Sir (Jonathan McMurtry), actor/manager of a small and financially strapped traveling company, has been on the road for who knows how many years and increasingly shows signs of the need to retire. We meet him somewhere in the English provinces in 1942, where he plays the lead in his company’s repertory performances of King Lear, Othello and Richard III.

But Sir is old and cantankerous, and can barely remember what play he’s in; in fact, getting up off the couch is almost more than he can manage. Earlier in the day, he embarrassed himself in town and was carted off to a local hospital. Besides, there’s a war on, and air raid sirens are a frequent occurrence. One of his actors has been picked up by the police for homosexual behavior. But Sir is convinced he and the show must go on, despite the pleas of Sir’s partner/wife Her Ladyship (Susan Denaker) and stage manager Madge (Lynne Griffin) to cancel the performance.

Sir’s dresser Norman (Sean Sullivan) has for decades lovingly cared for the old thespian, catering to his increasingly irrational whims and coaxing cooperation by using his “best nanny voice.” And he’s learned the foolproof way to get the old guy onstage – to tell him there’s a full house.

The Dresser, playwright Ronald Harwood’s valentine to a now-extinct breed of British actor/managers, plays through February 8 at North Coast Repertory Theatre, directed by David Ellenstein.

Harwood, trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, drew inspiration from the several years he spent as an actor and several more as dresser for Sir Donald Wolfit, a famous British actor-manager who specialized in Shakespearean roles, and about whom Harwood wrote a biography.

There isn’t a lot of action here; this is a tour de force relationship piece for actor and dresser, and it gets solid interpretations from both. Sir may not be much of a stretch for McMurtry – he’s been at the Old Globe for 47 years, after all – but he invests the old thespian with all the wounded pride, humor and humanity the part demands, and more. Sullivan’s gay dresser is perfect. He has the best and bitchiest lines, and delivers them with exactly the right attitude and great timing.

Denaker’s concerned and exasperated Ladyship and Griffin’s benighted Madge add welcome feminine counterpoint to the main relationship.

The Dresser is a show for those who are, ever have been, or want to be around theater folk. And this production is terrific.

The Dresser plays through Sunday, Feb. 8, at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sundays 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.

It took guts for Euripides to present Trojan Women in 415 BC, when the Greeks were more than a decade into the disastrous Peloponnesian War with Sparta.

Trojan Women was based on an event that had happened the previous year in which the Athenians had killed all the men on the island of Melos and enslaved its women and children in retribution for Melos’ refusal to ally itself with Athens, preferring to remain neutral.

That may explain why the great tragedian lost out in the dramatic competition that year to an unknown: With its virulent anti-war stand, Trojan Women may have simply made the Athenians too uncomfortable.

Claudio Raygoza directs a fine cast in what may be the greatest anti-war play ever written. Dr. Marianne McDonald’s lyrical translation of Trojan Women through Saturday, Feb. 1, at ion theatre.

Plaintive (and most effective) pre-show music sets the mood. Euripides sets the play in Troy, a few days after the fall of that great city, when the Athenians have killed all the men and enslaved all the women and children.

The play concentrates on the fate of three Trojan women: Hecuba (Veronica Murphy), former Queen of Troy, widow of Priam, mother of several murdered or fallen children and a sole remaining daughter, Cassandra (Morgan Trant), a virgin cursed with the gift of prophecy. The third of the trio is Hecuba’s daughter-in-law Andromache (Amanda Cooley Davis), widow of Hector and mother of his son, the 2-year-old Astyanax.

Athenian messenger Talthybius (Michael Dean Grulli), a kindly man with a ghastly job, is forced to bring first bad news (which master each woman will serve), then worse (that Cassandra, driven to insanity, will be the concubine of the hated Agamemnon; and finally the worst: the Greeks have decreed a son of Hector too dangerous to live, and the child will be tossed from the ramparts of the castle.

Mercifully, Euripides does not put the violence on the stage; still, this is a difficult play to watch, for the same reason war is: it brings pointless suffering, grief for the innocent, death and destruction too close.

Hecuba says it best: “Don’t think any woman happy until the day she dies.” And the way Murphy says it, you’ll believe it.

Trojan Women plays through Saturday, Feb. 1, at ion theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-374-6894 or visit www.iontheatre.com.

Scammers succeed because people want something. The truly seductive thing about John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation is that his protagonists don’t even know what they want ... until it walks in the door.

Art dealer Flan Kittredge (Thomas Jay Ryan) and his wife Ouisa (Karen Ziemba) live in the hermetically sealed bubble of the well-to-do. Flan makes a living procuring paintings by major artists at auction and reselling them to foreign buyers at inflated prices. They have three kids: two at Harvard, one at Groton.

One night they are about to go to dinner with Geoffrey (Tony Torn), an old friend from Johannesburg, when the doorbell rings and a young man bursts in, bleeding from an apparent mugging. This is Paul (Samuel Stricklen), claiming to be both a college friend of the Kittredge children and the son of actor Sidney Poitier.

Paul offers proximity to celebrity, surprisingly incisive conversation, a delicious home-cooked meal, kind words about their kids (from whom they are alienated in the way parents of college-age children often are), even parts as extras in a film Poitier is allegedly making of the musical Cats. The Kittredges are easily taken in, and offer a room for the night.

The scam is revealed in a particularly unsavory fashion the next morning.

The Old Globe Theatre presents a handsome production of Six Degrees of Separation through Saturday, Feb. 15, directed by Trip Cullman.

Identity, race, imagination, the longing for human connection, transgression, even Catcher in the Rye are just some of the topics Guare touches on here.

That’s a lot for a 90-minute play. Guare has written that at the beginning of rehearsals for the first production, “All I knew about the play was that it had to go like the wind,” and that it does. One’s attention never flags, to be sure, but the drawback to speed also applies: on occasion the actors (most new to the Globe and its sound conditions) speak too quickly or lower their voices too much to be easily understood.

But Guare has a way with dialogue, and the ability to sketch characters well in few words. And the show has great production values: Andromache Chalfant’s cleverly opening set, Emily Rebholz’s spectacular costumes, Ben Stanton’s excellent lighting design combine to make this as easy on the eyes as it is engaging to the mind.

The mostly out-of-town pros in the cast are nicely complemented by a contingent of Globe/USD MFA students/graduates. All together, it’s a fine ensemble that succeeds in the author’s purpose of stimulating thought.

The play’s title comes from the theory proposed by Marconi after his invention of the wireless, and expanded on by psychologist Stanley Milgram that six people separate every person from every other person on the planet. The key is to find those six people.

Guare’s inspiration for the play was a real scammer, who in 1991 sued Guare for $100 million, claiming civil damages. Guare countersued, and the New York Supreme Court ruled no damages were owed.

Six Degrees of Separation plays through Sunday, Feb. 15, at the Old Globe Theatre. Shows Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.