Poking Fun at Fire, Flood--and Tough Parking : Stage: Back for its third go-round, ‘Lagunatics’ will offer some welcome laughs to a city that’s been hit by a variety of natural disasters.

It’s a fact of life: Hairdressers run behind schedule. Stylist and “Lagunatic” Rick Breco is the first to admit it. But he offers a good excuse.

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Breco works in Laguna Beach, where parking is a bear. He has a residents pass, which allows him to park at meters for free. But only for two hours. He’s got to move his car every two hours--and he works 10-hour days.

“We have a joke at the salon,” says the stylist at Furioso. “We just would love to get one of the meter maids in the chair, to get her hair colored, and then, right at that certain moment,” when the dye must be rinsed, “say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I have to go move my car.’ ”

Even after eight years on the job, Breco finds humor in the situation, which is why, two years ago, he auditioned for “Lagunatics,” a revue lampooning life in Laguna Beach that’s becoming something of a home-grown institution. He’ll appear again in “Lagunatics ‘95,” the musical’s third incarnation, Friday and Saturday at the Laguna Playhouse.

Breco is one of 36 volunteer cast members in the show, which skewers the city’s perennial “Pageant of Disasters,” its gay community, “beach babes with implants,” the pooper-scooper law, recent fires and floods, relentless environmentalists and, of course, the impossible parking.

Thirteen musical numbers--with original choreography and lyrics set to favorites by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Aretha Franklin and others--make up the production, conceived by Bree Burgess Rosen, an actress, singer and writer who co-wrote it with playhouse volunteer Tim Dey.

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A Laguna resident, Rosen created the first “Lagunatics” in 1992 and the next year’s installment to coincide with A Day Without Art, the international arts community’s annual Dec. 1 AIDS observance. Both shows benefited the playhouse (as will “Lagunatics ‘95”) and Laguna Shanti, an AIDS health organization.

This year, Rosen, who has lost nearly 140 friends to AIDS, didn’t want to do the musical at that sad time again, so moved the production to February, she said on the phone recently. Also wanting to spread the wealth, she chose to have 20% of gross proceeds (as much as $8,000) benefit the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, catering to general family health.

The chance to contribute to a good cause was one reason that Breco, who’ll play a tap-dancing Hari Krishna convert, wanted to take part.

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“I saw the first one,” he said in a recent phone interview from the salon, “and I thought these people were so clever and so right on the money. It’s the cutting humor I loved, and I knew I had to do anything to be in it. I had never been in a a show before, and I just took a huge breath, auditioned, and they took me.”

Each “Lagunatics” contains new material, such as this year’s sober bit, written and performed by Rosen, on the rapacious 1993 Laguna fire.

Smoke and ash blew inside, but beyond that, Rosen’s home wasn’t damaged. However, her beloved cat, Basie, disappeared during the disaster and never came home.

“It broke my heart,” she said. “I had him for 12 years. He used to sit on top of computer monitor as I wrote ‘Lagunatics.’ ”

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On a somewhat lighter note, one of the last-minute additions to this year’s show was, you guessed it, the Orange County bankruptcy. (“Lagunatics” has always reached beyond city borders when apt.) An actor playing former county Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron, who resigned last December over the debacle, delivers his lounge-singer interpretation of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”:

“For what is a man, what has he got?

If not himself, then he has not.

To do these things without a care,

a billion here, a billion there.

. . . and did it my way!”

Both previous “Lagunatics” have sold out, and this year Mayor Kathleen Blackburn plans to see the show for the first time. She has no fear it’s bad PR for the municipality by the sea.

“Quite the contrary,” Blackburn said. “I think it’s simply wonderful, because if you can’t laugh at your problems and foibles, then life would be pretty boring, and it’s wonderful that the city has the strength and courage to hold itself up to review and poke a little fun.”

* “Lagunatics ‘95,” Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. at Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tickets are $50, general seating, and $100, preferred seating. (714) 497-5900.