Don’t go thinking this show has anything to do with the holidays, and despite the fact that some fourth-graders light its political fuse when their teacher replaces a holiday pageant with a script that references a possible gay relationship involving the 16th president, this is not a show for kids. Who is it for? I’m not really sure, although some at the opening performance found it hilarious.  

Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, now at Covington’s Carnegie Center in a production by the drama program at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music, has a current running through it. The production is warm, bright and slightly shocking.  

Whatever else, it requires bravery for a photographer to wander around abandoned buildings, subway stations, wave pools and other derelict remnants of the built environment. Vince Geier of Northside, who died in June at age 37, had it. His friend Cathy Heil, who accompanied him (and others) into Detroit’s massive Michigan Central (Railroad) Station, empty since 1988, can attest to that.   

Stephen Schwartz’s Wizard of Oz-inspired musical about the green witch has become a cultural icon for adolescent girls who yearn for freedom and success. Thousands, with or without their families, will flock downtown between now and Thanksgiving weekend, and they won’t be disappointed.  

Last week the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park announced that Blake Robison, currently the producing artistic director at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md., will become its next artistic director, succeeding Ed Stern, who retires after 20 years a the end of the current season.   

Alice Childress (1920-1994) didn’t get much recognition during her lifetime. She won acclaim as an actress in the 1940s but was dissatisfied with stereotyped roles, so she began writing plays. Trouble in Mind, presented in 1955, made her the first woman to win an OBIE award, but it never landed on to Broadway and was forgotten for years. Thanks to a prescient artistic decision, Northern Kentucky University chose the show for this season.   

When Andrew Carnegie mapped out plans for libraries across America — including one now serving as the Carnegie Center in Covington — he probably never envisioned one of them as a venue for a play about issues of love and sexuality in the 1880s. But that’s what’s happening at the Carnegie (Nov. 4-20) when Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play is presented.  

This show reunites actors Beth Harris and Jens Rasmussen with director Drew Fracher; a year ago they created Skin Tight, the best production of Know’s previous season. If subsequent shows are as gripping and off-kilter as this one in which humor and pathos constantly elbow one another, Know will deliver on its annual promise of edgy theater.   

Michael Hollinger’s Opus was a hit for ETC in 2007; Ghost-Writer recently won a Barrymore Award as the best new play in Philadelphia. It’s as much a meditation for writers as for theater lovers, but both should enjoy this thoughtful work.  

The promotional material for the Cincinnati Art Museum’s new Art Deco: Fashion & Design in the Jazz Age does something I haven’t seen before in the world of art-museum marketing: It headlines, “From the Curator that brought you Wedded Perfection.” Pop culture does that a lot — “from the director of Jaws” — but fine-arts institutions?