Inge drama and 4 musicals opening

A classic William Inge drama and four musicals are among this week's theater openings.

• PICNIC, William Inge's 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winner for drama, is the second of this summer's four main-stage productions in the Old Lyric Repertory Company series in Logan.

Patrick Sims is directing the drama, set in a small Kansas town over a Labor Day weekend, when a handsome vagrant changes the lives of several residents, including two sisters and a spinster schoolteacher.

The cast includes Brandon Pearson as drifter Hal Carter, Lacey Jackson as Madge, a beautiful woman reluctant to follow her dreams, and Rebecca Johnson as Millie, Madge's tomboy younger sister. (The original production marked the Broadway debut of Paul Newman, who played Madge's wealthy fiance.)

• MESA VERDE, a new play by Matthew Ivan Bennett about sisterhood and survival, will be presented on Sunday, June 24, at 2 and 5:30 p.m. in the Studio Theatre of the Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. Broadway (300 South) as part of Plan-B Theatre Company's "Script-in-Hand" series.

It will be presented in the style of a workshop production with a focus on the text. Directed by Kyle Lewis, the cast will include April Fossen, Teresa Sanderson and Yolanda Wood.

"Mesa Verde" was among pieces from last year's "Slam" program of 10-minute scripts written and produced in a 24-hour period, and it is in the process of being developed into a full-length play. (Cort Brinkerhoff's expanded script for "Ugly to the Bone" will be read next month.)

Tickets are $10 for general admission seating (355-2787, ArtTix outlets or www.planbtheatre.org).

• WHO WILL CARRY THE WORD? is a new play by Charlotte Delbo. It will be performed Thursday-Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. by the Pinnacle Acting Company, 695 W. Center, Midvale. Tickets are $10 for general-admission seating.

• THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, the Broadway musical comedy about a blood-thirsty plant that turns a skid row floral shop into a major attraction, is being added to the repertory series this summer at Pickleville Playhouse in Garden City on the southern shore of Bear Lake.