Clownishly dressed actor Guy de Bonheur (Ron Campbell) stumbles off a train and into a dingy station some 50 miles from Paris. The train, transporting deportees to Buchenwald, has been derailed by the Resistance. While waiting for the next train, de Bonheur has one last chance to use his craft to save his life.

“There has been a terrible mistake. I am just an actor,” he says in an attempt to convey that there is nothing subversive in his work. As proof, he takes his worn suitcase with four props (a robe, a pillow, a shawl and a canteen) and proceeds to tell the judges (the audience) amusing stories – “just stories, nothing more.”

Campbell is remembered fondly here for his stunning one-man performances in Shylock and R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe.

Now he’s back in the Southland with The Thousandth Night, the show he has performed around the world and which garnered him the London Fringe One-Man Show of the Year Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, the Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Solo Performance and a nomination for the Helen Hayes Award in Washington, D.C., The Thousandth Night, which was presented to sold-out houses at North Coast Repertory Theatre in 1999, plays through July 15 at Burbank’s Colony Theatre, directed by Jessica Kubzansky.

Imagine the film Life is Beautiful crossed with the Arabian Nights and you’ve got the idea of this tour-de-force piece, written specifically for Campbell by playwright Carol Wolf. Campbell plays 38 characters, switching from one to another so quickly that sometimes he seems to be playing several at the same time.

First is the tale of the sultan’s favorite hunchbacked dwarf, who unexpectedly chokes on a chicken bone in the home of a tailor. Here, Campbell changes characters with the aid of a pillow, which serves as hump, bosom and belly; the hunchback is further delineated by an enormous, lolling tongue, which de Bonheur shoves back into his mouth from time to time. When the hunchback is found dead, he is dragged to the doctor, the baker and a soldier, all of whom move him on, fearful of being held responsible for his demise.

As the show goes on, the stories and de Bonheur’s off-the-cuff comments become darker and more political. He sadly notes the loss of colleagues Lisette, beaten by the Gestapo for Resistance activities (“how long does it take to do that to someone’s face?”) and of leading man Etienne, who has simply disappeared.

Next he mentions Scheherazade and her life-preserving stories, and tells a wild version of Ali Baba (“with shoes so ragged he called them sandals”), again playing all parts.

The last and most political story, that of the fisherman and the jinni, ends with the fisherman outwitting the evil jinni by tricking the spirit back into the bottle, which the fisherman quickly corks, vowing nevermore to complain about poverty or hunger.

Susan Gratch’s sparse but evocative set, Jeremy Pivnick’s lighting and John Zalewski’s sound design add atmosphere and immediacy to Campbell’s astonishing performance. And Wolf’s wonderful script offers him the chance to portray the Everyman aspects of this dreadful historic time in which uncontrollable fear, ingenuity and responsibility found their nexus.

Don’t miss this show.

The Thousandth Night runs through July 15 at the Colony Theatre Company in Burbank. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 818-558-7000, ext. 15.

Ira Gershwin once told his kid brother George: “When it comes to songwriting, the first thing isn’t either the words or the music. It’s the contract.”

The Gershwin brothers, born in Brooklyn of Russian Jewish parents, wrote songs – classical pieces, musicals and the quintessential American opera Porgy and Bess – in the early decades of the 20th century.

Pianist Hershey Felder has spent the past seven years criss-crossing the country and crossing the pond to the West End, offering audiences a night with the famous composer in George Gershwin Alone. Some 3,000 shows later, George Gershwin Alone is back in Los Angeles. It plays through July 22 at the Geffen Theatre near UCLA, and will have a return engagement at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in spring 2008. Joel Zwick directs.

On a stage dominated by a Steinway grand piano and flanked by a messy desk with posters on the “wall” on one side and an easy chair and lamp on the other, Felder talks, jokes, sings, explains and illustrates the music and the personality of Gershwin. With his black, slicked-back wig, he even looks remarkably like the man himself.

Gershwin’s early piano teacher made him play “the old dead Europeans.” But Gershwin, influenced by Tin Pan Alley and the dawning of the Jazz Age, wanted to play music reflective of the young and vibrant new country his parents had adopted. He became an accompanist, playing for anyone who paid – including the Ziegfeld Follies – noting that “there was so much work for us, they used to call us piano pimps.”

Ira, a lyricist of no small talent, was his most consistent writing partner. Together they wrote many of the unforgettable songs that set the standards for American pop music: “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” “The Man I Love,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “Someone to Watch Over Me,” to name just a few.

In 1924, at the behest of bandleader Paul Whiteman, Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue for piano and jazz band (later orchestrated by Ferde Grofé). Felder relates the story of the piece’s premiere: Gershwin appeared next to last in a 24-piece program. The ventilation system broke down in the first half and the theater became “like a sauna.” George had a splitting headache; so did some of the audience, apparently, because many got up to leave – until George started to play. Those first few notes got most of them back to their seats.

Rhapsody in Blue was a smash hit, unlike the piece for which he will perhaps be most remembered by serious musicians: the opera Porgy and Bess, set in a black section of Charleston. Critics were not kind to the work: one sniffed, “Gershwin doesn’t even know what an opera is.”

So much for critics.

But if you have any interest at all in the history of American popular music, you can’t do much better than George Gershwin Alone. Felder is an engaging raconteur and a pretty good pianist. His singing voice is less lovely, but Gershwin was not noted as a singer either. An added bonus is that Felder plays Rhapsody in Blue in the second half. Go, enjoy and be prepared for a somewhat hokey sing-along in the last 15 minutes.

George Gershwin Alone plays through July 22 at the Geffen Playhouse near UCLA. Shows Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 310-208-5454 or visit www.geffenplayhouse.com.