Not only are the weeping willows at Kits Beach turning that fabulous goldy green. Not only is the sun hanging around for an extra couple of minutes of company every day. The spring theatre season has also begun. This year, there’s a verdant offering of original works and intelligent scripts.

The Gay Heritage Project

(At the Cultch’s Historic Theatre from March 2 to 19)

Three young, queer theatre artists—Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn, and Andrew Kushner—ask themselves the twisty question: Is there such a thing as gay heritage? Reviews of the Toronto run of this Buddy in Bad Times Theatre production were orgasmic: “wildly entertaining” (Globe and Mail), “deeply moving” (Toronto Star).

The Draw: Master puppeteer Ronnie Burkett (The Daisy Theatre) has endorsed this show. It must really be something.

Target Audience: Homos. Heteros. Cheerios. Everybody.

A Very Narrow Bridge

(At the Jewish Community Centre from March 5 to 13)

Itai Erdal, Anita Rochon, and Maiko Yamamoto have created a play about Erdal’s experience of divorcing a woman and leaving Israel.

The Draw: Intimacy. This Elbow Theatre production, which is being presented by the Chutzpah Festival, takes place in a boardroom.

Target Audience: Anybody who has ever left a person or a place. But don’t get carried away; if you have to leave in the middle of the show, they may not be able to reseat you.

The List

(At the Gateway Theatre from March 11 to 19)

Reviewing La Liste, the French original of Jennifer Tremblay’s play, the Straight’s Kathleen Oliver called solo actor France Perras’s performance “heartbreaking”. The central character struggles to hold chaos—and grief—at bay by making lists.

The Draw: Perras has been performing in French in Vancouver for years—and hauling in awards. In Shelley Tepperman’s translation for this Ruby Slippers production, she’s sharing her talent with anglophones.

Target Audience: Guilty English speakers who want to knowledgeably sing the praises of one of the stars of Vancouver’s French theatre scene.

The Crowd

(At Studio 58 from March 19 to April 3)

Studio 58’s not giving a lot away about this brand-new George F. Walker script, which it is producing in association with Green Thumb Theatre, but, apparently, it involves a wedding, an arrest, and Beyoncé’s greatest hits.

The Draw: Student actors will be originating the roles in a world premiere by one of this country’s most important playwrights.

Target Audience: Walker is consistently tough, smart, and funny. If you are too, come on down.

Onegin

(On the Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre from March 23 to April 10)

This new show from Veda Hille and Amiel Gladstone, part of the team that brought us the inspired Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata, reimagines Aleksandr Pushkin’s verse novel as a musical.

The Draw: A sneak preview of some of Hille’s music for this Arts Club production reveals a poignant combination of innocence and anticipatory despair.

Target Audience: The story is about narcissism and the artificiality of the constructed self. Do you have a cellphone? A Facebook profile? Well, then, it’s about you, isn’t it—just like everything else.

Good People

(At the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage from March 30 to April 24)

In playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s script, a South Boston woman who has lost her job as a dollar-store cashier asks for help from an old friend from the ’hood—who has moved away and become a successful doctor. In this Arts Club interpretation, Colleen Wheeler will play the same role that Imelda Staunton took on in London and Frances McDormand won a Tony for on Broadway.

The Draw: An intricate examination of class.

Target Audience: Citizens who have been so bamboozled by the North American swing to the right that they’ve forgotten what class analysis is.

The Invisible Hand

(At the Cultch’s Historic Theatre from April 6 to 23)

In playwright Ayad Akhtar’s script for this Pi Theatre show, a banker who has been captured by Muslim fundamentalists convinces his jailers that he’s an asset they can capitalize on—and he dispenses free-market advice while he’s at it: save your potatoes; when everybody else runs out, charge a fortune for them.

The Draw: Complexity. None of the characters are entirely good or entirely evil.

Target Audience: People who have been frightened by fundamentalist capitalism and/or fundamentalist Islam.

5 @ 50

(At the PAL Theatre from May 13 to 29)

In Brad Fraser’s new play, which is being coproduced by Ruby Slippers and Zee Zee Theatre, Olivia loses control at her fiftieth birthday party, prompting a group of her friends to intervene. But Olivia and her partner, Nora, are not keen about being intervened upon.

The Draw: The strong, all-female cast: Carmen Aguirre, Diane Brown, Deborah Williams, Donna Yamamoto, and Beatrice Zeilinger.

Target Audience: The old and cranky. Well, maybe the middle-aged and cranky. You know what I mean. Shut up.