BEST BETS Friday 5/11

COSTA MESA

8pm

Dance

“La Bayadere” is the last ballet Rudolf Nureyev choreographed for the Paris Opera Ballet, when he was its artistic director, from 1983 until 1989. It was his last big project before his death in 1993. Set in a mythical India viewed hazily through the lens of 19th century Parisian imagination, the ballet tells the story of love betrayed and lost, only to be found in other-worldly dreams. Different dancers will appear in the principal roles today through Sunday.

* Paris Opera Ballet, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. Also Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. $20 to $85. (714) 556-2787.

FULLERTON

8pm

Theater

Forty-five years ago this week, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews were starring together on Broadway as Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, two months into the original run of “My Fair Lady.” Musical theater fans found the Alan J. Lerner/Frederick Loewe adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” just loverly then, and so it has been ever since for a show whose score consists of a virtually uninterrupted string of standards, including “The Rain in Spain,” “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” and “I Could Have Danced All Night.”

* “My Fair Lady,” presented by the Fullerton Civic Light Opera at Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave. Opens tonight. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Also May 19, 2 p.m.; May 20, 7 p.m. $15 to $36. (714) 879-1732 or (714) 879-1733.