Hollywood used to steal from Broadway. Lately the progression seems to be going in the other direction.

Douglas Carter Beane, currently riding high on Broadway with Xanadu, adapted from the disastrous 1980 film and directed by La Jolla Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley, tries it again with the musical film classic The Band Wagon. Beane’s adaptation, Dancing in the Dark, is in Broadway tryout and has been extended through April 20 at the Old Globe Theatre, directed by Gary Griffin (The Color Purple).

A celebration of the stage musical, the backstage plot of Dancing in the Dark has Shakespearean actor Jeffrey Cordova (a wonderfully pretentious Patrick Page) announcing that he wants to direct a musical.

“How hard can it be?” he sniffs, hiring Comden and Green stand-ins Les and Lily Morton (Adam Heller, Beth Leavel) to write the book and songs for the show, and asking former musical comedy actor-gone-Hollywood Tony Hunter (Scott Bakula) to star.

Tony, whose star has gone into decline, takes the gig. In a script conference, Jeff seizes on Lily’s mention of the star “selling his soul” for a hit show to envision “a modern version of ‘Faust.’”

“Maybe I didn’t tell it right,” Lily laments.

True to the basic film plot, Dancing in the Dark becomes an amusing tug-of-war between Jeff’s auteur approach and the rest of the cast, who know what a musical should be. Beane has added backstory, especially between Lily and Tony, to deepen the characters.

Griffin has a crack technical team, with a clever set by John Lee Beatty, great lighting by Ken Billington and intelligent sound design by Brian Ronan that doesn’t blow you out of the building.

The cast is outstanding as well. Page (Broadway’s “Grinch” for the last two seasons) and Tony-winning Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone) are my favorites, but all are excellent. Big kudos to Warren Carlyle for his terrifically inventive choreography, and to the outstanding 10-piece pit band.

The original Band Wagon was a musical revue which premiered on Broadway in 1931 – a collection of skits and musical numbers with songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. The 1953 film became an instant classic, thanks in part to the dance magic of stars Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. And now, with a few tweaks and deletions, Dancing in the Dark should have a good run on Broadway.

On opening night, the show ran nearly three hours including intermission. That has likely been tightened by now. (If not, I have a few suggestions: the “Triplets” number has history, I know, but it’s silly and lacks relevance to the show. And the last sequence, 55 years in the future, is a waste of time.)

Get your tickets now. This will almost certainly be a hit on the Great White Way.

Dancing in the Dark plays through April 20 at the Old Globe Theatre. Shows Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call 619-23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.

The five unmarried Mundy sisters share a house and a meager living in Ballybeg with their brother Jack (Charlie Riendeau), recently returned after 25 years as a missionary in a Ugandan leper colony, and 7-year-old Michael, “love child” of Chris (Amanda Sitton).

The summer of 1936 in rural Ireland is seen through Michael’s eyes but narrated years later by the adult Michael (Joshua Everett Johnson) in Brian Friel’s autobiographical memory play Dancing at Lughnasa, playing through March 30 at New Village Arts Theatre. Esther Emery directs.

Kate (Kristianne Kurner), the stern mother superior figure, supports the family teaching in the local parish school; her salary is supplemented by the “pittance” sisters Agnes (Amanda Morrow) and Rose (PJ Anbey) make knitting gloves. Also in the house is cook and housekeeper Maggie (Grace Delaney), earthy, funny and love-obsessed. Now and again the boy’s meandering (and philandering) father Gerry Evans (Manny Fernandes) floats through with big talk and no follow-through.

The long, slow days of late summer are enlivened by “Marconi,” the sisters’ new and fitfully functional wireless radio, which brings them music to dance, dream and forget by. But progress is a double-edged sword: Marconi also brings the intrusion of political realities from the outside world.

It’s time for the harvest dance for the pagan festival of Lugh. Aggie’s suggestion that they go is taken up with glee by all but Kate; the sisters even practice a bit to the music of Marconi, until Kate puts her foot down: “Do you want the whole countryside to be laughin’ at us?” she asks. “Women of mature years dancin’?” (Kate, the eldest, is 40.)

Then, the pronouncement: “We’re goin’ to no dance.”

The year and this summer turn out to be pivotal for this Chekhovian family. But before all the changes, Friel gives us a lovely, funny, poignant portrait of life in rural Ireland before the war.

Friel has written full-blooded, rich characters, and this cast delivers on interpretation. Kurner’s Kate aches with unacknowledged longing for what never was; we know all we need to know about Delaney’s Maggie, the unapologetic realist, when she takes a drag on her cigarettes and sighs, “Happiness;” Sitton’s Chris pines for the prince who will never come, but her whole being lights up when that no-good Gerry wanders in; Morrow’s quiet Agnes doesn’t say much, but it’s clear there’s a lot going on inside; Anbey’s Rose, the mentally challenged youngest, wants attention and isn’t picky about where she gets it.

