Ten Nights in A Barroom. A temperance drama of the decline and fall of a saloon-keeper and the alternating fortunes of his customers. More of a social historical document than an aesthetic success, the piece is played dead seriously but turns out to be quite enjoyable, and, of course, pretty funny to a modern audience. It's good to see the Radcliffe Grant-in-Aid, always a good, cause, getting out of the Broadway-musical rut they'd been in for their last few productions Originally they were going to do Witness for the Prosecution but the lead got mono. Knowing that Ten Nights is not exactly a household word, the Grant-in-Aid people have decided that the best thing to accompany a temperance play with is bear, and they're selling it at the enticing price of $10 a glaza it almost reminds one of the days of England's great gin debauch in the early Industrial Revolution when modern methods of gin distilling were introduced and made it the preferred spirit of the working classes. For a couple of pence you got not only enough gin to knock you out till morning but a pallet of hay and a place to sleep on the barroom floor. It is said by reputable social historians that at any one time one third of the adult population of England was drunk. At the Agassiz, tonight, tomorrow and Saturday night at 8 p.m., as well as next weekend.

Peer Gynt is one of Ibsen's more difficult plays, outside the genre of the "problem" play about society and dealing with different, larger(?) issues. Long, uncompromising, and rewarding. Directed by the talented professional Peter Frisch. At the Loeb mainstage tonight, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday nights at 8 p.m., as well as next weekend.

Sticks and Bones. It probably wasn't entirely without a sense of theater that the Provisional Revolutionary Government entered Ho Chi Minh city within hours of May Day, but the war in Vietnam ended with less drama than we might have expected. What of the drama the war produced in the U.S.? David Rabe's Sticks and Bones has usually been considered the best of it, with other works like Medal of Honor Rag being placed by critics "in the tradition of Sticks and Bones." The play is about the psychic warping of a blind Vietnam veteran and the havoc he creates back home with his family. In Joseph Papp's original Public Theater version a few years ago the play had a hypnotically entrancing effect, but there really isn't that much analysis to it. It's a play about Vietnam as a pretext and not an event. That's okay, I guess--just don't expect that it'll take on any important new meanings in the context of the last few days. At Dunster House tonight, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday night at 8:30 p.m., as well as next weekend.

The Apple Tree. A set of three short musicals loosely based on some of the more august myths of Western civilization, in entertaining version at Leverett House. Tonight, tomorrow and Saturday at 8:30 p.m.

Arture Ui. Now that Boston's "legitimate theater" owners have told the city they will be closing up shop, this could be their swansong. Like Richard Chamberlain going "legitimate" from "Dr. Kildare" to the Prince of Denmark. Al Pacino, erstwhile brooding introspective mafioso, is trying to be even more serious as Arturo Ui Bracht's version of the Hitler-as-gangster phenomenon. Opens Wednesday May 7 at the Charles Playhouse downtown on Warrenton Street.