Spring Arts Preview: Theater
Curtains are rising on stages all over town this spring, as a new theater season is upon us. Over at the temporary space of Santa Barbara City College, Nikolai Erdman’s The Suicide finishes its run on Saturday, March 20. Down at Theater 150 in Ojai, Alex Lyras continues the run of his one-man show The Common Air until March 21. Another show that opened last weekend, Trying, continues at the Rubicon through April 4. It’s a new play, the story of a crotchety judge and his young assistant, and it stars the real-life father-daughter team of Robin Gammell and Winslow Corbett. Speaking of real-life relationships, Ojai’s Art Center Theater will present four couples throughout four weekends, each giving a go at A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters. The dates for these performances are March 19-April 11.
Ellen K. Anderson’s latest is called Bedtime in Detroit, and it has a great cast, including Jeff Mills, Sage Parker, Lisa Sanderson, and Paul Taylor. It will be at Center Stage March 26-April 3. Circle Bar B opens its season with Sherlock’s Last Case, which runs April 2-May 16 and stars Sean O’Shea as the famous detective and David Couch as his good man Watson. Sara Rademacher will direct a stage version of the camp classic Reefer Madness at Center Stage April 7-11. Ensemble Theatre Company has Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie April 8-May 2. Up at PCPA, the Broadway hit musical Curtains kicks off on April 15 and will run until July 3. Bill W. and Dr. Bob, a play about the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, will be at Center Stage April 22-May 2. The Rubicon’s James O’Neil will direct Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart there April 24-May 16.
The political satirists of Capitol Steps make their annual pilgrimage to the Lobero on Wednesday and Thursday, April 28-29. Theater returns to the Lobero stage May 6-16 as Santa Barbara Theatre presents George Bernard Shaw’s comedy Arms & The Man. Jason Narvy will direct Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba at UCSB’s Studio Theatre May 7-15. UCSB Theater concludes its season with Tom Whitaker directing Charles L. Mee’s Iphigenia 2.0 at the Performing Arts Theatre opening on May 14. The Girl in the Freudian Slip is a psychoanalytic farce directed by Joseph Beck for Circle Bar B May29-July 11. One of the most interesting things on the horizon this season is In All Honesty, a new play written by Quinn Sosna-Spear, a Dos Pueblos High School senior. Directed by Devin Scott and starring Robert Lesser and Nancy Nufer, In All Honesty will be at the Rubicon June 2-13. Finally, Jonathan Fox of Ensemble Theatre Company will direct Joe Orton’s magnificent dark comedy Loot at the Alhecama Theatre from June 3-June 27.
