The romantic comedy I Love You Because takes its cues from a Jane Austen classic

Syracuse Stage’s Caroline, or Change offers a unique musical perspective on 1960s-era civil rights

The spirit of poet Ralph Waldo Emerson inhabits a blue-collar joe in the comedy Call Me Waldo

Two aging women find themselves during an India trip in the Redhouse’s A Perfect Ganesh

Four couples straddle three boudoirs in Not Another Theater Company’s chatty Bedroom Farce

We’re not like the rest of the country, thankfully. The National Endowment for the Arts reports that attendance at live theater edged down nearly 1 percent in the last year, but that’s not what happened here. Syracuse Stage reported a strong spring and two hits in the fall.

Anyone who has followed Syracuse community theater for the last two decades will immediately recognize that Nuncrackers is another chapter in Dan Goggin’s ever-popular Nunsense franchise. Actually, it’s the third sequel IF IT’S THE THIRD, THAT WOULD MAKE IT THE SECOND SEQUEL; JUST SAYIN’ out of six, dating from around 1998. The title signals that there will be a partial spoof of the ballet The Nutcracker, and sure enough, that fills the frenzied 20 minutes before the first act’s curtain, although there are other musical parodies ranging from the Andrews Sisters to the Village People. And even though it does not contain holly, crèche figures, Scrooge or Santa, we know going in this is a Nunsense Christmas show. It’s also the holiday show from Encore Presentations at Jamesville’s Glen Loch restaurant.

Vaudeville comic Jimmy Durante used to howl, “Everybody wants to get into the act!” When that act is produced by the Appleseed Productions’ steering committee, just about everybody does get some moments on the boards.

Redhouse has been developing a new brand this season, and you can see how it’s working out in the current production of The Wiz. Ever since the company launched itself from what had once been Contemporary Theatre of Syracuse in 2004, we knew this would be a professional outfit.

the Chronicles of Narnia on stage was not an inevitable or easy choice. True, C.S. Lewis’ sevenvolume series of young adult novels has attracted millions of readers for 60 years. A movie adaptation of the first volume, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), was a box-office hit six Christmases ago.