Three American giants of the 20th century are represented onstage now in San Diego. At San Diego Repertory Theatre, Tina Fabrique channels legendary songstress Ella Fitzgerald in Ella, a stunning show featuring 20-plus of her favorites by Gershwin, Porter and others.

At the Old Globe, Hershey Felder brings a composer to life in George Gershwin Alone, a one-man show about the man and his music featuring a piano reduction of the great “Rhapsody in Blue.”

And local actor/director/writer Charmen Jackson has made a lovely play out of the “Simple” stories of literary great Langston Hughes. Ain’t You Heard? plays through Oct. 7 in North Park.

“I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.”

- Ira Gershwin

Ella lives, and you can catch her at San Diego Repertory Theatre through Oct. 15.

Oh, she calls herself Tina Fabrique, but make no mistake, this girl is channeling the First Lady of Song. From the gap-toothed grin to the boxy figure, you’ll see the resemblance even before she opens her mouth. And when she starts to sing, you’ll be transported to your favorite listening space, there to revel in that voice – pure, sweet and compelling.

Ella, directed by Rob Ruggiero, features about two dozen songs and a quartet of terrific musicians to back up Ella – and they take the stage in their own right. In between songs, she tells a bit about her life, loves and the business of music.

“I’m the only woman in the business who does not have a past,” she says. “I don’t drink, smoke or sleep around.”

But she did have her demons. Abused by her “stepfather” (her mother never married the man), she got into trouble at school and spent a year in a reform school, where she was beaten. In her quest for love, she hooked up with a few inappropriate people. Once she was even arrested (and acquitted) on gambling charges.

But through it all, she never let her art suffer. From her amateur-night win at the Apollo Theatre through the days with trumpeter Chick Webb (and as leader of his orchestra after his untimely death), through more than a half century of performing, Carnegie Hall appearances, 200 albums, 13 Grammys and a National Medal of Arts, all she did was sing her heart out and delight her myriad fans.

Along the way, she raised the art of scat singing to new heights, attaching nonsense syllables to notes that soar and swoop, glide and jump and then stop cold, daring you not to grin and love it.

“I stole everything I heard, but mostly I stole from the horns,” she says. But whatever she stole, she gave back a hundredfold to her fans.

Kudos to Jeffrey Hatcher for a script that tells enough of Ella’s story without depriving us of too many songs, and to the fabulous musicians Fabrique works with: pianist George Caldwell, trumpeter Brian Sledge, drummers Frank Derrick and Rodney Harper and bassist Brian Walsh.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, child. Get on down to the Rep before this terrific show leaves town.

Ella runs through Oct. 15 at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Shows Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 7:00 p.m., with matinees Sundays at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 544-1000 or visit www.sandiegorep.com.

“I hear music in the heart of noise”

- George Gershwin

America is great largely because of immigrants and their contributions to science, technology, sports and every other field you can name, including music.

George Gershwin and his brother Ira, born in Brooklyn of Russian Jewish parents, grew up to write songs (George wrote more than 1,000, most of them with lyricist Ira), classical pieces, musicals and the quintessential American opera Porgy and Bess.

Hershey Felder offers audiences a night with the famous composer in George Gershwin Alone, playing through Oct. 22 at the Old Globe Theatre and directed by Joel Zwick.

On a stage dominated by a Steinway grand piano and flanked by a messy desk with posters on the “wall” on one side and an easy chair and lamp on the other, Felder talks, jokes, sings, explains and illustrates the music and the personality of Gershwin. With his black, slicked-back wig, he even looks remarkably like the man himself.

Ira, a lyricist of no small talent, was his most consistent writing partner. Together they wrote many of the unforgettable songs that set the standards for American pop music: “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” “The Man I Love,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “Someone to Watch Over Me,” to name just a few.

If you have any interest at all in the history of American popular music, you can’t do much better than George Gershwin Alone. Felder is an engaging raconteur and a fine pianist. His singing voice is less lovely, but Gershwin wasn’t noted as a singer either. An added bonus is that Felder plays Rhapsody in Blue in the second half. Go, enjoy, and be prepared for a somewhat hokey sing-along in the last 15 minutes.

George Gershwin Alone plays through Oct. 22 at the Old Globe Theatre. Shows Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. and Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.

Poet, journalist, playwright and author of short stories, song lyrics and novels, Langston Hughes is an American original. By the time he was 12, he had lived in six American cities; as an adult he lived in places all over the world, including Mexico, France, Spain and the Soviet Union.

But he is most remembered as the chronicler of the black American experience. Hughes spoke for average, i.e., poor blacks. He was not afraid to tell the truth, and consequently was blasted critically by the black press for portraying the unattractive situation he saw. They called his poetry “trash” and Hughes a “sewer-dweller” and “the poet low-rate of Harlem.”

Still, Hughes had the distinction of being the first black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures.

The Ira Aldridge Repertory Players present Charmen Jackson’s tribute to Hughes in Ain’t You Heard?, a dramatization of some of Hughes’ poems, speeches, essays and his stories about Jesse B. Semple (Simple for short). Ain’t You Heard? plays through Oct. 7 on the Express Stage at Acoustic Expressions in North Park. Jackson, associate artistic director of the theater, directs this effort.

Critics may have sniffed at his work, but the blacks about whom he wrote were his fans, especially when the Chicago Defender began running his Simple stories as a series in the ’40s.

Simple is a charming no-good who spends too much time in Paddy’s Bar with other local characters, including his long-suffering girlfriend, Joyce, his Harlem landlady, his wife, the fun-loving barfly Zarita and various others. From observations like, “When a woman is mad at a man, she wants every other woman to be mad at him too” to appreciative poems like “When Sue Wears Red” (“When Susanna Jones wears red/A queen from some time-dead Egyptian night/Walks once again”), the point of it all is “I’m still here.”

Jackson has a fine cast, headed by Leonard Patton as Simple, ably aided by Andrea Purnell and Ida Rhem in multiple roles, Laurence Brown, Patrick Kelly and Damon Edwards.

Ain’t You Heard? is a sassy and poignant tribute to this major literary light of the Harlem Renaissance.

Ain’t You Heard? plays through Oct. 7 on the Express Stage at Artistic Expressions, located at 2852 University Ave. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., with Sunday matinees Sept. 24 and Oct. 1 at 2:30 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 283-4574 or visit www.iarpplayers.org.