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No need to worry about Christmas shopping, because the ancient Mayan Calendar predicts the end of the world on December 21, 2012. What’s more, according to Miss Richfield 1981, the Mexicans have something to do with it. Such is the premise of Illusion Theater’s holiday show titled Miss Richfield 1981 2012: We’ll All Be Dead By Christmas. Russ King has returned to the Twin Cities to play his legendary Miss Richfield 1981. He puts on an entertaining, interactive show that promises to offend some, if not all, in the audience.

Mixed Blood Theatre Company recently opened its season with an ambitious production of the musical Next to Normal. Normal won the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Original Score, Best Orchestration, and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley). The Broadway touring company staring Alice Ripley played last year at the Ordway and comparisons with this production are inevitable. But having seen both, I prefer the current production at Mixed Blood.

The world premiere of Buccaneers, a new pirate musical, opened this last weekend at the Children’s Theatre Company. Playwright Liz Duffy Adams partnered with composer Ellen Maddow to create a play that is very entertaining and surprisingly educational but at the same time somewhat alarming with its numerous bloodthirsty references.

The Minnesota Centennial Showboat has opened another season and, for at least the fourth time since it started presenting plays in 1958, they are doing a vampire-themed show. The first was staged in 1978: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which was the first Showboat production that I ever attended. They have done Dracula at least two more times since then, but this year the Showboat is going with a Scottish kilt-wearing vampire named Lord Ruthven in a play by J.R. Plance titled The Vampire! Peter Moore directs this melodrama written in 1820 involving a Scottish vampire who must drink the blood of a virgin bride every month or perish.