Podcasts by KRCB-FM: Second Row Center
House lights down. Cue the music. The curtain rises weekly on KRCB’s early-morning news segment Second Row Center.
Further podcasts by krcbproduction@gmail.com
Podcast on the topic Darstellende Kunst
All episodes
"Edith Piaf: Under Paris Skies"- January 7, 2015 from 2023-12-14T06:52:19.914924
It’s a new year, and as the North Bay theater community prepares to launch its first shows of 2015, Cinnabar Theater, in Petaluma, has already unveiled its newest show, and I mean new. "Edith Piaf:...
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"Edith Piaf: Under Paris Skies"- January 7, 2015 from 2022-03-07T10:11:21.861089
It’s a new year, and as the North Bay theater community prepares to launch its first shows of 2015, Cinnabar Theater, in Petaluma, has already unveiled its newest show, and I mean new. "Edith Piaf:...
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"Edith Piaf: Under Paris Skies" - January 7, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.364497
It’s a new year, and as the North Bay theater community prepares to launch its first shows of 2015, Cinnabar Theater, in Petaluma, has already unveiled its newest show, and I mean new. "Edith Piaf:...
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"Heroines" and "In the Next Room" - February 4, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.357899
In Victorian England, the unhappy wife of a repressed doctor yearns to feel alive - and finally takes matters into her own hands. In an imaginary steam-punk version of Victorian England, a band of ...
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"Bonnie & Clyde;" and "Shining City" - February 25, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.353803
The thing about death is, it’s not negotiable. Sooner or later, we all have to face it. Till then, it’s hanging out there, somewhere, waiting for us. And one way we deal with that is by experiencin...
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"The Convert" - March 4, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.352675
Change is part of life.
Some changes are easy, others much less so.
And when cultures collide, change is often dangerous, violent, and destructive. From the opening scenes of Dana...
Oregon Shakespeare Festival: "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Pericles" - April 1, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.349214
Every year in spring, when people hear me talking about the shows that just opened at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, they get confused.
“Wait . . . what? Just opened? You mean...
Oregon Shakespeare Festival: "Guys and Dolls" and "Fingersmith" - April 2, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.348144
One thing about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that surprises a few newcomers is that only about four or five of the eleven shows they do each year are by William Shakespeare. The festival mixes t...
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"Venus in Fur" - April 8, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.346822
Something kinky has been taking place lately in the world of mainstream entertainment. Sadism and masochism are now to romantic comedy what romance and comedy use to be to romantic comedy. From the...
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“Point Break Live!" - May 6, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.300116
Whatever else one says about "Point Break Live!," you have to agree there aren’t many other live entertainments where the audience is doused with water, beaned by flying sandwiches, robbed at gunpo...
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"The North Plan;" and "The Clean House" - June 3, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.293946
Making an audience laugh is not an easy task for any playwright, or for the actors indebted with bringing the author’s words to life on stage. Humor is primarily a matter of taste. Where one of mig...
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"Head Over Heels" - July 1, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.290448
Well, the recent Supreme Court ruling affirming marriage equality to all couldn’t be better timed, ‘cause the big celebration’s already started up in Ashland, Oregon, and this dance party’s got som...
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"Antony and Cleopatra;" and "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" - July 2, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.289390
The good, the bad and the ugly.
It’s not just the name of an old Clint Eastwood movie.
It’s also a fitting way to think about this year’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival, currently ru...
"The Count of Monte Cristo;" and "A Long Day’s Journey Into Night" - July 6, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.288374
One of the cool things about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the current season of which I have been reporting on lately, is the way it often programs shows that cleverly comment on each other in ...
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"Twelfth Night;" "Cymbeline" - July 8, 2015 from 2022-02-22T00:38:49.286999
There’s an old Latin saying.
"Aestivo Tempori est Shakespeare!"
Roughly translated: There’s no better time to watch Shakespeare than in the summertime!
I don’t know when ...
Hello, Dolly! - March 6, 2019 from 2019-03-06T08:50:43
Anyone going to a performance of Hello, Dolly! - running now at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco through March 17 - with an appetite for an enlightened look at male/female relationships...
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After Miss Julie - February 27, 2019 from 2019-02-27T09:32:14
Sometimes the most interesting dramas are the simplest - a single set, a few characters, a conflict. “Naturalistic” plays, as they are sometimes referred, were the result of a late 19th century mov...
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Forever Plaid - February 20, 2019 from 2019-02-20T08:24:43
Musical zombies rise from the dead to sing an evening of ‘50’s pop standards.
Let me try that again.
On February 4, 1964, The Plaids, an eastern Pennsylvania-based vocal quartet...
Hamlet - February 13, 2019 from 2019-02-13T09:55:55
To see or not to see? That is the question.
Anyone with even the slightest interest in theatre has probably seen a production or two of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in their lifetime. Cons...
Arsenic & Old Lace - February 6, 2019 from 2019-02-06T12:26:36
Serial killing would seem to be rather ghoulish subject matter for a comedic play, yet Arsenic and Old Lace has been a reliable audience-pleaser for over seventy-five years. Sonoma Arts Live has a ...
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How I Learned What I Learned - January 30, 2019 from 2019-01-30T09:03:37
When playwright August Wilson passed away in 2005, he left behind a body of work that has become a staple of the American theatre. As much a documentarian as a poet and author, the ten plays (Jitne...
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Moon Over Buffalo - January 23, 2019 from 2019-01-23T16:11:13
Continuing with the tradition of theatre companies producing theatre about theatre, 6th Street Playhouse is presenting Ken Ludwig’s 1995 door-slamming farce Moon Over Buffalo. The backstage comedy ...
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Top Torn Tickets of 2018 - Part Two, the Musicals - January 16, 2019 from 2019-01-16T08:27:14
It’s said that musicals are the bread and butter of community theatre, so here’s a list of the North Bay productions I toasted this past year. Here are my top torn tickets of 2018: Part Two, the Mu...
