★★★½  Marin Theatre Company Daily through October 11 Sarah Ruhl is without doubt one of the most innovative and daring playwright’s working today, and ‘The Oldest Boy,’ despite its somewhat undercooked story and curiously bipolar point-of-view, is a good example of why theaters love staging her works, and why audiences keep showing up, even if they…

★★★★ Narrow Way Stage Company/Sonoma Arts Live  Through Oct. 4 Stephen Sondheim’s offbeat historical-musical fantasia on what drives certain desperate people to pick up a gun and attempt to kill a President is exactly the kind of material Narrow Way thrives on, but rarely has assembled a cast as thoroughly strong voiced and spot-on as…

Treasure Island  ★★★★ Amélie: the Musical   ★★★★½ Spreckels Theater Company & Berkeley Repertory Company A story is an illusion, a series of events that are not really taking place, presented in a way that fool an audience into believing they’re really happening. Telling that story in a book or movie is a certain kind of…