enlarge Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Cast and crew members construct the set for “Twelfth Night” at Monmouth. The theater is Maine’s official Shakespearean company, but it mixes in other styles of drama and comedy.

enlarge Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Gertrude, played by Janis Stevens, left, looks up from the grave of Ophelia during a rehearsal of “Hamlet” at the Theater at Monmouth. Liz Helitzer, right, portrays Marcellus.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: The Theater at Monmouth

WHERE: Cumston Hall, 796 Main St., Monmouth

ON STAGE: "Twelfth Night," "Hamlet," "The Mousetrap," "A Little Hotel on the Side" and "The Wind in the Willows"

WHEN: The season runs through Aug. 22, with performances daily except Monday. Most days have matinees at 2 p.m. and evening performances at 7:30. The plays change daily.

SCHEDULE & OTHER DETAILS: www.theateratmonmouth.org

TICKETS: $20 to $24 for most shows. Friday's opening-night performance of "A Little Hotel on the Side" costs $26. Tickets for the family show "Wind in the Willows" cost $9 and $12.

Imagine acting in two plays at once. Or three. Or four.

And now, staging two of them in the same day, or all four over the course of a few days.

At the Theater at Monmouth, actors juggle multiple roles and shows as a matter of routine. The repertory theater company is a rare bird in Maine's summer theater scene, in that it presents several shows in rotation one on top of another.

It rolls out a new play each week beginning in early July. By now, as we turn the calendar to August, Monmouth has five shows up at once. The latest opening is the French farce "A Little Hotel on the Side" by Georges Feydeau, opening Friday.

The week of Aug. 11-16 (the company takes Mondays off) is particularly busy. The theater will present 11 shows over those six days, including each of the titles on the summer schedule.

Other plays on the schedule are "Hamlet" and "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare, "The Mousetrap" by Agatha Christie, and the family show "The Wind in the Willows." This fall, the theater will present the musical "Carousel" by Rogers and Hammerstein.

"It can get a little crazy around here," says producing director David Greenham, who for a change is not directing any of this summer's shows, but is acting in one, "Hamlet."

This summer, the Theater at Monmouth is celebrating its 40th season. Monmouth assembles about 45 theater professionals and college-age theater students each season.

They come from around the country for the opportunity to work in a classic New England village, where their concerns focus almost entirely on producing their best work possible. Many of the actors return year after year and have become company regulars.

The company presents its shows in the century-old Cumston Hall on Monmouth's Main Street in the heart of central Maine's lake country. Monmouth is about an hour's drive from Portland.

The Romanesque Revival-style building is an architectural gem, with a rising spire, stained-glass windows, stenciled murals, ornate trim and plaster ornamentations. The building also houses the town library, but it's the theater and the art that is created on stage that make Cumston Hall a special place.

It's widely considered one of the best theaters in Maine, with excellent acoustics and sight lines. The theater seats about 250 people, but feels more intimate.

In recent years, it has undergone a $2.7 million restoration and revitalization, which is almost complete.

With that as a backdrop, Greenham chooses plays he thinks local folks and summer people might find compelling. As the official Shakespearean Theater of Maine, so dubbed by the Maine Legislature in 1975, Monmouth always produces work by Shakespeare, who is central to the theater's mission.

Greenham supplements the Shakespeare titles with oddities, rarities and other shows that play off the themes raised in Shakespeare's work. But it all starts with the Bard.

"Hamlet" and "Twelfth Night" make an interesting pair, notes "Twelfth Night" director Janis Stevens. The latter is a comedy; the former obviously is not. But they share complexities in their structure and relationships, and also were written close to each other. "Twelfth Night" came first, followed by "Hamlet."

"Pairing the plays in this season's repertory allows us an exciting opportunity to 'hear the conversation' between them," Stevens writes in her director's notes.

"The Mousetrap" is noteworthy for at least two reasons. First, the Theater at Monmouth has never staged an Agatha Christie play before, which is somewhat remarkable given the theater's 40-year history, Greenham said. Second, the play opened in 1952 in London and is still running 57 years later.

"A Little Hotel on the Side" has its own side story. Feydeau wrote it in 1894, during a time when much of popular theater was concerned with realism and serious fare. Feydeau was the master of farce, and his work filled an...