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"Grey Gardens" at the Lyric Stage Company

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Lyric Stage Company

Maggie the Cat may be one of the sultriest Mississippi dames to swagger across a stage, but the only Valentine she can offer is laced with venom. Her husband is more interested in the bottle than his Southern belle, and she’s got her eye on his burly father’s sprawling estate, which she’ll never be able to call her own as long as she’s childless. Just in time for the lovers’ holiday, the Lyric Stage Company (140 Clarendon Street, Boston, 617.585.5680) opens Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams’s classic tale of a family viciously clawing at one another. It’s a catfight like you’ve never seen. Get tickets ($25–$50/$10 student rush) at www.lyricstage.org, or call the box office at 617.585.5678.

Friday, January 2-Sunday, January 31: The Year of Magical Thinking

As rational and comforting as the five stages of grief identified by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross may be, when it strikes, rationalization goes out the window. We’ve known songs, books, and movies that strive to capture the anguish and despair, but few have come close to Joan Didion’s crystalline prose in her recent memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which chronicled the way her world was upended when her longtime husband and fellow scribe, John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack at home and their daughter fell mysteriously ill. (In the time during which she adapted the book into a one-woman play, their daughter died.) But as she did in her essays on San Salvador decades ago, she again shows us that casting a reporter’s eye on catastrophe helps the spirit prevail. The Lyric Stage (140 Clarendon Street, Boston,
617.585.5680) offers the New England premiere of this touching work. Local thespian Nancy E. Carroll plays Didion. Get tickets ($25 to $50) at www.lyricstage.org or call the box office at 617.585.5678.

Three Tall Women at the Lyric Stage Company

"The Scene" at the Lyric Stage Company