We’re in luck, folks. The cast of the latest edition of Forbidden Broadway has landed in our midst, while a change of venue is prepared in New York. They’re here, skewering Broadway shows, actors and other celebrities through June 4 at The Theatre in Old Town.

The show, updated regularly, has been running off Broadway since 1982, making it the longest running musical revue in history. Valerie Fagan, Kevin B. McGlynn, Jeanne Montano, Jared Bradshaw and music director/pianist David Caldwell make up the terrifically talented cast.

Posters line the theater for shows like Into the Words, Rant, Wickeder and Gagtime, and the first bit is probably the easiest parody in the world: Annie. Oh, do I hate that show and that ghastly “Tomorrow” song, and Valerie Fagan does it in – er, does it justice.

The brainchild of writer/director Gerard Alessandrini, Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit posits gumshoes Jerry Orbach (Kevin B. McGlynn) and B.D. Wong (Jared Bradshaw) investigating “murders of a theatrical nature.”

Here are some of the crimes: The Lion King (“full of African baloney/But we won a lot of Tony”); Phantom of the Opera (“When I’m slightly under pitch/They just throw the reverb switch”); Rent (“Rent is spent”) and everybody’s favorite, Harvey Fierstein, the new Tevye, singing “If I Were a Straight Man.”

With clever lyrics, dizzying costume changes and hilarious impersonations of the likes of Sarah Brightman (“It’s time to go”), Carol Channing (with lipstick down to there), Maurice Chevalier (“Thank heaven we got Les Mis/It gets more misérable every day”) and Yoko Ono (“I want to be remembered as the woman who ruined Broadway”), you may leave with a stomachache from the laughter.

You snooze, you lose on this one. Miss this hilarious show at your peril.

Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit plays through June 4 at The Theatre in Old Town. Shows Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday at 5:00 and 8:00 p.m., with matinees Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 688-2494 or visit www.theatreinoldtown.com.

Constance Middleton (Henny Russell), the 30-something wife of a wealthy London surgeon, has spent the last six months trying to keep friends and her sister Martha (Heidi Fecht) from telling her the “news” she already knows: that husband John (Wynn Harmon) is having an affair with her best friend, Marie-Louise Durham (Lara Phillips).

It’s W. Somerset Maugham’s acerbic and witty The Constant Wife, in a sparkling production at the Old Globe Theatre through May 7. Directed by Seret Scott, beautifully costumed by Lewis Brown and designed by Ralph Funicello, the piece is splendidly acted by a fine ensemble cast headed by Old Globe favorite Kandis Chappell.

The time is the 1920s, and Martha and Mrs. Culver (Chappell), mother of Constance and Martha, sit in Constance’s tastefully decorated living room discussing the “situation” in the form of a philosophical discussion about the nature of men and the exigencies of marriage. Martha is determined to tell Constance of John’s peccadillo. Mrs. Culver is equally determined that Martha does not mention it to her sister. After all, Mrs. Culver notes, “I am unable to attach any great importance to the philanderings of men. I think it’s in their nature … and men can’t stand boredom as well as women.”

When Constance enters, her contribution to the discussion about men is this: “A good wife always pretends not to know the little things her husband wishes to keep hidden from her. That is an elementary rule in matrimonial etiquette.”

Constance views marriage in Marxist terms – as primarily an economic arrangement – though it troubles her a bit that upper class women like herself, with maids, nannies and no need to work, contribute little and therefore should be seen not as partners but as parasites, prostitutes or just very expensive toys.

The Constant Wife, first presented in 1926, concerns itself with basic questions: the nature of marriage and who gets to define it and the influence of gender on perceptions of behavior. And what parts do fidelity, affection, deception and independence play in marriage?

We’re still trying to answer those questions. Maugham had more than a theatrical interest in them himself. Married to an American woman, he also had a long-term gay liaison with his private secretary.

This is one of the best casts the Globe has assembled. Aside from the three principals, solid support comes from Amanda Naughton as Barbara (who wants Constance to go into business with her), Lara Phillips as bimbette Marie-Louise (whose fussy costumes are so very right), J. Paul Boehmer as Constance’s former beau Bernard Kersal, Cris O’Bryon as the piano-playing butler Bentley (whose selections are spot-on) and John Rosen as Marie-Louise’s aggrieved spouse.

The Constant Wife falls chronologically between George Bernard Shaw’s Candida and Noel Coward’s Private Lives, but seems just as firmly rooted in this century. Sometimes it seems that men and women really are different species – or perhaps, as a pop psych writer has suggested, from different planets. The relationship between these two frequently opposing forces can’t help but fascinate audiences, especially when expressed with such wit and cleverness.

