Caesars stockholders approve $6 billion merger with Fertitta

• September 23, 2026

By JESSICA HILL

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Caesars Entertainment shareholders have approved a multibillion-dollar merger with Fertitta Gaming that would create one of the largest gaming empires.

Caesars has a dominant presence on the Las Vegas Strip, operating hotels like Caesars Palace, the Flamingo and Harrah’s. It also operates casino resorts across the United States.

Fertitta owns Las Vegas’ Golden Nugget and restaurant chains like Rainforest Cafe and Morton’s. Billionaire owner Tilman Fertitta is the largest shareholder in Wynn Resorts and the sports betting company DraftKings. Fertitta stepped back from his role as president and director of his company following his April 2025 confirmation as U.S. ambassador to Italy and San Marino.

Tuesday’s vote took place in Reno, Nevada, with over 133 million votes in favor of the merger and 4 million votes against, according to a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The merger was first announced in May, with Fertitta agreeing to pay $5.7 billion and take on close to $12 billion in debt from Caesars, putting the total value of the deal at about $17.6 billion.

Caesars and Fertitta still must complete the federal antitrust review process. If it goes through, Caesars will become a privately-held company. Its shareholders will get $31 in cash for each share they own.

​ Orange County Register 

Hilary Duff extends The Lucky Me Tour with Honda Center stop

• September 23, 2026

Hilary Duff is extending her The Lucky Me Tour into 2027, with the newly announced run ending in Southern California.

The singer and actress will perform at Honda Center in Anaheim on Saturday, Nov. 20, 2027, as part of 32 additional dates across Europe, Latin America and the United States.

The expanded tour begins May 7 in Madrid before making stops in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Duff will then head to Latin America for shows in San Juan, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Santiago before returning to the U.S. in the fall.

The new U.S. leg kicks off Oct. 1 in Sunrise, Florida, and travels through cities including Orlando, Raleigh, Baltimore, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Milwaukee and Denver before wrapping with the Anaheim show. Dashboard Confessional and Tegan and Sara will join Duff on select U.S. dates, with Tegan and Sara hopping on board for the Anaheim date.

The additional dates follow Duff’s recent run of shows in the United Kingdom, which concluded with her second sold-out performance at The O2 in London. During the encore of “What Dreams Are Made Of,” the singer teased the expansion with confetti reading “2027 More Dates Loading” and a countdown that appeared onstage and on her website.

Tickets for the U.S. dates will first become available through Citi and Verizon presales beginning at 10 a.m. Monday, Sept. 28. An artist presale follows at noon Tuesday, Sept. 29. Fans must register for the artist presale by Sunday, Sept. 27 at livenation.com/hilaryduff. Additional presales will take place throughout the week before tickets go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. Friday, Oct. 2.

​ Orange County Register 

Video: Week 5 football predictions from OCVarsity’s Steve Fryer and Dan Albano

• September 23, 2026

Dan Albano and Steve Fryer talk about the top high school football games in Orange County on this week’s “OCVarsity Gridiron” video.

Albano and Fryer analyze the top games in Week 5 of the season and make their predictions.

They discuss these games: Trabuco Hills vs. El Modena, Servite vs. Damien, San Clemente vs. Murrieta Valley, Laguna Hills vs. St. Margaret’s and Summit vs. Edison.

Orange County football Top 25: Huntington Beach moves into Top 10

Orange County high school football schedule for Week 5, Sept. 24-26

​ Orange County Register 

22 new books coming in October 2026 to add to your reading list

• September 23, 2026

In some long-ago October, I can vaguely recall a house that gave out books for Halloween one year instead of candy, a substitution only slightly better received than, say, a toothbrush or a single Brussels sprout.

However, for me, I would have happily traded a few sleeves of Smarties or a stale Charleston Chew for the chance to stuff a good book into my pillowcase. “Just take one,” I imagine this ghoulishly literate parent saying as I reached into a bowl and pulled out a copy of “The Collected Stories” by William Trevor or an orange and black snack pack of Penguin Classics.

A boy can dream, right?

Well, your dreams – fine, my dreams – have come true this October because you can enjoy your Halloween treats in book form by reading on for some of the best titles coming out this month, a mix of novels and nonfiction, major publishers and independents, tasty tartness or full of nuts.

However, if this list of essential reading is the kind Victorian Dr. Jekyll, my creepy colleague and all-round spooky spectral creature of the dark, Sarah Batcha (whose very name harbors a hidden bat!), has created the Mr. Hyde version of this month’s new release list: She’s got 31 ghostastic, spooktacular novels that delve into the darkest, dankest depths of your consciousness. Be afraid of how much you’ll love the list.

