Local news celebrity Bob Shaw – aka the morning weather guy on KTVZ – stars in this one-man show that spurs nostalgia for Christmas past, and a hankering for whiskey-drenched fruitcake.

A Christmas Memory is based on a Truman Capote short story about a young boy’s Christmas with his elderly cousin and unlikely best friend. Despite their poverty and misfortune, the two are flush with the spirit of the season and make the best of the little they have. Their adventures and oddball relationship are beautifully depicted by Capote’s writing and are brought to life by Shaw’s performance.

Just in time for Halloween and reviving 2nd Street Theater’s Evil Dead spirit comes Bug, a play that lays out a true psychological vision of warped and squeamish dimensions. Once again, it’s nice to see something this bold and wacky in Bend.

You’ve got to hand it to this talented production team: they are not afraid to take risks. I was lucky enough to attend the “week before” opening and even though there are some minor bugs to work out, this is a solid production fully intent on remaining creepy-crawly from the inside out.

Outside the Tower Theatre after Cat Call Productions’ opening night performance of Chicago on Friday, I heard a man say to the woman hanging on his arm, “I can’t believe we just saw that in Bend.”

This didn’t surprise me. I heard a variation of that comment when Cat Call performed Cabaret in 2009 and again when they took on Little Shop of Horrors last fall. It does, however, make sense that people would say something like this, given that we really don’t see many large-scale productions of this caliber and edginess around these parts. But by now, theatergoers should be getting used to such quality as long as Cat Call is involved in a musical.

The popular tale of prohibition-era cabaret singers who find themselves in jail and accused of murder is left in the capable hands of director Michael Heaton and choreographer Michelle Mejaski who team up to provide a creative and daring take on one of the most popular American musicals of all time. Add in the live onstage band directed by Constance Gordy and one of the most impressive casts I’ve seen in this town and you’ve got a hell of a production.

Fuddy Meers is a rollercoaster ride. Directed by Derek Sitter, professional actor and founder of both the Actor's Realm and Volcanic Theatre, this David Lindsay-Abaire piece is one of the darkest plays to hit a Bend stage in recent memory. Told from the funhouse perspective of amnesiac Claire, played with a brilliantly eerie, almost childlike charm by Jeanne Sitter, Fuddy Meers is the journey of one woman's descent into the kind of madness that, in the end, seems almost preferable to the so-called sanity of an ordinary life.

Every member of the cast delivered the kind of performance the audience felt in their guts, a visceral response I have yet to sense from other local productions. Under Sitter’s direction, this cast transcended the expected limitations of community theater. Each shined in their own way, from Michael Coffman as Claire's bumblingly earnest husband, Richard, to Don Delach as the Limping Man, a character reminiscent of a Flannery O'Conner villain who manages to unapologetically lure the audience into his deception.

Gregory Lucas steals the show as Millet, a disturbed man with a mysterious past who carries around Binky, a hand puppet with the mouth of a sailor and the charisma of Wayne Newton during his early Vegas days.

Playwright Lindsay-Abaire, best known for writing Rabbit Hole, leaves the play open for interpretation. The darkness only gets so dark before this cast coaxes laughter with a carefully placed double entendre, a set designed to resemble a circus tent back in Disney's impenitent pink elephant days, and the sort of resident gloominess that one must laugh at in order not to cry.

Fuddy Meers is a play that people who don't usually go to local theater will enjoy. I encourage as many readers as possible to support this weird and wily production. This is not a safe play, or even an easy play to watch. This is the kind of production that is meant to overwhelm you. It overwhelmed me. When Millet, at the end of act one, performs a frantic CPR on his wounded hand puppet, I felt terrified, but could not look away. Go to this play and see what happens next. It just might astonish you.

Innovation Theatre Works’ new production, tick, tick…Boom! is the rock and pop autobiography of Jonathan Larson, best known as the creator of Broadway sensation Rent. Fans of musical theater will enjoy the pitch-perfect singing of main character Jon, played with enthusiasm by Matt Lutz, who commands the stage with the frenetic energy of a wind-up toy smack in the middle of an early midlife crisis.

His girlfriend Susan, played by porcelain songbird Olivia Cherryholmes, presses Jon to give up his dreams and settle into East Hampton domestic bliss as the age of 30 ticks ever so near. John navigates his existential pangs and soothes his Peter Pan complex by condensing his life into rollicking rock show tunes that canonize everything from his jealousy over not driving a BMW to his borderline shameful love of the Twinkie.