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The best thing about “Mesrine: Killer Instinct,” which opened in Atlanta last week, is also the best thing about the follow-up film, “Mesrine: Public Enemy #1.” Playing the titular French gangster, the dynamic Vincent Cassel is almost charismatic enough to make you forget that director Jean-François Richet’s movie doesn’t deepen or expand on its predecessor. “Killer Instinct” was generally accorded modern classic status when it came out. But by the end, the two films spend four hours showing Jacques Mesrine kidnap, rob and kill his way across several nations without ever really getting inside the man’s head.

Maybe…

Miss Great Plains is a shy, corn-fed gal with tentative manners and a sweet disposition. Miss Industrial Northeast is a buxom Latina with Carmen Miranda fashion flair, a heart of gold and all the nimbleness of Lady Liberty. Miss Texas is a towering redhead with a hysterical hoofing and baton-twirling routine and a sultry twang that can barely disguise her killer competitive instinct.

Welcome to “Pageant: The Musical Comedy Beauty Contest!,” a giddy, pastel-colored send-up of pageant culture, the cosmetics industry and regional stereotypes. Parading its coiffed and manicured self around the 14th Street Playhouse through October…

Jacques Mesrine may have been French, but according to a two-feature overview of his life, he would have liked to be named an honorary American — or, rather, a dishonorable one. A gangster who saw himself as a sort of film star, he comes across as a Gallic Clyde, robbing, killing and kidnapping his way across several countries with a succession of Bonnies at his side.

Based in part on Mesrine’s own memoir, the first film of director Jean-François Richet’s diptych is called “Mesrine: Killer Instinct.” It introduces us to the anti-hero (played by French film’s charismatic madman, Vincent…

Nazis as villains and nuns singing choral / Cute kids and goatherds and fresh mountain laurel …

These are a few of our favorite things, for those of us who are fans of “The Sound of Music.” With some of the greatest songs written for the American musical theater, a timeless plot and wonderful family appeal, it’s hard to mess up this classic. The production that opened last night at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre, and runs through August 29 as part of the Theater of the Stars series, doesn’t quite mess it up, but it rarely rises to the level we…

The Alliance Theater’s “Twist” transplants Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” to New Orleans in the 1920s, and production choreographer and director Debbie Allen sees strong parallels between Dickens’ early-Victorian London and Jazz Age America. She notes that the novel, a protest against the horrible living conditions of poor children in England, depicted an era of severe social dislocation and change similar to that in America from 1919 to 1928.

“There is a lot of rich stuff going on in America, and at the same time the desperation for work and jobs is mounting,” Allen said. “The Depression is getting…

Aficionados of the novel “A Confederacy of Dunces” will cherish Theatrical Outfit’s faithful, well-crafted take on John Kennedy Toole’s comic tale of the brilliant misfit Ignatius J. Reilly, who flamboyantly proclaims his quarrels with modern life while wandering through a lovingly evoked New Orleans.

(UPDATE 8/24: The run is now extended through Sept. 12)

The production, playing through September 5 at the Balzer Theater in downtown Atlanta, is a world premiere “adaptation” by Tom Key, Theatrical Outfit’s executive artistic director, of Toole’s 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Clocking in at nearly three hours, the show…