Tonight, Australian native, satirist and actor Barry Humphries, the creator of Dame Edna Everage, will open his her solo show, Dame Edna: Back With A Vengeance!, at the Ahmanson Theatre. If you are in need of marriage counseling and a psychic reading, Dame might make you part of the show. This short run closes April 9th.

25 ft. and 2 days away, iWitness opens at the Mark Taper Forum. Refusing to serve in the Third Reich, Nazis persecute Franz Jägerstätter. We don't expect it to be as loud as V for Vendetta, but a similar overlying theme they do share.

With another gender bending role this week, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is playing at the Roxy through April 19th. If you haven't experienced this show yet (yes, the movie is fantastic too, but that doesn't count), head on over to WeHo and get your two-drink minimum on (plus the ticket price).

Sometimes high acclaim for your play puts you in a difficult position. Playwright Gary Mitchell has been in hiding with his family since last November when threats from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA in Ireland) were sent his way. Force of Change is "a superb piece of theatre and a dark, bitter history lesson" about a female Belfast detective's investigation into the UDA (Sunday Times). Opens Thursday and closes on May 7th at the McCadden Place Theatre.

Maria Irene Fornes is one of America's most distinguished playwrights. "Mud is one of several beautiful and painful plays Fornes wrote in the 1980s in which a woman's inchoate desire for fulfillment disturbs her world, and thus destroys her—though no such description can capture the tonal contradictions and emotional depths of these works, much less the vast differences among them" (Village Voice, 1999). Opens Friday at The Complex and closes on April 30th.

Photo by Davis Factor Photography