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Top Torn Tickets of 2018 - Part One, the Plays - January 9, 2019 from 2019-01-09T07:30:50
‘Tis the time for “Best of …” lists, so in the spirit of my illustrious predecessor and with a nod to the substantial differences in mounting a musical versus a play, here are my top torn tickets o...
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Love, Linda - January 2, 2019 from 2019-01-02T07:41:21
For years, Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater has closed out the year with a musical cabaret show. Past years’ productions have celebrated the work of musical artists from Edith Piaf to Mahalia Jackson to...
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Dear Evan Hansen - December 26, 2018 from 2018-12-26T08:22:58
Dear Evan Hansen,
I attended the opening night performance of the San Francisco run of your national tour at the Curran Theatre. I’ve heard a lot about your show - the six Tonys (including...
Sonoma/Napa Holiday Theater Preview - December 12, 2018 from 2018-12-12T09:17:36
For folks looking for some respite from Christmas shopping or from becoming participants in the demolition derby that is mall parking, North Bay theatre companies are providing several seasonal ent...
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Polar Bears - December 5, 2018 from 2018-12-05T09:59:14
When after sixteen years David Templeton hung up his theater critic’s hat, his stated purpose was to turn his full attention to other pursuits: artistic, journalistic, theatrical and otherwise. Sin...
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Marin Theater Holiday Preview - November 28, 2018 from 2018-11-28T08:37:17
If you’re trying to avoid attending the umpteenth production of The Nutcracker in your lifetime, Marin theatre companies are providing several other entertainment options for this holiday season. <...
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The New Century - November 21, 2018 from 2018-11-21T10:09:35
For an area with as large a gay population and as much theatre as Sonoma County, it’s surprising how little gay-themed theatre is produced in the region. Oh sure, the larger companies will produce ...
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Uncle Vanya - November 14, 2018 from 2018-11-14T09:41:44
I don’t know anyone who attends theatre to reinforce their belief that life is simply a series of travails to be endured until the sweet release of death, but if you’re out there, have I got show f...
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God of Carnage - November 7, 2018 from 2018-11-07T09:17:43
In the past month, North Bay stages have been occupied by vampires, ghosts, a Thing, and Transylvanian transvestites. The Novato Community Playhouse now finds itself overrun with the most ghastly, ...
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Blithe Spirit - October 31, 2018 from 2018-10-31T08:49:34
If you’re wary of attending the latest splatter fest at your local multiplex and seeking a kinder, gentler Halloween season entertainment, Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions brings you Noël Coward’s Bl...
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Oslo - October 24, 2018 from 2018-10-25T08:35:53
At a time when the language of diplomacy has been reduced to a 140-character tweet transmitted at 3 am, it’s good to be reminded of the men and women for whom the quest for peace demanded actual th...
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The Addams Family, Count Dracula - October 17, 2018 from 2018-10-25T08:32:02
The credits for the Spreckels Theater Company production of The Addams Family, running now through October 28, notes that the musical is “based on characters created by Charles Addams.” It is not a...
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How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents - October 10, 2018 from 2018-10-25T08:26:03
There’s an interesting style of theatre in which a piece of dramatic prose, usually a short story or selected chapters from a longer piece, is fully staged and performed. Usually referred to as a “...
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Guys and Dolls - October 3, 2018 from 2018-10-03T07:58
If you’ve missed having Summer Repertory Theatre around this year, 6th Street Playhouse’s production of “Guys and Dolls” may hold you until SRT’s return in 2019.
SRT Artistic Director James New...
Church & State, Time Stands Still - September 26, 2018 from 2018-09-26T22:21:14
Last year, Healdsburg’s Raven Players surprised this critic with a very interesting production of Quiara Alegría Hudes “Water by the Spoonful”. The play, which tells parallel stories of the tribula...
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Naked Truth - September 19, 2018 from 2018-09-19T09:12:44
Spreckels Theatre Company opens their season with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Simon Stephens’ adaptation of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel about a boy with ‘behavioral difficulties...
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The Comedy of Errors, Henry IV Part 1 - August 29, 2018 from 2018-09-12T07:18:31
Like an Elizabethan game of whack-a-mole, as soon as North Bay theatre companies knock out one outdoor summer Shakespeare production, another one seems to pop up. Marin Shakespeare brought us Peric...
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North Bay Theatre Season Preview - September 5, 2018 from 2018-09-12T07:18:09
With September come football games that actually matter, open season on California tree squirrels (daily limit of four) and the opening of the new artistic season for many North Bay theatre compani...
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Cabaret, Savage Wealth - September 12, 2018 from 2018-09-12T07:17:07
Theatregoers hankering for a classic or the desire to see something new have two productions running now that fit the bill.
Cinnabar Theater presents the 50-year-old classic Cabaret. The ...
The Trial of John Brown - August 22, 2018 from 2018-08-22T07:14:05
So, what’s former Spreckels Performing Arts Center Manager Gene Abravaya been doing since his retirement to the Arizona desert?
“Well”, he told me in a recent interview, “I’ve been enjoyi...
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change & Heroes - August 15, 2018 from 2018-08-15T08:25:02
Relationships are front and center in two very different shows now running on the North Bay’s northernmost stages through August 19.
The Cloverdale Performing Arts Center is presenting He...
Shall We Dance - August 8, 2018 from 2018-08-09T18:03:21
Transcendence Theatre Company’s seventh season of “Broadway Under the Stars” continues with a dance-centric production entitled, appropriately enough, Shall We Dance. The show runs through August 1...
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Pericles, Shakespeare in Love - Aug 1, 2018 from 2018-08-01T06:36:01
‘Tis the season for Shakespeare al fresco so pack a picnic, grab a blanket and check out these North Bay productions:
Marin Shakespeare closes out its season under the stars with Pericles,...
