Boston Globe

Theater in bloom

''Happy Days": Gloucester Stage Company marks Samuel Beckett's 100th birthday -- and artistic director Israel Horovitz's final season -- with a true gift to audiences: Scott Edmiston directing Nancy E. Carroll as Winnie, the quintessential Beckett character, bleakly hopeful and buried up to her neck. In a season that also features tributes to Horovitz from such luminaries as Jill Clayburgh and Peter Boyle, this is a standout. Gloucester Stage Company, Gloucester, July 6-16. 978-281-4433, http://www.gloucesterstage.com/.

''Hamlet": Artistic director Tina Packer keeps it all in the family for what is, amazingly, Shakespeare & Company's first production ever of this jewel in Shakespeare's crown. Packer plays Gertrude to her real-life son Jason Asprey's Hamlet, while her husband, Dennis Krausnick, plays Polonius. No doubt they're wise to have a nonrelative, Eleanor Holdridge, direct. Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, July 1-August 27. 413-637-1199, http://www.shakespeare.org/.

''Johnny Got His Gun": Among the offerings in a diverse and adventurous season at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater is one that seems particularly pointed in the current political climate: a stage version of Dalton Trumbo's antiwar classic ''Johnny Got His Gun." If it's anywhere near as powerful as Trumbo's 1939 novel, this adaptation by Bradley Rand Smith (directed by Neal Huff) promises to enrage, enlighten, and provoke. Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Wellfleet, June 25-July 11. 508-349-9428, 866-282-9428, http://www.what.org/.

''Copenhagen": Michael Frayn's Tony Award-winning speculation on a mysterious conversation between German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his Danish mentor, Niels Bohr, takes the uncertainty principle far beyond physics. It also takes the Publick Theatre further along on its mission to expand its ''theater of the spoken word" beyond the Shakespeare productions that were, until last season's hit ''Arcadia," the outdoor stage's stock in trade. Publick Theatre, Brighton, July 20-Sept. 10. 617-782-5425, http://www.publicktheatre.com/.

''Double Double": The Williamstown Theatre Festival closes its main-stage season with the US premiere of a whodunit directed and co-written by Roger Rees, the festival's artistic director. Written with Rick Elice, ''Double Double" is billed as full of romance and intrigue and sounds lively, clever, and entertaining. But who knows? Williamstown Theatre Festival, Williamstown, Aug. 16-27. 413-597-3400, http://www.wtfestival.org/.

''Monsieur Chopin": Hershey Felder returns to the American Repertory Theatre with the second work in his one-man trilogy about composers, which began with the popular ''George Gershwin Alone" and is to conclude with ''Beethoven." American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, June 15-July 30. 617-547-8300, http://www.amrep.org/.

LOUISE KENNEDY