In 1911, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and a crew of four set out in the Terra Nova to be the first men to set foot on the South Pole. On the way, they heard that Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his crew were trying to do the same thing. The race was on.

History records show that Amundsen and his crew won the race and returned home safely. Scott and his crew did not return. Playwright Ted Tally explores the psychology of the ambitious Scott (Tom Andrew) in Terra Nova, Inukshuk Production Company’s debut San Diego presentation. Terra Nova plays through May 11 at 6th@Penn Theatre, directed by the company’s founder, Marybeth Bielawski-DeLeo.

Terra Nova is a memory play weaving in and out of time and place, and using Amundsen (Matt Thompson) as Scott’s alter ego, debate partner and conscience, arguing their differing approaches to the task.

Scott’s artist wife Kathleen (Amanda Cooley Davis), an unusually strong woman, had him pegged from the start. When they meet, she says, “I was promised a smashing celebrity, and I got a haunted man.”

Haunted or not, Scott is certainly driven.

Tally has taken some liberties with the facts to heighten the drama, suggesting that Scott did not take animals whereas Amundsen did. In fact, Scott took both horses and dogs. He also took four crew members: Bowers (Scott Striegel), Evans (Tom Hall), Wilson (Eddie Yaroch) and Oates (Ryan Schulze).

Scott, whom Amundsen calls “the most dangerous kind of decent man,” agonizes when he finds out that Evans has failed to report a deep cut in one hand, rendering him not only a liability in the race against time but almost certainly a man destined for gangrene and death. Should Scott abandon Evans because not doing so may condemn all of them?

Inukshuk uses a simple set – white sheeting pulled taut to represent snow and ice and a sled suffice for most of the play. A rear-screen projector with slides of the expedition provide historical content and a table for an imagined reunion dinner of the team provides a moving glimpse into Scott’s psyche.

De Leo has assembled a terrific cast of local actors. Andrew makes Scott’s ethical dilemma immediate and heartbreaking. Hall’s final scene is devastating. The others are just right.

“We turn our faces against the darkness, we grope for the pulse of our hearts, and feel an idiotic pride that they’re still throbbing,” Scott wrote in his journal near the end. “In the night we huddle together for warmth, but touching, we’re still alone. Still alone.”

The best theater makes you think and examine your own conscience. Terra Nova does just that.

Inukshuk Production Company’s production of Terra Nova plays through May 11 at 6th@Penn Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call (619) 688-9210 or visit www.sixthatpenn.com/terra_nova.htm.

She’s in customer service. He’s a garbage contractor with “Patrick Swayze eyes.” They meet in a bar in Bayonne, where she comes on so strong even he is turned off. It’s a pairing made in hell and everyone knows it but Debby (Jessica John), whose real-life bout with hysterical blindness at work seems to spill over into her unsurprisingly nonexistent romantic life.

Backyard Productions presents the San Diego premiere of Laura Cahill’s Hysterical Blindness through May 11 at Cygnet Rolando Theatre. Francis Gercke directs.

Hysterical blindness is a temporary condition, a response to stress in which the victim simply loses sight for a usually short period of time. Debby’s stress probably isn’t job related; it’s the sexual desperation that drives her to frequent bars with her friend Beth (Amanda Sitton) and throw herself at anything in pants.

Rick (Dylan Seaton), Debby’s choice this night, is willing to take what’s offered but is clearly not interested in more than a one-night stand – though Debby inflates the importance of the encounter to Beth later.

Debby lives with waitress mom Virginia (Jill Drexler), a divorcee who shares her desires but not her solution. Virginia is also interested in a connection, but has infinitely more patience (and better taste) than Debby. As it happens, she too makes a contact with Nick (Dale Morris), a customer from the diner.

There’s not a lot more to this dispiriting tale of self-delusion. Cahill has reportedly said she regards the play as comedy and was surprised that audiences found it depressing. “I think that the situation of these people in that world, to me ... was normal life,” she has said.

If I lived in Bayonne, I think I’d resent that remark.

Gercke has chosen to play up the outrageousness with Debby’s overdone accents and provocative clothing. It’s amusing for the first 10 minutes, but wears quickly and grates soon thereafter.

The cast gamely gives it the old college try, but they can’t do much with a script in which, as Gertrude Stein put it, “there’s no there there.”

Backyard Productions’ Hysterical Blindness plays through May 11 at Cygnet Rolando Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets call (619) 995-2225 or visit www.sdbackyardproductions.com.

