You need to strap on a backpack with some snacks and a water bottle and head to Over-the-Rhine for the sixth annual Cincinnati Fringe Festival. Fringe veterans know that the best way to enjoy this 12-day celebration of things theatrical and artistic is to come back again and again and see as much as possible.  

The Cincy Fringe Festival soon kicks off its sixth annual celebration of offbeat theater and other art forms. Not every city has a Fringe Festival, and occasionally people ask why we have one. The quick response is similar to the one sometimes offered as to why a city needs an alternative newsweekly like CityBeat: A conservative, buttoned-down place needs events and media that shake things up, that give us a new perspective on things.  

The Cincinnati Playhouse has offered a steady diet of musicals by Stephen Sondheim over the past decade. If you've seen them, you might think you're familiar with music by the legendary composer/lyricist. I have news for you: The current Shelterhouse production, 'Marry Me a Little,' will feel like a new show, full of songs that are clearly Sondheim's but seldom heard. It's a show for Sondheim fans and musical theater lovers.  

When George Bernard Shaw's witty comedy 'Arms and the Man' debuted in 1894 in Dublin, it was a hit. Shaw described it as "one joke after another ... a firecracker." That's pretty much what you'll experience onstage at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, making its first foray into Shaw's prolific output. I hope we'll see more Shaw on Race Street, based on the success of this production.  

It's back ... that musical with the mouthful name that kicked up so much excitement last summer at the 2008 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati bills Richard Oberacker's and Robert Taylor's no-plot, no-dialogue, five-person fantasia on parenting production as a premiere, and considering the changes that's close to true.  

So it's "hail and farewell" to Alan Patrick Kenny and New Stage Collective. With eight performances of Stephen Sondheim's and Hugh Wheeler's 'A Little Night Music' (presented at Know Theater), NSC completes its seventh and final season of always ambitious, often audacious playmaking.  

'Avenue Q,' which won the 2004 Tony Award for best musical, is more about the real world than almost any musical I can think of. If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself at the Aronoff Center. The hilarious, raunchy show is 'Sesame Street' through a dirty lens.  

Even if you know the story of 'Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde,' Robert Louis Stevenson's classic 1886 horror story, you'll likely be surprised by the Cincinnati Playhouse's version, since it twists and turns the tale in unanticipated directions. Jeffrey Hatcher adapted the story, and this version provides unexpected textures and narrative elements.  

Watching new scripts in their initial productions can be a double-edged sword: While it's exciting to be among the first audiences to see a brand-new play, there are often rough edges. Within 'Love and Communication' is a heartfelt, painful story about two parents dealing with the difficulties of raising an autistic child. But the new script, one of three plays produced during the biennial Y.E.S. Festival at Northern Kentucky University, tries to do too many things and dilutes its impact.   

At a guess, neither playwright Damon DiMarco nor director Michael King meant for 'Shock & Awe: Soldiers' Voices from Iraq' to take stage as a laugh riot when, on Thursday night, it opened Northern Kentucky University's biennial Year End Series (Y.E.S.) new play festival. But it did.  

Despite a few structural fumbles in the second act of Mark Rigney's 'Nightjars' and the occasional tendency to get knotted up in its own vehemence, the play is an engrossing, in-your-face theater piece. It's the third of three world premiere scripts on view at Northern Kentucky University's biennial Year End Series (Y.E.S.) new play festival.  

Alan Patrick Kenny did not find it easy earlier this month to discuss how New Stage Collective's production of Stephen Sondheim's 'A Little Night Music' would be the company’s final production. He said, "I did everything I could to avoid it." After seven seasons, NSC and its ambitious co-founder have succumbed to a lack of funding.  

Is Know Theatre obsessed with death? Following a production of Sarah Ruhl's 'Eurydice,' about a songwriter who tries to retrieve his beloved bride from the Underworld, the Over-the- Rhine theater is now presenting Noah Haidle's 'Vigils,' about a widow who keeps the soul of her dead husband, a firefighter, imprisoned in a trunk.   

While Arlene Hutton's play is new to Cincinnati, it's been around for almost a decade. The two-actor, 90-minute script charmed audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and its simplicity appeals to theaters today because it's inexpensive to produce, requiring minimal scenery. But it's rich in the emotion and storytelling that audiences respond to.  

This might be early, youthful Shakespeare, but it's still Shakespeare, which means it's about splendid language as much as farce. And here's the true marvel of this Cincinnati Shakepeare offering: For all its spaceships, flying nuns and gorillas (yes, there's a gorilla), the language smiles through, intact, respected and as sweet and thrilling as it should be.