Works by Shakespeare, Kushner, Williams on stages this spring

A short play inspired by "The Tempest," "The New World" draws on Shakespeare and real St. Louisans to create a story rooted in the area where it will be staged, Gravois Park's Cherokee Street. It's free, too.
"The New World" will of course include music, but it's not a musical, maybe St. Louis' theatergoers favorite form. (Thank you, Muny!) But the spring has plenty to offer that way, including two new shows at the Fox, the Broadway hit "Memphis" and the new show about competitive cheerleading, "Bring It On." For family favorites, look to the Peabody, where "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Mary Poppins" will play. And for something completely unexpected, New Line will mount John Waters' rockabilly salute to teen rebellion, "Cry-Baby," at Washington University's South Campus Theater.
But maybe you want more Shakespeare? No problem. There are the mixed-up twins in "The Comedy of Errors" at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and the haunting romance of "The Winter's Tale" at Mustard Seed, the theater in residence at Fontbonne University. St. Louis Shakespeare (which is not the festival) won't perform Shakespeare this season, but it certainly goes for the classics with Mary Zimmerman's version of "The Arabian Nights" at Black Cat.
Spring's modern classics prove just as inviting. There are two — yes, two — productions of the greatest play ever set in St. Louis, Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie," one from Dramatic License at its theater in the Chesterfield Mall and the other, from Insight, at the Missouri History Museum.
Stray Dog Theatre at the Tower Grove Abbey gives us another double helping. It's staging both parts of Tony Kushner's massive modern masterpiece "Angels in America." Too often we only get to see the first half (which, granted, is an undertaking all by itself). But Stray Dog isn't intimidated.
There's also Eugene Ionesco's absurdist triumph "Exit the King" from the West End Players Guild at Union Avenue Christian Church.
Coping with the strains of modern life? Maybe theater will help to sharpen your focus. Consider the harried teachers and students of the Black Rep's "No Child" at the Grandel, the unlikely troubled characters of "The New Century" at Max & Louie Productions, the Little League dads of "Rounding Third" at the HotCity Theatre in the Kranzberg, the murderous family in the St. Louis Actors' Studio's "Killer Joe" at the Gaslight Theatre or the paranoid down-and-outers of "Bug" at Muddy Waters (also at the Kranzberg). They are at least as overwhelmed as you are.
For a remarkably intense kind of strain, look at the kidnapped banker making compromises to save himself in "The Invisible Hand," a world-premiere drama by Ayad Akhtar at the Rep. "The Invisible Hand" opens the Rep's inaugural Ignite! Festival of New Plays. Stew, of "Passing Strange" fame, wrote one of them, "Stagger Lee."
When modern life seems challenging, art may show us how we got here — and several spring productions take that backward glance. McCarthyism echoes in "The Value of Names" at the New Jewish Theatre's Wool Studio while Upstream explores the genocidal legacy of Hitler and Stalin in "Conversations with an Executioner" at the Kranzberg. Two plays about entertainers — "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" at the Black Rep and "Jack and Jacob" at New Jewish — reach back to the early 20th century, inviting us to consider what has changed, and what has lasted.