Spring Arts- Theater: If you want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, be an audience

OK, Audience, you're on! Here's your role, as defined by several wits:

"The best audience is intelligent, well-educated,

and a little drunk." - Alvin Barkley

 "The play was a great success, but the audience

was a disaster." - Oscar Wilde

 "My only regret in the theater is that I could never sit out front and watch me." - John Barrymore

 "If you want to help the American theater, don't be an actress,

be an audience." - Tallulah Bankhead

 So here, Audience, are some promising shows in this second season that are looking for people just like you. You might want to consider auditioning.

- Toby Zinman, who reviews theater for The Inquirer

Dueling Shakespeares A Winter's Tale, an odd and beautiful comedy, is rarely performed, but this season twice locally on stage, first at People's Light and Theatre (Jan. 31-March 3) www.peopleslight.org or 610-644-3500. And then, while it's still fresh in your mind, you can head to Princeton and compare it with McCarter Theater's production (April 2-21.) www.mccarter.org or 609-258-5050.

Also, this spring, there's an even rarer chance to see Timon of Athens in the Philadelphia Artists Collective's production at Broad Street Ministry. Shakespeare's tragic and austere drama of misplaced trust and financial ruin (nothing like relevance, right?). (April 4-20) www.philartistscollective.org.

Monologue/dialogue Theresa Rebeck's comedy Bad Dates is a solo show about a single mother from Texas trying to make a new life for herself (and her shoes) in New York City. At Montgomery Theater (Feb. 6-24) www.montgomerytheater.org or 215-723-9984.

David Ives' Venus in Fur is a sexy, smart, dazzlingly theatrical Broadway two-hander hit about S&M, about acting, about passion. It opens at Philadelphia Theatre Company and should (if they cast the right actress) leave you breathless. (March 15-April 7) www.PhiladelphiaTheatreCompany.org or 215-985-0420

Some classic laughs Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operetta The Pirates of Penzance features the very model of a modern major general. At Bristol Riverside Theater (March 19-April 28) www.brtstage.org. or 215-785-0100.

Moliere's The Misanthrope is about a man who finds his fashionable, French, witty world unbearably faux. By Quintessence Theatre Group (April 24-May 26). www.QuintessenceTheatre.org.

Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the ancient Greek comedy about women who end a war with a sex strike, will be presented by Simpatico Theatre Project (May 15-June 2). www.simpaticotheatre.org or 215-423-0254.

If-only escape planning If only that old boyfriend would get me out of here . . . . People are longing to escape the old Boston neighborhood in David Lindsay-Abaire's hit Good People at the Walnut (March 12-April 28) www.WalnutStreetTheatre.org or 215-574-3550.

If only I didn't live on this side of the street . . . . Philly's own Bruce Graham gives us his newest, North of the Boulevard, another play about blue-collar longing. Theatre Exile (April 25-May 19) www.theatreexile.org or 215-218-4022.

If only we weren't old . . . . Heroes, Tom Stoppard's adaptation of a French comedy, about three geezer vets plotting to bust out of their home for retired soldiers. From Lantern Theater (May 16- June 9). www.lanterntheater.org or 215-829-0395.

From Toby Zinman, more things to look forward to from companies large and small:

To Fool the Eye stars Maureen Torsney-Weir (reason enough to see it) in a French farce about love. From 1812 Productions, (Feb. 14-March 3.) www.1812productions.org or 215-592-9560.

Richard Bean's Under the Whaleback is about a sailor's life, teenage to middle-age, linked by a mysterious (what other kind is there?) stranger. At the Wilma Theater March 6-April 7. www.wilmatheater.org or 215-893-0895. Lorraine Hansberry's iconic family drama, A Raisin in the Sun, at the Arden Theatre, where last year you may have seen Clybourne Park, which imagines what happens after Raisin ends. (March 7-April 14.) www.ardentheatre.org or 215-922-1122.

Now that the new Barnes Museum has opened, Thomas Gibbons' Permanent Collection will be remounted by InterAct Theatre (just when we thought the controversy was over). (April 2-28.) www.interacttheatre.org or 215-568-8079.

Plays & Players presents Suzan-Lori Parks' The America Play, a fierce revisionist drama about Lincoln (while he's on everybody's mind again). (April 4-21) www.Playsandplayers.org or 215-735-0630.

EgoPo concludes its season of vaudeville with Uncle Tom's Cabin: An Unfortunate Melodrama with choreography, in which Eliza apparently will dance as well as run. (May 29-June 16) www.egopo.org. or 267-273-1414.

Local actor Jared Michael Delaney wrote The Hand of Gaul for that rare breed, the theatergoer who's a soccer fan. Three rabid Irish soccer nuts try to reclaim the World Cup. Inis Nua Theatre (April 9-28). www.inisuatheatre.org or 215-454-9776.

Follow Toby Zinman on Twitter at #philastage. Read her reviews at www.phillystage.com.