The Purple Rose Theatre Company rounds out its all-new, all-Michigan season with a champion comedy, David MacGregor’s Consider the Oyster. Like a fruity health drink whose sweetness masks the vegetables within, this abundantly wacky caper cleverly disguises its fascinating, elegantly ingrained themes. In this world-premiere production, director Guy Sanville lends plausible ordinariness to the playwright’s enjoyably unbelievable premise in a show that amuses and intrigues in equal measure.

MacGregor immediately asserts the infinite possibility of this world in a most overt and cheeky manner, with a Detroit Lions Superbowl win. (I mean . . . right?) Roommates Gene (Michael Brian Ogden) and Eliot (Matthew David) are celebrating at home in an appropriately manly fashion, when Gene doubles down on his exuberance and spontaneously proposes to girlfriend Marisa (Stacie Hadgikosti). Then, just as quickly, he reverts to horsing around, which inevitably ends in a trip to the hospital. The injury heals beautifully, but its inconceivable side effects threaten his livelihood, his impending marriage, and his very identity. And that’s where this reviewer gets vague, because to reveal more would be a detriment to a story so inventive and sublimely constructed as this. The cleanly simple plot blends elements of farce into a character-driven comedy that also touches on questions of love and selfhood with thoughtfulness and charm.

The Purple Rose Theatre Company continues its twentieth-anniversary season with a third world premiere, by resident artist Carey Crim. Her Some Couples May…, directed by Guy Sanville, dives into the private lives of a married couple to unearth a story that in real life is often kept under wraps: their struggle with infertility. The result is a distinctive, emotional tale that further unfolds into a study of knowledge sharing and privacy among families and acquaintances.

In their unnamed wealthy suburb of Detroit, Emily (Rhiannon Ragland) and David (Bill Simmons) are ready to have a child. At the play’s start, they’ve already been trying for months, with nothing but disappointment to show for it. The main thrust of the story bounces across major expected events over the next several months of their lives: one grows fanatical about conception advice found on the Internet, the all-consuming process of in vitro fertilization threatens to overwhelm the relationship, the couple doesn’t see eye to eye about medically assisted pregnancy versus other avenues. Most scenes have comic overtones and many are quite warm; the playwright avoids pitfalls like outright sniping and broad Mars/Venus stereotypes, and the central duo has a believable compatibility that encourages the viewer to root for them. Simmons’s David is a loyal and supportive partner, wanting to take this next step for both his wife and himself, yet mindful of the dangers of pinning all their hopes on one specific dream. But the center of the play rests in Emily, who takes each loss the hardest even as she grows, and Ragland gives the character a fullness that’s needed to keep this story fresh —she’s not a one-dimensional baby fiend per se, but when she succumbs to that internal pressure, it becomes a part of her discovery.

With its astronomic stakes, operatic violence, and cinematic flourishes, Corktown is in essence a mob movie played out on the Purple Rose Theatre stage. Yet the world-premiere production of this Michael Brian Ogden script is notable for its complex and engaging performances as well as its innovative application of live-theater magic to the genre. Director Guy Sanville plays on viewers' familiarity with these brutal life-and-death stories while simultaneously reveling in the novelty of bringing an audience so close to something so dangerous and — in most cases — foreign.

The play is set in the Detroit apartment of Joey (Matthew David), an enforcer for the Irish mob. Set designer Bartley H. Bauer provides an ominous letterbox view of a remodeled-over domicile in a shabby building; even the water damage tainting its posh faux-finish paint job has a sinister quality. The tone is borne out in the terrible scope of Danna Segrest's properties, which quickly spell out Joey's exact role in the organization — in polite company, he might be called a "cleaner." In the disarming opening scene, Joey and longtime friend and colleague Laurence (Ogden) casually talk shop, quickly submerging the viewer into a world of unspeakable violence that's accepted as strictly business. The juxtaposition of their humdrum middle-management world view with the carnage in which they are steeped (further contrasted by the relatively pristine white coveralls of Christianne Myers's costume design) is a terrific entry point for a production insistent that gangland-style executions must coexist with basic human connection.

The Purple Rose Theatre Company's world premiere of Best of Friends certainly succeeded at blasting away my expectations. Everything from the warm and fuzzy title to the so-happy portraits adorning Vincent Mountain's rich Pottery Barn catalog set to the opening notes of convivial laughter is carefully suggestive of a real, honest, touchy-feely journey of discovery and friendship. Then the actors start speaking, and the ensuing laugh-baiting eighty-five minutes unravel a savagely mean, ruthless underbelly that almost punishes every preconceived notion of niceness. Indeed, playwright Jeff Daniels's new comedy is like putting bugs together in a jar and shaking it up to watch them fight.

