Area audiences will have the chance to see something new — and yet perhaps familiar — when the Michigan State University Department of Theatre offers free performances of the semi-staged workshop of “Pump Up The Volume,” a musical adaptation of the 1990 Christian Slater film.

When the lights come up on the Holt Dimondale Community Players’ production of “Company,” it will be the realization of a dream for its star, Chad DeKatch.

In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are just bit players, roaming the edge of the story, never really getting their moment in the spotlight.

A legendary carol gets a rewrite in Riverwalk Theatre s The Five Golden Rings, which bows on the main stage Saturday.

By CHRISTOPHER HORB We seem to live in an age when uncouth behavior is showcased and celebrated across the reality-TV spectrum and audiences can t get enough of it. It s clear there is fun to be had in watching people behaving badly. That is exactly what director Chad Badgero is counting on.

Brian (Brian de Vries) and Stacey (Marianne Chan) have discovered that raising their two children has not been quite as satisfying as they had hoped it would be and it’s gotten in the way of their own ambitions.

“Sister” was written by Charles Busch, a Tony-winning playwright and female impersonator known for irreverent pop-culture-skewering shows like “Psycho Beach Party” and “Die! Mommy! Die!” Coming directly from an acclaimed off-Broadway run, “Sister”...

The play depicts a trio of World War I veterans (played by Gary Houston, Richard Marlatt and Richard Henzel) plotting to escape the confines of a military hospital. It was written by French playwright Gerald Sibleyras and has been translated and adapted by Tom Stoppard, one of Thatcher’s personal favorites.

Written by Albert Innaurato, “Gemini” unfolds in the backyard of a blue-collar Philadelphia neighborhood, circa 1973, where Francis Geminiani has returned home for his summer break from Harvard.

At first glance, it may seem that director Lisa Sodman Elzinga has murder on the brain. She is, after all, behind Riverwalk Theatre’s “Musical Comedy Murders of 1940,” which opens Thursday. And her previous effort was Starlight Dinner Theatre’s “A Murder Is Announced.”