The challenge of the celebrity bio-play is in striking a balance between the individual’s public and private faces; showing only the former feels like a shallow impression, but revealing only the latter robs the viewer of the familiarity of the ingrained connection. Playwright David Rambo executes this conceit with skill in The Lady With All the Answers, an intimate exploration of extraordinary woman Eppie Lederer as well as of her nom de plume, famous advice columnist “Ann Landers.” Stormfield Theatre’s production, as directed by Kristine Thatcher and performed by Diane Dorsey, has mixed results in giving credence to both halves of the same subject, but succeeds in conveying unshakable strength and reason that reinforce the larger-than-life timbre of a nationally treasured voice.

The play opens with the moment of truth for any writer, her deadline, which Eppie is evading late in the evening in her downtown Chicago apartment. Something is evidently amiss: the character hesitantly dips a careful toe into her family life and upbringing, including the famous rift with her twin sister and professional rival “Dear Abby,” but for the most part she retreats behind the Landers persona and elegantly procrastinates. The character seems touchy about how to approach Landers’s fame, her boggled mind — that people have no recourse but this stranger for their weird, personal troubles — hovering near condescension and judgment. Yet despite her saucy quips that come across more like barbs, Dorsey is generously effusive connecting with the audience as she takes informal polls and initiates some easy question-and-answer, her delight in their laughter and reactions providing a concentrated shot of warmth to the character. Eventually she confesses to the viewers, who she addresses as readers but treats as friends, that her column is held up because she can’t think of how to tell the readership about her — Eppie’s — impending divorce.

All the publicity for Stormfield Theatre’s full production of Kimberly Akimbo (after the late-2009 staged reading that marked the theater’s inception) trumpets actor Carmen Decker in the title role, and it’s more than earned by Decker’s celebrated decades-long history in Michigan theater and carefully honed performance. Yet what makes this lovingly oddball production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s script really tick is its sharp ensemble feel and embrace of a comedic oddball world in which high school and criminal activity, normal and abnormal, and impending birth and death can coexist, or, more curiously, overlap.

Teenaged Kimberly is the new kid in Bogota, New Jersey; her parents have moved the family here under suspiciously vague circumstances. There’s some witness protection–like allusion to keeping quiet about their past, but it would be impossible for this quirky crowd to blend in or lay low. Hypochondriac Pattie (Deborah Keller) pushes her pregnant belly around the house, her hands bound tightly after a carpal tunnel operation, but her mouth in fine working order to plead and command. Unreliable boozer Buddy (Tommy Gomez) brings the deadbeat dad to new levels of bumbling ineptitude, but manages to stay in the family’s good graces with warmth and heartfelt promises. However, most conspicuous of all is Kimberly, who has a genetic disease causing her body to age at 4.5 times the normal rate. She looks like a grandmother at the age of sixteen, the average life expectancy of people with her condition — her birthday passes as celebrated as a death knell. From her place at the fringes of the social order, Kimberly makes a single friend in Jeff (Comso Greene), another loner who prefers his pastimes of role-playing games and anagrams to fitting in with classmates who ridicule him. Rounding out the ensemble is erratic and dangerous Debra (Michelle Meredith), Kimberly’s aunt, who tracks down the family and seems intent on blowing the mystery of their past wide open. The play's narrow world is intentionally alien and insular, populated entirely by people who couldn’t arrive at normal with a map, yet however unusual or closed-off these characters are, when surrounded by their own kind, their existence feels full instead of pitiable.

Mid-Michigan theater can let out a collective breath: after nearly a year of fundraising, a flurry of staged readings, and two incarnations of its Web site, Stormfield Theatre has taken the leap of faith and come out with its first fully staged production. With founder and artistic director Kristine Thatcher as the public face of the company, it's only fitting that the inaugural play be not only directed by Thatcher, but written by her as well. Happily, the choice is much more than just apropos; her 1997 Among Friends is a tour de force, and this incarnation quite simply shines.

With this production, the theater has also found a new temporary home in downtown Lansing, a ringingly bare-walls property tastefully softened with curtains and rows of chairs on three sides of a modestly sized raised stage. Yet this unassuming setting is home to lush production values in Michelle Raymond's set of staggered walls and Tim Fox's through-the-window lights that introduce each scene. Sparsely appointed enough to stand in as three men's homes, the set is a marvel of varied hues and finishes that's a perfect fit for its surroundings. These elements are also well met by three expert performances in a story about how surprisingly tenuous friendships can be.

As part of its inaugural year, Stormfield Theatre presented two staged readings of The Exonerated. The work-in-progress nature of a staged reading isn't my usual repertoire, but I wanted to get a look at this new company "dedicated to living playwrights and their works." With the support of some heavy hitters in Michigan theater, the production of this Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen–penned script held a gravitas well suited to an exploration of wrongly convicted individuals on death row.

Stormfield artistic director Kristine Thatcher directs the piece and is also counted among the cast of ten. The script is the product of years of research and interviews, with the characters' words all taken verbatim from these sessions as well as trial transcripts and other sources. Without devolving into lamentations, the play doles out the stories of six real people — three black men, two white men, and one white woman — sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit, and imprisoned for as many as two decades before their exoneration and release.