Always... Patsy Cline - July 25, 2018 from 2018-07-25T07:37:53
Jukebox musicals have become the bread and butter for a lot of community theatre groups. Minimal casts, simple sets and the built-in audience that comes with a popular singer or musical group is to...
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame - July 18, 2018 from 2018-07-18T06:56:13
The Hunchback of Notre Dame was originally scheduled as the closing production of the Spreckels Theatre Company’s 2017-2018 season. The musical, whose development by Walt Disney’s theatrical arm st...
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School of Rock - July 11, 2018 from 2018-07-11T07:08:57
One might think that the talents behind Downtown Abbey and Phantom of the Opera would be odd choices to make a Broadway musical out of a 2003 comedy starring Jack Black.
One would be corre...
llyria - July 4, 2018 from 2018-07-04T15:16:13
In a world of theatre based on movies and television shows, why not Shakespeare? Such is Illyria, a musical adaptation of Twelfth Night first produced Off-Broadway in 2002 and now running at Santa ...
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Stairway to Paradise - June 27, 2018 from 2018-06-27T07:15:45
Sonoma’s Transcendence Theatre Company opened its seventh season of “Broadway Under the Stars” in Jack London State Park with Stairway to Paradise, the first of four staged concert events scheduled...
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The Fantasticks, Bullshot Crummond - June 20, 2018 from 2018-06-20T06:49:10
Two community theatre workhorses have galloped onto North Bay stages.
Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater is presenting The Fantasticks, the 1960 musical that ran for a record 42 years Off-Broadway an...
Honky - June 13, 2018 from 2018-06-13T16:26:43
“Everyone’s a little bit racist” sing the puppets in the musical Avenue Q. Playwright Greg Kalleres takes that thought and runs with it in Honky, running now at Left Edge Theatre.
It open...
Hands on a Hardbody - June 6, 2018 from 2018-06-06T08:37:50
Ten down-on-their-luck Texans gather on a car lot to compete for a cherry red Nissan pickup. They must lay their gloved hands upon the truck and, except for scheduled breaks every six hours, never ...
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Mamma Mia - May 30, 2018 from 2018-05-30T16:03:47
High atop Mount Tamalpais, at about the 2,000 foot level, sits the Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre where the “great outdoor theatre adventure” known as The Mountain Play has been produced for the pas...
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Jeeves Intervenes, The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged) - May 23, 2018 from 2018-05-23T11:59:40
That the name ‘Jeeves’ immediately conjures up the image of a staid British manservant is a tribute to the staying power of author P. G. Wodehouse’s character. Since his first appearance in 1915, h...
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Women In Jeopardy, Eurydice - May 16, 2018 from 2018-05-16T07:14:23
Female protagonists in peril are the focus of one very silly and one very melancholy production running now in the North Bay.
Left Edge Theatre’s “Women in Jeopardy!” is a laugh-out-loud ...
Peter Pan - May 9, 2018 from 2018-05-09T07:12:50
J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan has been seen on stage in one form or another for well over 100 years. It’s survived being Disney-fied and even Christopher Walken-ized in a disastrous live television spec...
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La Cage aux Folles - May 2, 2018 from 2018-05-02T07:36:27
It’s been thirty-five years since La Cage aux Folles took Broadway by storm. What began in 1973 as a French stage farce followed by a series of films, the Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman musical ...
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Into The Woods - April 25, 2018 from 2018-04-25T06:03:31
The Santa Rosa Junior College theatre season ends with their production of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. It’s a fairy tale mash-up with elements of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack ...
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Death of a Salesman, Farragut North - April 18, 2018 from 2018-04-18T07:40:09
Dramas old and new dominate North Bay stages with two good ones continuing their runs.
Film, television, and theatre veteran Charles Siebert headlines the 6th Street Playhouse production ...
Lost in Yonkers, Time of Your Life - April 11, 2018 from 2018-04-11T06:04:19
Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas hit North Bay stages, first with the Raven Players production of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers. Simon, whose best-known works are comedies tinged with a little melancho...
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Amadeus - April 4, 2018 from 2018-04-04T09:55:48
In Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg assesses Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro with the criticism that it has “too many notes.” Cinnabar Theater’s current production suffers from...
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By The Water - March 28, 2018 from 2018-03-28T08:40:32
One wouldn’t think that a play that deals with the wreckage left behind by a natural disaster would be particularly attractive to North Bay residents right now, but Sharyn Rothstein’s By the Water ...
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Blackbird - March 20, 2018 from 2018-03-21T06:26:17
At a post-show Q & A following the opening night performance of Main Stage West’s Blackbird, director David Lear stated he felt that one of theatre’s responsibilities is to make an audience “a litt...
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Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter - March 14, 2018 from 2018-03-14T07:24:47
While time may heal all wounds, a little human kindness along the way doesn’t hurt. That’s the basic takeaway from the Santa Rosa Junior College production of Julie Marie Myatt’s Welcome Home, Jenn...
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The Realistic Joneses - March 7, 2018 from 2018-03-07T06:33:12
One of the oddest plays I’ve seen in a while, Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses isn’t particularly real in its examination of two suburban couples who share the same surname.
It does, howe...
Tenderly - February 28, 2018 from 2018-02-28T06:29:03
Ask anyone under fifty years of age who Rosemary Clooney is and they’re likely to respond “George Clooney’s wife?” They’d be in the ballpark (she was his aunt) but what they probably don’t know is ...
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Equus - February 21, 2018 from 2018-02-21T06:21:12
Why? It’s a question we seem to be asking ourselves daily as we wake up to the news of the latest national tragedy or act of incomprehensible behavior. That too-oft-asked question with the most elu...
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South Pacific - February 14, 2018 from 2018-02-14T06:37:16
World War II didn’t seem like ancient history in 1949 when South Pacific made its Broadway premiere. Sadly, its warnings of the damage that bigotry and prejudice can do aren’t ancient history now a...
