OPENING
CRAVINGS: SONGS OF HUNGER & SATISFACTION | “Boston’s favorite cabaret artist Belle Linda Halpern” — well, she is a favorite — “takes a funny, intriguing, and profound Jewish-American look at our constant cravings: food, sex, acceptance, fame, and true nourishment.” And while she’s at it, she’ll be preparing the traditional Passover dish charoset. Sabina Hamilton directs; Ron Roy is the accompanist. | Central Square Theater, 450 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 866.811.4111 | October 8-25 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri-Sat | 2 pm Sun | $35; $25 seniors; $20 students
DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE | The Lyric Stage Company of Boston has Carmel O’Reilly to helm the Boston premiere of this 2008 Off Broadway hit by thirtysomething Pulitzer finalist Sarah Ruhl, contriver of the surreal fantasies The Clean House and Eurydice. Ruhl’s latest smash-up of life and death, profundity and whimsy, centers on a young woman drawn into the life of a stranger whose cell phone she answers — just after he’s bought the farm. | 140 Clarendon St, Boston | 617.585.5678 | October 16–November 15 | Curtain 2 pm [October 21, November 11] + 7:30 pm Wed | 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 3 + 8 pm Sat | 3 pm Sun | $25-$54
GIRLS NIGHT: THE MUSICAL | This girls’ night out — which got its start in Great Britain in 2003 and spread to the US in 2007 — “follows five friends in their 30s and 40s as they relive their past, celebrate their present, and look to the future on a wild and hilarious night out at a karaoke bar,” in the process singing “It’s Raining Men,” “I Will Survive,” “Lady Marmalade,” “We Are Family,” “Man I Feel like a Woman,” and “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” | Club Café, 209 Columbus Ave, Boston | 877.386.6968 | October 13–November 22 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues-Fri | 4 + 7:30 pm Sat | 3 pm Sun | $55
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 | October 10-24 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs [October 22] | 8 pm Fri [no October 23] | 2 pm [October 17, 24] or 8 pm [October 10] Sat | 7 pm [October 11] Sun | $7
THE LARAMIE PROJECT, 10 YEARS LATER. AN EPILOGUE. | Emerson Stage and the Celebrity Series of Boston present this look back at the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, as members of the Tectonic Theater Project, which created the original play, returned to Laramie in June of 2008 for a second round of interviews, talking with Shepard’s murderer and his mother and other townspeople. The cast of this free production will include Emerson students and “prominent members of the Boston community.” | Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St, Boston | 800.223.3123 | October 12 | Curtain 8 pm | Free
