ongoing - Sun. Nov. 9

 If you’re watching a play set in Romania, it probably won’t shock you to see Vlad Tepes – the sadistic ruler and Romanian icon upon whom Bram Stoker based "Dracula" – making an appearance. That he does in the person of American Repertory Theatre actor Will LeBow in Anne Washburn’s new mouthful of a play, "The Communist Dracula Pageant – By Americans, for Americans, with hallucinations, phosphorescence and bears." It’s at the A.R.T.’s Zero Arrow Theatre and it closes today, Sunday Nov. 9.   
 "It’s a wild ride," Kauffman says. She describes "The Communist Dracula Pageant" as a "wry twist of genres." Transcripts from the Ceausescus trial are utilized, but the play veers far from linearity. There’s music, dancing, fantasy, comedy, vaudeville, and, says Kauffman, "the blurring of real and not real. There’s absurdity, spectacle. It’s a collage piece." The pageantry is two-fold. There’s the revolution, "an expression," says Kauffman, "of how we as Americans perceive this particular revolution, which was the first televised revolution." And there’s a grand costly pageant that the Ceausescus staged in 1976, when much of the country was mired in poverty, lacking basics like electricity. "The pageant is a great metaphor," says Kauffman. "Their reign is pageant-like, a celebration of ego." Tickets: $52-$39. Today's matinee is at 2. Check website below for specific performances.

Corner of Arrow St. and Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-354-8300 www.amrep.org