“All the World’s a Stage” and “Rheology” Are Promising New Productions

Adam Gwon’s new musical, “All the World’s a Stage,” is an unassuming, 100-minute marvel that follows a closeted math teacher at a rural high school in the 1990s. Like some of that decade’s gay-themed indie movies, including the earnest “Edge of Seventeen” and “Trick,” this musical is not looking to reinvent the wheel with its storytelling, but is charming, specific and appealing in its rendering of gay life outside the mainstream.

Ricky (Matt Rodin), a 30-something teacher with a new job, befriends a kind secretary, Dede (Elizabeth Stanley), and meets Sam (Eliza Pagelle), a rebellious student in whom he finds a kindred love of theater and simmering need to break free from societal expectations. They bond over “Angels in America,” the new risqué play and the source of her monologue for an acting scholarship audition. But her selection threatens the school administration’s conservative sensibilities.

At the same time, Ricky is striking up a romance with Michael (Jon-Michael Reese), the owner of a gay-friendly bookstore in a slightly more progressive town where he’s settled down. When Ricky’s two worlds inevitably collide, they do so with well-crafted wit.

Gwon’s yearning, pop-classical score flows together beautifully, yet is composed of numbers distinct enough to allow the four excellent cast members to flex their skills. That balance between individuality and unity proves a key theme, expressed in the title’s idea that each of us is always adapting our performance across circumstances. (He also has fun with some clever lyrics, at one point setting up “hara-kiri” to seemingly rhyme with “Shakespearean.”)

The director Jonathan Silverstein draws warm portrayals from his troupe (matched by a quartet playing onstage) in his modest, efficiently staged Keen Company production at Theater Row.

Jennifer Paar’s costumes are instantly evocative; button-up shirts and wire-frame glasses for the teacher and bomber jackets for his pupil. Patrick McCollum’s movement work is gently expressive and Steven Kemp’s scenic design is similarly to-the-point, with a bookcase or chalkboard rolled in as needed, a lone student desk and an American flag hanging ominously in the corner.