Theater can be a tough sell in the summer. Sitting on a sticky seat while you fan yourself frantically with a program? Trying to score a tan from an overzealous lighting design? It’s enough to make even the most dedicated theatergoer scamper off to the beach. But comb through the offerings carefully enough and you might just find some things worth sticking around for, and all without getting sand in your suit.

The gorilla in the living room is, as always, the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park. This season, the Public mounts two productions: Michael Greif, best known for directing “Rent,” helms “Romeo and Juliet” (June 5–July 8), starring the milky skinned Lauren Ambrose, of “Six Feet Under,” and the later production, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (August 7–September 9), cavorting under the veteran hand of Daniel Sullivan.

But you can only stand that line in the Park so many times. Think ahead and snag tickets to the Lincoln Center Festival (July 10–July 29), which offers the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s only real competition for exciting international programming. Daniel Veronese, whose “Women Dreamt Horses” brought down the (school)house at P.S. 122 earlier this season, gallops back into

town with a cross-gendered adaptation of “Three Sisters,” along with a one-man Taiwanese “King Lear,” and New York premieres by Spain’s Centro Dramatico Nacional and Chile’s Compañía Teatro Cinema. And the really big-ticket items at the Festival — like the Comédie-Française performing Robert Wilson’s “Fables de La Fontaine” — should be like mini-vacations in themselves.

Of course, if you fancy yourself smart enough, you can head to the Pretentious Festival at the Brick Theater (June 2–July 1) to see such fare as “Macbeth without Words,” “The Children of Truffaut,” and Robert Honeywell’s “Every Play Ever Written: a Distillation of the Essence of Theater.” Those scamps who brought us the Moral Values Festival pack their miniscule space with bloated egos and throbbing frontal lobes in the most adorable way. Brits off-Broadway, the 59E59 Festival that doesn’t know it’s an entire season, continues through July 1st. Highlights should include Alan Ayckbourn’s “Intimate Exchanges,” which plays in the big theater during June and features 16 different endings, and Nina Raine’s “Rabbit,” which had critics hopping in London.

Turning our attention to playwrights from this side of the pond, the Summer Play Festival at Theater Row has announced its roster. Between July 10 and August 5, you’ll find up-and-comers like Cory Hinkle, Desi Moreno-Penson, Carson Kreitzer, and Lisa Dillman. Since they only charge 10 bucks a pop, this is one festival that will save you from the trilogy-wrap-up movies playing down the street.

Finally, New Yorkers must prostrate themselves before the New York Fringe Festival (August 10–26). Feel free to get hot under the collar over such shows as “Action Jesus,” “Hillary Agonistes,” “Enough about me…Let’s Talk about JEW!” and “Hamlet, Prince of Mars.” Need we say more?

There are a handful of Broadway openings this summer, and two of them share an unholy alliance with Olivia Newton John. The reality television show that cast this summer’s “Grease” may have convinced many of the more millennially inclined that the End Times were upon us, but with Kathleen Marshall of “The Pajama Game” directing, perhaps lightning will strike. Get your pink jacket pressed — previews start on July 24th. Then there’s “Xanadu,” a 1980 John vehicle which answers the tough question: if Erato was love poetry and Calliope handled music, which Greek Muse presided over rollerskating? Pulitzer Prize-winner Douglas Carter Beane wrote the book and Christopher Ashley directs, but I advise skipping the previews (from May 23rd) and waiting until the show officially opens on June 26th. It might take them a little time to go wheels up. Producing off-Broadway in the summer is only for saints and fools — and this summer has a sprinkling of both. “Crazy Mary” at Playwrights Horizons (officially opening June 3) teams up husband and wife Jim Simpson and Sigourney Weaver for an A.R. Gurney play about that cousin nobody likes to talk about. Neil LaBute, whose take on male-female relationships will throw ice down your back, returns with “In a Dark, Dark House” (from June 7th) at the Lucille Lortel. Jason Patric has already left the cast over “creative differences,” so a chill is already in the air.

In the “saints” category, we have Sarah Ruhl (“The Clean House”) at Second Stage with “Eurydice,” a take on the classic myth that will make you believe young people read; saving graces the Civilians, back at the Barrow Theater with “Gone Missing” (from June 14th), the silly, moving, weirdly spiritual hymn to lost things, and “Grace,” A.C. Grayling and Mick Gordon’s play, once called “On Religion,” that examines every facet of religious experience at the Lortel from August 29th. So, you might as well stick around this summer – at least you will if you have any faith.