STAGE

Playhouse Season Opener: Athol Fugard’s latest play, “Valley Song,” will open La Jolla Playhouse’s 1996 season with a May 19-June 23 run at the Mandell Weiss Theater. Lisa Peterson will direct. The play, which premiered in Johannesburg in August, is set during South Africa’s first free elections. Playhouse artistic director Michael Greif will stage Diana Son’s “Boy” as the first show in the nearby Mandell Weiss Forum, June 16-July 14.

That’s ‘Fantastick’: Turns out that the London production of “Cats,” which held its 6,138th performance on Monday, isn’t really the longest-running musical ever. If you take a step away from Broadway-caliber shows, “Cats’ ” run is more than doubled by the off-Broadway production of “The Fantasticks” in New York, which celebrated its 14,800th performance Wednesday.