There's a lot to love about American Conservatory Theater's The Birthday Party, a funny, slightly freaky Harold Pinter. The cast is uniformly strong, director Carey Perloff (essaying her last directorial effort as ACT's artistic director) deftly balances the unease and the humor. But for me, the joy, the electrical charge, the bright light of the production is ...

There are several wonderful things about Jen Silverman's The Roommate now at San Francisco Playhouse, not the least of which is that it seriously considers the lives of two women in their 50s and their attempts to grow and change and correct what they perceive as some of the missteps of their lives. The nearly two-hour one-act play, directed by Becca Wolff, is also heartily entertaining, contains some satisfying laughs and creates a showcase for two dynamic actors to create complex characters that are full of surprises.

Julia Cho's Aubergine is the winner of the 2016 Glickman Award for the best new play to make its world premiere in the Bay Area. Aubergine was developed at Berkeley Repertory Theatre' Ground Floor, Center for the Creation and Development of New Work. The drama about a terminally ill father and his chef son opened in February at Berkeley Rep and was the first production in the newly refurbished and renamed Peet's Theatre.

On August 1, 2006, a little theater blog called Theater Dogs (thank you, Paul Rudnick for the name and for the story behind the name) came into being, and 10 years later, here we are.

As the 10th anniversary approached, I thought about how I might like to celebrate. Perhaps a party where theater people might imbibe generously and give me fodder for turning this into a gossip rag. Perhaps a limited edition T-shirt followed by posts full of photos of readers wearing the T-shirt (I've actually wanted to do that for years). Maybe nothing at all. Or maybe, just maybe, it was time to let Theater Dogs crawl back into the dog house from whence it came.

The Hypocrites' Pirates of Penzance is one part Yo ho! and one part Yo, ho! Which is to say, this is not your great-grandparents' Gilbert and Sullivan, and what a blessed relief that is. No wonder Berkeley Repertory Theatre seized the opportunity to present this Pirates as part of its season.

Not that there's anything wrong with G&S, but I have been tortured by Pirates and Mikados in the past and...

Francis Henshall may be one sandwich short of a picnic, as they say, but that's one of many reasons One Man, Two Guvnors is so much fun. Francis' hunger literally drives the first act's zaniness, and truth be told, once that hunger is satisfied, the farce loses a bit (but certainly not all) of its oomph. Thankfully there's a perky skiffle band on stage to keep things bouncing along.

Oh, if only all adaptations could be this fun. When playwright Richard Bean decided to pull Carlo Goldoni's 18th-century comedy into a specific time and place in the 20th century – Brighton, England, 1963 – he did so with an eye to heightening and broadening the comedy from its Venetian origins.