{"id":132353,"date":"2026-01-14T00:00:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T00:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/132353\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T00:00:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T00:00:58","slug":"the-state-of-the-theatrical-arts-in-long-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/132353\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of the Theatrical Arts in Long Beach –"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LBCtheather\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Whether or not the Los Angeles Times\u2019s recent \u201c52 Best Places to See Plays and Musicals in Southern California\u201d<\/a> comes anywhere close to providing that info, the list makes one thing clear: the Times don\u2019t know Long Beach.<\/p>\n

To fill that nescience, Random Lengths News presents the state of the theatrical arts in Long Beach, starting with the one and only Long Beach entry in the Times list\u2026.<\/p>\n

INTERNATIONAL CITY THEATRE
at the Beverly O\u2019Neill Theatre, 67 Long Beach Blvd. \/ (562) 495-4595 \/ ictlongbeach.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re talking about facilities (the Beverly O\u2019Neill is nicely tricked out and without a bad seat in the house), it\u2019s dubious to include ICT on any arts list with \u201cbest\u201d in the title. Aside from consistently solid mise en sc\u00e8ne, what happens there is\u2026well, let\u2019s say I want realism or some sort of humanized stylization, while ICT has the actors reciting their lines at each other, emoting, and holding reactions way too long. The resultant style can drain the life out of even truly powerful scripts (e.g., Doubt: A Parable<\/a>). Sure, on occasion I\u2019ve liked their work<\/a>, but\u2026.<\/p>\n

Of course, I haven\u2019t seen anything at ICT for over a year, because in June 2024, after covering them faithfully for well over a decade \u2014 sometimes when literally no other media outlet would (it\u2019s a news desert out here, folks) \u2014 I was informed that \u201cICT has decided to offer only a limited number of press comps to a specific list of media outlets\u201d and I was excluded. Because this has nothing to do with a lack of space \u2014 the Beverly O\u2019Neill seats over 800, with never half that many attendees at an ICT performance \u2014 the reason is obvious: ICT is trying to control the public narrative by cutting off access to critics<\/a> (I was told by a reliable source that I\u2019m not the only one) who have the temerity to suggest there\u2019s room for improvement.<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: ICT bills themselves \u201cLong Beach\u2019s Resident Theatre Company,\u201d like nobody else in this town counts. But if you want the best that Long Beach has to offer, look elsewhere.<\/p>\n

MUSICAL THEATRE WEST
at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 E. Atherton St. \/ (562) 856-1999 \/ musical.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Aside from ICT, Musical Theatre West is the only theatre company in Long Beach that has any real money behind it \u2014 the Carpenter is the city\u2019s ritziest venue \u2014 and it only highlights the Times\u2019s LBC blindness that ICT rates a mention while MTW does not. At worst, Musical Theatre West delivers professional extravaganzas of material that is uninspiring (for me, at least \u2014 I\u2019ll stay away when I know in advance that I simply don\u2019t like a given offering). At their best \u2014 a mark they hit with some regularity \u2014 you get Broadway-quality production (on the modest side, at least \u2014 they don\u2019t have that much money) coupled with top-flight talent and inspired directorial choices. A prime example was 2023\u2019s production of An American in Paris<\/a>, a show so good I sought out the film and found it severely lacking by comparison.<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: From Rodgers & Hammerstein to Sondheim<\/a>, from jukebox musicals<\/a> to unlikely adaptations of films<\/a>, MTW delivers the goods.<\/p>\n

LONG BEACH SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
at the Helen Borgers Theater, 4250 Atlantic Ave. \/ (562) 997-1494 \/ lbshakespeare.org<\/a><\/p>\n

