“It is easy to do justice – very hard to do right.”

- Lord Robert Morton

Young Ronnie Winslow (Kevin Koppman-Gue), apple of his father Arthur’s eye, is accused of the theft of five shillings from a fellow student and summarily expelled from the Royal Naval College in Osborne without trial or opportunity to defend himself.

Ronnie denies the charge, and his middle-class father decides to fight the dismissal. Two rounds of appeals later, Arthur (Jim Chovick) hires famous barrister Sir Robert Morton (Jason Heil) to defend the boy.

But high-profile lawsuits are costly, can be lengthy, and exact a toll on all close to the parties involved. The Winslows are no exception. The rest of the family consists of Ronnie’s older brother Dickie (Kürt Norby), an Oxford student (when he deigns to show up); his older sister Catherine (Colleen Kollar), a suffragette engaged to a proper army man John (Jon Lorenz); and dear old mom Grace (K.B. Mercer). And we mustn’t forget the embarrassingly ill trained maid, Violet (Dana Hooley).

Based on a real case (and one which led to a change in British law in 1947 that now allows private citizens to sue the crown), The Winslow Boy made playwright Terence Rattigan a rich man.

Small wonder; it’s a finely crafted piece of writing which accomplishes something seldom seen: a taut courtroom drama without a courtroom scene.

The Winslow Boy, playing through Nov. 20 at Lamb’s Players Theatre, is full of finely drawn characters and depends on fine acting. From Chovick’s quiet bullheadedness as Arthur and Mercer’s proper British housewife Grace to Kate’s early feminism, Dickie’s casual relationship to scholarship, Hooley’s hilarious gaffes as Violet, not to mention Jon Lorenz’s play-by-the-rules John and Heil’s impressively competent Sir Robert, this is a dream cast.

This is an excellent production worthy of this fine play. With high production values including Mike Buckley’s versatile set and fab costumes by Jeanne Reith, The Winslow Boy is one of the year’s best efforts.

The Winslow Boy plays through Nov. 20, at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado. Shows Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; matinees Saturday at 4:30 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 437-0600 or visit online at lambsplayers.org.

Some years ago, a typical ESL assignment was to write a few paragraphs about the American dream. In my other life as a reference librarian, I was asked to find information. You’d be surprised how difficult it was a find that term defined, much less discussed.

Which brings me to Adam Baum and the Jew Movie, directed by Glenn Paris and playing through Dec. 4 at 6 th@Penn Theatre.

The time is 1946; the place, Hollywood. Film producer Samuel Baum (Ralph Elias) meets with screenwriter Garfield Hampson (Max Macke) about Gar’s screenplay. Gar, tired of writing silly (but successful) escapist plots, has written a “message” film about anti-Semitism in America. His ponderous working title: Soil and Utopia.

Sam chats him up with the usual niceties – offering nuts, then scotch, which Gar accepts (“I’ll have my secretary walk five blocks to buy you some scotch,” Sam says) – then gets down to the point: “You wrote it as a Jew instead of as a Gentile. I hired you because you’re the best goyishe writer in Hollywood.”

Gar counters, “I’m the only goyishe writer in Hollywood.”

Sam wants to make an escapist film that will sell tickets. Most especially, he wants to beat Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck to the punch. Zanuck is in production with Gentleman’s Agreement, in which Gregory Peck plays a goy pretending to be Jewish.

Sam invites Gar to his son Adam’s bar mitzvah in order to give him a taste of Jewish family life in action. Gar is horrified at the excess, which leads to a heated discussion of what it is to be Jewish, or Jewish-American.

Inspired by a real-life conversation between producer Sam Goldwyn and screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr., Adam Baum and the Jew Movie is about doing good, doing well, truth and business and questions like “Why do we make movies?” and “What are we doing here?” (in the cosmic sense). What is an American; what is a Jew? What is the American dream, and who is allowed to attain it? Playwright Daniel Goldfarb delves into these sometimes uncomfortable questions, and leaves the audience to ponder the insidiousness of racism as well.

Elias (always a welcome onstage presence) is terrific as Sam the chameleon, Sam the businessman and father, and ultimately Sam the Jew and the Jewish-American. Macke is convincing as Gar, described by one critic as “the Socialist with a Rolex.” The juxtaposition between idealistic writer and pragmatic producer (“Did it occur to you that somebody might actually watch your picture if Cary Grant is in it?”) points up the lowest level of conflict here.

Zev Lerner (doublecast with Jacob Sampson) does well in the thankless part of Sam’s 13-year-old son Adam, about to celebrate his bar mitzvah.

There are many questions and no easy answers here. But there’s plenty of food for thought.

Adam Baum and the Jew Movie plays through Dec. 4 at 6th@Penn Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; matinees Saturday at 4:00 and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 688-2910 or visit sixthatpenn.com.

It’s difficult to put your finger on the point of The Frankenstein Project (v.2.0), Kirsten Brandt’s update of the classic Mary Shelley novel, presented at St. Cecilia’s Playhouse through Nov. 20 by Sledgehammer Theatre.

In this incarnation (v.1.0 was presented last year), a pregnant Mary Shelley opens the show, walking back and forth on a catwalk above the stage and musing about writing, fantasy, monsters and her husband, famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

What follows is a well staged and well acted but ultimately a silly update of the classic story, occasionally amusing but mostly a confusing jumble of too many concepts, too few original ideas and nowhere near enough humor.

Brandt, Sledgehammer’s redoubtable former artistic director, gets points for the inventive use of space as catwalk, scrims and shadows are employed to great effect.

In this update, Frankenstein’s creator is a female medical student, the monster female as well. This leads to lots of heavy-handed pronouncements about stem-cell research and the political will to approve or forbid same. (“We’re in danger of losing the lead to Singapore, of all places.”)

The media also come in for some thudding parody, as competing reporters from KFUK and KSHT (get it?) jockey for position and the first story. The script could do with a lighter touch and less obvious writing.

Despite some great acting (especially by the three Marys (Allison Riley, Laura Lee Juliano and Elizabeth O’Hara Yager), Frankenstein (v.2.0) is spinning its wheels.

This is the last full production at St. Cecilia’s, as the building is slated for the wrecking ball soon (though a “de-installation” will be presented for four days only in December).

The Frankenstein Project (v.2.0) runs through Nov. 20 at St. Cecilia’s Playhouse. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 7:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 544-1484 or visit www.sledgehammer.org.