When the curtain rises at the Cambridge Summer Theatre on Monday night, the audience will be presented with the world premiere of the sophisticated new farce comedy, "A Goose for the Gander" by Harold Kennedy. Sharing the spotlight will be Gloria Swanson and Ralph Forbes, both of stage and screen fame.

Miss Swanson's performance will be a return engagement to the little theatre, as she made her legitimate stage debut at Brattle Hall but two seasons ago. Known to all movie fans from 17 to 70, it was she who introduced glamour to motion pictures. Starting her career in Hollywood with Mack Sennet and Keystone, her first pictures were the bathing-beauty and cop-chasing comedies of the silent picture era. Soon she was working under Cecil B. DeMille and is said to have caused men to swoon and women to turn chartreuse with envy.

Forbes, who first became known for his performance in "The Flame" in London, has been seen on the American stage playing in "The Doctor's Dilemma" with Katherine Cornell and with Katina Paxinou of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" fame, in "Hedda Gabler."