North Bay Stage and Screen: Recent Episodes
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The holiday season will soon be upon us and with it a plethora of live theatre choices with which to escape pushy crowds, long lines, traffic, overbearing relatives, and the thought of what January 20, 2025 holds in store for our nation.
There’s a conspicuous absence of productions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol this year, but that may be because the thought of a cold-hearted, bitter, and selfish man seeing the error of his ways and undergoing a transformation would require a suspension of belief currently beyond human capability.
Instead, North Bay theatre companies are providing a variety of options for theatre goers looking for some holiday cheer or just a reason to get out of the house.
The holiday theatre season kicks off in Healdsburg this year with the Raven Players production of Cinderella – A Family Holiday Panto. Panto is short for pantomime, but banish thoughts of silent, white-face clowns annoying you at Fisherman’s Wharf. British “pantos” are raucous entertainments featuring jokes, slapstick, cross-dressing performers, music, dance, and audience interaction. The fun kicks off Nov. 15 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater in Healdsburg. (raventheater.org)
For those seeking a more traditional Broadway-style musical, Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse will be presenting Irving Berlin’s White Christmas: The Musical. Based on the 1954 film starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, this stage adaptation features 17 Irving Berlin songs including, or course, the title tune. The snow starts falling on 6th Street’s GK Hardt stage on Nov. 22. (6thstreetplayhouse.com)
Audiences old enough to remember a time when Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life seemed to be playing on every TV station for two months straight (before it was pulled from public domain) may get a sense of déjà vu with two productions of different adaptations of the story running in Sonoma County.
Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Theatre Company is presenting It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play. The show is performed as a 1940s live radio broadcast in front of a studio audience. Five actors perform dozens of characters as well as produce the sound effects. The show goes on-air in Spreckels Condiotti Black Box Theatre on Nov. 22 (spreckelsonline.com)
6th Street Playhouse will be presenting two workshop performances of local composer Janis Dunson Wilson’s musical adaptation of It’s a Wonderful Life, featuring over two dozen original songs which will be performed with a live orchestra. There will be two performances only – Dec. 17 & 18. (6thstreetplayhouse.com)
Spreckels is also doing three performances of All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. This dramatic retelling of a true event weaves together firsthand accounts of World War I soldiers with patriotic tunes, trench songs, and Christmas carols performed by an all-male, acapella chorale. Three performances only on the Codding Theater stage Dec. 13 – Dec. 15. (spreckelsonline.com)
Sonoma Arts Live is going with Little Women. Based on the Louisa May Alcott novel, this musical adaptation follows the adventures of sisters, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy March over a decade. While not a holiday musical per se, many of the scenes are set at Christmas time. The Rotary Stage at the Sonoma Community Center hosts the show beginning Dec. 6. (sonomartslive.com)
Sonoma’s Sebastiani Theatre will be hosting three performances of Transcendence Theatre Company’s annual Broadway Holiday production on Dec. 18 & 19. This all-new production features festive musical favorites, hit tunes and other on-stage antics by Broadway performers from such hit shows as Frozen, Mrs. Doubtfire and Wicked. (bestnightever.org)
Outside of the holiday theme, Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre will present the depressingly timely POTUS Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive starting Dec. 6 (leftedgetheatre.com), while Monte Rio’s Curtain Call Theatre will be presenting The Orchard, a replanting of Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard to Sonoma County starting Nov. 15. (russianriverhall.com)
Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions opened the Lucky Penny Community Arts center almost ten years ago with a production of Oliver! They now are wondering “Who Will Buy?” a ticket to one of the performances of their remounting of Lionel Bart’s classic musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. I’ll be “Reviewing the Situation” myself. “Consider Yourself” welcome to join them starting Nov. 29. (luckypennynapa.com)
In Marin, the College of Marin Performing Arts Drama Program will be presenting Stuart Paterson’s musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. This fairytale with music will be performed in the Studio Theatre on the College’s Kentfield Campus from Nov. 22 through Dec. 15. Tickets are free with an online reservation (pa.marin.edu)
Marin Theatre in Mill Valley will also be hosting five performances of Transcendence Theatre Company’s annual Broadway Holiday production from Dec. 12 through Dec. 15. (marintheatre.org)
The Marin Shakespeare Company enters the holiday fray with a late season run of The Winter Wonderettes. This jukebox musical is a sequel to Roger Bean’s The Marvelous Wonderettes. The original was about a high school Songleader squad performing at their prom and a 10-year reunion. The sequel finds the ladies toiling at a hardware store and pressed into entertainment action when the Santa Claus scheduled for their company Christmas party goes missing. It features 1960’s versions of holiday classics including “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”, “Jingle Bell Rock”, and “Winter Wonderland”. The show runs in Marin Shakes’ indoor theater in downtown San Rafael from Dec. 20 through Jan. 5. (marinshakespeare.org)
For those missing the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, the Ross Valley Players are offering a couple of substitute ghosts via their production of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit. The three-act farce features a London socialite and his new wife being harassed by the medium-summoned, temperamental ghost of his first wife. The Barn Theater at the Marin Art and Garden Center in Ross will be haunted starting Nov. 15. (rossvalleyplayers.com)
Solano County audiences can attend The Last Night of Ballyhoo in Vallejo starting Dec. 6 at Bay Area Stage (bayareastage.org), or visit The Visit at Solano Community College Theatre through Nov. 24 (solanocollegetheatre.org).
As always, North Bay theatre companies would appreciate your consideration of gifting season tickets to your arts-minded family and/or friends. Support live local theatre… while we can.
Photos by Ray Mabry
This preview originally appeared in edited versions in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
My guests on the 11/07/24 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Ken Urso and Imri M. Tate from the upcoming CollabWERKS production of Midsummer. The show is a wild, immersive, theatrical dance party based (loosely) on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Nikko Kimzin.
It’s being performed at The California in Santa Rosa on November 14, 15, and 17.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on Midsummer.
Several hundred costume-clad theatre goers filled the Santa Rosa Junior College’s Burbank Auditorium on Halloween night for the opening of their production of Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show. This was quite a change from my initial Rocky Horror experience in 1978 when my brother and three of our friends were joined by just one other patron at the first midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at a suburban New Jersey mall twin cinema. What a difference 45 years makes.
Fans of the film may not realize its stage origins, which began at a 60-seat London theater in 1973 and ended with a remarkably short Broadway run in 1975. The film followed and it was considered a flop until midnight showings in 1976 led to the cultural phenomena that is Rocky Horror.
And now, I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey…
Newly engaged Brad Majors (Aidan Pryor) and Janet Weiss (Austin Aquino-Harrison) are on their way to visit their friend Dr. Everett Scott (Matthew Quezada-Cortez) when a flat tire leads them to seek refuge at a nearby castle. Butler Riff Raff (Bronte Rodriguez-Stroud) introduces them to castle proprietor Dr. Frank ‘N’ Furter (Alex Delzell). He, in turn, introduces them to his latest creation, Rocky (Aidan Cumming at opening, Calvin Sandeen later in the run.) Sexual hijinks ensue which result in multiple awakenings until the castle’s residents’ true identities are revealed.
Alex Delzell as Frank ‘N’ Furter and the cast of “The Rocky Horror Show” The Rocky Horror Show is actually two shows in one – the one happening on stage, and the other happening in the audience. Productions usually allow audience members to bring props (rice to throw at a wedding scene, newspapers to cover your head to protect from the rain provided by squirt guns, toast, etc.) but that is not the case here. What the audience can do is participate in the ‘callbacks’ (audiences’ amusingly crude verbal responses to dialogue.) Unfortunately, many of these were lost in the 400-seat theater, leading to pockets of laughter from those who were able to hear them and confusion from those who weren’t.
Dana “Collette” Van Meter, Bronte Rodriguez-StraubWhat was heard by all was the terrific score, a sadly unappreciated component of the show. From “Science Fiction/Double Feature” to “Rose Tint My World” to “I’m Going Home”, stage director Justin Smith and music director Nate Riebli have a lot of talented folks delivering them.
They get to deliver them while attired in the most outrageous costumes by Coleen Scott Trivett whose colorful work is matched by the scenic and lighting designs by Austin R Mueck and Chris Cota.
The show is cast well, with Pryor playing just the right amount of nerd with Brad and Aquino-Harrison finding a nice balance between her character’s sexual naiveté and repressed lust. Delzell is a solid Frank ‘N’ Furter and the rest of the youthful ensemble provide energetic and amusing support.
Overall, the SRJC production of The Rocky Horror Show may be a bit tamer than one might usually expect (at least with the audience engagement), but it’s still a lot of fun.
And remember, don’t dream it… be it!
‘Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show’ runs Thurs–Sun through November 17 in the Santa Rosa Junior College Burbank Auditorium, 1501 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. Fri–Sun, 7:30pm; Thurs, 11/09, 7:30pm, Sun, 11/17, 2pm. $15–$25. 707.527.4307. theatrearts.santarosa.edu
Photos by Thomas Chown
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the 10/31/24 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Janis Dunson Wilson and Molly Larsen-Shine from the upcoming Mercury Theater of Petaluma presentation of With a Scene and a Song. The show is an evening of musical theater songs and theater scene excerpts from some of your favorite shows. It’s being performed one night only on Saturday, November 2.
We also previewed Janis’s upcoming musical workshop performances of It’s a A Wonderful Life at 6th Street Playhouse. Those performances are in mid-December.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on With a Scene and a Song.
Click HERE for more information on It’s a Wonderful Life.
My guests on the 10/24/24 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Alex Delzell and Austin Aquino-Harrison from the upcoming Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show. The show opens on the SRJC Burbank Auditorium Main Stage in Santa Rosa on Halloween night and runs through November 17.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
My guests on the 10/17/24 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Lexus Fletcher and Reilly Milton from the Left Edge Theatre production of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord. The production runs through November 9 at The California in Santa Rosa.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
Reviewing a mystery/thriller is always a challenge. One wants to leave a play’s twists and turns for the audience to discover on their own, but in evaluating the play one can’t but help give a bit away. This is my way of saying this entire review should be prefaced with a ‘spoiler alert’.
You have been so notified!
