Chilina Kennedy, left, and Lisa Horner star in the Shaw Festival's Wonderful Town. (David Cooper/Shaw Festival)

Summer’s (almost) here and the time is right for a) dancing in the streets; b) basking in a lawn chair; c) finally reading Infinite Jest, or; d) getting down with some good theatre. If you answered (d), then there’s no shortage of stuff to feed your stage jones.

Nor is it all light entertainment. While the film industry likes to lower its IQ during the warmer months, the theatre scene continues to mix intellectual nuggets with its popcorn. Sure, you’ll find breezy musicals galore — from Anne of Green Gables to Dirty Dancing — and the fringe festivals will be crammed with zany nonsense. But you can also brood over King Lear by the banks of Vancouver’s English Bay, or imbibe the human insights of Chekhov in Toronto’s Distillery District. Here, we shine a spotlight on just a few of the many theatrical offerings across Canada this summer.

Stratford and Shaw

In one of his last plays, a puppet show called Shakes versus Shav, George Bernard Shaw humorously pitted himself against William Shakespeare in a battle for literary supremacy. That rivalry continues to be re-enacted every summer in southern Ontario, as Canada’s two biggest theatre festivals duke it out for public attention.

This year, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival has the upper hand, thanks to a splashy new artistic director — Broadway showman Des McAnuff — and a starry lineup. Not only that, Stratford has encroached on its rival’s territory, with a production of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, starring the legendary Christopher Plummer, set to open in August. Another stage-and-screen titan, Brian Dennehy, makes his Stratford debut in June. He’ll be playing the King of France in All’s Well That Ends Well and starring in a Beckett/O’Neill double bill of Krapp’s Last Tape and Hughie. Also a must-see: Marti Maraden’s revival of Euripides’s The Trojan Women with the great Martha Henry. It opens May 30.

The Shaw Festival, ensconced in quaint Niagara-on-the-Lake, can’t compete with Stratford’s star power this year. Then again, the Shaw’s reputation isn’t built on names, but on excellent ensemble work. This year, the company is presenting a pair of plays by its namesake: the once-shocking Mrs. Warren’s Profession and always delightful Getting Married. Among the festival’s non-Shavian treats: the return of novelist-playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald’s 2005 hit, Belle Moral.

Darren O'Donnell's [boxhead] is among the indie theatre productions showcased at this year's Magnetic North festival in Vancouver. (Magnetic North)

Magnetic North in Vancouver

While Stratford and Shaw remain tethered to their small-town venues, the Magnetic North Theatre Festival is a moveable feast. Although its home base is Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, the six-year-old fete spends every other year in a different major Canadian city. This year, it’s Vancouver’s turn. From June 4-14, the city plays host to 10 productions by Canada’s top indie theatre artists, from Toronto’s Volcano company to Newfoundland madman Andy Jones. Vancouver, itself a hothouse of indie theatre, is represented by the Magnetic North-commissioned showcase Hive2, featuring 11 pieces by 11 West Coast troupes — among them, the superb Electric Company and venerable Rumble Productions. Be sure to catch Jones’s latest solo show — he’s one of Canada’s under-appreciated comedians. And it’s always worth seeing what Toronto playwright-actor Darren O’Donnell is up to. The outside-the-box mind behind such participatory events as Diplomatic Immunities and Haircuts by Children goes back into the box (sort of) with his play [boxhead].

Luminato in Toronto

Toronto’s international arts festival celebrates its second year June 6-15, and there’s a generous helping of theatre on its plate. Among the sure bets: director Tim Supple’s multilingual, South Asian re-imagining of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, touring North America after a rapturous reception in India and the U.K., and Black Watch, a look at the British involvement in the Iraq invasion by the National Theatre of Scotland. The New York avant garde also puts in a showing, with a trilogy of works by composer-performer Mikel Rouse and Homeland, a new production by musician and multimedia pioneer Laurie Anderson. Another mistress of multimedia, Quebec’s Marie Brassard, teams with veteran Toronto actor Louis Negin for a piece dubbed Glass Eye. Other homegrown fare includes Where the Blood Mixes, a new drama by award-winning B.C. First Nations playwright Kevin Loring. His play premieres at Luminato, then heads back west to Magnetic North.

