A paleface Irish American invents a Spanish folk hero who fights for the Mexican people of Old California. If that isn’t a great topic for a play, what is?

That hero is, of course, Zorro, the masked swashbuckler immortalized on film by actors from Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to Antonio Banderas.

The Zorro legend is the inspiration for Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell, a co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, commissioned and directed by BRT’s Tony Taccone, playing through Oct. 29 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre.

Culture Clash is the brainchild of three actors – Richard Montoya, Herbert Sigüenza and Ric Salinas – who have been doing comedy/political theater since they first got together in the Bay Area in 1984. They have typically done skits loosely held together by a theme. Zorro in Hell is their longest and most complex effort to date.

The premise is this: A “multi-culti” grant (given to Latinos with one leg shorter than the other) sends a nameless writer (called only “Crasher”) to the old El Camino Real Inn to do research and write the play.

There, Crasher (Montoya) meets the proprietor, a sprightly 200-year-old woman (Sharon Lockwood) who seems to have known and slept with all the great literary lights who passed through, from Marx on. “Pubescents to Pulitzers, that’s my motto,” she says.

The woman runs the inn with the help of Don Ringo (Sigüenza), “the first Chicano,” as he repeats at every opportunity.

While attempting to write, Crasher has a visit from a couple of philosophical desperados who climb into his window to discuss Nietzsche and the state of the world.

Welcome to the wacky world of Culture Clash and Zorro in Hell, where our heroes thrash, bash and slash – but mostly quip – their way through a dizzying array of topics. It’s a high-spirited, zany, scattershot piece full of rapid-fire one-liners, political references (such as el foreign-born Gobernador, in Arnie mask and mock-up Hummer) and social comment, sending up stereotypes such as the “lazy Mexican” (a seated, hunched-over figure in serape and huge sombrero, inside Clasher’s hotel room door) and the wealthy early 20th century Mexican landowners in velvet breeches. There are film spoofs (on a huge downstage screen), talk about medical marijuana, border policy, immigration and, oh, you name it, it’s here.

In a world gone crazy with violence, clowns are more important than ever because, as director Tony Taccone has said, laughter releases us from collective suffering.

But there is also a point to all this lunacy: The country, and most particularly California, is in a tough, mean and ugly place right now, and it’s up to each of us to “find our inner Zorro” and set it right.

Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell plays through Oct. 29 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Potiker Theatre. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:00 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (858) 550-1010 or visit www.lajollaplayhouse.com.

When I was a child, I thought the Christian notions of heaven and hell were pretty scary.

Then I grew up and heard about reincarnation. Now that is a truly terrifying prospect – the idea that you have to keep coming back until you get it right.

So I can identify with Veronica, a.k.a. the depressed, “anti-depressant resistant” Miss Witherspoon (Melinda Gilb), who kills herself in the 1990s and ends up in the Barbo, a Tibetan netherworld where the lovely, sari-garbed guide Maryamma (Jo Anne Glover) is determined to help her perfect her soul.

Veronica isn’t interested in self-perfection. She wants to go right now to the place for Jews and non-believers (including John-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus), described by Maryamma as “sort of like prolonged general anesthesia.”

But, as Maryamma reminds her, she has no choice and so is reincarnated as an annoyed baby, a happy dog and a troubled teenager.

Playwright Christopher Durang’s Miss Witherspoon plays through Oct. 29 at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, wonderfully directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg.

Sonnenberg has assembled a powerhouse local cast for Durang’s return to the topic of religion (his 1979 Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You has become a minor classic). Gilb is by turns funny, poignant, acerbic and ultimately cooperative as she takes her journey.

Glover is a lovely and unflappable spirit guide; DeAnna Driscoll in turn hilarious and horrible as the mothers of the babies; Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson terrific as a teacher and “Jesus,” resplendent in white brocade coat and fancy white broad-brimmed hat. Steve Gunderson is also fine in a variety of small roles.

Durang has changed a bit over the years. Though he hasn’t given up the quips (“Thornton Wilder reincarnated as Arianna Huffington”), the smart-alecky dark humor of Sister Mary Ignatius has softened into this fable reminding us that our choices matter and we are all responsible to others in some way.

Miss Witherspoon doesn’t end as much as it just stops, but it’s a good ride carrying an important message.

Miss Witherspoon plays through Oct. 29 at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Shows Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:00 p.m., with a matinee Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 544-1000 or visit www.sandiegorep.com.

Not many people will argue the proposition that middle-aged white men have messed up the world.

Certainly not many women, nor the Celestial She who made the mistake of creating them in the first place. But She’s had just about enough of these dunderheads.

So when She sees the trailer-trash trio – the Mannerling brothers Roy (Dale Morris), Clem (Gerald Maxwell) and Moon (Dónal Pugh) – in the city dump, it seems like a good time to knock a few heads together and straighten things out. These guys – the corrupt Mayor Roy, who mistreats women and dumps toxic chemicals into the river; Clem, who owns a gun shop and still hasn’t recovered from the death of his wife, Evelyn; and Moon, the Vietnam vet, now a gun for hire, who opines, “The thing I like least about killing people is how easy they get off” – clearly haven’t gotten it, just like the rest of the world’s white guys.

The dump (which once was the high school baseball field where they all starred) is where they go each year to mourn the passing of R.V. (Katharine Tremblay), the siren in red that all loved and one (Roy) married.

R.V.’s spirit (she ran herself off a bridge at 145 mph a decade ago) appears at the top of Jane Martin’s Middle Aged White Guys, on the hood of a dismantled old car.

Her message is that the Celestial She is going to make life pretty darned difficult if She doesn’t get an apology. And fast. The requirement: This trio has to walk to Washington, D.C., with a banner that says “I’m sorry.”

They seem a little reluctant, so R.V. calls in help in the form of Elvis (Volt Francisco), the King of White Men, resplendent in Vegas glitz, who tells them they’ve been chosen to save white men everywhere.

That doesn’t quite do it either, so Mom (Joan Westmoreland) is invoked, or at least her spirit. Well, you know, everybody listens to mama, and they decide maybe they should do just this one good deed.

Martin (whose real identity is unknown, but who may be Jon Jory, producing director of Actors Theatre of Louisville), gives us a mildly amusing script, though for me a little trailer-trash humor goes a long way. But Ralph Elias directs crisply, and the looniness of it all does inspire laughs, especially for Morris, whose first entrance in a Lincoln suit (or as a Smith Brothers cough drop model) is pretty chuckle-inducing.

Middle Aged White Guys plays through Nov. 12 at 6th @ Penn Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 688-9210 or visit www.sixthatpenn.com.