London and summer can seem like an oxymoron, that is if you're unfortunate enough to land in the capital in conjunction with days (and nights) of rain. The upside of the uncertain weather is that it allows culture to take hold throughout August in a way that isn't always true elsewhere—at least in those cities where the world and its mother decamp for the beach, leaving any and all serious artistic brooding for the fall.

As it happens, some of London's most engaging summertime soirees are better in good weather. You'll be a happier groundling at Shakespeare's Globe if you're not being showered on throughout the performance, though rest assured that the play will go on regardless and ponchos are provided. At the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, cancellations are more common: it took me three tries several years ago before I and my fellow audience members finally made it all the way through a performance of Lauren Ward in Camelot. Their summer musical, opening this month, is a revival of Gigi, starring Topol and Millicent Martin, though there are those for whom the chance to feast on strawberries and cream al fresco beforehand is enticement enough to head for Regent's Park.

Following are five productions to whet the August appetite, before the nights draw in and the autumn's heavy hitters come to call.

Brief Encounter

Brief Encounter
The year's most bracing production to date is also the sweetest and most moving: a highly physical stage version of the classic David Lean film and the Noel Coward one-act, Still Life, which spawned Sir Noel's much-lauded screenplay. The narrative still tells of the railway encounter between a doctor, Alec, and a married woman, Laura, with more than a penchant for Rachmaninoff. But as reconsidered by Emma Rice, artistic director of Cornwall's Kneehigh theater troupe and also the show's director, the adulterous tryst gives rise to musical interludes on, of all things, a banjolele. Theater ushers attired in the period style of the era when the film is set, and a breezy sense of playfulness that always honors the source, leaves you beguiled and touched in equal measure. As an added perk, Rice herself is appearing in the production through August 18 to play the tea-room manager, Myrtle, while cast member Tamzin Griffin is away. The venue, too, is a converted cinema, which adds to the sense of occasion.

Hairspray

Hairspray
You think the Brits can't do Broadway musicals? Think again: the West End incarnation of Hairspray not only deserves its sweep of the top three prizes at this year's Olivier Awards, but more than holds its own against a Broadway forbear that with all due respect has never boasted a true singing star on the order of London's Edna Turnblad, Michael Ball. It may be disconcerting for some to see the U.K.'s favorite juvenile of old looking big and baggy and wearing a dress. But Ball acts Harvey Fierstein's stage role every bit as well as he sings it, and he is matched by newcomer Leanne Jones's irrepressible Tracy and the vampish Velma of two-time Olivier recipient Tracie Bennett, a performance at once funny and furious. The production, incidentally, has now recouped, joining the West End Wicked as two of the few Broadway musical transplants to strike box office gold in London.

Mamma Mia!

Mamma Mia!
Why catch this box office behemoth on stage when you can now see it on the big screen? Easy: It's a lot more fun dancing in the aisles along with a flesh-and-blood cast than it is whooping it up in some movie theater somewhere, knowing that Meryl and co. are unlikely to be hearing you. What's extraordinary is to think back on this show's modest origins as West End filler that at the time was deemed unlikely to stay the course. Since then, of course, ABBA has become a stage musical mainstay and Mamma Mia! has spawned countless progeny, of which the Take That-scored Never Forget, at the Savoy Theatre, is only the most recent. Here's a chance to go back to the well, as it were, and see where a legitimate theatrical phenomenon in fact began. The director Phyllida Lloyd next revisits for Broadway her sterling Mary Stuart, a production whose monarch isn't exactly a dancing queen.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's Globe
Not this old Shakespearean chestnut again! Well, why not when it comes served up with the affection and energy brought to the task by the director Jonathan Munby, a former RSC assistant director here making his Shakespeare's Globe debut. The Globe, in fact, has been having a bang-up summer to date, starting with David Calder's rending Lear and carrying through to a bustling Merry Wives of Windsor that locates Shakespeare's middle-class romp firmly in the tradition of English situation comedy. But this is that rare Dream in my experience to honor the numerous facets of this everlastingly strange and wondrous play, as it flits between royals to lovers to fairies and on to the stage-mad "mechanicals," which here include a Peter Quince from Michael Matus who can't keep his nightshirt in place. The production is bawdy and low, when it needs to be, and magical, when it must be that, as well, and it augurs well for Munby's next directing gig: Webster's bloody The White Devil at the Menier Chocolate Factory, opening in October.

Under the Blue Sky

Under the Blue Sky
Eight years ago, David Eldridge's one-act theatrical triptych made a fleeting appearance at the Royal Court's tiny Theatre Upstairs, in a Rufus Norris production that left me on the fence. Well, that was then and this is now: As directed in an entirely new staging by Anna Mackmin in full and confident command of her six-person cast, Eldridge's musings on love as played out by three pairs of teachers seem riotously, woundingly fresh. British TV comedienne Catherine Tate is the putative draw and is, indeed, in superbly blowsy form, playing a math teacher who turns into a wild woman in the bedroom. But don't let the attention surrounding Tate blind you to the excellence of her colleagues, starting with fellow TV actor Chris O'Dowd in sparky, sprightly form as the emotionally cornered boyfriend of an agitated Lisa Dillon and the ageless Francesca Annis (the erstwhile Gertrude to Ralph Fiennes' Hamlet), who guides this beautiful play into its optimistic yet never sentimental port.