Blood, Gore and Murder Make for a Spine-Tingling Lineup of Openings

In October’s theater lineup, Shakespeare gets a new look, Virginia Woolf goes solo, “Gorey Stories” go for the jugular, and “The Most Happy Fella” goes Hollywood. The openings include:

Tuesday: At Hollywood’s Henry Fonda Theatre, David Carradine, Stewart Granger, Ricardo Montalban and Lynn Redgrave star in George Bernard Shaw’s philosophical dialogue “Don Juan in Hell.”

Wednesday: The story of New York Times writer Steven Callahan’s 76-day struggle to survive after his boat capsized is dramatized in Judy Montague’s “Adrift” at the Gene Dynarksi Theatre in Hollywood.

Thursday: Harry Hamlin, Jessica Walter and JoBeth Williams star in a reading of P. J. Barry’s murder mystery “Bad Axe” in L.A. Theatre Works’ The Play’s the Thing series at the Santa Monica Guest Quarters Suite Hotel.

Thursday: Sponsored by the Santa Monica Playhouse, the English Shakespeare Company comes to UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall with an innovative new look at Shakespeare’s plays, “God Say Amen.”

Saturday: A black psychiatrist treats people dealing with the violence of the Algerian revolution in “Fanon’s People,” written and directed by Toby Armour, at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood.

Saturday: Fringe Festival/LA presents “24 Hours of Art,” seven different bus tours around Los Angeles, including stops at the Watts Towers, Santa Monica’s Electronics Cafe and the Daniel Saxon Gallery in Hollywood.

Saturday: In Woodland Hills, the Richard Basehart Playhouse kicks off its fifth season with a staging of the Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt musical “The Fantasticks.”

Oct. 14: Samuel Bernstein presents an encore of his musical parody “Cheap Shots, An Unprovoked Attack on the Modern Musical Theatre” in a benefit for Equity Fights AIDS, at the Gardenia in Hollywood.

Oct. 15: “And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little,” Paul Zindel’s drama about three sisters haunted by their pasts, opens at the Zephyr Theatre in West Hollywood.

Oct. 15: At the Westwood Playhouse, Eileen Atkins plays Virginia Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own,” an acclaimed solo show based on Woolf’s book of the same name.

Oct. 17: An older vineyard owner takes a young mail-order bride in Frank Loesser’s 1956 musical “The Most Happy Fella” at the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood.

Oct. 17: Joe Pintauro’s “Metropolitan Operas,” nine short plays about modern American life, opens at ARTAFAX in Los Angeles.

Oct. 17: The unconventional love lives of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron are the subject of Howard Brenton’s “Bloody Poetry” at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.

Oct. 18: In Hollywood, the Attic Theatre presents a revival of Arthur Miller’s drama about individual accountability, “All My Sons.”

Oct. 19: Wakako Yamauchi’s “Not a Through Street,” a contemporary drama set on an Asian-American cul-de-sac, bows at East West Players in Hollywood.

Oct. 19: In Venice, Beyond Baroque presents a one-night staged reading of Glenn Hopkins’ “The Pursuit of Happiness,” a story of two non-traditional American couples. Oct. 24: Every day is Halloween at Hollywood’s West Coast Ensemble for “Gorey Stories,” a bizarre and scary evening of songs and sketches, based on the stories and drawings of Edward Gorey.

Oct. 24: A tale of high jinks in heaven and on Earth, “The Living Dead,” Frank Galati’s adaptation of Stanley Elkins’ novel, is part of The Play’s the Thing play-reading series at the Guest Quarters Hotel.

Oct. 25: Jerry Mayer (“Almost Perfect,” “Aspirin & Elephants”) presents his newest work, the semi-autobiographical “A Love Affair,” at the Santa Monica Playhouse.