Nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Best Music, Adrift in Macao is a hilarious musical parody of classic film noirmovies. Everyone who comes to Macao, China in 1952 is waiting for something, and though none of them knows exactly what that is, they hang around to find out. The characters include your film noir standards, like Laureena, the curvaceous blonde, who luckily bumps into Rick Shaw, the cynical surf-and-turf casino owner her first night in town. Then along comes Mitch, the American who has just been framed for murder by the mysterious villain “McGuffin.” With songs and quips, puns and farcical shenanigans, this musical parody is bound to please audiences of all ages.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Seascape is a major work by one of America’s most well-known and influential playwrights. On a deserted beach, a couple talks idly about home, family, and their life together as they near retirement. Then, suddenly, they are joined by two sea creatures who have risked leaving the ocean depths to come ashore. Initial fears and suspicions are soon replaced by curiosity. Before long, the humans and the creatures are engaged in a funny, fascinating dialogue. As the creatures face the terrifying prospect of life ashore, the humans are forced to contemplate their own emotional and mortal realities. Albee’s play is filled with warmth, humor, poetic eloquence, along with emotional and intellectual reverberations that will linger in the heart and mind long after the play has ended.

This musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest “in the spirit of Gilbert and Sullivan” is making its world premiere at TheatreWorks. In 1895, the world-famous theatrical team of Gilbert and Sullivan fell apart. The partnership apparently over for good, composer Arthur Sullivan immediately began searching for a new librettist and quickly found Mr. Wilde, who had just completed an extraordinary new play that seemed the ideal piece to set to music…well, you know the name! If Gilbert and Sullivan hadn’t ultimately reconciled, this “what if” scenario of a Wilde-Sullivan collaboration provides audiences with a delightfully charming and frothy musical comedy.

Set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland in 1934, The Cripple of Inishmaan is a strange comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling. As word arrives on Inishmaan that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighboring island of Inishmore to film Man of Aran, the one person who wants to be in the film more that anybody is young Cripple Billy, a boy whose chief occupation has been gazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. Filled with a cast of extraordinary characters and unexpected plot turns, The Cripple of Inishmaan promises to take the audience along on Cripple Billy’s crazy journey of hope and discovery.

Winner of the 2008 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, Boeing Boeing is a hilarious, door-slamming farce. Bernard, an American architect living in 1960s Paris, successfully juggles three flight attendant fiancées: one American, one German, and one Italian. He tracks their schedules while his long-suffering housekeeper reluctantly plays romantic air controller as they fly in and out of his swank bachelor pad. But when his old college pal, Robert, visits unexpectedly, things turn a tad turbulent. Unfortunately for Bernard, a faster Boeing jet has been introduced. Schedules change, flights are delayed, and chaos ensues in this hysterical, high-flying fiancée fiasco!