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The Last Five Years. This intimate two-person musical involves the breakup of a marriage. When Jamie and Cathy met in New York, he was an aspiring writer and she an actress. Success came for him fast, while she continued to inhabit the dreary, ego-pummeling world of auditions and summer stock — with predictable results for their relationship. The songs — solos, with one exception — reveal a triumphant Jamie noticing his effect on other women and fighting the desire to utilize it, with a sulky Cathy refusing to attend his publishing party. He resents her neediness and insecurity, she his arrogance and self-involvement. Playwright Jason Robert Brown has hit on an interesting device to make this relatively commonplace story more poignant and more complex: While Jamie relates events as they happened, Cathy reveals them backwards. At the very beginning, she weeps over Jamie's goodbye letter, and minutes later, he erupts onto the scene singing rapturously about the "shiksa goddess" he's just met. Chris Crouch and Shannan Steele are both terrific performers, brimming with energy, poised and charismatic, possessed of lovely, expressive voices. Crouch makes Jamie real and funny and quirky, and Steele is often touching as Cathy — though I wish both would avoid that awful, dissolving-into-self-pitying-tears style that's come to dominate singing in musicals these days. Still, this is an emotionally exuberant production, staged in a smooth, comfortable style, and enjoyable even though it's far from thought-provoking. Presented by Denver Center Attractions through June 29 at the Galleria Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 303-893-4100, www.denvercenter.org. Reviewed February 14.

Little Shop of Horrors. This show began in 1960 as a seventy-minute black-and-white movie, featuring Jack Nicholson in a small role and shot by director Roger Corman in two days. In 1982, the musical Little Shop of Horrors opened off Broadway, where it ran for five years. In 1986 it was made into a second film, with Steve Martin giving a brilliant performance as Orin, the sadistic, black-leather-clad dentist. A big reason for Little Shop's success is Alan Menken's catchy, rhythmic music, much of it a takeoff on the hits of such 1950s girl groups as the Chiffons, Crystals and Ronettes — and in fact, the trio of vocalists who accompany much of the action are named Chiffon, Crystal and Ronnette. There's also the brilliantly spoofy central conceit: An alien embodied in a cannibalistic plant is determined to proliferate and consume the human race. To do this, he employs the unwitting services of Seymour, an innocent nerd employed in a skid-row florist shop. Seymour is in love with comely blond shop assistant Audrey, but she's been claimed by Orin and is afraid to leave him. As the tiny plant he discovered in an alley reveals its murderous nature to him, Seymour is confronted with a Faustian dilemma: The plant can help him win wealth, fame and Audrey — but only if he feeds its insatiable appetite for blood. Boulder's Dinner Theatre does a great job of capturing the show's lighthearted, capering energy. The costumes are witty, the set well designed and the orchestra's sound infectiously effervescent. But it's the actors who give a show its soul, and there are several good ones here, foremost among them strong-voiced Brandon Dill as Seymour. Presented by Boulder's Dinner Theatre through May 3, 5501 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder, 303-449-6000, www.bouldersdinnertheatre.com. Reviewed February 21.

Lydia. The central figure in Octavio Solis's world premiere is a brain-injured young girl who rises periodically to speak to the audience, then subsides again on her pallet in the middle of the family living room, grunting and moaning. Trapped in her stiffening body, Ceci burns with sexual desire and a longing to continue her tragically interrupted life. Her family is completely dysfunctional — and apparently was so before the car accident that damaged her. Into this charged environment comes Lydia, an illegal immigrant hired as a maid, and her arrival sets off a cascade of tumultuous events. Lydia is the sexy, healthy, confident young woman Ceci can never be, and the two young women form an instant understanding, with Lydia tending to Ceci, breaking her terrible isolation and translating her guttural howls for the others. But is Lydia ultimately a force for good or ill, a life-giver or a representative of death? The script evokes a multitude of charged ideas: the painful realities of exile and the ways in which people adjust to or are broken by it; homosexuality in a macho culture; sex as a wild, chaotic impulse that can lead to spiritual imprisonment or joyous freedom; the redemptive power of art; Vietnam; the politics of immigration as seen by those in the States either legally or illegally; and, of course, the lies and secrets that both glue families together and hurl them apart. But Lydia also has flaws. You can think up mystical or metaphorical explanations that make all the events cohere, but somewhere, somehow, at some point — and I don't mean in a literal or reductive sense — the author should give you some hint, and he simply doesn't. Solis just tosses all these charged elements together and leaves them for you to sort out, and by the end of the evening, you're begging for clarity. Presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company through March 1, Ricketson Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 303-893-4100, www.denvercenter.org. Reviewed February 14.

Of Mice and Men. Is there anyone who doesn't remember the two central figures in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men: quick-witted, enterprising George and his friend Lennie, with his child's mind in the body of a hulking, preternaturally strong man, who tends to kill small, smooth-furred things like mice and rabbits by petting them too hard? Scraping a living as itinerant farm workers — or bindle stiffs — the men sustain themselves with the dream of a ten-acre farm, but the bitter poverty of the rural world they inhabit shreds dreams and constricts lives. Since Steinbeck published his novella in 1937, George and Lennie have embedded themselves in the popular imagination. We also encounter other compelling characters, most particularly tough-minded, thoughtful Slim, who serves as the working men's moral arbiter; a tormented woman known only as Curley's Wife, trapped in an all-male world and attempting to use her sexuality to gain kindness and attention; and the friendly, talkative old farmhand Candy, who's accompanied wherever he goes by the ancient dog he raised from a puppy.  Of Mice and Men is set in Northern California, and a sense of place is crucial to its meaning and poetry. Director Terry Dodd has done well by the text: He's woven the sound of birdsong and rushing water into the action and set it on a convincingly detailed set. He has also assembled an excellent cast, and every one of them performs with conviction. Of Mice and Men is a period piece, and that's how this group plays it. But it's precisely because of the production's fidelity to a specific time and place that it feels universal. Presented by the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities through March 9, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, 720-898-7200, www.arvadacenter.org. Reviewed February 21.