There’s a lot to like about All the World’s a Stage, the Keen Company’s new musical at Theatre Row, but the most likable item of all might be … the strings. Michael Starobin’s orchestrations comprise piano, cello, violin, banjo, and guitar, infusing Adam Gwon’s songs with warmth, color, and the sort of lush sound that new scores haven’t proffered for years. We’ve gotten so used to artificial-sounding synthesizers, ear-rattling drums, and over-miked accompaniment that Gwon’s and Starobin’s work sounds fresher and newer than anything going on at whatever jukebox musical is playing down the street. And it’s serving a story that bears telling, and is told well.

There have been many memorable productions at the Irish Rep over the years—of Beckett, Synge, Friel, O’Casey, McPherson, and more—but with Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s Irishtown, it’s clear that the venerable nonprofit theater has a robust and self-deprecating sense of humor, able to laugh about the dominant tropes of Irish drama and the innumerable depictions of trauma and strife. Smyth’s play, developed under the theater’s New Play Development initiative and directed by Nicola Murphy Dubey, who leads that initiative, is a departure from its typical fare: a funny, satirical exploration of Irish theater, stories, and cultural identity.

“Grief is among other things a loss of rhythm,” remarks Patrick Bringley in All the Beauty in the World. This one-performer drama, now on the miniature stage of DR2, is based on Bringley’s 2023 memoir of the same title. Both play and memoir explore the emotional life of a man in his mid-20s, sensitive and erudite, seeking solace in art and isolation following his older brother’s death. When “you lose someone, it puts a hole in your life,” says Bringley (making his theatrical debut playing himself), “and for a time you huddle down in that hole.”

Written in 2000 and inspired by the Y2K scare, Eric Bogosian’s dark apocalyptic play Humpty Dumpty is finally receiving its New York premiere after debuting at the McCarter Theater Center in Princeton, N.J., in 2002. At that time, Bogosian’s script included dialogue that eerily foreshadowed the September 11 attacks. Now it serves as a cautionary tale about mankind’s  dependence on technology.

Any family rift can be gut-wrenching under the best of circumstances. But imagine the agony that ensues when one extricates oneself from a family and society whose unshakable beliefs are reinforced by centuries of tradition. Playwright Emil Weinstein’s Becoming Eve, based on Abby Chava Stein’s memoir, and directed by Tyne Rafaeli, expertly conveys this angst—and Chava’s conundrum.

In Two Minds is a new Irish play about the way a mother and daughter's intimate relationship is tested by mental illness. Playwright Joanne Ryan has constructed a story in which a mother’s behavior, resulting from bipolar disorder, tests her daughter’s resolve, love and support. Daughter (the characters are unnamed) knows she has little control to prevent her mother’s descent into depression, like watching a sinking ship. The play presents two portraits of the bipolar’s emotional toll compassionately but accurately. It is gritty and unflinching.