So do you head toward the light (or lighter) lit list, or do you explore the cobweb-covered passage into the dark and scary books? Here’s the thing: You don’t have to choose. Check out these 22 here and then head over to get her 31 books perfect for Halloween and scaring yourself silly.

And if you happen to find a cache of long-discontinued Marathon bars, let me know and I’ll be right over.

31 horror novels and scary books for Halloween coming out this October

Oct. 6

“We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg” by Franny Choi (Ecco)

This debut book of essays by the author of the poetry collection “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On” digs into science fiction tropes involving Asian women and cyborgs, as well as explores AI, chatbots, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” and Choi’s own family history in South Korea and the U.S.

“Dark Reading Matter” by Jasper Fforde (Soho Press)

Twenty-five years after Fforde’s first Thursday Next novel, “The Eyre Affair,” the series returns with what’s reported to be the eighth and final adventure of the literary detective who must battle a bad batch of Martians who bust out from an H.G. Wells novel.

“The Occidental Book of the Dead” by T. Geronimo Johnson (Morrow)

In a sprawling narrative centered around a 1992 police shooting in Atlanta, the novel employs a unique structure to tell the story of a Black Army veteran turned police officer whose life begins to shatter in the aftermath of a murder. “Welcome to Braggsville” author Johnson explores corruption, racism, systemic inequality and more in the book, which concludes his cycle of novels set in and around the city.

“Mothsblood” by Lynn D. Jung (Bloomsbury)

A writer from Southern California, Jung offers a dose of dark academia for her debut novel. In “Mothsblood,” the headmistress of a Paris university is found dead, and a young alchemist and a competitive cohort of students are pulled into the case as the murder investigator believes a secretive cult may be responsible.

“Partita” by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper)

In her first novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Demon Copperhead,” Kingsolver returns with a story about a woman whose quiet life is disrupted when a former lover, with whom she had an affair during her days studying at a music conservatory, calls after decades of silence.

“Agate Head / Stone Soup” by Patricia Lockwood (Penguin Books)

Lockwood, one of our funniest and most original voices, is back with a new book of poetry after her memoir “Priestdaddy” and novels such as the Booker Prize finalist “No One Is Talking About This.” “Carlsbad California,” a poem included here, finds the poet collecting treasures on the San Diego County beach while reflecting on a constellation of deeper concerns.

“What Remains” by Brais Lamela; translated by Jacob Rogers (Dorothy, A Publishing Project)

We’re always interested in books from Dorothy, A Publishing Project – named after a badass San Bernardino County librarian who drove around Southern California delivering books – and this slim, translated debut melds fiction, memoir, essay and more to tell the story of a Galician scholar in New York City who’s researching the displacement of the Galicians from Spain under Franco’s rule.

“Fair Ones” by Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton)

One of our most consistently compelling writers in book after book, Millet returns here with a novel about two women who each narrate a section about the sudden death of a mutual friend and its fallout.

“The Rush” by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)

The National Book Award-winning historian of “In the Heart of the Sea” returns with a page-turning look at the fevered times of the California Gold Rush. Philbrick evokes a swirling chaos that envelopes gold-crazy arrivals, grasping politicians, Indigenous populations, boom-and-bust millionaires, lawless mobs, Chinese railroad workers, as well as those aiming to employ California’s influence upon the looming Civil War.

8 new bookstores in Southern California that opened in 2026

“Life Out of Order” by Audrey Niffenegger (Hanover Square)

For fans of Niffenegger’s massive hit, “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” the arrival of a new novel is something to celebrate – especially as this stand-alone has links to that earlier novel. Here, Alba, daughter of the original time traveler, navigates a dystopian future Chicago as she slips through time.

“The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford” by Nafissa Thompson-Spires (Scribner)

In this debut novel from the National Book Award-longlisted author of the story collection “Heads of the Colored People,” a womanizing moonshiner is murdered in 1920s Oklahoma and four of the women he’d been involved with are suspects even as the story encompasses much more about life in these times.

“The Savage Mind: An American Legacy” by David Treuer (Little, Brown)

In his follow-up to “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present,” Treuer, who is Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and a professor at USC, melds memoir, history and recent headlines in a work addressed to his children about the nation and the way we are.

“The Names of the New World” by Kawai Strong Washburn (FSG)

After a superstorm ravages Minneapolis, the lives of three survivors become entwined in its wake. Washburn’s second novel follows a crusading lawyer (and amateur MMA fighter), an avaricious investment banker and a mechanic trying to keep his business afloat after nearly being paralyzed in the storm.

Oct 13

“Peck & Peck” by Bonnie Garmus (Scribner)

Riverside native Garmus synthesized an extremely successful formula with 2022’s “Lessons in Chemistry,” and here she returns with her follow-up, which is set in 1980s New York City within the fiery confines of a very unusual poetry journal run by a pair of battling twins.

“Unspeakable Things” by Elizabeth Hand (Little, Brown)

We’re fans of Hand’s writing, especially her Cass Neary novels about a punkish onetime photographer drawn into some dark places. Set in the 1920s, her latest involves two young women on the run after a mysterious death who end up at an estate in the company of London’s high-living Bright Young Things.

“Music Against the Night” by Yiyun Li. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “Things in Nature Merely Grow” returns with a novel about two musical prodigies, one whose family hopes he’ll be the next Mozart and the other an orphan in French India, at the dawn of the 19th century.

“Pan” by Francesco Dimitri and translated by Sophia McDougall (Tor Books)

If the idea of “Peter Pan … but darker” gets your inner Wild Boy or Girl excited, then you’ll be interested in this bloody retelling set in modern-day Rome amid mythic clashes between deities, pirates and more.

Map: 100 Southern California independent bookstores to visit in 2026

Oct. 20

“The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City” by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)

After the success of “Piranesi,” Clarke returns to the world of her brilliant “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,” which should be a cause for exultation. This new novella tells the story of Ranulf, Bishop of Durham, as he attempts to save his city during a period of discord between humans, fairies and, um, trees.

“Sleuth-Hound” by Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris (FSG)

In this book that combines true crime and historical nonfiction, the author of “The Butchering Art” reveals the story of Joseph Bell, the 19th-century physician and pioneering forensic expert who inspired the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

Oct. 27

“The Hollow” by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)

Connelly, the towering crime-writing bard of Los Angeles and Southern California, returns with a fresh Bosch novel … and you have already stopped reading and gone to pre-order it, haven’t you? Good move.

“The Brightness” by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown)

Fifteen years after Harbach’s baseball novel, “The Art of Fielding,” the author returns with a novel about the friendship of two young women at a Midwestern college as they hurtle headfirst into their twenties and the bumps and bruises of life.

“A Court of Splintered Harmony” by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury)

Look, either you’re already camped out in front of your local independent bookstore for this one or you’re going to need to get reading to catch up as book six of Maas’ mega-popular series arrives on the shelves.

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​ Orange County Register 

Trump’s Board of Peace proposes $2.45 billion blueprint to begin Gaza reconstruction

• September 23, 2026

By MATTHEW LEE, AP Diplomatic Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S.-backed Board of Peace is proposing a six-month, $2.45 billion plan to begin reconstruction and governance in Gaza as President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan struggles to stay afloat.

At a meeting of the group’s board in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, the governors unveiled a 66-project blueprint to get things started while acknowledging enormous hurdles that must still be overcome. The projects include ambitious infrastructure, education and health initiatives that are designed to support Trump’s 20-point plan to end the Israel-Hamas war.

“The need is immense,” the board said, noting that full reconstruction from the physical damage across Gaza will cost roughly $35.2 billion over the medium term and another $71.4 billion in the next 10 years.

The proposal is largely aimed at potential donors who will be asked to foot the bill for reconstruction of the war-devastated territory.

The ceasefire, which took effect on Oct. 10, was meant to clear the way for a broader process to rebuild Gaza under the guidance of the Board of Peace. The plan included additional Israeli military withdrawals from Gaza, the disarmament of Hamas, the arrival of an international peacekeeping force and a new apolitical Palestinian government to administer the territory’s day-to-day affairs. It also envisioned an ambitious program for rebuilding war-ravaged Gaza.

But the U.S.-backed plan has largely stalled. While the ceasefire halted the heaviest fighting and humanitarian conditions have improved, the Israeli military has expanded its control of Gaza and now occupies some 60% of the territory. Hamas has not given up its weapons. The international military force and new government still have not entered Gaza, and reconstruction has not begun. The vast majority of Palestinians continue to live in tent camps or ruins of their former homes.

The board’s high representative, Nikolay Mladenov, has said progress hinges largely on Hamas disarming — a step the group has refused to take. But he also has pressed Israel to scale back its military operation.

“I want to be very clear that we are not bound by a calendar,” he said. “We want to make sure that this works.”

Key questions that the board faces are not only laying out plans for reconstruction but also a timeline for the deployment of the international force meant to provide security in the territory and a new government, plans to disarm Hamas, and bringing in badly needed building materials.

U.S. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, commander of the international stabilization force planned for Gaza, outlined a five-step approach to dealing with the thorny issue of demilitarizing Hamas. It begins with the first wave of the multinational unit being deployed with troops from Kosovo and Morocco, to be followed by additional personnel from Albania and Kazakhstan.

Their task will be to demilitarize the territory and decommission all of Hamas’ military infrastructure.

The goal, he said, is to gradually turn security control over to the interim government, after which Israel will be expected to withdraw its forces.

Associated Press writers Josef Federman and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Ben Finley in Washington contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Republicans say Democrats are extremists. These Democrats want to convince voters that’s not true

• September 23, 2026

By MEG KINNARD

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — As Democrats try to take back control of Congress, they’re trying a familiar tactic to win over voters in conservative areas — they’re criticizing their own party.

They’re complaining about former President Joe Biden, promising to work with President Donald Trump to secure the border, insisting they’ll never defund the police and criticizing democratic socialists as too extreme.

Taking shots at the left is one way that Democrats are trying to distance themselves from their party’s tarnished brand. It’s also a reflection of how the midterms are increasingly playing out in red states. Although progressives notched notable wins in Democratic primaries this year, the path to a majority in the House and the Senate runs through places where Trump won two years ago, such as North Carolina, Alaska, Kansas and Iowa.

“You need to own values that are where the center of the party is,” said Adam Frisch, the finance director for Welcome PAC, which tries to boost Democrats in Republican-leaning districts. He previously ran twice for Congress in Colorado.

North Carolina’s Cooper boasts of bipartisanship

Known for forging compromise with the Republican-led legislature during his two terms as governor, Roy Cooper argues in his Senate campaign that Democrats should be willing to do the same in Congress.

Cooper also served as state attorney general, and one of his ads says he “toughened bail laws, went after drug dealers pushing fentanyl and said, ‘No way do we defund the police.’” Another says Cooper “bucked his own party to oppose defunding the police” and “partnered” with the Republican president to crack down on drugs.

Conservatives and allies of Republican nominee Michael Whatley, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, have tried to link Cooper to national progressive figures like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

When Cooper entered the race more than a year ago, the Senate Leadership Fund — a Republican super PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune — swiftly attacked him by saying he “masquerades as a moderate” but is ”just another radical, D.C. liberal in disguise.”

Earlier this month, Cooper explained a bit of his strategy to CNN, saying that he felt that “there are enough people who are skeptical of national Democrats” in North Carolina, a factor he cited in the state’s tendency to elect Democrats to statewide offices more often than its congressional offices.

Alaska’s Peltola and Iowa’s Turek want distance from national Democrats

In Alaska, former Rep. Mary Peltola has tried to steer the same centrist path as in her House campaigns, reviving her “fish, family, freedom” slogan and expressing support for Second Amendment rights and border security — two issues that traditionally resonate with more conservative voters.

“I’ll take on anyone, including Democrats, anyone in the Lower 48 who doesn’t understand what Alaska needs,” she said in one campaign advertisement that mentioned her support for the massive Willow oil project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope that was opposed by environmentalists. “When both parties are attacking you, you’re doing something right.”

Peltola’s tone hasn’t kept incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan from seeking to align Peltola with “D.C. Democrats,” as well as characterizing her as ineffective during her time in Congress.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Democratic nominee Josh Turek has emphasized his commitment to bipartisanship, highlighting hundreds of times he voted with Republicans as a state legislator. He represented a district won by Trump, and he leaned on that experience in this year’s Senate race as evidence that he could appeal to independent and moderate Republican voters in November.

As he vies with Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, Turek is also running an ad decrying the U.S.’ “broken immigration system,” saying, “I’ll work with anyone to fix it, including President Trump.”

After Turek won the nomination, Hinson told delegates at Republicans’ state convention that he was “masquerading as a moderate,” calling her opponent “a far-left fraud.”

Hamilton says Kansas is very distant from Washington’s ‘extreme politics’

Pastor of a Kansas megachurch, Democratic Senate nominee Adam Hamilton describes himself as a centrist, running partly on “bringing people together” and noting that his congregation is nearly evenly split among Democrats, Republicans and independents.

That’s the tenor Hamilton has brought to his campaign against Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, running ads noting that Kansas is “proud of being in the middle politically” and “about a million miles away from the extreme politics of Washington that are tearing us apart and driving up prices.”

“On one side, the far left pushes socialism and open borders,” he said. “On the other side, Roger Marshall gives us higher gas and grocery prices, while slashing our healthcare.”

In a debate earlier this month at the Kansas state fair, Hamilton also wasn’t shy to blame Biden for immigration problems while also criticizing Trump’s policies.

“Immigration at the border under Biden was a disaster,” Hamilton said. “That is how we ended up where we are today.”

Marshall has said Hamilton is “too woke for Kansas.”

Sand decries parties as ‘two private clubs’ in Iowa governor’s race

It’s not just Senate contests in which Democratic candidates are seeking to chart a new course.

Back in Iowa — where Democrats see an opportunity to win in a once-competitive state, with high costs, manufacturing job losses and a struggling agricultural economy weighing on voters — Democrat Rob Sand says he can win over independents and Republicans frustrated with party politics.

Central to his campaign message is the premise that America’s political system is broken “largely because it’s run by two private clubs” — the two major parties — “the well fed versus the fed up.”

Republican nominee Zach Lahn has said Sand’s critique of his own party isn’t genuine. Appearing on the “Ruthless” podcast this summer, he said that Democrats “are realizing that their ideas don’t sell” and ”have to pretend to be somebody they’re not.”

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

​ Orange County Register 

Alt-rockers The Calling return with a new album decades after massive hit

• September 23, 2026

Following a yearslong hiatus, which was partially due to the lead singer’s life-threatening medical diagnosis, alt-rockers The Calling are back with a new album and a record release show in Malibu. And for the band’s co-founder, the new music is considered a comeback record as well as a continuation of where The Calling left off before the lengthy hiatus.

“It is a comeback because obviously for me I didn’t even know I would be alive or able to do this now,” said Alex Band, The Calling’s co-founder and lead singer. “It’s the story of my life. It’s an incredibly emotional record and the fact that it’s coming out is a dream of mine that I didn’t think would ever happen,” he said.

The new album, “Before The World Turns to Dust,” which is The Calling’s third studio album, is set to be released Sept. 25 and the band will mark the occasion with a show at Dreamland, an intimate live music venue in Malibu. It’s the first full-length album since 2004’s “Two,” coming 25 years after the group’s 2001 platinum-selling debut, “Camino Palmero.”

The new 15-track pop-rock record features the band’s familiar soaring melodies and anthemic uplifting rock-pop songs.

“Sonically it’s going to feel very comfortable for people who know The Calling stuff. I fought really hard to keep it sounding like that so this record sounds like what the third The Calling record would be,” Band said.

Music comes calling

Formed in 1996 in Los Angeles, The Calling found massive worldwide success with the anthemic hit “Wherever You Will Go,” from the debut album “Camino Palmero.”

Written by Band when he was 15 years old, the breakout hit reached the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, spent 23 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Pop Airplay chart, was named Billboard’s No. 1 Adult Pop Song of the Decade, and has surpassed 1 billion streams on Spotify.

“It was so overwhelming, all of that happening. I don’t think I was thinking about anything but to make it to the next day,” Band said. “But it was amazing once everything started blowing up. Nobody thought that song was going to do very well. It was all a surprise and once it became a hit I had no idea it would continue to be such an important song,” he added.

The Calling’s second studio album didn’t have the same impact as its debut offering, although it did include the hit “Our Lives,” which was included in the closing ceremonies of the 2004 Olympics and was the opening song for the 2006 Academy Awards.

But the musicians faced some serious challenges thanks to label and industry complications that halted their rise. Band eventually released a solo album in 2010, but not long after that he received a devastating Parkinson’s diagnosis and spent the next seven years struggling to regain his motor skills. He had to use a wheelchair to get around for about eight months, the lead singer recalled.

“That ended everything basically. That was the end of it all,” Band said.

But in 2018 his condition started to dramatically improve and in hindsight Band thinks he may have been misdiagnosed. Regardless, his health improvement allowed him to turn his attention back to The Calling.

“It was basically a new lease on life. I was kind given a go pass again to finally get back to making music. I’ve been wanting to put this record out for 20 years,” he said.

For tickets to the record release party, go to thecallingmusic.com

​ Orange County Register 

Review: Modern dating gets a Shakespearean spin in new Chance Theater show

• September 23, 2026

A sex comedy, or its polite equivalent, the “bedroom farce,” isn’t typical Chance Theater programming. But a play investigating relationship needs and choices, self-worth and other bewilderments among the young certainly is on the Anaheim theater’s bingo card.

And so Keiko Green’s “The Bed Trick” makes quite good sense on this stage.

The periodically engaging, and, at one point, riotously funny two-act comedy strains a tad at its seams with an overabundance of thematic energies.

But through H. Adam Harris’ polished direction, the ultimate takeaway is a showcase for the playwright’s probing intelligence.

First, the title. As one of the play’s characters explains A “bed trick” is a plot twist device notably known from the early 1600s in two Shakespeare comedies, “All’s Well That Ends Well” and “Measure for Measure.”

A “bed trick” is a planned connivance involving mistaken identity, a substitute replacing an expected partner during an intimate encounter.

Shakespeare didn’t create it. Originating in early Greek tragedy, a bed trick unexpectedly appears in the start of the Bible, Genesis 29: 21-25 to be exact. (Google “bed, Jacob, Leah, Rachel”)

In olden times, this subterfuge occurred under the covers and in the cover of darkness.

But in Green’s play, it’s contemporary sources for emotional hoodwinking — online dating apps — plus plenty of old-fashioned lying, driving the deception.

The setting is a college dorm, and the focus is on the hyperactive interactions among three freshmen female roommates.

Two of them, Marianne and Lulu, are friends and the third, Harriet, overtly wants to be friendly.

But Marianne and Lulu find Harriet too different since the besotted theater nerd/actress is quite capable in the moment of using stuffed animals to stage a mounting in the dorm room of “All’s Well That Ends Well.”

And anyhow, the other two young women are preoccupied with scratching the distracting itch of their formative sex lives.

Marianne is turning 18 and wondering if she will gift herself with the loss of virginity, though with whom is a secondary concern.

Lulu is further along this path, now obsessed with exactly where she stands with an occasional hook-up named Willis, the friend she has discovered has opened a separate dating profile describing himself as “open” to other possibilities.

What ensues are frantic and fumbled online tactics between the two pals, clandestine texting and talking to Willis, with Harriet the unknowing participant in the fallout.

No further spoilers from here on.

Character conniptions aside, Green probes current boundaries of sexual consent and agency as well as using Harriet’s preoccupation with “All’s Well That Ends Well” as a sounding board to understand the dynamics of intimacy and power between things then and life now.

The three actresses channel the passions written into the roles effectively, with each taking them to a next step.

As Harriet, Sophia Blake’s earnest declarations come from within, and feel earned. In a note to directors, Green says an ideal Harriet has “chaotic energy that overwhelmed creative people have” and Blake fires those sparks well.

Mae Linh Young is recognizable as Marianne, a callow college freshman who is newly 18. Young’s performance peels back layers, both revealing capabilities for manipulating others, then also taking refuge in vulnerability when the situation blows up.

Zoe Hertzberg’s range through Lulu’s tough veneer and vulnerable interior, the dorm room’s chief schemer, is an interesting progression to watch. Her early take-no-prisoners confidence disintegrates when she realizes she is not controlling emotional events and the actress lets us see the insecurities which have been inside all along.

Though creatively engrossing as the work moves along, there are couple of challenges to sustain the audience’s attention.

Green introduces a distracting side plot involving Marianne’s divorced parents Benny and Anna who are struggling to find out how the mores of today’s intimacies fit them.

The revelation that their daughter’s conception took place in a similar bed trick situation feels convenient and forced.

Though well-acted by Karen O’Hanlon and Eric Dylan Matibag, these roles aren’t fully developed. The former couple’s value is for ultimately acting as referees in sorting out the main plot resolution among the younger people.

Additionally, Green saddles the work with slightly stodgy opening and closing monologues which Harriet, breaking the fourth wall, earnestly addresses to the audience.

An overly lengthy “warning: sexual content ahead” declaration opens the performance.

But a more interesting epilogue includes a very Shakespearean apologia: “…We’re sorry we’re presenting you more questions/But we hope that in all of this chaos/you found something worthwhile anyway.”

Quite worthwhile. And no apologies necessary.

‘The Bed Trick’

Rating: 3 stars (out of four possible)

When: Through Oct. 4. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

Where: Chance Theater, Cripe Stage, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim

Tickets: $48-$96

Information: 888-455-4212; chancetheater.com

​ Orange County Register