“If you are wondering who I am, I am just a man like any other man,” Dan Guerrero sings at the top of his show, vamping an improvised dance step that is anything but “like any other man.”

Guerrero brings his one-man autobiographical show Gaytino! to Diversionary Theatre through Oct. 1, directed by Diane Rodriguez. It’s a combination of social and political history and Guerrero’s personal odyssey as a gay, Hispanic man in the U.S.

Son of songwriter Lalo Guerrero (“the original Chicano”), Guerrero and his best buddy, Charles (later Carlos) Almaraz, grew up in East Los Angeles in the’ 50s. These were times when gringos said the word “Mexican” dismissively – or with a sneer. The response? “Some of us call ourselves Spanish – as if that’s a step up,” Guerrero notes.

Dan and Charles loved to perform, frequently putting on shows in the back yard. But an eighth grade field trip to the Egyptian Theater to see Oklahoma! is all it takes: Guerrero falls in love with musicals, buys original cast albums from the Columbia Record Club and tells Charles he wants to go to New York to make it big in musicals.

At 20, he goes to New York to follow his dream (his mother’s comment: “Mi hijo! They’ll kill you on the subway!”) and ends up successful, but never in musicals, returning to Los Angeles 20 years later.

Gaytino!, a combination of autobiography, song, dance, video and storytelling, is alternately funny, charming and poignant. Age may be an asset here – audience members of a certain age may laugh louder at lines like, “I became a disco slut in the ’70s” or to references about seeing Ethel Merman in Gypsy – but the rest will get the jokes, with or without the context.

Guerrero dwells less on the problems of being gay than I expected. Perhaps it didn’t seem as severe because his father was in show business and suspected the truth anyway (though when asked, Guerrero denied it until he was an adult).

Guerrero calls himself a “born-again Hispanic” rather than Chicano. “A Chicano is a Mexican-American who is not kidding,” he says, adding that Chicanos are the political and social activists of the community.

Whatever you call him, Guerrero is a most engaging performer, and Gaytino! is a riveting piece of social and personal history. Don’t miss it.

Gaytino! plays through Oct. 1 at Diversionary Theatre. Shows Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m., as well as Monday, Sept. 18, at 7:30 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 220-0097 or visit www.diversionary.org.

A son of privilege returns home from college, bringing a friend of radical political persuasion.

Nothing unusual there, except that the rich kid is Arkady Kirsanov (Daniel Blinkoff), his friend is nihilist Yevgeny Bazarov (Eric D. Steinberg), and they are in Russia in 1859, a few years after Alexander II has become czar. Russia has been humiliated in the Crimean War and there are revolutionary stirrings in the land.

It’s playwright George F. Walker’s Nothing Sacred, based on Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, playing at South Coast Repertory Theatre through Oct. 8 and directed by Martin Benson.

The Kirsanov household includes Arkady’s father, the widower Nikolai (Richard Doyle), owner of what Arkady calls “the farm;” Nikolai’s brother Pavel (John Vickery), a true aristocrat and foppish representative of the old order who wants nothing more than to look and sound French; the old butler Piotr (Hal Landon Jr.), sharper of mind and tongue than his employers comprehend; and young housekeeper Fenichka (Angela Goethals), mother of Nikolai’s baby.

For the wealthy Kirsanov père, medical student Bazarov is exactly the kind of friend a parent wouldn’t want for his suggestible son. Smart, rude, arrogant and well-informed, he can best almost anybody in verbal combat. Neither is his nihilist conviction that the social and political order must be destroyed very cheering – especially not to Pavel, hell-bent on maintaining his privileged status.

Walker’s version is less about filial relationships than it is about class and political philosophy, announced in the first scene as Bazarov stops Nikolai’s Bailiff (Jeremy Peter Johnson) from viciously beating the peasant Gregor (Jeremy Guskin). “I think they enjoy it,” the Bailiff offers.

The arrival of the Bazarov’s mysterious and stunningly beautiful lover, the widow Anna (Khrystyne Haje), shakes things up a bit, especially when she asks him and Arkady to kill Pavel, claiming he has been stalking her.

Nothing Sacred is an odd piece, static in nature and punctuated by sung snippets of Russian-sounding incidental music (the words are actually stage directions translated into Russian) by Michael Roth. More verbal tennis match than dramatic story, it consists mostly of a series of clever riffs on the social and political order and what it ought or ought not be (hence the title).

It’s the top-notch cast that makes this worth seeing, headed by Steinberg’s coldhearted but oddly compelling Bazarov. Blinkoff and Doyle’s father and son represent the old guard realistically, while Vickery’s caricature of the dying aristocracy is terrific. The women are excellent (and Haje really is gorgeous). But my favorite is Landon, whose Piotr lights up the stage with sardonic wit and quiet subversion.

