The Bardy Bunch Set in 1974, Stephen Garvey’s musical parody almost literally mashes up the Brady bunch and the Partridge family, locking them into mortal scenarios out of Shakespeare. Keith P. and Marcia B. have gone all Romeo and Juliet even as Laurie P. and Greg B. are backing into romance a la Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado. Mike and Carol B. are advancing their careers using the Macbeth method. while Danny P. has Hamlet-like notions about his stepdad. And so on and on, packing in the references, from Antony and Cleopatra Halloween costumes to Titus Andronicus meat pies. Inasmuch as the show is all premise, it takes some ingenuity to keep things going. Mostly, they go. I can see cutting 20 minutes and tightening some of Jay Stern’s staging, but there’s a lot of groany fun here, especially if you’re well versed in the original sitcoms. Music director/arranger Logan Medland gets surprisingly fine results from Brady and Partridge hits. Who knew “I Woke Up in Love This Morning” would sound so good as a ballad? —Tony Adler
Fly by Night Nobody pulls off vocal harmonies quite like Theo Ubique. Partly, that’s because few other companies utilize cozy spaces like the No Exit Cafe with as much blocking and acoustic aptitude. In this revival of a 2015 off-Broadway “darkly comic rock fable” by Will Connolly, Michael Mitnick, and Kim Rosenstock, director Fred Anzevino and music director Jeremy Ramey achieve many of the surround-sound, spine-tingling moments the ensemble is known for. Whether or not the indie-pop show—set during the 1965 New York blackout—has legs of its own is a different question. A guitar-strumming dreamer played by James Romney finds himself in a love triangle with an actress and her sister, Meredith Kochan and Kyrie Anderson, respectively. The central problem is an uneasy schlockiness to the score that just doesn’t jibe with themes intended to be weighty. —Dan Jakes
The People’s History of the United States Quest Theatre Ensemble, which takes pride in “making theatre accessible to everyone” with free performances, offers an updated version of its 2008 populist pageant. Alternately celebratory and satirical, idealistic and ironic, the show juxtaposes the noble rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama with musical vignettes dramatizing the darker realities of American history: Native American genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, the Cold War “Red Scare,” the atomic bomb, etc. Well performed by a large multiracial cast, the production has an engaging homemade feel thanks to its use of oversize papier-mache puppets and masks. But writer-director Andrew Park’s insistent focus on America’s shortcomings make the rousing finale—a choral anthem calling on the nation to end gun violence and racial animus—feel more than a little naive. —Albert Williams