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Buried Child, Good People - February 7, 2018 from 2018-02-07T06:47:15
The choices in life that haunt you take center stage in two terrific productions running now in North Bay theatres. Sebastopol’s Main Stage West is presenting Sam Shepard’s Buried Child while Petal...
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Disgraced - January 31, 2018 from 2018-01-31T07:27:33
Blistering drama takes the stage at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre with the North Bay premiere of Ayad Akhtar’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced. Akhtar has taken the “friends drink to e...
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The Dining Room - January 24, 2018 from 2018-01-24T08:05:37
The plight of the vanishing New England WASP is the subject matter of A. R. Gurney’s The Dining Room, running now at Sonoma Arts Live. No, it’s not a science lecture on the more annoying cousin of ...
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Honky Tonk Angels - January 17, 2018 from 2018-01-17T06:39:12
North Bay theatre kicks off the new year with 6th Street Playhouse’s Honky Tonk Angels, a country music revue by Ted Swindley. Swindley, best known for the community theatre staple Always, Patsy Kl...
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A Look Back at Sonoma County Theatre in 2017 (Part II) - January 10, 2018 from 2018-01-10T06:37:33
Avoiding the typical “Best of…” lists that are commonplace at this time of year, last week I presented Part I of my 2017 “Special End of Year” Awards for local theatre. Here now is Part II:
A Look Back at Sonoma County Theatre in 2017 (Part I) - January 3, 2018 from 2018-01-03T06:15:47
It’s that time of year again for the usual “Best of…” lists where critics review their picks for the best (and sometimes worst) in music, movies, fashion, and the like and give people at holiday pa...
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Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge - December 20, 2017 from 2017-12-20T15:29:14
In comedy, timing is everything and the timing is so off in 6th Street Playhouse’s Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge that the fact that it still manages to extract any laughs at all from its...
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Daddy Long Legs - November 29, 2017 from 2017-11-29T06:27:18
If you like A.R. Gurney’s popular two-person play “Love Letters”, you’re going to love “Daddy Long Legs”, a musical adaptation of the 1912 novel by Jean Webster. Set at the turn of the 20th century...
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Bakersfield Mist - November 22, 2017 from 2017-11-22T08:47:12
In 1992, a retired truck driver named Teri Horton paid five dollars for a painting from a southern California thrift store to give as a gag gift to a friend. An incomprehensible series of dots, blo...
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2017 Holiday Plays - November 15, 2017 from 2017-11-15T22:38:24
The holiday season will soon be upon us and Sonoma County Theatre companies will be providing plenty of opportunities to escape the bumper-to-bumper traffic, full parking lots, and crowded stores t...
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2nd Annual MTJA Awards - November 8, 2017 from 2017-11-08T06:33:45
At last count, Sonoma County had over twenty active theatre companies, ranging from the nomadic Pegasus Theatre Company to the theatre departments of the two local institutions of higher learning. ...
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Steel Magnolias - November 1, 2017 from 2017-11-06T08:12:10
The unique bonds of female friendship are at the heart of Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, now in the middle of its run at Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse. Based on the life of Harling’s sister,...
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Mary Shelley's Body - October 25, 2017 from 2017-10-25T06:45:28
“Am I supposed to be retelling my creature’s story or confessing my own?” – so asks Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, author of Frankenstein and the protagonist in Petaluma playwright (and former Second ...
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SPAMALOT - October 18, 2017 from 2017-10-18T07:39:17
The old axiom “the show must go on” traces its origins back to traveling circuses when, if an animal got loose, the ringmaster and the band tried to keep things going so that the crowd would not pa...
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Constellations - September 20, 2017 from 2017-09-20T07:02:43
Back in my college days when, after the ingestion of a substantial quantity of adult beverages, the conversation topic amongst my friends inevitably steered to the meaning of life, my standard cont...
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Sideways - September 13, 2017 from 2017-09-13T08:39:06
Two shows hit North Bay stages whose titles audiences may recognize from their somewhat better-known film adaptations. First up is Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre’s presentation of Sideways, author ...
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Elephant Man & Man of La Mancha - September 6, 2017 from 2017-09-06T05:03:43
Titular roles don’t come more challenging than those of Miguel de Cervantes, the Man of La Mancha and John Merrick, better known as The Elephant Man, so why not increase the challenge by casting th...
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You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown - August 30, 2017 from 2017-08-30T06:37:58
A citizen of Santa Rosa who criticizes anything Charles Schulz / “Peanuts”- related runs the risk of being run out of town on the next Smart Train. This theatre critic took on that risk and attende...
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The Farce Awakens - August 9, 2017 from 2017-08-18T09:11:38
According to IMDB, the budget for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an estimated $245,000,000.00. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here in saying the budget for the Redwood Theatre Compa...
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The Farce Awakens - August 9, 2017 from 2017-08-18T09:11:38
According to IMDB, the budget for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an estimated $245,000,000.00. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here in saying the budget for the Redwood Theatre Compa...
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The Farce Awakens - August 9, 2017 from 2017-08-18T09:11:38
According to IMDB, the budget for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an estimated $245,000,000.00. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here in saying the budget for the Redwood Theatre Compa...
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George M! - June 28, 2017 from 2017-06-28T07:03:45
George M. Cohan was known as “the man who owned Broadway” in the first two decades of the twentieth century. A prolific playwright and composer of hundreds of songs, today he’s mostly known as the ...
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Becky's New Car - June 21, 2017 from 2017-06-21T06:43:52
Middle-aged angst takes center stage at the Sonoma Community Center as Becky’s New Car pulls into Sonoma Arts Live. Steven Dietz’s bittersweet comedy runs through June 25.
Becky Foster has...
Clue: The Musical - June 14, 2017 from 2017-06-14T05:57:41
Your enjoyment of Clue: The Musical, now running at Napa’s Lucky Penny Community Arts Center, may be wholly dependent on two factors –
1.) Your familiarity with and affection for the clas...
