OCC’s ‘No Exit’ launches season

Orange Coast College will launch its 2007-08 theater season with a brief shot at French existentialist playwright Jean Paul Sartre. Its production of “No Exit” is scheduled for three days only.

Produced by the college’s Repertory Theater Company, “No Exit” is ticketed for an abbreviated Sept. 13-15 engagement in OCC’s Drama Lab Studio. Curtain will be 8 p.m. for all performances.

First staged in Paris in 1944 — just before the Allies liberated the city from the Nazis — “No Exit” unfolds in a small room where three souls have been condemned to remain for eternity. The play is Sartre’s clearest example and metaphor for the philosophy he espoused.

Tickets are $5 each and may be reserved in advance by calling (714) 432-5640, ext. 1. They will be sold at the door for $6.

The college’s theater operations will swing into gear next week with auditions for two OCC productions — Kitty Felde’s new drama “The Man With No Shadow” and Doug Rand’s comedy “The Auditioners.”

Director Alex Golson will have tryouts at 6 p.m. Monday and both Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. in the Drama Lab Theater on campus.

The cast for “The Man With No Shadow” consists of five men and two woman, plus three extras, in the 17 to 60 age range. “The Auditioners” includes two to four men and eight to 10 women in all age groups.

Performances will be given weekends from Oct. 11 to 28 in the Drama Lab Theater on the Costa Mesa campus. Scripts are available in the Theater Department office and additional information is available at (714) 432-5640, ext. 5.

Earthlings schlocky but funny spoof

You won’t find a cheesier local show than “Earthlings Beware.”

But before you begin to dub writer-director Michael Dale Brown Orange County’s own Ed Wood, be aware he realizes just how schlocky his show is, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Earthlings Beware” is Brown’s ambitiously left-handed tribute to all those aliens-from-outer-space epics Hollywood foisted on its audiences back in the early 1950s. You remember, flicks like “It Came From Outer Space,” “Them” and “The Amazing Colossal Man.”

The Costa Mesa production follows this pattern, only with a knowing wink at the audience. We see the offstage gimmickry that creates a humongous creature on a rear projection screen. Backstage techies bring in the flying saucers on strings, suspended from wooden sticks.

In other words, the show is so bad it’s good. It’s also an enormous technical challenge with multiple settings and myriad lighting effects, testing the playhouse’s resources both in terms of physical capacity and creative personnel.

The plot centers on a scientist (Nick Prelesnik) who lost his fiancee in a nuclear accident six years before and now is engaged to an alluring lady (Laura Lindahl) who undergoes a drastic personality change after a visit to the Mercury Mine. Yes, she’s possessed by an alien, giving Lindahl a delicious acting opportunity.

The earthlings are caught in the crossfire of a war between two other worlds, monitored by the school science professor Hoyt Bissell (Ron Grigsby), who’s been lured to the dark side.

A few “straight” roles are included for balance. John Schwendinger plays Prelesnik’s stalwart teen-age son, who’s always accompanied by girlfriend Heather Zavala and buddy Samantha Stedman. Barbara Duncan Brown is a hoot as a frizzy-haired scientist and Tom Mazzone is a security-minded general.

“Earthlings Beware” will recall (for audiences of a certain vintage) some of the low points of Hollywood moviemaking a half century ago, long before Steven Spielberg got it right.

WHAT: “Earthlings Beware”

WHERE: Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, 611 Hamilton St., Costa Mesa

WHEN: Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. through Aug. 26

COST: $18-$20

CALL: (949) 650-5269