THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE (ABRIDGED) | What Hamlet calls "this most excellent canopy, the air," overhangs Orfeo Group's zanily laid-back rendition of the Reduced Shakespeare Company's The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), which is being performed outdoors on the Publick Theatre stage in Christian Herter Park (through August 9). Neither are the plays of Shakespeare the only things squeezed by Orfeo, which reduces the title of this parodic staple to The Complete WOWS(A) and shaves the price of admission on Thursdays to nothing. The popular RSC spoof has been purveying its low-comedy take on the lofty art of the Bard since 1987, but Orfeo throws in a party atmosphere, beer for sale, and an urgency of its own. As Risher Reddick, nimble and nauseated as the show's too-too-solid heroines, warns, the troupe rejects "dry, boring, vomit-less Shakespeare." Joining the retching Risher in punning, mugging, swashbuckling, and pratfalling under the direction of Steven Barkhimer are an at-ease Daniel Berger-Jones and a more pompously antic Gabriel Kuttner. Skilled actors on a hambone holiday, they'll have you laughing till the light fades. | Publick Theatre, Christian Herter Park, 1175A Soldiers Field Road, Brighton | 617.747.4460 | Through August 22 | Curtain 6:45 pm Thurs-Mon + 2 pm Sat [August 8] | $15; Thurs free to all; Fri free with student ID

DEATH OF A SALESMAN | Attention must be paid once again as Independent Theatre Company presents Arthur Miller's Tony- and Pulitzer-winning story of Willy Loman, who as his sales career starts to tank wonders whether he can't provide for his family by committing suicide so they can collect his insurance. (The insurance company, of course, has other ideas.) Miller wrote his play back in 1949, but 50 years later, it hardly seems out of date. Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Black Box Theatre, 539 Tremont St, Boston | 617.933.8600 | Through August 8 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Fri | 3 + 8 pm Sat | $20-$25

THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE | Shakespeare & Company takes up Donald Freed's 2005 two-hander, whose setting is Panama City in 1989. The Americans are invading, and General Manuel Noriega has taken refuge in the papal nunciature, where his only companion is Archbishop José Laboa. The general is looking for sanctuary abroad from the archbishop; when that's not forthcoming, he starts to explain why the mess he's in is not his fault but the CIA's. Dennis Krausnick and Ignatius Anthony make up the cast; Dee Evans and Clare Reedy direct. | Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | Through August 16 | Curtain 8:30 pm August 6, 9, 11, 13, 15 | 3 pm August 16 | $16-$38; $11-$29 students, seniors

HAMLET | Shakespeare & Company reprises its 2006 production, a family affair, with Jason Asprey as Hamlet, S&C artistic director Tina Packer as Gertrude, her son, Jason Asprey, as Hamlet, and her husband, Dennis Krausnick, as — no, not Claudius, that would be a bit much — Polonius. Nigel Gore is back as Claudius, and Eleanor Holdridge again directs this dark, muscular production, in which the jarring metallic sounds that signify Hamlet's synaptic twitching also suggest the clanging shut of doors in the prison that is Denmark. This is a clear, compelling, if hardly transcendent reading, with a few twists that work — like Hamlet's passing out scripts of The Mousetrap to Gertrude and Claudius and having them play it like an amateur theatrical. With Elizabeth Raetz as Ophelia. | Shakespeare & Company, Founders Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | Through August 28 | Curtain times vary | $16-$60

Brilliant and infuriating Shakespeare didn’t slow dance when he wrote Romeo and Juliet — he went for the essence of impetuous young love like a brisk waltz.

Reversal of fortunes Timon of Athens is Shakespeare’s least characteristic tragedy, and the toughest to pull off.

Out on a limb Actors’ Shakespeare Project handles Shakespeare’s biggest bloodbath without turning on a single spigot.

Quake and Shake A tenderhearted yarn spinner tells an anxious little girl a story about a talking bear hawking honey. A nerdy young debt collector comes home to find a six-foot amphibian bent on recruiting him to save Tokyo from a natural disaster. Both scenarios emanate from the brain of award-winning Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

Songbird and Snowbirds For Shakespeare’s Orsino, music is the food of love. For soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, it was the food of delusion — and she had a voracious appetite.

Sea foam In Rough Crossing , British playwright Tom Stoppard demonstrates that even in the manufacture of abject silliness he’s smarter than anyone else.

More Bard, please The sultry season is soon upon us, and as always, it will bring area theater-goers such dependable balms as Shakespeare (both in and out of the park), classic musicals, and giddy misbehavior of various sorts. Between that manna and a few original productions, written and performed by local artists, we've got a rich season line-up.

LIGHT WAVES: BOSTON BALLET'S ''ALL KYLIÁN'' | March 13, 2013 A dead tree hanging upside down overhead, with a spotlight slowly circling it. A piano on stilts on one side of the stage, an ice sculpture's worth of bubble wrap on the other.

HANDEL AND HAYDN'S PURCELL | February 04, 2013 Set, rather confusingly, in Mexico and Peru, the 1695 semi-opera The Indian Queen is as contorted in its plot as any real opera.

REVIEW: MAHLER ON THE COUCH | November 27, 2012 Mahler on the Couch , from the father-and-son directing team of Percy and Felix Adlon, offers some creative speculation, with flashbacks detailing the crisis points of the marriage and snatches from the anguished first movement of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony.