Andrew Lloyd Webber won the race to get a musical version of Phantom of the Opera onstage first, but a second musical, written at about the same time by Arthur Kopit (book) and Maury Yeston (music and lyrics), has proved to have legs as well. This version, called simply Phantom, is on view at Moonlight Stage Productions through Aug. 29, brilliantly directed by Todd Nielsen.

You remember the story: An opera star is born, thanks to serendipity and lessons from a masked phantom named Erik (Chris Warren Gilbert), victim of a horrible congenital facial deformity, who lurks in the catacombs under the Paris Opera. He is mostly a benign presence but can be a menace, even a murderer if his “rules” are broken.

A pretty young woman named Christine (Sarah Bermudez), singing as she walks through a Paris street on a lovely day, is heard by the wealthy Count Philippe de Chandon (Cris O’Bryon), ladies man and supporter of the opera extraordinaire. He gives Christine a card of introduction to Gerard Carriere (Normal Large), manager of the opera, so that she might audition.

But by the time she gets there, Carriere has been fired and replaced by Alain Cholet (Danny Blaylock), husband of new owner Carlotta (played to a hilarious turn by Debbie Prutsman). The Florence Foster Jenkins of the Paris opera set, Carlotta proceeds to cast herself in leading roles, despite consistently dreadful reviews.

Carlotta does not welcome musical competition, but hires Christine as costume mistress, replacing Joseph Buquet (Shawn Goodman Jones), who one day descended into the Phantom’s territory and disappeared.

Christine gets her break and wins the love of both the phantom and the count, a happy circumstance not without its drawbacks.

Don’t look for spectacle here; Phantom takes you back to turn-of-the-century Paris for a character-driven story about the City of Light and the people who live and love the opera. Kopit and Weston stay true to the time period with songs and lyrics reminiscent of the great operettas of Sigmund Romberg and Victor Herbert, and choreographer DJ Gray has created lovely opera-appropriate interludes for the talented young dancers.

Technically, this show is superb. Christina Munich’s evocative lighting and Peter Hashagen’s sound design add to the wonderful capabilities of the new stage house.

Gilbert and Bermudez are an appealing and vocally well-matched pair in the main roles. Gilbert not only sings well but has a particularly pleasing speaking voice as well.

Almost stealing the show are Prutsman’s terrific Carlotta and Large’s Carriere, whose heartbreaking rendering of “You Are My Own” brought a hush to the house.

Nielsen (who directed the Lion King road show) obviously knows his way around musicals; his excellent blocking created one lovely stage picture after another.

Kudos also to conductor Elan McMahan and the fine orchestra.

If you’re looking for the special effects-driven Lloyd Webber blockbuster, this isn’t it. But I’ll take this Phantom any day over that other overdone and overhyped piece.

Phantom plays through Saturday, Aug. 29, at Moonlight Stage Productions in Vista. Shows Wednesday through Sunday at 8 p.m. For tickets, call 760-724-2110 or visit www.vixtixonline.com

A man mistaken for a murderer goes on the run and attempts to thwart an evil plot in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 thriller The 39 Steps.

La Jolla Playhouse presents Patrick Barlow’s four-man comic version of that famous film through Sept. 13 in the Mandell Weiss Theatre. Maria Aitken, who directed the Tony-winning play on Broadway and in the West End, helms this West Coast premiere as well.

Four actors – Claire Brownell, Ted Deasy, Eric Hissom and Scott Parkinson – play more than 150 roles in this stylized romp that presents itself as a theater troupe on the cheap trying to produce this Hitchcock thriller with as little baggage (in all senses) as possible.

Protagonist Richard Hannay (Deasy), bored nearly to the point of suicide in London, decides to do something “mindless and trivial” – go to the theater. There he sees Mr. Memory, a purveyor of memory-related parlor tricks. Soon a shot rings out, and a sexy woman named Annabella Schmidt (Brownell, complete with Russo-Slavic accent) asks to spend the night in Hannay’s apartment, where she reveals that she is a spy trying to save the world from unspecified bad dudes. When she turns up dead the next morning, Hannay is on the run and we’re off to the races.

Deasy plays only Hannay. Brownell plays three characters: Annabella; the proper Brit Pamela, and Margaret, the repressed wife of a prayer-spouting Scottish farmer. It’s up to Eric Hissom and Scott Parkinson (last seen here in The Third Story) to play the other 146-plus characters in this wild ride that depends on sight gags, script references to other Hitchcock films, clever stagecraft (indoors/outdoors indicated by the turning of a stand-alone door) and most of all, the consummate ability of Hissom and Parkinson to make instantaneous character shifts with the change of a hat or accent, and to do flawless mime, often mirroring each other. (The mime began to wear on me after a while, but others seemed quite entranced by it.)

Deasy is a fine Hitchcockian accidental hero, well-meaning but clueless. Brownell is terrific as the women, quick-changing costumes, accents and characters with seeming ease.

But the bulk of the work depends on Hissom and Parkinson, whose lightning character changes (usually onstage), mirror actions and quick set shifting are jaw dropping.

The 39 Steps is funny, silly, clever and a lot of high-energy fun, moving at breakneck speed and holding out a little surprise now and then (one of the best is a shadow-puppet chase scene across the Scottish moors, watched over by the silhouette of Hitch himself).

The 39 Steps will move to Seattle Repertory Theatre before beginning its national tour.

The 39 Steps plays through Sunday, Sept. 13, at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m.; matinées Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 858-550-1010 or visit www.lajollaplayhouse.org

We all know about trailer trash. But it’s difficult to know what to make of the characters populating Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping & Fucking.

The latest offering from Triad Productions plays through Saturday, Sept. 12, at Compass Theatre. Adam Parker directs.

Let’s see: Lulu (Katie Harroff) lives with Robbie (Julio Jacobo) and Mark (Patrick Kelly). Lulu and Robbie seem to be something more than roommates, but Robbie has a case on Mark, who in the first scene splits for rehab in an attempt to kick his smack habit.

Robbie and Lulu try a few dead-end jobs. Lulu (who claims to be an actress) ends up reciting Chekhov topless for Brian (John Whitley), who says he’s auditioning her for a job on something resembling the Home Shopping Network. Actually, he wants her to push Ecstasy.

Meanwhile, Mark seems to have less of a problem with smack than with his addiction to oral-anal sex, and leaves rehab to find Gary (Kevin Morrison), a high-energy rent boy who turns out to be 14.

Ravenhill may be daring us to care about his version of gritty urban reality, but he gives us no reason to do so. Occasionally a character spouts a stale ’60s diatribe about the horrors of capitalism, but it’s difficult to know whether the playwright thought he was writing something of significance or (given the titillating title) just something to get Gen-X butts into the seats, however long they stay (at the performance I saw, two people walk out on this intermissionless play).

The actors do what they can with this sketchy script, giving it a better reading than it deserves. Whitley is particularly effective as the slimy but sentimental drug dealer; Morrison excellent as the rent boy whose past will doom him.

But the poor actors have to work too hard to wring meaning out of a script that gives them little to work with.

Shopping & Fucking plays through Saturday, Sept. 12, at Compass Theatre. Shows Thursday-Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 4:00 p.m. For tickets call 619-688-9210 or visit www.triadprod.com.