The Birthday Party, Signal Ensemble at Chopin, through Aug. 30. You can run, but you can’t hide. But can a person be–literally–frightened to death by his past? This production extracts every last milligram of paranoia from Harold Pinter’s cryptic morality fable. MSB
Dancing at Lughnasa, Oak Park Festival Theatre, through Aug. 23. Final days for this beautifully-wrought, bittersweet elegy to lives gone by and sisterly love in 1930’s rural Ireland, by Ireland’s finest living playwright, Brian Friel. Outdoors at Austin Gardens. JA
Hay Fever, Circle Theatre; through Aug. 24. This is your last chance to catch Circle Theatre’s acclaimed and gorgeously designed take on Noel Coward’s 1920s comic trifle of bad-mannered hosts and baffled weekend guests. SCM
—By Abarbanel, Barnidge and Morgan