The Cape Playhouse

Founded in 1927 inside a converted 1838 Unitarian meetinghouse, the Cape Playhouse bills itself as America's oldest continuously operating professional summer theatre. The list of people who passed through is remarkable — Bette Davis started here as an usher before returning to act, and Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda and Julie Harris all played the stage.

The site is a small arts campus rather than a single building: the Cape Cod Museum of Art and the Cape Cinema, with its Rockwell Kent ceiling mural, share the same green, along with a café. Even outside performance season it's a pleasant twenty-minute wander.

Summer productions run roughly June through September; book ahead, as runs are short.