Theater Review:

John Rafanello’s “Chronicles,” now playing upstairs at Glendale’s First Lutheran Church, is less an evening of theater than a night of fascinating “true” stories told by your own Uncle John, who just happens to believe in past lives, out-of-body experiences, Christianity, telepathy, aliens from outer space and the power of positive thinking.

All that’s expected of you in return is to listen with an open mind, a sense of humor and a feeling of goodwill that’s half as expansive as storyteller Rafanello’s.

There are none of the regular theater-going formalities. Instead, you might be greeted at the ticket table by a little 4-year-old girl chiming up “Twenty dollars, please” to anyone coming in the door. It’s immediately clear that Rafanello is a very well-liked performer, since most of the people in the room seem to know him a lot better than you do. And what’s more, they already like him a lot.

There’s no stage. Under other circumstances, the audience would be gathered around Rafanello in the family living room, seated on sofas and armchairs and pillows. Here, the audience sits in armless metal chairs near a corner of a church conference room, decorated with bookcases, a music stand to hold a few reference notes, posters of celestial beings and a few toy wizards.

There’s no program to explain that you’ll get a 10-minute intermission — with sodas free of charge.

Instead, there’s a flier with the show schedule on one side, and information on how to contact Rafanello for your own spiritual awareness session on the other.

Standing so that everyone can see him, like a big, burly, gravelly voiced salesman who sincerely wants to sell you the car that’s best for you, Rafanello comes across as friendly, cheerful and honest, no matter how incredible some of his stories may sound. There are no stage lights. At Monday’s performance, the regular room lighting was added to by video light stands, while three men who appeared to also be friends of Rafanello were running video cameras for him during the show.