Steve Kidd, left, as Don Carlos and Richard Donelly as King Philip II of Spain in Tony Estrella’s adaptation of Don Carlos.

Peter Goldberg

This month, the national tour of Legally Blonde opens at the Providence Performing Arts Center, while Trinity Rep kicks off its season with a contemporary take on Sophocles’ Antigone, a version penned by the theater’s creative head, Curt Columbus.

Meanwhile, things are already under way at Pawtucket’s Sandra-Feinstein Gamm Theatre, where artistic director Tony Estrella’s adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s political pot boiler Don Carlos is being staged. That runs through Oct. 5, and will be followed by Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband in November.

The Legally Blonde tour, starring Broadway understudy Becky Gulsvig, gets under way in a preview performance next Sunday and opens Sept. 23. The opening of a national tour here is something of a coup for the theater and the city, which will be hosting the cast and crew for most of the month as they prepare to take the show on the road for the next year. The show, about sorority sister Elle Woods who enrolls in Harvard Law to try to win back the boyfriend who dumped her, runs through Sept. 28.

Trinity’s The Dreams of Antigone, which deals with a recovering alcoholic who challenges governmental authority and demands change, opens in previews Friday and runs through Oct. 26 (see story on today’s Arts cover). And Trinity’s 32nd annual A Christmas Carol comes to the upstairs theater Nov. 21. This year the production is headed up by the hot young New York director Liesl Tommy, and it promises to offer lots of music and flying ghosts.

Look for company members Joe Wilson Jr. and Mauro Hantman to share the bill as alternating Scrooges. Tickets for A Christmas Carol go on sale Sept. 28.

Adam Bock’s dark comedy The Receptionist, with Janice Duclos in the lead, rounds out the fall line up at Trinity Dec. 5. It’s a fun look at office politics in a company where things are not as they seem.

The Providence Black Repertory Company begins its season Thursday with Bug by Tracy Letts, author of the Pulitzer Prize winner August: Osage County, which is now all the rage on Broadway. Letts’ Bug tells the story of a lonely middle-aged waitress victimized by her abusive ex-husband, who develops a romantic relationship with a timid stranger in a trashy Oklahoma motel room.

Warren’s 2nd Story Theatre stages the first of five American classics Sept. 26 with Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest, the “prequel” to her popular The Little Foxes, which was done at 2nd Story a few years ago. It’s the story of hatred and greed among members of the Hubbard family in the turn-of-the-century South. The 2nd Story season continues Nov. 14 with The Miracle Worker, William Gibson’s touching tale of the deaf and blind Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan. Joanne Fayan plays Sullivan and young Patricia Kinnane, who appeared in Gibson’s Christmas pageant The Butterfingers Angel, plays Keller.

Also, 2nd Story is mounting a special two-weekend performance of Brian Friel’s The Faith Healer in the courtroom of the historic Bristol State House on High Street Oct. 23 through Nov. 2. The show follows the exploits of an itinerant Irish faith healer, who wrestles with the question of whether he’s a saint or a con man.

cgray@projo.com