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.

When you hear that ace female impersonator Jimmy Wachter is appearing as Judy Garland in a show about an imagined 1959 Christmas TV special with celebrity guests, you should expect a parade of good campy fun. And there is some of that. Then again, note the second word in the title: Judy’s Scary Little Christmas. We may never have heard before of authors James Webber and David Church, or composer-lyricist Joe Patrick Ward, who opened this show in Los Angeles nearly 10 years ago. But collectively their sensibility has much in common with movie director Tim Burton. If Judy’s fictional celebrity special had even taken place, it too could have been called The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Karis Wiggins channels the life of Texas journalist Molly Ivins in a witty solo showFirst they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.%u2

Most audiences will enter with the show’s premise well in hand. The Tuna of the title is a tiny burg in Texas, third smallest to have its own radio station, OKKK.

In Fuddy Meers, the current production from the Syracuse University Drama Department, our protagonist, sweet, sensible Claire (Jasmine Thomas), avers, “I don’t want to wake up with strangers.” Answering her is a listener of shifting identities, usually known as Limping Man (Max Miller), “That’s what you do every morning.