The good news is that “Thoroughly Modern Millie” is a relentless, nonstop period pastiche musical set in the Jazz Age and performed as if each actor’s life depended on it. The bad news is that “Thoroughly Modern Millie” is a relentless, nonstop period pastiche musical set in the Jazz Age and performed as if each actor’s life depended on it. Millie Dillmount arrives in New York City from small-town Kansas, circa 1922. She rips up her return ticket, only to have her purse, suitcase, and even her hat and one shoe stolen in broad daylight—but “Millie” is not about the terrors of the big city. There is a hilarious speak-easy scene, ending with all the participants spending the night in the pokey—but it’s not about Prohibition. She checks into a women’s hotel managed by a former actress whose sideline is white slavery, and there are two “Chinese” henchmen who assist in the abduction of orphaned guests—but it’s not about racism or any sort of political statement. It’s about having fun, and being silly, and falling in love, and having hope.

What favorite American comedy takes as its themes mental illness, elder abuse and serial murder? Why, “Arsenic and Old Lace,“ the 1941 Joseph Kesselring chestnut about two old ladies with a body in the window seat. This is the reliable farce about elderly sisters living in their family’s longtime Brooklyn home who like to dispatch lonely old men by serving them poisoned elderberry wine. They have three nephews: Mortimer, the drama critic for a New York newspaper; Teddy, who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt; and Jonathan, who has been away for a few decades but is back after a stint in an institution for the criminally insane.

The peak theatrical pleasure to be had in Richmond is back: summer Shakespeare at Agecroft Hall. It’s a happy mystery how hot, humid days can switch to cool evenings just as the Elizabethan verse gets going, but it seems to happen every time. This season’s opener is “Henry V,“ the culmination of three years pursuing the Henry cycle. James Alexander Bond has directed all three plays, and Phillip James Brown has played the younger Henry throughout, granting audiences a marvelous artistic continuity.

If you can remember when a paperback spy novel cost $4.95 and when telephones had dials and long cords, you are the right vintage for Neil Simon’s 1977 play “Chapter Two.“ But you don’t have to be that well-seasoned to appreciate the reliable humor and stinging pain with which Simon infused this semi-autobiographical comedy. Standing in for the playwright is George Schneider, a successful New York-based writer who pens the aforementioned spy novels for money and the occasional serious novel for artistic satisfaction. In his mid-40s, he has just lost his perfect, beloved wife of 12 years and is bereft.

If America could harness the vim that actress Audra Honaker brings to her latest gig, the country’s energy problems would be solved. In the Barksdale Theatre’s diverting production of Neil Simon’s comedy “I Ought To Be in Pictures,“ Honaker turbojets through the role of Libby, an eccentric 19-year-old who has barged in on the Hollywood home of her long-lost dad.

Altar Boyz” is still running at Swift Creek Mill Theatre, but there’s more going on there through the end of May: “Blues in the Night” is on stage when the Boyz are off. This is the 1980 Sheldon Epps revue with a cast of four covering more than two dozen blues songs, some more classic than others. We’re talking Bessie Smith blues, not Muddy Waters blues—sometimes brassy and bawdy, sometimes forlorn. Epps includes some interesting out-of-the box choices, too: Ann Ronel’s “Willow Weep for Me” and a haunting slow version of the jazz standard “Stompin’ at the Savoy.“

A modern Irish classic within 20 years of its first production, Brian Friel’s “Translations,“ first performed in 1980, is a tightly knit ensemble work that derives considerable dramatic action from the theme of change that tears at the fabric of the small community of Ballybeg. But it is ultimately, and more importantly, about language. “Translations” is a fitting stimulus for the intellect that raises relevant questions about language and culture, and about hegemony—one nation’s political and cultural dominance over another.

Think that “Annie” is just for kids? The 1977 powerhouse musical by Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin is a favorite of young audiences, surely, but rarely in its history has it seemed so appropriate for older ones as well. Theatre IV’s current production is big and stylish and full of fun—and loaded with Depression-era nostalgia that’s all too pertinent today. But being “Annie,“ the attitude is sunny, hopeful and positive—a real tonic for us veterans of bailouts and layoffs.

Things are a little off right from the beginning of “Well,“ the Lisa Kron play at Barksdale Theatre. There’s the nutty music—Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut,“ maybe a little Partridge Family—and that lady snoozing in the La-Z-Boy. Things get weirder when Jenny Hundley, playing Lisa (the playwright), starts to tell the audience about her mother, Ann, an “energetic person trapped in an exhausted body.“ Ann (she’s the one in the recliner) has long had something like chronic fatigue syndrome, but it didn’t keep her from founding and running a neighborhood organization that integrated her Lansing, Mich., neighborhood in the 1960s.

Building on its strengths, Derome Scott Smith’s African American Repertory Theatre revived the 1980’s off-Broadway to Hollywood hit “Steel Magnolias” with, apparently, few major changes since its last appearance in 2006. The all-female cast—which is true to the original 1987 production—is primarily focused on Shelby and her mother, M’Lynn, the former a young diabetic who determines to have a baby against medical advice, and her somewhat overbearing but truly loving Southern mother. But there are no stars in this tragicomedy; it is an ensemble effort with strong performances and meaty characters for all six of the cast members. If nothing else, this production proves that Southern is a culture and not a color.

It’s silly, and clever, and satirical and high-powered. I smiled so much I thought my face would hurt the next day. At Swift Creek Playhouse, “Altar Boyz”—the second Richmond-area based production of this musical this theater season (Richmond Triangle Players, Jan. 28-Feb. 21)—is rockin’ the house with its special style of boy-band Christian pop music.

It’s exciting to witness the birth of a new musical. How often does Richmond see a world premiere? The much-anticipated “Mona’s Arrangements” has opened at Hanover Tavern, and with modest ambition, it harks back to a time when peppy melodies and cute banter made for satisfying entertainment. It’s a collaboration between Bo Wilson, who wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics, and Steve Liebman, who wrote the music and shares the lyrics credit. Wilson’s program notes disclose that he conceived of the show as a vehicle in which his wife, Richmond stage favorite Jan Guarino, and the peripatetic Scott Wichmann could work together. And the production features another local powerhouse, Audra Honaker.

You know quality when you see it. Take a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, get a sensitive director and five refreshingly natural actors, and you can’t go wrong. That’s the recipe Firehouse Theatre Project used to whip up “Rabbit Hole,“ David Lindsay-Abaire’s lovely and heartbreaking 2006 play. It’s really a simple tale of a couple that has lost a child and how they are coping some months afterward. Not surprisingly, they’re not coping very well. And through artfully layered details we see the landscape of their bereavement, the missteps they and those who care about them make ceaselessly.

Flaws in ‘Steal Away’ undercut fine actresses Ramona King’s 1981 play “Steal Away” is subtitled “A Folktale” in its published version, but Sycamore Rouge’s new production of it has the wishful title “A Folk Comedy.“ It’s not very comical; rather, it’s a creakily concocted tale about some folks in Chicago during the Depression. Or, as folks are starting to call it, the First Depression.

How does “Children of a Lesser God,“ Mark Medoff’s 1980 Tony-winning play, fit as Barksdale Theatre’s offering for the Acts of Faith Festival? Its title comes from a Tennyson poem: “Why is all around us here/As if some lesser God had made the world/But had not force to shape it as he would,/Till the High God behold it from beyond/And enter it, and make it beautiful?“