Several Lehigh Valley colleges are staging the final productions of their 2023-22 seasons.

The Northampton Community College theater department presents Tennessee Williams’ classic drama “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” April 18 - 21.

Muhlenberg College Theater and Dance rounds out its season with the musical comedy “Head Over Heels,” April 18 - 21.

DeSales Act 1 Theatre concludes its season with “The Drowsy Chaperone,” April 24 - May 4.

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” was to have been directed and had been cast by NCC theater department head Bill Mutimer, who died March 6.

The show is co-directed by NCC technical director Brett Oliveira and NCC theater professors Clair M. Freeman and Kevin Gaughenbaugh.

“This is a show Bill picked with the cast he wanted and we will honor his wishes,” Oliveira says.

The three-act play follows the Pollitt family over the course of an evening in the 1950s as the family gathers at their plantation in the Mississippi Delta to celebrate the birthday of wealthy patriarch Big Daddy (Jim Long), “the Delta’s biggest cotton-planter,” and his return from the Ochsner Clinic with what he has been told is a clean bill of health. Family members, except for Big Daddy and his wife Big Mama (Denise Long), know he is dying of cancer.

Big Daddy’s favorite son is Brick (Max Wetherhold), a former football star who is now an alcoholic. His ignored and frustrated wife, Maggie the “Cat” (Lydia Walker), wants to have a baby to guarantee their share of the Pollitt family wealth.

The family’s other son, Gooper (Travis Nugent), a successful corporate lawyer, resents his parents’ preferential treatment of Brick. He plots to secure control of the estate with his wife Mae (Megan Wolfe).

The NCC cast includes Jarrad Gholston Jr. and Andy Van Antwerp.

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” an adaptation of Williams’s 1952 short story, “Three Players of a Summer Game,” premiered on Broadway in 1955 and was nominated for four Tony Awards, including best play. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955.

The NCC production has two intermissions.

Audiences are asked to bring nonperishable food items for the college’s H.O.P.E. Food Bank or feminine hygiene products to help the college’s Women’s Club stock bathrooms on campus.

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” 7:30 p.m. April 18, 19, 20; 2 p.m. April 21, Lipkin Theater, Northampton Community College, 3835 Green Pond Road, Bethlehem Township, 484-484-3412, https://www.northampton.edu/

Muhlenberg College Theater and Dance presents the musical comedy, “Head Over Heels,” April 18 - 21, Baker Theatre, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre and Dance.

“Head Over Heels” is a jukebox musical set to more than one dozen songs of 1980s’ all-female rock band, The Go-Gos, including “We Got the Beat,” “Our Lips Are Sealed,” “Vacation,” and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” and “Mad About You.”

The show’s plot is based on “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia,” a 16th-century prose romance by English poet Sir Philip Sidney.

Adapted by James MacGruder and with a book by Jeff Whitty, the musical fairy tale follows the escapades of a royal family who set out on a journey to save their kingdom.

“Head Over Heels is ultimately a celebration of love in all its forms, of embracing who you are without apology, and of daring to dream big,” says the show’s director Alessandra Fanelli.

“Head Over Heels” premiered on Broadway in 2018.

“Head Over Heels,” 8 p.m. April 18, 19, 20; 2 p.m. April 21, Baker Theatre, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre and Dance, Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew St., Allentown. 484-664-3333; https://muhlenberg.edu

“Curtain Rises” is a column about the theater, stage shows, the actors in them and the directors and artists who make them happen. To request coverage, email: Paul Willistein, Focus editor, pwillistein@tnonline.com