounding beat and melodramatic passions of disco hits from the 1970s. | Oberon, Mass Ave + Arrow St, Cambridge | 617.547.8300 | Through January 2 | 8 pm Thurs [through October 30] | 8 pm Fri | 8 + 10:30 pm Sat | $25-$49
