Theater Summer Stages: Crammed With Comedies, Melodic With Musicals

Let me entertain you,

Let me make you smile.

That number from Gypsy pretty well sums up the summer-theater aesthetic. Hold the heavy drama; let's have some fun.

Musicals and comedies are the main fare, along with a thriller or two to make you shiver on a sultry night. With the change of emphasis comes a change of scene. Most of the theaters in Philadelphia take a break during the hot months, and the action moves out of town.

If you fancy a woodland setting, consider the Mount Gretna Playhouse near Lebanon, Pa.. It is run by Bernard Havard, executive director of Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theater. He has lined up three comedies - How the Other Half Loves, by Britain's Alan Ayckbourn; The Moving of Miss Lilla Barton, by Southerner John MacNicholas, and Andrew Bergman's Social Security, which played the Walnut last fall. He also will present the American premiere of An Act of the Imagination, a thriller by Bernard Slade, author of Same Time Next Year.

The Bucks County Playhouse, which has a long tradition of summer theater, is celebrating its 50th-anniversary season with a roster of musicals including 42nd Street, La Cage aux Folles, Man of La Mancha, Evita and Dreamgirls. The same productions of Man of La Mancha, Evita, La Cage and 42nd Street, plus Sugar Babies, will be seen at the Poconos Playhouse in Mountainhome, Pa.

At the Shawnee Playhouse in Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pa., you can catch Cole Porter's Anything Goes, Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance and another production of 42nd Street.

In Cape May, N.J., Theater-by-the-Sea inhabits the Victorian mansion known as the Emlen Physick Estate. This summer, the historic house will be haunted by Dracula, the Musical?, Arsenic and Old Lace and Little Shop of Horrors.

Brrr!

The Foundation Theater in Pemberton, Burlington County, will present a musical revue - Side by Side by Sondheim - and two comedies, John Van Druten's Bell, Book and Candle and Alan Ayckbourn's Round and Round the Garden.

Gypsy will entertain you, along with another production of Anything Goes, at the Glassboro Summer Theater. Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I will be the summer musical at the Ritz Theater in Oaklyn, with Noises Off, a British comedy, due in September.