You’re setting the energy level pretty high when you blast a Dick Dale surf-guitar version of “Hava Nagila” before the lights even go down. My expectations were high, too, for the first night of University of Michigan Department of Dance’s four-day Dancing Globally event (Feb. 1-4).

British playwright Nick Payne’s celebrated two-person play Constellations deals with quantum multiverses: multiple universes in which many different outcomes can come from the same, or a similar starting point. But don’t worry, you don’t need a Ph.D. in theoretical physics to understand and love the play, which is at Theatre Nova until Feb. 18.

Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on at the Encore Musical Theatre in Dexter as the way-back machine takes us to Dec. 4, 1956, when Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash came together for the first and last time as a quartet.

The Colin Escott-Floyd Mutrux jukebox musical The Million Dollar Quartet is less a historically accurate presentation of that day than an all out celebration of these four seminal figures in the history of rock 'n' roll and Sam Philips, owner of Memphis’ Sun Records and their mentor, producer and father figure (though only a few years older).

Titling a play Flint may seem somewhat presumptuous after all that's gone down in the beleaguered city in recent years. How could one summarize the city's water crisis and the devastation it's caused Flint residents in an 80-minute show? But playwright Jeff Daniels rises to the challenge impressively with his new show, currently making a world-premiere run through March 10 at his Purple Rose Theatre Company (PRTC).

Daniels' wisest decision -- and the main reason the show works as well as it does -- is to go very, very small and very, very personal in approaching an issue that has rocked thousands of peoples' lives. Flint follows two couples, one white and one black, in the latter couple's kitchen as they laugh, drink, fight, and contemplate bleak futures, all in a mostly uninterrupted stretch of real time.

“What does it mean to see?” --Jillian Walker

Speculative Histories was a Dr. Martin Luther King Day Jr. event sponsored by University Musical Society as part of its No Safety Net festival. Hosted at the Ann Arbor District Library's downtown branch, award-winning playwright and UMS Research Residency artist Jillian Walker led a workshop that invited participants to engage with history in a way that may be new to them.

The three-week-long theater festival No Safety Net presented by the University Musical Society (UMS) will showcase four productions that focus on important and divisive social issues in modern society, from slavery and terrorism to transgender identity, radical wellness, and healing.

So, what do the four pieces in No Safety Net have in common?

On Friday, Jan. 12, the Brooklyn-based dance company Urban Bush Women performed Hair and Other Stories at the Power Center courtesy of University Musical Society. The show uses black women’s relationship to their hair to explore larger truths about the society we live in. I am neither particularly fluent in the world of dance performance, nor am I deeply entrenched in the dance world. I am most accurately described as an enthusiastically casual appreciator.

I am, however, well versed in black hair culture. 

This is probably why I should have known that the audience would be expected somehow to participate in the experience. 

Black hair is a contact sport. 

Once you learn that someone has an “adventure tiki room” in his own home -- well, let’s just say it’s not so surprising to learn this same person was inspired to direct an Ann Arbor Civic Theatre production of Nell Benjamin’s comedy The Explorers Club.

“(My adventure tiki room) is very empty right now,” said Brodie Brockie. “Pretty much everything is on the stage.”

The Arthur Miller Theatre’s stage, to be exact, where this weekend audiences will be transported to an exotic gathering spot for male adventurers in 1879 London. The Explorers Club, which had its Off-Broadway premiere in 2013, tells the story of what happens when a gutsy female explorer, Phyllida Spotte-Hume, crashes the club, with a non-English-speaking tribesman from a “lost city” in tow.

The University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society (UMGASS) is one of campus's most venerable and long-lived community arts organizations, and they can be counted on to produce two excellent classic operettas each year. This term, they've taken on Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant; not one of Gilbert & Sullivan's most popular works, but just as delightful and witty as ever.

Directed by David Andrews, a cast of UMGASS regulars and some campus rising stars come together this weekend to stage this story of betrothal, education, evolution, the military, tenure, cross-dressing, and generally singing "hoity-toity" a lot.

David Andrews chooses a setting mostly contemporary to the 1884 debut of Princess Ida and sticks pretty close to the script; there was one clearly added throwaway gag that got a big laugh. Whether this was improv or planned, it worked! U-M Freshman Alexandra Kzeski takes the title role, an unusually forthright and strong G&S heroine, who walls off 100 women in Castle Adamant to form a Women's College. Kzeski has the presence and power to pull off this role and shines in every scene. Christopher Kendall (playing one of the great G&S hero names, PRINCE HILARION) takes the male lead once again and continues to deliver; his mugging, lovestruck dopeyness, and powerful voice have become a staple of recent UMGASS productions.

I hope to see him in several more productions before he returns to his native Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwilliantysiliogogogoch in Wales. (Stunt Bios are always appreciated.) Some G&S works are powered by pairs, but Princess Ida is heavy on trios, and the leads are joined by UMGASS regulars from the supporting cast to form some outstanding trios. Kendall is joined by his friends and sidekicks, Patrick Takata as Florian, and Sounak Raj Das as Cyril. These are very funny roles hilariously delivered; Takata, in particular, steals several scenes, and the three of them together just nail the back-to-back trios of the first act. Similarly, Ida's soldierly brothers, Arac, Guron, and Scynthius have some of the funniest moments in the production, and their deadpan, bass delivery, solid slapstick, and perfect dishevelment are a highlight. Guron is played by Stephan Lemmer, and Scynthius by Jeff Spindler, and Natan Zamansky as Arac does an outstanding job with the soldierly disrobing solo "This Helmet, I Suppose." UMGASS's stable of regulars is truly deep, including other wonderful performances from Don Regan and Phillip Rhodes as the warring kings, and lots of familiar faces in the chorus. UMGASS newcomer and U-M Alumna Elizabeth Mitchell as Lady Blanche and BGSU student Amanda Williams as Lady Psyche turn in excellent performances and keep the lady undergraduates in order. So, don't miss this brief chance to see one of Gilbert & Sullivan's most wry but underappreciated works at the Mendelssohn Theatre this weekend; where else can you hear heavenly voices sing that "Man Is Nature's Sole Mistake," and even better, that "Darwinian Man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved."

Eli Neiburger is Deputy Director of the Ann Arbor District Library and had no business being cast as Ralph Rackstraw in high school. Love levels all ranks, but it does not level them as much as that.

UMGASS presents Princess Ida, or, Castle Adamant, continues December 8, 9, and 10 at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre. Tickets are available at Brown Paper Tickets or at the door.

Violet is a musical that’s known both for its soaring gospel- and blues-infused score and for its social commentary about race relations. Originally written for Off-Broadway back in 1997, the show follows a young, facially disfigured Caucasian woman in 1964 who travels across the United States in the hopes of having her outward scars healed by a TV evangelist. Over the course of her journey, she meets and falls in love with an African-American man. “It’s about finding out who you are, accepting who you are, appreciating who you, and loving who you are. And then being able to navigate this world,” says Mark Madama, who is directing a production of Violet this weekend through the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, & Dance department.