Belinda Cornish and Josh Meredith in Private Lives, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

Vanessa Leticia Jetté and Daniela Vlaskalic in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Hey, Edmonton, look what’s waiting for you onstage this weekend. Something about summer inspires our theatre artists to tangle with the classics, reimagine them, put them in new shapes: A classic playwright (you guessed, Shakespeare), in camping mode in an outdoor community hockey rink. A  perfectly contoured Jazz Age comedy. A classic ‘20s murder mystery (dismantled by earnest thesps). Chekhov, but through a playful absurdist lens. Mythology tickled and bent by a selection of local playwrights.

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•The season finale at Teatro Live!, opening tonight on the Varscona stage, is Noel Coward’s witty, sparkling 1930 anti-romantic romantic comedy Private Lives — as dry and fizzy as the best champagne. For the occasion, and Private Lives is always an occasion, Teatro has borrowed director Max Rubin from Theatre Yes, where he’s the co-artistic director. His production, which runs through July 28, stars Belinda Cornish and Josh Meredith, as Amanda and Elyot, a couple who have uncoupled, then find themselves in an inflammatory situation — on their honeymoons with new spouses (Garett Ross and Priya Narine), in adjacent hotel rooms on the French Riviera. It runs through July 28 (stay tuned for a 12thnight review soon). Tickets: teatroq.com.

•In The Play That Goes Wrong, at the Citadel through Aug. 4, the earnest amateur thespians of the Cornley Dramatic Society are putting on an elaborate 1920s-style murder mystery. What could possibly go wrong? The comedy, a losing race against chaos that is still packing houses in London and New York, is by the cheeky insurrectionists of the English company Mischief (Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, Henry Shields) who brought us Peter Pan Goes Wrong a season ago. Dennis Garnhum, a former artistic director of Theatre Calgary and the Grand Theatre in London, Ont., directs the production, a partnership between the Citadel, Theatre Calgary, and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.

Nadien Chu as Prospera in The Tempest, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Tech dress rehearsal shot by Brianne Jang

•It’s the final weekend of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, this year in exile — like the magus at the centre of The Tempest — from their home in Hawrelak Park. They’ve landed in a series of community outdoor hockey rinks (currently the Sherbrooke Community League). Dave Horak’s production of the strange and wonderful late-period romance leans into the comedy instead of the play’s darker tones. Tickets: freewillshakespeare.com. Have a peek at the 12thnight interview with star Nadien Chu, as Prospera, and the 12thnight review.

•At the 2024 Thousand Faces Festival, five Edmonton playwrights of very different stripe, are inspired by mythology in their five new plays. The festival’s “New Mythic Works Series” that runs Saturday and Sunday (2 p.m.) at the Alberta Avenue Community Centre (9210 118 Ave.). The lineup includes Christine Lesiak’s Rebel Rebel, Gavin Bradley’s SeanChai, Calla Wright’s Tiresias, Turning, Sophie May Healey’s Issun Boshi, The Inch-High Samurai, and Bailey Bieganek’s Hero and Leah. Tickets: eventbrite.ca

•At Walterdale, Edmonton’s venerable community theatre, you’ll find a kooky but genial Chekhovian mash-up in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Christopher Durang’s  Tony Award-winning comedy of middle-aged regret and disappointment and under-achievement. Crammed with every kind of Chekhov allusion, it’s kind of an homage to, and kind of a take-down of, the storied wistfulness built into the sacred canon. Lauren Tamke’s production runs July 10 to 20. Tickets: walterdaletheatre.com.