Dancing at Lughnasa is a lovely piece, full of longing and humor, sadness and joy, words and dance – as Michael puts it, “dancing as if language had surrendered to it, dancing as if words were no longer needed.”

Dancing at Lughnasa plays through March 30 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday at 3 and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call (760) 433-3245 or visit www.newvillagearts.org.

Homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and PTSD are just a few of the themes in Zsa Zsa Gershick’s award-winning Bluebonnet Court, at Diversionary Theatre through April 13, in co-production with MOXIE Theatre. MOXIE’s Delicia Turner Sonnenberg directs.

It’s 1944 and New York journalist Helen Burke (Wendy Waddell) is stuck in Austin, Texas after plowing into a tree in order to avoid a deer in the road. In Texas to write one last war story for the New York Daily News before fleeing to Hollywood for an MGM screenwriting job, Helen is at the mercy of local mechanics who do not share her urgency, but work on the “things take the time they take” principle.

Helen checks into Bluebonnet Court, presided over by Lila Jean (Jo Anne Glover) and her recently returned soldier husband, Roy Glenn Webb (Christopher Buess). Roy Glenn suffers what was then called shell shock (now known as PTSD) and drinks to try to stave off nightmares about the death of fellow soldier (and Lila Jean’s twin) Robert.

Lila Jean runs the place with the help of black maid Orla Mae Bird (Monique Gaffney), a self-educated voracious reader and the target of Roy Glenn’s racist comments, as his anti-Semitic remarks are aimed at Helen. Orla Mae knows her place in this house but Helen knows a kindred soul when she meets one, and soon Roy will have another reason to disparage both.

Helen and Roy share a fondness for the sauce – she has brought her own stash of scotch and cigarettes – and it will be to her that Roy confesses the devastation wrought on his soul by the war experience.

Comic relief is provided by “librarian” Nanalu Branch (a hilarious Leigh Scarritt), who has undertaken the task of providing personal comfort for Austin’s returned (or departing) boys in uniform (“This kitten is gettin’ too old for what’s bein’ asked of her,” she gasps). Nanalu is a great character, though I must point out that after 42 years in the profession I have never met a librarian even remotely like her.

Gershick won the 2007 GLAAD Media Award (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) for outstanding Los Angeles theater and two NAACP awards for excellence for Bluebonnet Court. But despite the many changes that have occurred since the ’40s, Gershick has pointed out that, “Major media outlets didn’t cover the GLADD award. But the Army did.”

Kudos to Sonnenberg and Diversionary’s Bret Young for their fine adaptation of Joel Daavid’s original set design, and to Jennifer Brawn Gittings for her evocative period costumes. The flavor of the ’40s is further imparted by occasional radio spots – food ads, a revivalist selling God, a typical musical show, all performed splendidly by Lisel Gorell-Getz and Fred Harlow.

Gershick’s script and Sonnenberg’s top-notch cast make this a compelling theater piece artfully combining major social issues, a sweet lesbian romance and dialogue that amuses while it makes its points. That’s a winning combination.

Bluebonnet Court runs through April 13. Shows Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday & Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m., and Monday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets call (619) 220-0097 or visit www.diversionary.org or www.moxietheatre.com

Last call for that great counterculture commentary on politics, health care and freedom, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The Theatre Inc.’s production of Dale Wasserman’s adaptation of the 1962 Ken Kesey novel closes on Saturday at Twiggs Coffee House on Park Boulevard. Douglas Lay directs.

In an asylum somewhere in Oregon, Nurse Ratched (Bonnie Stone), instrument of “the Combine,” keeps patients under control chemically in this psychological repair shop. Chief Bromden (Brian Abraham), a huge Indian hospitalized after the Combine took his village, defends himself by pretending to be deaf and dumb. The other patients meekly accept what is mandated for them.

New patient Randle P. McMurphy (Giancarlo Ruiz), outspoken and unruly, is not insane but is committed for fighting in jail and immediately shows himself uninterested in tranquilizers or cooperation with the “treatment” offered. Shocked to find that the other patients have been voluntarily institutionalized, McMurphy tries to show them – and particularly the Chief – another way.

Lay is to be commended for the quality of this minimalist production, which has suffered major setbacks including a change of venue. The room at Twiggs is not a theater in any sense, but it works well for this script. The actors strike the right notes (if somewhat over the top) and the message gets through loud and clear.

But hurry; the show closes this weekend.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest plays through March 29 at Twiggs Coffee House. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. For tickets call (619) 216-3016.