Flying cats, a witch’s curse, weird sounds, strange lights, murder, gluttony and yes, even love in the Florida swamps are on display in Nathan Sanders’ 2007 Southern gothic tale “The Sugar Witch,” playing through Nov. 3 at OnStage Playhouse. Rob Conway directs.

Everything seems to be decaying around the old Bean homestead: the house itself, the sugar cane fields no longer tended, even the Bean family. This is due in part to the curse, which dates from a flood whose particulars sound suspiciously like Katrina, but in fact are based on a 1928 incident.

The trestle above Pope Lick Creek is 100 feet above the ground, and over that trestle hustles the 560-ton train that chugs though the small Kentucky town of Fisherville.

It’s 1936, and like the rest of the country, Fisherville is drowning in dashed hopes, high unemployment and wrecked lives wrought by the Great Depression.

Pace Creagan (Amanda Osborn), a 17-year-old tomboy daredevil who fears nothing and will try anything, has discovered the challenge of trying to outrun the 560-ton train. Now she wants to bully 15-year-old Dalton Chance (Ryan Kidd) into doing the run with her.

Fine ensemble acting characterizes Claudio Raygoza’s “Julia,” now in its world premiere and playing through Oct. 27 at ion theatre.

Inspired by August Strindberg’s classic “Miss Julie” – with its themes of class, power and gender roles in 19th-century Sweden – Raygoza has reimagined the original and moved the location to San Diego in 1975, suggesting the continuing relevance of the issues, despite where the power lies.

The duality of man is nowhere more compellingly portrayed than in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” in which a kindly doctor and a vicious serial killer exist in one person.

Several stage versions exist. Broadway San Diego brings back the 1997 Frank Wildhorn musical version (which ran nearly four years on Broadway); San Diego is the first stop on its march back to Broadway, where it is slated to open in April 2013.