It’s been a great year locally for playwrights William Van Zandt and Jane Millmore. Comedies by the self-styled “king and queen of New Jersey dinner theater” have flourished with Not Another Theater Company (You’ve Got Hate Mail, from last February) and the Talent Company (Wrong Window! from last April).

Offering comfort brings its own risks. At Syracuse Stage, a feature of producing artistic director Timothy Bond-era scheduling, often remarked upon in this space, is that one offering each season should be “comfort food”: that is, easily accessible, uplifting and familiar.

Polls numbers vary, but an even two-thirds, 66.6 percent, is about average. Some of our countrymen express their support with passionate enthusiasm. We heard this at the Sept. 7 Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., when Texas Gov.

Director Matt Chiorini makes the challenge, “It’s the funniest play about fascism you’ll see all year—or your money back,” during his curtain speech for Le Moyne College’s Boot and Buskin Theater Group production of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.

The Salt City Center for the Performing Arts brand, now 40 years old and without a permanent home, has actually been having a good year. Cathleen O’Brien’s electrifying Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Master Class, seen by minuscule audiences, was justly recognized by the Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) Academy at awards time.

The Bad Seed, with its premise of the cute little girl who is rotten to the core, is so familiar it’s most often seen these days in parody, such as Joel Paley and Marvin Laird’s Ruthless: The Musical.

Only two instances do not establish a pattern, but in his second original drama in less than 12 months, playwright Garrett Heater demarcates clear priorities with The Romanovs. He likes family dramas in which characters are defined in bouncing off each other in roles we all know intuitively: father, mother, children.

Even if its thwarted opening had not been such a scandal, Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock would still command attention. Not merely focused on the working classes, Cradle faces up to contemporary problems by championing labor unions at a time when industrial strife was spilling blood in the streets.

The action for The Turn of the Screw, Syracuse Stage’s season opener, begins with a prospective governess facing a tough job interview. A well-to-do gentleman is looking for someone to take care of an orphaned nephew and niece in a country home.

I ntimacy in live theater can be both an asset and a risk. The up-close and personal space of the Fire & Ice banquet facilities, inside the Locker Room at 528 Hiawatha Blvd., was never intended to be a theater.