The festive production, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, is yet another example of hip-hop’s incredibly diverse nature and ability to fuse with a variety of styles of music. The tour kicks off at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, Nov. 10.

“It’s amazing just to be here to witness the 50th anniversary, it is such a miracle for me. And to be involved with ‘The Hip Hop Nutcracker’ on the 50th anniversary of hip-hop is all the more special to me,” said Blow, a rap pioneer who has been with the show since the beginning. He considers still being present a true miracle since he underwent a life-saving heart transplant surgery in late 2020.

“It’s amazing just to be available and able to get out there and tour again,” he continued. “I was not supposed to be around. I was supposed to pass away a couple of years ago, but I’m still here.”

The holiday dance mash-up turns Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s 130-year-old ballet on its head as it’s reimagined as a contemporary dance set on New Year’s Eve in 1980 in New York City. The show opens with Blow hyping the crowd and preparing the audience for what they are about to see.

“I take them back to old school hip-hop,” he said. “I take them back to that time when hip-hop was very special and I have the crowd stand up with their hands in the air screaming.”

The show still follows the basic storyline about Maria-Clara and the Nutcracker prince who go on an adventure in magical lands where they encounter fighting mice and toys that come to life set to Tchaikovsky’s original score. But instead of pirouettes and pliés, these dancers are popping, locking and breakdancing.

“It’s just something amazing to see and hear. Just the fact that we have classical music, the music of Tchaikovsky and hip-hop beats, wow,” Blow said.

After introducing the show, the rapper then comes back at the end of the to perform “The Breaks,” the hit single from his 1980 self-titled debut album.

“We leave everyone feeling good inside and that is our mission,” said Blow, who in 1979 became the first rapper signed to a major label.

He was also one of the first to fuse hip-hop with other genres, like rock and reggae. So for him, a hip-hop version of “The Nutcracker” feels like a natural fit.

“That’s the whole thing about hip-hop is that it is malleable and able to shape into any form,” Blow said. “This is flipping and remixing a classic story to inspire people, to feel the magic of the holiday season.”

“The Hip Hop Nutcracker”

When: 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10

Where: Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 18000 Park Plaza Drive, Cerritos

Tickets: $44-$82 at hiphopnutcracker.com.

In South Coast Repertory’s best production since the pandemic, a new mounting of Lorraine Hansberry’s treasured  “A Raisin in the Sun” finds no aspect of quality deferred.

Direction, acting, staging and design, this is a fully realized manifestation of a seminal play.

While Hansberry’s 1959 drama may seem remote in time — though neither a neglected or outmoded work — director Khanisha Foster charges the text with staging vitality that showcases the playwright’s sublime weave of social issue themes with a nuclear Black family’s predicaments and preoccupations.

The result is that this “A Raisin in the Sun” rings as true as ever in 2023.

This certainly seems to have its wellspring in Foster. She was born in Chicago. Her grandparents grew up in the neighborhood Lansberry writes about. The director wrote her graduate thesis on the playwright.

But homegrown knowledge is not a guarantee of artistic talent. It’s the assuredness with which Foster, and her impressive nine-member cast rowing together, apply boisterous, revealing energies that serve the gripping story.

A plot refresher of the barest outline: a lives-changing $10,000 life insurance check is arriving soon at the Younger family’s well-kept, but cockroach-ridden tenement slum apartment. Previously out-of-reach dreams — aspirations and values differ within this family’s three generations — may become realities.

At stake is reconciling that these Black lives matter. Not easy then — nor now — in an America that invariably tempts all have-nots with plenty but is perniciously effective at keeping goals and dreams out of reach unless they are seized.

The character most tormented at being limited and defined by  America is Walter Lee Younger, evocatively captured by sensitive actor C.J. Lindsey.

Walter’s frustrations are not just racial, but also driven by his embracing classic American lust for materialism as the way to a better future. Lindsey is accomplished at conveying Walter’s tortured — and volcanic self-torturing — path to an ultimate clarity of understanding who he must be for his family to grab a worthy life.

Two women share Walter’s struggles, but constantly struggle for realization of their own needs.

As family matriarch, Lena Younger, Veralynn Jones conveys the tired, but undaunted, stalwart dignity of someone who values love and honor more than her son’s just seeming to want to grab America’s brass ring.

Tiffany Yvonne Cox is an affecting Ruth, daughter-in-law, wife and mother, a compass for this family, but with deeply felt frustrations and needs that she can’t realize on her own.

Two other family members feature live-wire performances, making it hard to take your eyes off either actor when they are on stage.

Ashembaga (Ashe) Jaafaru inhabits 20-year-old Beneatha Younger, Walter’s sister and Lena’s youngest daughter, with performance animation and youthful intensity that is flat out fabulous.

Foster and Jaafaru seem to have miraculously worked out an alchemy version of a Beneatha whose exuberant gyrations exploring youthful identity — as well as steering between polar opposite suitors — are simultaneously hyper-animated while perfectly fitted into the family as the beloved/maddening influencer.

Another actor you pay attention to in his every move is local newcomer Nathan Broxton playing Travis Younger. The middle-school performer’s optimistic naivete in the midst of this family’s struggles adds depth to a role via genuine stage presence, not just as a cute kid on stage.

There are three roles outside the family.

Beneatha’s would-be boyfriends are a self-searching Nigerian idealist (winningly and gently delivered by Kenyan actor Junior Nyong’o) and a smug, assured preppy (talented SCR and UC Irvine acting alum Tristan Turner).

Actor David Nevell is suitably squeamish as Karl Linder, the identifier of racial redlining, trying to suppress the family’s very essence as well as its rights as property owners.

SCR brass might have staged this on the Segerstrom main stage, but the choice of the cozier Argyros theater affords an excellent payoff.

Josafath Reynoso’s marvelous scenic design provides an atmospheric, detail-rich view into the Younger apartment, intimate in a way that supports the conflicts of the family dynamic.

Above the apartment is a cutaway panorama of the exteriors of the larger tenement area, with a rat’s nest of telephone and electrical wires conveying just enough of the trapped, claustrophobic circumstances surrounding the Youngers.

A final thought in the form of a tip and some practical advice on how to act on it.

For excellent live theater it’ll be hard to better than what is onstage here. SCR enjoyed well-deserved advance box office sales for the production, but recently added two extra performances on Tuesday, Nov. 7 and Sunday evening, Nov. 12.

A quick look online at these two new dates finds excellent opportunities; fleet fingers at the keyboard reserving seats will be extremely well rewarded.

‘A Raisin in the Sun’

Rating: 4 stars (out of four)

Where: Julianne Argyros Stage, South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa

When: Through Nov. 12. 7:45 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 2 and 7:45 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Additional performances at 7:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 7 and Sunday, Nov. 12.

Tickets: $29-$105

Information: 714-708-5555; scr.org

Now, with “The Angel Next Door” — an accomplished farce with a highly polished new gloss applied to a 100-year-old plot — the bromide “laughter is the best medicine” is again on display in Laguna.

Taking on directing a show for the first time since becoming the theater’s artistic director in May, David Ellenstein makes adroit plate spinning seem seamlessly easy.

“The Angel Next Door” has five sets of doors on its appealing set, all beckoning to be slammed for fun, but it is tight pacing and verbal dexterity that Ellenstein and his skilled six-person cast delight with.

This play world premiered in September at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach and has transferred very well up the coast.

Kudos also go to author Paul Slade Smith. Commissioned by Ellenstein, writer/actor Smith chose to adapt a plot from 1924 called “Play at the Castle.”

There is wise precedence for adapting the work from Hungarian — and, briefly, Hollywood — writer Ferenc Molnar: lauded British playwrights P.G. Wodehouse and Tom Stoppard each tapped this source material for different plays.

In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Smith said, “I’ve always wanted to adapt something, to take one of the old plays and have somebody else do the hard work of figuring out the plot. I just get to work on the jokes.”

Smith is clearly selling himself short about just writing the jokes. Nothing dies faster on stage than farce when it is forced and labored.

And while the secret sauce here will forever remain unknown to audiences — somewhere in gestation between Smith’s writing, director’s Ellenstein’s rehearsals and Smith’s rewriting —  “The Angel Next Door,” is full rollick.

Set in 1948, in a Newport, R.I., mansion, the show is centered on the frenzied professional and romantic offstage doings among five upper crust, la-di-da theater types.

They are offset by the deadest-pan delivery, thickest-accented house maid ever fictionalized from somewhere in the wilds of Eastern Europe.

Comedy, as they say, ensues.

“The Angel Next Door” is a vividly meta show with self-referential asides ever building on and folding into events on stage.

Reading about the previous versions, it appears at least some of this was in Molnar’s original plot. But Smith has cheekily and efficiently modernized lines and patter.

Being an actor, Smith declared he consciously set out to give all of his performers plenty of opportunities for antic behavior and that is evident. More importantly, though, Ellenstein and Co. are sophisticated enough not to chew up the (nice) scenery by hamming up performances so much as letting them organically explode as the plot dictates.

And while there are far more than a fair showing of knowing winks, nods and flat out fourth wall-breaking declarations to the audience, it’s in equally meta fashion: after all, they do so to an audience they simultaneously pretend is not there.

Confusing in the moment? Not at all. Successful? Oh, yeah.

There is no mystery about the performances here: these are accomplished actors reveling in their chances. Two performances beg for singling out.

While we only hear him in Act 1 before finally seeing him after intermission, Thomas Edward Daugherty as the (extremely well-named) Victor Pratt, takes a well-known type — the nitwit self-involved actor — and conveys his bumptious combination of ego and eternal confusion not so much through predictable voice and double-takes, but marvelous facial calisthenics and physical gestures.

There are several predicaments Pratt slowly becomes aware of. Dawning realization raced across Daugherty’s face, puzzled confusion slowly changing in his expression to something approaching the 20-watt amount of self-knowledge Pratt can muster.

Equally, Daughtery/Pratt deeply taps this same self-absorption with reflexive and faint semi-bows during a staged rehearsal of sorts, beaming to his imagined audience … the natural self-absorbed reactions of a fatuous ham gleaming in an imagined limelight.

Erin Noel Grennan as Olga the maid has the unfair advantage with so many laugh lines written to land from her mouth. But Grennan earns them with a pliant comic, baleful mask of resigned resentment, plus an accent that isn’t quite as severe as Natasha from the old “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoons but headed there.

