Summer Splash III : Looking For Hot Tips? Well, We Recommend . . . : Stage

Musicals and Shakespeare still tend to be the order of the increasingly busy summer theater season, but this year holds other surprises as well.

David Henry Hwang’s award-winning “M. Butterfly,� a fascinating tale of spies, mistaken genders and stolen identities, will make its overdue first Los Angeles appearance at the Wilshire Theatre on July 2. Chilean author Ariel Dorfman will be doing his own stage adaptation of his novel, “Widows,� an anguished cry for the South American “disappeared,� opening July 25 at the Mark Taper Forum--right after Eric Bogosian brings his “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll� to the Taper on June 25.

To the south, “Necessities� will open at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre on July 10. This new play about a mature woman’s effort to adopt a child is by Velina Hasu Houston, who wrote “Tea,� a funny, shattering and lyrical study of the effects of cultural dispossession on five Japanese war wives. The new Lee Blessing comedy, “Fortinbras,� which begins more or less where “Hamlet� leaves off, will be the La Jolla Playhouse’s inaugural production in the sleek new Mandell Weiss Forum on the UC San Diego campus. It opens June 23.

Closer to home, three events spark interest at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Icelandic playwright Birgir Sigurdsson’s “Day of Hope,� about a haunted family in a state of dissolution, has its premiere Thursday. On June 18, monologuist Spalding Gray will indulge in another personal rumination, “Monster in a Box,� that gleaned interesting reviews in New York last year. And “Bogeyman,� Reza Abdoh’s latest performance piece-cum-theater, an exploration of terrorism, freedom, addiction and desire, opens Aug. 29.

As for those summer musicals, the first happens tonight when Cole Porter’s “You Never Know,� a frothy musical comedy of errors and marital infidelities opens at the Pasadena Playhouse, marking the centennial year of Porter’s birth.

It’s an early work that has been honored more in the breach than the observance since its 1938 Broadway opening and was written while Porter was recovering from a riding accident that cost him the use of a leg. Later in life Porter said he considered this seldom-done confection his worst effort, but with Harry Groener and Donna McKechnie featured in the cast and some clever songs and lyrics, it merits attention at least as a curio.

The exuberant South African musical “Sarafina!,� revolving around black students who put on a play about Nelson Mandela’s release, is finally coming to the Doolittle Theatre on July 18. It had been scheduled late last year as an attraction at the downtown Orpheum, then canceled when ticket sales didn’t move fast enough.

And you’ll want to check out “City of Angels,� opening at the Shubert on June 12. This clever Larry Gelbart/Cy Coleman/David Zippel show about 1940s B Movies, a Chandleresque gumshoe/novelist and his Bogart-like creation, should find itself right at home in the City of Angels.

If you missed “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber� concert when it came through town with ex-Mrs. Lloyd Webber Sarah Brightman singing the songs, you may catch it at the Universal Amphitheater (June 20-22) or at Irvine Meadows (June 23). This time it features “Phantom� heartthrob Michael Crawford.

As for Shakespeare, among many scheduled productions, two Shylocks will be observed claiming their pound of flesh in “The Merchant of Venice�: Alan Mandell at the Grove Shakespeare Festival beginning June 20, and Hal Holbrook at the San Diego Old Globe, starting June 28.