The Old Globe Shakespeare Festival opened last week with a spectacular, must-see Cyrano de Bergerac, the first non-Shakespeare play to appear in the festival. It continues with the Bard’s Coriolanus and Twelfth Night. All three play in repertory.

Ancient Rome takes on a starkly modern look on the Old Globe’s outdoor stage when Darko Tresnjak directs Shakespeare’s last tragedy, Coriolanus, as part of the annual Shakespeare Festival.

Five soldiers with rifles are projected on scrims; ranged in front are nine blood-red Roman flags. The opening “find your nearest exit” announcement follows an air raid siren-like blast.

In a story as old as history and as modern as Ahmadinejad, Coriolanus reminds us that in a democracy, getting (and keeping) power depend on more than valor and connections.

As an angry Roman crowd complains about the price of corn and the lack of governmental responsiveness to their needs, the great Roman warrior Caius Martius (Greg Derelian) returns triumphant after subduing Tullus Aufidius (Brendan Griffin) and the Volscians in battle.

With a distinguished military career and the scars (including new ones) to prove it, he is hailed as hero and given the laudatory title Coriolanus. There is talk of making him a consul. This pleases his ambitious mother Volumnia (Celeste Ciulla) no end; for years, she has been carefully grooming her son for power. This may be his time.

Valiant though he is, Coriolanus is also arrogant, intolerant and dismissive of ordinary Roman citizens. Not a schmoozer and unable even to say “I feel your pain” convincingly, he must nonetheless court the support of the Roman citizenry if he is to become consul.

But kissing babies is not his forte, and after an amusingly distasteful attempt at it, Coriolanus decides dying might be better. Even advisers Menenius (Charles Janasz) and Cominius (Gerritt VanderMeer) can’t save him from his own lack of empathy.

The electorate promptly votes to banish him from Rome, whereupon Coriolanus allies himself with the just-conquered enemy in an ill-fated plan to sack the Eternal City.

Based on the life of a real 5th century Roman general, Coriolanus is the Bard’s most overtly political and least poetic play, full of unlikable characters jockeying for position and power.

It’s also a bit redundant, and Tresnjak has wisely trimmed about an hour of unnecessary dialogue, giving us a much more consistently absorbing drama. Coriolanus, in fact, turns out to be the shortest of this year’s Festival offerings.

Tresnjak has set the play between the world wars, and with minimal attention to costumes and sets, attention is concentrated on the manipulations at hand.

Derelian is imposing and effective as the soldier with the one-track mind, but still manages to show his vulnerability. He’s been expertly groomed to Rambohood, but he’s no match for Ciulla’s Volumnia, who takes over the stage whenever she’s on it, striding imperiously in her scarlet and sable dress, chomping on a stogie. One look at her and you know why Sonny accedes to her request that he change his mind about sacking the homeland.

Of course, the story ends badly. But at least Tresnjak swaps the written final speech for a much stronger visual image of Volumnia and Coriolanus’ widow Virgilia (Brooke Novak) returning to Rome, having saved the city but lost the only thing that mattered.

The Old Globe Theatre’s Shakespeare Festival presents Coriolanus in repertory with Twelfth Night and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac through Sunday, Sept. 27, at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. For tickets call 619-234-5623 or visit oldglobe.org.

A fool (James Newcomb), a fat guy (Eric Hoffmann), a fop (Bruce Turk) and a long-faced servant (Patrick Page) accessorize the plot of Shakespeare’s consummately sillyTwelfth Night at the Old Globe Theatre. The bard’s last comedy plays through Sept. 27 in the summer Shakespeare festival, in repertory with Coriolanus and Edmond Rostand’s classic Cyrano de Bergerac. Paul Mullins directs Twelfth Night.

You remember the plot: Twins Viola (Dana Green) and Sebastian (Kevin Hoffmann), separated shortly after birth by a storm at sea, converge quite accidentally years later in Illyria, resulting in much confusion, merriment and mistaken identities.