That’s fine, but what really elevates the performance comes later when Grennan/Olga unexpectedly grows and flowers as events reach their culmination. Somehow, the actress both keeps dubious Olga still in place, but also reveals her emotional depths. Her exit line, a fervent and honest cry of self-knowledge mock despair, both shakes her to the core and also knocks out the (real) audience!

Early in Sunday night’s opening act, Olga dourly pronounced “OK, I am going,” only to be confronted by a stuck door. After a slight tussle yanking it open, she declared in even more adamant character voice, “I am NOW going!”

The ad-lib busted up the (real) audience, earning even a fleeting character-breaking appreciative grin from another actress.

Spend time at this show and you’ll appreciate how well everything else operates so perfectly well.

‘The Angel Next Door’

Rating: 3 1/2 stars (out of a possible 4)

Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach

When: Through Nov. 5. 7:30 p.m., Wednesday-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sundays. Added performances at 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26 and at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 31. No 5:30 p.m. performance on Sunday, Nov. 5.

Tickets: $45-84

Information: 949-497-2787; lagunaplayhouse.com

The dozens of pop hits by the Temptations, Motown’s most successful R&B quintet, may be more than a half a century old, but the verve of the group’s singing, as well its synchronized dance moves, are still propulsive and land with feel-great impact.

While the biographic story of the five original band members feels a bit glossed over, with chunks of standalone songs appearing as much for chronological convenience as serving narrative storytelling, the show is up there with “Jersey Boys” as a look-back musical marvel.

That mention of “Jersey Boys” is not coincidental. Both jukebox musicals were directed with a knowing eye by Des McAnuff. He clearly understands how pacing makes these ensemble-driven shows tick.

McAnuff threads the band’s rough and tumble backstory into two or three-minute scenes, just enough narrative weave to provide a reasonable platform for underpinning catchy chunks of 31 songs. These are energetically and faithfully delivered by an efficient 11-piece band.

The story is a straight-forward rendition of the Detroit group’s formation and sustaining power, with the sole remaining member, Otis Williams (Michael Andreaus), acting as emcee, narrating events through the Temptations’ life and times promised in the title.

As lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda says in “Hamilton” with the song title “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” this is ultimately a version from one of the group’s least visible members. (It’s as if George Harrison lasted longest and wrote the only bio of the Beatles.)

Based on Williams’ Temptations memoir, and Dominique Morisseau’s utilitarian book, the musical is a familiar rendering about those who hit it big, but fall prey to the usual, well-chronicled overindulgences of pop music stars recording, touring, feuding and slighting their personal lives.

These lives are a messy ball of confusion — over the decades, there will be 27 Temptations! Talk about “people moving out, people moving in” — with recreational pharmacology, one of pop music’s enduring miseries, ultimately leading to inter-personal clashes and too-early departures, both from the band and life itself.

This includes the two splashiest Temptations ever, protean vocalist/life forces David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks. Beyond music and dance, a key to this touring production working as well as it does is in its excellent casting of the two performers.

Elijah Ahmad Lewis is a diabolically apt Ruffin — if nothing else, he implausibly makes Ruffin’s on-stage, thick black-rimmed glasses somehow incredibly cool, just like Ruffin himself. A throaty baritone with great range and power, Lewis also breaks out flashy dance moves (down-to-the-floor splits for a guy this size should not seem this easy).

As a querulous counterpoint, Jalen Harris’ confident tenor lead gives us the Kendricks voice the show requires. In the cover of the band’s first charting single, 1964’s “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” to the indelible “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)” in 1971, Kendricks’ last recording with the band, Harris is impactful as a singer and also as a slim, wiry presence.

Sergio Trujillo’s choreography somehow delivers synchronicity but also allows the five to express themselves through individualized movement, a nifty hybrid.

Opening night sound was satisfactory (sometimes lower ranges can seem muddied or absent early in a Segerstrom run… if the hall is hosting Motown, it’s gotta give us bass lines).

The staging is unfussy. Effective, minimal props slide on and off and most of the visual impact comes from Peter Negrini’s projection design above and behind the action.

There are about a half dozen Temptations’ song titles to suggest a punchline for how enjoyable this evening is. Let’s keep it simple: it’s a good bet you’ll walk out of this one on “Cloud Nine.”

‘Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations’

Rating: 3 1/2 stars.

When: Through Oct. 29; 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays

Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Tickets: $29-$129

Information: 949-556-2787; scfta.org

Dramatist Octavio Solis’s very early play “Man of the Flesh” — a contemporary adaptation of the Don Juan myth — was staged by the Costa Mesa troupe in 1990, more than half the theater’s lifetime ago.

He also authored the second longest running show in the theater’s history, “La Posada Magica.” This annual yuletide Hispanic counterpoint to the perennial “A Christmas Carol” was staged across Decembers from 1994 through 2008.

Solis’ newest work “Quixote Nuevo,” a modern-age retelling of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” — do we detect a repurposing trend across the decades? — now receives a handsome and engrossing presentation on the theater’s mainstage.

While the cast, artistic crew and physical production of this mounting originated at the Denver Center Theatre Company, many of the creative principals are quite familiar to SCR stages, so this is a homecoming of sorts.

