Sir Tom Stoppard revolutionized modern theater with word-drunk, idea-dense plays that require close audience attention, unlike most contemporary offerings on stage and screen.

A critic even suggested that Arcadia should be read with an encyclopedia handy. Not a bad idea, and reading the play before seeing it should almost be mandatory because Arcadia tosses out, in rat-a-tat fashion, food for thought on physics, mathematics, philosophy, literary research, landscape gardening, chaos theory, teleology and Lord Byron. There’s even some talk about climate theory (global cooling in this case; the play was written in 1993).

Cygnet Theatre’s production of Arcadia plays through July 29, directed by Sean Murray.

Arcadia takes place in the schoolroom at Sidley Park, a country house in Derbyshire, in three time periods: 1809, 1812 and the present. The play’s first six scenes alternate between the 19th and 20th centuries; the final scene takes place in both centuries simultaneously.

The plot centers around precocious 19th-century, 12-year-old Thomasina Coverly (Rachael VanWormer), her tutor Septimus Hodge (Matt Biedel) and 20th-century literary researchers Hannah Jarvis (Rosina Reynolds) and Bernard Nightingale (Claudio Raygoza). Thomasina is a math prodigy; Septimus a rake; Hannah a one-note academic and Bernard an academic opportunist who wants to prove that Lord Byron shot minor poet/botanist Ezra Chater on the Sidley Park grounds.

Shortly after Septimus defines “carnal embrace” as “throwing one’s arms around a side of beef” for the young Thomasina, she discovers the heretofore elusive proof of Fermat’s last theorem. Don’t worry if the notion of “iterated algorithms” doesn’t mean any more to you than it does to me.

Other plot points include the Coverlys’ plan to update their lovely neoclassical garden and its 500 acres of park into a more fashionable gothic landscape with “gloomy forest and towering crag” (and a cottage for the mysterious “hermit” Hannah is researching), the cuckolding of Chater by Hodge, and many discussions of the nature of perception and reality, whether in the end life is chaos and the old free will vs. determinism debate.

It’s a heady mix, and one that’s likely to leave theatergoers puzzled from time to time. My advice: Relax, enjoy the wordplay and the character interactions, and don’t worry about it. There will not be a quiz.

Murray’s fine cast goes a long way toward making Stoppard’s dense conversation comprehensible and the characters interesting. Reynolds is a wonder (as always) and her down-the-line academic plays wonderfully off Raygoza’s charming but slapdash opportunist.

VanWormer finds the right line between intellectual precocity and little-girl curiosity. Biedel’s randy tutor is both lovable and believable. The rest of the cast includes other bright lights on the local theater scene, such as Jim Chovick, Jason Connors, Glynn Bedington, David Radford, Bryan Curtiss White and Michael C. Burgess. This production also marks the first time Reynolds has acted with her Yale drama school grad daughter Kate (who plays Chloë Coverly with great skill).

Arcadia is a satire on the limitations of human knowledge and a feast for word and idea lovers, highly recommended for those willing to pay attention.

Arcadia plays through July 29 at Cygnet Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-337-1525 or visit www.cygnettheatre.com.

The Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 pitted religion against science in the classroom. Teacher John Scopes, using the textbook provided and teaching the chapter on evolution, was found guilty of violating a Tennessee law making it illegal “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

Playwrights Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence, writing 30 years later, saw parallels between the Scopes trial and political developments in the United States in the ’50s. In those Cold War years, the Russians were branded devils and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s attempt to “root out godless Communists” in the U.S. would ruin careers and subvert the arts scene for decades to come.

Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized re-creation of that trial, plays through July 29 at Coronado Playhouse, directed by Keith A. Anderson.

Picketers outside the Coronado Playhouse with signs proclaiming “Read your Bible” and “I am Not a Monkey” bring the action to the audience even before the curtain goes up on Hillsboro, “a small town in the American Bible Belt,” where the trial of the century is about to begin.

Teacher Bertram Cates (Carlos Guzman) is no wild-eyed revolutionary; he’s just a guy trying to do his job. Girlfriend Rachel Brown (Julie Eastland), daughter of local fire-and-brimstone-preaching Rev. Jeremiah Brown (Leo Walker), is caught between these two immovable forces. She asks Cates to just apologize in order to end the fuss. But Cates can’t admit to having done anything wrong.

The cards are stacked against Cates from the beginning: Public opinion is against him, and he can’t deny that he taught the forbidden material. Worse, the prosecutor (based on William Jennings Bryan) is the silver-tongued Matthew Harrison Brady (Richard Herring). Cates expects a public defender, and is shocked when famous defense attorney Henry Drummond (Martin M. White) appears, courtesy of the Baltimore Herald. Drummond is based on Clarence Darrow.

Drummond beats his opponent on logic, but this trial isn’t about logic. Man has the capacity to think for himself, but like the old saw that says you can’t make a horse drink, you can’t make a man think, either.

Anderson has assembled a fine cast of principals. Herring’s Brady is smooth and self-assured; White’s Drummond, thwarted at every turn by the judge, is terrific as he methodically demolishes Brady’s insistence on a literalism by putting him on the stand as an “expert on the Bible.”

