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.   

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.  

Irving Berlin lived for more than a century (1888-1989) and his popular songs have outlasted even that incredible lifetime — including “God Bless America,” “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business” — so the current Covedale Center revue I Love a Piano (a title from another of his well known tunes) has a ready advantage with audiences of a certain age.   

I’ve seen As You Like It many times, but Ed Stern’s final directorial outing for the Playhouse (co-staged with Michael Evan Haney) distills its warmth and goodwill better than any I’ve previously witnessed. Stern has blessed Cincinnati audiences for 20 years, and this production is a wonderful gift of love and joy that will be remembered for years to come.  

There’s no doubt that Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is a show audiences have loved. It had 5,461 performances over 13 years, making it the eighth longest-running show in Broadway history. Based on the animated film with great musical numbers and done right, it’s a surefire crowd-pleaser. That’s pretty much what’s landed onstage at the Aronoff for a two-week run, with a young cast that’s full of enthusiasm.  

The title of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This suggests it will be inflammatory and tempestuous. Knowing that its original New York production starred John Malkovich and Joan Allen might heighten your expectation that a local production by New Edgecliff Theatre (NET) would pin you to the wall. Featuring Nathan Neorr’s energetic performance as the crazed Pale, a man hopped up on grief, drugs and booze (the role Malkovich inhabited in 1987), there’s potential for a riveting production.  

Astonishing: It’s what Jo March yearns to be, pacing in her attic, spinning gruesome, spectacular tales to take the publishing world by storm. But Louisa May Alcott, the real-life author the fictional Jo grew up to become, made her name not by startling readers but by moving them with a simple story of four New England sisters and their mother making the best of things in bad times.   

Cincinnati’s Riverfest fireworks once fired the starting gun for local theater, but already several theaters have shows onstage. This week Cincinnati’s major theaters open their first productions of 2011-2012, launching a fall offering an unusual number of award-winning shows.