La Jolla Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley brings Broadway to his new hometown crowd with his recent New York success Xanadu, launching its national tour at the Playhouse. The Ashley-directed show ends its local run on Dec. 31 with a show followed by a festive New Year’s Eve bash.

Writer Douglas Carter Beane has resurrected the 1980 movie flop that would be Gene Kelly’s last film (and didn’t burnish Olivia Newton-John’s reputation, either, though it later became a cult classic) with a new, witty and yes, even heartwarming script.

The only thing the film had going for it (aside from Kelly) was a terrific score by Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne and Newton-John’s longtime producer and songwriter John Farrar. The music was kept and, as Ashley puts it, when choreographer Don Knechtges got hold of the songs, he made the musical numbers “feel like a collision of classical Greekness and Rollerboogie.” Silly as that sounds, it works.

Here’s the plot: The muses are lounging around Mount Olympus one day when Clio, muse of historical and heroic poetry (Elizabeth Stanley) notices that mortal artist Sonny (Max von Essen) has become discouraged to the point of giving up on his mural of the muses. Clio, sister muse of tragedy Melpomene (Sharon Wilkins), and head muse of eloquence Calliope (Joanna Glushak) decide to drop down to earth and watch.

Clio (who has changed her name to Kira and taken on a Newton-John Australian accent) finds out what Sonny really wants is to open a roller rink (handy, since she’s already on skates). Melpomene and Calliope, noting an unmistakable mutual attraction between the two, mischievously decide to wreak muse-ical havoc by casting a spell to make Clio fall in love with Sonny. That is one of the Big Three Nos in the muse handbook, for which she risks eternal damnation in the netherworld.

The plot has a certain goofy charm, but it’s the songs, choreography and shameless spoof of everything from film (including an especially funny Clash of the Titans bit) to Los Angeles, the Olympics, scientology, Andrew Lloyd Webber and other easy targets that will make the sourest of sourpusses smile.

Elizabeth Stanley (last seen here in Cry-Baby) is utterly winning as roller-skating muse Clio/Kira. Max von Essen, light on skates and solid of voice, makes a fine partner for Stanley. Glushak and Wilkins are great as the mischief-making muses, and everybody in this cast dances like a dream ... even on skates.

With a fine cast, terrific staging and music that doesn’t require earplugs (thank you, sound techs!), it’s no wonder this Xanadu turned a cinematic flop into a Broadway winner. Don’t miss it.

Xanadu plays through Dec. 31 at the Mandell Weiss Theatre. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m. Matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For more information, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com/links/1094.

The old “Princess and the Pea” fairy tale gets an update and The Wiz treatment in The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea, San Diego Repertory Theatre’s first world premiere musical. The show plays through Dec. 21 and is directed by Stafford Arima, who directed the Old Globe’s Ace last year.

It’s the biggest enterprise ever undertaken by the theater, says Rep artistic director Sam Woodhouse, with 15 cast members (many of them veterans of Broadway, “American Idol” and/or gospel singing) and a six-man combo. The music (by Andrew Chukerman; lyrics by local actress Karole Foreman and Chukerman) is a mix of rhythm and blues, world beat, pop and gospel.

You remember the original story: only a blue-blooded princess is delicate enough to sustain bruises after sleeping on 20 mattresses under which a pea has been placed.

In this version, Princess Quelie (Sabrina Sloan) has lost her mother and lives in the African kingdom of Kheba with father King Nat (P.L. Brown). Of marriageable age, she is bored-bored-bored with the procession of eligible princes seeking her hand. Hearing about a dance competition in nearby Torel (and singing “Taking Charge of My Life,”), she decides to sneak away with “poor cousin” Hena (Jennifer Leigh Warren) to participate.

The dance contest is just a pretext to get Quelie together with Prince Right (actually Prince Gallant, wonderfully played by Josh Tower), a science geek who at first seems less interested in her hand than in determining the reason for a strange blue light seen only from Torel and Kheba.

But they do fall in love, which is less important to Gallant’s overbearing mom Queen Zauba (Lillias White) than Quelie’s need to pass the “bluest blood” mattress test. Meanwhile, the spunky Hena, who thinks Gallant pretty cute, finds a way to pass the test herself.

Princess has a sprightly and engaging if overmiked score, energetic and eminently watchable choreography and a terrifically talented cast. White steals the show with her soulful rendition of “My Only Son,” but that’s not to slight the immense contributions of the others, including a terrific Supremes-style girl trio (Sylvia MacCalla, Angela Wildflower Polk and Angela Teek) that do-wops away as backup and also gets its own glory in “Ain’t Gonna Wait Around No More.”

This Princess isn’t about blue blood, it’s about being true to yourself and finding the life path that’s right for you. The opening night crowd loved this show. It’s impossible to resist the infectious humor and toe-tapping music, and though I would wish for lower sound levels and better diction, these are minor quibbles.

The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea plays through Dec. 21 at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Shows Sunday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 2 p.m.; Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. For more information, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com/links/1094.

You remember Forever Plaid, that hapless close-harmony quartet that bashed into a busful of Catholic schoolgirls on their way to the Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964. The Plaids became angels instantly, the girls were not hurt, and every now and then St. Peter sends the guys back to earth for one reason or another.

In Plaid Tidings, they have to figure it out or, as St. Pete puts it, “determine the mission” themselves. In on the guessing game are first tenor Jinx (Gregory Starkey), second tenor Frankie (Jason Maddy), baritone Sparky (Doug Schmitt) and bass Smudge (Douglas Davis).

When the rights to Plaid Tidings became available earlier this year, two theaters snagged them: Welk Resort San Diego and Vista’s Broadway Theater, where it plays through Dec. 21. Randall Hickman directs and choreographs.

If you were a quartet waiting for divine (or some other kind of) inspiration, what would you do? Of course: they sing – snippets of the songs that have made the original show a huge hit wherever it plays. “Stranger in Paradise,” “Moments to Remember,” “Sh-boom” (with toilet plungers ... don’t ask), even Peggy Lee’s “Fever” are reprised.

The first half meanders a bit, perhaps to mirror their psyches, a highlight being Jinx’s medley of “Besame Mucho,” “Kiss of Fire” and “Mambo Italiano.” Finally a cell phone call from Peggy Lee in the great beyond clues them in that the mission is to provide a Christmas show for the hurried and the harried.

With that, the second half picks up steam and focus, and the holidays are toasted in songs such as Louis Armstrong’s “Cool Yule” and a hip-hop “’Twuz the Nite B4” (so not 1964), and after which Jinx comments, “We shall never speak of it again.”

Ah, but the Christmas season in the ’60s also meant the family gathered around the TV to watch Ed Sullivan’s holiday special. Here, the Plaids give us an entire Sullivan show in three minutes and change, including the Vienna Choir Boys, Birgit Nilsson, the Chipmunks, the singing nun and Jose Jimenez. It’s a hoot.

Plaid Tidings (or, as they put it, “the return of the return of Forever Plaid”) is not as strong a show as the original, and this quartet also lacks the consistent blend of the first four. But it’s fun and short and goofy – a perfect antidote for the stresses of the holiday season.

Plaid Tidings! plays through Dec. 21 at the Broadway Theater in Vista. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For more information, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com/links/1094.