BEST BETS Thursday 7/13

COSTA MESA

10am

Theater

Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince” must be the most cerebral children’s story ever written: a tale of a lone aviator who crash-lands in the Sahara Desert and meets a mystical boy with a lifetime of experience in heaven and earth. All the enchanting and disparate elements of the tale--the baobab trees, the temperamental flower, the tiny remote planets--will come alive in Orange Coast College’s Children’s Theatre Company’s production, which opens this week at the Robert B. Moore Theatre.

* “The Little Prince,” Robert B. Moore Theatre, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Wednesday and Thursday, 10 a.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Through July 22. $5-$7. (714) 432-5880.

IRVINE

8:30pm

Comedy

Henry Cho, who was influenced by the comedic storytelling of Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart, is a second-generation Korean American who grew up in Tennessee. Cho doesn’t dwell on his ethnicity in his act, but it’s hard to resist: “Y’all remember playing Army when you were a kid? I pretty much hated the game. All my buddies would go, ‘OK, it’s the neighborhood against you.’ ”

* Henry Cho, Irvine Improv, 71 Fortune Drive. 8:30 p.m. Also Friday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, 7, 9 and 11 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. $12-$15. (949) 854-5455.

BREA

8:30pm

Comedy

Damon Wayans created a memorable gallery of characters on brother Keenan Ivory Wayans’ comedy sketch show “In Living Color” on Fox a decade ago. Wayans developed his penchant for performing while growing up in Harlem, but he wasn’t always sure what he’d end up doing in life: “It was either be a funny inmate or a funny guy working at McDonald’s. I knew somehow I needed to make people laugh.”

* Damon Wayans, Brea Improv, 945 E. Birch St. 8:30 p.m. Also Friday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, 8 and 10:30 p.m.; Sunday, 8 p.m. $20-$25. (714) 529-7878.

FULLERTON

8pm

Theater

“Heartbreak House” by George Bernard Shaw is about a bunch of mainly idle, mainly rich folks sitting around chatting wittily and playing eccentric games with one another’s emotions until the last scene, when the bombs start to drop. The aerial attack just before the final curtain is the first hint that the play, written in 1916-17 and first performed in 1920, is Shaw’s scathing vision of how Europe’s ruling classes blundered their way into the cataclysm of World War I. This very funny, very dejected play indeed bombed with critics and theatergoers when it first played two years after the war ended, but it has stood the test of time in depicting humanity’s tendency to fiddle while civilization burns.

* “Heartbreak House” by George Bernard Shaw, presented by the Vanguard Theatre Ensemble at the Vanguard Theatre, 699A S. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Preview tonight; runs Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Ends Aug. 12. $7 (preview only); $13 to $15, regular run. (714) 526-8007.