Best Bets / MAY 7-13, 2000

Theater

The story of tejano singer Selena Quintanilla, who was murdered in 1995, becomes a stage musical in “Selena Forever,” opening Thursday at Universal Amphitheatre. The show features 30 songs and a cast of 35, including Veronica Vazquez and Denise Stefanie Gonzalez as the older and younger Selenas, respectively. San Diego’s William Alejandro Virchis directs.

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Continuing a surge of plays set in Stalinist Russia is the West Coast premiere of “Bed and Sofa,” opening Friday in an International City Theatre production at Long Beach’s Center Theater. Focusing on a love triangle against the backdrop of a housing shortage, author and lyricist Laurence Klavan was inspired by a Russian silent movie from 1926. The music by Polly Pen (“Goblin Market”) won a 1996 Obie Award.

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Hal Linden stars as a playwright in P.G. Wodehouse’s adaptation of Ferenc Molnar’s 1925 comedy “The Play’s the Thing,” opening Friday at El Portal Center’s main stage in North Hollywood. The writer and his collaborators visit an Italian villa and stage a play-within-a-play to restore a composer’s faith in his fiancee. Linden was a Tony-winning stage star before he became known as Barney Miller.

Comedy

“If you haven’t had a chance to see Tenacious D play, it’s one of the six or seven wonders of the world.” So says actor John Cusack of the wild, X-rated, rock-and-comedy-infused musical stew cooked up by Jack Black and Kyle Gass, who are otherwise known as Tenacious D. Cusack liked Tenacious D so much he cast Black as the loud-mouthed record store clerk Barry in “High Fidelity”; this after the D’s cult status grew with a short-lived HBO series last year. Tenacious D plays the Roxy on Thursday.

Dance

If anyone can make a history lesson pleasurable, it’s award-winning, locally based choreographer Loretta Livingston. Commissioned to create a piece on the evolution of modern dance, she’s come up with what she calls “a dance adventure”: a full-evening work titled “Two Thousand Steps,” set to premiere on Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Pop Music

The top of the pops may look like a teenagers’ playground these days, but if L.A.’s Top 40 kingpin KIIS-FM (102.7) is any indication, it’s a little more eclectic than that. Its Wango Tango 2000 concert on Saturday at Dodger Stadium ranges from teen-pop hosts ‘N Sync to rocker Lenny Kravitz to Latin-bred pop crossovers Enrique Iglesias and Marc Anthony.

Music

A long-awaited collaboration between soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Kronos Quartet comes together this spring in only six places--four North American cities and London and Prague. Tuesday, the tour comes to Irvine Barclay Theatre in Orange County with ear-opening repertory: music by Golijov, Gabriela Ortiz, Rahul Dev Burman, Carlos Paredes, Stravinsky, Rezso Seress and Astor Piazzolla.

Family

The West Coast premiere of “Mirette,” a family-oriented musical by “Fantasticks” creators Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones, opens Friday at Plummer Auditorium in a Fullerton Civic Light Opera production. Based on a Caldecott Award-winning book, the show is set in 1890s Paris, where the title character’s mother runs a boarding house for circus performers.

Video

Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen’s young film company, DreamWorks SKG, triumphed at this year’s Oscars when its dark satire “American Beauty” won five Academy Awards, including best picture, screenplay and director. Kevin Spacey, who won best actor, plays an Everyman in midlife crisis. Annette Bening and Chris Cooper also star in the bleak comedy penned by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes. In video stores Tuesday.