Having previously addressed the upcoming theater season in Tacoma, let's take a look at the year in Olympia.

Harlequin is first off the blocks with its production of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde as adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, premiering Aug. 26.  The public read-through made it clear Hatcher's eloquent voice is in full effect.  Shakespeare's dated gender politics are justified via Old Western chauvinism in The Taming of the Shrew, opening Oct. 7 after another public read-through on Sept. 6.  In a case of dueling Scrooges, Harlequin is first out of the gate with A Stardust Christmas Carol Nov. 26.  Deborah Zoe Laufer's End Days was a major artistic success, which helps explain why her The Last Schwartz - about a majorly dysfunctional family - arrives Jan. 27.  End Days is also a helpful point of reference for the ironically uncapitalized boom (March 24), which concerns a "casual encounter" on the night of the global apocalypse.  (The script lists the time as "when we least expect it."  Yikes.)  Septuagenarian hipster Israel Horovitz shows us Unexpected Tenderness (May 5), about the trap of suspicious minds.  If you dug Sixties Kicks (and let's face it, you totally did), watch for Summer in the Sixties June 16. Harlequin also took the initiative to announce the comic thriller Mauritius for Aug. 18, and a Sept. 29 production of my all-time favorite play script, Cyrano de Bergerac.

The Olympia Little Theatre season kicks off with The Dixie Swim Club Sept. 10; it's a distaff comedy that spans three decades in the lives of five North Carolinian friends. Harvey (Oct. 22) is not, in fact, about a white lepine hominid; rather, it stars Elwood P. Dowd and a pooka.  Pug Bujeaud directs the unconventional Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol (Dec. 2), in which four actors play what seems like half of Victorian England.  Romance is an underrepresented genre in modern theater, so that should make Sea Marks (Jan. 13) all the more welcome.  Feb. 3 brings an introduction to an Algonquian Indian tribe called the Abenaki in The Basketmaker.  Love, Sex, and the IRS (March 11) isn't as bawdy as it sounds, but it is a bedroom farce in the madcap, door-slamming vein.  Aaron Sorkin may be best known for TV's The West Wing, but his A Few Good Men (April 29) accomplishes much more than handling the truth.  Finally, there's Play On! (June 3), a behind-the-boards comedy reminiscent of Noises Off.

The migrant Theater Artists Olympia's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Oct. 1) should be about as provocative as live drama gets, thanks to a jaw-dropping script by Edward Albee.  Blood Relations enliven December when TAO takes on the acquittal of Lizzie Borden.  Speaking of blood, TAO's Cannibal! The Musical! revives the "shpadoinkle" college project of South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone.  John Munn ventures south from Tacoma to direct summer project Oleanna, the incendiary undergraduate gender war penned by noted F-bomber David Mamet.

Capital Playhouse offers a full season of popular musicals, commencing with Sondheim's fractured fairy tale Into the Woods (Oct. 7).  Next up is White Christmas (Nov. 26), followed by The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Jan. 27), The Secret Garden (March 17), and Kiss of the Spider Woman (May 8).

Olympia Family Theater offers A Year with Frog and Toad (Oct. 1), Little Women (Dec. 10), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Feb. 4), Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (April 1), and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (May 13).  I assume it's like feeding a Mogwai after midnight?  Oh, and it's not "Underland," Burton!

Prodigal Sun Productions fills its bunker-esque Midnight Sun Performance Space with Paula Vogel's unsettling Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, How I Learned to Drive (Nov. 4).  Then comes the sketch comedy Parallel Lives (Feb. 10), formerly known as The Kathy (Najimy) and Mo (Gaffney) Show.  The upstart company concludes its season with David Hare's ambitious four-act tragicomedy Amy's View (May 6).

Nights off are for sissies!

• Harlequin Productions, 204 Fourth Ave. E., 360.786.0151  
• Olympia Little Theatre, 1925 Miller Ave. N.E., 360.786.9484
• Capital Playhouse, 612 Fourth Ave. E., 360.943.8708
• Olympia Family Theater at the Washington Center, 512 Washington St. S.E., 360. 570.1638
• Prodigal Sun Productions at the Midnight Sun Performance Space, 113 N. Columbia St., 360.250.2721