The play derives, of course, from the novel “Don Quixote,” published in the early 1600s by the primordial giant of Spanish-language literature, Miguel de Cervantes.

His massive telling of an addled knight errant on a romantic quest and jousting at windmills has continued to strike a chord through the ages and has been staged repeatedly in plays, musicals, operas and ballets.

Here, Solis finds something new, examining it through a contemporary medical plague in aging American life: the national trauma of dementia.

Moved from the plains of Spain to the playwright’s native borderlands of Texas, the central character, a retired literature professor, is being cared for by relatives but is about to be sequestered in a care home.

Juan Quijano breaks free from his waning life in the fictional dusty town of La Plancha. He wanders off on a 24-hour rebellious fantasy trek that is equal parts based in personal reality but is also a delusional rampage. Quijano/Quixote is coming to terms with his own failing present and his regretful memories.

If this sounds a bit grim, no fears: the show, a raucous comedy, is anything but. It’s both literal and magic realism howling at the moon.

Solis’ kitchen sink is vividly and coherently brought to life by director Lisa Portes and an effective nine-member cast mostly taking on dual roles.

The quest includes festive Latin music, Spanish-language slang, social satire, immigration issues, medical science vs. religion debates, lost and lamented romantic yearnings, small and oversize puppets, a helado cart, Pancho Villa’s desiccated finger, a TikTok reference and a shrewd, accurate wisecrack about the current NFL season.

Centering the show is actor Herbert Siguenza’s central role as Quijano/Quixote. This performer has been in SCR’s orbit as part of the comedy troupe Culture Clash, which has periodically and faithfully staged its own social satires in Costa Mesa once a decade since 1998.

At 64, and a veteran of physical sketch comedy, Siguenza is required to stretch emotionally into a fully developed and energetically layered character with a foot in reality and his brains a bit fried.

He proves up to the task. With frowsy hair ringing a bald head — the look channels Doc in “Back to the Future” — and compact, rambunctious energy, Siguenza is entertainingly capable of wrestling two out of three falls with his character’s personal devils.

Every Quixote must have his Sancho Panza and Ernie Gonzalez, Jr., whose program bio notes a professional penchant for playing Shakespearean clowns, has the plaintive persona of the fool — often slyly the wisest man in the room — totally down.

Playing Manny, the local ice cream street vendor, Gonzalez is willing to not just sidekick Quixote on his desert wanderings but support the underlying truths underpinning the fantastical journey.

The rest of the cast is well fitted to their roles. In particular, take note of Raul Cardona, who has a marvelous turn as Papa Calaca, the black leather-clad fantasy figure of muerte, haunting Quixote’s fever dreams and acting as a commenting Chicano specter on the action.

The only objection with the ensemble isn’t an acting problem, but a discordant what-were-they-thinking characterization. Manny’s wife Antonia, an unformed sidelight role, is required to mince about the desert in a short skirt and revealing top like some bimbo Chiquita time traveling from a cheeseball 1950s staging. If there’s a theater doctor in the house, call “out-of-date stereotyping 911,” please!

The much superior eye-candy is the production, something worth beholding.

Efren Delgadillo, Jr.’s scenic design gives us a multi-purpose backdrop for the bleak desert wanderings. Pablo Santiago’s gorged blood red fantasy skies are lighting design at its most evocative.

Helen Q. Huang has done the costuming; she gets the credit for the Dia de Los Muertos outfitting of ghouls that periodically haunt Quixote, as well as the puppets who fill in as the juvenile Quijano and his itinerant farmworker love Dulcinea.

Among its other virtues, “Quixote Nuevo” also includes Solis’ writerly flourishes.

As Papa Calaca advises us all: “Remember in the end, you ain’t what you pretend or what you spend but what you did and didn’t do, said and never said, loved and loved so badly.”

‘Quixote Nuevo’

Rating:  3 stars

Where: Segerstrom Stage, South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: Through Oct. 28. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m., Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m.  Sunday.

Tickets: $29-$105

Information: 714-708-5555; scr.org

But that doesn’t necessarily apply to theater productions and the halls we see them in, where good-enough musicals might seem swallowed whole by a cavernous environment.

Happily, the reverse is vibrantly on display at La Mirada Theatre with a production of “On Your Feet!” — the 2015 modestly ambitious, yet peppy jukebox/bio musical subtitled “The Story of Emilio & Gloria Estefan.”

La Mirada’s 1,286-seat theater is big enough to support a sizable show, but intimate enough to convey a nightclub vibe, a suitable spot for experiencing this show’s infectious energy, radiating an unflagging party atmosphere.

This streamlined production is here as part of a 30-+ city national tour of “On Your Feet!” aimed for smaller, regional-sized venues.

While most of the dates — in the Midwest and East — are for a night or two, La Mirada management wisely snagged exclusive rights in Southern California for the rest of October.

Filling seats shouldn’t be a challenge for this one.

“On Your Feet!” is about the mid- and late ‘80s pop group Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine. Their run of Latin-influenced dance hits, which successfully crossed over to a wider (read: whiter) audience, include “Conga,” “Get On Your Feet,” and “Rhythm is Gonna Get You.”

