THE GOOD PERSON OF SETZUAN | As part of its “Fringe Festival,” the BU School of Theatre takes on Bertolt Brecht’s fable about the title mensch, a prostitute with a heart of gold in western China who, when everyone starts taking advantage of her goodness, has to invent a not-so-nice alter ego. David Gram directs. | Boston University Theatre, Studio 210, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston | 617.933.8600 | Through October 24 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs [October 22] | 8 pm Fri [October 16] | 2 pm Sat | $7
LITTLE BLACK DRESS | Like The Gigolo Confessions of Baile Breag, the final leg of the Irish trilogy that made Ronan Noone’s name, this Kansas-set black comedy has as its seed a “gigolo business,” in which a couple of enterprising young bucks posing as window washers make their daytime rounds servicing sexually frustrated married women. “De-stressing” is what 19-year-old gigolo mogul Charly Prescott, trying to enlist stoner chum Jimmy Beaudreaux Jr. in his heretofore one-man enterprise, calls the Oedipal aid he provides — to, among others, Jimmy’s attractive 41-year-old mom, Amy, who can’t get no satisfaction from interested but insensitive factory-worker spouse Jimmy Sr., with whom she’s been saddled since high school. Noone’s droll if perverse premise, triggered as much by the courage and perils of risk taking as by all-American enterprise and its rules and deregulations, eventually jumps the fence into Grand Guignol melodrama, ending with all four characters, several of them bloody or dead, dancing dreamily to Frank Sinatra. And at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, under Ari Edelson’s direction, the play is so well acted by Marianna Bassham, Jeremiah Kissel, Karl Baker Olson, and Alex Pollock that Noone will be able to decide for himself whether he wants to signal a little earlier where, other than a strangely imagined Kansas, he’s taking us. | Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Comm Ave, Boston | 866.811.4111 | Through October 24 | Curtain 7:30 pm Wed-Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 4 + 8 pm Sat | 2 pm Sun | $30; $25 seniors; $10 students
A LONG AND WINDING ROAD | Drawing on the songs of Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Webb, Paul Simon, Carole King, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Laura Nyro, Grammy winner Maureen McGovern reconnects with her boomer roots in this show based, we imagine, on her 2008 album of the same name. Philip Himberg directs. | Boston Center for the Arts, Virginia Wimberly Theatre, 539 Tremont St, Boston | 617.266.0800 | Through November 15 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues [no October 27] | 2 pm [October 28, November 4] + 7:30 pm Wed | 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 2 pm [no October 31] + 8 pm Sat | 2 pm [no November 8] + 7 pm [November 1, 8] Sun | $20-$60
OLEANNA | Contemporary Theatre of Boston takes on David Mamet’s 1992 play — which premiered right here in Cambridge — about a university student who after seeking personal instruction from a professor accuses him of sexual harassment and ruins his chances of getting tenure. So, who did what? Judith Kallora and Allan Mayo star; Chris Cavalier directs. | Boston Center for the Arts, Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont St, Boston | 617.933.8600 | Through October 17 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri-Sat | $22.50-$25
