At the Table If there’s one thing that’s rarely in short supply at storefront theater, it’s new plays that follow the Big Chill template: classmates and old buds reunite in adulthood for drinks, memories, arguments, and unexpected self-examination. Michael Perlman’s 2015 script, about friends who surrender their smartphones at the door of a vacation home during two separate weekends, largely follows that tried-and-true format. But Broken Nose Theatre’s version, retooled by Perlman and director Spenser Davis, reflects changes in casual conversations since the 2016 presidential race and election. The result is subtle and brilliant: over weed and whiskey, Robert Altman-style conversations about social issues, relationships, politics, and adulthood collide in unforeseen ways, working wonders out of what’s often a stale formula. —Dan Jakes
Love’s Labor’s Lost Shakespeare’s jest fests can get annoying, what with everybody competing so hard to win points for repartee—and this early romantic comedy is as jest-festy as they get. But it’s also remarkable for the ways in which it refuses to act like a conventional rom-com. When the King of Navarre’s courtiers let infatuation get ahead of honor, love neither conquers nor forgives all. Marti Maraden’s gorgeous, compassionate staging brings out these off-tones, highlighting not only the nobles’ hypocrisy but their offhand cruelty. There’s a deep resonance in the moment when an old pedant, teased like the rude mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, tells his supposed betters, “This is not generous, not gentle, not humble.” Maraden’s cast works gracefully under the tree-limbed canopy of Kevin Depinet’s equally graceful set, with Allen Gilmore making himself especially vivid as a fantastical Spaniard. —Tony Adler
Nameless Mountains This Accomplice Theatre production is a story of boredom, misery, and bad weather set at a Podunk brothel in Canada during the gold rush. The girls are tired of the blizzard; upstairs, Ginny (Megan Donahue) diddles the night away in bed with playmate Emmeline (Courtney Abbott). Suddenly, Ginny’s husband Charles (Jake Kaufman), thought to have been shot dead, rumbles in, dusts off his boots, and asks his stunned wife to please come home . . . now! She’s gotta cleave to him, he says, ’cause that’s what wives are for: cleaving. Trouble is, Ginny’s been cleaving to every gold-digging john in the Klondike—and to Emmeline, too. Doesn’t matter, he says: you’re my wife, you do what I say! And so on. Their fighting is monotonous and takes up almost half the play, which despite some wonderfully blase acting (Laura Coleman, Chelsea David) is dull and sentimental. —Max Maller