For a decade I saw most every show Long Beach Shakespeare Co. produced, but finally I stopped going, because almost all of my reviews were identical: Competent, traditionalist, minimalist Shakespeare in a black box. That\u2019s not nothing \u2014 incompetent Shakespeare is commonplace \u2014 but writing the same thing over and over didn\u2019t seem fair. Still, I always felt a bit guilty about ignoring a company that was so consistently plugging away, so when I saw they were doing Ibsen\u2019s A Doll\u2019s House \u2014 a script I like (sidenote: there\u2019s plenty of Shakespeare that I don\u2019t) \u2014 I had to have another look. I was so impressed<\/a> that later this month I\u2019ll be checking in on their latest Shakespeare offering, Julius Caesar (one of the Bard\u2019s best).<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: Competent, minimalist Shakespeare? Sure. But there\u2019s more to LB Shake. In fact, this year only two of their 12 scheduled shows are by their namesake. The other 10 include a number of \u201cRadio Style Live On Stage\u201d performances (e.g., their annual War of the Worlds \u00e0 la Orson Welles). Whatever the show, it\u2019s the cheapest ticket in Long Beach.<\/p>\n

THE GARAGE THEATRE
251 E. 7th St. \/ (562) 283-373 \/ thegaragetheatre.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Full disclosure: I\u2019m friends with this company. But that wasn\u2019t the case when I first reviewed them back in the Aughts and dug them enough to keep coming back. Nor does it prevent me from writing negative reviews when that\u2019s how I feel<\/a>; and their taste in scripts doesn\u2019t always align with mine (but find me a theatre company where that\u2019s not the case). Fortunately, more often than not I like what I see \u2014 including some of my all-time favorite theatrical experiences. One of those highlights just how little real attention the Times pays to Long Beach: In 2018, the Garage obtained the rights to do the world-premiere staging of Tom Stoppard\u2019s radio play Darkside<\/a>. Despite the fact that the Times had ignored the Garage for most of the Garage\u2019s 20-year history and hadn\u2019t reviewed a single one of their shows since 2011, the Garage peeps thought this might change things. The world premiere of a Tom Stoppard, THE most Tony-decorated playwright in history?! But while Stoppard himself deemed the production serious enough to send a representative from his management team in England to check it out, despite the Garage\u2019s several overtures, the Times couldn\u2019t be bothered to come 30 minutes down the 710. Well, fuck them.<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: More than 25 years on<\/a>, the Garage keeps doing it their way. Friendliest, loosest, most intimate theatre in the LBC, capable of delivering truly fantastic stuff.<\/p>\n

LONG BEACH LANDMARK THEATRE COMPANY
at First Congregational Church: 241 Cedar Ave. \/ (562) 366-0085 \/ lblandmark.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Emerging from a meeting of the minds of choir members and staff at Long Beach\u2019s historic First Congregational Church<\/a> after they produced a one-off \u201cmusical saga\u201d about the city\u2019s history to celebrate the church\u2019s centennial, a proto version of the theatre troupe that would be LB Landmark began producing shows in 2014, with official formation as a company three years later. Somehow I\u2019d never heard of them until 2023, when I got wind that they were producing Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Assassins. In a church?! This I had to see. Well, it was far better than I hoped<\/a>, fully doing justice to Sondheim\u2019s genius. But I was more surprised by their next show, the SoCal debut of Groundhog Day: The Musical<\/a>, which didn\u2019t strike me as promising but was a true joy. Although I didn\u2019t love their most recent offering, Jagged Little Pill: The Musical<\/a> (Alanis ain\u2019t my bag), it was a big hit. They don\u2019t produce a lot of shows each year, but I\u2019m always looking forward to the next.<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: LB Landmark falls firmly in the \u201ccommunity theatre\u201d category, but that doesn\u2019t stunt their ambition. And the beautiful church they call home is a truly unique place to see such work. Don\u2019t shuffle off this mortal coil without seeing at least one show here \u2014 and don\u2019t be surprised if you want to come back for more.<\/p>\n

