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.
As October begins in relative coolness before the intensity of Halloween, here are some equally cool local theater happenings to celebrate its first weekend, ranging from plays to poetry to dance.
Two play productions are continuing this weekend. The chilling “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” at Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., dramatizes how good and evil alarmingly coexist in the same person.
And in its final weekend, “Predictor” at The Garage Theatre, 251 E. 7th St., tells in a rather psychedelic way about the forgotten woman who invented home pregnancy tests in the 1960s.
For showtimes and tickets, visit LBPlayhouse.org and TheGarageTheatre.org.
For something completely different in theaters, two options involving poetry, dance and art are happening this weekend only.
Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s third annual poetry weekend features spoken word, music and movement performances that “promise to be as daring as they are reverent,” according to the Bixby Knolls-based theater.
Festivities begin Friday, Oct. 3, at 6:30 p.m. as participants can stroll through Bixby Knolls to encounter “Poets on the Street” who type poems on demand for whatever you’d like to pay them.
Audiences can then head to the company’s Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave., at 7:30 p.m. for “The Playful Stage,” a pay-what-you-can improv performance.
On Saturday, Oct. 5, local poets will read their work at 2 p.m., followed at 8 p.m. by “Black Mosaic” — a celebration of Black history and culture curated by Dr. Melanie Curtis Andrews, cofounder and artistic director of the Inner City Shakespeare Ensemble, featuring spoken word, music and dance.
After being steeped in verse, you can try it out yourself during the theater’s open-mic poetry on Sunday, Oct. 5, at 2 p.m. And then settle back in that night at 8 p.m. to see the play “The Life and Undeath of Lucy Westenra,” a gothic retelling of “Dracula” by Cara Sanchez and directed by Linda Ravenswood.
“It’s a festival that asks audiences to consider how Shakespeare’s influence persists — not as a relic, but as a living spark,” Long Beach Shakespeare Company says of its poetry weekend. “Whether through verse tapped out on a typewriter, a dance tracing the arc of resilience or a play that reimagines Dracula’s hauntings, the work here is united by one throughline: art speaks across time.”
For tickets and information, visit LBShakespeare.org.
And at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 E. Atherton St., dance troupe Noche Flamenca is performing “Searching for Goya” on Saturday, Oct. 4, at 8 p.m.
Inspired by the work of Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, and with live music and vocals, “Searching for Goya” explores political upheaval, injustice and human contradiction through contemporary flamenco dance.
“Noche Flamenca fuses theatricality with raw emotion in a performance as striking as Goya’s art,” says the Carpenter Center.
For tickets and information, visit CarpenterArts.org.
Any or all of the above sound like treats to begin October!