SEE flying saucers invade Nevada! SEE a giant mutant destroy whole cities! SEE a killer robot reduce man to skeleton!
That's just some of what audiences are in for when they attend The Costa Mesa Playhouse's encore production of Earthlings Beware!, October 28 - November 20, 2011. The show is written and directed by
Michael Dale Brown.
In Earthlings Beware!, Scientist Peter Carlson finds himself caught in the middle of an intergalactic war between two alien races while his colleague, Tom Morrow, has mutated into a rampaging 100-foot giant. There's also something peculiar about his beautiful fiancée, Rachel.
Earthlings Beware! is a savvy and silly homage to those unintentionally hilarious B-grade sci-fi flicks of the 1950s, with hokey dialogue, stiff acting and cheesy special effects intact.
Eric Marchese of the OC Register called the original 2007 production "a full-on campy spoof of a prized genre of American film- a loving tribute as well as a merciless satire of ‘50's society and the movies that reflected it...pure theatre magic."
As a child in the 1950's
Mike Brown grew up with a love for low-budget, science-fiction films. He regularly attended Saturday matinees at his local movie theater and began to obsess over the sci-fi genre. In 2006, this passion came to life when Mike wrote and directed Earthlings Beware! for the Found Theatre in Long Beach, California.
The show got such positive feedback that there was a second production the following year at the Costa Mesa Playhouse, this time on an even larger stage utilizing more effects than before.
Now, four years later, the show is back and Brown is excited to revisit the show with a revised script, more advanced special effects, plus cast members from the previous shows and new talent.
To pay homage to the 1950's classics that inspired Brown, he named many of the characters in the show after actors from those films. This particular production is dedicated to
Peter Graves from the "Mission Impossible" TV series, who passed away last year.
Brown says, "I had become quite friendly with Peter and his wife Joan in 1980 when we had worked on a motion picture together-he was the star, I was a scriptwriter. In his early years Graves had been the strong, scientist hero of a string of sci-fi films, most notably the giant-grasshoppers-attack-Chicago epic, Beginning of the End, and
Roger Corman's It Conquered the World. When I first met him, I rattled off the titles to all those sci-fi films of his I loved. He was quite embarrassed, but bought me dinner in gratitude. So the hero in Earthlings Beware!, Peter Carlson, is named after
Peter Graves, and another sci-fi star of the time,
Richard Carlson."
PERFORMANCES
Preview
Friday, October 28 at 8 pm
Gala Opening Night
Saturday, October 29 at 8 pm
Regular run
October 30 - November 20
Friday & Saturday evenings at 8 pm
Sundays at 2 pm
Ticket Prices
Preview: $16
Gala Opening Night: $23
General Admission: $18
Students & Seniors: $16
(Discounts for groups of 10 or more)
Information
(949) 650-5269
www.costamesaplayhouse.org
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