Being a trophy wife and called cutesy things like “songbird,” “little lark” and “little squirrel” must be an awful drag.

Ask Nora Helmer (Gretchen Hall). Not only does her husband Torvald (Fred Arsenault) call her silly names like those above, but he doesn’t bother her pretty little head with serious talk of any kind. Consequently, despite eight years of marriage and three children, she really does feel like a doll, an inanimate object kept around the house for looks alone.

There’s a bracing new voice in American theater. It belongs to Tarell Alvin McCraney, and you can see a prime example of his work in “The Brothers Size,” his heartbreaking three-character parable of brotherhood, love and jealousy, through Feb. 24 at The Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre.

“The Brothers Size” is part of McCraney’s Brother/Sister trilogy set in a poor black neighborhood in Louisiana. (Another in the trilogy, “In The Red And Brown Water,” was produced earlier by UCSD at the Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre in La Jolla).

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” wails Professor Henry Higgins, voice dripping exasperation after his “project” Eliza Doolittle behaves like – well, like a woman, and a human at that.

The world’s most famous professor is back onstage at The Old Globe, making a princess out of a flower girl and proving once again that a great story is timeless.

The Old Globe celebrates the 100th anniversary of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” with this sparkling production directed by newly named Old Globe Associate Artist Nicholas Martin.

You better watch out: Santa may be coming to town, but that gnarly green Grinch is here already, with fingernails out to there, nothing but bad to say about Christmas and a special hatred for those Whos down in Whoville.

The 15th annual rendering of “Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas!” barged into The Old Globe and has set up shop through Dec. 29. James Vásquez directs and restages the choreography, as he has since 2003.