BEST BETS Thursday 11/2

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

8pm

Pop Music

Miss Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers are another of the ‘90s-spawned swing revivalists, but Smith’s latest album, “Everybody’s Talkin’ ‘Bout Miss Thing!” shows her good taste in choosing solid jazz musicians to help her out. (Former Count Basie saxophonist Herman Riley and trumpeter Bill Ortiz are among the soloists.) That helps makes the album come across as a labor-of-love period piece rather than simply a labored one.

* Miss Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. With Crosstown 7. 8 p.m. $15 to $17. (949) 496-8930.

BREA

8:30pm

Comedy

John Pinette has an infectious sense of humor that generates wave and after wave of laughter in an act that takes full advantage of his ample girth. Take Pinette’s visit to Disney World for a family reunion. “They say it’s the Happiest Place on Earth--not in August, it’s not,” he says. “It’s 100 degrees with 90% humidity. What do you do when it’s that hot? ‘Oh, I don’t know, let’s take the big man out and walk him!’ And you have to wait an hour and 45 minutes for every ride, it seemed. An hour and 45 minutes for a ride! I wait an hour and 45 minutes, there better be a buffet at the end of that line.”

* John Pinette, 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. $17-$20. (714) 529-7878.

LAGUNA BEACH

2 & 8pm

Theater

“Enter the Guardsman” is a new entry in the old tradition of the backstage musical. Created by the same team that wrote “Gunmetal Blues,” which also had its West Coast premiere at the Laguna Playhouse, it’s based on “The Guardsman,” a 1910 comedy by Hungarian Ferenc Molnar. The premise: A recently wed actor and actress hit the marital skids; the husband tests the wife’s love and fidelity by disguising himself as a handsome soldier and trying to seduce her.

* “Enter the Guardsman,” by Scott Wentworth, Craig Bohmler and Marion Adler, at the Laguna Playhouse’s Moulton Theater, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays 2 and 7 p.m. Previews today (two shows) and Friday; regular performances begin Saturday (7:30 p.m. only). Through Dec. 3. $24-43. (949) 497-2787.

COSTA MESA

7:45pm

Theater

Eminent Victorians, one of them eminently messed up in matters sexual, populate “The Countess,” Gregory Murphy’s play about the true story of famed English critic John Ruskin, his wife, Effie, and Ruskin’s painter protege, John Everett Millais. The three became entangled in a celebrated scandal in the 1850s when Effie opted out of her unconsummated five-year marriage to Ruskin and married Millais. The show, a long-running success off-Broadway, is having its West Coast premiere.

* “The Countess” by Gregory Murphy, South Coast Repertory Second Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays through Sundays, 7:45 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Preview tonight, regular performances begin Friday. $18-$47, with a pay-what-you-will show Saturday, 2 p.m. Through Dec. 3. (714) 708-5555.