The Festival Circuit

Music has long dominated the European summer air--almost any city, hamlet or two-liter spa has some sort of festival, and new ones are started every year. But today there is an increasing shift in emphasis to the drama. From the indoor stages of Scandinavia to the open-air theatres antiques of Roman Provence, there is a heady international mosaic. Moliere's L'Ecole des Femmes, for example, will be done in Lallan Scots accents at Edinburgh (hoot, monsieur).

Five top festivals:

P: Paris (through July 9). Easily the most ambitious of the drama festivals is the Theatre des Nations. Over the years, 175 theatrical troupes from 50 countries have traveled to Paris to offer 745 performances. The Peking opera was the hit of 1960, and this year's schedule brings groups from the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, India, Ireland, Uruguay, Chile, Egypt and South Africa. Just before returning to the U.S., the State Department-sponsored troupe that included Helen Hayes, June Havoc, Leif Erickson and Helen Menken did The Skin of Our Teeth and The Grass Menagerie there. And this week Manhattan's Living Theater group arrives at the Theatre des Nations with Bertolt Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities and Jack Gelber's The Connection.

P: Carcassonne (through July 15). Behind its formidable walls, the fortress city offers a program formidable, meeting the competitive challenge of the nearby Avignon festival with Goldoni and Aristophanes, Romeo and Juliet, Emmanuel Robles' Montserrat, a presentation in the original Provenc,al of Frederic Mistral's poem Calendau, and a production called A Meeting with Vincent Van Gogh in Aries, based on the painter's correspondence with his brother Theo.

P: Edinburgh (Aug. 20-Sept. 9). Dull and in atrophy for several years, Scotland's International Festival of the arts promises a return to pre-eminence this year under a new artistic director, Lord Harewood, 38, music-critic cousin of Queen Elizabeth. With John Osborne's Luther (see above), he will present the Bristol Old Vic's version of Lawrence Durrell's Sappho and Wolf (Expresso Bongo) Mankowitz' adaptation of Friedrich Duerrenmatt's Frank V, described as the "musical history of a private bank." Then there is also the famed Edinburgh "Fringe"--small, independent productions that sprout by the dozen (about 60 last year), have no official connection with the festival, and often include some of the most original theater seen anywhere in Britain. Refusing suggestions of a subsidy for the Fringe. Director Harewood says: "They must be free to put on a play by Picasso in which someone fries fish onstage while a naked woman recites comments on the world situation"--which is what one Fringe group did last year, with Father Pablo's Desire Caught by the Tail.

P: Dublin (Sept. 10-24). Despite the refusal of Playwright Sean O'Casey to permit performances of his plays the three-year-old Irish festival is already ploughing the stars. This year, along with a bit of Shaw (Mrs. Warren's Profession), examples of some new Irish playwrights, a visit by Paris' Compagnie de Rigault, and an appearance by Dame Sybil Thorndike in the premiere of Hugh Ross Williamson's Teresa of Avila, the Dublin International Festival is a grand diptych of Actress Siobhan McKenna. She will appear in the first English production of Brecht's St. Joan of the Stockyards, in a new version of Finnegans Wake.

P: Berlin (Sept. 24-Oct. 10). A program amply varied with Shaw, Brecht, Lope de Vega, Strindberg, Genet, Ayme and Tennessee Williams also includes the world premiere of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. The Berlin Festival Weeks are noted for premiere productions of foreign playwrights. The U.S.'s Edward Albee took his The Zoo Story there two years ago, four months before it opened off Broadway; he is returning this year with The American Dream.

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