Guzman and Eastland are believable as the teachers caught in the maelstrom. Leo Walker is as convincingly closed-minded as Hillsboro’s religious leader as Pete Shaner is annoying as the H. L. Mencken-inspired Baltimore Herald journalist E. K. Hornbeck.

Though both the trial and the play are from another time, another century, the discussion isn’t over. Many people still want creationism (now wrapped in a spiffy new package called Intelligent Design) taught in schools.

Lawrence and Lee ask us, in a most dramatic and entertaining way, to consider the costs of a closed mind.

Inherit the Wind plays through July 29, 2007, at Coronado Playhouse. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call (619) 435-4856 or visit www.coronadoplayhouse.com.

Bright-eyed college graduate Princeton (Robert McClure) arrives in New York ready to take on the world – only to discover that it will take a bit more money than he’d planned, good jobs aren’t that easy to come by and maybe he’s not as special as his parents said.

These and other horrors of moving into adulthood and/or the real world are discussed and sung about in Avenue Q, the adult puppet show playing through Aug. 5 at the Spreckels Theatre as part of the Old Globe Theatre’s summer season. Jason Moore directs.

Princeton ends up on Avenue Q with others of similarly thin pocketbooks: wannabe stand-up comic Brian (Cole Porter) and his Japanese girlfriend Christmas Eve (Angeli Ai), a therapist; Nicky, the good-hearted slacker (Christian Anderson), and his roommate Rod (Robert McClure), a Republican investment banker with a secret; and pretty kindergarten assistant teacher Kate Monster (Kelli Sawyer). Even Gary Coleman comes in for some hilarious impersonation by Carla Renata.

Avenue Q’s Tonys for best musical, book and score of 2004 are well deserved. Jeff Whitty’s book is clever, the songs by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx witty. And how could you not respond to song titles like “What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?” Who hasn’t thought “It Sucks to be Me” or “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist?” And – be honest now – haven’t you once in a while, just now and then, engaged in “Schadenfreude?”

But everybody on Avenue Q has problems. Brian thought he’d be a big comedian on late-night TV. “I ain’t,” he concedes. Christmas Eve lacks clients. Kate Monster is dependent on “crabby old bitch” regular teacher Mrs. Lavinia Thistletwat, who asserts that “crabby old bitches are the bedrock of society.”

But at least they have each other, and Kate Monster thinks Princeton is pretty cute. One night, they go to a club where the Bad Idea Bears (temptation in puppet form) bring them multiple Long Island Ice Teas. That inspires a hilarious puppet sex orgy (this scene is what all the X-rated hype is about).

By the way, that hype is hugely overstated. It’s true that this show isn’t for kids, but Avenue Q is mostly about survival, friendship, being honest with oneself and others, and, well, love.

The show’s emotional content is about as real as it gets. Everyone will relate to at least some of these insightful songs, whether it’s Nicky and Rod’s “If You Were Gay (but I’m not),” Christmas Eve’s “The More You Love Someone (the more you want to kill them)” to Kate Monster’s final “There’s a Fine, Fine Line (between love and a waste of time).”

Avenue Q boasts a terrific cast, headed by Sawyer (who plays, and has voices to match, both Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut, who tries to pick up Princeton) and McClure (who plays both the openhearted Princeton and the very closed-off Rod with equal ease). Christian Anderson nearly stops the show with Trekkie Monster’s “The Internet is for Porn,” and the others are equally fine in their parts.

A great score, fabulous lyrics and adorable puppets: Avenue Q is both a pleasure and a must-see.

The Old Globe Theatre’s production of Avenue Q plays through Aug. 5 at the Spreckels Theatre downtown. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 5 and 9 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. For tickets, call 619-23-GLOBE or call the Spreckels box office at 619-235-9500. For more information, visit www.theoldglobe.org.

Those rascally Riviera con men are back and still trolling for unsuspecting prey.

The Jack O’Brien-directed Dirty Rotten Scoundrels returns home after a successful Broadway run; this road show plays through the weekend at Civic Theatre as part of Broadway San Diego’s season.

The question at hand is this: How many con men can tiny Riviera resort town Beaumong-sur-Mer support? Until now, Lawrence Jameson (Tom Hewitt), tall, debonair and oozing charm and wealth, and partner local police chief André Thibault (Drew McVety) have had the field to themselves. Whispers of “the prince” and his charity work “to save the children” in some unnamed country have for years served to separate rich female tourists from their money.

When the arrival of brassy and vulgar American con Freddy (“the jackal”) Benson (D.B. Bonds) threatens to cut into Jameson’s take, the two call a truce and eventually bet each other as to who will first extract $50,000 from a mutually agreed-upon mark.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is fluff, but wonderfully done and extremely well packaged with a spiffy revolving set, fabulous costumes and two of three marks with such annoyingly grating voices that it almost makes you feel they deserve the con.

Welcome home, you two.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels plays through July 22 at Civic Theatre. Shows Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. For tickets, call 619-570-1100 or visit www.broadwaysd.com.