The Mikado. The production lacks exuberance, but it's still solid Gilbert and Sullivan and that should help just about anyone's term-paper blues. At the Agassiz (a wonderful theater, incidentally, with good acoustics and a sense of intimacy unique among Harvard's auditoria, even if it is structurally unsound), tonight, tomorrow, and Sat. at 8 p.m.

Three Plays from The Towneley Cycle. These may be the best things playing all month for those with a serious, and especially an academic, interest in theater. The Towneley Cycle is one of those compendia of medieval religious plays halfway between ritual and modern drama. This production is the outgrowth of David Staines's English 211 and represents one of the few attempts to bring performing drama within Harvard's academic orbit. The English department should sit up and take note. Two of the three plays that make up the program were translated into modern English by students in the course; the other translation is a new one by William Alfred, professor of English. These plays are not just historical oddities--they've been turned into effective drama in their own right, and are funny, obscene and moving as well as intellectually interesting. At St. John's Chapel, Episcopal Divinity School, 99 Brattle St., Fri., Sat. and Sun. at 8 p.m.

Day of Absence is a good play by the talented Douglas Turner Ward. Black Cast, fresh from the excellent Amen Corner at the Loeb, performs at Quincy Dining Hall, Fri, Sat. and Sun. at 8 p.m.

Green Julia will be reviewed on Saturday.

Arsenic and Old Lace is that old play about two old women in an old mansion in Brooklyn who knock people off with poisoned elderberry wine, a play that a lot of people seem to think is funny. The Leverett House production is very well done, though. Fri. at 8 p.m. and midnight, Sat. at 8 p.m.

Lysistrata is reviewed on page two.

Narrow Road to the Deep North is a good, serious play about zen and Japan by Edward Bond. It's not the most exciting two and half hours of theater around, but it's far from lightweight. At the Loeb mainstage, tonight, Fri, Sat, Sun, Tues, Wed. at 8 p.m.

The Man of Destiny is one of Shaw's lesser-known plays, a "historical" drama about Napoleon and the women he loved. At the Loeb Ex, tonight, Fri and Sat. at 7:30.