The History Boys are a group of bright, articulate and often unruly sixth formers with attitude and potential in a Yorkshire boys’ school in 1983. They have just delighted their headmaster (Eric Poppick) by turning in the best A-level exam scores in the school’s history, placing them in a good position to be admitted to Oxford or Cambridge.

Because their good showing will reflect on his school, the headmaster hires Irwin (Brian Mackey) as a temporary tutor to give the boys “polish” – and a leg up in the upcoming university entrance exams. The headmaster figures Irwin can polish these rough diamonds in time appropriated from the general studies class taught by longtime teacher Hector (Tom Stephenson).

The History Boys – winner of six Tonys – plays through March 29 at Cygnet Theatre Old Town. Sean Murray directs.

It’s a talky show, characterized by a much higher level of chatter than you will hear from most American teens. These boys have spent their school careers learning history and have also memorized reams of poetry, and their conversation shows it.

It’s not that they aren’t concerned about teen stuff. Posner (Tom Zohar), who plays a mean piano, is gay and crazy about hunky Dakin (Bryan Bertrone), who has all the girls after him. Scripps (Kevin Koppman-Gue), the religious one, is trying to “get through this romance with God now or else it’ll be hanging around half my life.” And to the rugby-playing Rudge (Bobby Schiefer), getting into Oxford seems less exciting than winning a game.

The teaching troika presents an equally intriguing group of characters. The unconventional Hector believes in learning for its own sake and has a penchant for giving a ride home to one boy each day on his motorcycle. The students regard the groping that accompanies this act as a bit of a rite of passage, but the headmaster takes a dimmer view.

Irwin, the young Turk hired to teach to the test (shades of No Child Left Behind), encourages the boys to think outside the box (asking them to consider one good thing about Stalin, for example) so that their entrance exams might stand out from the pack.

Finally, Mrs. Lintott (Jillian Frost), feminist and lone woman in a distressing sea of testosterone, complains, “Can you imagine how depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude? History is a commentary on the continuing incapabilities of men ... women following behind with a bucket.”

This is a fine production of a brilliant play, well directed (though surely the frantic set changes could have been handled in calmer, more British fashion) and wonderfully acted. Educational assessment, history, literature and ethics have never been as engagingly presented as in The History Boys.

The History Boys plays through Sunday, March 29, at Cygnet Theatre Old Town. Shows Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; 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.

Time may stand still when the shutter snaps, but it’s dragging for war photographer Sarah (Anna Gunn), sent home from Iraq to recover from a car bomb which took the life of her “fixer” and interpreter Tariq and left her with broken bones, facial lacerations and pangs of guilt over his death.

Now she shares a New York loft with journalist and lover of eight years James (David Harbour), shell-shocked himself and home on leave, but still beating himself up over departing Iraq earlier and not being there to protect her.

For a pair that has been covering wars together for years, Sarah and James seem remarkably uneasy with each other. She paces, and while he busies himself writing about horror films for an online zine, both seem to wish they were elsewhere, doing something else. But while she speaks of returning to Iraq, James seems to evidence a bit of a homing instinct.

Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still, commissioned by the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, is in its world premiere through March 15. Daniel Sullivan directs.

The appearance of photo editor Richard (Robin Thomas) and his new and much younger ditz of a girlfriend Mandy (Alicia Silverstone) – whose opening remark is “I prayed for you” – sets up a play that is alternately funny, trenchant and preachy and makes it unclear exactly what Margulies wants to say.

The relentlessly cheerful Mandy, rather ironically employed as an event planner (“I guess you can say I’m into events too,” Sarah replies caustically. “Wars, famines, genocides...”), speaks for the helpless observers of such events. Flipping through a book about the war with James’ prose and Sarah’s pictures, Mandy recoils at a photo of a bloodied child, musing, “Maybe if you took him to the hospital instead of taking his picture.” But Sarah has a response: “The camera’s there to record life, not change it.”

Excellent casting almost overcomes the play’s shortcomings, most evident in the murkiness of motivation and character. Sarah is the exception, and Gunn is clearly in control with her portrait of what it takes to shake the confident competence of a strong woman like Sarah.

“I live off the suffering of strangers,” she says. “I built a career, a reputation on the sorrows of people I don’t know and will never see again.”

Margulies has said he regards Time Stands Still as a love story. It does not play that way. The characters make speeches about liberal guilt, stay-at-home mothers, the vagaries of the publishing business and, of course, journalistic ethics – but only in Sarah’s case do these outpourings seem natural rather than inserted.

Still, Margulies has a way with dialogue and though Time Stood Still could use a rewrite, this version is worth seeing for its strong cast and fine technical achievements, most notably Peter Kaczorowski’s evocative lighting design.

Time Stands Still plays through Sunday, March 15, at The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Shows run Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 310-208-5454 or visit www.geffenplayhouse.com.

In 1869, 16-year-old Henri Louis Grin left his mother and his London home in search of adventure. Hiring on as a seaman, he got as far as Australia, where he left the ship and proceeded to work a succession of jobs including footman to actress Fanny Kemble and butler to the governor of Western Australia. Almost 30 years later, after marrying and abandoning a wife in Australia, Grin returned to England.

In 1898, a series of stories about shipwrecks, pearl diving in New Guinea, living with Australian aborigines, riding giant sea turtles, seeing flying wombats and similar fantastic exploits appeared in the pages of London’s The Wide World Magazine under the byline of Louis de Rougemont, Grin’s nom de plume. Adventure stories were all the rage, and de Rougemont quickly became the toast of London.

A superb cast dramatizes some of de Rougemont’s fabulous adventures in the San Diego premiere of Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked! An Entertainment: The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself) at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Shipwrecked! plays through March 15, directed by Matthew Wiener.

Queen Victoria introduced de Rougemont to the Royal Geographical Society, whose members questioned some of his claims (riding turtles and flying wombats, for example). Further inconsistencies – such as his inability to place his travels on a map – precipitated his public fall from grace, and soon he went from everybody’s darling to the world’s greatest liar.

But what stories! And what a cast!

Campbell, a captivating storyteller and one-man-show veteran (remembered for his terrific turns in R. Buckminster Fuller, Shylock and The Thousandth Night, among others) takes on the central character in this three-person play, brilliantly assisted by local favorite David McBean and Yetide Badaki, each playing multiple characters.

The always hilarious McBean is particularly memorable for his characterization of de Rougemont’s faithful dog Bruno and for his Queen Victoria impersonation. Badaki is terrific as Louis’ mother, his aborigine wife Yamba, and two men: Jenson, the gruff boat captain and magazine editor Fitzgerald.

Production values are high as well: Marty Burnett’s versatile set, Matt Novotny’s evocative lighting, Michelle Hunt Souza’s costumes and Steven Cahill’s sound effects contribute to an evening of theater that zips by.

There’s something in man that loves a good story and respects a well-planned hoax. De Rougemont fell down a bit in the second category, but he sure could tell a tale. And, after all, “What does a man leave but his name and the stories he told?”

Shipwrecked! An Entertainment plays through Sunday, March 15, at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Shows run Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 858-481-1055 or visit www.northcoastrep.org.