After the Rain, to judge by a modestly incomprehensible press release, is a "British farcial satire" about some criminals in the year 2176 who apparently put on a play, while hypnotized by the Lecturer, about "your ancestors" who survived on a raft during the "great Rain" of 1976. The new South House Drama Society, we're asked to believe, chose this play for its inaugural production after discarding Buchner and Shaw. Where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Tomorrow and Sunday at 7:30, Saturday at 2, in the Hilles Library Theater.

Applause is a fair-to-middling. 60s musical about how tough it is to be an actor, and stuff like that, which once starred Lauren Bacall and is getting a better than fair-to-middling production. In the Leverett Old Library.

The Duplex is by Ed Bullins, once minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, and it's part of a projected series of 20 full-length plays about black people in America. Bullins modestly calls it the "Twentieth Century Cycle." Among his other accomplishments are an Obie award and, for his first novel, possibly the worst review ever to appear in The Crimson. Tonight through Saturday, 7:30 at the Loeb Ex.

A Celebration of Life stars Dee Brown and actors, dancers, and singers from the Boston Conservatory. Tomorrow at 8 p.m. in the Currier Fishbowl.

The Wizard of Oz. Words fail me. If you know the right ones, on the other hand, you can trade them in for a couple of ruby slippers. Under what guise did Ozma, the legitimate ruler whose place the Wizard took, pass the majority of her childhood? And a pun referring to what conveyance so offended even the long-suffering Jack Pumpkinhead that he momentarily stopped smiling? This weekend and next, 8 p.m. at Dunster House (also 11 on Saturday).