The catty, sexy production of Marivaux’s “The False Servant,” now at Classic Stage, disproves the old adage about catching flies. Apparently, honey can’t beat venom and a cast-iron nerve. Stealing all the best bits of Shakespeare’s comedies and leeching the sentiment out of them, Marivaux shows how much better it is to play with claws extended.

An heiress (Martha Plimpton) dresses in drag to discover the truth about her misbehaving betrothed, Lelio (Jesse Pennington). He is handsome but thoroughly corrupt. He is also not terrifically bright, and quickly involves this “Chevalier” in his schemes. “Deceiving women, why that’s tradition!” he insists, and he has plenty of women to deceive.

One of Lelio’s pesky pre-existing romantic entanglements needs to be unravelled before he can wed, and he asks his new friend to help him. As unscrupulous servants threaten to unmask her, the lady Chevalier must woo a Countess (the delightful Tina Benko), keep her valet (Bill Buell) at arm’s length, and make sure that Lelio gets the right measure of comeuppance.

Brian Kulick’s handsome production of Kathleen Tolan’s sprightly translation makes for a wicked treat. The servants have good reason for their viciousness – they have to push an enormous amount of luggage around the stage. But Ms. Plimpton’s amused gamesmanship and Mr. Pennington’s knee-jerk knavery are just examples of how much more fun it is to be bad.

The final gesture, one that seems almost too familiar, begins when rose petals flutter down from the ceiling. It seems these days a show can’t end without showers of snow or sand. But Mr. Kulick, isn’t turning trite in this last moment, he’s being bitter. The red petals fall on a stage where romance has been clawed to bits. They float in the air like chicken feathers in a henhouse after a visit from the fox.

***

A quick warning to parents or parents to be: The poster for “Orange Flower Water,” a picture of a cute toddler wearing a tiger suit, is wildly misleading. Craig Wright’s new show deals with the adult of our species, and in its most compromising positions. After an hour and a half of straight talk about marriage, and at least 20 minutes of graphic, depressing sex, any urge to run out and have a cute toddler in a tiger suit should be almost entirely quashed.

Two couples on a collision course torture each other before dividing and reforming. Beth (Pamela J. Gray) seems to have the upper hand in her marriage to David (Jason Butler Harner), but she has lost him to a neighbor even before the play begins. Cathy (Arija Bareikis) and David teeter on the edge of taking their affair public – her husband Brad (Paul Sparks) and their respective children be damned.

The twin talents at the company’s core, director Carolyn Cantor and set designer David Korins, excel at smothering, immersive productions. The Theater for a New Audience black box disappears completely – the audience seems to be sitting in a nicely raked cedar closet with a bed at its center. At first, the warm wood looks inviting, at least until it starts to feel like a trap.

Ms. Cantor coaxes brave performances from her actors; all of them do beautiful work here. In particular, Ms. Gray’s Beth is a whiz with the verbal needle – she can stab her husband even as she’s capitulating – and Paul Sparks’s Brad can steal a scene before he starts talking. Despite their strengths, though, Mr. Wright’s piece could just seem like a movie of the week. Ms. Cantor, working simply, answers the challenge with a kind of persecuting intimacy. Film may have the leg up on theater in a couple of ways, but you can’t beat this show for sheer, unnerving proximity.

***

First out of the gate at 59E59’s Brits Off Broadway Festival, the Traverse Theater’s monkishly simple “When the Bulbul Stopped Singing” returns to the very first principles of entertainment. Rather than play, performer Christopher Simon merely tells a story, one culled from the diary of Raja Shehadeh, the Palestinian novelist. Arranged by David Greig, the evening consists of entries made during the 2002 siege of Ramallah.

Mr. Simon’s disciplined delivery and Mr. Shehadeh’s concentration on the minutiae of existence drains much of the urgency out of the accounting. There’s such restraint, such even-handed description of a town patrolled by Israeli tanks, that one could wonder why another installment in this “soap opera” (as Mr. Shehadeh calls it) is necessary. But a calm head is always welcome.

“The False Servant” until May 8 (136 E. 13th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, 212-279-4200).

“Orange Flower Water” until May 8 (155 First Avenue, between Ninth and Tenth Streets, 212-868-4444).

“When the Bulbul Stopped Singing” until April 23 (59 E. 59th Street, between between Park and Madison Avenues, 212-279-4200).