This week we bring you a crucifixion, ghetto Shakespeare and mean people in love. Because why get vanilla ice cream when you can get, say, caramel ice cream with fudge chunks and cookie dough and cherry bits and sugar cone slivers? Just kidding. You can't really get that ice cream. But ghetto Shakespeare, we got that.

Crucifixion at New Conservatory Theatre Center
One of the last times playwright Terrence McNally's name was linked to a crucifixion, it was in the late 1990s and the play was his Corpus Christi. Featuring a tormented gay man named Joshua who leaves Corpus Christi in search of tolerance and who picks up, so to speak, 12 other men along the way, it was one of those plays that was picketed, threatened, dropped from theatres schedules and then put back on after protests from other artists. Well, as far as we know, the world premiere of Crucifixion at New Conservatory Theatre Center has had no such problems. Using multiple story lines laid out by 11 characters, the play centers on a high-profile TV producer who is murdered by a Jesuit priest. The characters, ranging from a lesbian couple to a Broadway composer to a Bay Area weatherman, discover how they're connected through family, faith and community. Artistic director Ed Decker commissioned the play after McNally, who was in San Francisco for the production of Dead Man Walking (he wrote the libretto) at the San Francisco Opera a few years ago, dropped in on New Conservatory's rehearsals for, appropriately, Corpus Christi. The rest is, as they say, soon to be history.
Crucifixion opens October 8 and plays through November 6.

Two Noble Kinsmen at African American Art & Culture Complex
The African-American Shakespeare Company reckons the last time Shakespeare's last play written was seen in the Bay Area was 1985. Well, even if you happened to catch that performance, you probably won't recognize the play after you see what African-American Shakes has done to it. Director David Westley Skillman sets the tale of imprisoned cousins and friends who fall for the same woman in modern-day Western Addition. Idyllic scenes are replaced by housing projects, matriarchs are upstaged by drag queens and swords are swapped for guns in this multicultural "sort of ghetto" production, the style of which the company compares to current indie film Rize. Shakespeare's characters krumpin and clownin? We doubt it, but we're looking forward to local dance star Robert Henry Johnson's choreography in this play anyway. And if he krumps, then Baz Luhrman (Romeo + Juliet), you're so upstaged.
Two Noble Kinsmen opens October 7 and plays through October 23.

Funny But Mean at Exit Theatre
Just in time for Halloween, this sketch comedy group presents Funny But Mean Falls in Love. Well, that's what the press release said. Don’t ask us why. A good sketch comedy group can't just get by on jokes and site gags anymore, they need to be a quirky, a little bit contrary and, oh yeah, mean. Developed by local production company Strange Prescription, Funny But Mean performs once a month and features actors who have trod the boards of such companies as California Shakespeare Theater and Beach Blanket Babylon. This month the company takes a crack at the issues surrounding romance, flirting and marital bliss--namely, romance, flirting and marital bliss.
Funny But Mean Falls in Love plays October 10 for two performances.

Photo: Camilla Busnovetsky, Colin Stuart and Paul Araquistain in Crucifixion. Photo by Lois Tema.