As directing debuts go, Pam MacKinnon's for American Conservatory Theater is pretty auspicious. Her production of Seascape by Edward Albee is her first on the Geary Theater stage since taking over as artistic director last year. A Tony Award-winner (for Albee's 2012 revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) who has worked on other Bay Area stages (Berkeley Rep, Magic), MacKinnon seems to have landed quite comfortably in the world of institutional regional theater.

Sarah Ruhl is a brilliant writer capable of intellectual heights and emotional depths. Her latest play, For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, now at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre, displays few of those qualities.

Paired with director Les Waters with whom she worked so memorably on Eurydice and In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) at Berkeley Rep, Ruhl is working in mysterious ways here.

Opened April 10, 2008 at the Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Carla Spindt (left) is Hecuba, queen of fallen Troy, and Sepideh Makabi is a member of the Greek Chorus in the Aurora Theatre’s production of The Trojan Women. Photos by David Allen Aurora resurrects timely, wrenching Trojan Women 3 ½ stars War in pieces Watching Barbara Oliver’s production of The...