African American Trailblazers,“ a series of vignettes about native Virginians who left a lasting legacy to the world, would have been the second production of the 2008-09 season for the African American Repertory Theatre. But the company’s production of August Wilson’s “Fences,“ scheduled for last November, had to be canceled because of the sudden illness of founding director Derome Scott Smith.

Some things are right about Henley Street Theatre Company’s production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.“ This is the 1963 adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel by Dale Wasserman, who died last month, and it’s an interesting choice as Henley Street’s entry in the 2009 Acts of Faith Festival. Randle Patrick McMurphy, Kesey’s anarchic con man, is compared to Jesus for bucking the system and trying to lead the oppressed out of their suffering, and for being persecuted.

Although it was not considered a box-office success, Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life” has become a Christmas classic. At the Barksdale Theatre, starting Nov. 28 and running through Jan. 11, the film classic takes on new life as a stage production.

If bluegrass gospel warms your soul at holiday time, you can go on out to the Gospel Chicken House, or you can stop in to “Sanders Family Christmas” at Hanover Tavern. The latter is Connie Ray’s sequel to “Smoke on the Mountain,“ which was a big hit for Barksdale at the Tavern a year and a half ago. With musical arrangements by John Foley and Gary Fagin and several original songs by Alan Bailey, who conceived the show, “Sanders Family Christmas” is a welcome reunion.

Amusing, poignant, and sometimes illogical, playwright Sarah Ruhl’s romantic comedy, “The Clean House,“ is a delicate balance of reality, the esoteric and the mystical. Reality is an actual historical reference to William Stewart Halstead, a prominent American surgeon credited with the invention of sterile surgical procedures and the surgical glove. Ruhl maneuvers this into an analogy for love.

There is no creature loves me, and if I die, no soul shall pity me,“ mourns the lame king with the hump and the withered arm. But it’s his withered soul and crippled conscience that make people hate the manipulative King Richard III. Henley Street Theatre Company opens its second season with Shakespeare’s history play about the 15th-century monarch, and director James Ricks has chosen a modern setting with an emphasis on politics. Shakespeare’s Richard is bitter and twisted, plotting his ascension to the throne of England by whatever means. He is willing to lie and cheat and dissemble, so Ricks inserts videos that mimic political commercials and Sunday-morning news programs that highlight Richard’s management of how he is perceived.

Nostalgia is the first emotion elicited by “Driving Miss Daisy”—nostalgia for the play’s period, the post-World War II years up through the civil-rights era, and for the 1987 play itself. Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work pointedly and touchingly looks at race relations in the South by focusing on one well-to-do elderly Jewish widow and one slightly less elderly black man.

Sometimes a snafu is an opportunity in disguise. Such was the case earlier this year, when Bruce Miller, artistic director of the Barksdale Theatre, and Carol Piersol, founding artistic director of the Firehouse Theatre Project, realized that both companies were planning to mount “The Clean House,“ a comedy by acclaimed young playwright Sarah Ruhl.