The joy of musical standards lies in reinterpretation. In the case of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” the centerpiece of the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical Pal Joey based on John O’Hara’s 1940 novel of the same name, there are plenty to choose from: Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Linda Ronstadt, Sammy Davis Jr., and even a duet version with Rod Stewart and Cher. But in Chez Joey, a new musical inspired by Pal Joey playing through March 15 at Arena Stage, book writer Richard LaGravanese and choreographer and “orchestrologist” Savion Glover (co-directing with Scandal star Tony Goldwyn) are taking reinterpretation to the next level by crafting a new story and set list from the old musical using songs from across the Rodgers and Hart catalog. The resulting play lives up to Pal Joey’s primary anthem, and is mostly bewitching, at times bothersome, and occasionally bewildering.

In his lyrical retrospective, Finishing the Hat, legendary composer Stephen Sondheim set out his three rules of writing: less is more; God is in the details; and content dictates form. That’s not to say these are the only or definitive rules, of course, as evidenced by Joriah Kwamé’s Little Miss Perfect—a world premiere musical playing at Olney Theatre Center through March 8—which flips the last rule to construct a whole musical from a single YouTube viral hit. But whereas other social media musicals like Ratatouille: The Musical and The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical have found their stride sticking mostly to the platforms that bore them, translating “Little Miss Perfect” to Little Miss Perfect has proven a more difficult task, at times falling victim to its own desire for virality. 

You should know that I am not the target audience for Paranormal Activity, a stage adaptation of the Paramount Pictures movie franchise running at Shakespeare Theatre Company through February 7. I am a wimp, a wuss, a weenie, with a time-tested talent for weaseling out of movie nights with even a whiff of public fright. But more so, I am a sucker for spectacle, and this Paranormal Activity — which leans heavily on illusion and ambient creepiness instead of the “found-footage” format of its film iterations — is a horror hoot.

It begins with a baseball-size lump of gray clay, which she unwraps from a piece of damp cloth so quickly that it takes an extra moment to realize what she’s holding. Then it’s on the wheel, spinning ceaselessly as she dips her hand into a rusty pail and shovels water onto the ball with her palm. More spinning, her hand flattening the mass, then more water, and her thumbs push up the side of the soft slab until it’s tall. The music is swelling now, unfazed by another splash, and her thumbs rotate, pressing down to form a well in the center. The music is still driving, but the wheel has stopped and she’s pulled a wire taut—another sleight of hand—and scrapes it against the flat base, releasing the perfect pot into her hand. She’s standing now, depositing it into the kiln, letting hours pass in a few breaths until the clay is finally cool and she can lift it high like a divine tribute, ignorant of the deep crack only the audience sees. She notices and she sighs. So goes an unforgettable pas de deux (pot de deux?) between real-life artist Marie–Berthe Cazin (Alex Finke) and her creation in the new musical In Clay, making its U.S. premiere at Arlington’s Signature Theatre through Feb. 1 under director Kimberly Senior.

There’s unspeakable devastation in actor Lee Osorio’s eyes when his character, Ryan, confronts the prospect that he may not get the mortgage he needs to build his dream home in Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God. (Mosaic Theater Company’s production plays at the Atlas Performing Arts Center through Dec. 14.) He suggests to his mortgage broker, Keith (Jaysen Wright), that he might call the bank himself. He’s a good guy, after all, and if he can just explain his plans and dreams to them, they’ll approve the loan. Right? “They don’t care about who you are as a person,” Keith says, dismissing Ryan’s naivete. “It’s just numbers to them.”

“It is a little alarming to have lived here so long without realizing who our neighbors are.” That woeful admission seems an understatement by the time it comes in An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen’s treatise on truth that sees a town turn against a doctor whose microscopic discovery endangers their economic prosperity. This revival of Ibsen’s 1882 play, set in the present day, is now playing at Theatre J through November 23 in a new adaptation by Amy Herzog. But the realization that follows it says everything you need to know about director János Szász’s feeling of urgency and resignation in staging this drama: “And these people consider themselves to be free-thinkers.” 

There isn’t much talk about religion in Lloyd Suh’s The Heart Sellers—playing at Studio Theatre through Nov. 2—but there is faith in spades: that a frozen turkey will still cook through, that one job may soon turn into a better one, that a woman and her husband will someday have enough money to buy tickets to Disneyland, and that a new life built here will be happier than the one left behind. It is Thanksgiving in 1973, after all, and though Watergate rages on, the American dream is (presumably) alive and well.

If you are still under the illusion that online dating in 2025 is anything other than a hellscape of half-hearted swipes, scripted introductions, and painfully awkward first dates, Miriam Battye — the playwright behind Strategic Love Play, playing through November 9 in an area premiere at Arlington’s Signature Theatre — is here to absolve you of that notion once and for all. In a trendy New York restaurant, where reddish plaster walls are offset by desilvering mirrors that evoke the screens in our hand as much as reflect the people in front of them, a Man (Danny Gavigan) and a Woman (Bligh Voth) have just sat down for drinks after matching on an unspecified dating app. We’ll eventually learn her name is Jenny (and his, Adam), but she comes in hot from the jump, prodding her uptight suitor with difficult questions and confessing less-than-generous assumptions that make him clam up quickly. Whether he’ll stick it out for the obligatory second drink is anyone’s guess. Because it’s theater, he does, and for 70 minutes the two wrestle with romantic expectations, take stock of the baggage they carry, and dream of what comes next, should this be the match they’ve been waiting for.