Beauty and the Beast - June 7, 2017 from 2017-06-07T06:28:43
If you haven’t had a chance in the last 104 years to check out the Mountain Play, now’s as good a time as any. This year brings an enjoyable production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to the Cushi...
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The Money Shot - May 31, 2017 from 2017-05-31T07:08:59
“Vapid” and “vacuous” are two terms that come to mind when discussing the characters in The Money Shot, Neil LaBute’s theatrical thumb-in-the-eye to Hollywood that closes out the 2016/2017 season a...
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A Masterpiece of Comic... Timing - May 24, 2017 from 2017-05-24T08:11:20
Big shot Broadway producer Jerry Cobb has a problem. He’s in desperate need of a big comedy hit to impress the Hollywood bigwigs and pave his way to fame and fortune on the left coast. He’s rented ...
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Guards at the Taj - May 17, 2017 from 2017-05-17T05:54:03
It’s 1648 and the splendiferous Taj Mahal awaits its opening. Humayun and Babur, the two lowliest members of Emperor Shah Jahan’s Royal Guards, are assigned the lowliest duty at the lowliest post. ...
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Tarzan - May 10, 2017 from 2017-05-10T17:57:38
In recent years, when you entered the Spreckels Performing Arts Center’s Codding Theater you found yourself in an undersea world, or on the deck of the Titanic, or in Philadelphia’s Independence Ha...
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Songs For A New World - May 3, 2017 from 2017-05-03T07:07:44
Songs for a New World is not a typical piece of American musical theatre. There is no book or “story”, per se, with a standard beginning, middle and end. There are no characters to follow from Act ...
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Breeders - April 26, 2017 from 2017-04-26T17:45:49
Sonoma County is, some would say blessed, others might say cursed, with a lot of theatre. Currently running or recently closed shows range from classic fare like The Odd Couple, The Diary of Anne F...
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The Birds - April 19, 2017 from 2017-04-19T06:56:20
Before attempting to explain what Conor McPherson’s The Birds is, running now at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West, best make it clear what it isn’t. It is not a stage adaptation of the Alfred Hitchcock...
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The Odd Couple - April 12, 2017 from 2017-04-17T15:57:07
There’s a certain segment of the “thea-tuh” community that turns its collective nose up at the mere mention of a mainstream, commercially-successful playwright. One of my most vivid college memorie...
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Visiting Mr. Green - March 29, 2017 from 2017-04-06T09:41:33
There’s a nice, little show running in the 6th Street Playhouse Studio Theatre right now. You’ve probably never heard of it, though it’s been around a little over 20 years. In those twenty-plus yea...
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Sugar Bean Sisters - April 5, 2017 from 2017-04-05T06:02:30
A title like The Sugar Bean Sisters may conjure up images of sweet Southern belles, mint julips, or quaint sibling rivalries that end in hugs, forgiveness and tears. Perhaps it invokes memories of ...
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The Handoff - March 22, 2017 from 2017-03-22T09:52:02
The Handoff…
DAVID: The art of theater and the inevitability of change - they’ve gone together from the beginning of, well, of theater. And I’m not talking about the pocket change that mos...
"Race" - March 15, 2017 from 2017-03-16T16:33:57
It has been argued, effectively, that the person most qualified to talk about race and racism is the victim of that racism – not those who, consciously or unconsciously, are benefiting from that ra...
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"Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf" - March 8, 2017 from 2017-03-08T06:11:32
There’s a line that comes about halfway through Edward Albee’s classic play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Unlike so much of the rest of Albee’s brutal and brilliant drama, it’s not a line full ...
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"Mojada" - March 1, 2017 from 2017-03-02T06:20:49
Well, it’s spring, and the annual Oregon Shakespeare Festival has kicked off its 2017 season with four new shows – out of an eventual total of eleven —the majority of them playing for the next nine...
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"Hand To God" - February 22, 2017 from 2017-02-22T06:29:41
I’m not sure what it is, but there’s just something appealing—if that’s the word—about watching a puppet – especially a cute puppet – talking dirty … dropping F-bombs, describing sex acts, saying t...
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"Evita" - January 25, 2017 from 2017-02-15T18:56:50
Powered by some pretty spectacular voices, Sonoma Arts Live’s clever, minimalized production of Webber-and-Rice’s iconic musical “Evita” scores major points for musicality, invention and sheer guts...
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"Native Son" - February 1, 2017 from 2017-02-15T18:56:44
Beauty, one could argue, isn’t always very pretty.
Especially in the case of great literature.
Richard Wright’s 1940 masterpiece Native Son—considered one of the most important an...
"You Got Older," "Buyer & Cellar" - February 8, 2017 from 2017-02-15T18:56:38
Playwright Clare Barron, a New York theater artist with a fast-rising reputation for crafting quirky comedy-dramas with the ring of truth and an affection for damaged people, is finally getting her...
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"Emile," "Stage Kiss" - January 18, 2017 from 2017-01-18T08:42:57
Valentine’s Day is less than a month away, and love is already in the air at some local theaters. Well, love and sex, and betrayal … and sex, and also mathematics … and sex, and stage-fright, fake ...
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New Year's Eve 2017 - December 28, 2016 from 2016-12-28T15:22:22
Whatever else one has to say about the year 2016, for those in the North Bay who love live theater, it’s been an especially strong year. If you were willing to do your homework, make good choices, ...
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"Miss Benet: Christmas at Pemberley" - December 14, 2016 from 2016-12-14T09:33:05
It all began on a road-trip to Ashland, Oregon.
The acclaimed playwright Lauren Gunderson was taking a theater-going excursion with Margot Melcon, then the Director of New Play Development...
"Hope" - December 7, 2016 from 2016-12-07T06:22:24
“Hope. Do we ever give up on hope? Even in the face of hard evidence?”
That the question at the heart of Si Kahn’s succinctly-titled new musical memory play Hope, running through December ...