Viola, you see, has arrived first and hired on as a boy named Cesario to serve as messenger to Count Orsino (Gerritt VanderMeer). Viola has her eye on the Count; the Count is in love with the lovely Olivia (Katie MacNichol), still in mourning for her recently departed brother. The Count sends Cesario to Olivia with entreaties of love; Olivia will have none of the Count, but falls in love with Cesario.

Eventually Viola’s long-lost brother Sebastian (Kevin Hoffmann) docks, thanks to stalwart seaman Antonio (Greg Derelian), and the real confusion begins. Through it all, Olivia‘s anti-fun steward Malvolio (Patrick Page), stiff of carriage and solemn of expression, stalks around, glowering at the frivolity that surrounds him. He is so out of place in this group that Olivia plans an elaborate prank that involves Malvolio dressing in a particularly uncharacteristic fashion, making him the source of widespread derision.

Set on the Italian Riviera in the 1950s, the production invokes Hollywood with a couple of production numbers (one with choreographed umbrellas is a hoot) and boy singers with do-wop backup. Linda Cho’s terrific costumes featuring basic black, shirtwaist dresses, plaids, and of course, shades add to the ambience.

There is no lesson here, no deeper meaning, unless it be the suggestion to lighten up, kick back and enjoy life while you can. Mullins and his cast make that inevitable with a sprightly production that lights up a summer night with music and laughter.

Dana Green’s Viola is adorable and plucky (if not especially convincing as a boy); Katie MacNichol’s Olivia is lovely and regal, at least until she falls for Cesario. The Newcomb-Hoffmann-Turk trio add to the merriment, while Page’s Malvolio, stiff as a board and with slicked-back hair, reminds one a bit of the wartime monster Hitler. It’s a bit jarring, but who better to mock?

The Old Globe Theatre’s Shakespeare Festival presents Twelfth Night in repertory with Coriolanus and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac through Sunday, Sept. 27, at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. For tickets, call 619-234-5623 or visit www.oldglobe.org.

What if Oliver Twist had something other than gruel in mind when he said, “Please, sir, may I have some more?”

In conjunction with Pride Week, Diversionary Theatre presents Twist, a gay, kinky, cross-dressing musical version of the Dickens original, through Sunday, Aug. 9. James Vasquez directs.

In order to make it work onstage, book writer Gila Sand cut most of the characters, leaving Fagin’s gang, Mr. Bumble, Weasel, the Sowerberrys, Noah Claypool and Lady Downlow (formerly Mr. Brownlow).

The Dickens story is the saga of Oliver’s search for a safe place. Orphaned at birth, Twist endures a series of unpleasant living situations before finally finding a home. He first lands in Mr. Bumble’s workhouse.

Most of the boys try to avoid punishment, but this Twist (Jacob Caltrider) is 18 (child abuse isn’t funny) and avers submissively to any who will listen (or cane him) that “I’m under everyone, sir.” Bumble (Tony Houck) doesn’t believe in sparing the rod, but is incensed when Twist asks for it, and puts him on the auction block.

Twist is sold to the skeletal, black-clad undertaker Sowerberry (Andy Collins, in a scream of a performance), who carries (and talks to!) a skull and sings, “Even if you’re in remission/you’ve got a date with the mortician.”

But Sowerberry’s other lackey, Noah Claypool (Scott Striegel), picks a fight and blames it on Twist, and soon Twist is out on the street again, where the Artful Dodger (Tom Zohar) finds and brings him “home” to Fagin’s gang of thieves.

Fagin (David McBean) is a male diva with a short fuse and long high-heeled black patent boots who abuses everyone. The “family” supports itself by thievery or, in the case of Nancy (Amy Northcutt), whoring.

Eventually, Twist is rescued by my favorite character, shoe fetishist Lady Downlow (Jackie Cuccaro), whose musical ode to shoes is a highlight of the show.

The cast gets a great opportunity to strut its stuff in Jeannie Galioto’s terrific costumes. Kristin Ellert’s clever set design helps Vasquez keep the show moving. Vasquez also contributes some amusing choreography. Cheers also to the fine band, which showcases the catchy music by Sand and Paul Leschen nicely without drowning out the singers.