Nothing Sacred plays through Oct. 8 at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. Shows Sunday and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. and Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For tickets, call (714) 708-5555 or visit www.scr.org.

Actors are such easy targets for comedy. Here are people who lie for a living and then ask you to love them… rather like some politicians.

Playwright Ken Ludwig succumbs to time-honored tradition and spoofs actors by putting men in dresses. The result is Leading Ladies, a sort of Some Like It Hot-lite, playing through Oct. 8 at North Coast Repertory Theatre, directed by John Seibert.

The actors in question are Leo (Phil Johnson) and Jack (Matt Thompson), down on their luck and on the train bound for York, Penn., to do scenes from Shakespeare.

“Why don’t we do a whole play?” asks Jack.

“We have seven costumes,” says Leo. “We can do Much Ado About Hamlet or One Gentleman of Verona.”

On the train, Leo reads of a rich bitch named Florence Snider (Sally Stockton), who will die soon and wants to see her long-lost grandchildren Max and Steve before she kicks. The plot is set when Audrey (Brenda Hogan), a pretty and lithe young thing on roller skates, rolls into the car and reveals that she is from York and knows the grande dame in question. Leo pumps her for details and we’re on our way.

“Oh, by the way,” Audrey notes, “Steve is deaf and dumb.” And, oh, yes, Max and Steve are girls: Maxine and Stephanie.

Leading Ladies is a cross-dressing, quick-change marathon with the subtlety of a Mack truck and jokes older than dirt (“I enjoyed your sermon on Sunday. Best sleep I’ve had in weeks”). But the cast is terrific, Marty Burnett’s set is fabulous (as always) and the costumes are to giggle at or die for, depending on who’s wearing them.

Johnson and Thompson get a serious workout as the felonious “girls” in question, and, boy, are they homely women – especially the very tall Thompson, hilariously ungainly in the increasingly ghastly frocks Jeanne Reith has designed for him.

Jeannine Marquie and Hogan are adorable as sweet young thing Meg and roller skating waitress Audrey. Stockton is terrific as the moneybags who refuses to die, and Herzog properly annoying as the insufferable bore Duncan (the plot point that has Meg engaged to this clod is the show’s weakest).

Some Like It Hot did it better, and so did lots of other shows. In fact, Ludwig has done better in shows like Lend Me a Tenor. But while Leading Ladies is like an extended sitcom, its production values are high enough to push it over into the recommended category.

Leading Ladies plays through Oct. 8 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m.; select shows Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. and Saturday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (858) 481-1055 or visit www.northcoastrep.org.Romeo and Juliet

Coronado Playhouse offers free performances of one of the world’s great love stories, Romeo and Juliet, through Sept. 24. Originally slated for their spiffy new digs on the Strand, they had to move to their Pavilion when a water main break flooded the new theater.

But the Pavilion offers one of the area’s great natural settings, and I was lucky enough to go on a night the Summer Pops was doing the Tchaikovsky spectacular with fireworks (conveniently occurring during the play’s intermission).

But even without fireworks, Romeo and Juliet is one of the Bard’s most famous and most accessible works.

Anthony Misiano and Julianna Rotta as the star-crossed lovers serve director Keith A. Anderson’s modern English adaptation well. Other favorites are Elizabeth Mander-Wilson’s spunky Nurse and Martin M. White’s Friar Lawrence.

Shows Thursday through Sunday at 8:00 p.m. No reservations necessary. Call (619) 435-4856 for information.

Excess and frivolity are common enough royal attributes. But add to that a homosexual liaison with a commoner (and the chutzpah to bestow a noble title on him), and it’s enough to get you killed.

A new theater company called The Collective presents Philip Marlowe’s play Edward II, which concentrates on the events that led up to the murder of King Edward II (William Lacox) and his lover Piers Gaveston (Nicholas McElroy), through Sept. 24 at the New World Stage downtown, directed by the company’s founder, Peter James Cirino.

An aggrieved wife, scheming nobles and rumblings of military incursions lead to treachery, cruelty and murder most foul in this bleak modernized play, which uses cell phones, video projections and odd costumes with varying success.

Lacox and McElroy are excellent as the lovers. Also notable is Nicole Brokaw as the scenery-chewing schemer-in-chief Mortimer, who has designs on the throne. I’d like to see her play Richard III sometime.

This isn’t a perfect production – among other things, the video projections are largely useless, often even out of focus – but this is a play not often done and the three performances mentioned are worth the trip.

Edward II plays through Sept. 24 at the New World Stage, 917 Ninth Ave. downtown. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (858) 503-0881 or e-mail info@collectivepet.org.