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<\/a>Deborah Gilmour Smyth in The Trip to Bountiful at Lamb\u2019s Players Theatre (Photo courtesy of Nathan Peirson)<\/p>\nThomas Wolfe may have published You Can\u2019t Go Home Again in 1940, but Horton Foote put the claim to the test 13 years later with this play about an aging woman who longs to escape the Houston apartment she shares with her son and his wife and return to the titular town where she grew up. It turns out market forces (to say nothing of the forces of war) were busy reshaping the American landscape even way back when. Still, what\u2019s that old line about the journey and the destination? Robert Smyth directs. Runs through March 1.<\/p>\n
Where: Lamb\u2019s Players Theatre, 1142 Orange Avenue, Coronado<\/p>\n
When: Wed 2 & 7pm, Thu 7pm, Fri 7pm, Sat 7pm<\/p>\n
Cost: $48-$98, discounts for seniors and veterans<\/p>\n
Get tickets<\/a><\/p>\n Louisa Gillis<\/p>\n North Coast Rep worked with playwright Joanna McClelland Glass to bring this new play to the stage, workshopping and honing the script through what director David Ellenstein calls a \u201cseries of rich, collaborative exchanges with the amazing Joanna.\u201d (Oh, to be a fly on the wall during a series of rich collaborative exchanges between artistic types!) Especially when they bust out the adjective \u201csearing\u201d to describe the drama of a story billed as a \u201cmasterfully crafted battle of wits and words\u201d in which \u201csecrets unravel and alliances shift as a brilliant but fractured family grapples with the power of forgiveness and the price of letting go.\u201d Runs through February 8. <\/p>\n Where: North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe, Suite D, Solana Beach<\/p>\n When: Wed 7 pm, Thu 7 pm, Fri 8 pm, Sat 2 & 8 pm, Sun 2 & 7 pm<\/p>\n Cost: $68.50-$80.50, discounts for seniors<\/p>\n Get tickets<\/a><\/p>\n Of Mice and Men<\/p>\n It may be an old standby, a story so deep in the American consciousness that it got the Looney Tunes treatment<\/a>, but if you ain\u2019t seen it, it\u2019s new to you! The straightforward promo copy serves the play well: \u201cA story of enduring friendship, John Steinbeck\u2019s classic novel is more than 85 years old, but with themes of economic migration, racism, and prejudice, it remains a parable for our times. George and Lennie are migrants with a dream; a dream of a better life, a place where they can belong, where Lennie feels safe, and George can be somebody. But this is the Great Depression, when not many dreams come true in a time where a few have plenty, but most have nothing. When the friends take a job on Curley\u2019s farm\u2026\u201d well, you\u2019ll just have to see it to learn the rest. Directed by Teri Brown. Runs through February 1<\/p>\n Where: Lamplighters Community Theatre, 5915 Severin, La Mesa<\/p>\n When: Fri 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm (check website for exceptions)<\/p>\n Cost: $30, discounts for seniors and veterans<\/p>\n Get tickets<\/a><\/p>\n \u200b<\/p>\n Dead Moose<\/p>\n Well now: a world premiere musical \u2014\u00a0not at La Jolla Playhouse, which seems to send one or two of \u2019em to Broadway each year, but at Oceanside\u2019s Sunshine Brooks Theater. Speaking of the Playhouse: last year, they gave us The Heart, a musical about a young man hovering between life and death and the moral and religious questions raised by his situation. Here, we have creator and director Tyler Tafolla\u2019s story of Job (ding ding ding!), \u201can eighteen-year-old who miraculously survives a car accident with a moose. Returning home from the hospital, he begins to reassess his life, grappling with questions of death, fate, and religion. All the while, the nagging voice of the dead moose lingers in his head, pushing and provoking him at every turn.