Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production of Crime and Punishment invites audiences to enter the mind of a murderer. It’s a cramped and tawdry place. Oddly angled walls painted a bilious green seem to close in on you; disembodied sounds emanate from the background and doors swoosh open and shut, marking phantomlike entrances and offering glimpses of a diaphanous limbo in which the protagonist’s fearsome existence appears to be couched. Rarely does stagecraft, sound and lighting play such a significant role as it does here in this pareddown production.

Kopper Bear’s production of Three Viewings, a comedy set around a funeral home, closes Feb. 17 at Sunset Playhouse. Less than a week later, Sunset Artistic Director Mark Salentine directs Ivan Menchell’s comedy The Cemetery Club. It’s the lighthearted story of three aging Jewish widows who meet each month to visit the graves of their late husbands. Doris (Frances Klumb) clings to the memory of her late husband, Lucille (Susan Loveridge) dates as many men as she can and Ida (Sally Marks) tries to find a balance between the two extremes. Previous productions of this episodic comedy have been compared to the style of a sitcom.

Three people play six characters in two acts occurring in one location. The delicate threads of human interaction unfold in a small space as Windfall Theatre presents its production of Three Days of Rain now through March 1. The Richard Greenberg drama has met with considerable acclaim since its California debut in the ’90s. The first act, set in 1995, features two sons and one daughter of a visionary pair of architects meeting to discuss the mysteries behind their parents’ inheritance.

It is in the opening moments of the staged musical version of The Lion King that the visual spectacle of puppetry and theater creates its own magic and literally takes flight. Birds soar above the audience while giraffes amble along amid lumbering elephants, graceful gazelles and other African creatures, all making their way toward Pride Rock. There, they pay homage to their lion king, Mufasa, on the birth of his son, Simba, while the strains of “Circle of Life” play on. Those familiar with the 75-minute Disney movie will be dazzled by the feats of daring design within this two hour, 40 minute production that opened last Thursday night at the Milwaukee Theatre (Wednesday’s snowstorm cancelled the planned opening). Now entering its 11th year as a stage musical, The Lion King departs from other Disney musicals transported to the stage, note for note, scene for scene. Director Julie Taymor has created spectacular images of actors integrated into the shapes and forms of animals through the use of multidimensional large scale puppets, African masks and shadow puppetry. The effects are dazzling . . .

The private, personal connection of the present to the past is a tenuous one, manifesting itself only in strange, phantasmal stories passed in whispers, floating through the primitive artifacts of human language. Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain explores this connection in a tight and enthralling drama. Debuting in the mid-’90s, the three-actor play has slowly garnered the breathless acclaim of critics. On Feb. 15, Windfall Theatre launches a production of the play from the intimate confines of Village Church Arts (130 E. Juneau Ave.).

The Rep’s new production of Enchanted April is not the gossamer offering the title implies. Banking its ample charm in a production rich in slight-of-hand comedy, Matthew Barber’s 2003 play is an adaptation of a 1922 novel that echoes the disruption and monotony constituting women’s lives after World War I. He takes an even-keeled, lighthearted view of the boredom that two English housewives claim to experience as a result of the ongoing tediousness of the “surety of the routine.” The women place an ad in The Times of London for two more ladies to share the month of April in a secluded villa among the “wisteria and sunshine” of the Italian Riviera. The mismatched foursome discover that some miscommunication and uneven objectives have tagged along on their sojourn . . .

One of the classic scripts of the late 20th century, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a fascinating journey into the dark heart of big-ticket sales—the lifeblood of American capitalism. The Milwaukee Rep continues an impressive season with its well-executed production of the David Mamet play . . .

Given the right circumstances, and depending on your perspective of morality, even the most brutal, coldblooded murders can be justified. Whether the murders come about as the result of a pre-emptive military invasion or crude blows from a heavy blade, the laws that govern the rest of society, they say, do . . .

Frank Hardy is a man plagued by many demons, among which are alcohol, women and ironically faith healing. His is “a craft without an apprenticeship…a vocation without a ministry.” Is he a medicine man? Performer? Con artist? The answer lies somewhere in the well-staged production of Brian Friel’s play, Faith . . .

They’re probably the easiest theater companies to overlook, since they only have one or two shows per season.