Seat Filler

Room 17B
Four stooges who look like peons from Mad Men — Mike Dobson, Danny Gardner, Joel Jeske, and Brent McBeth — make up quirky theater troupe Parallel Exit, who charmingly pay tribute to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in this slaphappy series of pantomimed sketches and darkly comic bits set in a random filing office. Some audience interaction halts this genial farce’s momentum, but a good game of musical chairs never hurt anyone.
59E59 Theaters, through February 6.

Blood from a Stone
Fitfully powerful yet ultimately unfocused and overlong, Tommy Nohilly’s promising debut stars Ethan Hawke as a pill-popping ex-Marine sucked back into a blue-collar Connecticut household that makes Roseanne look like Dynasty. Guided by New Group’s out artistic director Scott Elliott, the superlative cast includes But I’m a Cheerleader’s Natasha Lyonne and Rent’s Daphne Rubin-Vega, but the play favors realism over reward.
Acorn Theatre, through February 19.