There are some scripts that can be like pulling teeth when not done right. Thankfully, no orthodontist is needed for director Tristan Tapscott's powerful production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

Self-referential meta-theatre ploys wage stealth attacks on the audience like mosquitoes. By the time you notice the tiny, piercing strike, it’s gone.

Kitty: Before the show started, Tommy Ranieri, the Timber Lake Playhouse's artistic director, asked the audience for a show of hands: Who had seen Hands on a Hardbody on stage before?

Mischa: And no one had. He was clearly making the point that this show is not so well known to the general public. And really, the premise seems a little dubious for a stage musical.

Background characters essayed by day players. Casts of thousands. Movies are crawlin’ with ’em. Nobody much cared about the usually unnamed souls who were rarely part of the plot, and they still don’t. But Puffs, a boy-wizard spoof subtitled Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic & Magic, shines a spotlight on them (without casting “lumos,” because that’s a proprietary spell).