Theater Minis

OPENING

• Grace — Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. An empty Florida condo, three dead bodies, police sirens blaring, a frenzied knocking at the door. Is this a pulp crime drama or God’s fateful hand at work? Opens Monday at the Warehouse Theater. 800/494-8497.

• Guilty Until Proven Innocent — Warner Theatre. Krissy, an affluent young lady in her mid-20s, puts her heart on trial when she falls in love with a troubled thug named Pookie. Opens Tuesday. 202/783-4000.

• The Highest Yellow — Signature Theatre. Vincent van Gogh, suffering from delirium and a self-inflicted knife wound, is admitted to hospital in Arles in December 1888 and endures an intense period of self-discovery. Opens Tuesday. 703/218-6500.

• The Light of Excalibur — Kennedy Center Theater Lab. A twisted version of the classic tale wherein a young Arthur is paired with a modern-day computer whiz in his quest for the kingdom. Opens tomorrow. 202/467-4600.

• One Good Marriage, A Simple Tale of Glorious Grief — Metro Stage. A couple celebrating their first wedding anniversary has a chilling secret that binds them together for life. Opens tonight. 800/494-8497.

• The Pangea Projects — Theatre Alliance. Four world-premiere plays by up-and-coming writers. Sunday and Monday only at the H Street Playhouse. 800/494-8497.

NOW PLAYING

• Anna in the Tropics — Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage — ****. The catalyst of Nilo Cruz’s voluptuous, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, about the startling effect words have on a group of Cuban-American cigar factory workers in Florida in the 1920s, is Juan Julian (the princely Jason Manuel Olazabal). The plant’s new “lector,” who reads aloud to the workers as they bunch tobacco and roll cigars, he chooses the bodice-ripper “Anna Karenina” as his first effort, unaware of how this book will ignite passions both grand and violent in the men and women. The play is an orgy of language, with metaphors that accrete like the finest silk lingerie. The actors capture the tone perfectly. Sometimes the prose gets purplish, but for the most part, you just lie back and think of Cuba. Through Nov. 21. 202/488-3300. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• Blithe Spirit — Olney Theatre Center for the Arts — **. Noel Coward’s caustic comedies should go down like a faultlessly mixed dry martini. This production is closer to a warm shot of Gatorade. The play itself is a tart honey, full of razored dialogue and airy sophistication, about a novelist researching the occult at an English country estate who sits in on a seance that calls up his first wife, who decides to linger — a stay that wreaks havoc on the writer’s second marriage. The play depends for its success on a certain daffy insouciance that’s lacking here — in spite of fine performances by Kate Goehring as the spirit Elvira, naughty and lighter than air, and Halo Wines as the minxish and kooky medium, Madame Arcati. Olney’s staging of “Blithe Spirit” remains doggedly earthbound, haunted by the presence of what might have been. Through Nov. 7. 301/924-3400. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• Bunnicula — Imagination Stage — ***. Bunnicula is the fearsome “vampire bunny” that arrives in the Monroe household to the consternation of the family dog and cat. With cape-like black markings on his back, with beady, burning eyes and teeth more Bela than Bugs, the rabbit springs open the doors of his cage at night and preys on innocent salad fixings. The erudite and thoughtful resident animals’ comic attempts to warn the family provide much of the fun of this nicely scary play, a Halloween treat. Jon Klein’s adaptation of the literate and wry children’s book by Deborah and James Howe reaches a wide range of ages without dumbing down the sophistication of the original text. Through Nov. 7. 301/280-1660. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• Macbeth — The Shakespeare Theatre — **. “Macbeth” charts the trajectory of the former “brave knight” (Patrick Page) who quickly goes from hailed loyal nobleman to reviled psychopathic tyrant after he is seized by a “vaulting ambition” — the result of the weird sisters’ prophecy and some shrewd goading by his wife (Kelly McGillis). Sets, shadow play and costumes make this a dazzling production. Beyond the purely visual, it’s respectable but not greatly involving. With its cool, modern Danish sensibilities, this staging presents a portrait of ruthless ambition that attracts the eye but gives emotions the brush-off. Through Sunday. 202/547-1122. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• The Matchmaker — Ford’s Theatre — **. Embracers of modernism might find Thornton Wilder’s play — set in the 1880s, written in 1954 and the basis for the hit musical and movie “Hello, Dolly!” — redolent of mothballs. It’s sweet and well-intentioned, but full of drab spots that make the show gently narcotic. The widow Dolly Levi (Andrea Martin), an amiable but entrepreneurial busybody and matchmaker, sets up the lively milliner Irene Molloy (Sarah Zimmerman) with Horace Vandergelder (Jonathan Hadary), a miserly dry-goods scion from Yonkers, then decides she wants Horace for herself. Miss Martin is a gifted comedian; her Dolly is bossy and outsized, with a love of life. As Horace, Mr. Hadary has the bluster down pat but appears more uncertain in expressing the character’s vulnerabilities. There are some winning parts but few creative, unexpected moments. The play is sturdily nostalgic but hardly transcendent. Through Sunday. 202/347-4833. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• Tabletop — Round House Theatre — **. Rob Ackerman’s fitfully funny play portrays the insular world of the “tabletop” ad technicians — those camera tricksters who make “ice cream” out of mashed potatoes — with hectic, almost bruising comedy. The play does give us a glimpse into a world to which most of us are not privy, but its one-note extremism is wearing. Even the rhythms become predictable — hissy fit, recovery, hissy fit, recovery. For a play lambasting our culture’s preference for image over substance, “Tabletop” comes off as oddly shallow, as pea-brained as the people and the industry it portrays. Through Oct. 31. 240/644-1100. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS