Don Caballero: Complex instrumentals that have nothing to do with math. Or geometry. Or any other number-related puns. $10. 21+.
ALEX’S BAR 2913 E Anaheim St, Long Beach 90804. 562.434.8292; alexsbar.com.
Tango: Opening night of “Tango” at Cal Rep, about a young man trying to ease his family’s lack of moral structure. 7pm. $15-20.
CAL REP National Guard [...]

Pages: An exhibit ripped literally from the pages of its artists.
UTOPIA 445 E First St, Long Beach 90802. 562.432.6888; utopiarestaurant.net.
Robert Kuttner: An “authoritative voice of liberalism” in conversation with Ariana Huffington. 8pm. Call for details.
BOOK SOUP 8818 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood 90069. 310.659.3110; booksoup.com.

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 [...]

Shipwrecked works because its actors do
South Coast Repertory’s production of Shipwrecked: An Entertainment, The Amazing Adventures of Louis De Rougemont (As Told By Himself) claims to be an examination of the nature of truth. Eh, not so much.Yes, Shipwrecked: An Entertainment, The Amazing Adventures of Louis De Rougemont (As Told By Himself) is about a [...]

International City Theatre delivers a modernized goddess

For a play that begins with a flitting dream-sequence dance between a lovesick Japanese schoolgirl in traditional kimono and a droning Greek love goddess in flowing robes, Calling Aphrodite is surprisingly down-to-earth, particularly after the atom bomb explodes.
Velina Hasu Houston’s new drama is inspired by the cruel irony of [...]

Long Beach Shakespeare Company challenges you with Breath
By Ellen Griley
If Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was your introductory course to the confusing, fictional science behind memories—that is, memory making and memory loss—Melissa M. Miller’s Breath quickly (and unforgivingly) bumps you up to graduate school level. I spent the first 20 minutes of the play [...]

Sex, Drugs and a Drunk Jesus: Welcome to ‘White Trash Catholic Circus’
By Dave Wielenga

Remember when an autobiographical one-woman play recounting how a childhood filled with alcoholism and Catholicism drove a shamed and guilt-ridden girl into a young adulthood of sex, drugs, and degradingly bad relationships until she found redemption in the chemical-free serenity of a [...]

At South Coast Repertory, Hamish Linklater knows Hamlet
By Cornel Bonca
When we first get a look at Hamlet in the new production of the most famous play in the world at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory, he’s squished off at the side of the stage, a little nobody, legs squeezed together, arms held tight to his [...]

Richard III may have been a wretched monarch, but in the hands of Long Beach Shakespeare Company, his reign improves dramatically
By Patrick Dooley
It’s easy to miss the Richard Goad Theatre, wedged as it is between two insurance companies, but the place is worth finding for Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s stand-up exhibition of Richard III.
Richard III [...]

Critics say Hamlet is a perfect play, maybe even the perfect piece of art because it doesn’t just speak to us, it shapes us. So what does South Coast Repertory’s newest version say about America right now? And how will it make you different?

PHOTO by HENRY DIROCCO
1. Mona Lisa Mountain
Have you ever seen the Mona [...]