Conceivably, you could spend every night in a theater and still not see every one of the new shows - although the way the performances tend to be concentrated on weekends and with the limited offerings on weeknights, you might actually have a few Mondays off.

There is never a guarantee of which ones are going to be great and which aren’t. Some of the best professional efforts can be sorely disappointing and some of the tiniest community theaters can occasionally score a direct hit that knocks your socks off.

Since you can’t possibly go see all of them, which of the shows offered in the metropolitan area this summer are most likely to give you the “I’m so glad I saw that” feeling? In part, the answer depends on your personal tastes – do you prefer musicals? Comedies? Dramas? New works? Classics? Children’s shows?

Trying to touch on all tastes, here are my choices of shows likely to deserve your careful consideration for theatergoing this summer.

Do you like musicals?
You’re in for a great summer! Start out in Bethesda at the Round House where the Caribbean influences the score of Ragtime’s composer and lyricist for the love story “Once On This Island.” Then head to Arena Stage in Southwest which is bringing back “Crowns,” the gospel-tinged musical with “hattitude” based on photographs of African-American women in their church-going outfits. Over in Arlington, Signature Theatre has already opened its first summer musical, Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” which tells the story of the opening of Japan to western influences from the perspective of the Japanese. Later they tackle the supposedly unproduceable musical Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman set out to write, only to end up with the Tony Award for best book and score for a musical in 2002, “Urinetown.”

Also already up and running is the return engagement of the Abba musical “Mamma Mia!” which holds forth at the National through July 2. The national touring company of the Broadway hit “Hairspray” is going to spend most of the summer in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House. On a more intimate scale is a marvelous two-character musical which will be produced at Alexandria’s MetroStage called “The Last Five Years.” With a score by Jason Robert Brown, the story is the failed marriage of a young couple – but it is told through the husband’s eyes from their first meeting to their breakup while the same story is seen through the wife’s eyes backwards in her memory from breakup to the first meeting. The only time they sing together is when the story converges at the wedding. In Maryland, Toby’s Dinner Theatre will offer the rock ‘n roll musical “Grease.”

With all this, it is hard to believe you’d need to wander farther afield, but I, for one, will take one night to drive up to Baltimore where “The Lion King” will pack the Hippodrome all summer long.

Comedies more your bag?
Check out a pair of Woody Allen one-act plays, “Central Park West” and “Riverside Drive” at Theater J. Studio Theatre’s 2nd Stage company has scheduled a computer-age comedy by Rolin Jones, “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow.” The Shakespeare Theatre’s comedy of the summer is Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere's Fan” which will be directed by Keith Baxter.

How About Dramas?
No shortage this summer! The Washington Shakespeare Company presents Peter Shaffer’s historical drama “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” after it finishes the run of Euripides “Medea” at the Clark Street Playhouse, just over the 14th Street Bridge in Virginia. Also in Arlington, The American Century Theater will be reviving “The Emperor Jones,” Eugene O'Neill's 1920 play about an escaped convict who flees to a Caribbean island where he sets himself up as the Emperor. Downtown, Studio Theatre’s 2nd Stage company will offer a Russian playwright’s political thriller involving a Russian town terrorized by murder plots and bomb scares. It is called “Terrorism.” The Actors’ Theatre of Washington is presenting “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” while Keegan Theatre revives Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”

The Open Circle Theatre, which jumped into the spotlight last season with a fabulous “Jesus Christ Superstar” utilizing artists with disabilities, takes on Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” this summer. In Virginia, the new Natural Theatricals uses the indoor amphitheater of the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria to mount Euripedes’ “Ion” and Archibald MacLeish’s “Herakles.” The Shakespeare Theatre’s drama of the summer is “Othello” which will be directed by Michael Kahn.

Check Out Some New Theaters
This will be the first summer you can go to Woolly Mammoth Theater Company shows in their new house in the Penn Quarter at 7th and D Streets NW. The inaugural show, Mickey Birnbaum's dark comedy “Big Death and Little Death” which is already playing, will be followed by “The Clean House,” a comedy about a cleaning woman who'd rather tell jokes (in Portuguese) than clean.

Also opening a new theater will be the Olney Theatre Center for the Arts in Montgomery County. The first show on their new mainstage will be William Gibson's drama of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller, “The Miracle Worker.”

Summer Evenings Outdoors!
You don’t really need to spend all your time in a dark theater to fill your summer evenings with live theater. Some fine offerings are out of doors. The most famous, of course, is the Shakespeare Theatre’s annual Free For All at Carter Barron Amphitheater which will be underway by the time you read this. Jeff Hall-Flavin is restaging Mark Lamos' production of “A Midsummer Nights’ Dream” there through June 5 and then the company takes the entire show to Colorado where they will perform it as part of the Aspen Institute’s famed Ideas Festival. That won’t be the end of live outdoor theater for the summer. The same play will be this year’s outdoor production by the new but impressive Chesapeake Shakespeare company in what they term “Shakespeare in the Ruins” in Ellicott City.

Further east is the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre, a community theater with outdoor productions of “The Tempest” for fans of classics or “Nunsense” and “A Chorus Line.” Another community company offering out-of-doors productions is the Hard Bargain Players in Accokeek across the Potomac from Mount Vernon, where evening performances of the comic fantasy “Prelude to a Kiss” is on the bill, as is Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.”

