Mark Cofta’s March theater picks

EgoPo Classic Theatre continues its American Giants II Festival — featuring women playwrights after last season's male triumvirate of Miller, Williams, and O'Neill — with Clare Boothe Luce's still-timely The Women (March 3 - 20), her 1936 hit about five Manhattan socialites. Lane Salvadove directs an all-women cast including Barrymore Award-winners Genevieve Perrier and Cheryl Williams.

Mockingbird, mysteries, Shakespeare, and more

Recently departed Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel, gets a big production by the Resident Ensemble Players, the professional company at the University of Delaware (March 2 - 20). Mystery queen Agatha Christie is represented by her stage classic The Mousetrap (March 8 - 27) at Princeton's McCarter Theatre, and at Hedgerow Theatre Company by Jared Reed's new adaptation of her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (March 17 - May 8), which introduces Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

Other classics in March include two major Shakespeare productions: Lantern Theater Company's As You Like It (March 10 - April 17), featuring Barrymore winner Liz Filios, and People's Light & Theatre’s Richard III (March 16 - April 24), with Pete Pryor reprising the title role, for which he won a Barrymore with Lantern in 2006. Samantha Reading, who's impressively staged Shakespeare for Revolution Shakespeare and the Delaware Shakespeare Festival, directs.

Quintessence Theatre Group in Mt. Airy begins its spring repertory with George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan (March 16 - April 22, rotating with Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus), with Leigha Kato playing the iconic saint, directed by Rebecca Wright.

From unscripted to prequel, plus Wilson and An Octoroon

Tongue & Groove — "Philly's unique unscripted theater company" (its way of saying "improv" without sounding like the more humor-and-game-oriented improvisation most people know) returns with a new format, Art (March 11). We're asked to anonymously submit the title of a fictional work of art based on a true transitional moment in our lives, from which the ensemble instantly creates a life-inspires-art-inspires-life-inspires-art theater piece in their emotionally genuine long-form style.

The Arden Theatre Company returns to August Wilson with Two Trains Running (March 10 - April 10), part of the black playwright's Century Cycle, set in 1969 Pittsburgh during the civil rights movement. The Wilma Theater's An Octoroon (March 16 - April 10) is Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's provocative adaptation of Dion Boucicault's 1859 antebellum melodrama The Octoroon, with original music by Ill Doots. (Here's my BSR review.)

The Walnut Street Theatre's Peter and the Starcatcher (March 15 - May 1) is the Tony Award-winning Peter Pan origin story, adapted by Rick Elice from the 2006 novel for children by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.

Final curtain at Society Hill Playhouse

Goodbye to the Society Hill Playhouse, a fixture on 8th Street between Lombard and South since 1959. Founders Jay and Deen Kogan produced hundreds of plays and provided space for new companies. The world-premiere Liberty City Radio Theatre, a “live show in the style of old time radio,” runs March 4 and 5 in the Red Room. There’s also an indoor yard sale on March 13. Noir at the Bar: The Final Curtain (an evening of fiction readings) is coming on March 19, and a March 25 farewell party for all who've worked at SHP over the years are the last events scheduled before the venerable building becomes . . . apartments.