A new round of shows comes your way this weekend (while several good ones remain onstage, including Freud's Last Session at Ensemble Theatre and Abigail/1702 at the Cincinnati Playhouse). Here are a few choices that are just opening: Know Theatre is finally getting around to its first full-fledged production of the season, Andrew Bovell's award-winning drama, When the Rain Stops Falling. (The playwright's Speaking in Tongues was a much admired production at the Cincinnati Playhouse a year ago.) An intricate fabric of overlapping connections, Bovell's 2010 script moves seamlessly through time and across continents between the years of 1959 and 2039. In a world where the rain rarely stops falling, four generations of a family search for truth and hope to mend broken connections. What they discover is the impossibility of escaping the past. The production should be all the more interesting since it's being directed by Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's Brian Isaac Phillips and features a cast of nine excellent actors, four of whom are CSC regulars. It will be onstage through March 16. Box office: 513-300-5669. To see another award winner, you need to head up I-75 to Dayton where the Human Race Theatre Company is offering the regional premiere of Eric Simonson's bio-play, Lombardi. Set in 1965, it's a portrait of the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers through the eyes of a young reporter assigned to follow the sports icon, a man full of passion and drive without equal. The show had a recent run on Broadway, and I expect it will attract an audience not normally drawn to the theater. Through Feb. 24. Box office: 937-228-6830 Falcon Theater, which presents its shows in the tiny Monmouth Theatre in Newport, is staging the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt, a success on Broadway, at the Cincinnati Playhouse, and on movie screens. It's the provocative story of a starchy nun who thinks it's possible that a priest has abused one of her students. Although she's not sure, her accusations have dire ramifications. Through Feb. 23. Box office: 513-479-6783 Finally, a blast from the past at UC's College-Conservatory of Music: William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life. Set in October 1939 in a run-down waterfront dive bar on the docks of San Francisco, the script is full of colorful, eccentric characters and portrays the love and follies of human nature. It's being staged by veteran faculty member Diane Kvapil with a cast of 29. This production has a short run (one weekend, wrapping up with a performance in Patricia Corbett Theatre on Sunday at 2 p.m.) Box office: 513-556-4183

No matter what your theatrical tastes are, there's something onstage right now for you to enjoy this weekend: A classic story: If you can get a ticket (there aren't many left, I'm told, except perhaps for Saturday matinees at 2 p.m.) to To Kill a Mockingbird, you won't be disappointed. It's a wonderful theatrical retelling of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It features one of Greater Cincinnati's best actors as the honorable attorney Atticus Finch. Tickets: 513-381-2273, x1. Adventure: Buckle on your swashes (and your sword) and head to the Cincinnati Playhouse for The Three Musketeers. It's a familiar tale of a young man named D'Artagnan who yearns to be a member of the King's guards. He's brash and naive, but his role models, "the three musketeers," are funny and loving and always ready for a good fight. This is one that kids can enjoy. Tickets: 513-421-3888 Contemporary drama with a dose of with: Ensemble Theatre's Good People is the story of a woman who loses her job and struggles to figure out what to do next. She has good, gossipy support from two friends — and a one-time boyfriend who's now a successful doctor. Her story is one that feels like it's about someone you know, trying to make ends meet in today's world. Tickets: 513-421-3555. An old-fashioned musical: Meredith Willson's The Music Man, a Tony Award winner, is getting a charming production on the Showboat Majestic. It's a big cast on a small stage, but it's inventively directed and choreographed by Ed Cohen, Dee Anne Bryll and Jane Green, and you'll definitely leave the theater marching in 4/4 time to "Seventy-Six Trombones" or humming one of the show's other memorable melodies. Tickets: 513-241-6550

