Long Beach theaters are on a roll. The Long Beach Playhouse is staging “Reefer Madness: The Musical” beginning this weekend in its Studio Theatre, while the creepy “Night of the Living Dead” continues on its downstairs Mainstage Theater.
And Long Beach Shakespeare Company is joining that Halloween spirit this weekend with two eerie radio plays featuring stories by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe.
“Reefer Madness: The Musical” takes a 1936 public-service film called “Reefer Madness” about the dangers of marijuana to America’s wholesome youth and flips it on its head in a theatrically hysterical way.
This satirical spoof of that film —with its story and lyrics by Kevin Murphy and music by Dan Studney, first produced in Los Angeles in 1998 — features clean-cut teenagers in 1936 lured into a den of drug-dealers, fully realizing the film’s purported “dangers” of marijuana in an over-the-top way.
Teens Jimmy and Mary quickly lose their minds and become hallucinatory and addicted after first trying the drug, soon succumbing to the licentiousness of music, sex and criminal behaviors that spiral out of control.
Songs include “Jimmy Takes a Hit/The Orgy,” “Mary Jane/Mary Lane” and “The Brownie Song.”
Sean Gray, the Playhouse’s artistic director, said in a statement that the 1936 movie isn’t only about the dangers of marijuana, but has a racist subtext targeting Black musicians and Mexicans.
Though the film doesn’t depict people of color, cannabis use at the time was prejudicially associated with Mexican immigrants and jazz musicians.
The film — originally titled “Tell Your Children” — begins with a foreword calling marijuana a “violent narcotic” and a danger to youth, causing hallucinations and lack of control over physical impulses leading to “incurable insanity.”
The film was recut in 1938 with additional salacious scenes and released in movie houses as an exploitation feature depicting marijuana use. By labeling it “educational,” distributors skirted the 1934 Hays Code, which prohibited depictions of drug use in films.
Madison Mooney, the Playhouse’s executive director, said the satirical musical is “brilliantly funny” and celebrates theater through its critique of mass hysteria.
“Reefer Madness: The Musical” runs Oct. 10 to Nov. 15 at the Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., with shows Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., plus two lower-priced previews on Thursday, Oct. 8 and Friday, Oct. 9. For tickets and information, call the box office at 562-494-1014 or visit LBPlayhouse.org.
If it’s October, it’s spooky radio-show season at the Helen Borgers Theatre. The Long Beach Shakespeare Company starts its radio series this weekend with a double feature of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Ray Bradbury’s “Zero Hour” performed as 1940s-style radio plays.
The shows feature actors in 1940s attire reading dialogue and making their own sound effects for the stories in the KBRD radio studio inside the theater.
Poe’s 1843 short story has a narrator meticulously describing how he killed his employer and buried him beneath the floor — only to be caught off guard when he hears the man’s heart beating.
In Bradbury’s chilling 1947 “Zero Hour”, a young girl and other children play a game called “Invasion,” coordinated by an otherworldly friend. The adults think it is meaningless — until it isn’t.
The double feature of radio plays will perform Friday, Oct. 9 at 8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 10 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 11 at 2 p.m.
The radio-play series continues the following weekend with “Frankenstein” from Oct. 16 to 18, bringing Mary Shelley’s iconic 1818 novel to life.
The story depicts scientist Victor Frankenstein creating a living “monster” in his laboratory, whom he rejects in horror, causing the creature to take revenge, but also search for belonging out in the world.
The series culminates the weekend before Halloween with the theater’s traditional “War of the Worlds” radio show from Oct. 23 to 25, which it has presented annually since 2002.
Actors perform Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells’ novel, which caused real-life panic over a martian invasion due to its “breaking news” format on the radio.
Having experienced “War of the Worlds” at the theater myself, I can tell you it is surprisingly suspenseful and unnerving thanks to the company’s expert deliveries and sound effects — a perfect prelude to Halloween.
For tickets to all October radio shows at the Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave., visit LBShakespeare.org. Tickets are $21.50, including fees.