Mindy Farabee

Drew Blakeman and Dan Spurgeon; Credit: Amelia Gotham

How to Make Horror and Sci-Fi Theater Work

Mindy Farabee
One man is dragged, screaming, down a portal to hell. A boy takes a baseball bat to his abusive father. A mysterious body stuffed into a trunk provokes the most unsettling metaphysical questions. Happy holidays. Perhaps not every theater company, in casting about for the perfect yuletide show, settles upon......
law logo2x b

Merlin: The Untold Adventures

Mindy Farabee
Begat of a demon, gifted with second sight and shape-shifting powers, the druid Merlin provides much of the momentum of the Arthurian legend. In the process of retelling the fabled wizard's backstory, playwright-director Ellen Geer has concocted a high fantasy with a strong antiwar flavor. The work's emphasis on meshing......
Opening night at the Serial Killers playoffs; Credit: Arthur Africano

A Late-Night Theater Battle Royale

Mindy Farabee
It is about a quarter to midnight last Saturday, and it's the eve of World War II on stage at the Sacred Fools Theater. A young Fuhrer (writer/actor Donal Thoms-Capello) prances out and picks up the phone to call his man-crush, Henry Ford (Curt Bonnem), who is on the other......
Elijah Sedustine meets the LA River; Credit: Arthur Africano

L.A. River Opens for Recreation, Isn't Yucky

Mindy Farabee
"I feel a little itchy, I'm not going to lie." Tyler Sedustine has just emerged from the Los Angeles River, his dripping wet two-and-a-half-year-old son Elijah ensconced in his arms. That his first instinct is to hose off will likely strike few Angelenos as strange. Just twenty-four hours previous, the......
law logo2x b

Death of a Salesgirl

Mindy Farabee
Death of a Salesman goes into a cinematic blender, which transforms the original's thematic preoccupations into a noir grudge match between the past and present. Down-on-her-luck salesgirl Catherine (playwright Patricia Scanlon, in fine form) has arrived at a grungy motel with her last $300, intent on getting a good night's......
law logo2x b

The Fainting Couch

Mindy Farabee
A love quadrangle among a ballerina, two fools and their evil boss, the Magician, lies at the heart of playwright Robert Riemer's twisted revisiting of the Stravinsky ballet Petrushka. With themes like manipulation and doubling, the play shares much with the original, and direct references to the Russian ballet abound,......
law logo2x b

Farm Boy

Mindy Farabee
Under the fluid direction of David Fofi, this adaptation (by Daniel Buckroyd) of Michael Morpurgo's sequel to his children's novel War Horse gracefully achieves its simple ambitions. Sometime around the 1970s, a young man (Simon Lees) stops over at the Devon farm belonging to his grandfather (Lawrence Pressman) while on......
law logo2x b

The Children

Mindy Farabee
Playwright Michael Elyanow transports Euripides’ Medea to the present day via a magic spell cast by a chorus member, an incantation that whisks the play’s two titular protagonists away from their homicidal mother to a Maine town in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane. Once there, the production takes......
law logo2x b

Seascape

Mindy Farabee
Retirees Nancy (Arden Teresa Lewis) and Charlie (Alan Schack) have found a quiet beach on which to picnic, paint watercolors and argue over how to play out the rest of their days. She yearns to travel the world; he's determined to take it easy. Just when it appears a stalemate......