Ira Levin’s Deathtrap is Broadway’s longest running comedy/thriller. It debuted in 1978 and ran for four years. A film adaptation starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve followed in 1982. Its small cast and single set have made it a popular choice over the years for community and regional theaters. Healdsburg’s Raven Players have a production running at the Raven Performing Arts Theater through October 27.
Poor Sidney Bruhl (Craig Peoples). It’s been 18 years since the playwright has had anything close to a hit after the smashing success of his comedy/thriller The Murder Game. He’s been reduced to giving writing seminars and living off of the largesse of his well-to-do wife Myra (Elizabeth Henry).
Craig Peoples, Christopher JohnstonHe’s contacted one day by Clifford Anderson (Christopher Johnston), an attendee at one of Sidney’s recent seminars and an aspiring playwright. He’s written a play and he wants Sidney’s thoughts. Sidney thinks it’s a guaranteed hit and one that he would kill to have written. Myra encourages Sidnett to invite Clifford over in the hopes of them collaborating. Much to Myra’s consternation, Sidney starts to conjure up a plan to get his hands on the play that involves getting his hands on Clifford’s throat. But he’s only kidding.
Clifford arrives and the three settle in Sidney’s study. The walls of the study are covered in a variety of weapons, from guns and knives to battle axes and broadswords, as well as a collection of handcuffs. In no time at all, Sidney puts one of the items to use and the collaboration is over.
Diane BaileyAfter disposing of Clifford’s body, Sidney and Myra’s discussion of what had just happened is interrupted by visiting psychic Helga ten Dorp (Diane Bailey). She’s had visions of terrible pain emanating from the Bruhl’s home and has come to warn them. After Helga’s departure, Sidney and Myra prepare for bed and…
If you think I’ve given too much away at this point, believe me, I haven’t. There are about a half -dozen more twists and turns that I’ll endeavor not to reveal.
Director Steven David Martin has a solid cast at work here. Craig Peoples does well as the beaten-down Bruhl, but he needs to raise the stakes and display a more compelling character arc as the plot untwists. The same goes for Johnston’s Clifford. They both do good work, but stronger character arcs for the two would make the twists and turns that much more twisty and turny.
Henry might be Sonoma County’s new scream queen, as she’s required to do a lot of that in this show, and she does it well. Bailey is fun as the flamboyant Dutch psychic whose premonitions are slightly off but close enough to cause the characters some concern.
Set Designer Julie-Raven Smart puts the expansive Raven stage to good use, and Production Manager Beneicka Brown did an excellent job of acquiring the menacing wall-mounted props. Dan Spears’ lighting is effective, from the cavernous theatre bathed in pre-show blood red to the climactic lightning storm.
Typewriters, landlines, and references to Merv Griffin may date the show a bit and there’s a lot of “inside” theatre speak, but Deathtrap remains an effective stage thriller. The Raven Players have mounted a solid production that’s a good choice for theatre-goers looking for Halloween-season entertainment.
‘Deathtrap’ runs through October 27 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater, 115 North St., Healdsburg. Thu–Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $10–$25. 707.433.6335. raventheater.org.
Photos by Dennis Whitaker
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Healdsburg Tribune.
My guest on the 10/10/24 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Nikko Kimzin, founder of Kimzin Creative and developer of the Kimzin Creative BIPOC Producers Lab in collaboration with Creative Sonoma. The lab is an innovative, nine-month professional development program designed to foster the growth and success of two emerging Sonoma County-based BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) producers. Both emerging producers selected will receive a $1,500 a month stipend ($13,500 total) to support their participation. Listen to find out more and how to apply. Applications are being accepted through October 15.
Nikko also previewed an upcoming production by a collaboration of three local theatre artists/companies. Midsummer will play in mid-November at The California.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the BIPOC Producers Lab.
As a graduate of a University Theatre Arts program, I well remember how important it was to have an audience fill the seats at our performances. Having an audience, a real audience (not just one composed of friends and family and students looking for some easy extra credit for their English class) made all the difference in the world to a bunch of young and not-so-young humans like me, insane enough to actually pursue a degree in Theatre.
All of the post-secondary education institutions of higher learning in the North Bay have vibrant theatre programs. Napa Valley College, College of Marin, Santa Rosa Junior College, and Sonoma State University (for now) all mount productions that welcome the public’s attendance and support. The state-of-the-art facilities at all four campuses are some of the best venues in the area to enjoy a live performance.
Santa Rosa Junior College’s Burbank Auditorium has two theatres – the 400 seat Main Theatre and the 200 seat Frank Chong Studio Theatre. The studio theatre has fast become one of my favorite North Bay venues. It’s modern yet comfortable and has all the bells and whistles one expects when it comes to lighting and sound.
AJ Correia and Maya Tuchband in “Sure Thing”Those bells and whistles are put to good use by a bunch of current and former student designers in the SRJC’s production of All in the Timing: An Evening of David Ives Comedies. The show runs on the Santa Rosa campus through October 13.
The show is a collection of six one-act comedies that gives the student cast the opportunity to play a variety of roles, from a couple of folks chatting at a coffee shop to monkeys sitting at typewriters to Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky to two mayflies looking to make the most of their 24 hours on Earth.
Sure Thing plays like an improv comedy sketch as two people (Maya Tuchband and AJ Correia) meet in a coffee shop and engage in a conversation. The conversation literally turns on a bell.
Words, Words, Words is Ives’ take on the infinite monkey theorem. That theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ives puts three monkeys (Cameron Sundberg, Ethan Fuller, Emerson Reynolds) to work on Hamlet.
The Universal Language introduces the audience to Unamunda, a nonsensical language being hawked by a shady huckster named Don (Orion Pudoff) to an unsuspecting woman named Dawn (Nataly Garduno) who’s trying to overcome a speech impediment.
Gavin Sellors as TrotskyThe Philadelphia features two gentlemen (Will Mosier, Kasey Vannoy) and a waitress (Mariah Burgos) living in a world where you can never get what you ask for.
Variations on the Death of Trotsky is just what its title indicates. The Russian revolutionary lived 24 hours after a mountain-climber’s axe was smashed into his skull so Ives gives us Trotsky (Gavin Sellors), his wife (Samantha Rokes), and his gardener/assassin Ramon (Juan Torres Ibanez) in a number of Monty Python-esque bits, all with the axe protruding from Trotsky’s head.
Time Flies features two mayflies (Maya Tuchband, James Maverick Cheney) trying to get it on under the watchful eyes of Sir David Attenborough (Orion Pudoff).
Director Leslie McCauley’s young cast handles Ives’ often intricately amusing wordplay extremely well. For folks who like their comedy a bit more on the physical side, the casts of Words, Words, Words and Time Flies deliver the goods, with Sundberg’s work as monkey ‘Milton’ particularly funny.
The utilitarian set by Nathaniel George Gillespie allows for quick scene changes and crisp projections (also by Gillespie) announce each play. The cast is well-supported by the lighting and sound designs by Alex Clark and Grace Reid. If you’ve ever wondered what mayflies on the make look like, costume designer Reynalda Cruz gives them a Las Vegas lounge singer look (with antennae).
Maya Tuchband and James Maverick Cheney in “Time Flies”With a running time of less than two hours and ticket prices only $15 – $25, this well produced, well performed and often very amusing show is an absolute bargain. It would be time (and money) well spent.
‘All in the Timing’ runs Thurs–Sun through October 13 in the Santa Rosa Junior College Burbank Auditorium Frank Chong Studio Theatre, 1501 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. Thurs–Sat, 7:30pm; Sat & Sun, 2pm. $15–$25. 707.527.4307. theatrearts.santarosa.edu
Photos by Thomas Chown
This review originally appeared on the on-line site of the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the 10/03/24 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were director Patrick Nims and performer Chloë Angst from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Lizzie: The Musical. The show is running in 6th Street’s GK Hardt Theatre in Santa Rosa through October 27.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the 10/03/24 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were director Leslie McCauley and actors Maverick Cheney and Orion Pudoff from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of All in the Timing: An Evening of Comedy by David Ives. The show runs in the Burbank Auditorium Studio Theatre on the campus of Santa Rosa Junior College through October 13.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
As jukebox musicals go, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is a pretty darn good one and the production at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park through October 13 is a pretty darn good one, too.
While most jukebox musicals use a flimsy book as connecting material for a plethora of songs by a particular artist or genre, Beautiful has the advantage of having a genuinely interesting biography as its base and one helluva songbook.
It’s the story of the transformation of plucky 16-year-old college student Carole Joan Klein (Julianne Bretan) from future teacher-to-be to multi-award-winning singer/songwriter Carole King.
After selling a song to music impresario Donny Kirshner (Keith Baker), Carole connects with fellow college student and aspiring playwright Gerry Goffin (Noah Vondralee-Sternhill). Goffin also dabbles in lyric writing and in no time flat, they’re collaborating. That collaboration leads to a daughter, a marriage, and a lot of hit songs.
Also in Kirshner’s orbit are Barry Mann (Drew Bolander) and Cynthia Weil (Tina Traboulsi). A friendship and competitive rivalry with King and Goffin ensue, with Mann and Weil’s story and songbook deserving of their own jukebox musical.
Julianne Bretan (Carole King), Tina Traboulsi (Cynthia Weil), Drew Bolander (Barry Mann), Keith Baker (Don Kirshner)As one relationship grows, the other falters, and soon King is solo. Never one to see herself as an on-stage performer, King finally comes into her own with the release of her classic album Tapestries and its songs “So Far Away”, “It’s Too Late”, “You’ve Got a Friend”, and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Women”.
King and Goffin wrote a lot of the familiar hits of the 60s, and those numbers are interspersed throughout the story with appearances by such groups as the Shirelles (Kellie Donnelly, Aja Gianola, Simoné Mosely), the Drifters (Jim Frankie Banks, Daniel Marchbanks, Malik Charles Wade I, Phillip Percy Williams) and the Righteous Brothers (Malcom March, Michael Arbitter) with performances of such songs as “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”, “On Broadway”, and “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”.
Director Sheri Lee Miller no doubt had her hands full casting a show this diverse and has a nice blend of North Bay regulars with talent from throughout the Bay Area.