"Luzia" - November 30, 2016 from 2016-11-30T08:14:53
Describing a new Cirque du Soleil show is a little like describing a dream while still half asleep. Talking about ‘Luzia,’ appropriately subtitled “A Waking Dream of Mexico,” is roughly that diffic...
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"Quality of Life" - October 19, 2016 from 2016-10-19T06:08:53
Have you ever noticed that most stories that appear, on the surface, to be all about death and dying, actually turn out to be all about life and living? It’s true. Think about Joan Didion’s memoir ...
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"Threepenny Opera" - October 5, 2016 from 2016-10-05T09:35:27
The Threepenny Opera — Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 “play with music — is like an expensive desert that’s so complex and filled with flavor most people can’t quite figure out how to enjoy it. That’s how B...
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"Sweeney Todd," "Baskerville" - September 28, 2016 from 2016-09-28T13:11:26
Victorian England produced some spectacularly bloody and murderous literature.
Some was written and published, some began as the stuff of urban legend before being translated for the stage...
"The Big Meal," "August Osage County" - September 21, 2016 from 2016-09-21T08:56:37
Two appetizingly notable stage plays, both currently running in the North Bay, feature the unpredictable combustible power of people related to one another, or about to be, sitting down to eat dinn...
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"The House That Jack Built" - September 14, 2016 from 2016-09-14T14:07:16
Jack London.
One cannot grow up in Sonoma County, or even visit here for very long, without gaining at least some awareness of who Jack London was. Few local school-kids can’t tell you tha...
"The Most Happy Fella" - September 7, 2016 from 2016-09-07T09:11:36
It’s been twelve years since Stephen Walsh last played Tony the grape grower, in the classic Frank Loesser musical ‘The Most Happy Fella,’ at Cinnabar Theater. And to employ an over-picked cli...
"Animal Crackers" - August 31, 2016 from 2016-08-31T09:28:39
Hooray for Captain Spalding.
And hooray for the weird, wonderful, creatively imitative assemblage of actors who are currently bringing the Marx Brothers ‘Animal Crackers’ to retro-ridiculo...
"Comedy of Errors" - August 23, 2016 from 2016-08-24T06:24:05
The issue of high ticket-prices is rarely discussed openly within the North Bay theater community, nor do many seem eager to talk about the arguable effect of prices on the widely reported erosion ...
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"Big Fish" - August 17, 2016 from 2016-08-17T07:48:12
Some stage musicals are lighter than air, soothing as water, sounding good and feeling delightful as long as they last, then evaporating on the wind, fading fast into the folds of our cerebral cort...
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"Rock Of Ages" - July 27, 2016 from 2016-07-28T09:49:28
Let’s talk about Jukebox Musicals.
That’s a slangy term describing a stage show that is built around an assortment of pre-existing, usually well-known songs, stuff you might have heard on ...
"Macbeth" - July 13, 2016 from 2016-07-20T08:00:25
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” One of Shakespeare’s scariest lines comes from what is easily his scariest play, ‘Macbeth,’ a show so frightening most theater peopl...
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"The Little Dog Laughed" - July 20, 2016 from 2016-07-20T07:58:03
Summer Repertory Theater Festival, Santa Rosa’s acclaimed training program, has returned for its 45th year. Over the last four-and-a-half decades, Summer Rep has earned a reputation as one of the c...
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"A Winter's Tale" - July 6, 2016 from 2016-07-11T05:50:03
Prince Hamlet is a moody death-metal addict with a messed-up ghost on his case.
The jealous monarch from The Winter’s Tale has become a tyrannical ruler in imperial China.
And the...
"The Invisible Hand" - June 9, 2016 from 2016-07-11T05:48:42
Money corrupts, as does Power, and they often work together, because of course, everywhere you go in this world, money is power. In playwright Ayad Akhtar’s uneven but often gripping drama ‘The Inv...
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"West Side Story" - June 2, 2016 from 2016-06-02T07:04:31
West Side Story—Sondheim, Bernstein and Laurents’ beloved 50s-era street-gang homage to Romeo and Juliet. Few American musicals are as widely loved and as over-performed.
Let’s face it, in...
"Red Velvet" - May 25, 2016 from 2016-06-02T07:02:34
Fictionalized history, like ‘free trade’ and ‘forgotten memories,’ is something of an oxymoron. The minute you introduce fiction to a story, its claim to being history loses strength. But unless a ...
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"Venus In Fur," "My Fair Lady" - May 18, 2016 from 2016-05-18T06:25:13
“Battle of the sexes.”
That phrase dates back to at least 1914, when the notorious filmmaker D.W. Griffith (he of “Birth of a Nation”) released a blatantly sexist film with that title. “B...
"Bob" - May 12, 2016 from 2016-05-12T06:39:31
The writings of San Francisco playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb have always been a balance of the weird, the wondrous, the sensitive, and the cynical. Nachtrieb likes to test artistic and cultural bo...
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"Treasure Island," "Little Mermaid" - May 11, 2016 from 2016-05-11T06:03:56
One recently-opened Bay Area stage show takes place under the Sea, where fish creatures dwell, another takes place on the Sea, where dangerous men scheme and battle for buried gold. One show featur...
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"Twelfth Night" - May 4, 2016 from 2016-05-04T18:12:29
For several years, the lack of strong roles for women has been the talk of the theater world, lighting up blogs and theater-related websites. With the problem so prominently under discussion these ...
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"Anne Boleyn" - April 27, 2016 from 2016-05-04T18:03:59
Anne Boleyn lost her head.
Everyone knows that.
Little else is known about the infamously short-lived second wife of King Henry VIII. Largely because her husband all but erased he...
"The Andrews Brothers" - April 20, 2016 from 2016-05-04T17:56:07
When is a play not a play?
When it’s a concert.
Because concerts have no plots, and plays have plots
That’s the argument some have made against the recent rise of so-called “J...
