Welcome to Theater News, a regular column by longtime reviewer Anita W. Harris. Look for it most Thursdays. Or sign up for our Eat. See. Do. newsletter to get it in your inbox.
Easing into summer doesn’t mean avoiding the brave and bold.
Local theaters are offering just that this month, including a prematurely aging girl in Long Beach Playhouse’s “Kimberly Akimbo,” a New Work Festival at Long Beach Shakespeare Company, The Garage Theatre’s horror parody “Elves 1989” and International City Theatre’s “The Revolutionists” — featuring four bold women from the French Revolution.
Though its 16-year-old protagonist suffers a rare medical condition causing her to age at four times the normal rate, “Kimberly Akimbo” is actually a hilariously funny story by David Lindsay-Abaire, whose play later inspired a musical (which this is not).
Running at the Long Beach Playhouse’s upstairs Studio Theatre from June 5 to July 3, the play centers on young Kimberly, inhabiting the physical body of an elderly woman while dealing with a crazy family.
“Not only is she facing her own mortality,” says the Playhouse, “her father is rarely sober, her mother is a pregnant hypochondriac, and her aunt is a con artist who ensnares Kimberly’s classmates in her crimes.”
Kimberly soon meets another “misfit” at school named Jeff, who likes wordplay. And despite her circumstances, Kimberly sees life as an adventure, says Playhouse executive director Madison Mooney.
“There is no sad ending,” Mooney says. “Kimberly doesn’t give up, she takes control of her life, and sets off on a road trip, like any normal teenager would do.”
The play is directed by Michael Hovance, who brought “A Doll’s House” to riveting life last year at Long Beach Shakespeare Company.
“In this show we see humanity,” says Playhouse artistic director Sean Gray. “For the good, the bad and the absurd.”
For “Kimberly Akimbo” tickets and showtimes at Long Beach Playhouse’s Studio Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., call the box office at 562-494-1014 or visit LBPlayhouse.org.
Meanwhile, Long Beach Shakespeare Company is continuing its New Works Festival this weekend on June 6 and 7 with four new plays — a fully-staged double-feature, a staged reading and a radio-style play.
Having experienced a reading of “A Wire in Mind” last month during the Festival’s first weekend, I was taken by the compelling nature of Michael J.M. Canas’ story — which blended AI and Alzheimer’s disease in innovative ways — as well as the reading performances, especially by Holly Leveque, the theater’s artistic director.
This weekend’s productions should prove to be similarly bold and moving.
In the fully staged “Life and Death in Cowboy Country” by Andrew Tyrell-Smith, a bounty hunter’s quarry is mortally wounded, giving the hunter an opportunity to talk to a dead man. And in the accompanying “The Deed” by Jessica Wienecke, a man has a permanent solution for a woman’s temporary problem.
A staged reading of “Reflections in a D’Back’s Eye” by Deanne Stillman explores gun violence in an unexpected way.
And a radio-style presentation of “Department – Episode 2: Anchor Store” by Christopher Bucca Taylor is “Mad Men” meets murder-mystery in a 1946 Chicago department store.
“This innovative production highlights the festival’s embrace of both traditional and experimental approaches to storytelling,” says Leveque.
For New Works Festival tickets and showtimes at the Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave., call the box office at 562-997-1494 or visit LBShakespeare.org.
Over at The Garage Theatre, it’s anti-Christmas in June with the bold new parody “Elves 1989” — a riff on Jeffrey Mandel’s campy 1989 horror film “Elves” — conceived by Rob Young, directed by Diana Kaufmann and running from June 12 to July 11.
“Sick of the holidays, crass commercialism and her lame job at the mall, Kirsten invites her two besties to perform a ritual to denounce Christmas,” the theater describes. “But their innocent ceremony in the woods accidentally awakens a deadly dark elf.”
With only the help of a department-store Santa, the young women must stop the elf and its elven army’s gruesome terror before they destroy Christmas — and the world.
The production contains foul language, depictions of abuse and violence, nudity and some potentially shocking or offensive scenes, the theater warns.
“Life can sometimes be like that,” it says.
For “Elves 1989” tickets and showtimes at The Garage Theatre, 251 E. Seventh St., visit TheGarageTheatre.org.
And last but not least in this month’s brave offerings, International City Theatre is staging Lauren Gunderson’s award-winning play “The Revolutionists” from June 12 to June 28 — a fast-paced comedy that finds humor even in the darkest of times.
“Four badass women — a playwright, an assassin, a spy and a queen — lose their heads (figuratively and literally) in this dream-tweaked version of the French Revolution,” the theater says.
Gunderson said she conceived the play while visiting a mausoleum in Paris and reading a footnote about a feminist playwright who was guillotined during the French Revolution.
“I did a cartoon-style double take and said ‘Wait. A feminist playwright? During the French Revolution? Guillotines?!’” Gunderson said. “It was a gradual exploration of that time and the striking similarities to our time in America: ridiculous war, drowning national debt, vast divide between rich and poor, institutional racism and the quest for women’s equality.”
But the play turned into a grander story about stories, she said — about why we need to make art, what art does in times of crisis and how stories connect eras and philosophies across time.
“This play is exactly what we need right now,” says caryn desai, the theater’s artistic director. “It’s a bold, irreverent — and very funny — exploration of the power of women to shape history.”
For tickets and showtimes for International City Theatre’s “The Revolutionists” at the Beverly O’Neill Theater, 330 E. Seaside Way, call the box office at 562-436-4610 or visit ICTLongBeach.org.