THE DIARY OF A MADMAN
In the mid-1800s, the great Russian author Nikolai Gogol wrote a classic short story; it's the first-person narrative of an average St. Petersburg man's yearning for a woman that turns into delusions.  Writer David Holman, director Neil Armfield and actor Geoffrey Rush have turned this story into a dark stage comedy, produced by Sydney Australia's Belvoir Company.  If you loved Rush as the charismatic speech therapist in The King's Speech, as I did, here is your chance to see him live.
 
BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Feb. 1-Mar. 12.
 
HEAVEN ON EARTH
The prolific Charles L. Mee has come up with a new collage-like script about what happens after the world ends.  Dan Safer's Witness Relocation dance/theater troupe, along with France's Ildi! Eldi will stage it.  This seems like a good match.  Both Mee and Safer are unafraid to go anywhere when it comes to putting on a show.  Mee will take us from ancient Roman ruins to the collapse of American financial institutions, and Safer will have his dancers physically and humorously attacking any pre-conceived ideas of what dancers should be doing.
 
La Mama, Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 E. 4th St. Feb. 17-Mar. 6.
 
VIEUX CARRE
In this year's celebration of what would have been Tennessee Williams's 100th birthday, here is another of his rich memory plays. It's set in a boarding house in New Orleans, where Williams stayed in 1939, when he first moved away from his Mississippi home, and experienced his sexual and artistic awakenings.  What makes this production so extra special is that The Wooster Group is doing it.  Liz LeCompte directs Ari Fliakos as Williams, who reportedly based the play on his French Quarter journal entries.  Other Wooster stand-outs, Scott Sheperd, Kate Valk, Kaneza Schaal and Devid Pettrow, complete the cast.
 
The Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 W. 37th St. Feb. 2-27. smarttix.com.
 
GOOD PEOPLE
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire and Tony Award-winning director Daniel Sullivan both won their honors for Rabbit Hole.  It was even made into a movie.  Here they join again for a current drama set in a tough South Boston neighborhood, where a down-on-her-luck woman, played by the splendid Frances McDormand, gets the idea that a one-time boyfriend (Tate Donovan), who has made it out of Southie on his own, might just be the person to help her get back on her feet.  Estelle Parsons is also in the cast.
 
Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th St. Previews Feb. 8, opens Mar. 3. telecharge.com.
 
THE HALLWAY TRILOGY
The protean Adam Rapp has written three full-length 90-minute plays, to be done in repertory, with 14 actors and three directors.  Each play is set 50 years apart, and the Rattlestick Theater will reconfigure its space to accommodate the set's long, L.E.S. tenement hallway .  Part one, Rose, directed by Rapp, happens on Nov. 28, 1953, the day following Eugene O'Neill's death.  Part two, Paraffin, directed by Daniel Aukin, is on the first night of the 2003 NYC blackout. And part three, Nursing, directed by Trip Cullman, is set in a 2053 disease-free NYC, when the tenement is transformed into a museum where young men and women who need money are injected with old-fashioned diseases for the public's amusement.
 
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly Pl. Previews Feb. 6, opens Feb. 20-Mar. 30.
smarttix.com.