The Cincinnati Ballet opens each season with a fresh crop of modern performances, but this season’s Kaplan New Works Series stands out as being the first featuring all women choreographers. While ballet dancers are predominantly female, male choreographers significantly outnumber women. Choreographers Amy Seiwert, Paige Cunningham Caldarella, Heather Britt and Jessica Lang all present new programs through Sunday. Tickets are still available for tonight’s 8 p.m. performance here. Check out our recent story on the Kaplan New Works Series to learn more about these choreographers and the program. Ensemble Theater Cincinnati and Playhouse in the Park also have productions tonight. ETC’s Good People, a Critic’s Pick, is “a total package that feels good and real from start to finish.” The Three Musketeers, onstage at the Playhouse, promises lots of silly laughs and exciting swordplay. See Rick Pender’s full review here. The Cincinnati Film Festival continues today with screenings running through 9 p.m. at Esquire Theater. Single tickets are $10 or $25 for the full night. Read our interview with Executive Director Katharine Steele here. The Main Library downtown kicks off its series of experimental music nights with Electric Inertia and Her Weasels Wild Running at 7 p.m. in the Reading Garden Lounge. The night will feature stop-motion animation from 1930s film footage, free-form trumpet, piano and guitar. The series continues Sept. 26, Oct. 3,17 and 30.Columbus Day might be a month away, but locals can celebrate early by visiting replicas of The Nina and Pinta today. The ships will be at the Levee (conveniently docked by Hooter's) through Saturday. Tours are available between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. and run $6-$8 per person. Peep our full calendar for more concerts, art and theater shows, events and more stuff to do tonight.

If you can land a ticket for Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati’s revival of the Tony Award-winning musical next to normal, that’s what you should be doing this weekend. I saw it on Tuesday night, and it’s even better than it was last September. It’s the story of a woman struggling with schizophrenia and how it affects her family; that might not sound like the stuff that musicals are made of, but it uses the power of a brilliant Rock score to deliver the impact of this story. ETC has reassembled virtually all of its superb cast from last fall, including Jessica Hendy in the central role. Her beleaguered husband is now being played one of our area’s best actors, Bruce Cromer, and his relationship with Hendy makes their pain all the more deeply felt. It’s only around for one more week, so you should do your best to grab a ticket now. Box office: 513-421-3555. ETC’s revival isn’t the only thing worth seeing this weekend. You might check out the classic comedy Arsenic and Old Lace on the Showboat Majestic. It’s an old chestnut (it was a hit in 1944), but it’s one of the funniest shows you’re likely to see, the tale of an off-kilter pair of elderly maiden aunts who keep their quite normal nephew astonished and scrambling to keep them in line. The kind-hearted women take in boarders, quiet elderly men who are “all alone in the world,” and polish them off with elderberry wine laced with arsenic. They convince their addled brother, who believes he’s Teddy Roosevelt, to bury them in the basement by telling him they’re victims of yellow fever who have been digging the Panama Canal. A great show for the whole family, with lots of comic twists. Box office: 513-241-6550. You’ll also find a stage full of laughs at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, which is producing The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). You’ll witness mentions of all the Bard’s works — although many are completely unrecognizable, thanks the three buffoonish characters who undertake the task. The second act is a wild send-up of Hamlet that involves the audience. Order your tickets online, and there’s an automatic buy-one, get-one offer available. Website: www.cincyshakes.com. Don’t forget to look in out-of-the-way places for good summer theater entertainment: At Highlands High School in Fort Thomas, Ky., you’ll find the Tony Award-winning musical The Producers, the first outing by C.A.S.T. (Commonwealth Artists Summer Theatre), the brainchild of Jason Burgess, a one-time directing intern at Ensemble Theatre who’s now an award-winning teacher at Highlands. The hilarious show about putting on a musical so bad that the guys doing it can abscond with all the investments will be onstage through July 1, with performances at the high school (2400 Memorial Parkway, Fort Thomas) on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets (only $10): www.showtix4u.com (or at the door). Each week in Stage Door, Rick Pender offers theater tips for the weekend, often with a few pieces of theater news.