Gloria Estefan’s career was seemingly cut short after a 1990 accident when a truck hit her tour bus, breaking her back.

It was feared for a time that she might end up paralyzed, but fortunately for all she was able to recover and resume recording and performing.

Director and choreographer Luis Salgado — who last year shaped a Spanish-language version of this show — expertly keeps “On Your Feet!”  at a suitably feverish pitch.

With a sizzling seven-piece band onstage and a multinational, mostly Hispanic cast in place, this show is its own impressive sound machine.

Leading the way are actors Gaby Albo and Samuel Garnica, in the lead roles as aspiring songwriter Gloria and band manager/Svengali Emilio. Playing the Cuban-American duo, they are a companionable fit in conveying both dedicated music maker and marketer, as well as wife and husband.

A crucial key is that Albo is an impactful vocalist, at the top of her game inhabiting Gloria during a dozen or so live numbers.

Supplemental characters are also ably conveyed.

As Gloria’s mother and grandmother, Kristen Tarrago and Adela Romero are appealing in their roles as complicating parts of Gloria’s home life (Tarrago is additionally a strong singer in the flashback number “Mi Tierra”).

Notable in the very satisfying supporting ensemble is Jake Dylan as Phil, a nebbish record executive and combination roadblock and aid in the duo’s path to success.

It needs be said that dialogue and storyline are the least parts of this entertainment.

In the fashion of most two-act jukebox musicals, there is a five-step, goes-down-easy narrative arc:

Young people have little else except great dreams, ambitions and talent. They struggle for early success, and once achieved, face further struggles to achieve bigger successes.

Meanwhile, there are personal challenges — family and/or emotional relationships dramatically and/or humorously get in the way. Then, a crisis occurs, is met and conquered. This leads to self-realization, triumph and an ultimate, feel-good ending.

Despite the superficiality of the formula, maybe the value in simplicity here is that nothing gets in the way of the music and dancing. “Conga” is not just a song title, but one of the dance variations that an ensemble of more than 15 powers along.

Considerable technical prowess is brought to bear in this staging: Patrick W. Lord’s production design is a shifting swirl of scene-establishing, brightly lit video walls.

Jeannette Christensen’s costumes are a mélange of often bright pastels capturing the overall period look. Ryan J. O’Gara’s Vegas-style hot lighting scheme — often accenting yellow, pinks and peach — drives the mood.

A late first-act dance montage finds Gloria and Emilio as a struggling duo grasping to get wider attention by getting their music in front of people in any way they can think of, in this case at bar mitzvahs, Italian weddings and finally a Shriner convention in Las Vegas.

This sequence leads the cast off the stage and up the aisles into the audience.

In “On Your Feet!”, the party is literally in the house.

‘On Your Feet!’

Rating: 3 stars.

When: Through Oct. 29: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays,  8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays.

Where: La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada

Tickets: $19-85

Information: 562-944-9801; lamiradatheatre.com

This group has been the longest lasting comedy troupe in Orange County, playing mostly at the Coach House and Brea Improv, but also performing as far away as Boston. With their joking play on the “Real Housewives” TV franchise on Bravo, the rotating cast of this troupe has spun off into its own universe, with successful contestants on “America’s Got Talent” and other comedy venues.

The troupe was originally founded by standup comics Cindy Burns and Vince Harper, and featured standup sets by mostly women who gave themselves personas such as the “Dysfunctional Housewife.”

“People said, “Oh, women aren’t funny. You’re never going to make it,” recalled comedian and author Julie Kidd, who kept the troupe going after Cindy Burns’ death from cancer in 2016.

But the group did succeed, drawing big crowds and devoted fans. Kidd estimated they performed around 100 shows altogether. She even wrote a book about the show, called “When Laughter and Inspiration Collide: The Funniest Housewives.”

Kidd, who has produced the shows for many years, said she is now ready to move on, so putting on this last show at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Wednesday, Oct. 18 will bring everything to a close.

“This was Cindy’s big dream and I carried it on,” Kidd said about her stepsister and best friend. “But now it’s time to move on.”

Kidd recently bought a condo in Costa Rica and said she’s performing comedy down there. Many of the original cast are returning for the Oct. 18 show, which at this writing was nearly sold out.

Garden Grove native Vicki Barbolak, who rose to fame after being a finalist on “America’s Got Talent,” said she performed at the very first show. She became known as the “Trailer Trash Housewife” and still lives in an upscale trailer today in San Diego County.

“I hope this is like a Cher show,” she said, “and there’s never a final tour.”

Funniest Housewives — ‘The Last Show’

When: Wednesday, Oct. 18; doors 6 p.m. show 8 p.m.

Where: The Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano

Tickets: $25

Information: 949-496-8930; thecoachhouse.com; funnymomproductions.com/shows

How will you react when a brood of vampire brides are chasing you through a graveyard? What will you do when you’re tasked with leading a group of innocent souls through a damp and creepy cellar or you have to pick the pocket of a dead guy to escape your own demise? Will you rise to the occasion and help save the day? Or will you freak out and just hope the others in your group can save you?

Now in its ninth season, Delusion, which is a horror-themed live theater experience conjured up by writer, director and stuntman Jon Braver, is telling an all-new story, but with some familiar characters and scenes for those that have attended previous installments of the event. This year’s hourlong performance dubbed “Nocturnes & Nightmares” is now open at the historic Phillips Mansion in Pomona and runs select evenings through Nov. 12.

