OPENING
CHILDREN | The Williamstown Theatre Festival opens its Mainstage season with A.R. Gurney's Fourth-of-July-set play about three adult (but also adolescent) children whose widowed mother is about to remarry — which means that they'll inherit the family house. Tony nominee (for Loot) John Tillinger directs; the cast includes Mary Bacon, Katie Finneran, Judith Light, and James Waterston. | Williamstown Theatre Festival Mainstage, 1000 Main St, Rte 2, Williamstown | 413.597.3400 | July 1-12 | Curtain 8 pm Tues-Wed | 3 + 8 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 4 + 8:30 pm Sat | 2 pm Sun | $45-$59
THE EINSTEIN PROJECT | This work by Paul D'Andrea and Jon Klein was presented in BTF's Unicorn Theatre in 2000; now it's being brought to the Main Stage, with Eric Hill again directing and Tommy Schrider back in the title role of a scientist whose understanding of relativity doesn't seem to give him a leg up on relationships. With Miranda Hope Shea as his son, Edward, and James Barry as Werner Heisenberg. | Berkshire Theatre Festival Main Stage, Main St, Stockbridge | 413.298.5576 | June 30–July 18 | Curtain 8 pm Mon-Tues | 7pm Wed | 2 + 8 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | $46-$68
HAMLET | Shakespeare & Company reprises its 2006 production, a family affair, with S&C artistic director Tina Packer as Gertrude, her son, Jason Asprey, as Hamlet, and her husband, Dennis Krausnick, as — no, not Claudius, that would be a bit much — Polonius. Nigel Gore is back as Claudius, and Eleanor Holdridge again directs this dark, muscular production, in which the jarring metallic sounds that signify Hamlet's synaptic twitching also suggest the clanging shut of doors in the prison that is Denmark. This is a clear, compelling, if hardly transcendent reading, with a few twists that work — like Hamlet's passing out scripts of The Mousetrap to Gertrude and Claudius and having them play it like an amateur theatrical. With Elizabeth Raetz as Ophelia. | Shakespeare & Company, Founders Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | June 26–August 28 | Curtain times vary | $16-$60
THE LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS | Gloucester Stage continues its 2009 season with this 1969 Neil Simon comedy. Gloucester artistic associate David Zoffoli directs and stars as the middle-aged and married Barney, who's hoping to join the sexual revolution; ART member Karen MacDonald plays the three women he tries, and fails, to seduce. | Gloucester Stage Company, 267 East Main St, Gloucester | 978.281.4433 | July 2-19 | Curtain 8 pm Wed-Fri [7:30 pm July 3, with fireworks] | 3 + 8 pm Sat [no performances July 4] | 4 pm Sun | $32-$37
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING | Without Shakespeare's romantic comedy about the bickering Beatrice and Benedick, would we have Sonny and Cher, or Sam and Diane? Whatever, theater companies love it, and this month it makes its way to the Cape. | Cotuit Center for the Arts, 4404 Falmouth Rd, Cotuit | 508.428.0669 | June 25–July 19 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Sat [no July 4] | 4 pm Sun | $20; $18 seniors; $10 students
