The summer season offers plenty of good reasons to spend an occasional evening in an air-conditioned theater. When you're deciding what to do on a Friday night, browse through the movie listings, but don't forget that live performance is a great alternative.

        Here are some week-by-week recommendations to carry you through to Labor Day.

        Week One: Wingfield Unbound, July 2-14, Playhouse in the Park Shelterhouse, 421-3888.

        Week Two: We Tell the Story, continuing in rep through Aug. 19, Hot Summer Nights, University of Cincinnati, 556-4183. This is summer's hottest ticket. A must-see. Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens (Ragtime, Suessical, Once on This Island) put together the new revue that includes songs from past hits and from shows waiting in the wings, including A Man of No Importance, due to start previews in New York in September.

        Dead Man Walking, July 11, 13 and 19, Cincinnati Opera. (241-2742). A sensation when it premiered two years ago in San Francisco, composer Jake Heggie was inspired by Sister Helen Prejean's book of the same name, about her experience as the spiritual adviser to a Death Row inmate. Frederica von Stade helps make this summer's other hottest ticket.

        Week Three: The Reducers, July 9-28, Playhouse in the Park Marx Theatre. Ulysses. Huckleberry Finn. Faust. Moby Dick. Don Quixote. Animal Farm. Frankenstein, The Scarlet Letter. Origin of the Species. Lolita. Das Capital. Bridges of Madison County? And that's not even half the syllabus for Reduced Shakespeare's latest, so new it's in the process of being written. Part of the fun will be going back and seeing how scenes and characters have developed.

        Elektra. July 17, 20, Cincinnati Opera. There was never a dull moment among those ancient Greeks. Our heroine obsessively plots to avenge her father's murder (by her mother and her lover). The opera is by Richard Strauss, but I'll buy my ticket because the director is Nicholas Muni, whose productions (Jenufa, Pelleas et Melisande, Turn of the Screw) are pretty much out of this world.

        Week Four: Hay Fever, July 18-20, 25 and 26. Miami University Summer Theatre, Center for Performing Arts, Oxford, (513) 529-3200. Sherman Fracher takes center stage in Noel Coward's serious frolic about an artistic family and the overwhelmed strangers they've invited for an unforgettable weekend at home.

        The Compleat Works of Wllm Shakspr (abridged), July 25-Aug. 18, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. It's b-a-a-a-c-k. The three-minute Hamlet, the Titus Andronicus cooking show, the confusion of comedies — it's Shakespeare that even a junior high school kid could love. Which is the point. Check out the new cast.

        Week Five: The Fantasticks, July 30-Aug. 4. Xavier University Summer Theater (745-3205). Theatre lovers with a long history in Cincinnati will delight in the return of David Barrie, who ran the Edgecliff College theater department and established the original Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival about 40 years ago. He returns to direct the beloved boy meets girl, loses girl, gets girl musical. Try to remember a kind of September ...

        Week Six: Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, in rep through Aug. 15, Hot Summer Nights, University of Cincinnati. It's a seedy South Philadelphia bar in 1959, not so long before the legendary jazz artist Billie Holiday's suffering would finally come to an end. Jasmin Walker plays Lady Day, performing a couple of sets and reminiscing about good times and bad.

        Week Seven: Violet, in rep through Aug. 16, Hot Summer Nights, University of Cincinnati. Taking the title role is Ashley Brown, so memorable as Cunegonde in Candide at College-Conservatory of Music last fall (and as Johanna in Kentucky Symphony Orchestra's concert version of Sweeney Todd this spring). In 1964, a scarred young woman finds that a bus trip from her small North Carolina hometown to Tulsa (where she's hoping to be healed) is an emotional and spiritual journey.

        Honky Tonk Angels, July 25-Aug. 18, Playhouse in the Park Shelterhouse. More than 30 favorite country songs by the likes of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Emmylou Harris power the story of three gals who board a bus to Nashville to reach for their dreams.

        Week Eight: Anton in Show Business, Aug. 15-31, Know Theatre Tribe, Gabriel's Corner, Sycamore at Liberty. (300-5669) The emphasis is on show business in this tres insider comedy that sends up professional resident theater and the National Endowment for the Arts. The adventure begins with a famous TV actress being hired to star in The Three Sisters and degenerates into a producer's nightmare.

        Week Nine: Take a breather. Enjoy the fireworks. The 2002-2003 season starts next week.

        E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/demaline

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