Marfa, Texas, the shooting locale for the George Stevens epic film Giant 70 years ago, is known as a dot of cultural sophistication, big on minimalist art, amid hundreds of miles of Texas brush and desert. It’s also renowned for the Marfa Lights, a nocturnal phenomenon of distant brightness that can appear orange, yellow, blue, red. It’s not known as a hangout for anxious thirtysomethings yapping about politics, gender, and muddled friendships, but that’s the upshot of Very Blue Light, Daphne Silbiger’s new drama at The Tank. That it plays as well as it does is a tribute to Silbiger’s clever invocation of familiar themes, and a beguiling cast of four up-and-coming actors.

Crikey! Garry Starr: Classic Penguins makes one wonder what the Aussies are consuming besides cold ones. A quarter century after Puppetry of the Penis, the lunatic 2001 production from Down Under that introduced “genital origami,” comes this brash, loopy clown show, written and performed by Garry Starr (the stage persona of Damien Warren-Smith).

Although the renowned 20th-century poet W. H. Auden dismissed The Taming of the Shrew as “the only play of Shakespeare’s that is a complete failure,” Laura Lapidus proves there is still plenty of life in the old comedy with To Have and To Hold, her contemporary reimagining that explores sisterhood, romantic love and the difficult business of coming into one’s own. Smartly directed by Zoë Adams and featuring a top-notch ensemble, this 85-minute romp through modern romance is both deliciously entertaining and unexpectedly poignant.

Laura Strausfeld, adaptor and director of The Real Ivanov: A Comedy About Despair, describes her production as a “faithful adaptation of [Anton] Chekhov’s Ivanov.” In 100 minutes without an intermission, an 11-member cast touches the principal plot points of the Russian master’s first full-length drama; but little remains of the dramatic craftsmanship that gives each scene of a genuine Chekhov play the aura of lived experience. The script of the so-called Real Ivanov summons to mind Reader’s Digest Condensed Books: more has been discarded than left intact.