The verbal wars have broken out at George and Martha’s, with all the marital sniping, embarrassment of guests and audience discomfort that entails.

Edward Albee’s classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? plays through June 24 at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Richard Seer directs.

In a small New England town, history professor George (James Sutorius) and his wife Martha (Monique Fowler) return home after a faculty party given by Martha’s father, the university president.

It’s 2 a.m. and George is sinking contentedly into his drink when Martha announces that she’s invited new faculty member Nick (Scott Ferrara) and his mousy wife Honey (Nisi Sturgis) over for a nightcap. It will turn out to be a bumpy ride, especially for the unsuspecting guests.

George and Martha, massively unhappy yet deeply attached, inhabit a netherworld of realism and illusion which are sometimes difficult to distinguish. They survive by a combination of verbal sparring in the here and now (which often becomes cruel and occasionally impotently physical) and the construction of a mutually preferable reality maintained by agreement and a set of rules to which both adhere. Both are watered by copious amounts of alcohol.

Their imaginary son, for example, has inspired wonderful fictions never revealed to outsiders; this night Martha’s mention of him will by the end of the play come back to haunt both her and us.

The faculty newcomers, biology professor Nick and his vapid and innocent wife Honey arrive, little expecting the maelstrom they have stepped into. When the games Martha and George play (such as Hump the Hostess and Get the Guests) get too rough, Nick and Honey flee, leaving George and Martha to their by now comfortable, mutual sniping.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is an emotionally harrowing experience made bearable by copious amounts of searing humor and an expert cast. Fowler’s Martha, caustic and emotionally crippled, tries to drown her disappointment (in George and in life) in booze and sarcasm, but it’s easy to feel the pain underneath.

Sutorius, looking every bit the history professor, reminds us of all the losers our mothers warned us about. Yet he has learned how to play Martha’s game, occasionally manages to best her at it, and is in fact the only one left standing at the end.

Ferrara’s Nick cuts a fine figure as an ambitious young academic with designs on the whole department. Sturgis is perfect as the slightly dim-witted Honey, utterly out of her element in this pool of sharks.

Seer directs this fine cast with a sure hand, though working in the round means all audience members lose some of the subtler movements and facial expressions.

Seer describes the play best: “Neither actors nor audience will have anyplace to hide.”

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? plays through June 24 at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Shows Sun, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-23-GLOBE.

Mr. Green (Ed Eigner), a gruff but lonely 86-year-old Jewish widower, lives alone in the apartment he and his beloved wife Yetta inhabited for the 59 years of their marriage. He does not welcome a knock on the door from 20-something stranger Ross Gardiner (Sean C. Vernon), who announces out of the blue that he is there to help Green with clean-up, shopping or whatever else he needs.

Jeff Baron’s Visiting Mr. Green plays through June 24 at the Broadway Theater in Vista, directed by Jerry Pillato.

Mystified and annoyed by this intruder, Green tells him to please go away. But it turns out that Ross’ visits are court-mandated community service for driving too fast and almost hitting the old man, who had (perhaps precipitously) ventured into the street. Ross must visit Green every week for six months.

Though it stretches credulity a bit (would you want “help” from the guy who almost ran you down?), it works as a plot device, serving to toss these two men together long enough for them to clash and then to realize their commonalities.

Green’s frosty demeanor begins to warm when Ross brings soup from the best local kosher restaurant. When Ross lets it slip that he is Jewish, the wall crumbles quickly … until the end of the first act, when Ross mentions that he is gay.

The first act is reminiscent of Driving Miss Daisy, but the second plays on themes of intolerance (as Green asserts that homosexuality is “dirty” and “wrong,” and Ross equates his anti-gay bigotry with anti-Semitism), familial bonds (playwright Baron has another surprise up his sleeve, but I won’t disclose it here) and the universal experience of loneliness.

Eigner owns this play. His Green is irascible, difficult, funny, bright, but also obviously lonely and in need of help, whether or not he admits it. Vernon’s buttoned-down Ross is a fine counterbalance, but in this play, as my dad used to say about tennis, age and treachery will beat youth and skill any day of the week.