A haunting preshow

While the show itself is all fast-paced action that puts guests in small groups face-to-face with the characters involved in the story, exploring the mansion ahead of and after your designated show time can be done so at your own pace. There are bars to grab cocktails and snacks as you roam from room to room in this dimly lit home with staircases that creek loudly as you head to the second floor and even up the narrow, winding staircase into the spooky attic space.

There are no pop-out scares here, it’s more about immersing yourself into the story and coming into contact with a variety of characters that will sit down and have a cocktail with you and spill gossip about the mansion and its inhabitants.

You’ll run into Esther Phillips, the lady of the house, who may breeze through the Dark Arts Theater area you’re taking in some close-up magic, a burlesque show or an intimate musical performance. Marion The Marionette, a tall, quiet fellow with a big top hat and a wide grin will gladly take your hand for a waltz in Marion’s Chamber Bar and show you his creepy marionettes. If you’re hearing strange voices, it’s probably just Manny Manners. He’s a scary little possessed doll with a big personality that you can actually pick up and carry around with you — and he’ll even learn your name and whisper secrets to you.

Then there’s the attic, where groups of six are allowed to head up to search for a spell book that can summon the dead.

“They’ll find that they can actually speak to the dead and that’s an effect I’ve been trying to do for many years,” Braver said during a recent phone interview. It is creepy-cool and you need to be quick with your questions as these spirits aren’t exactly patient, but they will directly interact with you and divulge information if you’re polite.

All of these activities are on top of the big show, but still very much essential to the overall experience, Braver insists.

“If you come to this for the Halloween season, you’ll have an incredible time in this whole world we’re creating,” he said. “You can spend three hours here and this can be your full evening. Dive into everything we’re offering as much as you possibly can because we’re putting a lot of love into this. There’s nothing in the world like it.”

A familiar story

Since 2011, Braver has written new, terrifying scripts for Delusion each year. For this season, he reflected upon previous shows and thought about the logistical nightmares of this writing process.

“It always drives me crazy,” he said with a laugh. “So I had this idea of getting a bit meta with it and having a metaphorical representation of the struggle of writing this thing and center it around this author who has created all the Delusion stories from the past and it’s kind of driven her mad.”

Die-hard fans of the experience, who are lovingly known as Delusionals, will get to see nods to past stories and a few of the more than 45 previously highlighted characters.

“There was a lot to pull from,” he said. “But I didn’t want to force it into the story, they just had to make sense. People have come to know Delusion, too, for some of its stunt work, but we don’t just put in action for shock value, it has to make sense. It has to be practical and reasonable to the story.”

Braver said that newbies will still very much be able to follow along and enjoy this new tale, too.

It was my first visit to Delusion during a media preview night on Sept. 28 and I didn’t feel lost at all. My guest and longtime friend Ashley has been to several Delusion events and was thrilled to discuss the story and character Easter eggs hidden within the latest show with others in our small group who had also been before. It was way more immersive than I expected and I was happy to have worn sturdy footwear for the show, which had us running through a graveyard, climbing into a cellar and swiftly heading up stairs and away from the undead.

It’s almost choose-your-own-adventure in the way you participate. If you’re feeling brave and bold, step up and lead the pack, jump in to help solve some clues or hang back and watch the action unfold. You won’t be forced to do anything you absolutely don’t want to do. For those really wanting in on the action, there’s the Behind The Veil: VIP Experience where you actually get to dress up in period clothing and take part in a scene within the show and scare other guests.

After Ashely and I got done playing our parts and sent patrons screaming up the stairs, one of the staff said “Some guy peed his pants.” I couldn’t confirm this, but I’d like to believe our acting skills were that good.

A grand production

Delusion has relocated to various venues in Los Angeles County through the years, but is now in its third season at the Phillips Mansion. The show will be forced to move next year, due to the property receiving a grant for much needed upgrades.

“It the greatest location we’ve ever had,” Braver said, adding that they’ll be moving back to a more central Los Angeles locale in 2024.

For the production team lead Drew Dalzell, who is the president and principal designer at Diablo Sound in Valencia, this mansion has been a dream location. Dalzell and his team create immersive experiences year-round, including theater productions and even working with theme parks such as on Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights event.

“It’s kind of one of the greatest things about this,” he said. “We have a real historic mansion and the Currier House in the back is a great piece of it, too. With the group sizes going through we really leverage the particular location and it’s not trying to overlay something that isn’t there, so we’re taking advantage of that in a big way.”

This year, the team is using all of the space in both houses and the grounds surrounding the buildings for the production. While the sets are dressed and filled with props, lighting, sound and the actors all have to hit their marks, Dalzell said the live audience is always the wild card.

“When you’re dealing with the audience, you need to know what they’ll do and whenever you think you know what they’ll do, they’ll find a way to do the exact opposite,” he said with a laugh. “That’s the thing that will drive you the most crazy, but it’s also the thing that makes it the most exciting. When we do dress rehearsals and we put guests in, we joke internally ‘Let’s add the audience and now break it to see what works and what doesn’t.’”