LONG BEACH OPERA
no fixed venue \/ (562) 470-7464 \/ longbeachopera.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Under the guidance of Andreas Mitisek, between 2003 and 2020 Long Beach Opera produced as many as a half-dozen operas each year; and though they often leaned toward \u201cmodern\u201d and \u201cminimalist\u201d \u2014 e.g., they staged multiple works by both Philip Glass and Stewart Copeland \u2014 all fit neatly within what comes to mind when we most of us think of opera: plot, spectacles, arias, etc. But in 2021 James Darrah took the helm and somewhat flipped the script, favoring a broader interpretation of \u201copera\u201d (which literally translates as simply work and originally included a wide variety of musical performance). This philosophical change has yielded mixed, less predictable results. Some shows (such as 2023\u2019s The Horse<\/a>) have been little more than aleatory music with no real follow-through on their supposed concept. But others, such as last year\u2019s The Library of Maps<\/a>, have dazzled. And when they do lean more into plot\/spectacle, they\u2019ve done some of the best and most acclaimed work in LBO\u2019s history, such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning Central Park Five<\/a>, which world premiered at LBO, and Kate Soper\u2019s The Romance of the Rose<\/a> (also a world premiere).<\/p>\n

That unpredictability has included the cancellation of four scheduled shows within the last three seasons; and a press release previewing 2025\u201326 listed only two shows, one of which opened the same day as the press release, the other being a two-night recital at the end of January. New CEO Michelle Magaldi, who came on board in September, explains that LBO \u201cis really ambitious, and in some cases has gotten ahead of itself in planning \u2014 and for various reasons that resulted in cancellations.\u201d She calls 2025\u201326 \u201ca reduced season, [which] is really a chance for us to do some resetting of some of our practices [and] reframing of how we build our seasons. We want to make sure we\u2019re not in a position of cancelling shows.\u201d She says perhaps one additional will be announced for 2025\u201326, but that otherwise, \u201cWe just need to take a bit of a breather to rebuild some of our production practices and infrastructure to be able to produce at a greater scale. [\u2026] We\u2019re really taking this time to look forward. [\u2026] We\u2019re building some projects on a longer time scale so that we can put the proper pieces in place in advance and have a proper planning cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: Anytime LBO puts on a show, there\u2019s a chance of greatness, so keep your eye out for anything they do this year; but they won\u2019t be giving you regular opportunities before 2026\u201327.<\/p>\n

CALIFORNIA REPERTORY (Cal State Long Beach)
at the University Theatre, south side of campus \/ (562) 985-4500 \/ csulb.edu\/theatre-arts<\/a><\/p>\n

Once upon a time \u2014 i.e., in the \u201800s and \u201810s \u2014 the graduate theatre program of Go Beach! was producing shows on the Queen Mary (after they were forced out of Edison Theatre for repairs that wouldn\u2019t be effected for damn near 20 years) of such high quality that I half-wondered if this were a case of false advertising, with professionals running the show. But the reason was simple: Theatre Department Chair Joanne Gordon didn\u2019t fuck around<\/a>. On her watch, the standards were so high that even the undergraduate shows were often great, while the work produced by the graduate program was everything you could ask for. A spectacular example was Melissa James Gibson\u2019s Current Nobody, a great script brought to vibrant life by Gordon and a crop of actors who were true pros regardless of their grad-student status. (I\u2019ll never forget the slo-mo fight scene set to the Beastie Boys\u2019 \u201cSabotage\u201d.) But as soon as Gordon moved on, the dip in quality was precipitous. After a couple of years Cal Rep returned somewhat to form \u2014 2017\u2019s Machinal<\/a> was very good, and 2023\u2019s Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play<\/a> was an aesthetic delight \u2014 although the lows were sometimes unbearable<\/a>. But it was the slippage behind the scenes (the last straw was when I was all set up to review a show, only to get an e-mail the day of saying they gave away my seat) that chased me off bothering. I can\u2019t tell you anything about the quality since 2024 \u2014 though unless things have changed, if you buy a ticket, prepare to endure sitting amongst a slew of students on their cell phones, clearly in attendance only because of course credit (evinced by the line of kids after the show getting their program stamped or whatever). I once saw a guy who for an entire show \u2014 I mean two acts! \u2014 played NBA2K (he was the Bulls). I don\u2019t mean to throw them all in the same barrel \u2014 plenty of these kids are dialed in and truly enthusiastic, really fun people to share a play with \u2014 there are enough bad apples to spoil the bunch; and as far as I could tell, the university has no interest in curtailing the behavior.<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: Historically, Cal State Long Beach has demonstrated that, with the right leadership, it can create with the best of them. But without such leadership, you get more or less what you expect from the term \u201cstudent theatre.\u201d That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s never worth seeing, but caveat emptor.<\/p>\n

