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.
Kicking off its 26th season, The Garage Theatre is staging “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” — Alexis Scheer’s dramatic comedy about four teen girls in a Florida treehouse in 2008 obsessed with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Directed by Skylar Alexis — making her directorial debut at the theater — the play sees the girls talking about school and boys in the privacy of their treehouse and, oh yeah, performing a séance to communicate with Escobar’s spirit, including animal sacrifice.
Alternately funny and gruesome, the play is notable for portraying a world exclusively of young women (except, of course, the drug lord’s pervasive spirit). It’s also reminiscent of Arthur Miller’s 1952 play “The Crucible,” about the 1690s Salem witch trials, when more than a dozen women were executed for “witchcraft” in early-American Puritan society.
The girls in “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” act subversively in a similarly patriarchal world. In the privacy of the treehouse, they can explore sex, death and the supernatural, with the dead drug lord’s ruthless and violent power contrasting their own feelings of disempowerment.
“But what happens when their idea of fun and games turns into something they never bargained for?” the theater asks. “No one said growing up as a girl would be easy.”
The theater adds an advisory that the play contains strong language, strobe effects, herbal cigarette smoke, depictions of drug use and mentions of self-harm, sexual assault, animal abuse, animal death and abortion.
The play is a “wild rollercoaster ride that blurs the lines between imagination and reality, girlhood and womanhood,” the theater says.
Director Alexis further adds, “With what is happening to our Latina/o communities across the country right now, we hope this show reminds you that you are seen and safe here at The Garage.”
“Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” continues through April 4 at The Garage Theatre, 251 E. Seventh St., Long Beach, with shows Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $23 to $40, with two-for-one tickets on Thursdays using code TWOFER. For tickets, visit TheGarageTheatre.org or purchase from the box office 30 minutes prior to each night’s performance.