“Power to the Peeple” screams a sign atop a toilet outside SDSU’s Powell Theatre.

Before you shake your head and start muttering about the state of public education, know that Bobby, Hope and those capitalist pigs from Urine Good Company are back with Urinetown: The Musical, a tale of greed, corruption and basic human needs, closing May 4 at the Powell. Paula Kalustian directs and retiring professor Terry O’Donnell handles the musical direction.

Police Officer Lockstock (whose partner is – what else? – Barrel), warning that “nothing can kill a show like too much exposition,” narrates the story about a 20-year drought that has inspired laws against private bathrooms, forcing citizens to pee at public toilets owned by UGC, which of course sets the price. Using a bush or tree is illegal and punishable by removal to Urinetown, the greatly feared unseen hell from which no one returns.

When elderly dad Old Man Strong (Joseph Almohaya) is unable to come up with enough money and disgraces himself, he is carted off to Urinetown. At this point son Bobby (Andrew J. Smith) spearheads a rebellion among the poor, overpowering UGC guard Penelope Pennywise (Lindsey Gearhart) and rushing into Facility No. 9 to pee free.

But of course, this is a musical and has to have a love story. In this case, Bobby falls for Hope Cladwell (Maeve Martin), just graduated from “the world’s most expensive university” and back to help her CEO daddy run UGC.

Inspired by a time when book writer/lyricist Kotis spent two weeks penniless in Paris and finding free relief became an issue, Urinetown combines the political sensibility of Dario Fo and the lyrical inventiveness of Stephen Sondheim in this parody of musical theater history that includes songs reminiscent of Brecht/Weill, Fiddler on the Roof, Rodgers and Hammerstein, West Side Story, and even gospel.

Uninetown boasts a terrific cast, eight of whom are slated to receive an MFA in musical theatre next month. Gearhart’s Pennywise is a particular hoot, especially when lending her industrial-strength voice to the Weill-like “Privilege to Pee.”

Crammed with clever songs by Greg Fotis and Mark Hollman, augmented by Kalustian’s terrific choreography and performed magnificently by SDSU drama students, Urinetown is a must-see. But hurry.

Urinetown: The Musical runs through May 4 at SDSU’s Don Powell Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets all (619) 594-6884 or visit theatre.sdsu.edu/html/boxoffice.htm.

A concert with Death as headliner, a secret college society that rewards the last member alive with money and other goodies, a pair of baboons in the zoo musing about death (in between bouts of tossing poop at human gawkers) and a wheelchair-bound woman with a mysterious gentleman caller make up the four one-acts in the second incarnation of Challenge Theater, on the boards through May 11 at 6th@Penn Theatre.

Playwrights who responded to the challenge had to agree to write a one-act play with a four-character limit on a topic TBA and further agree to get it on the boards in short order. This year’s assignment was to write a comedy about death. The plays place variably on the hilarity meter, but all are inventive and impressive just for having been written and produced under these constraints.

Tennessee Williams meets Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte in Michael Thomas Tower’s excellently acted One Down. Somewhere in the South, Lucy (Kelly Lapczynski) sits in a wheelchair, sipping Southern Comfort and being a burden to her harried sister Jane (Leslie Gold), who seems also to be caring for their aged father.

When smooth-talking Buford (Jude Evans) appears, allegedly looking for a hotel room, Lucy falls fast and furious while Jane is, to put it kindly, underwhelmed. The question in this fascinating, word-drunk adventure is: Who is this stranger? Gilbert Songalia directs.

Ivan Harrison and Michelle De Francesco shine as David Wiener’s baboon characters Bernie and Fran in Feeding Time in the Human House, as they speculate on their family backgrounds (“my grandmother’s troop knew Dian Fossey”), the real nature of dolphins and death. Jessica Seaman directs.

Student members of the Yale Skull and Bones Society meet to discuss the contents of a secret box in Tim West’s The Skull and Bones Tontine, directed by Chelsea Whitmore.

Dallas McLaughlin wrote and directs Death: Live in Concert, in which the black-robed Grim Reaper does a nightclub act. “I’m a nice guy, in spite of what you’ve heard,” he says, going on to sing standards like “Rainy Days and Mondays” and “My Way.”

If you’re looking for something different in theater, support local playwrights and take in these four new plays.

Funny Bones plays through May 11 at 6th@Penn Theatre. Shows Sunday at 7 p.m.; Monday through Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. For tickets call (619) 688-9210 or visit www.sixthatpenn.com.