"Silent Sky," "All My Sons" - April 13, 2016 from 2016-04-13T11:44:44
Two plays based on real happenings from the first half of the twentieth century have recently opened in the North Bay. One is new, the work of an up-and-coming young playwright from San Francisco. ...
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"Time Stands Still" - April 7, 2016 from 2016-04-07T14:45:14
War is not just about bombs and bullets and blood.
It’s also about politics and position and power.
Playwright Donald Margulies is not particularly interested in either the politi...
"God of Carnage" - March 23, 2016 from 2016-03-24T15:45:32
As theatergoers, we occasionally attend plays we never previously liked, and end up changing our minds by the end. Maybe the acting and directing somehow assist the script in transcending its limit...
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"The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" - March 17, 2016 from 2016-03-17T16:27:22
I am, in a moment, going to talk about spelling, as in spelling bees, as in ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,’ a musical that is currently running in two different productions in the Nor...
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Oregon Shakepeare Festival - March 2, 2016 from 2016-03-02T06:39:34
Many playwrights strive to create poetry on stage, hoping to put such elegant words in the mouths of their characters that audiences will sit stunned and shaken, transported from their seats to som...
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"Arches, Balance and Light" - February 24, 2016 from 2016-02-24T06:43:23
In author-playwright Mary Spletter’s world premiere, Arches, Balance and Light, the East Bay playwright takes on a difficult, if not impossible, task—telling the personal behind-the-scenes life sto...
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"Kismet" - February 17, 2016 from 2016-02-17T06:13:15
Last year, Spreckels Theater Company staged an unconventional revival of Rogers and Hammerstein’s ‘Carousel,’ a play many have heard of but few have ever actually seen. Eschewing complex sets, shor...
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"Road To Mecca," "Bad Dates" - February 10, 2016 from 2016-02-10T06:47:56
The Nobel-prize winning novelist Edith Wharton once wrote, “There are two ways of spreading light—to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
Mirrors—and candles, too—are both the se...
"From Russia With Love," "In Love With the 8x10" - February 3, 2016 from 2016-02-03T08:14:11
Short plays aren’t easy.
Like a haiku, you have to say a lot with a little.
Because of that, it’s easy for a short play to come off less like a full play in miniature, and more like a...
"A Steady Rain" - January 28, 2016 from 2016-01-28T06:39:30
Good cop. Bad cop.
It’s a formula so mainstream that it was the basis of a character in the ‘The LEGO Movie,’ where Liam Neeson voiced the dual-personalities of a tiny plastic policeman, n...
"Gem of the Ocean" - January 27, 2016 from 2016-01-27T15:16:58
The late August Wilson wrote ten plays as part of his celebrated Century Cycle, completing one play for each decade of the twentieth century, all but one of them set in the same neighborhood in Pit...
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"One Man, Two Guvnors" - January 20, 2016 from 2016-01-20T06:44:11
Four-and-a-half years ago, Richard Bean’s comedy play ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ appeared out of nowhere, making a mad, merry pratfall onto the stage of public awareness—first in London on the West End...
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"Mahalia Jackson" - January 6, 2016 from 2016-01-20T06:40:21
“Sometimes,” exhorts actress Sharon E. Scott, stirringly embodying the rich voice and sassy-sweet attitude of the great Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. “Sometimes, God turns your life upside down—so...
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"Into The Woods" - January 13, 2016 from 2016-01-20T06:40:11
Magic isn’t easy.
And sometimes, it takes a village to make something truly magical—and that even goes for fairy tale villages perched on the edge of a mysterious forest. With leads us to ...
New Year's Eve Traditions - December 16, 2015 from 2015-12-16T06:45:44
Let’s talk a little about New Year’s Eve.
I know, I know. It’s not even Christmas yet.
But given that some of the New Years Eve events I’m about to mention will be sold out by Chr...
"Polar Bears" - December 9, 2015 from 2015-12-09T08:55
Many of our Christmas entertainment traditions are tales of tribulation from Jimmy Stewart contemplating suicide in It’s a Wonderful Life to Charlie Brown’s seasonal affective disorder which become...
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"A Christmas Carol," "Little Women: The Musical" - December 2, 2015 from 2015-12-02T06:46:52
“I wear the chains I forged in life!”
This ghostly report from the doomed spirit of Jacob Marley is amongst the most famous supernatural utterances in English literature. It’s also a fair ...
"Seminar" - November 18, 2015 from 2015-11-18T06:34:52
It has been said that there is nothing less dramatic or more lacking in entertainment value than watching a writer write. In the clever comedy-drama ‘Seminar,’ presented at Wells Fargo Center by...
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"The Other Place," "My Mañana Comes" - November 11, 2015 from 2015-11-11T07:34
Invisibility.It’s not just something that happens in fantasy books and science fiction movies. In the real world, there are invisible people, folks who, because of their social status or lifestyle,...
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"The Rocky Horror Show," "Blithe Spirit" - October 28, 2015 from 2015-10-28T07:31:27
Halloween is upon us, and to get us in the mood, two infamous supernatural sex-comedies are currently haunting 6th Street Playhouse. Both plays are crammed with witty retorts and sexual innuendo, b...
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"The Creature" - October 21, 2015 from 2015-10-22T14:45:54
1999 years ago, an unmarried teenage mother had a bad dream. The next morning, she decided to turn that dream into a short story. Over the next few months, that story evolved into a novel—and that ...
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"The Light in the Piazza" - October 14, 2015 from 2015-10-14T06:26:10
A little emotion goes a long way. And music is one of the best communicators of emotion, as Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Billy Joel can tell you. The richer the music, the deeper the emotion...
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"Glorious" - October 7, 2015 from 2015-10-07T06:35:04
Oh, the glory of the human voice.
And the power of the human mind to hear one’s own voice, and somehow experience it as beautiful when to other’s it’s . . . not.
Not Beautiful.
Not even...
“Treasure Island” and "Amelie" - September 30, 2015 from 2015-09-30T06:58:31
A story is an illusion, a series of events that are not really taking place, presented in a way that fools its audience into believing, for a moment, that it is all really happening.
