Greenwich Village events: Concerts, parties, readings and more

Kenneth Lonergan's shaggy but engaging down-home dramedy, about a narcissistic country star whose life falls apart after the death of his mother, got a handsome premiere production at the Atlantic in 2016. Now it returns at the West Village's Lucille Lortel Theatre, directed again by Neil Pepe but with a different leading man: Star Wars baddie and Girls boy Adam Driver, returning to his Off Broadway roots. Three actors from the original cast—Keith Nobbs, Adelaide Clemens and CJ Wilson—are back for another go, this time joined by Heather Burns and Frank Wood. 

After a successful run earlier this year, the West Village's resident Axis Theatre Company brings back its grey-toned, Georgian-era, 90-minute version of Shakespeare's ever-popular comedy of cross-purposes, cross-dressing and cross-gartered socks. Company founder Randall Sharp directs a cast of 12 in an adaptation by Marc Palmieri. The production features live original music by Paul Carbonara.

On The Rocks Theatre Co., which is currently in residence at Ars Nova, proffers a genre-noncomforming new work that is tantalizingly if enigmatically described as "a twistedly comedic puppet pageant of consumption, corruption and the end of humankind." The piece is written by Christopher Ford and Dakota Rose; Rose also directs a cast composed of Marc Bovino, Cornelius Loy, Rebeca Miller, Gil Perez-Abraham, Phillip Taratula, Ellen Winter and Jeena Yi. The Austrian theremin specialist Dorit Chrysler adds to the weirdness. (Music supervisor Ellen Winter contributes additional compositions.)