Long Beach Shakespeare does something good with ‘Much Ado About Nothing’

PHOTO by HENRY JOSEFSBERG ESQ.
There are many ways to think about Shakespeare. The worst, though, is as a given—that just because it’s Shakespeare it has inherent worth. No, Shakespeare was just a guy who wrote plays, and it’s for you to determine how good they [...]

Much Ado About Nothing
If you call yourself the Long Beach Shakespeare Co., two things better be true: 1) you’re in Long Beach; 2) you’re good at Shakespeare. Well, nothing amiss here, as LBSC has been serving Long Beach real Shakespeare (i.e., not the lifeless stuff that makes you wonder why anybody would bother) for nearly [...]

Long Beach Shakespeare Co.’s ‘Julius Caesar,’ as expected

PHOTO by HENRY JOSEFSBERG, ESQ.
Under a perfectly symmetrical constellation of fire sprinklers, the Long Beach Shakespeare Co. kicked off (in the introductory words of director Helen Borgers) their “first indoor outdoor Shakespeare Festival” (this 11th installment being held in the expansive space that was the Expo Furniture building) [...]

Long Beach Shakespeare Company deftly de-immortalizes a classic
There are several things disconcerting about the Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon–that Sam Spade smokes Djarum cigarettes; that he wears cuffless pants; that he’s a blond. But none are so difficult to reconcile as the distance between the seminal 1941 film version [...]