THEATER REVIEW: "Precious Little" ★★ Through April 2 at the Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph St.; Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes; Tickets: $25 at 312-742-8497and www.dcatheatre.org

Believability in theater is a strange beast. At the new play “Precious Little” Thursday night, I had no trouble buying the scenes where the actress Marilyn Dodds Frank was playing a gorilla, not least because this remarkable actress can nail primates with ease. But I was driven nearly crazy by a ridiculous scene wherein some kind of medical practice or testing agency sends out their youngest and most clueless counselor to tell a high-risk mother that she may be carrying a child with a genetic defect. No doctor — just a nincompoop, overplayed in Julienne Ehre's struggling production for the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble. And the nincompoop refuses even to discuss the relative likelihood of any problem. None of this would ever happen, especially not to a college professor with decent insurance. I've been around a couple of those tests. They're all about percentages. Minutely refined percentages. That's why people take the tests. They don't just say “maybe.” The testers would be out of business.

In fact, the stressed pregnant woman in Madeleine George's three-actress, multi-character play seems never to meet a doctor at all. That certainly serves the plot of a play that wants to depict some of the confusion and angst felt by a single academic mother (a lesbian who is sleeping with one of her students but whose baby comes from artificial insemination) stuck in a world dominated by those less intelligent than herself. But it doesn't help you buy into her milieu.

The excellent Rivendell Theatre Ensemble production of Stephen Massicotte's love story "Mary's Wedding" has now been extended through March 6.

A spokesman noted that this was the first time in a very long time that Rivendell, one of the great survivors of the Chicago scene and a company that has always maintained a commitment to quality and new works, had been able to extend a production.

But Mark Ulrich's production of  "Mary's Wedding," which stars Cassandra Bissell and Shane Kenyon, has been packing the house at the Raven Theatre.

THEATER REVIEW: "Mary's Wedding" ★★★ Through Feb. 20 by Rivendell Theatre Ensemble at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St., $22 at 773-334-7728 and www.rivendelltheatre.net

At the top of “Mary’s Wedding,” we meet a pretty English girl in a period nightdress whose feelings are awakened by a dreamy ride on a horse with Charlie, a handsome young Canadian soldier in her new North American homeland. One could head to the historical-romance section of a local bookstore and find many a pulpy, paperback variation on that basic theme.

Stephen Massicotte’s 90-minute, two-character play, a popular national title in the last couple of years but only now premiering in Chicago, is most certainly a tear-jerking romance. But not only is this love story deeper and richer than its initial premise might suggest — the romance and the wedding involve two different men — it taps into some strikingly intense feelings about love, loss and recovery. It didn’t have me at hello, but it had me at goodbye.

THEATER REVIEW: "The Walls" ★★ Through June 20 at Steppenwolf Garage Theatre, 1624 N. Halsted St.; Tickets: $20 at 312-335-1650 and www.steppenwolf.org. Starring Tara Mallen as Alice in the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble’s production.

Early on in Lisa Dillman’s “The Walls,” an intense new play about women who’ve been incarcerated because of mental illness, there is a heart-wrenching little scene that begins on a seemingly ordinary day in the kitchen of a woman named Alice.

The local sheriff shows up. He tells Alice she’s a danger to herself and her children and must be incarcerated. Naturally, Alice goes looking for her husband, but he appears of his own volition. Immediately, Alice comes to a horrible realization: He already knows.

You can’t watch that scene without thinking about what it must be like to become mentally ill, not to know that you’re mentally ill and become utterly unable to convince everyone else for your own sanity. Even your own family.