When in Rome

Summer means many things to many people, almost none of which applies to those living in San Francisco. In fact, if anyone recalls anything summerlike at all about life in San Francisco, it's those ass-to-elbow Saturday commutes to Mount Tam to soak up some Marin sun. This weekend might actually be the only one in which such non-workday crowds don't sully your northbound excursion -- since the rest of the world is dutifully consuming a season's worth of hot dogs, marshmallows, and beer at every campground in the state. Which makes catching the annual play atop Mount Tam a tad easier than it'll be in the coming weeks.

Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forumserves up Roman satire by the bucketful, equal parts plot and slapstick. Ripped from the comedies of Plautus, Sondheim's farce (book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart) is a frantic mess of subplots: slave Pseudolus, who will do anything for freedom; young master Hero, who will award said freedom in exchange for dimwitted courtesan Philia; soldier Miles Gloriosus, who already has bought Philia's, er, company. Expect buffoonery, mistaken identities, and ill-fated schemes unraveling a mile a minute, set in one of the most gorgeous stages in the Bay Area.