{"id":105401,"date":"2025-12-22T22:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T22:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/105401\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T22:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T22:00:10","slug":"best-of-long-beach-theatre-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/105401\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of Long Beach Theatre, 2025 –"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Set<\/a>From a scene in The Library of Maps. File photo <\/p>\n

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Why didn\u2019t we think of this before?! People love lists, right?<\/p>\n

In 2025, I saw 20 theatrical works in the LBC and\/or by Long Beach-based companies, and more often than not I came away at least reasonably satisfied. But there were five clear standouts. So, without further ado, in chronological order\u2026:<\/p>\n

Into the Woods \u2014 Musical Theatre West<\/a><\/p>\n

When you do Sondheim, you\u2019re cooking with gas \u2014 but that shit can blow up in your face if you don\u2019t have the talent necessary to bring out all the flavorful genius of one of musical theatre\u2019s most demanding doyens. The Musical Theatre West peeps are pros, though. Act One was great fun (\u201cAgony\u201d in particular); but Act Two, where 70% of the show\u2019s brilliance and the better part of its great music resides, was arresting. If you saw only the rondo of recrimination \u201cYour Fault\u201d, you\u2019d know that this was an ensemble without a weak point. And the finale, \u201cChildren Will Listen\u201d, had all the oomph it needed to serve as the capstone of a magnificent edifice. Even with a couple of directorial choices that missed the mark, this April show was easily the best thing that had been staged in Long Beach to that point in 2025 and set a bar high for the rest of the year.\"Image0\"From Musical Theatre West\u2019s Into the Woods. File Photo<\/p>\n

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The Library of Maps \u2014 Long Beach Opera<\/a><\/p>\n

After their December 2024 one-off opener<\/a> of a season dedicated solely to the \u201csonic meditations\u201d of Pauline Oliveros, I thought Long Beach Opera\u2019s year would be a complete bust for me. Seventy minutes of minimalist improv while sitting in a room full of shredded newspaper is not my idea of a great performance (though the newspaper bit was more thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing than it sounds). I liked their more ambitious March offering better<\/a> \u2014 the site specificity, exploiting the entire grounds of L.A.\u2019s Heritage Square Museum, was a real treat \u2014 but aleatory music doesn\u2019t generally turn me on. Then, however, came May\u2019s The Library of Maps: An Opera in Many Parts, performed just twice in the Queen\u2019s Salon aboard the Queen Mary. Maybe I can\u2019t say it\u2019s the best thing LBO has ever done, but they\u2019ve never given me a more pleasurable experience. Though inspired by Oliveros and drawing upon a small sampling of the two-dozen poems loosely comprising the libretto for her opera-concept, director\/producer James Darrah and musical director Christopher Rountree helmed an original creation (\u201cNo score exists for the piece,\u201d I was told, \u201cno musical sketches\u201d) of largely improvised music that never seemed to meander, with all eight performers exercising a discipline that unfailingly served the moment and the whole. The skeleton of a plot \u2014 we\u2019re on a ship at sea, where the captain has just died and a new mapmaker has been born unto a library that contains all the maps in the universe; passengers and crew drift across the sea of time on a voyage without a fixed destination \u2014 mattered far less than the immersive gorgeousness of the music and mise en sc\u00e8ne. As soon as it was over, I wanted them to perform the whole thing again. Wow.<\/p>\n

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A Doll\u2019s House \u2014 Long Beach Shakespeare Company<\/a><\/p>\n

I gave up on Long Beach Shakespeare Co. years ago \u2014 not because they were ever bad, but I simply found myself writing more or less the same review every time \u2014 Competent, minimalist Shakespeare in a black box \u2014 which I didn\u2019t imagine was doing them a great service. But when I heard they were mounting Ibsen\u2019s protofeminist tour de force, I had to see what\u2019s what. I never expected it would be one of the best things I\u2019d see all year, but great casting and thoughtful, unobtrusive directing, with no scene or snatch of dialog rushed, allowed all of Ibsen\u2019s nuance to come across (despite much of the audience laughing at everything that seemed quaint through their veil of 21st-century, short-attention-span ignorance). With the emergence of the \u201cwomanosphere<\/a>\u201d in recent years, the choice to stage this story of unwitting complicity with patriarchy was extra timely. The play\u2019s final scene is a true emotional and thematic climax if ever there was one, and the actors \u2014including Ceili Lang as Nora, excelling at every stop along Nora\u2019s broad character arc \u2014 played it for everything it\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n

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Predictor \u2014 The Garage Theatre<\/a><\/p>\n

How much do I know about the history of the at-home pregnancy test? A helluva lot more now that I\u2019ve seen a staging of Jennifer Blackmer\u2019s entertaining telling of how a 27-year-old non-scientist combined creativity and common sense to package the necessary elements so women could know what\u2019s what privately \u2014 and the decade-long, sexist delay in bringing her breakthrough to the American market. Opening as an episode of an imaginary \u201860s gameshow called Who Made That? before launching into the narrative proper, Predictor never progressed too far down any one track before switching it up with flashbacks and fantasy sequences, a farrago of scenes that collide and interpenetrate ceaselessly, rhythms breaking against contrary rhythms. Director Jessica Variz grokked both the substance and style of Blackmer\u2019s script and had her cast jumping through all the right hoops to deliver the goods.<\/p>\n

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A Christmas Carol \u2014 Long Beach Playhouse<\/a><\/p>\n

Prior to 2025, Long Beach Playhouse had done a show based on Dickens\u2019s classic novella a full 13 times. From seeing more than half of these, I can tell you that no two were the same, and some were quite good. But director Carole Louise Nicholson worked some fresh magic on this tried-and-true tale of redemption and viewing others as \u201cfellow\u2013passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.\u201d With a perfect [I used that word a lot in my full review] cast from Scrooge to Tiny Tim, meticulous costumes and makeup, and understated lighting that\u2019s every bit as thoughtful as every other element, iteration #14 was a masterclass in the dramatic arts, a piece of theatre whose every second was subsumed into a continuous flow, with each moment playing out organically and those moments succeeding each other in such a way that each scene seemed to have naturally sprouted from the one it replaced.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Although we\u2019ll have to wait to see whether in 2026 Long Beach can produce any shows matching the above five, tune in right here next month to read about the general state of theatre in Long Beach as we launch into the second quarter-century of the millennium, including capsule histories and updates on every theatre company in town.<\/p>\n

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