You know how some days nothing seems to go right? The theater company run by fading stars George and Charlotte Hay (Nils Anderson and Jill Drexler) is about to have one of them.

The Hays and their entourage, relegated to the outer reaches of theatrical Slobovia (Buffalo) by age and lack of better offers, are presenting Private Lives and Cyrano de Bergerac in repertory. The Hays recognize the financial necessity of this move, but still hold out hope for a return to the silver screen, civilization and the adoration that comes along with it. Meanwhile, it’s upstate New York.

Moonlight Stage Productions presents Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo through Sunday, March 22, at Avo Playhouse in Vista. Eric Bishop directs.

In the tradition of backstage farces like Noises Off and Room Service (both recently seen), Moon Over Buffalo features slamming doors (the requisite five), seven characters, mistaken identities, sexual dalliances and an engagement you know is doomed from the get-go. Oh, and Charlotte’s nearly deaf mother Ethel (Patricia Sullivan), acting as stage manager and providing hilarity in the mishearing department.

The engagement in question is that of Hays daughter Roz (Theresa Layne), recovering from the acting bug and now slated to begin a “normal” life with Howard (Howard Bickle, Jr.). But of course her ex, Paul (Danny Blaylock), is in the troupe to provide conflict. Likewise, ingenue Eileen (Stacy Huntington) is around to provide distraction for George.

Everything that can go wrong does, giving rise to the best scene (and every actor’s nightmare): being stuck onstage alone to vamp until your counterpart arrives – and then having him show up drunk and in the wrong costume.

Moon Over Buffalo treads no new ground, nor is it the best or funniest example of the genre. But Roslyn Lehman’s costumes are terrific, N. Dixon Fish’s set clever, the cast up to the task. And how could you not giggle at a show that Ethel describes as “like living in an asylum on the guard’s day off”?

Moon Over Buffalo plays through Sunday, March 22, at Avo Playhouse in Vista. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; matinées Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 760-724-2110 or visit www.vistixonline.com.

In a trashy trailer park on the outskirts of Dallas, the mush-brained Smith family (plus Smith-by-marriage Sharla) live out an existence most theatergoers probably neither know nor wish to know about.

You’ll get the feeling as you walk into the lobby of Compass Theatre. Cheap shelving holds stuff – old pots, cracked dishes, rusting implements. On the stage – the interior of the trailer – more stuff is crammed everywhere. There’s an aged TV with cockeyed rabbit ears, newspapers are piled up on every available surface, old food wrappers litter the floor.

Patriarch Ansel (Mike Sears) lives here with new wife Sharla (Judy Bauerlein-Mitchell) and Ansel’s pretty and innocent 20-year-old daughter Dottie (Amanda Cooley Davis).

Modesty, decorum and polite conversation are not what this family is about. Sharla wanders around in a T-shirt and no underwear, thinking nothing of opening the door half naked.

Ansel’s 22-year-old loser of a son Chris (Joe Baker), who has failed spectacularly at rabbit farming and turned to drugs for fun and profit, shows up whenever his wife tosses him out for domestic violence.

This day he comes not just for shelter, but also to ask his father for a loan to get the drug sharks off his back. Failing in that, he proposes a harebrained scheme to have his mother killed and split the proceeds of her lucrative life insurance policy, which names Dottie as beneficiary.

You won’t want to meet these folks in person, but the theater is a safe place to encounter them, and Compass Theatre’s terrific production of Tracy Letts’ dark comedy Killer Joe is as good as you’ll see anywhere. Wonderfully directed by Lisa Berger, Killer Joe plays through April 5.

Chris hires smooth-talking cop and killer-for-hire Joe Cooper (Don Pugh, who manages to be at once courtly and threatening) for the job, but finds the only way Joe will waive his hefty upfront fee is by offering a “retainer” in the form of Dottie.

This is in-yer-face theater (there is, in fact, a British movement by that name, and Letts is considered a prime exponent), raw, violent, vulgar, shocking but also – believe it or not – funny and utterly riveting.

With a spot-on cast, Michael McKeon’s trashy (in the right way) set and Berger at the helm, Killer Joe will make you laugh, gasp and hope you never meet anyone like these folks, but you’ll leave knowing you’ve seen some fine theater.

Killer Joe plays through April 5, 2009 at Compass Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinée Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-688-9210 or visit www.compasstheatre.com.

Speaking of people to avoid, prime on that list is the seductive, murdering thug Mackie Messer, aka Mack the Knife.

Yes, Mackie’s back in town through Sunday, March 29, at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Sam Woodhouse directs his fine cast and a seven-piece orchestra in the first local production of The Threepenny Opera since 1982.

The 1928 Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill collaboration is presented in the smaller Space theater, affording a more in-your-face production which doesn’t allow viewer distance quite like a larger theater would. Be prepared to get involved, especially if you sit in the front row.

The time is right before Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1837, and in society at large, as is always the case, “them as has, gets” and the rest make do as best they can.

The Threepenny Opera is about the have-nots of London – whores, beggars and thieves. The beggar market has been cornered by Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (Lyle Kanouse), and he runs it with an iron fist. Peachum assigns territory, provides uniforms and takes most of the profits.

Peachum is not happy to learn that career criminal Mack is out of prison and even less thrilled when he finds out that his pretty young daughter Polly (Amanda Kramer) has secretly married the thug. Peachum and his wife Celia (Leigh Scarritt) vow to bring Mack down.

The Threepenny Opera is a portrait of the London underworld, groundbreaking in both musical style (a combination of jazz, cabaret, operetta and vaudeville) and political content. Brecht the Marxist made no bones about considering capitalism the real enemy of the people – while the rich do just fine, the poor have to scramble to make ends meet.

This is a worthy production, especially notable for a terrific quartet of female characters: Polly; the whore Jenny Diver (Lisa Payton Jartu); Amy Ashworth Biedel’s Lucy Brown, who also has her eye on Mackie; and Mrs. Peachum, with Scarritt considerably toned down in look and hair. They can sing, they can dance and the “Jealousy Duet” between Lucy and Polly is a total hoot of a catfight number.

For my money, Jeffrey Meek looks good but is neither sufficiently seductive nor frightening enough as Macheath. But Gale McNeeley’s Tiger Brown (the crooked police chief), Kanouse’s greedy Peachum and the other male characters (especially Ruff Yeager and Shawn Goodman Jones) are strong enough to make up for it.

Kudos to the fine musicians as well.

Welcome back, Mackie. Who knew the question at issue here: “Who is the greater criminal – he who robs a bank or he who founds one?” – would find such resonance today.

The Threepenny Opera plays through Sunday, March 29, at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Wednesday and Sunday at 7 p.m.; matinée Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-544-1000 or visit www.sdrep.org.