Book of Days, set in Dublin, Missouri, concerns a community-theatre actress cast in a local staging of Shaw's St. Joan. The actress becomes involved with a local mystery when the cheese factory owner dies. She and her mother-in-law — a flinty, outspoken onetime hippie who swears, chain smokes and teaches at the local Christian college — lock horns with a local preacher and the factory owner's son. Book of Days, which also features Miriam Shor and Tuck Milligan, continues at the Signature Theatre's Peter Norton Space through Dec. 8.
— By Christine Ehren