“Adding people in the middle of all of this is an amazing dynamic and also what makes Delusion so different,” he continued. “Every group of people is different and every group has as much of an impact on the story and the experience as the script and the performers and the technology we put in. The people bring the energy into it and one group of 10 people is going to have a totally different reaction than the next group of 10 people and that makes the show.”

Delusion: ‘Nocturnes & Nightmares’

When: Various dates and times through Nov. 12

Where: Phillips Mansion, 2640 Pomona Blvd., Pomona

Tickets: $94.99-$154.99 at enterdelusion.com

Another remount of Meredith Willson’s eternal “The Music Man”? Nope, it’s “The Rainmaker,” a dramedy largely vanished from recent sight, now at Laguna Playhouse in an appealing staging with a top-notch cast and handsome physical production.

On Broadway in the mid ’50s three years before “The Music Man” (there is no sense Willson shipoopi’d it for source material), “The Rainmaker” became a Katharine Hepburn-Burt Lancaster movie.

The story was then refashioned into the musical “110 in the Shade.” With tepid tunes, that one cast a small shadow on Times Square.

N. Richard Nash’s play was once a staple of high school and college productions, probably for its plainspoken western American folksiness and ensemble acting opportunities. But perhaps why it’s not in fashion now is a central theme mired in ‘50s sensibilities where the storyline virtually emotionally batters the lead woman.

The central character Lizzie Curry is deemed — even to the point of seeing herself as — “plain,” doomed to be nothing more than “an old maid” with no future worth having.

And somehow it’s her own damn fault.

But a key scene of emotional resolution near the end of this production — superbly directed by Andrew Barnicle — shows her transformed during a wonderfully acted scene of cathartic self-empowerment.

Lizzie Curry may be in the physical arms of the conman/shaman Bill Starbuck when this occurs, but it’s her own, newly raised consciousness of self that emerges. It invests this show with a satisfying wholeness at its conclusion.

The key to these efforts is Barnicle.

As Laguna Playhouse’s artistic director from 1991 to 2010, he produced 150 shows, directing more than 40 himself as well as appearing on the stage nine times. According to well informed lobby gossip before Sunday’s opening performance, he performed in “The Rainmaker”  in college in 1974.

This is his first work at Laguna since the COVID shutdown and he is especially welcome back, given this fastidious but not at all fussy mounting.

“The Rainmaker” calls for a cast of seven — six men and one woman. This is a talented group of actors who feel like an organic collection in their communal scenes and yet there is enough for most of them to do separately that there is a true sense of individual characters being inhabited through strong acting.

Actress Lizzie Zerebko is quite good early in the show at being quiet, muted by the incessant bluster surrounding her. Hers is not exactly a poker-face, but the patiently neutral expression worn by a character whose prairie lifetime has been forged by verbal buffetings from father, brothers and the local male dullards.

What’s great early on is how Zerebko conveys her frustrations with the smallest of knitted brows or crossed arms, so that later, when her inner tumult explodes in anger, relief and exultation, Lizzie’s emotions feel so earned.

James Taylor Odom brings the merry promise of slim-hipped shenanigans as soon as he dashes unannounced and unexpectedly through the open front door of the Curry household.

This is not some sly trickster. Instead, sporting a jaunty little neck kerchief Odom radiates reveling in being an animated changeling whose darting movements and joyous incredulousness at his very own boisterous personality and malarky projects a “can ya believe what I’m doing here?”.

The Curry clan rounds out with brothers Noah (Richard Baird) and Jimmy (Nick Tag), plus patriarch H.C. (Jeffrey Markle). These three play hot potato much of the time with Lizzie’s matrimonial fate, but each actor captures his character’s own trials and predicaments, sporting, as things go along, a limp, black eye and whitewash paint, respectively.

Rounding out the cast nicely are File (Andy Hoff) as a deputy sheriff who might be Lizzie’s longshot suitor if he could only get out of his own way and, in a supportive role, his boss, Sherriff Thomas (Barnicle).

Beyond the performances, the show’s other triumph is the physical staging. Resources for Laguna Playhouse productions seemed an intermittent challenge even pre-COVID and emerging from the pandemic the physical trappings of many productions were frankly pitiful.

But walk into the intimate hall for this show and the greeting is an emphatic visual statement: “We’re back!”

Bruce Goodrich’s lovely two-story open-air board and beam house is beautifully lit by Jared Sayeg’s dawn lighting, giving the wood and stage as a whole a discreet, golden glow and beckoning the audience into the setting.

It’s also rewarding to go to the lip of the stage at intermission and peer briefly around at props designer Kevin Williams’ many period items placed around the house, all amplifying the ambience.

The origin in North America of the word “rainmaker” comes from Native American culture, the conjuring up of nourishing replenishment. In this instance, it’s Laguna Playhouse and Andrew Barnicle as rainmakers in and of themselves.

‘The Rainmaker’

Rating: 3 1/2 stars

Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Rd., Laguna Beach

When: Through Oct. 8. 7:30 p.m., Wednesday-Friday, Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 1 and 5:30 p.m. Added performances Thursday, September 28 at 2:00pm and Tuesday, October 3 at 7:30pm.  No performance on Sunday, October 8 at 5:30pm.

