George Psarras
Actor - San Francisco, Los Angeles, CA
SAG-AFTRA, AEA
Reviews
Lt. Caro - Between Riverside and Crazy
by Stephan Adly Guirgis
San Jose Stage Company - December 2018
"George Psarras, who’s been an effective and versatile actor for City Lights, TheatreWorks and many other places, is both grating and funny as Lieutenant Caro."
- John Orr, Regarding Arts
"a hilariously boorish George Psarras"
- Sam Hurwitt, The Mercury News
Bassanio - The Merchant of Venice
by William Shakespeare
City Lights Theater Company - March 2018
"played with blithe earnestness by City Lights resident George Psarras"
- Sam Hurwitt, The Mercury News
Brock - Ideation
by Aaron Loeb
City Lights Theater Company - January 2017
"George Psarras is priceless as the brash Brock"
- Sam Hurwitt, The Mercury News
John Merrick - The Elephant Man
by Bernard Pomerance
City Lights Theater Company - March 2016
"Within minutes of the play's beginning, it is clear to the hushed audience that City Lights Theater Company has cast a John Merrick who can stand up to the best of those who have won accolades and awards in the past 25+ years for this most difficult stage role in Bernard Pomerance's The Elephant Man (including 1979 and 2015 Tony nominations for Philip Anglim and Bradley Cooper, respectively).
"Many moments of Mr. Psarras' performance are mesmerizing, but none is so captivating as when he expresses his tearful gratitude to a visiting, beautiful actress, Mrs. Kendal, as she takes his hand and declares with much conviction, "I am very pleased to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Merrick.'"
-Eddie Reynolds, Talkin' Broadway
"Psarras is terribly touching as the lonely and suffering Merrick, who soon displays a philosophical bent that often cuts through the Victorian propriety of caretakers who insist on treating him like a child."
-Sam Hurwitt, The Mercury News
"At the center of those performances is Merrick, played with great physical control by George Psarras, a member of the company who has his fingerprints on many City Lights’ productions, certainly as an actor and also for his work with sound design. Here, Psarras breaks down his approach to Merrick where it most needs to be – physically."
-David John Chavez, Bay Area Plays
Dr. Jekyll - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
by Jeffrey Hatcher
City Lights Theater Company - September 2015
"George Psarras brings to his initial Dr. Jekyll a serious intensity of purpose, an air of reserve, and a penchant for intellectual conversation over a brandy with colleagues. Yet he also convincingly demonstrates how his anger can suddenly erupt with viciousness when he halts a lecture over a woman's naked corpse by his somewhat slimy colleague, Dr. Carew."
-Eddie Reynolds, Talkin Broadway
"Front and center is an excellent performance by sound director Psarras, in the lead role of Dr. Jekyll. His Jekyll is a solid, 19th century British gentleman and scholar, confident in his intelligence and morality. One of his best scenes is when he berates another doctor at a teaching hospital for his misogynistic and incorrect diagnoses at the postmortem examination of a prostitute who'd been beaten to death. Psarras is in full believable rant in a scene that carries much irony."
- John Orr, Regarding Arts
"An engaging George Psarras nimbly steps into the ill-fated shoes of the good doctor Henry Jekyll, capturing his sharp intellect as well as his fateful narcissism."
-Karen D'Souza, The Mercury News
Kip - Build
by Michael Golamco
City Lights Theater Company - January 2015
"Acting-wise I think City Lights has just set a new bar for itself. These are three superb performances, believable, enjoyable in every sense. George Psarras has the lethargic, paranoia-angst, but brilliant thing down to perfection."
- Clinton Stark, Stark Insider
Mozart - Amadeus
by Peter Shaffer
City Lights Theater Company - March 2014
"Psarras is positively dazzling as Mozart, capturing the childlike willfulness and crudity of the character and yet quite believably giving us glimpses of his genius. Psarras also devised the sound design for the show, providing an extra layer of actor-character oneness that is beautifully rendered, including his own piano playing. This is an astonishing, not-to-be-missed performance."
-Jeanie K. Smith, Talkin' Broadway
"Psarras imbues the wunderkind with a devil-may-care intensity, sucking down bad wine, chasing after his wife, Constanze (a bubbly Roneet Aliza Rahamim) as well as every other skirt that crosses his path, and delighting in potty humor. The music pours out of him in a fugue, as if he weren't the creator of such sublime compositions, but merely the delivery system. The actor captures both Mozart's early giddiness and his later despair."
-Karen D'Souza, The Mercury News
"Psarras makes it his, bringing a sweet naïveté that the movie didn’t quite pull off."
-Cy Ashley Webb, Stark Insider