Caltrider is both adorable and less innocent than he looks as Twist. The always-reliable Zohar’s fast-talking Artful Dodger is a triple threat: not only is the character riveting, but Zohar also has the most consistent accent and the clearest diction. Scott Striegel does a nice turn as murderer Bill Sikes; his duet with Nancy is a highlight.

McBean is hilarious at the top of the show as Bumble’s stooped Matron, and an imposing presence later as “I Always Come Out on Top” Fagin (“You know I wouldn’t trip you/but I could stand to see you crawl”).

Most of Dickens’ social commentary has disappeared in the kinky makeover, though the themes of finding a home and being used are made clear, especially in the cases of Twist and Nancy.

This isn’t your English teacher’s Twist, but it’s a dickens of a show.

Twist plays through Sunday, Aug. 9, at Diversionary Theatre. Shows Monday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets call, 619-220-0097 or visit www.diversionary.com.

Federico Garcia Lorca, originally trained as a classical pianist, is best remembered today for his “rural trilogy” of plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernardo Alba. All are concerned with village life, social expectation and death.

Yerma runs through Sunday, July 19, at Swedenborg Hall in Hillcrest, in a joint production between Chronos Theatre Group and A Talent to Amuse Theatre Company. Doug Hoehn directs.

A village woman’s life in Spain in the early 1930s was expected to center around marriage and children, and a barren wife was an object of pity. Yerma (Justine Hince) is in exactly that situation, and she’s devastated that the dozen years she’s spent with husband Juan (Josh Freeman) have produced no offspring.

Yerma doesn’t get an answer when she asks the village pagan woman why she’s barren, but she does volunteer that she is “not empty, I’m filling up with hate” for Juan. It doesn’t help that Juan, a shepherd who, like all the men in the village, comes and goes at will, has decreed that Yerma shall not leave the house.

Beware the unfulfilled woman. When Juan’s friend Victor comes to the house to say goodbye, Yerma quite unexpectedly feels stirrings that have eluded her for a dozen years.

You know this cannot end well, but Lorca tells the story so poetically that your heart will ache for these victims of society and each other. And Lorca is always worth seeing.

The company does fairly well with this hall, which provides no acoustic support whatsoever and requires huge attempts at articulation. Innocenti is easily understood throughout (and is a fine singer).

There is one particularly lovely scene that’s worth the price of admission: the women at the river, singing and gossiping as they do laundry. It makes village life seem downright desirable.

Yerma plays through Sunday, July 19, at Swedenborg Hall, 1531 Tyler Ave. in Hillcrest. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-615-8928 or visit chronostheatre.com.

Topol (in the guise of Tevye the milkman) is back in town for a much too short run through Sunday at Civic Theatre. This Fiddler on the Roof is billed as Topol’s farewell tour in the role.

Everybody knows the story of “underfed, overworked” Anatevka, the tiny Russian village in 1905 where Jews and Russians co-exist (albeit a bit uneasily), where Tevye sells milk to his neighbors, talks to God and tries to maintain a balance between “Tradition” and the changes brought by history and by his daughters and their spousal choices.

Fiddler is an irresistible story about family, history and change, and this version is terrific. Topol is amazing – even at 73, the voice is strong, the pacing, dialogue and gestures spot-on. Perhaps that’s what comes of doing a role some 2500 times.

Topol gets no small amount of help from Susan Cella (Golde), Rena Stober (Tzeitel), Jamie David (Hodel), Deborah Grausman (Chava), Mary Stout (Yente), Erik Liberman (Motel), Colby Foytik (Perchik) and Eric Van Tielen (Fyedka).

Great choreography, excellent tech work, (especially the set by Steve Gilliam and Tony Ray Hicks’ costumes) and an utterly engaging story make this Fiddler on the Roof a must-see.

Fiddler on the Roof plays through Sunday, July 19, at the Civic Theatre. Shows Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-570-1100 or Ticketmaster 800-745-3000.