The idea of turning Thomas Hardy’s entirely brilliant, and resoundingly bleak, 1895 novel Jude the Obscure into a musical sounds a little patently nuts on its surface; trust me, if you haven’t read the book, just go find a synopsis and you’ll understand. Not really the sort of thing that you’d think would lend itself to musical theater. Rather astonishingly, a Raleigh playwright named Ian Finley has managed to do it, in two parts, the first of which bows on April 12 on Burning Coal’s Mainstage. This is definitely worth going to take a look at. (Triangle Arts and Entertainment)