Corruption, greed, sellout artists, poor shopkeepers, immigrant families, a faithless priest – sounds pretty contemporary, right?

Maybe so, but it’s history repeating itself – specifically, the 1937 “play in music” The Cradle Will Rock, funded by the Federal Theatre Project (part of FDR’s Works Progress Administration, aimed at putting people to work as the country struggled to pull out of the Great Depression).

Originally directed by Orson Welles and produced by John Houseman, Cradle was considered revolutionary in its time – so much so that the first performance was canceled and the cast locked out of the theater. (Welles and Co. went to another theater, where the cast did 19 performances from the audience, as they were forbidden to perform onstage.)

What caused such a drastic response? Talk of unions and the plight of the lower classes. The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Lindsey Duoos Gearhart, is about the attempt of Larry Foreman (Christopher T. Miller) to unionize workers in the fictional Steeltown, USA, and the powerful and corrupt forces led by Mr. Mister (Brett Daniels) arrayed against that effort. This is political, agitprop theater and the government didn’t like it. (Does that remind you of any events concerning the National Endowment for the Arts in the not too distant past?)

More revue than musical, The Cradle Will Rock is staged in minimalist style, with a piano and several folding chairs the only set. This rivets the attention on Blitzstein’s clever and very pointed lyrics in songs such as the prostitute Moll’s “Nickel Under the Foot,” the tongue-in cheek “Freedom of the Press” and “Joe Worker,” about injustices suffered by the average factory worker.

Twelve actors play (and sing) 20-some roles in this little piece of history. Katie Harroff is terrific as Moll, as is Bryan Curtiss White as Rev. Salvation, who will preach whatever anyone will pay to hear. Andy Collins is also fine as the struggling druggist and Calah Beck a hoot as Editor Daily; Brett Daniels is excellent as bad guy Mr. Mister. Musical director/pianist Billy Thompson plays a mean piano, but he could stand to tone the volume down a bit to keep from overpowering the singers.

You’d hope we’d learn from the past. It’s distressing how similar to today’s issues the problems raised in this play are.

Stone Soup Theatre’s production of The Cradle Will Rock plays through Sunday, April 26, at the Tenth Avenue Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-287-3065 or visit www.stonesouptheatre.net.

Local (Del Mar) playwright Annie Weisman takes on the cultural phenomenon of cheerleading (if “cultural” is quite the word) in Be Aggressive, about two girls low on the cheer squad totem pole who pull a cross-country Thelma and Louise to cheerleading camp in hopes of wowing the rest of the team when they return.

Be Aggressive plays through Sunday, April 26, at New Village Arts Theatre. Kristianne Kurner directs.

Weisman tries to make us care about this (for me, that’s a bit of a chore) by making Laura (Rachael VanWormer) newly motherless (hit by a car while jogging) and Leslie (Amanda Morrow) fatherless (he abandoned the family years ago), and by mentioning (and dropping) that both are Jewish.

Laura’s father Phil (Daren Scott) wants no part of Laura’s desire to attend the Spirit Institute of the South in North Carolina. He wants her home in the mythical SoCal Vista del Sol, cooking and helping to raise little sister Hannah (Amanda Sitton), who seems to be 11 going on 35.

Weisman doesn’t tell us why Laura and Leslie are outsiders. Maybe they just aren’t very good. She also doesn’t tell us why they continue to hang in where they are apparently not wanted. Nor how two girls of at least normal intelligence could possibly consider stealing a parent’s car and credit card for a cross-country jaunt a good plan.

What she does do is give us some pretty good, often hilarious satire on the peculiar aberration of cheerleading and the lengths to which girls go to keep up with the others.

There is talk of boob jobs, hair elixirs, eating cumin-scented, barbecued tofu wraps and “cheer for cheer’s sake.” But the best bit isn’t about cheer at all; it’s Laura’s spiel for the smoothie flavors of the month (Buddhaberry and Messianic Mango are two) at Smooth Talk, where she works.

Be Aggressive is a slight piece at best, partly because the scenes are so short as to be choppy, made more noticeable by the use of cheerleaders shoving Tim Wallace’s set pieces around. And though more serious issues (single parenting, the cult of beauty, even environmentalism) are mentioned, Weisman is so busy with satire and wisecracks that she forgets to give us enough information to make us care about these characters.

But the cast is terrific. Sitton’s wise-beyond-her-years Hannah is my favorite, but VanWormer and Morrow are also convincing, as are Scott as Laura’s lost dad and Dana Case as Leslie’s world weary but strangely clueless mom.

Be Aggressive needs more heft in the script, but Kurner and her cast make it a fun evening as it stands.

Be Aggressive plays through Sunday, April 26, at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. Matinées Saturday at 3 and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 760-433-3245 or visit www.newvillagearts.org.

People grieve differently, sometimes in ways so divergent that they preclude even the ability to comfort each other.

Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s mentor at Juilliard, Marsha Norman, once told him to write a play about his greatest fear. The result was Rabbit Hole, which takes place eight months after 4-year-old Danny, son of Becca (JoAnne Glover) and Howie (Brendan Ford), ran into the street after his dog and was killed by teenage driver Jason (Ryan Kidd), who had swerved to miss the dog.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole plays through Sunday, April 26, at North Coast Repertory Theatre, directed by Stephen Elton.

Now the still-devastated 30-something Becca stands in the kitchen folding laundry (clothes that belonged to Danny) for the giveaway box.

While Becca folds and thinks her private thoughts, her irresponsible, bouncing-off-the-wall younger sister Izzy (Jessa Watson) tells a wild story about getting into a bar fight with a total stranger as prologue to informing Becca that she is pregnant by that stranger’s boyfriend.

Becca and Izzy’s garrulous mother Nat (Sandra Ellis-Troy), wanting to make everything better, spouts one platitude after another when she’s not nattering on about the Kennedys or reminding Becca that she, too, has suffered the loss of a child – Becca’s older brother – to adult suicide.

Meanwhile, Howie is in double mourning. His way of grieving is to reach out, and he wants his wife back. But Danny’s loss has caused Becca to withdraw even more deeply within herself, to a place he can no longer reach. Their increasing alienation is made visible when Howie, massaging Becca’s shoulders, kisses the back of her neck and she reacts as if she’s been struck.

And 17-year-old Jason, wracked by guilt, dedicates a short story to Danny in expiation for the anguish he has inadvertently caused.

How does one climb out of such a cavern of grief? The play’s title may refer to that, or to the plot of Jason’s story, in which “rabbit holes” in the universe lead to parallel universes.

A whole play about grief could be an awful slog, but Elton keeps tight rein on the emotional content, allowing his top-notch cast to navigate nimbly around the traps to arrive at a truth that does not slide over into bathos. Rabbit Hole is thoughtful rather than depressing and often very funny, the welcome comic relief provided mostly by Ellis-Troy’s well-meaning but sometimes thoughtless Nat and Watson’s utterly self-involved Izzy.

Glover’s Becca is about as buttoned-down as they come, but a look here and a hesitation there are enough to communicate her fragility.

Ford’s Howie is heartbreaking, reaching out to a Becca who cannot respond. Kidd is fine as the glassy-eyed Jason, forced to deal with an earth-shattering event beyond his capability.

Lindsay-Abaire offers no easy answers here, no tidy happy ending. Sort of like life.

Rabbit Hole plays through Sunday, April 26, at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m.; select Wednesdays at 7 and Saturdays at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 858-481-1055 or visit www.northcoastrep.org