Tickets: $50-81

Information: 949-497-2787; lagunaplayhouse.com

Not as an extra, but in the demanding lead role.

Until now, Lipp could only point to school-based performances, starting in sixth grade.

Still, at all of 20, Lipp brings both lived and theatrical experience to his portrayal of the teenaged Christopher Francis Boone.

Like Christopher, Lipp is neurodivergent, a term that means his brain, because of neurological differences, doesn’t function in the typical ways society expects.

He has quirks that can make other people nervous, and worse, mean. But his idiosyncrasies also helped make him perfect for the role, which he played for the first time in a February production of “Curious Incident” at Chapman University.

Lipp, now a junior at Chapman, was so good he won a theater department award.

His organic understanding of Christopher is exactly what director Darryl B. Hovis wanted for the Chance Theater production.

“Yes, it is a risk to cast somebody that’s an unknown,” said Hovis, a resident artist at Chance Theater for more than 20 years. “But we were really hoping to cast somebody who identified as neurodivergent. We really felt like it’s their story.”

Not ‘doing anything wrong’

Neurodivergent embraces a broad swath of conditions and behaviors, from learning disabilities to anxiety disorders.

Someone who is neurodivergent could have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Or they could be on the autism spectrum. For Lipp, it’s both.

Lipp grew up in Redwood City in the Bay Area. He was diagnosed with mild ADHD in third grade. He felt much the same as other kids until middle school, when his peers began to look at him as someone different or lesser than.

As he grew older, Lipp felt that ADHD wasn’t “quite the whole thing” going on. Then a few years ago, while working for an escape room, someone asked him if he was on the autism spectrum.

“I went, ‘Huh.’”

Through his own research and talking with other people, Lipp became convinced that some of his behaviors — such as making minimal eye contact and being oblivious to certain social cues — place him on the autism spectrum.

There’s been no formal diagnosis, but he is confident in his conclusions.

It changed how he viewed himself: “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just being myself in an awkward situation.”

Christopher is like him in many regards, Lipp said.

“He struggles a bit more socially. But the thinking that he has, that’s me.

“That’s me.”

A story about difference

It’s never stated in the play or in the 2003 mystery novel it’s based on that Christopher has Asperger’s Syndrome. British novelist Mark Haddon only describes the character he created as “a mathematician with some behavioural difficulties.”

Haddon later wrote in his blog that his book is “a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way.”

Hovis interprets playwright Simon Stephens’ Tony Award-winning adaptation as a “a play about somebody who happens to be neurodivergent.”

Because Lipp doesn’t have to work at trying to act like someone who is neurodivergent, “we can get right to the story,” Hovis said.

The story, set in a town an hour west of London, involves Christopher’s attempt to solve the death of a neighbor’s dog. His relationship with his widowed father, and revelations about his dead mother, drive the play.

An ever-present heart

The struggling blue-collar father is played by Casey Long, managing director at Chance Theater. It’s been six years since being on stage for Long, who oversees operations at Chance — budget, administration, marketing.

He called Lipp, who is also a math whiz, “incredible” in rehearsals.

“The value of his performance and the skill that he brings is coming much more from his talent than from being neurodivergent,” Long said.

“He plays this character who cannot be outwardly affectionate, but his heart is very present in every scene that he’s in.”

In their few weeks of rehearsal, he and Lipp formed a genuine connection. One scene in what he calls his favorite play particularly moves Long.

“I look at him and see his eyes. The way he’s responding to me just makes me immediately emotional.”

Hovis said the few challenges in directing someone who is neurodivergent mainly involved the physicality of the play and moments of intimacy.

Christopher won’t allow others to touch him at all but does so at one point with the mom. Hovis worked to make Lipp feel safe in that scene.

“That’s a challenge for Aaron because that’s a place of discomfort for him as a person,” Hovis said.

Another challenge for Lipp, who is taking full-time classes at Chapman: He is basically on stage the entire play.

“Yes, I’m going to be exhausted and tired,” Lipp said. “But I also don’t have to leave the stage and go in and out of character. I find that challenging.”

He’s excited to be paid minimum wage, $15.50 an hour, for his work in the play. He hopes to continue in stage shows once he graduates.

Acting, Lipp said, is his outlet: “It’s a way to say whatever I want to say emotionally and physically through the words and actions of another character.”

His parents will be in the audience during the run of “Curious Incident” at Chance Theater. They’re driving down for opening night and other performances.

Lipp hopes audience members themselves will feel different at the end of two and a half hours. “I want people to just care more about others around them.”

Hovis, who serves as the associate producer of the Theater for Young Audiences and director of the Teens Speak Out program at Chance, also sees the broader reach of “Curious Incident.”

“It’s really about everyone who is navigating spaces in between people that don’t quite look like us or don’t sound like us.”

‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’

Where: Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim

When: Previews at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22, Saturday, Sept. 23 and Friday, Sept. 29, plus 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 24; opening night 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30 and the show runs through Oct. 22 with performances at 8 p.m. Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays (not performances Saturday, Oct. 7)

Suitability: The play contains strong language and depicts violent behavior and domestic violence; lighting, video and sound effects may be intense for a person with sensory sensitivities.

Cost: $36-$39

Information: 888-455-4212; chancetheater.com