The Neighborhood Theatre Group’s small, minimalist theater is an intimate space for what it calls an anthology play in four parts.

The seating is limited. The stage area is small. The audience is practically part of the scene.

All these limitations are a plus for a theater that emphasizes a tight story, engaged actors, and a very different theater experience, especially for a production like The Hotel Del Gado.

The anthology drama will conclude its two-weekend schedule March 14-16 at The Back Office Studio in Ypsilanti. 

Its four plays are set in a cheap, rundown hotel room. The time is the 1970s. The Neighborhood Theatre Group (NTG) co-founder and literary manager A.M. Dean created a conceit that many of the NTG plays will be set in a place called the Huron Valley Universe, drawing on the college towns of Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, and East Lansing.

Dark, steel gray walls loom ominously as the moody setting for Aaron Sorkin’s breakthrough, lacerating portrayal of a troubled military.

Sorkin’s A Few Good Men seems like just the right play at just the right time for the University of Michigan Department of Theatre and Drama's on-point production at the Power Center.

Director Geoff Packard writes in his program notes that he began to see the play through “a different lens with a new set of images in my mind.”

“Like many of you, I find myself grappling with a complicated relationship with America today, questioning who we are, who we’ve been and where we are headed as a nation,” he writes. “The world in the play, as I read it now, is no longer the hopeful vision I once imagined. It has become grayer, darked and more monolithic.”

Imagine a time in the near future when scientists develop a procedure that will allow some people to become near immortals.

Lisa Sanaye Dring’s play Kairos is an interesting idea but her real subject is how precarious relationships can become when threatened.

Theatre Nova is presenting Kairos as part of the National New Play Network Rolling World Review, which includes stagings by other theater companies in Cincinnati and Los Angeles.

Kairos doesn’t begin as a sci-fi thriller. The challenge of immortal life is offered up as a unique test of human relations. So the play opens not with mad scientists but with two people looking for love.

It begins when two drivers have a minor car accident, which opens the door to romance. David and Gina are in their early 30s. David is black, Gina is white. David is attracted to Gina and she’s interested in learning about him, and so begins their sometimes blissfully happy and sometimes darkly unhappy relationship. Dring tells their story in a series of short vignettes.

Funerals can be sad, yes, but they can also be funny and even life-changing.

The Purple Rose Theatre is presenting the Michigan premiere of Eric Feffinger’s Fourteen Funerals, a very funny comedy with a very serious look at friendship, family, and life from the perspective of two very different women from two very different places.

Sienna is a young Chicago woman with aspirations of becoming a published writer. She has received a confusing call to come to small town Blissfield, Indiana, to present a eulogy for a relative she’s never met. She’s intrigued, she’s curious, she needs money, she needs to escape from Chicago if just for a day. But when she arrives she’s informed that 14 relatives have all died in an explosion of fireworks and she must give a eulogy for all of them at 14 separate funerals.

Millie is the funeral director’s daughter who has asked her to come. Millie is a young woman who loves Blissfield and hates Blissfield. But she’s ever optimistic. She’s learning all the ins and outs of being a funeral director. She’s funny, even a little goofy and leary about the woman from the city.

It’s been a nerve-wracking year.

The country is divided. Americans say they’re pessimistic about the future, even those who voted for a change in the White House.

Could a little girl be just what we need to make us more optimistic about our future and see that we always have tomorrow?

The Encore Theatre seems to think so and is offering the perfect Christmas musical that just might provide a little lift in our spirits, Annie.  Director Daniel Cooney draws together an excellent cast, combining seasoned stage veterans to young performers giving seasoned performances.

Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire received two 2023 Tony Awards and won rave reviews for his musical adaptation of his play Kimberly Akimbo. In 2007 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Rabbit Hole.

Director Gary Lehman is taking audiences back to a much earlier Lindsay-Abaire play, but one that combines humor with a dark undertone. PTD Productions in Ypsilanti is presenting Fuddy Meers through August 24 at the River Arts Center in Ypsilanti.

At the center of Fuddy Meers is Claire. Every morning Claire wakes she doesn’t know who she is, where she is, and how she got that way. A man who claims to be her husband explains the situation to Claire. The husband and her rebellious teenage son help fill in some of the gaps and tell that she will learn a lot during the day but lose all again at night. 

While the husband takes a shower, a masked man with a limp, a deformed ear, and part of a pair of handcuffs rushes to Claire’s bedroom and tells her that he’s her brother and is taking her to her mother’s house.

Playwright Carey Crim has conjured up a rollicking, raunchy and, at times, revealing comedy about summer, friendship and the perils of Michigan outdoors.

The Purple Rose Theatre is presenting the world premiere of Crim’s What Springs Forth. 

Director Kate Thomsen and her four-women cast serve up a comedy that combines more than a bit of raunch, expertly executed physical comedy, some quiet reflection on unfulfilled dreams, and most importantly, the strength of female bonding.

As the play begins, two women are driving up to meet their other bestie who has invited them to enjoy Michigan outdoors. Sallie Ben and Robyn are imagining a posh spa, invigorating massages, and quiet walks on a summer evening. 

That would be a great weekend away from Robyn’s rambunctious boys and Sallie’s troubled daughter. 

Of course, it doesn’t work out that way.

The Encore Theatre’s artistic director and co-founder Daniel Cooney takes the helm of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s game-changing and beloved musical Oklahoma and has given it a youth infusion.

Just down the road from Dexter is the University of Michigan’s School of Music and Theatre with some of the most talented young performers anywhere, many of them bound for Broadway and Hollywood. The Encore has a group of excellent actors who perform at the highest level. Put them together and the result is magical.

From the moment a swaggering Curly greets Aunt Eller with the rousing declaration, "Oh, what beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day" we get the idea that we will be given a jolt of boundless energy. The electricity never flags.

Oklahoma opened on Broadway in 1943. It was the first of an unprecedented run of hit musicals. Rodgers' music and Hammerstein’s book and lyrics dominated Broadway for the next 20 years. Hammerstein stepped in to write the book and lyrics after Rodger’s long-time lyricist, the brilliant but troubled Lorenz Hart, declined to participate and suggested Hammerstein as a replacement. 

An ambitious, idealistic young American woman with an engineering degree comes to Kenya with a dream of building a four-lane highway and helping Kenyans move forward. She has financial support and encouragement from the Kenyan government but this is her first time in Africa and she has a lot to learn.

She’s hired a young Kenyan man to drive her and they quickly develop a friendship. She values his knowledge and he is offered a rare opportunity to be involved in the project.

This is the plot of Will Snider’s play Death of a Driver, an examination of just how complicated it is to communicate across the historic, cultural, and fiercely political landscape of post-colonial Africa. 

Theatre Nova is presenting the Michigan premiere of Snider’s one-act play through June 9. 

The engineer and her driver form a close bond. They like each other, they are attracted to each other but they are from two different worlds. Snider tells the story in a series for vignettes across 18 years from 2002 to 2020. 

David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross is about double-dealing, backstabbing, power plays, American striving, and the rage of real estate salesmen in a heartless Chicago, circa 1980s. 

It’s also about language—Mamet’s sharp, snappy, multi-layered, and riveting symphony of words. They call it “Mamet-speak,” a mastery of street language, the language of the locker room, the real estate office, the street, and a perfect voice for the raging anger and dashed hopes of his characters.

It’s not an easy language to master. PTD Productions has taken the challenge in a lively production of Glengarry Glen Ross under the direction of Liz Greaves-Hoxsie. 

The first act is set in a Chinese restaurant near the real estate office. It’s a set of three one-sided dialogues each fueled by alcohol and grievance.