What’s On At Wolf Trap?
Another outdoors experience awaits just two exits down the Dulles Toll Road from the beltway in Virginia: Wolf Trap, the Federal Government’s only National Park for the Performing Arts. Three national tours of Broadway musicals will stop at the amphitheater with its 3,766 seat’s under cover plus 3,000 lawn seats. It wouldn’t be a summer at Wolf Trap without a visit from the Irish step-dancing extravaganza, “Riverdance.” Cathy Rigby will fly into the center in the musical “Peter Pan.” At the end of the season, the national tour of “My Fair Lady” comes in.

Big musicals at the Filene aren’t the only theater-related offerings at Wolf Trap. Marvin Hamlisch will lead the National Symphony Orchestra Pops in a Broadway program on one night and a Cole Porter Celebration on another. Keith Lockhart will bring the Boston Pops in for one night with Linda Eder (Broadway’s “Jekyll & Hyde”) as soloist. Two items on the schedule for June might intrigue as well: The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players mount “H.M.S. Pinafore” at the big Filene Center and the Wolf Trap Opera Company is presenting its own production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” directed by Joe Banno in the small, intimate concert space called “The Barns.”

Kids’ shows
Don’t ignore Imagination Stage with its beautiful, fairly new house in Bethesda where you can take your children to see “James and the Giant Peach.” There’s also the Adventure Theatre in Glen Echo Park which will offer first “Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” and then “Hyronomous A. Frog.” While in Glen Echo, check out the Puppet Company with its two-story show “Little Red Riding Hood & the Three Little Pigs” or its Dinarock Productions presentation of the “Dinosaur Book of World Records.” At Classika in the Virginia village of Shirlington, puppeteer Lilia Slavova and the team of the Green Parrot Puppet Theatre present their version of “Cinderella.”

Community Theaters Offer Variety
While there are professional shows aplenty this summer, you might consider some of the many productions available from community theaters. These volunteer efforts may be unpaid but aren’t always amateur in terms of quality, and the variety of musicals and non-musicals is astonishing while the price is low enough to make it possible to see even more shows. Among the musicals on community theater stages this summer are Victor Herbert’s 1913 operetta “Sweethearts” at the Mount Vernon Players who perform in the United Methodist Church on Mount Vernon Square in Northwest, “Big River” at the Aldersgate in Virginia, the astonishingly accomplished youth company Bound4Broadway stages “The Scarlet Pimpernel” in Kensington, the Rockville Musical Theatre mounts “Pippin” and the Port Tobacco Players of La Plata are going to immerse themselves in “Singin’ in the Rain.” What is more, Brooklyn Park’s Chesapeake Arts Center will host “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” as well as premiering a new musical based on Amelia Earhart‘s story “Amelia’s Journey.”

The non-musical community theater offerings that I’m looking forward to the most include Rich and Judy Massabny appearing in the two-character “Love Letters” at the Mount Vernon Players, Virginia’s Elden Street Players’ production of “Dinner with Friends” to be directed by Chuck Dluhy and the Silver Spring Stage’s “Round & Round the Garden.” Also, there will be productions of “Picnic” (Dominion Stage) “Over the River and Through the Woods” (Greenbelt Arts Center) and “Run for Your Wife” (Little Theatre of Alexandria.)

With all this, it may be difficult to find a night just to stay home.

--------
Brad Hathaway is the editor/reviewer for Potomac Stages, a website and email service covering theater in Washington, Maryland and Virginia (www.PotomacStages.com). He has covered theater for Theatre.Com, Musical Stages Online, The Connection Newspapers and such magazines as Show Music and Entertainment Design. He and his wife live on Capitol Hill. He can be reached by email at Brad@PotomacStages.com.

----- SIDE BAR -----

Here are the phone numbers for the companies mentioned in this article:

Actors’ Theatre of Washington – 202.319.7227
Adventure Theatre – 301.320.5331
Aldersgate Church Community Theatre – 703.799.7061
American Century Theater, The – 703.553.8782
Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre – 410.268.9212
Arena Stage – 202.554.9066
Bound4Broadway – 240.418.2477
Chesapeake Arts Center – 410.636.6597
Chesapeake Shakespeare – 410.752.3994
Classika – 703.824.6200
Dominion Stage – 703.683.0502
Elden Street Players – 703.481.5930
Greenbelt Arts Center – 301.441.8770
Hard Bargain Players – 301.292.5665
Hippodrome – 410.481.7328
Imagination Stage – 301.280.1660
Keegan Theatre – 703.527.6000
Kennedy Center’s Opera House – 202.467.4600
Little Theatre of Alexandria – 703.683.5778
MetroStage – 703.548.9044
Mount Vernon Players, The – 202.783.7600
National Theatre – 202.628.6161
Natural Theatricals – 703.739.9338
Olney Theatre Center for the Arts – 301.924.3400
Open Circle Theatre – 240.683.8934
Port Tobacco Players – 301.932.6819
Puppet Company, The – 301.320.6668
Rockville Musical Theatre – 301.530.6477
Round House – 240.644.1100
Shakespeare Theatre, The – 202.547.1122
Signature Theatre – 703.820.9771
Silver Spring Stage – 301.593.6036
Studio Theatre – 202.332.3300
Theater J – 202.777.3229
Toby’s Dinner Theatre – 301.596.6161
Washington Shakespeare Company – 703.418.4808
Wolf Trap – 703.255.1800
Woolly Mammoth Theater Company – 202.393.3939