Told in a fluid, half-narrative style, the single-act play gives the viewer entry into the living rooms of two married couples. Privileged auto executive John Martin (Alex Leydenfrost) and his bitter lush of a wife, Beth (Michelle Mountain), fall halfway into and then unreservedly out of a friendship with rough-edged mechanic Ken Porter (Matthew David) and his easily influenced wife, Hannah (Rhiannon Ragland). An apparently harmonious quartet at first, some potentially unremarkable incidents drive an immediate, irreparable wedge between the Martins and Porters, who fully morph into scheming and vengeful monsters gleefully holding up the pretense of friendship in order to keep their enemies closer. What follows is part childish prank escalation, part upper versus upper-middle class war, and all a highly concentrated embodiment of the frenemy concept. Even as it becomes clear these couples never liked each other much, even as it becomes questionable that they are capable of liking anybody, both sides collectively come back for more, claws at the ready.

There's two people having breakfast and there's a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that's a surprise. But if it doesn't... —concept attributed to Alfred Hitchcock

Boeing-Boeing is a comedy, and a very good one, but it also gets mileage from Hitchcock's perspective on suspense. A woman's decision whether to eat at home or go out for dinner plays totally different when the audience knows there's another woman behind the bedroom door — and that neither is aware of the other's existence. It's taxing to worry every instant that one character could walk in the wrong door, doubly disconcerting when another might come out. In its production of this 1960s Marc Camoletti script (adapted from the original French by Beverly Cross), the Purple Rose Theatre Company has crafted a riotous flavor of thriller: five doors, three fiancees, and two hours spent wondering when the truth will detonate.

So, okay, I'd never seen Our Town. Lest my American citizenship be called into question, of course I read the play, but somehow it never came to pass that I actually saw it. As initiations go, the Purple Rose production was a fine way to break the ice, a fresh-feeling approach to a classic that speaks for itself.

The success and longevity of Thornton Wilder's play is in its universality. The specifics of life in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, are not ubiquitously American; they describe a single small town, in New England, in the early twentieth century. Yet the stories of two families growing up, finding love, and suffering loss even now feel like our own. Newcomer though I was, it's safe to say there are few actors better suited to the role of Stage Manager than the lyrical Will David Young, whose leisurely paced, gentle narration neither extols nor condemns the proceedings. This warts-and-all take on the past is what sets the production apart. Eschewing anything idyllic or sepia-tinted, director Guy Sanville does not lionize the humdrum repetition of "Daily Life" in the first act. In fact, he is unafraid to dig for humor (even when it is of the "mothers be shrill!" variety), knowing there is plenty of time later in which to grab the viewer's heart, and squeeze.

The year is 1693, and the already-famous scientist and mathematician Isaac Newton (Alex Leydenfrost) is intent as ever on pursuing his work. What his colleague John Locke (Jim Porterfield) doesn't know is that instead of science or math, the great man is trying his hand at the illegal practice of alchemy. In Gravity, the David MacGregor play in its world premiere at the Purple Rose, Newton is scarcely an object at rest, fitfully traversing his Cambridge University suite and laboratory. In a plot that takes liberties with written history, he meets the headstrong widow Brilliana Cavendish (Michelle Mountain), then surprises himself by confiding in her about his true pursuits as their relationship grows. While the story figuratively brews, something is literally cooking in the laboratory oven, changing properties at a glacial pace.

What works in Gravity's favor is its lead actors, under the direction of Guy Sanville. As the overworked Newton, Leydenfrost is solitary, pensive, ruthlessly single-minded, and captivating as he is plagued with moments of weakness. Mountain is too good to be true as Brilliana, more intelligent and forward than centuries-ago women had permission to be. Porterfield's Locke is a smaller role, but he aptly plays the friend who spends too much time supporting and not enough time intervening. My favorite, however, was Newton's professional nemesis, Robert Hooke (Will David Young), who is absolutely the most fun a depraved weasel can be. The smug dressings down Young delivered made me wish he was available for parties. An additional plus is the actors' rich voice work — they have an easy cadence that rises to meet the classically inspired sentence structure. It's a shame, therefore, that the script is so far from Shakespeare.

Like a little kid who saw The Phantom Menace before Star Wars, the Purple Rose Theatre Company's final installment in the Escanaba trilogy was the first I had seen. Unlike that little kid, I wasn't disappointed, and, from the murmurs and chuckles of the audience, nor were the die-hard Escanaba fans.

The story of Jeff Daniels's Escanaba predates both Escanaba in Da Moonlight and Escanaba in Love, chronicling the very moment at which the Soady family history and traditions began: patriarch Alphonse Soady (Tom Whalen) completes the cabin at the deer camp. It's pretty unrealistic that every single tradition had its roots in just over an hour's time (including when Soady met Negamanee), but what legend was ever believable? The events are best taken in with the same skepticism one would use to interpret annals of ancient history — probably not how it really happened, but as close as we'll ever get.