THIS IS HOW IT GOES
Through: Nov. 21
Tickets: $10-$25
Info: (804) 355-2001 or http://www.firehousetheatre.org

Playwright Neil LaBute is known for exposing the bad behavior and bad motives that people like to hide. In plays such as “In the Company of Men” and “Fat Pig,“ his characters display the secret thoughts and cruelties that we suspect are lurking in the worst of us—if not in all of us. In “This Is How It Goes,“ the 2005 LaBute play now at Firehouse Theatre Project, there are breathtaking moments when the three main characters—who are in an interracial love triangle—reveal their racist, sexist, classist truths. Not breathtakingly beautiful, but breathtakingly ugly. And startlingly courageous in their way.

Howard Korder’s 1988 “Boys’ Life” is a mostly comic play about three 20-something guys wallowing in their immaturity. But there’s more to this Firehouse Theatre Project season opener than bad behavior. The play was nominated for a Pulitzer (it lost to “Driving Miss Daisy”). It’s an acid-tongued, gimlet-eyed look at three young men who lack direction and morality, but they’re not the guys Vince Vaughn plays in movies—they actually reveal rudimentary consciences and hints of depth.

Bootleg Shakespeare. A true story about a radium-poisoning scandal. A black comedy whose characters include a talking apartment and a ghostly Justin Timberlake. Those are some of the enticements that Richmond-area theaters will present in the 2009-10 season. Firehouse Theatre Project artistic director Carol Piersol might have been speaking for many company leaders when she said of her play-selection process, “I make a pile of plays that hit me in the gut - and then I try to get variety.“

Jase Smith is at it again. The 33-year-old director previously staged the eyebrow-raising extravaganzas “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant” and “Reefer Madness” for Richmond’s Firehouse Theatre Project. Now he has mounted another outrageous project: “The Great American Trailer Park Musical,“ running at the Firehouse through May 16.

Now the sun will shine, now we’ll be just fine, we have got the science of the mind.“ That’s the oft-repeated refrain from one of the songs in “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant,“ Firehouse Theatre Project’s twisted holiday offering. In Kyle Jarrow’s deadpan 2003 comedy (from a concept by Alex Timbers), 10 choir-robed kids illuminate the life of L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of Scientology.