BEST BETS Thursday 4/12

COSTA MESA

8pm

Music

Richard Strauss’ “Don Quixote” is a colorful tone poem in which a solo cello depicts Cervantes’ Knight of the Rueful Countenance in his varied ventures and encounters. A solo viola portrays Sancho Panza. Pacific Symphony principal cellist Timothy Landauer and principal violist Robert Becker play the work on a program that also will include Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto Andaluz,” with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Robert Xavier Rodriguez’s “Hot Buttered Rumba” and Emmanuel Chabrier’s “Espana.” Carl St.Clair conducts.

* Pacific Symphony, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. $19 to $52. (714) 556-2787.

IRVINE

8pm

Theater

Big Daddy is dying, his favorite son, Brick, is boozing himself into oblivion, and the grasping other son, Gooper, is maneuvering with his wife to take over the family’s vast Mississippi plantation. Maggie the Cat, Brick’s wife and the indomitable life force and title character of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” is not going to go down without a fight. Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor and Burl Ives starred in the 1958 film version of Williams’ play; now students in the drama department at UC Irvine are having a go at it.

* “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” UC Irvine’s Little Theatre, West Peltason Drive and Mesa Road. Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; matinee Saturday, 2 p.m. $8. (949) 824-2787.