You could point out to fans of 'A Christmas Story' that cherished holiday films almost never work onstage. You might also tell a kid who dreams of owning a Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot Range Model air rifle that he’ll shoot his eye out. Some warnings are destined to fall on deaf ears. So expect full houses this month at Covedale Center for the Performing Arts, where Ralphie, played with a pro’s confidence by local seventh-grader Michael Van Schoik, once again sets out to foil the skeptics.  

You could point out to fans of 'A Christmas Story' that cherished holiday films almost never work onstage. You might also tell a kid who dreams of owning a Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot Range Model air rifle that he'll shoot his eye out. Some warnings are destined to fall on deaf ears. So expect full houses this month at Covedale Center for the Performing Arts.  

Brains trump beauty in 'Cinderella,' now playing at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, where every December another familiar fairy tale gets a fun musical makeover. This year's installment features a philosophy-loving heroine (exceptional homegrown talent Brooke Rucidlo) in local playwright Joe McDonough's clever script.  

This gleeful hour of stage calamities, conceived by Minneapolis-based partners Ryan Lear and Rachel Petrie, was the breakout hit of the 2010 Cincy Fringe Festival. Cleverly constructed, sharply written and hilariously performed, it's a simultaneous celebration and lampoon of all that is sacred and silly in the histrionic realm. Opens Dec. 6 at Know Theatre and continues through Dec. 14.  

Brains trump beauty in 'Cinderella,' now playing at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, where every December another familiar fairy tale gets a fun musical makeover. This year's installment features a philosophy-loving heroine (exceptional homegrown talent Brooke Rucidlo) who calls her critter sidekicks Plato, Socrates and Aristotle (a toad, spider and crow, respectively; no cute rodents in this intellectual menagerie) while dividing her days between books and chores.  

Team spirit is what Professor Harold Hill is really selling to the people of River City, Iowa. And 'The Music Man,' now at the Aronoff's Jarson-Kaplan Theater thanks to Cincinnati Music Theatre, has more esprit de corps in its piccolo-playing pinkie fingers than you might find in the entire bodies of a real brass band.   

Team spirit — that's what Professor Harold Hill is really selling to the people of River City, Iowa. Not a Sousa march or a "think system" or moral uplift for the town's pool-hall-imperiled youth. And 'The Music Man,' now at the Aronoff's Jarson-Kaplan Theater thanks to Cincinnati Music Theatre (CMT), has more esprit de corps in its piccolo-playing pinkie fingers than you might find in the entire bodies of a real brass band.  

Abraham Van Helsing insists all men are madmen. This theory might help explain why, as hard as he works to kill Count Dracula — garlic, crucifixes, the nasty business of turning the Nosferatu torso into a Transylvanian shish kabob — theatre artists work even harder, October after October, to bring the vampire back to life. It’s an insane exercise. Bram Stoker’s epistolary 1897 novel resists dramatization almost as strenuously as the undead might resist a dunking in holy water.  

Abraham Van Helsing insists all men are madmen. This theory might help explain why, as hard as he works to kill Count Dracula, theater artists work even harder, October after October, to bring the vampire back to life. Cincinnati Shakespeare breathes life into Steven Dietz's smart, well-paced script, with Giles Davies' hungrily elegant turn in the title role.  

Somewhere in playwright Theresa Rebeck's past there must have been screwed-up theater colleagues, or maybe the professional disasters and personal heartbreaks captured so hilariously and affectingly in 'The Understudy' are simply the products of her rich imagination. Either way, the Cincinnati Playhouse production has a real ring of authenticity. Through Oct. 17.