OPENING
ALL IN THE TIMING | Bad Habit Productions visits area bars and the Somerville Theatre with this sextet of witty short plays by David Ives. On the bill are Words, Words, Words, about the proverbial monkeys trying to tap out literature on typewriters, and the musical Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread. Anna Waldron directs. | Hennessey's Bar, 25 Union St, Boston | April 3, 10, 17 | Curtain 7 pm Fri | Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq, Somerville | April 4, 11, 18 | Curtain 7 pm Sat | Burren, 247 Elm St, Somerville | April 5, 19 | Curtain 4 pm Sun | Sweet Water Café, 3 Boylston Place, Boston | April 9, 16 | Curtain 7 pm Thurs | www.badhabitproductions.org| $15 on-line; $20 doors
ANGELS IN AMERICA | Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club takes on both parts of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-winning "gay fantasia on national themes," which, set in the midst of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, features lovers, Mormons, and Republican demon Roy Cohn. Sara Wright directs Millennium Approaches; Laura Hirschberg is at the helm of Perestroika. | Loeb Drama Center Mainstage, 64 Brattle St, Harvard Square, Cambridge | 617.496.2222 | April 3-11 | Curtain Millennium Approaches 8 pm Fri [April 3] | 2 pm Sun [April 5] | 8 pm Thurs | 2 pm Sat [April 11] | Curtain Perestroika 8 pm Fri [April 10] | 8 pm Sat [April 4, 11] | 8 pm Sun [April 5] | $12, $15 both parts; $8 students, seniors, $10 both parts
ANNA CHRISTIE | Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, its "American Voices" series now divorced from Citi Performing Arts Center, presents this free staged reading of Eugene O'Neill's 1922 Pulitzer winner. Artistic director Steven Maler is at the helm of the work, which features the real-life father-and-daughter team of Will Lyman and Georgia Lyman (he Voice of Frontline, she the determined Maggie of the Lyric Stage's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), along with Jim True-Frost of HBO's The Wire. The younger Lyman takes the title role of an ex-prostitute attempting to reconcile with her estranged father as love heats up with a handsome sailor. | Boston Center for the Arts Plaza, 539 Tremont St, Boston | 617.426.0863 | March 30 | Curtain 7:30 pm Mon | Free; donations accepted
BIG APPLE CIRCUS | Now in its 31st season, the intimate one-ring circus returns with a new edition. Play On!, which takes its name from the opening line of Twelfth Night, boasts "high-spirited Colombians on the flying trapeze; an acrobatic Chinese ballerina pirouetting on top of her partner; jazzed-up juggling twins from America; Russians springing skyward from their Russian barre; a talented troupe of Italian dogs; and the breathtaking exploits of Big Apple Circus equestrians vaulting onto galloping horses." And if that's not enough for you, they'll send in the clowns led by BAC veteran Grandma. The inventive set is by 2008 Tony Award winner (for August: Osage County) Todd Rosenthal. | City Hall Plaza, Boston | 888.541.3750 | April 4–May 10 | Performance times vary | $20-$65; $100 premium seating weekends and Patriots Week
A BRONX TALE | Oscar nominee Chazz Palminteri comes to town fresh from the successful Broadway reprise of the 1989 one-man show that became the 1993 film in which Palminteri starred with Robert De Niro. In the stage version, here directed by four-time Tony winner Jerry Zaks, the actor plays 18 characters as he re-creates his tough 1960s childhood in the New York neighborhood of the title. | Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston St, Boston | 800.982.ARTS | March 31–April 5 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues-Thurs [except Wed at 7 pm] | 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7:30 pm Sun | $35-$81 | Sara Faith Alterman's preview in "TJI," page 6
THE CHERRY ORCHARD | Phoenix contributor Steve Vineberg is at the helm of this College of the Holy Cross department of theatre production of Chekhov's masterpiece about the demise of the Russian gentry and some prime real estate. | Fenwick Theatre, O'Kane Hall, College of the Holy Cross campus, Worcester | 508.793.2496 | March 26–April 4 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Sat | $10; $7 Holy Cross community
EVERY BROOM AND BRIDGET — EMILY DICKINSON AND HER SERVANTS | Film and stage actor Peter Berkrot is at the helm of poet Tom Daley's play, which, set in Amherst on the day of Emily Dickinson's burial, explores the relations between the poet and her Irish servants. Based on Dickinson's writings as well as on "historical documents," the show seeks to convey "the complexity of the attitudes — sometimes affectionate, sometimes resentful — of the Dickinsons' Irish-Catholic staff toward their well-to-do Protestant employers." | Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre, 820 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 617.256.8242 | April 4 | Curtain 7:30 pm Sat | $10; $8 students, seniors, unemployed
THE FIRST [W]RITES SERIES | In Vivo Productions and Cambridge Center for Adult Education team up for this new play-reading showcase. This installment presents portions of Incubation Period, a new comic tragedy by Hortense Gerardo. | Cambridge Center for Adult Education Blacksmith House, 56 Brattle St, Cambridge | 617.547.6789 x 1 | March 28 | Curtain 8 pm Sat | $10
