Though forced online last year, the Long Beach Shakespeare Company (LBSC) will once again perform Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” radio play live and in-person this month, along with two other scary stories.
LBSC’s month of scariness begins with “The Invisible Man” on Friday, Oct. 8 through Sunday, Oct. 10—the story of a scientist who makes himself invisible, grows power-hungry and resorts to murder.
“Are you ever really safe from the killer you can’t see?” LBSC asks about the production.
“The Hound of the Baskervilles” follows the next weekend, from Oct. 15 to Oct. 17, which LBSC describes as Sherlock Holmes’s most “terrifying” case.
LBSC’s scary series culminates the weekend of Oct. 22 to Oct. 24 with its annual performance of Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds,” a radio play that created nationwide panic when first broadcast in 1938, when listeners really believed Martians had invaded.
LBSC’s radio-style performances feature live actors “broadcasting” from the 1940s-era KBRD radio station inside the Helen Borgers Theatre, LBSC’s home at 4250 Atlantic Ave. The players read into microphones while performing all sound effects in front of a live audience.
“War of the Worlds” was the first production LBSC performed—on Halloween night in 2002—upon moving into its intimate theatre in Bixby Knolls, named after LBSC’s founder and first artistic director Helen Borgers, who died in 2017.
“Helen built this company to be a family,” LBSC Producer Dana Leach told the Signal Tribune. “We honor her dream by continuing to include the community in the audience, on stage and behind the scenes to make magic together.”
With live productions resuming after nearly 18 months, LBSC is looking for more of those behind-the-scenes volunteers to help run the theatre lobby and produce its shows.
Upcoming LBSC productions after October include a holiday show with puppets and “A Christmas Carol” radio play. The theatre plans to stage four plays in 2022 and offer several radio plays, including its traditional “War of the Worlds” again next October.
Visit LBSC’s website at LBShakespeare.org to purchase tickets for its October radio plays—“The Invisible Man,” “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and “War of the Worlds”—at the Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave. Tickets are $13 each. LBSC asks each patron to wear a mask while in the theatre due to continuing pandemic health concerns.