The Constant Wife plays through May 7 at the Old Globe Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday through Wednesday at 7:00 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.

“God is speaking to you in the voices from those boxcars,” says Austrian farmer and refusenik Franz Jägerstätter (Gareth Saxe), by way of explanation for his refusal to serve in the army of the Third Reich.

iWitness, playing through May 21 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, dramatizes the story of one of some 500 anti-Nazi dissidents who chose death over capitulation.

Coincidentally, also opening this week is the film Sophie Scholl, telling the similar story of the last five days in the lives of three members of the White Rose underground in Munich.

Married with three children, Jägerstätter was a committed Catholic and sexton in his local parish. His farm and family teetered on the edge of poverty, but Jägerstätter refused financial aid owed him under a Nazi assistance program, even turning down emergency aid when a storm destroyed his crops.

Drafted into the German army after the Anschluss of his homeland by the Nazis, he showed up at the induction station, but announced his refusal to wear the uniform of a country engaged in an unjust war.

Now he sits alone in his death row cell, shining prisoners’ shoes and washing pots to while away the time. A parade of characters visit, each trying to get him to change his mind. The prison physician, Dr. Raps (Joan McMurtrey), wants to certify him insane or make him “see the light” and save himself.

Franz’s old friends Martin (James Joseph O’Neil) and Hans (Seamus Dever), as well as prison priest Fr. Jochmann (Michael Rudko), practice simple denial. Martin, an anti-aircraft gunner, does not understand Franz’s position, seeing the war as a “wounded German” seeking just revenge for Allied bombing raids. Hans, who has a cushy job as a colonel’s chauffeur, represents the “close-your-eyes-and-hope-for-the-best” contingent. The priest claims to know nothing about those boxcars to eternity.

iWitness is uneven: excellent in spots and annoying in others. It suffers from lack of cohesion as it jumps around in time and tone. Director Barry Edelstein says it best: “The play itself is so free-associative at times that one of the jobs I have is in finding a unitary tone.”

Several scenes and/or characters of questionable relevance dilute the dramatic effect, particularly Franz’s old girlfriend Margaret (Katrina Lenk), who takes up far too much time toward the end and has no evident connection to the issue at hand.

The production is further gunked up by unevenly effective images projected at the rear, and by Sobol’s clumsy and unsubtly drawn (not to mention repeated) parallels between Nazi invasions and current events, overstated and unnecessary for today’s audiences.

On the other hand, iWitness boasts a splendid ensemble cast and some profoundly affecting scenes, most notably an ethics vs. survival exchange between Jägerstätter, Dr. Raps and the warden (Dever).

Saxe is perfect as the principled Catholic martyr, willing to sacrifice everything. His counterpart in Sophie Scholl, a married family man charged with writing the anti-Nazi literature handed out by Scholl and her brother, caved at the end and begged for his life. All four suffered the same fate: the guillotine.

iWitness plays through May 21 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Shows Tuesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For tickets, call (213) 628-2772 or visit www.taperahmanson.com. The Housekeeper

You just can’t get good help anymore.

Manley Carstairs (Dale Morris), author of such blockbusters as Crash of the Drunken Pillow, Gull over Doom Lake and The Quiver and the Sigh, has recently lost his sainted mother. Rattling around in the 17-room house alone, he calls an agency, thinking it wouldn’t hurt to have a sweet young thing around to clean up after him and cook.

Annie Dankworth (Grace Delaney) shows up. Annie is, well, unusual, beginning with her attire: red bandanna, gray pants, blue smock, orange apron, purple slippers. She is neither sweet nor especially young, and though she regards herself as the “cream deli cream,” Manley has found in her a stubbornness to match her strong opinions … among other unpleasant attributes.

“You’re pushy and loud,” he says. “Your cleaning is indifferent, your cooking inedible and injurious to one’s health.” After three and a half days, Manley announces her dismissal. But Annie, with her own unstated problems, isn’t about to leave.

James Prideaux’s The Housekeeper, playing through April 26 at 6th@Penn Theatre, is a wild, wacky and joyously over-the-top evening of theater. Morris (guiding light of the theater) and Delaney camp (and ham) it up with such gusto that it’s impossible not to love these two oddball characters. They are helped along by Prideaux’s hilarious script and Rhys Green’s snappy direction.

Playing in off-night run, this play closes next Wednesday. Don’t miss it.

The Housekeeper plays through April 26 at 6th@Penn Theatre. Shows Monday through Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 688-9210 or visit www.6thatpenn.com.