It’s Sept. 3, 1939. The father of psychoanalysis, Dr. Sigmund Freud, has invited to his London flat a young scholar of literature and theology from Oxford, C. S. Lewis.   

Good theater can result from good stories, good writing, good acting or good directing. All are in evidence in Ensemble Theatre's 25th season opener, 'Collected Stories,' which was a Pulitzer finalist in 1997, was filmed for PBS in 2002 and had a Broadway revival earlier this year. ETC's production is its local premiere.  

Lynn Meyers' intuition for audience-pleasing productions continues its unerring course at Ensemble Theatre with this musical about four young women who have dreams and hopes and keep striving for them. The Wonderettes of Act I are a high-school girl group who get to sing at their 1958 prom when a boy group gets into some teenage trouble; in Act II, a decade later, they're back for a reunion.  

Imagine one of René Magritte's paintings brought to fulminous, razzle-dazzle life. That's Sarah Ruhl's highly, wryly comic new play, 'Dead Man’s Cell Phone.' Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati offers this regional premiere in a well conceived but mostly impenetrable production directed by Michael Evan Haney and brilliantly designed by Brian c. Mehring.  

It's back ... that musical with the mouthful name that kicked up so much excitement last summer at the 2008 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati bills Richard Oberacker's and Robert Taylor's no-plot, no-dialogue, five-person fantasia on parenting production as a premiere, and considering the changes that's close to true.