SUMMER SPLASH II : Our Picks for the Best of the Summer

STAGE

Three playwrights who have been known to surprise us before will be launching the uncommonly busy theatrical summer: Irishman Brian Friel, whose “Aristocrats,” a Chekhovian tale of landed gentry falling from grace in County Donegal, opens Thursday at the Mark Taper Forum; American David Mamet, whose comic Hollywood horror story, “Speed-the-Plow,” opens June 8 at South Coast Repertory, and Caribbean poet-playwright Derek Walcott, whose new piece, “Viva Detroit!,” kicks off June 9 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

All three plays are new to Southern California, which can also look forward to another new play at the Taper: David Feldshuh’s “Miss Evers’ Boys” (July 19), a piece about medical prejudice in 1932 Alabama that finds resonance in the current AIDS crisis. And Neil Simon’s farce,”Rumors,” coming to the Doolittle July 12.

In addition, the Los Angeles Theatre Center, which likes to mix it up between classics and contemporary work, is offering Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck” beginning July 11. It will be staged by an iconoclast who should know his Ibsen: Stein Winge, artistic director of Oslo’s National Theatre.

“August 29” (on Aug. 28), a piece commemorating the death of Times reporter Ruben Salazar in an East Los Angeles police action in 1970, will cut close to home. It is being developed by LATC’s Latino Lab.

Another potential notable: The L.A. Theatre Works production of “The Love of a Nightingale” by expatriate American Timberlake Wertenbaker. The show, to be staged at the Santa Monica Museum of Art starting June 15, played the Royal Shakespeare Company last year and is described as an expose of the violence that stems from silence based on the Greek myth of Philomel.

To the south, Lloyd Richards will stage Lee Blessing’s “Cobb,” on the life of hated and celebrated ball player Ty Cobb, for the San Diego Old Globe (June 28), which is also presenting Stephen Metcalfe’s new play about male bonding, “White Man Dancing” (July 3), and a new “Hamlet” (Aug. 30), starring Campbell Scott, son of actors George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst.

At the La Jolla Playhouse, two good bets may be Keith Reddin’s surreal comedy about locking people in (and out) “Life During Wartime” (opening June 24) and Athol Fugard’s newest play about his racially torn South Africa, “My Children! My Africa!,” which opens Aug. 28, with Fugard directing.

Off the beaten track: Look for the June 22 opening at LATC of a group of Latino satirists called, appropriately enough, “Culture Clash.” Japan’s Grand Kabuki will play the Orange County Performing Arts Center (June 30-July 1) and the Japan America Theatre (July 3-4). And “Dear Yelena Sergeevna” will open at Cal State Dominguez Hills on June 29. This is a production from Moscow’s Mossoviet Theater of a politically touchy play by Ludmila Rasumovskaya that was banned for years in the Soviet Union. Performed in Russian (with a detailed synopsis in English), it was seen in Atlanta last year and is recommended.

Among the shows already running that will be around for at least part of the summer, we recommend you check out the luminous “Cherry Orchard” at the La Jolla Playhouse or A. R. Gurney’s brittle “The Cocktail Hour” at the Doolittle Theatre. And for pure unpretentious