Shakespeare alfresco

The summer’s outdoor Shakespeare season begins early in — where else? — balmy Vancouver. The city’s highly popular Bard on the Beach, staged in a pair of tents beside English Bay, begins performances May 29 with the gender-bending Twelfth Night. King Lear joins it on June 11 in the mainstage tent. In the smaller studio tent, gifted Calgary actress Meg Roe turns her hand to directing with a production of The Tempest, starting June 26. Kim Collier, one of Vancouver’s most exciting young directors, brings her creative chops to the super-gory Titus Andronicus, which arrives on the studio stage July 9.

Winnipeg’s Shakespeare in the Ruins also gets a jump on the season with a Wild West staging of The Taming of the Shrew, busting out of the chute May 29. Toronto’s Dream in High Park is back in mid-June, with a remount of last year’s hit: a funky, urban rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by ahdri zhina mandiela. Most of the other open-air Shakespeare troupes hit the boards (or the grass) in July. Among them: Newfoundland’s Shakespeare by the Sea in St. John’s; Nova Scotia’s Shakespeare by the Sea in Halifax; Saskatoon’s Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan; Calgary’s Shakespeare in the Park and Edmonton’s River City Shakespeare Festival.

A few companies like to stray from the Bard’s canon now and again. Montreal’s bilingual Repercussion Theatre brings last summer’s hit, Molière’s Les fourberies de Scapin, to the city’s Old Port in June. And if you’re in St. John’s, check out SBTS’s dramatizations of two masterpieces of horror, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Rats in the Walls, performed by candlelight in the historic Newman Wine Vaults.

Anne on the island

Prince Edward Island’s favourite (fictional) daughter is turning 100 this year, and the province is making the most of it. While P.E.I. marks the 1908 publication of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, the musical version of the novel skips onto the stage of Charlottetown’s Confederation Centre of the Arts this summer for a 44th season. Meanwhile, the more recent spin-off, Anne and Gilbert: The Musical, traces the heroine’s romantic adventures at Summerside’s Harbourfront Jubilee Theatre.

Those who have had their fill of mischievous redheads might consider an ode to another Island original. The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom, by playwright David Scott, uses Stompin’ Tom Connors’s songs and autobiographical writings to trace the singer-songwriter’s unlikely path from a foster home in Skinners Pond, P.E.I. to Canada-wide fame. First presented in 2006-07 at Ontario’s Blyth Festival, it runs this summer at the Confederation Centre as part of the Charlottetown Festival.

Hit rock spoof Die Roten Punkte returns to Canada's fringe circuit this summer. (Buxton Walker Publicity)

Lunatic Fringe

Where do award-winning musicals about drowsy chaperones and devils with magic bullets come from? Where can you find plays that champion the lowly dish pig? Or showcase incestuous German sibling-rockers? The fringe festivals, of course. This summer, Canada’s fringe circuit cuts its usual erratic path across the map, from Montreal (June 12-22) to Ottawa (June 19-29), Toronto (July 2-13), Regina (July 9-13), Winnipeg (July 16-27), Windsor (July 18-27), Saskatoon (July 31-Aug. 9), London (July 31-Aug. 10), Calgary (Aug. 1-10), Edmonton (Aug. 14-24), Hamilton (Aug. 15-24), Victoria (Aug. 21-31), Halifax (Aug. 28-Sept. 2) and Vancouver (Sept. 4-14).

Their bountiful programming defies recommendations — and some of the shows are still being put together as I write. But keep an eye out for TJ Dawe; the prolific jack-of-all-fringes who gave us Dish Pig and The Slip-Knot, among many others, is touring with his monologues Totem Figures and Maxim and Cosmo. And if you’re kicking yourself for missing last year’s hit rock spoof, Die Roten Punkte (The Red Dots), Otto and Astrid will be back to play most of the festivals this summer. (Fringe websites can be found via the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals.)

Summer spice

The workaholic’s theatre company, Toronto’s Soulpepper just doesn’t quit. When other public theatres take a vacation, it carries right on with its round-the-year season. This June, the classics-loving troupe toasts its 10th anniversary by reviving its acclaimed interpretation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, translated by Canada’s John Murrell and directed by Hungary’s Laszlo Marton. It’s followed in July by the Restoration high-jinks of Congreve’s The Way of the World, and actor Kenneth Welsh giving flesh and blood to Dylan Thomas’s “play for voices,” Under Milk Wood. August finds a double-bill of clever one-acts by two of Britain’s best living playwrights: Messrs. Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard. Shaffer’s lights-out Black Comedy is paired with Stoppard’s satire of whodunits and critics, The Real Inspector Hound. All shows are in the Distillery District’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.

Is there a theatrical event you’re looking forward to this summer? Leave a comment.