Adulterous lovers. Women and men in drag. Mistreated orphans. Nuns sniffing glue. Grandmas peddling racy underwear.

But enough about my upcoming birthday party.

These are just a few of the stage sights that audiences will be privy to over the next three months, as our area's theatre venues and companies open, at last count, an intimidating 62 productions between June 2 and August 26. As usual, the summer season will be filled with musicals, comedies, and blends of the two. But we theatre-going masses will also be treated to a number of classical and Shakespearean titles, challenging Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winners, and even - gasp! - the occasional intense drama, for those who aren't afraid to spend a couple hours of their summer, you know, thinking.

Last month, the locally produced zombie comedy A Cadaver Christmas was named Best Professional Feature at the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival, and given its title, you'd rightly expect the movie to have its tongue stuck firmly in its cheek. Most likely, after being gnawed off and spit out by the groaning, lumbering undead.

BRIDESMAIDS

You wouldn't necessarily think that exhaustion and depression would be fertile subjects for a big-screen slapstick - at least, for a big-screen slapstick that didn't star Paul Giamatti. Yet in director Paul Feig's buoyant and brainy Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a sad, discouraged, frequently humiliated maid of honor with such inventiveness and style that she seems to be creating a new comic archetype right before your eyes. Hiding her misery behind a thinly veiled mask of courtesy and good cheer, and letting her anger and resentment spill out in sarcastic asides and messy, chaotic bursts, Wiig's Annie - like many of the brilliantly talented performer's most memorable characters - is a singular creation. And so, too, is Bridesmaids, a female-driven Judd Apatow comedy (he's a co-producer) with the rare distinction of being smarter than it is funny, though it's still plenty funny.

THOR

Prior to the film's release, I wouldn't have thought any director a worse candidate for helming the hugely budgeted comic-book adaptation Thor than Kenneth Branagh, that frequent interpreter of Shakespeare whose one foray into Hollywood-blockbuster(-wannabe) terrain was 1994's monstrously terrible Frankenstein. In retrospect, I'm not sure any director would have proved a better choice. Two days after seeing Branagh's grandly produced yet subtly frisky entertainment, I'm still a bit shocked at how strong the results are; against all logic, Thor's director has successfully melded his movie's wildly disparate elements into an action-packed thrill ride (in 3D!) that, incredibly, also manages to be emotionally satisfying, and oftentimes funny as hell.