Top – Drew Bolander, Kellie Donnelly, Malik Charles Wade I
Lower – Malcolm March, Daniel Marchbanks, Jim Frankie Banks, Aja Gianola, Michael Arbitter, & Simoné MoselyBretan is perfectly cast as King, convincingly portraying the transformation from teen to mature, independent woman. Vondralee-Sternhill is equally strong as the troubled Goffin, and both deliver strong vocal work. As do Bolander and Traboulsi, with Traboulsi in particular continuing to impress with her work on local stages. A lot of the show’s humor comes from these two characters, and both performers display significant comedic chops.
Humorous support is also provided by North Bay veterans Baker as Kirshner and Mary Gannon Graham as King’s not-very-supportive-until-she-is mother Genie.
Lucas Sherman leads a strong but not overpowering nine-piece on-stage band and does the heavy lifting with his keyboard work.
Choreography was a big part of early 60s musical acts and choreographer Karen Miles puts the ensemble to work in recreating those movements with somewhat mixed results. While the ensemble’s work is generally strong (with a slight edge given to the work by the ladies), it could stand to tighten up over the show’s run.
It’s also nice to see Phillip Percy Williams back on stage.
Despite some clunky expository dialogue and one curious omission (Where the heck is James Taylor?), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is a very pleasant trip down musical memory lane.
‘Beautiful: The Carole King Musical’ runs through October 13 in the Codding Theater at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $12 – $42. 707.588.3400. spreckelsonline.com
Photos by Jeff Thomas
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
It’s been a while since I’ve attended a film festival, so an invitation to attend the Healdsburg International Short Film Festival after a radio interview with Festival co-founder Patricia Demorest got me back in the film fest mood.
The Festival began in 2011 as the Bodega International Short Film Festival, then moved to the now closed Raven Film Center in Healdsburg in 2012, and landed last year at the Raven Performing Arts Theatre in Healdsburg where it ran this year from September 17 – 29.
This year’s Festival screened 44 short films (out of 472 screened by the selection committee) from 18 countries. There were seven programs presented over the three-day festival with each program featuring from six to twelve films in about 90 or so minutes. The films themselves varied in length from 48 seconds to twenty minutes.
The great thing about short films if it they fail to pique your interest, they’re over in no time and your on to the next one. I’m happy to report there were no real clunkers in the programs I attended, though one short film felt like an extened advertisment for a local winery.
I attended two programs on the second day of the Festival. Both programs were comprised of mixed genres including comedy, drama, documentary, animation, and even a music video. Each program ended with a Q&A with some of the filmmakers whose works were shown.
Program C featured what was probably my favorite of the 18 films I saw, and it happened to be the work of local filmmakers.
Moving Day used a clever mixture of live action and animation to tells its story of the adventures of a smiley face. You read that right. While a couple is moving out, a smiley drawing on one of their boxes comes to life, falls in love with another drawing across the room and sets out on a box hopping adventure in the hopes of reaching their beloved.
Director/writer Sean Mirkovich’s genuinely sweet film accomplished a lot in twelve minutes.
Another film that stood out in the program was Catherine & Michael. The American film featured Molly Ringwald as one half of an unhappily married couple who find a very interesting way to restart their relationship while visiting some nauseatingly happily married friends.
Changing Rooms, from France, told the story of César, a 12 year-old boy whose sister was a victim of sexual assault. The fooling around in the locker room of his fencing gym doesn’t feel the same anymore.
Inhumane, from the Netherlands, was an amusing look at what a parent goes through when having to make difficult decisions about a family pet.
Dirt to Glass is the film I referrred to earlier. Labeled as a documentary, it really did come off as more of a promotional piece for the Bunschu company.
After a short break and an annoying Q&A where a bloviating attendee monopolized most of the time allotted, I attended the next block of films.
Program D opened with 48 Hours, a film from Iran about a political prisoner given a two-day leave from prison to spend time with his family. He valiantly tries to reconnect with his infant daughter, knowing full well it can’t really happen. This was a very powerful and sad film.
Puppy Love, from the USA, was an amusing look at the compromises one is willing to make to keep a relationship going… with a significant other’s pet.
Once More, Like Rain Man, also from the USA and featuring Joe Mantegna in a small role, was about a day in the life of a young autistic actress fighting against the stereotype through multiple auditions.
The program closed with another one of my favorites, Favourites. This wickedly funny Australian film begin with parents arriving at an outback health clinic with their two children near death from snake bites. Ah, but there’s only one dose of anti-venom… The film is a lot funnier than that synopsis sounds.
The Festival continued Sunday with one program dedicated to documentary films and another to French films.
I appreciated the opportunity to return to my film festival-going ways, and certainly will keep the Healdsburg International Short Film Festival on my radar for next year.
Click HERE to visit the Festival website.
Click HERE to hear my interview with Festival co-founder Pamela Demorest.
Photos courtesy of the Healdsburg International Short Film Festival
My guests on the 09/26/24 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Elly Lichenstein and Jared Emerson-Johnson, founding members of the newly formed Mercury Theater of Petaluma. Their opening presentation is called Welcome Home and happens on Saturday, October 5 at the (former) Cinnabar Theater building. Welcome Home “will be one part variety revue, and one part celebration and party.”
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
As I read the program’s synopsis of Opera Modesto’s production of The Marriage of Figaro in my seat in the Gallo Center, waiting for Annalisa Winberg and her husband Roy Stevens to welcome everyone (by encouraging us to yell “bravo!” and “brava!” and “bravissimo!” like they do in Italy), I learned something very interesting: The Marriage of Figaro is actually the sequel to The Barber of Seville.
That is, both operas are based on plays by the French playwright Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais. In fact, both are part of a trilogy which ends with a play called The Guilty Mother. However, The Guilty Mother did not draw the interest of turn of the eighteenth century opera composers the way it did with Rossini and Mozart – until 1966 when the Frenchman Darius Milhaud wrote music and his wife Madeleine Milhaud wrote the libretto. (The most recent production I could find was something obscure in 2017 in New York City.)
What is even more interesting is that, while The Barber of Seville comes first in the trilogy, and The Marriage of Figaro second, the first one to be adapted and performed as an opera was actually Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1786. Rossini’s adaptation premiered in 1816, exactly thirty years later, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. Of course, I’m sure today that any film director would have optioned the rights for all three adaptations at the same time, and produced and released them in the proper order. But apparently, back at the turn of the eighteenth century, Beaumarchais’ agent wasn’t quite so organized.
The reason I make the two hour trip to Modesto from my home in Napa to see an opera at the Gallo Center has much to do with the tone set by Stevens and Winberg at the beginning of every performance. They come out on stage and tell the audience that opera doesn’t have to be pretentious; it doesn’t have to be stuffy, or fancy, or pompous. (As I grew up in a small town outside of Bakersfield, I know that such an attitude is not going to get you very far in Modesto.) Opera should be fun. “So, when a singer does something you like, don’t be afraid to yell…!” And the audience boisterously practices their accolades before the show.
Nathan Stark as Figaro, Darby Schmidt as SusannaAccording to everything I’ve read, most experts agree that The Marriage of Figaro is the greatest comic opera ever written. And given Nathan Stark’s performance last night, it looks like Figaro is the ‘funnest’ role to sing in the entire cannon. From the very beginning, when Winberg directed him to strut out during the overture, he was impish, mischievous, a little arrogant, and completely hilarious as the titular groom. Even though his aria in the fourth act, when he is alone in the garden before Susanna and the Countess arrive, waiting to deceive them, he still seemed to have a good heart despite his impetuous motives.
Darby Schmidt, as Susanna, Figaro’s bride, despite her youth, sang the role with a kind of understated authority, giving her the gravitas to insult the petulant Marcellina because of her age, played by Anakira Gabriella-Graça late in the first act. (Winberg directed Susanna to wrap Marcellina in a sheet, further belittling her, before they walked through the door.)
Schmidt and Mary Evelyn Hanley as Countess Almaviva were fitting collaborators in the ruse to fool Count Almaviva and Figaro. Also they seemed to have quite a bit of fun dressing up the darling Devony Smith’s Cherubino in the Countess’ bedroom. But Hanley’s sterling voice was at its most moving with her aria at the beginning of act two, when she bemoaned her husband’s infidelity. Winberg placed her at a vanity in the front of the mirror, as she nearly cried into her own reflection.
Devony Smith, played Cherubino, like an impish and spritely cherub – as the character’s name implies. Throughout the production she seemed to dance around the stage, like a grasshopper in a vineyard. In the first act, she executed one of the most famous scenes in all of opera with grace – hiding under the chair and eventually revealing that she hears Count Almaviva’s asking Susanna for sexual favors. Once the Count finds out that he is overheard, all hell breaks loose.
But no one in the cast was required to be more pompous and proud than Count Almaviva, and Robert Balonek played the role to a nearly porcine extent. The entire conceit behind this story was the tendency or expectation that a master would seduce his servant girl on her wedding night – which is a truly despicable power move. And given the opera was a subversive satire of the upper classes, Balonek had to play the Count to be unwitting and unaware of his own hubris – which he did to an infuriating degree. (Balonek as Scarpia in Opera Modesto’s Tosca was just as smarmy and maladjusted and evil. He has a type.)
The Company of Opera Modesto’s “The Marriage of Figaro”While the acting in an opera is important, the music will make or break the production. Caleb Yanez Glickman directed the orchestra with a precision and cleanliness that made Mozart’s music sound as fresh as the day it premiered in 1786. There was no break or discord between the singers and the orchestra – they wholly functioned as one. This is despite the fact that the pit in this smaller theater of the Gallo Center is sunk so far under the stage that we could only see Glickman’s hand and baton as he waved it above his head to show us that the maestro was in the pit and the show was about to start. It didn’t seem like he could see the singers, and they definitely couldn’t see him.
The competency of Maestro Glickman’s direction was apparent in the many ensemble duets this piece contains. That is, Mozart, and most well known opera composers, write scenes where singers are singing different words, but the music comes together beautifully in one song. (“Prima Donna” in Phantom of the Opera is an example of this.) There are too many of these to count in this opera, but they are the most complicated thing for singers to do. Each ensemble duet in this production worked like the gears in a finely tuned mechanical clock.
