If Stephen Sondheim had never written another thing, his place in the history of the American musical would have been assured by his brilliant lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, arguably the best musical ever written.

But West Side Story was just his first Broadway hit. Sondheim has gone on to win an Oscar, seven Tonys (more than any other composer), multiple Grammys and even a Pulitzer Prize (for Sunday in the Park with George).

Side by Side by Sondheim, a revue created in 1976 as a fund-raiser for the English theater run by singer Cleo Laine and her jazz musician husband John Dankworth, plays through Nov. 25 at Coronado Playhouse, directed by Daniel Logan.

Sondheim’s music is complex, sophisticated and often funny. Someone suggested his songs are one-act plays, as in the morning-after-a-one-night-stand exchange in “Barcelona.” Some are tour-de-force exercises taxing the singer beyond reasonable limits, as in the breakneck-paced “Getting Married Today,” in which Sondheim seems to have wanted to test how many words he could get into one measure of music. (From my perspective, there’s no point to such an exercise, but give props to Lisa Goodman for getting them all in, and mostly intelligibly.)

Adrienne René narrates; Kirk Valles accompanies, and Goodman, Julia Celano and Brett Daniels interpret Sondheim songs from the early shows (through Pacific Overtures in 1976) with a few oddball additions from lesser-known productions. The songs run the emotional gamut – from the raucous “Comedy Tonight” to the bitchy “You Must Meet My Wife” to the pensive “I Remember.”

By and large, the trio does a creditable job, although the narration is lame and there are a few missed notes along the way. Goodman is by far the most successful; her slightly naughty “I Never Do Anything Twice” (“once is delicious/ twice would be vicious/or just repetitious”) breathes Dietrich, her defiant “I’m Still Here” and the novelty take-off on “The Girl from Ipanema,” Mary Rodgers’ “The Boy from....” show the breadth of her capabilities.

Daniels is most effective on the ballad “I Remember” and the Follies song “Could I Leave You.”

Celano is terrific with Goodman on “Can That Boy Foxtrot” and solid alone on the emotional “Losing My Mind.”

Sondheim leaves me cold because he writes recitatives, not songs. You won’t leave the theater humming a Sondheim tune, because with few exceptions tunes aren’t his interest. He writes musical monologues, or rather monologues with music.

But I am in the minority. Though the stage set is unremarkable and the costumes terrible (and why doesn’t Daniels have a shirt that fits?), the songs are here and you can get your Sondheim fix at Side by Side by Sondheim.

Side by Side by Sondheim plays through Nov. 25 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.

If your only association with Greek drama is Oedipus gouging his eyes out or Medea killing her children, step right up for the king of Old Attic Comedy, Aristophanes.

Although tragedians Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles get most of the onstage play these days, Aristophanes wrote 40 plays, of which 11 survive, all comedies, all skewering the mighty with words and madcap situations.

San Diego’s newest theater company, The Theatre Inc., presents its first production, Aristophane’s The Frogs, through Nov. 18 at The Ark Theatre Downtown. Douglas Lay and Melissa Hamilton, co-founders of The Theatre Inc., direct; Lay also plays the god Dionysus.

In The Frogs, written 26 years into Athens’ disastrous Peloponnesian War with Sparta, Dionysus (god of wine and theater) decides that what Athens needs is a great playwright. Since the big three were dead by 405 B.C., when The Frogs was written, Dionysus takes his trusty servant Xanthias (Fred Harlow) and sets off for Hades to resurrect one of them.

Getting there is never half the fun except in this case, when a wisecracking corpse, a chorus of frogs, a strange group of cult initiates and Pluto himself prance and cavort, taunt and tease poor old Dionysus along the way.

But he finally gets there and tracks down old established poet Aeschylus (Fred Harlow) and younger upstart Euripides (Michael Nieto), who will duke it out verbally for the crown and the chance at resurrection and return to Athens.

The script of The Frogs (translated by UCSD’s Dr. Marianne McDonald) is raucous, vulgar, even scatological, lending itself to oddball costumes and loony stage business, and that’s exactly the treatment it gets. This is a pull-out-all-the-stops production, full of nonstop activity, slapstick, sight gags, vulgarity and just plain silliness, not to mention the obligatory moral, this time about the decline of civilization as it was then known. It’s a terrific ensemble cast; I don’t even want to single anyone out. They’re all wonderful.

Were the Greeks always sophisticated, philosophical and serious? Nope, sometimes they were just plain fun.

The Frogs plays through Nov. 18 at The Ark Theatre, 899 C Street Downtown. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call (619) 216-3016 or visit www.thetheatreinc.com.

There’s something in all of us that responds with an almost erotic frisson to the power of the weird and the fear of the unknown. Count Dracula, the sexiest, scariest bloodsucker of all, ensconced in that drafty old Transylvanian castle, taps into that dark place we seldom talk about.

Steven Dietz’s retelling of the Bram Stoker classic is at North Coast Repertory Theatre through Nov. 18, directed by Christopher Vened.

Dietz’s version increases the creepiness quotient by keeping mental patient Renfield (a magnificently insane Sean Sullivan), who has clearly been driven crazy by “the master” – the Count himself – onstage almost throughout as a cross between a cautionary figure and a Greek chorus.

“We are all of us invented,” Renfield says, “cobbled together from bits of cartilage.”

Renfield’s assembly was apparently more haphazard than most. Even worse, “He [Dracula] gave me immortality. I have never forgiven him that.”

With that, Renfield starts to chow down on a large rat when he is tackled, straitjacketed and locked in a cell-like hospital room, there to spend the rest of the play.

But Renfield is just a disquieting diversion. You know the story: young Jonathan Harker (Jason Heil) goes off to make a business deal with the Count (Matt Thompson), where he encounters strange goings-on. Meanwhile his fiancée Mina (Brenda Dodge) encounters Dracula vicariously through her friend Lucy (Christy Yael), who falls under the spell of the enchanter and wakes every morning visibly weakened and in need of transfusion.

Dracula is about power, eroticism and lunacy, and this production plays up all those aspects, especially in the first act. The second act drags a bit, especially with the moralizing at the end. Marty Burnett’s set isn’t optimally adaptable. But Michelle Hunt’s evocative costumes and fine performances all around make it a fine addition to this year’s roster of Halloween shows.

Dracula runs through Nov. 18 at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m., select Wednesdays at 7 p.m., and select Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. For tickets call (858) 481-1055, or visit www.northcoastrep.org.