Critic’s Theater Picks

Summer comes but once every four seasons or so. So? Statistically, the proof’s in: It’s as good a season as any to indulge your theatergoing lech.

Among other prospects, the summer of ’00 heralds the return (after a five-year break) of the Mark Taper Forum’s Taper, Too series, held at the Actors’ Gang. Out of the lineup jumps a 16-headed hydra known as “The Square.” It’s an intriguing amalgam of 16 short plays--by, among others, David Henry Hwang, Maria Irene Fornes, Jose Rivera, Mac Wellman and co-conceiver Chay Yew--set in and around L.A.’s Chinatown. Co-creator Lisa Peterson directs these variations on a theme and investigations of a malleable symbol. “The Square” previews June 29 and 30, opens July 1 and runs through July 16 at the Actors’ Gang, 5201 Santa Monica Blvd., in little old Hollywood.

Meantime, an unusual Broadway musical that didn’t survive the New York spring--but won many admirers--stops by the Ahmanson Theatre for a visitation. “James Joyce’s The Dead” sets the Joyce story (filmed, eloquently, by John Huston) to music redolent of an Irish parlor and the fragrance of memory. Replacing a postponed “Finian’s Rainbow” revival, “The Dead” opens officially July 19 and runs through Sept. 3.

Subtitled “A Greek Tragedy Hijack,” Cornerstone Theatre’s latest, “An Antigone Story,” received a workshop premiere earlier this year at the Getty Center. Now Shishir Kurop’s futuristic riff on some ageless bad tidings reemerges, in a full production, at the downtown Subway Terminal Building July 29-Aug. 20.

Hie thee hence.