Quite possibly the one person in a production like this from a company like Opera Modesto that must do the most with the least was the set designer Corey Strauss. In act two, his design for Countess Almaviva’s bedroom was sumptuous and almost glamorous. In act three, with just the cut out of a window seat, and projections on the rear wall of the stage, he gave the impression of a huge stately mansion in Italy. (Though he might want to put some blocks around the wheels of that window. It seemed to move when the Count bounced onto the cushion.) My favorite, however, was the garden scene in act four. There was a gloominess to it, with dark lighting and a mausoleum looking construction, possibly to highlight the intrigue of disguises, cross purposes and deception that occur.
No matter what route you take, or what time of day you go, it is a solid two hour drive from where I live in Napa to the Gallo Center in downtown Modesto. But I can’t think of a better use of time or gas money, than to support a company whose productions exhibit this kind of positivity and fun. Smaller houses like this, not just those in San Francisco and Los Angeles, show that opera is not only for the privileged, but can be enjoyed by all.
This Opera Modesto production ran at the Gallo Center in Modesto from September 20 – September 22, 2024.
Photos by David Schroeder
John Henry Martin is a Napa-based writer who covered theater and arts for the Napa Valley Register from 2018 to 2021.
By Beulah F. VegaWhen playwright Will Arbery was asked what his play Heroes of the Fourth Turning was about, he had a simple answer: “Listening.” Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre has a production closing Saturday, September 21 with a 1:00 pm matinee performance at The California.
Set in 2017 soon after the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency, three very different alumni of a small Catholic college in Wyoming meet up to celebrate the appointment of one of their professors, Gina (Lisa Flato), to the College presidency. As midnight approaches, we meet them at the afterparty hosted by ex-marine Justin (Brandon Kraus). Emily (Allie Nordby) is not an alumnus of the college but is Gina’s adult daughter and is plagued by a mysterious illness. Kevin (Logan Witthaus) is questioning his faith and everything else through the filter of Jack Daniels. Teresa (Jessica Headington) is a conservative firebrand from New York who is desperate for the approval of her old professor.
As with all small communities this one has plenty of secrets, complicated relationships, and unspoken grievances. It all comes to a head when a question from Kevin pits Teresa and Gina against each other and all hell (maybe literally) breaks loose.
Allie Nordby, Brandon KrausThis is a challenging script to produce. Director Skylar Evans and the cast gamely meet that challenge head on, but don’t meet it equally throughout the show.
For instance, the confrontation between Flato and Headington is a highly nuanced, beautifully acted scene. With both playing off each other in a way that breaks through any superficiality and shows us two fully realized, grounded, and vulnerable human beings.
Unfortunately, there are also moments – especially in the first half – where big emotional moments are not earned, acting choices are superficial, and Kraus’s lines are inaudible.
This unevenness is a problem in a show that is essentially three hours of talking.
Jessica HeadingtonArbery is clear that he is not trying to justify or vindicate either side of the political spectrum, but instead he is trying to get audiences to think. In our dangerously partisan political environment, that is almost impossible to get people to do, let alone give any thought to the humanity of the ‘other side.’
Arbery is correct. Without the ability to truly listen to each other and the grace to afford our opponents the respect due to any other human being we will never rectify our fractured society.
The production isn’t perfect but, like all good art, it does bring an important argument to the forefront.
There are a lot of shows running right now that will make you feel good while asking nothing of you and leaving no lasting impact on the communities they are supposed to be serving.
This show is not one of them, and for that it is worth your time.
Left Edge Theatre’s ‘Heroes of the Fourth Turning’ runs through September 21 at The California Theatre. 528 7th Street, Santa Rosa. Thu – Fri, 7:30pm; Sat., 1pm. $20–$29. 707.664.7529. leftedgetheatre.com
Photos by Dana Hunt
My guest on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the 09/19/24 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 was David R. Gordon from the Transcendence Theatre Company production of The Gala: A Sentimental Journey, the fourth and final summer production in Transcendence’s “Broadway in Sonoma” series. The show is running on the Field of Dreams in Sonoma through September 22.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the 09/19/24 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were actors Julianne Bretan (via phone), Drew Bolander, and Keith Baker from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. The show runs at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park from September 27 through October 13.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
Cinnabar Theater opens their 52nd season on the road with a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic Oklahoma! Having vacated the little red schoolhouse on the hill in Petaluma while awaiting construction of their new theatre, Cinnabar is utilizing the Warren Auditorium at Sonoma State University for their mainstage performances. It runs there through Sept. 29.
The original 1943 production was a milestone in the evolution of the Broadway musical, earning a special Pulitzer Prize and multiple revivals over the decades. The 2019 revival brought some significant “reinterpretations” to the show, particularly in the show’s conclusion. The Cinnabar production appears to be using elements of this version.
The show opens with an overture performed by a four-piece band featuring piano by musical director Brett Strader, bass (Michael Price), flute (David Latulippe), violin (Caleb Forschen) and drums (Ken Bergman). Soon the air is pierced by the voice of cowboy Curly (Nathanael Fleming) singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”. He’s arrived at the farm of Aunt Eller (Jill Wagoner) to court Laurey (Monica Rosa Slater) and ask her to the box social. She’s a little piqued at the time he’s taken to ask so she refuses to take a ride with him in “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” and accepts an invitation from farmhand Jud (director Zachary Hasbany).
Nathanael Fleming & Monica Rose SlaterAlso interested in attending the box social is cowboy Will Parker (Noah Evans). He’s back from the big city with $50 cash, which is the amount the father of Ado Annie (Quinnie Farley) says is required to gain her hand in marriage. The problem is, she’s just a girl who “Cain’t Say No”, especially to traveling peddler Ali Hakeem (Christian Arteaga).
All hell breaks loose at the box social when Curly’s intentions with Laurey become clear to the obsessed Jud. Laurey fires him and he sulks off, only to return three weeks later at the wedding of Curly and Laurey. Tragedy ensues.
Ah, but not quite the tragedy you might expect if you’re a fan of the original Oklahoma!
Spoiler alert!
Nathanael Fleming & Zachary HasbanyIn the original version, Jud dies after falling on his knife during a fight with Curly. In the “reimaging”, Curly clearly kills Jud, lunging after him more than once after he gains possession of the knife. At a hurriedly-convened court session, he’s found “not guilty” and the newlyweds are off on their honeymoon.
It’s a decidedly darker ending, and one that apparently confused the opening night audience, who weren’t even sure the show was actually over. You end a happy, peppy musical with a guy getting away with murder? And it all happens mighty fast.
Everything up to that point was bright and bouncy, with just a hint or two of what’s to come. Director Hasbany, who acquits himself quite well as the villainous (or misunderstood depending on your interpretation) Jud, has an excellent cast with top-notch voices, led by Fleming and Slater. Evans, Farley, and Arteaga provide the comedy relief with Evans’ put-upon “Will” clearly an audience favorite.
Quinnie Farley & Noah EvansChoreographer Bridget Codoni gets the most out of the cast and smartly utilizes trained ballet dancers (Hannah Woolfenden, Nicole Wilson, Jennifer Doll) for the show’s “dream” sequence.
Cinnabar’s 52nd season is off to a solid start with their not-quite-your-grammy’s Oklahoma!
Cinnabar Theater presents ‘Oklahoma!’ through September 29 at Warren Auditorium in Ives Hall at Sonoma State University. 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. Fri–Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $20–$60 inclusive of parking fee. 707.763.8920. cinnabartheater.org
Photos by Victoria Von Thal
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the 09/05/24 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were Cinnabar Theater Artistic Director Nathan Cummings and Director/Actor Zachary Hasbany from the Cinnabar Theater production of Oklahoma! The show is running at Warren Auditorium in Ives Hall on the campus of Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park through September 29.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the 09/12/24 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were actors Michael Bauer and Joanna Lynn Bert from the Sonoma Arts Live production of Young Frankenstein. The show runs on the Rotary Stage at the Sonoma Community Center through September 22.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
Mel Brooks followed up his incredibly successful Broadway adaptation of his film The Producers with a musical adaptation of what he considers his finest film, Young Frankenstein. Not nearly as successful with audiences or critics as The Producers, it’s still a solid show for fans of the film and others looking for light amusement. Sonoma Arts Live has a production running on the Rotary Stage at the Sonoma Community Center through September 22.
The plot basics remain the same. Young Frederick Frankenstein (Michaee Bauer) returns to his ancestral castle to find Ygor (Pat Barr) and buxom lab assistant Inga (Emma Sutherland) ready to assist in continuing his father’s experiments. Frau Blucher (Kim Williams) (cue horse whinny) also wants him to proceed. Soon the monster (Todd Krish) is running amok and kidnapping Frederick’s fiancé Elizabeth (Joanna Lynn Bert). It’s up to Inspector Kemp (Bruce Vieira) and the villagers to rid their community of the Frankenstein curse.
Frederick Frankenstein is invited to “Join the Family Business”Doing a large-scale Broadway musical on a community theatre budget and on a small community theatre stage can create numerous challenges. Director Larry Williams used lighting (by Frank Sarubbi) and projections (by Chris Schloemp) to bring some sense of the real scale of the show with mixed results. Scene changes led to the lush theatre curtain being drawn as many times as I can remember the curtain ever being drawn at an SAL show with musical tracks filling the change time. The cast scurried to make these changes as quickly as possible but the show’s momentum was occasionally slowed.
Newcomers to SAL Bauer and Bert acquit themselves well in their roles and both possess fine singing voices. Barr’s Ygor was very representative of Marty Feldman’s (minus the googly eyes) and it worked, as did Williams’ Blucher and Vieira’s Inspector Kemp. Sutherland makes for a bouncy Inga, and Krish does a good job channeling Peter Boyle’s original take on the monster, albeit with a fuller head of hair. The ensemble (and choreographer Liz Andrews) got to shine in the larger musical numbers like “Join the Family Business” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz”.
But some of the film’s funniest scenes failed to ignite on the small SAL stage. The “Put the candle back!” and blind hermit scenes just didn’t work. The book shelf was clearly being manipulated by Bauer and Sutherland while the hermit scene cried out for something other than a young man in a fake beard (Kevin Allen) and invisible hot soup. It’s as if the production was relying on audiences’ memories of the scenes rather than the execution of the scenes themselves to generate laughs.
The Monster & ElizabethThe vocal work (under the musical direction of Justin Pyne) was fine, but I missed the presence of live music. The orchestral needs for this score were no doubt beyond this company’s means, let alone space. The music is all typical Mel Brooks material. Some songs work (“He Vas My Boyfriend”), others don’t (“Transylvania Mania”) despite the energetic dancing.
