![\"Kelsey](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/sut-l-stage-strangers3.jpg\")
Kelsey Venter and Javier David in Chalk Circle Collective\u2019s \u201cThe Strangers.\u201d (Karli Cadel)<\/p>\nEarly in Christopher Oscar Pe\u00f1a\u2019s play \u201cThe Strangers,\u201d the actors confess to the audience that Pe\u00f1a \u201cappropriated\u201d elements of Thornton Wilder\u2019s 1938 drama \u201cOur Town\u201d for his play.<\/p>\n
The main character in \u201cThe Strangers\u201d is Cris, an actor cast in the lead role of an \u201cOur Town\u201d production, and another character, Emily, was named after the most tragic character in Wilder\u2019s play. There are also actors directly addressing the audience, the foretelling of characters\u2019 fates, the iconic step ladder at center stage, chairs lined up tombstone-style (to seat the living and the dead) and a climactic wedding. All of these moments recall Wilder\u2019s groundbreaking play about life, death and the passage of time in small-town, early-20th-century America.<\/p>\n
Kelsey Venter and Javier David in Chalk Circle Collective\u2019s \u201cThe Strangers.\u201d (Karli Cadel)<\/p>\n
But \u201cThe Strangers,\u201d which San Diego\u2019s Chalk Circle Collective opened Sunday in its West Coast premiere at the Old Town Theatre, is most definitely not \u201cOur Town.\u201d<\/p>\n
A queer American-born son of Honduran immigrants, Pe\u00f1a said after the opening-night performance that \u201cOur Town\u201d didn\u2019t look like the community he grew up in, so he wrote his own contemporary twist on the story.<\/p>\n
Where \u201cOur Town\u201d is placid, gently-paced and G-rated, \u201cThe Strangers\u201d is peppered with fast action, arguments, sex and violence.<\/p>\n
The characters in Pe\u00f1a\u2019s play are not truly strangers. They\u2019re siblings, friends, lovers, roommates, teammates and acquanitances. But at heart, they are estranged in how they hide their true selves from one another, resist intimacy, and manipulate and betray one other.<\/p>\n
Coleman Ray Clark makes an audacious San Diego directing debut with \u201cThe Strangers,\u201d creating a shape-shifting theaterscape that\u2019s at times haunting, funny, disturbing, visually dazzling and filled with surprises.<\/p>\n
Steven Lone is the cast standout as Cris, a deeply lonely actor who arrives in town for an \u201cOur Town\u201d production. Lone\u2019s Cris visibly aches with sadness, lack of confidence and low self-esteem. Even when Cris finds romance with theater worker Dave \u2014 ebulliently played with sweet, boyish sincerity by Jake Bradford \u2014 he pushes love away.<\/p>\n
Eight other actors co-star in the production, mostly in multiple roles, including Michael Amira Temple (most memorable as a heroic crossing guard), Lauren King Thompson (best as a wise homeless woman), Kimberly Weinberger (the dark and complex Emily and others), Javier David (fiery in dual roles), Kelsey Venter (best as the truth-telling wedding planner) and Michael DiRoma (as the gentle and idealistic anti-ICE activist Niegel), as well as young actors Pepe Aparicio and Ellis Quesada in smaller roles.<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s eye-popping physical production is impressive, with gorgeous lighting design by Sammy Webster; whooshing, bone-shaking sound by Steven Leffue; costumes by Jemima Dutra; and scenic design by Nicholas Pontung, who has created an overcrowded, props-filled stage that the actors pull elements from to set up their scenes.<\/p>\n
The structure of the play in the first act sometimes feels disjointed, with no clear throughline connecting all the scenes. In that way it reminds me of \u201cOur Town,\u201d where the stage manager chooses which scenes the audience will see. But the gap in exposition for the most shocking relationship in \u201cThe Strangers\u201d left me wanting more.<\/p>\n
The more focused second act picks up some years later on the eve of Cris and Dave\u2019s wedding. The act\u2019s highlight is Lone\u2019s masterful delivery of Cris\u2019s monologue about his self-identity, self-destruction, anxiety and fears for the future in a world torn by cruelty, racial strife, politics and environmental catastrophe. Bradford also delivers a wonderful monlogue as the misunderstood Dave in Act Two.<\/p>\n
The play\u2019s unexpected conclusion once again draws on the timeless nature of \u201cOur Town,\u201d while also recognizing the damage that humans can do to each other and the world around them. Although this line from \u201cOur Town\u201d isn\u2019t in \u201cThe Strangers,\u201d it\u2019s an apt epilogue for Pe\u00f1a\u2019s play: \u201cThis is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018The Strangers\u2019<\/p>\n
When: 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 30<\/p>\n
Where:\u00a0Old Town\u2019s Historic Barn Theatre, 4040 Twiggs St., San Diego<\/p>\n
Tickets:\u00a0$40 and up<\/p>\n
Email:\u00a0Chalkcirclecollective@gmail.com<\/p>\n