Vagabond

Axis Theatre. "Telling Tales," a poetic collection of stories told from a feminine, Latino, big-city point of view. All female cast. 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday and next Monday at the theater, 3600 Clipper Mill Road. Call 410-889-0252.The Barnstormers. In residence at Catonsville Campus of Community College of Baltimore. "The Crucible." 7 p.m. tomorrow and Wednesday and 4 p.m. Thursday in Room 104 of the Administration/Faculty Building, on campus, 800 S. Rolling Road. Needed are 11 women, including two age 40 and two over 55; 10 men, including two age 40 and two over 55. Be familiar with the play.

Plays about dinner parties appear to be in vogue in this area nowadays. Olney Theatre Center is serving up a gourmet meal nightly in the apocalyptic Omnium Gatherum, and on a smaller scale, the Vagabond Players has set the table for Neil Simon's 2000 comedy The Dinner Party. The setting - a private dining room in a chic Paris restaurant - is something of an oddity for Simon, and the Vagabonds' elegantly detailed set, designed and built by Tony Colavito, is a piece de resistance. But the play itself is less satisfying.

When the king of Sweden hands out the Nobel Prizes this week in Stockholm, undoubtedly all present will have only nice things to say about the man who made it all possible. But back in 1864, Stockholm's city fathers booted Alfred Nobel right out of town. And not for nothing. Nobel, then 31 years old, was experimenting with mixtures of gunpowder and nitroglycerin in his workshop on the outskirts of the city when there was a huge explosion. Nobel's 21-year-old brother, Emil, and three other people were killed.

Jean Anouilh's historical drama "Becket" opens tomorrow at the Vagabond Players.Barry Feinstein directs this study of political vs. religious allegiance. Tom Nolte plays the title role opposite Mark Williams as Henry II.Show times at the Vagabond Players, 806 S. Broadway, are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays, through March 17. Tickets are $9 and $10. Call (410) 563-9135.

The Vagabond Players, 806 S. Broadway, opens its 80th season tomorrow with Joseph Kesselring's comic chestnut, "Arsenic and Old Lace." Joan Corcoran and Irene Patton star as the happily homicidal Brewster sisters; Tom Nolte, ToddCunningham and Art Sinclair play their nephews. Tracey Anne Tokar-Smith directs.Show times are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 29. (No performances Saturday, Sept. 30, or Sunday, Oct. 1.) Tickets are $9 and $10. For more information call (410)

The Vagabond Players, one of America's oldest little theaters in continuous operation and Baltimore's first community theater, marking its Diamond Jubilee season with a number of significant events.From humble beginnings in a small storefront on Centre Street in 1916 to its current address in Fells Point, 806 South Broadway, the group has, over the 75 years of its existence, survived the Great Depression and two world wars to stage at least 600 plays for Baltimore audiences.Salty Sunpapers columnist H.L. Mencken wrote a comedy mounted by the company.

Baltimore Playwrights Festival veteran Carol Weinberg returns to the festival this summer with a play grounded in the Civil Rights struggle. "Freedom Summer," which opens tomorrow at the Vagabond Players, tells the story of a housewife from Queens, N.Y., whose commonplace existence is upset by the disappearance of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, three young men who volunteered to register voters in Mississippi in 1964. Lynda McClary stars as the housewife, and Matthew Bowerman portrays Goodman.

The 15th annual Baltimore Playwrights Festival continues with John Morogiello's "Keeping It Aloft," opening tomorrow at the Vagabond Players.Directed by Mike Moran, this fast-paced farce concerns a wealthy middle-age woman who hires a recent ex-con as a gardener. Mayhem results when his identical twin, a respected doctor, shows up unexpectedly. In the process, themes are explored ranging from affirmative action to the quest for the meaning of life.Playwright Morogiello is the resident dramaturg at the Rep Stage Company in Columbia.

Shakespeare had his problem plays, and Stephen Sondheim has his problem musicals. High on Sondheim's list is "Merrily We Roll Along," a 1981 collaboration with George Furth that closed after 16 performances on Broadway.The musical's chief difficulty is the unconventional structure of its plot. Based on the 1934 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart play of the same name, the action moves backward in time, beginning with the jaded disillusionment of a trio of friends and ending with the hopes and dreams they had expressed two decades earlier.

Serious clowning has been the means through which Italian playwright Dario Fo makes political comments about contemporary society. Proof that Fo's goofy plays are themselves taken seriously came when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997. You can laugh yourself to the same conclusion by watching "Abducting Diana" at Vagabond Players. This near-surreal comedy is characteristic of Fo's work in a less fortunate way as well, because the playwright often ventures from silly into just plain stupid.