Telling th...
“The Taming of the Shrew” - August 26, 2015 from 2015-08-27T07:09:30
In Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” the indelible Kate and Petruchio—a feisty, ferocious fiancé and her would-be “tamer”—together discover something truly amazing and surprising. They disco...
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"A Midsummer Night’s Dream" - August 12, 2015 from 2015-08-27T07:05:04
KRCB 8-11-15Second Row Center“Oh, what fools these mortal’s be!”“The course of true love never did run smooth.”“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.”There are a lot of great lines in Sha...
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Maintaining That Festival State-Of-Mind - August 5, 2015 from 2015-08-06T07:09:46
Last week—in my report on Dezi Gallegos’ new show, ‘Yesterday Again’—I spent a lot of time talking about newness, originality, world premieres, fresh spins on old themes… You know.. Stuff we have...
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"Yesterday, Again" - July 29, 2015 from 2015-07-29T12:01
It’s a mystery, a challenge, a puzzle, a conundrum.
How do you keep theater alive and interesting, when the majority of your audience has proven their relative preference for familiar show...
The Sonoma County Stage One Theatre Arts Awards - July 22, 2015 from 2015-07-22T13:13:32
It is better, they say, to give than to receive.
That must be why so many groups gather so often to give so many awards to so many people for their efforts in so many different art forms ...
"Shiner" - July 16, 2015 from 2015-07-16T20:24:55
For those who prefer not to travel far for their onstage entertainment, and like to avoid any excursions into foreign territory, there are, fortunately, a tremendous number of nearby theater compan...
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"Twelfth Night" - July 15, 2015 from 2015-07-15T20:17:42
"Twelfth Night" is amongst Shakespeare’s most popular plays, in part because the story is so accessible, and the situations so universally funny. Typical of the Bard, humor and tragedy are never fa...
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"Oh, What A Night!" - June 24, 2015 from 2015-06-24T18:55:24
Lets talk about inspiration.
Inspiration is often likened to lightning striking, or an electric bulb popping on over our heads. Metaphorically, when light suddenly appears, when lightning ...
"Falstaff;" and "Choir Boy" - June 17, 2015 from 2015-06-17T18:37:33
There’s no denying it. Music is a powerful force. Music can express the deepest of human emotions. And there are, obviously, many different styles and forms of music. One could easily make the argu...
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“Peter Pan" - May 27, 2015 from 2015-05-27T16:05:34
No one’s ever done an official scientific study on this, but I have observed certain conspicuous distinctions between the way adults react to the story of Peter Pan, and how children respond to the...
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"Noises Off;" and "One Man, Two Guvnors" - May 20, 2015 from 2015-05-20T16:17:36
Let’s face it - it’s not always easy to look on the bright side of life. Laughter helps, but getting there often requires a helpful boost. If you are looking for something to give your laughing-and...
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“Mary Poppins;" and "Crazy For You" - May 14, 2015 from 2015-05-14T21:13:55
Theater is all about transformation, and transformation is never easy. But transforming one of the best-loved movies of all time into a stage musical? That’s a huge challenge, because the expectati...
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“Trailer Park Gods" - May 13, 2015 from 2015-05-13T20:51:53
First, let me tell you about a show I saw last week, then let me say a few words about where I saw it.
"Trailer Park Gods" is an original play by Nayia Kuvetakis, a recent UC Berkeley grad...
“The Way West;” and “The Amen Corner” - April 29, 2015 from 2015-04-28T16:53:52
Music has a way of reaching out like no other art form. In times of stress it calms our nerves. It gives us strength when we are struggling. Then again, it also has a way of reaching into our souls...
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"Nunsense!" - April 22, 2015 from 2015-04-22T20:43:39
There may be more-than-one theatrical franchise of musical plays that started out as a line of greeting cards showing nuns saying vaguely racy things, but if there is, it’s not anywhere as famous o...
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"King Lear" ... with puppets! - April 15, 2015 from 2015-04-15T19:09:25
I love puppets.
It’s a secret that only a certain number of people know about me, but in my late teens, I was a professional puppeteer. It’s true. I had my own company - a puppet company -...
"[Title of Show];" and "Deathtrap" - March 25, 2015 from 2015-03-25T21:15:19
It’s a striking coincidence.
You don’t have to be the writer of stage thrillers to see it.
Maybe it’s the work of some devious theatrical conspiracy.
How else to explain ...
39th Annual San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Awards - March 11, 2015 from 2015-03-10T19:50:39
Well, Monday night was a good night for North Bay theater people.
At the 39th annual San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Awards, a batch of Sonoma County theaters were honored, with som...
"Carousel" - February 18, 2015 from 2015-02-19T16:10:19
"Carousel," the second musical created by the legendary Rogers & Hammerstein, is noted today for two major things. One - it’s the show from which we gained the songs "June is Bustin’ Out All Over,"...
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"I Am My Own Wife" - February 11, 2015 from 2015-02-11T11:33:47
Twelve years ago, journalist and playwright Doug Wright unveiled a new one-actor play with a curious name: "I Am My Own Wife." As a member of the Tectonic Theater, which had earlier premiered the g...
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Theatre Awards Season! - January 28, 2015 from 2015-01-28T13:18:26
It’s awards season, and everyone’s talking about who got nominated and who didn’t. And no, I’m not talking about the Oscars. Last week, the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle announced t...
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"The Fever" - January 21, 2015 from 2015-01-21T11:28:14
I saw an amazing performance last weekend, but I have no clue how to properly describe what I saw. I could start by talking about Wallace Shawn, the playwright of "The Fever," which was first perfo...
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"Clybourne Park" - January 14, 2015 from 2015-01-14T11:05:36
One need not have ever seen Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun to appreciate the setup - or laugh at the jokes - in Bruce Norris’s brilliant 2012 Pulitzer-and-Tony-winning comedy-dr...
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