Temperance. The Magician. The Moon. The Devil. One by one on her dressing room floor, playwright and performer Priyanka Shetty reveals the tarot cards in her shuffled stack, allowing their meanings to guide her through a string of personal stories and epiphanies in The Elephant in the Room. Over the course of Shetty’s 90-minute solo journey, running at Keegan Theatre through June 23, she delves into love, loss, and determination to gain greater understanding of what it means to belong.

What’s the story, morning glory? What’s the tale, nightingale? Did you hear about Hugo and Kim (and Conrad and Albert and Rosie and Mae)? With “The Telephone Hour,” Bye Bye Birdie lays claim to one of Broadway’s most iconic earworms. And in a new production running through June 15 as part of the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage series, the classic musical’s iconic score is placed front and center for paramount pleasure.

“Just because you write the number down doesn’t mean you have to buy it.” Such is the opening advisory from America’s naughtiest Tupperware Lady and the eponymous host of Dixie’s Tupperware Party (running at Kennedy Center through June 2), who rattles off trademarked names and product numbers with the speed of a veteran auctioneer. Written and performed by Kris Andersson (Dixie Longate when in drag), Dixie’s Tupperware Party is more a celebration of “Good Old American Plastic” and the generations of enterprising women responsible for its ubiquity, than an in-home trade show (though products are available for purchase in the lobby).

“What happens to the living when all our hopes and dreams are reserved for the afterlife?” It’s a question that has been mulled over, in one way or another, since the beginning of modern religion. And it emerges again as the guiding question in Amm(i)gone, a new play created and performed by Adil Mansoor and running at Woolly Mammoth through May 12.

When Arlington’s Signature Theatre first programmed Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragni, and James Rado’s “tribal rock musical” Hair for the 2019/20 season, the artistic staff had no idea that their plans would be derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, as the theater finally realizes its production (running through July 7), the national focus has turned away from the pandemic and toward a wave of protests materializing across college campuses. That Hair would finally land amid such student-led social unrest may feel a bit like poetic justice, but Signature’s bouncy, nostalgic revival prioritizes the vibrancy of mid-century free love over the grittiness of that era’s anti-war spirit.

It begins with a pitched sigh from the depths of the belly, lingering for a moment before the button gets pushed. Originating millimeters from the microphone’s waffled cap, the forced air grows tighter and fuller, morphing into a pulsating, gentle “shhhh.” Another push. Like a descant above a meditative symphony, the kinetic crackle of a shaking jaw bounces in the breeze. Push. And there, in the air, hangs the ocean. So it goes in Islander, a soaring new musical that blends loop technology with the miraculous versatility of human sound, playing at Olney Theatre Center through April 28 in the last stop of its North American tour.

Unknown Soldier is a new(ish) musical that asks whether we really know ourselves and the people around us, and just how far we’ll go to hold on to our memories, dreams, and desires. Written by book writer and co-lyricist Daniel Goldstein and late composer and co-lyricist Michael Friedman, the musical premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2015 and enjoyed a shortened 2020 run at New York’s Playwrights Horizons before the COVID pandemic closed theaters.

It’s hard to imagine that, when writing Little Shop of Horrors in 1982, composer Alan Menken and book writer and lyricist Howard Ashman were hoping to elicit a reaction of, “Well, that was sweet.” After all, a people-eating plant capitalizing on one man’s unchecked greed to devour human flesh and take over the world is hardly the stuff of rom-coms. Sociologists may tell you that, in the four decades since its premiere, society has become desensitized to such acts as a result of the violent images both in entertainment and the news. But, in the case of Ford’s Theatre’s garden-variety Little Shop, running through May 18, the more likely culprit is simply that, in its slickness, the show struggles to leave any blood on the stage.