Arts & Entertainment

Theater

Miss Nelson Has a Field Day It's phys-ed terror in this Theatre For Young America musical — and not in the typical body-issues and tight-shorts ways. An adaptation of Harry Allard and James Marshall's raucous book about what happens when the worst school in Texas meets the world's meanest substitute teacher, this Miss Nelson promises comic gloom and energetic numbers as well as Valerie Mackey made up into a truly hideous swamp of a coach: black lipstick, a Cardinals cap and a black fright wig that looks like its made entirely of spider legs. Through April 18 at the H&R Block City Stage in Union Station, 30 West Pershing Rd, 816-460-2020. (Alan Scherstuhl)

Macbeth Ambition unchecked is the order of the day here, both in the mad Scot's power lust and, perhaps, in the very fact of this often grand community theater's daring to take on "the Scottish play." The crazier strand of drama folk fake-believe that this witch-brew tragedy hexes any theater in which its name is said aloud, a superstition even more absurd than Midwesterners thinking gay couples somehow jeopardize marriage. What's important: Barring high schools and in-the-park productions, it's the only full-length Shakespeare production on the calendar anytime soon at any local theater. Here's one of the bard's nastiest plays, dripping with blood and cauldron gunk, packed to straining with murderous verse of the highest order, mounted in Mission by a reliable crew — can't we shift the cursed-title thing to something that deserves it, such as Mitch Albom's Duck Hunter Shoots Angel? Through April 6 at the Barn Players, 6219 Martway in Mission, 913-432-9100. (Alan Scherstuhl)

Copenhagen This thoughtful little show will almost certainly blow up real good. Imagining a mysterious, postwar reunion between Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the renowned physicists whose collaborative investigation of quantum mechanics "shattered" — in Heisenberg's words — "the objective universe around us," Michael Frayn's Tony-winning drama explores physics' biggest questions as well as something bigger still: Why do people do what they do? In 1941, after their work together had been disrupted by war, the German Heisenberg sneaked to Copenhagen to visit Bohr, a Dutchman; the historical mystery of why he risked his life to do this has fueled half a century of speculation. Under director Karen Paisley, the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre digs into not only the whats and hows of the universe but also the whys. Through April 20 at Off-Center Theatre, Crown Center, 2450 Grand, 816-536-9464. (Alan Scherstuhl)

The Country Wife As it wraps up its season, UMKC's venerable graduate theater department is way-backing with the mission of showing how little, over the centuries, folks have changed. First up is The Country Wife, William Wycherley's jaded, Restoration-era comedy of seduction, deception and the hard work men will put in to get women to put out. Director Theodore Swetz isn't exaggerating when he calls this "the original Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives." Thanks to its daggered repartee and sexual frankness, Whycherley's disreputable 1675 masterpiece languished for more than a century in a bowdlerized form, kind of like those basic-cable reruns with all the juicy bits trimmed out. Through April 13 at Studio 116 at UMKC's Performing Arts Center, 4949 Cherry, 816-235-6222. (Alan Scherstuhl)