The cure for these ugly, cold, rainy nights is at hand. At the John Houseman, “Lone Star Love or The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas” will warm you up with some complimentary chili, tilt you back in your seat with a beer, and dry you off with some unlikely brilliance. You thought we didn’t need a Texan musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor”? Well then it’s a good thing you never got between adaptor John L. Haber and a stage.

Windsor, Texas, is full of scrappy women and gun-totin’ cattlemen – not the best place for sleazy John Falstaff to wind up. When the Missus Ford and Page (crack-shots Beth Leavel and Stacia Fernandez) find themselves the recipients of two of his identical love letters, it doesn’t take two shakes to come up with their revenge.

The flabby, treasonous, otherwise lovable drunkard gets his comeuppance in spades (and pitchforks and a shotgun), all while everyone else learns key lessons about trust and true love. The story of Big John Falstaff (Jay O. Sanders) and his scalawag ways works disturbingly well in the down-home idiom. It’s almost too obvious – where else do you find sassy women dumping fat men in creeks?

From the get-go, director Michael Bogdanov has the cast clambering right out of the stage and into the audience. Before the show, Big John could barely be dragged away from his beer to perform. Mr. Bogdanov, no stranger to Shakespeare, also steers us easily through the secondary story lines.

All his clowns are adorable, but special praise has to go to Miss Anne Page (Julie Tolivar), the young daughter who wants to marry for love, and her beloved Fenton (Clarke Thorell), the yodeling cowboy. Finally, as the heroes with nothing heroic to do, the husbands Frank Ford (Gary Sandy) and George Page (Dan Sharkey) establish themselves as a new kind of triple threat. Now everyone will have to act, sing, and lasso, just to keep up.

The music alone would pep up a winter night. Jack Herrick wrote most of it, with contributions from the founder of the Red Clay Ramblers. The current members of the Ramblers are right onstage playing in tight, perfect bluegrass harmonies. Joining them are a posse of (literally) barn-storming musicians, all tucked up in the corner of set designer Derek McClane’s big, beautiful hayloft. This lets choreographer Randy Skinner pull out the whole bag of slides, stomps and yahoos – getting free rein in the giddy, adorable finale. In fact, the piece is giddy from nose to tail. Giddy-up.

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The New Victory’s latest clown show isn’t exactly a victory, but it is a very sturdy runner-up. Dimitri Bogatirev’s “Aga-Boom” has many of the ingredients of Slava Polunin’s spectacular “Snow Show” – from the big balloons that bounce over the audience to the pre-occupation with mess – but it doesn’t attempt Slava’s sophistication.

For a show aimed at the shorter set, this hardly detracts from their pleasure. But after I got walloped in the eye by an overeager parent, I felt a little over stimulated and I wanted my nap.

Mr. Bogatirev plays Aga, who can juggle a polka-dot briefcase or spin a toy plane winningly around his head. His opposite number, Boom (Iryna Ivanytska), pushes buttons that say “don’t touch,” squeaking when it causes the inevitable ruckus. Along with stranded astro-clown Dash (Philip Briggs), they bounce sweetly through the predictable clown chestnuts. Be warned: There’s a lot of forced participation by the aisle-sitting adults, and your children will love to laugh at you.

As veterans of Cirque du Soleil, it’s no surprise that the performers are able, clever, and can wrap children around their fingers. But after the anarchy of “Snow Show,” Mr. Bogatirev’s chaos may strike the adults in the audience as a little second-rate.

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In case anything has recently persuaded you to move to Canada, the current one-man show at P.S. 122 offers assurances that you will at least find good theater there. But those are the only assurances it does offer – it is a tale of devastation and the cruelty of loneliness, all told in the lightest of tones.

Daniel MacIvor’s “Cul-de-Sac,” co created with long-time collaborator Daniel Brooks, avoids the many pitfalls of solo performance. Where others might tread heavily, Mr. MacIvor has an incredibly gentle touch. He tells the story of the last minutes of one man’s life – a life that hasn’t been ignored, exactly, but certainly neglected. As his dying moan wends around this dead-end street, we meet his many neighbors who have each betrayed him in their way. They’re the usual mix: a precocious preteen who invents disturbing stories, a deranged ex-veterinarian, and a couple of tubby nudists.

Mr. MacIvor isn’t exactly the type to disappear into a character; this isn’t a virtuoso, Jefferson Mays kind of turn. Instead it’s an example of clever, subtle writing. Images bubble to the surface that defy instant identification as “symbols” but nonetheless establish tones of rot and fragility. Despite a frightening storm of violence at its end, the piece’s attitude always tends towards resignation and humor. Mr. MacIvor could just be laughing at us, though. He punctures the city-dweller’s easy nostalgia for neighborhoods. In his cul-de-sac, proximity does not create intimacy, and even this lovely creation of his will die alone.

“Lone Star Love” until January 9 (450 W. 42nd Street, 212-239-6200).

“Aga-Boom” until January 16 (209 W. 42nd Street, 212-239-6200).

“Cul-de-Sac” until December 19 (150 First Avenue, 212-477-5288).