​Red Herring Productions illuminates “Knives in Hens” with stabs of poetic power, but David Harrower’s brooding romantic triangle remains a dark drama indeed.

Penny Napoli’s taut direction propels the Ohio premiere of the 1995 play, which opened Friday at the Franklinton Playhouse, as a timeless journey of enlightenment that evokes biblical fable.
The Scottish playwright may be best known for “Blackbird,” another drama of sexual awakening, deception and revenge.

​An iconic painting and an equally classic film noir plot combine in to make the delightfully wry comedy “Nighthawks.”

In the latest production by Red Herring Theatre, local playwright Johnrick Hole brings Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks at the Diner” to life, casting the four figures in the painting as characters in a quirky murder mystery.

Hole’s trim, well-structured script, which clocks in at about 70 minutes without an intermission, begins with an off-stage death, that of Bennie the bookie, who is found a couple blocks away from the diner that serves as the single set, a purloined fork lodged in his eye.

​Relationships aren’t easy to sustain, often have ups and downs, and can go sideways, despite the best intentions.

“Jack and Jill” persuasively probes beyond the initial meet-cute and/or meet-awkward moments of most romantic comedies to explore what can happen in a courtship, marriage and years afterward.

​The hugely entertaining and quietly moving “Waiting to Be Invited,” a dramedy written by S.M. Shepard-Massat, is performed with relish as a collaboration between PAST Productions and Red Herring Productions.

Three black co-workers at a doll factory head out on a bus after work on a Friday afternoon shortly after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been upheld by the Supreme Court. Feisty Ms. Odessa (Julie Whitney Scott),timid Ms. Delores (Patricia Wallace-Winbush) and observant Ms. Louise (Demia Kandi) plan to meet self-righteous pastor’s wife Ms. Ruth (Cathy Bean) outside an Atlanta department store and then go in to make a stand by eating at the previously “whites only” dining room there.

​All that the black women want to do is eat at an Atlanta department-store restaurant.

But the year is 1964, the risks are real and the outcome is uncertain as they strive to test a Supreme Court decision upholding the recently passed Civil Rights Act in “Waiting to Be Invited.”

PAST Productions Columbus and Red Herring Productions are co-producing the Columbus premiere of S.M. Shephard-Massat’s civil rights drama, which opens Friday at the Franklinton Playhouse.