Garage Theatre’s annual “melodrama” is about as good as it’s gonna get

More than half of the Garage Theatre’s 25 seasons have closed with an installment of co-founder Jamie Sweet’s five-part “melodrama” cycle (think Looney Tunes rather than strict adherence to genre) about the do-good employees of the Pike (i.e., the former amusement park, not the Shoreline Dr. shopping mall that’s there now), an ace reporter, and a wannabe magician who’s always up to malevolent mischief.

As a rule, you either like this sort of thing or you don’t. But either way, this year’s installment is about as good as it’s gonna get.

In Part 3, Long Beach Is Sinking, or…Hard Times Are Better Than a Lifetime of Injustice, oil extraction is causing the city to sink. Either that or mole people, whom Ian Sidious (Shabar Shabazz Rouse) has conjured to help him, I don’t know, get power or something. As always, Pike handymen Gino Pao (Alizon Morea) and Rod McGirdlebutt (Diana Kaufmann, a holdover from last year), along with Dixie Troobaloo (Shannon Wynne), save the day. 

The plot’s raison d’être is to string together the yuks, which, even if they align with your sense of humor (and that’s a big “if”), work only when the delivery is right. The Garage generally succeeds on this score, probably never better than this year. As Pike concessionaire Tricia La Rue, Pagan Urich delivered what for me was the show’s biggest laugh with the utterance of a single synonym, and Shabar Shabazz Rouse’s singing of Sidious’s backstory (to the piped-in accompaniment of Jamie Sweet on banjo — funny in its own right because he ain’t no Earl Scruggs) was a charmer. Then there’s the trio of mole people, more risible than they might be because Alfred DiGrazia, Jeff McGinness, and Kale Lanik are so divergent in their line deliveries. 

As always, the entire cast is completely committed. And as always, the more seats that are filled by folks who love silly-and-nothing-but and fully buy in to the participatory spirit — boo/hissing the bad guys, responding to the music cues with pre-ordained character slogans (“Hooray!” for Rod, “Ooo, sequins!” for Tricia, etc.) — the more fun the show is. Certainly the opening-night crowd was game — and even a stick-in-the-mud like me couldn’t resist chucking cloth tomatoes at the actors. Because this year the Garage is including two matinee performances, there’s more chance for kids to be in the house — a boon for material that seems ideal for 7- to 12-year-olds with parents who can fully engage on that level.

Long Beach Is Sinking, or…Hard Times Are Better Than a Lifetime of Injustice at the Garage Theatre

Times: Thursday–Friday 8pm, Saturday 7pm, plus Nov. 22 and Dec. 6 at 2pm
The show runs through December 13 (but no performances Thanksgiving weekend).
Cost: $23–$35 (Thursdays 2-for-1); closing night w/afterparty: $40
Details: thegaragetheatre.org
Venue: The Garage Theatre, 251 E. 7th St., Long Beach