Great plays live on because they contain memorable, complicated characters, and Hedda Gabler is one of the great female roles. Capital Stage is presenting this classic show, which even a century after it was written still packs a timely punch.

This show at the Sacramento Theatre Company is about the desperate poor and the moneyed elite living in London a century ago. It might sound somewhat Dickensian, but this show is actually a new musical getting its premiere production this month.

The bitter racial division of South Africa under apartheid inspired several plays, including one by playwright Athol Fugard now at the Sacramento Theatre Company. It depicts how state-sanctioned segregation damaged relationships and degraded society.

George Bernard Shaw is often rated as one of the great dramatists in the English language, but productions of his plays in Sacramento are rare. This month, California Stage is doing one of Shaw's early comedies.

Playwright Katori Hall grew up in Memphis, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Hall’s play imagines a conversation King might have had the night before he died. An award-winner in London, it's now playing at Capital Stage.

Edgy humor is very big on stages around Sacramento these days. But what strikes one person as bold, biting comedy could rub others the wrong way. Critic Jeff Hudson says one prime example is the current show at Sacramento’s B Street Theatre.

Two local theatre companies are mounting competing versions of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” They started with the same script, but each made different choices along the way, finding humor and drama in different places.

Conspiracy theories involving the Department of Homeland Security abound in this dark comedy now playing at Sacramento’s Capital Stage. Beyond the outrageous plot, one over-the-top performance supplies the bulk of the show's plentiful laughs.