\u201d Runs through February 1. (Ages 14+)<\/p>\n Where: Sunshine Brooks Theater, 217 North Coast Highway, Oceanside<\/p>\n When: Fri 8 pm, Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 pm<\/p>\n Cost: $43<\/p>\n Get tickets<\/a><\/p>\n Donna Orbits the Moon<\/p>\n Hey, remember Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s film Gravity, which was essentially a one-woman drama starring Sandra Bullock as a woman so existentially unmoored that she\u2019s literally floating in space? Here we have Susan Clausen in a one-woman comedy about a woman who is a \u201cloving mother, a devoted wife, and a minor celebrity to all the bake sale planners in town \u2014 but something is making her spacey, and she\u2019s not sure what it is.\u201d And just as astronaut Bullock got advice from the not-really-there George Clooney, Donna \u201cwill need to pass through space and through time \u2014\u00a0all the while listening to an unlikely voice \u2014 and try to break free from her gravitational pull to learn just how she can land.\u201d Directed by Kandace Crystal. Runs through February 15.<\/p>\n Where: Scripps Ranch Theatre, 9783 Avenue of Nations, Alliant University Campus, San Diego<\/p>\n When: Fri 7:30 pm, Sat 2 & 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm<\/p>\n Cost: $30-$52<\/p>\n Get tickets<\/a><\/p>\n Red Light Winter<\/p>\n It\u2019s theater, people \u2014 not TV, and not Hollywood. There\u2019s bound to be something that pushes the boundaries a bit, especially when it\u2019s pitched as \u201can unflinching exploration of desire, intimacy, and the fragility of human connection,\u201d and tells the story of to friends who head out for a night of indulgence in Amsterdam and meet up with a gal named Christina for a red-light district hookup that turns into something\u2026more. \u201cA meditation on loneliness, obsession, and the lingering power of memory.\u201d Small wonder that there\u2019s an alert for strong sexual content and nudity. Directed by Marti Gobel. Runs through January 24.<\/p>\n Where: Light Box Theatre, 2590 Truxton Road, San Diego<\/p>\n When: Thu 7 pm, Fri 7 pm, Sat 4 & 8 pm<\/p>\n Cost: $40 (Discounts for seniors, veterans, and students)<\/p>\n Get tickets<\/a><\/p>\n Monty Python\u2019s Edukational Show<\/p>\n If you are of a certain age \u2014\u00a0more to the point, if you are the person writing this paragraph \u2014\u00a0you may have had the experience of introducing your kids to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the film that introduced you to the howlingly funny humor of the English comedy troupe Monty Python. And you may have been mortified, horrified, baffled, bufuddled, flummoxed, and otherwise stunned to discover that they didn\u2019t think it was quite as funny as you did back when you were their age. But at least one of them took to it, even going so far as to search out Python sketches on YouTube<\/a>. Here, Trinity Theatre Company stages an 80-minute revue of classic Python sketches, stitched together for the stage. Larry Groznic, call your date!<\/a> Runs through January 25.<\/p>\n Where: Trinity Theatre Company, 1640 Camino Del Rio N, Suite 129<\/p>\n When: Fri 7 pm, Sat 7 pm, Sun 2 pm<\/p>\n Cost: $30<\/p>\n<\/a>Denise Young and James Sutorius in Louisa Gillis at North Coast Repertory Theatre (Photo courtesy of Aaron Rumley)<\/p>\n<\/a>The men of Of Mice and Men at Lamplighters Community Theatre (Photo courtesy of Steve Murdock)<\/p>\n<\/a>Dead Moose: a world premiere musical at the Sunshine Brooks Theater! (Event poster)<\/p>\n<\/a>Susan Clausen in Donna Orbits the Moon at Scripps Ranch Theatre (Photo courtesy of Cristyn Chandler)<\/p>\n<\/a>Red light means stop, right? (Event poster)<\/p>\n<\/a>Can comedy be handed down? Trinity Theatre Company aims to find out! (Event poster)<\/p>\n