The Westmont Theatre Arts Department staged a hilarious version of John Buchan’s The 39 Steps that brought plenty of laughs through an unrelenting barrage of creative set-design gags and physical comedy. Director Mitchell Thomas masterfully squeezes out every laugh while navigating a plot that doesn’t take itself seriously. This was good lighthearted fun at its […]

For the last several years, New Beginnings’ annual fall fundraiser has moved beyond the typical wine-and-dine gala concept to actually put the focus on the longtime nonprofit’s areas of service – via presenting a theatrical event that mirrors themes of issues it works to combat. This year’s offering, The Boys Next Door, examines issues of […]

Out of the Box Theatre Company kicks off its new season with something different a few blocks up from its usual home at Center Stage. Family Album – a song collection by Joe Iconis, composer-lyricist of the Broadway hit Be More Chill and several other musicals – will be performed just once in a concert-style […]

DramaDogs Theater Company is celebrating three decades of presenting compelling and largely offbeat theater with a new production called HERE! This Moment for Women, featuring a series of dramatic short plays and monologues by contemporary playwrights E. M. Lewis and James Still. The pieces highlight women’s grit, resiliency, longing, sorrow and wonder, such that, collectively, […]

Ventura playwright Kieron Barry’s latest work, Spy for Spy, is a two-character romantic comedy that’s also a memory play, and a mixed-up one at that. There are six scenes that serve as snapshots of significant moments in the relationship between high-strung lawyer Sarah and free-spirited aspiring actress Molly. These include when they first fall in […]

The decorous sunken lawn in front of Pierre Lafond is ordinarily a still point of shade-dappled peace, the calming eye of any given day’s hurricane. The trees lean in with leafy solicitude, birdsong seasons the scented air, and the good people of Montecito engage in lively conversation, gesturing and gabbing. Into this bucolic set piece […]

Critics have unanimously praised Florian Zeller’s The Father, a play that takes the unusual perspective of presenting the world from the vantage of an elderly but still elegant man going through progressive stages of dementia. His shifting and relative reality – including concepts of such taken-for-granted facts as time and place – wreaks havoc on […]

Elings Park’s two-production experiment in bringing Shakespeare to its charming Godric Grove amphitheater this summer winds up with a pair of performances of Much Ado About Nothing from UCSB’s Naked Shakes, the Irwin Appel-founded-and-directed company that employs minimal props and costumes to keep the focus on the acting and the Bard’s prose. Ado, which boasts […]