There’s also loads of crude and crass Brooks humor so, while it may go over their heads, it’s not a show for younger kids.
I’ve loved the original film since seeing it with my parents in 1974 (they also let me see Blazing Saddles earlier that year, but that’s a whole other story) and I’ve seen a number of local theatrical productions. My fondness for the material and appreciation of companies willing to take on the challenge of mounting it remains.
Who couldn’t like a show that takes a garage dish heater, festoons it with Christmas lights, and calls it a brain transference machine?
Sonoma Arts Live presents ‘Young Frankenstein’ through September 22 on the Rotary Stage at Andrews Hall in the Sonoma Community Center, 276 E. Napa St., Sonoma. Thurs – Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $25 -$42. 707-484-4874. sonomaartslive.org.
Photos by Miller Oberlin Photography
This review originally appeared in an edited version at Bohemian.com
Musicals seem to be the season openers of choice for North Bay theatre companies with two more joining the Spreckels Theatre Company run of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. 6th Street Playhouse is hosting 4 Guys Named José… And Una Mujer Named María! in their GK Hardt Theatre while Sonoma Arts Live brings Young Frankenstein to the Rotary Stage at the Sonoma Community Center. Both shows run through September 22.
4 Guys… is a jukebox musical, which means a whole lot of music broken up by a sub-micro-millimeter paper-thin plot. The whisper of a plot concerns four young men (Maick Poroj, Jonathen Blue, Sergio Diaz, Ismael Armando Ramos) who share the name José who come together to present a musical review of Latin music to share with their fellow residents of Omaha, Nebraska. They’re joined by one of the guy’s roommates named María, who actually can’t show up and sends another woman named María (Jackie Diaz) in her place. She’s on the rebound from a breakup and her availability has the guys interest piqued.
See what I mean about plot?
Maick Poroj, Sergio Diaz, Jonathen Blue, Reilly Milton, Ismael Armando Ramos Forget the forgettable plot (it’s easy) and focus on the music. The show incorporates 47 different songs with bits of songs like “La Bamba” and “Guantanamera” surrounding fully-produced numbers like “Bésame Mucho” and “Es Mentiroso”.
The four guys are fine. They all possess good voices and their group work was great, but individually they were often tough to hear. Diaz has stage presence to spare and stood out by really working the audience.
Jackie Diaz played María at the performance I attended and will play the role again on September 19. You’d never know it was her debut performance in the show (the role is usually performed by Reilly Milton) as she completely owned the stage, so much so that the show is really about una mujer named María, and four guys named José.
Nate Riebli led “El Trio Los Omahaenos” with occasional percussive support from the cast. The costumes (Adriana Gutierrez) were colorful and the choreography (director Erin Rose Solario) mostly solid and better than you might expect from a show being performed at the Omaha VFW Hall.
Now about the sound…
‘4 Guys Named José… And Una Mujer Named María!’ runs through Sept. 22 in the GK Hardt Theatre at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 W. Sixth Street, Santa Rosa. Thurs-Sat., 7:30pm; Sat-Sun, 2pm. $29–$45. 707.523.4185. 6thstreeetplayhouse.com
Photos by Eric Chazankin
The predominant story in Bay Area theatre for the past year continues to be company closures and the regular announcement of emergency fund raisers to stave off further closures. No theatre company is immune to the financial pressures created by the combination of the increase in costs of doing business and the reduction of income that comes with smaller audiences.
Other than the closure of Sonoma County’s Main Stage West in 2023, North Bay theatre companies have managed to survive and even occasionally thrive in this difficult time for the performing arts. While the Mountain Play appears to be financially struggling, most other Marin-based theatre companies seem to have reacted to the changing circumstances by shortening their seasons and, in one case, their name.
Marin Theatre (formerly Marin Theatre Company) opens their 2024/25 season in October with the U. S. premiere of Yaga. Written by Canadian playwright Kat Sandler, it was apparently inspired by the Slavik myth of Baba Yaga, an old woman who is alternatively murderous and cannibalistic or helpful and benevolent. Part detective story, part fairy tale, the Barbara Damashek-directed show opens in Mill Valley on Oct. 10.
The company then goes dark until February 2025 when they will present a rarely seen century-old political play. Waste, written in 1906 by Harley Granville-Barker, is a turn-of-the-century play about abortion and politics. Carey Perloff, A.C.T. Artistic Director Emerita, will be making her Marin Theatre debut.
The Ross Valley Players open their 95th season with Susan Sandler’s Crossing Delancey. The 1985 play which inspired a well-received 1988 film adaptation has been described at the “quintessential Jewish rom-com”. The Barn at the Marin Art & Garden Center hosts the Adrian Elfenbaum-directed show starting Sept. 13.
The company’s season continues in November with a production of the Noël Coward classic Blithe Spirit.
Nuns will be running amok at the Novato Theater Company playhouse in September with the umpteenth Bay Area production of Dan Goggin’s Nunsense. Lisa Morse directs the NTC production of the first in the series of popular shows featuring the Little Sisters of Hoboken that originally started as a series of greeting cards. If you haven’t seen it in any of it previous 1,847 incarnations at a theater near you, then you’ll have a chance in Novato starting Sept. 12.
The company has not announced their second production of the season yet, but do plan to host Marin Musical Theatre Company’s production of Cabaret in March 2025.
The College of Marin’s Performing Arts Department will be mounting a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in late September. Erin McBride Africa directs the Shakespeare tale of lies, supernatural portents, devious planning, murder, a ghostly sighting, revenge, and power struggles in the college’s James Dunn Theatre starting Sept. 28.
Speaking of the Scottish play, the Marin Shakespeare Company’s interesting (if overlong) “echo” of the play, The Untime, continues at their Fourth Street theater through Aug. 25, and their somewhat-more traditional production of The Comedy of Errors runs at the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre at Dominican University through Sept. 15.
Circumstances have led to a reduction in the amount of live theatre available to Marin audiences. You can ensure its availability and its future by attending any of the shows listed above, be it a well-worn musical comedy or something completely new. Just see something.
This preview originally appeared in an edited version in the Pacific Sun.
The predominant story in Bay Area theatre in the past year continues to be company closures and the regular announcement of emergency fund raisers to stave off further closures. No theatre company is immune to the financial pressures created by the combination of the increase in costs of doing business and the reduction of income that comes with smaller audiences.
Other than the closure of Sebastopol’s Main Stage West in 2023, North Bay theatre companies have managed to survive and even occasionally thrive in this difficult time for the performing arts. Companies have announced their plans for the 2024/25 season with one company even announcing plans for an ambitious new venue.
That company, Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater, has vacated their home of over 50 years and will be taking their shows on the road while they raise the funds to construct a new theater in the Petaluma Village Outlet Mall. For the foreseeable future, Cinnabar has relocated to Sonoma State University’s Warren Auditorium in Ives Hall on the SSU campus in Rohnert Park. The auditorium was the University’s original performing space before being supplanted by Person Theatre and the Green Music Center.
Cinnabar will open their season there on Sept. 13 with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! DirectorZachary Hasbany hopes audiences “Cain’t Say No” to this classic musical.
Just a stone’s throw from SSU, the Spreckels Theatre Company opens their season on Aug. 30 with You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Elly Lichenstein directs a bunch of adults as a bunch of kids and, of course, a certain dog in a series of musical vignettes based on… well, you know.
Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse opens their season with Four Guys Named José… And Una Mujer Named María. Director and choreographer Erin Rose Solorio says that it’s “a heartfelt musical full of silly fun. It celebrates Latin culture and pride, creates nostalgia for the homeland through songs telling family stories and unifies everyone with its beautiful universal message. Love, family, music and dance connect us all.” The show opens in the GK Hardt Theater on Aug. 30.
Left Edge Theatre veers right with their season opener Heroes of the Fourth Turning. The play, about a group of graduates from an ultraconservative/religious college having a reunion of sorts, was a favorite of conservative and religious media as well as a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist. It opens Sept. 5 at The California in Santa Rosa.
Young Frankenstein will be stumbling around Sonoma starting Sep. 6. Larry Williams directs the Sonoma Arts Live season opener that’s based on Brooks’ beloved 1974 film. The film wasn’t a musical (but for one classic scene), but Brooks turned it into one after the enormous success of The Producers.
Healdsburg’s Raven Players open their season on Sept. 5 with a premiere production of a work by a local playwright. Steven David Martin directs Francine Schwartz’s The German Upstairs. It’s a fictional love story inspired by true events set in Paris during its occupation by the Nazis.
Monte Rio’s Curtain Call Theatre unleashes the God of Carnage on Sept. 6.
Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions hopes audiences won’t object to Legally Blonde The Musical. Elle Woods and Bruiser begin traipsing around Napa on Sept. 13.
From musical comedies to thought-provoking dramas, North Bay theatre companies seem to be offering something for everyone seeking to support live theatre in our community. Go see something.
This preview originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guest on the August 15 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Eric Jackson, Conceiver/Director/Choreographer of Transcendence Theatre Company’s third production in their “Broadway in Sonoma” series. Dancing in the Street runs through August 18 at the Field of Dreams in Sonoma.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
My guests on the August 1 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Danny Bañales and Jackie Rosas from the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center production of Our Lady of the Tortilla. The show runs at the Performing Arts Center from August 10 through August 25.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
Summertime is when most theatre companies reset for their new seasons so July and August are usually pretty slow when it comes to live theatre in the North Bay. Local venues are hosting a few interesting “one offs”, though, to satiate the community’s need for live theatrical entertainment.
And then there’s the Marin Shakespeare Company.
Summertime is when they’re at their most active. Their season began in July with a well-received mounting of Much Ado About Nothing and continues in August with two interesting productions.
Usually situated at the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre at Dominican University, MSC will be presenting their first indoor summer production. The Untime, an original piece conceived by Artistic Director Jon Tracy and Nick Musleh, will play at their downtown San Rafael venue at 514 Fourth Street starting on Aug. 2. The show contains echoes of Macbeth with its tale of a King, his generals, a wedding, and conflict.