Baron left a corporate career in the 1990s to become a playwright. Visiting Mr. Green, his first effort, was nominated for a Best Play by the Drama League in 1998.

Visiting Mr. Green plays through June 24 at the Broadway Theater in Vista. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 760-806-7905 or visit www.broadwayvista.com.

Three couples contemplate parenthood in Sybille Pearson’s 1983 musical Baby, playing at North Coast Repertory Theatre through June 24. Paula Kalustian directs.

College juniors Danny (Jason Maddy) and Lizzie (Ashley Linton), living in a basement apartment near campus, find themselves expecting by accident.

Danny immediately jumps to the marriage conclusion, but Lizzie puts the kybosh on that notion. “I never want to get a divorce, so I don’t want to get married. Marriage is an anti-social act no one survives,” she says.

Thirtysomethings Nick and Pam (real-life partners Nick and Rebecca Spear) want a baby but are having trouble conceiving. And Alan (Steve Gunderson) and Arlene (Susan Jordan), 48 and 43, have raised three daughters and are flummoxed by this unexpected pregnancy, the result of a barely remembered boozy weekend at the Plaza Hotel.

Baby explores the fears, doubts and questions many couples face when motherhood is in the offing. Nick and Pam’s only question is whether the scheduled sexual encounters, thermometer readings and oddball positions will work (“At 11 on the dot/ whether we’re enthused or not/we rendezvous”). Arlene wonders whether she wants this baby. Danny (naive boy that he is) thinks “the important thing is to work the baby into your life and not the other way around.”

Slight, pleasant and often clever, Baby was nominated for seven Tonys in 1984. The music is mostly bouncy and Sondheimian – repetitive musically and often lyrically.

Kalustian, who directs Baby for the fourth time, is blessed with a fine cast, from always-reliable local stalwarts Gunderson, Jordan and the Spears to new faces Linton (with a voice reminiscent of Bernadette Peters) and Maddy. Lindsay Gearhart and Paul Morgavo are impressive in a variety of roles.

This is a small show, with minimal set and props. A big bed is front and center, with a few chairs and other pieces moved in when needed.

The subject of Baby might limit its audience to some extent (I find it less than fascinating), but moms and dads who remember the event will likely get a kick out of it.

Baby runs through June 24 at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m.; select Wednesdays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 858-481-1055 or visit www.northcoastrep.org.

Teenybopper musical Hairspray is back in town and plays through Sunday at the Civic Theatre.

Set in 1962, after the Bay of Pigs but before life got ugly with assassinations and Vietnam, Hairspray hits a home run with foot-stomping tunes, spiffy stagecraft and the obligatory upbeat ending.

Brooklynn Pulver belts it out winningly as Baltimore’s Tracy Turnblad, a pudgy teen who wants to be on the “American Bandstand”-inspired Corny Collins Show, while supersized mom Edna (Jerry O’Boyle) tries to protect her daughter from the depressing facts of life for overweight TV performers.

But Tracy auditions anyway, and of course becomes a star despite her weight and the machinations of the show’s evil producer Velma Von Tussle (Kristi Stewart) and her blonde daughter Amber (Pearl Thomas). Tracy even manages to steal Amber’s boyfriend, the hunky Link Larkin (Constantine Rousouli).

Originally directed by the Old Globe’s Jack O’Brien, Hairspray reeled in eight Tonys in 2003 with its loud, ’60s-inspired music, frenetic choreography and jackhammer messages about pudge power and racial tolerance.

The opening-night crowd, younger than most at Broadway San Diego events, seemed to know the show already and not to mind the overmiking that makes many of the lyrics incomprehensible.

Hairspray is noisy, upbeat fun, and worth seeing if only for O’Boyle’s charming duet “(You’re) Timeless to Me” with skinny, geeky-looking husband Wilbur (Dan Ferretti).

Hairspray runs through Sunday, June 10. Shows Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday at Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 6 p.m.; matinees Saturday at 2 p.m and Sunday at 1 p.m. For tickets, call 619-570-1100 or Ticketmaster at 619-220-TIXS.