SHAKESPEARE BY THE SEA
numerous SoCal parks \/ 310-217-7596 \/ shakespearebythesea.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Founded in 1998, 27-year-old MFA candidate Lisa Coffi decided that as a thesis project she (with a little help from her friends) would stage her own Shakespeare festival. More than 1,000 people came out to San Pedro\u2019s Point Fermin Park; and a year later the same group founded Little Fish Theatre. But you won\u2019t read about the latter here, as Little Fish pulled up stakes from San Pedro<\/a> (largely due to security issues, they say) for the ostensibly safer pastures of Redondo Beach. And now that Shakespeare by the Sea has attenuated its San Pedro connection \u2014 visiting San Pedro\u2019s 22nd Street Park for only one performance of one show, rather than starting and finishing their summer run of both seasonal offerings at Point Fermin \u2014 Long Beach is their home base, at least as much of a home base as there can be for a yearly pair of touring shows<\/a>, kicking off each season at the Bandshell in Recreation Park. But wherever you see them, count on competent, traditionalist Shakespeare brought in at almost exactly two hours, regardless of script length, with the production values you might expect from an outdoor staging with traffic in the background, with piped-in film score-type music that sometimes helps, sometimes hinders the proceedings. Each cast tends to be a mix of competent Shakespearean acting with a couple\/few outstanding performances. And although I said \u201ctraditionalist,\u201d last season\u2019s Julius Caesar<\/a> was their first \u201cmodern-verse\u201d adaptation, so who knows exactly what the future holds for these guardians of the past?<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: There\u2019s a long, healthy tradition of Shakespeare in the park, one in which perhaps everyone should partake at least once. It\u2019s not the best way to ingest the Bard, but it\u2019s kinda neat nonetheless. Shakespeare by the Sea is the only game in town for this, and it\u2019s always free (donations greatly appreciated), so go.<\/p>\n

LONG BEACH PLAYHOUSE
5021 E. Anaheim St. \/ (562) 494-1014 \/ lbplayhouse.org<\/a><\/p>\n

I had never seen a show at LB Playhouse when I started as theatre critic for The District Weekly c. 2008. We reached out about my coming to a staging of Of Mice and Men and were told that we were not welcome. My publisher sent me anyway. Immediately, I understood why they didn\u2019t want us: their populist aesthetic was not something anybody at our edgy, snarky alt-weekly was likely to appreciate. I focused my criticism on Steinbeck\u2019s bad script and from then on respected their wishes that we leave them alone. But then came new leadership that was happy to have me (now with the Long Beach Post) and a slate of plays \u2014 such as 2011\u2019s The Lieutenant of Inishmore<\/a> \u2014 that showed they were tacking away from appealing solely to the blue-hair crowd. With two spaces \u2014 the Mainstage downstairs, the Studio Theatre above \u2014 Long Beach\u2019s oldest theatre company produces not only more theatre per year than anybody else \u2018round here, but also the widest variety (and that\u2019s not even counting their Studio Collaborative season<\/a>, when each winter they allow outside theatre troupes to cheaply rent the Studio Theatre for a week). Even though I stay away when they\u2019ve got on tap is not to my taste (Neil Simon, N\u00f6el Coward, Agatha Christie), in a given year, I might approach double digits with them. Their willingness to try just about anything leads to the occasional misfire (for example, musicals aren\u2019t their specialty), but they also produce real gems, such as last year\u2019s production of Martin McDonagh\u2019s The Pillowman<\/a>. And every year closes with a new staging of A Christmas Carol, with this year\u2019s<\/a> being a master class in the theatrical arts.<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: At 90, LB Playhouse is showing no signs of decrepitude. Almost no matter what you want from a night of theatre, you\u2019ll find it here at some point.<\/p>\n

Like this:<\/p>\n

Like Loading…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whether or not the Los Angeles Times\u2019s recent \u201c52 Best Places to See Plays and Musicals in Southern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[9720,23050,131,133,132,9722,1058],"class_list":["post-132353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-curtaincall","tag-lbc","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-rln","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}