JOAN OF ARC RETURNS: In Carolyn Gage's Second Coming.

Since it turns out that the Evil Empire actually does suck this year, let’s start this summer preview off with Joe Boyd’s famous Faustian bargain. Red Sox Nation has no need for the Devil’s help when it comes to pitching staff, so it’ll be all the more sweet to watch the musical pennant-racing of Damn Yankees down at SEACOAST REPERTORY, in Portsmouth (in repertory).

The spectacle of Joe and his soul-bought arm is an American favorite, but even more classic fare for the musical season is West Side Story, fifty years old this year. Bernstein’s quintessentially American retelling of Romeo and Juliet changed the way we do musicals, and this summer you can experience the star-crossed gang-banging with two different companies, the MAINE STATE MUSIC THEATER, in Brunswick (June 6-23), and Seacoast Rep (in repertory).

Shakespeare always seems particularly omnipresent in the summertime, and if you’re looking for the non-Bernsteinized version, head up to lovely Cumston Hall. Although the THEATER AT MONMOUTH is offering the gossamer season standard A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you can also have your Bard much darker, with Measure for Measure, an acute and ever-relevant exploration of corruption, hypocrisy, and sex scandals in the government (both in repertory). Another Shakespearean option, which also deals with the vicissitudes of governance, is Henry 5.0 (THE PLAYERS’ RING, June 15-July 1). As the title suggests, this recounting of the young king’s battles is not a period piece.

If it’s period you want, I hear it’ll be sartorial heaven over at THE STAGE AT SPRING POINT, as they mount Oscar Wilde’s delicious The Importance of Being Earnest (July 11-28). This tale of men’s naughty fakery is presented under the stars, within a leap of Casco Bay, starring a trove of favorite local thespians, and — manna! — for free.

The theater of man’s love-via-vice is of course extensive, and the Theater at Monmouth’s David Greenham adds to it this season with an adaptation of Henry Fielding’s 18th-century romp of a novel, Tom Jones (in repertory). Tom ventures from the country to upper-class London seeking his true love, on the way encountering corruption, bawdiness, and plenty of warm beds to tide him over.

Trying to actually maximize your exposure to the exposed? Well, you’re in luck: The summer will bring two different productions of the feel-good working-man-stripper musical The Full Monty: The OGUNQUIT PLAYHOUSE (June 12-30) and the ARUNDEL BARN PLAYHOUSE (July 24-August 11) will both offer Broadway-caliber song and pelvic thrusts — between them, that’s a full dozen guys in thongs. And at Ogunquit you get Sally Struthers(!) as the boys’ joint-toking pianist.

Almost as hard for those steelworkers as learning to shimmy is dealing with their relationship issues — another theatrical perennial. This season, Arundel Barn also offers a popular musical homage to the battle of the sexes: I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (June 12-30). The PR calls this look at heterosexual love and lunacy “Seinfeld set to music.”

Add man’s best friend to the mix, and subtract the music, and you’ve got the premise for the THEATER PROJECT’s summer show, A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia (July 13-29): Guy meets dog. Guy falls, obsessively, for dog. Guy’s wife is not pleased. The subtext here is enhanced and dramatized by the casting of an attractive woman as the dog.

Romantic relationships can certainly be nuts, but when it comes to psychological and genetic backstory, they have nothing on sisterhood. Just look at Beth Henley’s Pulitzer-winning Crimes of the Heart, the warming but wacky black comedy about three grown Southern sisters who reunite at the old Mississippi homestead when the youngest shoots her husband. This witty paean to strong familial womanhood will be mounted up in Hallowell, at the GASLIGHT (August 16-25).

Strong women’s voices will speak to a much bigger conflict, the war in Iraq, in a one-weekend-only offering by Portland’s renowned feminist playwright CAROLYN GAGE. The ST. LAWRENCE will host two of her plays: The Rules of the Playground, in which six mothers gather for a lesson on playground violence; and The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, in which Gage herself portrays a lesbian Joan who returns to confront the audience about war, religion, and patriarchy (June 29 and 30).

Another original play will hit the boards up in Bath, and this one is a world premiere. Devil’s Elbow, by Eileen Noon, is a combination comedy, farce, and magical realist play about the employees and patrons of a small-town café slated for demolition. LANYARD PRODUCTIONS mounts this new work at the CHOCOLATE CHURCH (August 1-4).

Finally, an original sequel to a truly Maine original: After Reny’s: The Sequel. The evil Wall-Mutt brothers are back for more sparring with small-town Maine for control over the state’s most beloved retail outlet. A follow-up to last year’s Reny’s: The Musical, After Reny’s will return to the DEERTREES THEATRE (June 20-24). Kick off the summer theater season up in Harrison, cheering Maine on as she sticks it to the globalist corporate Man.

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Megan Grumbling: mgrumbling@hotmail.com