For folks seeking a more traditional Shakespeare show, The Comedy of Errors will play at the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre starting August 17. Director Michael Gene Sullivan’s adaptation of the play presents the show in period but as if it’s being performed by a rogue women’s acting troupe.
www.marinshakespeare.org
Speaking of Michael Gene Sullivan and acting troupes, the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe, now in their 65th season, brings its rabble-rousing ways to Sonoma and Marin counties with stops in Cotati and Mill Valley for performances of their latest poke-in-the-establishment’s-eye, American Dreams – A New Musical – Was Democracy Just a Dream?
For those not expecting to hear much from a mime troupe, be aware that they use the term mime in its classical and original definition, “The exaggeration of daily life in story and song.”
Members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe in “American Dreams”Written by Sullivan (with music and lyrics by Daniel Savio and directed by Velina Brown), the show features Sullivan as Gabriel Pearse, a black man tired of failed liberal promises and ready to give up, or worse, voting conservative.
Other subjects addressed by the Troupe in this 80-minute intermission-less show include the latest on the Palestinian ‘situation’ and its accompanying campus unrest, and what the future might hold for us all as AI becomes more prevalent.
One person’s dream is another person’s nightmare and yes, there’s a mad robot and a cow puppet.
The show also features Andre Amarotico, Lizzie Calogero, and Mikki Johnson playing multiple roles. Music is provided via a three-person band with Savio on keyboards, Caroline Chung on bass and musical director Dred Scott on percussion and keyboards.
The Troupe is traveling throughout Northern California with their show. Cotati’s La Plaza Park will host the show on Saturday, August 3 at 2 pm while Mill Valley’s Community Center will host the show on Saturday, August 21 at 7 pm on their back lawn. There’ll be pre-show music thirty minutes before each curtain. Admission is free, but donations are graciously accepted.
www.sfmt.org
On a more spiritual and somewhat less political note, Sonoma’s venerable Sebastiani Theatre is hosting storyteller Celeste Mancinelli’s one-woman show Crying on the Camino. The show is based on Mancinelli’s own 200-mile hike from Portugal to northwestern Spain on the Camino de Santiago to the sacred site of the Cathedral Santiago de Compostela.
“My show is an invitation to walk the Camino with me, share my adventure, every grungy, grueling, crazy, silly, and serious moment of it,” says Mancinelli. “It is said that the Camino pilgrimage happens from mind to heart, and it ends, if you’re lucky – and I was – with a sense of wonder.”
The show plays Saturday, August 10, at 3:00 pm at the Sebastiani Theater on the Square in downtown Sonoma. Tickets are $25.
www.sebastianitheatre.com
Photos courtesy of MSC, Mike Melnyk, Celeste Mancinelli
This preview originally appeared in an edited version in the Marin Pacific Sun.
My guest on the July 25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Velina Brown, director of American Dreams, the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s latest production. The show is playing at various venues throughout Northern California, including at La Plaza Park in Cotati on August 3 and the back lawn of the Mill Valley Community Center on August 21.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
My guest on the July 18 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Tony Gonzalez, Artistic Director at Transcendence Theatre Company. Tony previewed Don’t Stop Us Now, the second production in Transcendence’s “Broadway in Sonoma” series. The show opens July 25 at the Field of Dreams in Sonoma.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
My guest on the July 11 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Jonathen Blue, director/choreographer/cast member in the Sonoma Arts Live production of The Prom. The show runs on the Rotary Stage of the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma through July 28.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
After a COVID-related postponement, the Raven Players production of Company is now open for business. The classic Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical runs in the Playhouse at Windsor High School through July 21.
A smash hit in 1970, the show is a series of musical vignettes in no particular order on the subject of human relationships and marriage. The central character, Robert/Bobby (Samuel J. Gleason) is turning 35 and starting to question his bachelorhood. All of his friends are married or in committed relationships and are anxious for him to “settle down”. They all invite him to spend some time with them.
Many of the company from CompanyRobert visits Harry (Anthony Martin) and Sarah (Skylar Salz), who spend the evening playfully battling each other. Or are they? When Robert asks Harry if he has any regrets about being married, Harry responds with the song “Sorry/Grateful”.
Robert then visits Peter (Bohn Connor) and Susan (Crystal Wilson), a seemingly happy couple who, to Robert’s surprise, announce they are getting divorced.
A visit with David (Tyler Marques) and Jenny (Alexis Walker) brings a marijuana-induced interrogation as to why Robert isn’t married. Robert isn’t opposed to the idea; he just hasn’t found the right “one” yet.
We meet three women who Robert has dated: April (Ashley Talbot), a charmingly dim-witted stewardess; Kathy (Kelly Devoto), who may actually be the one that got away; and Marta (Sky Hernandez-Simard), a free spirit.
Molly Larsen-Shine, Samuel J. Gleason We’re then transported to friends Amy (Molly Larsen-Shine) and Paul’s (Troy Thomas Evans) wedding day. They’ve been living together for some time, but they are finally “Getting Married Today”. Or are they?
The second act brings us a deeper look into his relationship with April, an update on Jenny and Peter’s relationship (and a surprising conversation with Peter), and an evening with Larry (Nicholas J. Augusta) and Joanne (Katie Watts-Whitaker) at a nightclub that leads Robert to really confront himself about his situation.
Director Steven David Martin’s decision to mount Company at the Windsor High Playhouse pays off in terms of the intimacy the space provides and the upgrade in most technical elements. Sound levels were a real issue though, with music director Kelly Considine’s three-piece band drowning out many of Sondheim’s lyrics. The band’s placement mid-house might have been a factor.
Thankfully, a few performers overcame this aural obstacle. Shine’s energetic delivery of “Getting Married Today” and Watts-Whitaker’s powerhouse presentation of “Ladies Who Lunch” were highlights of the evening.
There’s nice work done by the ensemble, especially in the larger musical numbers and with Michella Moerbeek’s choreography. Costumer Jeanine Gray’s selections nicely set the period firmly in the 1970s. A simple but effective lighting design by Dan Spears helped clarify changes in time, space, and thought.
There’s a lot to like about this Company.
I wish I could have heard more of it.
The Raven Players present ‘Company’ through July 21 in The Playhouse at Windsor High School, 8695 Windsor Road, Windsor. Fri – Sat, 7:30 pm; Sun, 2 pm, Thur 07/11, 7:30 pm. $10–$40. 707.433.6335. raventheater.org.
Photos by Ray Mabry Photography
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Healdsburg Tribune.
My guests on the June 27 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Anthony Martin and Molly Larsen-Shine from the Raven Players production of Company. The show runs at The Playhouse in the Windsor High School Theater Building through July 21.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
The Novato Theater Company closes out their 103rd season with a production of Michael Frayn’s award-winning farce Noises Off. The three-act comedy runs at the Novato Playhouse through July 14.
Act I introduces us to stressed-out director Lloyd Dallas (Mike Pavone), who has his hands full at the final rehearsal of a touring production of the British sex farce Nothing On. Dotty Otley (Heather Richardson) can’t remember her blocking. Dim bulb ingenue Brooke Ashton (Melody Payne) can’t act. Garry Lejeune (Diego Hardy) can’t keep his jealous feelings in check. Hyper-sensitive Frederick Fellowes (Jeffrey Biddle) is constantly seeking his “motivation”. Belinda Blair (Jane Harrington) does her best to be a steadying influence. When he isn’t searching for a line, aging star Selsdon Mowbray (Wood Lockhart) is looking for a bottle. Overworked theatre techie Tim Allgood (Sky Collins) can’t wait to get on stage, while stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Rachel Ka’iulani-Kennealy) can’t wait to tell Lloyd some big news.
Act II take place a month later as we get a look at the backstage antics during a matinee performance, and Act III takes us to the closing performance where everything than can go wrong does.
The cast of Noises Off.It’s a farce, so doors will be slammed, stairs will be tumbled down, sardines will be spilled, and pants will be dropped as bruised egos, costume malfunctions, prop misplacements, missed entrances and various other set mishaps combine to doom the final performance.
Timing is everything in comedy and director Carl Jordan has this excellent ensemble moving at a cracking speed. The NTC Playhouse is a relatively small space, so the action already has a sped-up quality to it as it doesn’t take much to get an actor from place “A” to place “B”.
Set designer Michael Walraven’s multi-level, multi-door, revolving set gets a big assist in making this show work as well as it does. While some of the floor-level, on-stage action is lost to back-row-sitting audience members (one sight gag in particular), there’s enough going on in-view everywhere else to compensate.
Cast energy is also an important ingredient in a successful farce, and it never flagged over the two and a half hour running time of the show. As long as the show is, it never felt that long.
The ultimate measure of a comedy’s success is the amount of laughter elicited from an audience during a show.
By that simple measure, NTC’s production of Noises Off is a success.
It’s a funny show.
’Noises Off’ runs through July 14 at the Novato Theater Company, 5420 Nave Drive, Ste. C, Novato. Fri & Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm., Thu July 11, 7:30 pm, $20–$30. 415.883.4498. novatotheatercompany.org.
Photos by Bill Weinberg
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the Marin Pacific Sun.
‘April is the cruelest month’ is the opening line to T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land, but June has been no picnic for the North Bay theatre community either. Transportation issues marred the opening of the Mountain Play while bouts of illness plagued other productions.
Napa’s Lucky Penny had to utilize an actor with script in hand for one of The Real Housewives of Napa Valley with a medical emergency. Sonoma Arts Live lost their entire opening weekend of Lend Me a Tenor after several cast members took ill, while Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse canceled the opening night performance of Kinky Boots to give their understudies a go at a run after illness took out a number of their players.
But, as either British actor Edmund Kean or circus impresario PT Barnum said, “The show must go on!” and so it shall for 6th Street’s production of Kinky Boots. The Cyndi Lauper/Harvey Fierstein musical runs in the GK Hardt Theater though July 7.
The story of a struggling, English family-owned shoe manufacturer and its unique solution to avoid insolvency was first told in a 1999 BBC television documentary. That broadcast inspired a “mostly true” film adaptation in 2005, and that film inspired the 2013 multi-Tony-Award-winning Broadway musical.
The cast of “Kinky Boots”Charlie Price (Noah Vondralee-Sternhill) has been avoiding the family shoe business for years, but the death of his father finds him back at the factory and dealing with the possible shuttering of the company. A chance meeting with drag queen Lola (Jonathen Blue) leads to a discussion about the lack of quality women’s footwear for men.
