Blood is fun – at least it is within the confines of Impact Theatre's omnibus presentation Bread and Circuses, a collection of nine short plays fairly dripping with the thick red stuff.

As you'd expect with such an assortment, there's a wide variety in style and substance here. There's also one easy-to-draw conclusion: endings are hard.

The most satisfying entries in this two-hour experience at LaVal's Subterranean include...

You're bound to like Carson Kreitzer's Lasso of Truth if you like Wonder Woman...and a heaping helping of S&M on the side.

If you didn't know the two were related, first of all, think about it for a minute (the golden lasso, the bustier, the metal bracelets, etc.), and second of all, has Kreitzer got an origin story for you. Commissioned by Marin Theatre Company, the play is part of the National New Play Network, which means this is what they call a "rolling world premiere." The show begins in Mill Valley then heads to Atlanta and Kansas City.

So where did Wonder Woman come from (and we're not talking about Paradise Island, home of the Amazons)? For many of us, she sprung fully formed in the 1970s looking like Lynda Carter in a patriotic bathings suit and gold accessories. That famous TV show is actually a jumping-off point for Kreitzer's play.

Scuzza me, but you see back in old Napoli that's...

In the play Napoli!, it's not so much "amore" as it is "controlling the market." American Conservatory Theater's new translation of Eduardo De Filippo's 1945 play eschews the Italian title, Napoli milionaria!, in favor of translators Linda Alper and Beatrice Basso's choice, Napoli!. The exclamation point might suggest a musical (Hello, Mussolini!), but it's probably meant more ironically. Naples during World War II, especially before the allies arrived, was a pretty dismal, bombed-out, typhus-infested place with no shortage of shortages.

Neither a chest-beating drama nor an uproarious comedy, Napoli! resides in an in-between zone...

There's only so much you can say about Rob Handel's delectably intriguing play A Maze without spoiling the fun. The first thing to know is that the play was first produced in the Bay Area last summer by Just Theater at the Live Oak Theater. That production generated such buzz, both from critics and audience members, that the astute folks at Shotgun Players pricked up their ears and decided to re-mount that production at the Ashby Stage.

The re-mount brings back the original cast of eight under the direction of Molly Aaronson-Gelb, and though I didn't see the show last summer, it's hard to imagine these performances are not sharper and more astute this time out.

So I met a fella in a yellow fedora on the steps of a museum, and he told me where to go to find The Speakeasy, a new interactive theater experience created by Nick A. Olivero and Boxcar Theatre.

I reviewed the show for the San Francisco Chronicle, and I have to say this was a hard review to write only because I so wanted to love this ambitious enterprise.

Music is so ingrained in New Orleans culture that it's no surprise when a play set in the area turns out to be full of wonderful choral singing, voodoo chanting and other musical surprises. But what's interesting about Marcus Gardley's The House that will not Stand, now receiving its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is that music elevates the show in ways the plot and characters do not.

This play about a mixed-race family in New Orleans circa 1836 really wants to be a musical.