The 2006 musical love story I Love You Because, its music by Joshua Salzman and its book and lyrics by Ryan Cunningham, is a modern spin on Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, exploring the age-old notion that opposites attract. And in its current presentation at the Black Box Theatre, the show provides a light and entertaining theatre experience.

The concept of taking songs from an artist’s catalog and piecing them together to create a narrative doesn’t always work. But I must say that the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's current Snapshots: A Musical Scrapbook is one of the genre's best, culling the music of Broadway composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz to tell the tale of a couple whose relationship is at a turning point. Its 26 numbers are from albums and familiar musicals such as Wicked, Godspell, and Pippin, and although some of the lyrics have been altered to match new characters and situations, this wasn't a distraction for me, and I was able to enjoy them as fresh and fitting for the storyline.

Considering its real-life tale of the 1916 lynching of a circus elephant and the event’s effects on those who either demanded or protested the execution, playwright George Brant’s Elephant’s Graveyard could rightly be labeled a drama. But it’s more accurately a horror story, and as evidenced by New Ground Theatre’s and director Debo Balogun’s electrifying presentation, that horror doesn’t come from a momentarily out-of-control pachyderm; it comes from human beings, from us, and our own worst impulses.