Charlie returns to the factory and begins to lay off his employees. He’s challenged by employee Lauren (Grace Kent) to find an underserved niche market and save the company. Charlie soon puts two and two together and enlists Lola’s help in designing footwear for drag queens.
There are, of course, obstacles to overcome. Charlie’s fiancé Nicola (Nicole Stanley) wants him out of the shoe biz and in London. Factory workers like uber-macho Don (Skyler King) continually harass Lola. Soon, Charlie is cracking under the pressure.
Noah Vondralee-Sternhill & Jonathen BlueIt all works out (of course) and soon Charlie, Lola, and a cadre of drag queen angels are off to Milan for a make-or-break footwear fashion show and the unveiling of Lola’s Kinky Boots.
Director Patrick Nims and his creative team have mounted a good production that is still struggling with some cast absences. Vondralee-Sternhill is excellent in the lead and is well-matched with the multi-talented Blue (he’s also the show’s costume/makeup/wig designer.)
The bulk of the show takes place in Luca Catanzaro’s nicely-detailed factory set, complete with operating conveyor belts that led to one helluva wardrobe malfunction. The audience absolutely ate it up and kudos to performer Maureen O’Neill for singing and dancing (and laughing) her way through it.
Lauper’s joyous and emotional songs are performed to tracks and while well-performed by all, a live orchestra is sorely missed.
Despite the challenges 6th Street continues to face in mounting Kinky Boots, the production holds up pretty well. Only a heel without a sole would think otherwise.
‘Kinky Boots’ runs through July 7 in the GK Hardt Theatre at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 W. Sixth Street, Santa Rosa. Thur.-Sat., 7:30pm; Sat & Sun, 2pm. $29–$51. 707.523.4185. 6thstreetplayhouse.com
Photos by Eric Chazankin
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
Salonen’s Symphony of DisgustLast Sunday, I attended a very interesting program at Davies Symphony Hall. It was a groundbreaking collaboration with Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, as well as the performance of a rarely done operatic monologue by Arnold Schoenberg. Here’s a spoiler: they were successful in that they did happen, not because they should have happened.
Alonzo King took Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mere I’Oye or Mother Goose and directed his dancers to move. The music played behind them, and they did their dancing. But there seemed to be no correspondence between the sounds that were coming from the musician’s instruments and the movements the dancers were making with their bodies. It was as if all the dancers were deaf.
Composers are not choreographers and choreographers are not composers. They’re two different art forms that must come together in a ballet. With most ballets these days, the music comes first. For example, Mrs. Tamara Rojo, artistic director of the SF Ballet, couldn’t consult with Tchaikovsky about her company’s thrilling recent production of Swan Lake – for obvious reasons. Likewise, given that he died in 1937, Mr. Ravel was unavailable to advise Mr. King about the look and feel Ravel intended when he expanded a little piano piece for four hands, into this a five movement ballet.
This is unfortunate because King’s choreography did not seem to respect the music at all. The music evokes gentle and soothing turn of the century nurseries, where little boys in sailor suits and girls in white lace dresses play on rocking horses or sail boats in a pond. (I’m thinking Mary Poppins here.) These dancers were dancing as if in the future. Their movements were jerky and abrupt and had no turn of the century grace that the music evoked.
The choreography was so bad and so out of sync with the music that I began to think that the dancers were moving just for the sake of moving. It was as if they had gotten bored with all the standard movements dancers do and were just doing whatever. (Then I thought how wonderful it must be to be a dancer and have your occupation be to move like that all the time. It must be so freeing.) Fine if you’re in a studio, not fine if people are paying to watch you move.
In the program, King admits, “I’m not trying to recreate the Mother Goose fairy tales.” If that is the case, why in the hell did you choose this music? Instead, he wanted to “unearth the deeper allegorical truths that are so large they’ve had to be shrunk into stories” and illustrate those with dance.
Well, Mr. King, your choreography failed to do that. Furthermore, I am currently unable to see how a dancer is even capable of “unearthing deeper allegorical truths” of any kind when they don’t speak, or, quite frankly, when their movements have no correspondence with the music behind them.
Furthermore, Mr. King, my sense is that you are incapable of paying tribute in dance to the beautiful music of Ravel. You’ve lived and worked in a postmodern meaninglessness too long. You wouldn’t know what to do if you had to direct your dancers to conform to something. Instead they just do (or seem to do) what they want, regardless.
Supposing that your choreography “unearths deeper allegorical truths” is just fancy smoke and mirrors which cover up the fact that your choreography means nothing. If your choreography is any indication, you don’t know what these deeper allegorical truths are, wouldn’t be able to articulate them in words, and probably haven’t even thought about them in the first place.
In saying this in the program, you absolve yourself of having to do the work of making meaning with your dancers. The abstract nature of your “deeper allegorical truths,” as well as the fact that you never mention what these truths are, or that the dance itself does not illustrate or demonstrate these truths, indicates that they are just words that sound good and relieve you of the responsibility of actually making meaningful art.
At least that seems to be the case from this performance.
Esa-Pekka Salonena, Peter Sellars, Mary Elizabeth Williams, Alonzo King*
Act II of this program was not an improvement on Act I.
The performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung, with the operatic monologue sung by the very capable Mary Elizabeth Williams, was a flawless and meticulous performance of some of the worst music ever written. Reinterpreted by Peter Sellars as a comment on prison brutality, it made for an absolutely painful afternoon.
I read Peter Sellars’ biography in the program. MacArthur Genius, Erasmus Prize, Professorship at UCLA. Certainly his other work warrants such accolades. But this?
According to the notes in the program, Schoenberg and Pappenheim placed the woman in the forest, searching and longing for her lover. Sellars puts her in a prison? And he superimposes a terrible twist to the plot: this prisoner has died as a result of violence in the prison!
There is nothing in Schoenberg’s music or Pappenheim’s libretto that indicates anything about this. What on Earth is Sellars thinking? He’s taken something that could be moving – a midnight journey through a forest, and turned it into a completely inappropriate and out of place comment on prison brutality.
It’s no wonder the libretto, as translated by Williams, made no sense. The Woman says nothing about why her lover was in prison, or how she felt that he was in prison. It is clear she suspects that he had an affair – but how unusual is that? Not very.
The point of good art would be that it puts chaos in order. Erwartung is essentially the glorification of chaotic hysteria which, in itself, does not make for an enjoyable afternoon at the symphony.
Mary Elizabeth Williams herself in her essay about the piece says that it is not performed much. It’s no wonder. The piece is too conceptual. By Schoenberg’s own admission, the point of this piece is to allow dissonance to be heard on its own. In Jenny Judge’s commentary, she says that the piece is not written in a key which means that the “dissonances do not just fail to resolve, they are impossible to resolve.” In other words, this is not music – this is exquisitely conscientious, and expensively produced, noise.
Good art adds order to chaos. Good art is not chaos – which is what this is. That was Schoenberg’s intent. Perhaps this was an interesting enterprise in 1904 when the piece was written. I can see from his point of view – given the aesthetically beautiful turn of the century world that he was living in, he might have longed for something atonal and dissonant. Or, perhaps his life was so civilized that he lived exclusively in his mind. He was no longer in touch with the world around him. He wrote this piece as a purely intellectual exercise – not for aesthetic pleasure. In which case its contemplation should be the content of seminars in music conservatories, not the centerpiece of an afternoon’s program at one of the world’s finest symphonies.
When I was walking into Davies, a musician was outside handing out yellow pieces of paper. She said that the Board of Governors of the SF Symphony is clipping Esa-Pekka Salonen’s wings by cutting his budget for works like what I was about to see. So after all the fanfare of moving him to San Francisco, he was threatening to leave.
Now that I saw the kind of programming Salonen has in mind, I am siding confidently with the Governors. If this is what we can expect from Salonen’s leadership, let him throw his temper tantrum and move back to some European capital where pessimism is a way of life.
This production ran at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco from June 7 – June 9, 2024.
Photos by San Francisco Symphony
John Henry Martin is a Napa-based writer who covered theater and arts for the Napa Valley Register from 2018 to 2021.
My guest on the June 13 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Patrick Nims, director of the 6th Street Playhouse production of Kinky Boots. The show runs in the Playhouse’s GK Hardt Theatre through July 7.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
My guest on the June 6 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Tony Gonzalez, Artistic Director at Transcendence Theatre Company. Tony previewed Summertime!, the upcoming opening production of Transcendence’s “Broadway in Sonoma” series. The show opens June 20 at the Field of Dreams in Sonoma.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
North Bay theaters seem to be in the middle of a Karen Zacarías mini-festival with the Ross Valley Players well-received run of the playwright’s The Book Club Play coming to an end while Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse is in the middle of their run of Native Gardens. Both plays poke fun at suburban life while slyly introducing grander concepts beneath their comedic surface. Gardens is running on 6th Street’s Monroe Stage through June 16.
The play is set entirely in the backyards of two adjoining homes situated in a quiet Washington, DC suburb. Long-time residents Frank and Virginia Butley (Ron Smith and Sheila Lichirie) are delighted to welcome new neighbors Pablo and Tania Del Valle (Lorenzo Alviso and Lexus Fletcher) to the neighborhood.
Sheila Lichirie & Lexus FletcherFrank is a retired DC bureaucrat while Virginia is an engineer with a defense contractor. Pablo, a Chilean immigrant, is an attorney who’s just joined a prestigious firm while the very pregnant Tania, a New Mexican-American, is trying to finish a doctorate program. In an attempt to impress his new employers, Pablo has invited the entire firm to a barbecue at their new home. Fixing up their backyard means getting rid of a rickety old fence that separates the two properties. It also means disturbing Frank’s potentially prize-winning flower garden. Hell hath no fury like a gardener scorned. The neighborly dispute soon turns into an all-out war.
Zacarías uses the cartoonish dispute to address issues of immigration, racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, and more and all in a breezy 85 minutes.
Lorenzo Alviso & Ron SmithDirector Beulah Vega has cast the show well. North Bay stage veterans Smith and Lichirie are solid as the older couple. Alviso, regularly seen in local musicals, does well as the ambitious, stressed-out counselor. Fletcher, a fairly recent addition to the local casting pool, is showing impressive growth as a performer.
