Some plays don't focus on holidays

A recent off-Broadway musical and a couple of classics are among this week's non-Christmas stage productions.

• BLITHE SPIRIT, Noel Coward's classic comedy about a couple's placid country life in rural England, which suddenly turns chaotic when the ghost of the husband's deceased first wife resurfaces during a seance, is being staged Thursday through Dec. 8 by Pinnacle Acting Company in the Midvale Performing Arts Center, 695 W. Center (7720 South), Midvale.

Director Ron Jewett's cast includes Justin Bruse as Charles, Melanie Reese as Ruth, Melanie Nelson as Elvira and Vickie Pugmire as Madame Arcati.

Performances are Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with matinees at 2 p.m. on both Saturdays. For ticket information, contact Melanie Nelson at 674-7956.

• CANYON SUITE, Charles Evren's drama, a finalist at the 2006 Kennedy Center-American College Theatre Festival, centers around nine people who meet in the same motel room near the Grand Canyon over a 30-year period.

The varied relationships of the group, ranging from fickle lovers to lonely cowboys, are explored as the complicated characters collide and intersect. The three-act play is being co-directed by Utah Valley State College theater department chairman Terry Petrie and students Mahonri Stewart and Ruth Carlstrom.

Performances will be Thursday through Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m. nightly except Sunday in UVSC's Black Box Theatre (Room 627 of the Gunther Trades Building). Tickets are $10 for general admission, $8 for senior citizens, UVSC faculty and staff and non-UVSC students, and $6 for all UVSC students (at the school's Campus Connection box office or 863-8797).

• MUSICAL OF MUSICALS: THE MUSICAL, a 2005 parody of the musical-theater genre by Eric Rockwell and Joanne Bogart, will have its Utah premiere in a student production at Weber State University, directed by Jim Christian. The show plays Friday through Dec. 8 in the Eccles Black Box Theater of WSU's Browning Center.

"Musical of Musicals" is based on a single "you-must-pay-the-rent" melodrama theme — with each of the five short parodies told through the eyes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Kander and Ebb.

The first segment is titled "Corn," which presents the story in an "Oklahoma"-esque setting, followed by the Sondheim segment, "A Little Complex"; a Jerry Herman sendup, "Dear Abby"; a Lloyd Webber spoof, "Aspects of Junita"; and the Kander-Ebb parody, "Speakeasy" (sort of like "Cabaret").