BEST BETS Friday 10/12

8pm

Pop Music

Keola Beamer, who stops in Santa Ana, is one of the leading practitioners of the art of Hawaiian slack-key guitar, which isn’t a type of instrument but a way of tuning. He’s no rigid traditionalist, having been raised on rock ‘n’ roll and known for merging old and new approaches to island music. His latest release is the autobiographical-leaning “Island Born” album, which came out in February. Beamer’s performance will be accompanied by the screening of a new documentary film, “Waikiki, In the Wake of Dreams.”

* Santa Ana Performing Arts & Events Center, 505 N. Sycamore St. 8 p.m. $25 advance, $30 at the door. (714) 550-0040.

8pm

Pop Music

James Taylor got his career rolling 30 years ago with “Fire and Rain” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” songs that offered gentle reassurance when the nation was suffering from the wounds inflicted by the Vietnam War. Expect to see lots of boomers with kids in tow when Sweet Baby James returns to Orange County at a time when people across the country seek that same kind of comfort.

* James Taylor, Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. 8 p.m. $25 to $65. (949) 855-8096.

8 pm

Theater

South Coast Repertory has done more productions of Harold Pinter plays--10--than those of any living playwright. The current one, “The Homecoming,” is often rated as the most perfect example of the British author’s trademark elusiveness of meaning and ambience of dread punctuated by bursts of violence and humor. It concerns a curdled working-class family in London, where the oldest son, having escaped to make good as a philosophy professor in America, returns to his familial den of wolves like a lamb to the slaughter.

* “The Homecoming,” South Coast Repertory’s Mainstage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Previews begin tonight, regular performances Oct. 19. Ends Nov. 18. $19 to $52, with pay-what-you-will matinee Oct. 20. (714) 708-5555.