Ben Roots clearly had fun with the sound design as scenes are bridged with Spanish versions of recognizable American songs.
The show’s set budget must have been spent on the houses’ facades, as the focal points of the dispute – the dilapidated chain link fence and the garden – are woefully inadequate. The chain-link fence clearly isn’t, and the flowers are represented by small, painted flats. The usually inventive Luca Catanzaro’s design really misses the mark here.
The play’s ending is a bit pat, but Native Garden’s amusing trip through suburbia is a good enough reason to get out of your yard and go to the theatre.
‘Native Gardens’ runs through June 16 on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 W. Sixth Street, Santa Rosa. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $29–$45. 707.523.4185. 6thstreeetplayhouse.com
Photos by Eric Chazankin
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the May 30 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Michael Tabib and Wanda Weimar from the Curtain Call Theatre production of Entertaining Mr. Sloane. The show runs at the Russian River Hall in Monte Rio through June 22.
Click below to hear the interview:
Click HERE for more information.
In a London in the not-too-distant future, the British government has imposed a strict limitation on the number of words any individual can speak in a twenty-four-hour time period. That’s the basic premise of Sam Steiner’s Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons. The “whys?” for the limitation are barely addressed (and the “hows?” never are) in what is basically a love story. Jenny Hollingworth directs the Left Edge Theatre production currently running through June 8 at The California Theatre in Santa Rosa.
The 90-minute show consists of a series of short scenes beginning with Oliver (Argo Thompson) and Bernadette (Rosie Frater) “meeting cute” at a pet cemetery and then traipses non-chronologically through their life together. Bernadette is a lawyer. Oliver is a musician who eeks out a living writing commercial jingles. The relationship has its ups and downs with Bernadette concerned about one of Oliver’s previous lovers while Oliver has issues with Bernadette pulling in more money than him.
Their relationship is further complicated by the passing of the Quietude Bill, or Hush Law as it’s commonly known. How can any relationship survive when limiting verbal communication to 140 words a day?
Argo Thomson and Rosie FraterWhile issues of privilege, free speech, oppression, and authoritarianism lurk in the background, the importance of open communication to the success of any relationship is front and center. What we say and how we say it counts more than how much we say.
The California’s floor has been transformed into a small black box theatre with the audience at one end in “stadium” seating. The set (by Thompson) is sparse, consisting of one bench that also operates as a bed and a dinner table. The back wall is a series of shelves that subtly contain items representing forms of communication (a telephone, a radio, a typewriter, musical instruments, etc.)
Thompson and Frater are very strong in their roles, literally having to turn on a bell from one point in the relationship to another. (Each scene change is noted by the ringing of a bell, which too often gives the show a sense of being an improv exercise, instead of the quirky rom-com that it is.) They both give very physical performances and adeptly deliver the shows comedic and dramatic moments. The accents they use are generally solid and non-distracting though Thompson’s seemed to wander on occasion.
Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons was a big hit at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It certainly maintains the feeling of a “fringe” show which is a nice change of pace from our area’s usual theatrical fare.
Left Edge Theatre’s ‘Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons’ runs through June 8 at The California Theatre. 528 7th Street, Santa Rosa. Thu – Fri, 7:30pm; Sat., 1pm. $20–$29. 707.664.7529.leftedgetheatre.com
Photos by Dana Hunt
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
The last few years have been exceedingly challenging for the theatre community, and Mill Valley’s Mountain Play is no different.
“Since 2019 the Mountain Play has been weathering storms,” said Executive Director Eileen Grady, “both literal and figurative. From the climate crisis to employment law changes to the pandemic and its aftershocks, we’ve been through it all. Theatre companies came back, but we returned to a whole new world. We are filled with gratitude for our community members who have really stepped up to the plate with contributions that have helped us survive this new world. We’re still here because of them.”
This year’s production is Kinky Boots, the Cindi Lauper/Harvey Fierstein musical about a struggling London shoe factory that turns to manufacturing footwear for drag queens to survive. It’s an interesting choice for the company.
“We’re always looking for new stories to tell on the mountain,” said Grady. “It’s a universal celebration of self-acceptance, community, and kindness.”
But it ain’t no Sound of Music.
Miss Jaye as Lola“There are always concerns about subject matter with play selections,” continued Grady. “Humans have evolved since the golden age of musical theatre, so even the Rodgers & Hammerstein classics have moments of subject matter that don’t play well when viewed through today’s lens. Kinky Boots is about acceptance. One would hope that wouldn’t turn any one off. We sure hope our audience stays with us and that we find new friends to join us.”
Director/Choreographer Gary Stanford, Jr. agrees. “This musical is one of the most fun stage experiences an audience could wish for in terms of pure entertainment!”, said Stanford. “You’re going to want to dance, clap to the beat, laugh and even cry. It’s also a show about humanity. It weaves together many aspects of society where everyone comes together for a common cause.”
Stanford has enjoyed the challenges inherent to the Mountain Play. “I think it’s safe to say that this is the most challenging venue in the entire Bay Area. Dealing with the heat, the thin air, and drastic weather changes while wearing makeup and full costumes for singing and dancing requires a stamina that is not a normal requirement for a stage actor!”
“We really want to remind everyone how healthy it is for us all to experience theatre and that the arts truly are a remedy for a lot of personal and social ills”, concluded Grady. “We hope our audience returns to the Mountain Play being an annual tradition.”
‘Kinky Boots’ runs Sundays through June 16 at the Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre in Mount Tamalpais State Park. 801 Panoramic Hwy., Mill Valley. 2pm. $25–$190. 415.383.1100www.mountainplay.org
Photos by Robin Jackson
This preview originally ran in an edited version in the Marin Pacific Sun.
My guests on an extended May 23 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Argo Thompson and Serena Elize Flores from the Left Edge Theatre production of Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons. The show runs at The California in Santa Rosa though June 8.
We also took the opportunity to get an update on how things are working out at The California, the downtown Santa Rosa entertainment venue where Left Edge is a resident theatre company.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
It’s been more than forty years since Harvey Fierstein exploded into our cultural consciousness with Torch Song Trilogy. At a time when being gay could get you thrown out of the military and the concept of marriage equality was considered a fantasy, the story of a gay man (and a drag queen at that) searching for love and the domesticity that often accompanies it was quite revolutionary.
Dean LinnardEssentially three one-acts running over four hours, the show won Fierstein Tony Awards in 1983 for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play. In 2017, Fierstein abridged his script by about 90 minutes and the title to simply Torch Song. Marin Theatre has a production of this version running in Mill Valley through June 2.
We first meet Arnold Beckoff (Dean Linnard) backstage after one of his drag performances as “Virginia Ham”. It’s the early 70s, and Arnold is bemoaning the lack of love in his life. He’s been looking in all the wrong places including the backroom of “The International Stud” (a very funny scene). He actually does meet a guy there who piques his interest. His name is Ed (Patrick Andrew Jones) and he and Arnold begin what Arnold thinks is a relationship. But Ed is bisexual, and continues to date women. This does not bode well for their future together.
Fast forward a couple of years and Arnold is invited to join Ed and his girlfriend Laurel (Kina Kantor) at Ed’s family home in upstate New York. Much to Ed’s consternation, Arnold arrives in the company of his new, younger lover Alan (Edrick Young). “Fugue in a Nursery” takes place entirely in a vertical bed with all four popping in and out of conversations and couplings, both comedic and emotional.
Patrick Andrew Jones, Kina Kantor, Dean Linnard, Edrick Young“Widows and Children First” takes place five years later. Ed has left Laurel and is sleeping on Arnold’s couch. Arnold is fostering a gay teen (Joe Ayers) with hopes of adoption while dealing with the devasting death of Alan. They are all on edge with the impending arrival of Arnold’s mother. Mrs. Beckoff (Nancy Carlin) has never accepted Arnold’s “lifestyle”. A blistering battle will ensue.
Director Evren Odcikin and a terrific ensemble do wonders with Fierstein’s brilliant (but still overlong) script. Linnard is dazzling as the annoyingly loveable Arnold. Jones’ performance as the conflicted Ed is nicely understated. Carlin’s scenes with Linnard leave them (and the audience) emotionally drained.
Joe Ayers, Dean Linnard, Nancy CarlinAyers does his best to embody the character of a 15/16-year-old high school freshman, but the casting of an obviously twenty-something year-old performer in the role of David really throws the impact and poignancy of the family dynamic off-kilter.
The scenic design by Sarah Phykitt, lighting design by Ray Oppenheimer, and sound design by Nick Carvalho are all top-notch.
Torch Song may run a verse or two too long, but overall the notes are beautifully played.
‘Torch Song’ runs Weds – Sun through June 2 at Marin Theatre, 397 Miller Ave, Mill Valley. Weds – Sat, 7:30pm; Sat & Sun, 2pm. $12-$72. 415.388.5208.marintheatre.org.
Photos by David Allen
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the Marin Pacific Sun.
My guests on the May 16 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Ron Smith and Lexus Fletcher from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Native Gardens. The show runs on the 6th Street Playhouse’s Monroe Stage from May 24 though June 16.
Click below to listen:
Click HERE for more information on the show.
“Is this funny? I think it’s sad.”
That comment was murmured from one audience member to her seatmate after other audience members chuckled at the recent Mother’s Day matinee performance of Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone. The Raven Players production runs through May 26 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater in Healdsburg.
It’s a fair question. The title, which reads like it was ripped off of a modern pulp fiction novel, might make you think one thing, the play itself another. The truth is it has moments of both humor and pathos.
Thomas Gibson, Jeanette SeisdedosJean (Jeanette Seisdedos) is sitting at a table at a non-descript café when a cell phone goes off at the table next to hers. The gentleman at the table (Thomas Gibson) appears to be ignoring it much to Jean’s consternation. Thinking perhaps the phone owner may be deaf, she gets up to clarify the situation only to discover (and there’s no need for a spoiler alert here as it’s in the damn title) that the gentleman is dead.
On an impulse, Jean picks up the phone and answers the call. Rather than tell the caller of the gentleman’s unfortunate passing, she merely responds that he’s “unavailable”. Other calls come in, and she continues to obfuscate the situation. She eventually calls for an ambulance, but keeps the cell phone.
Jeanette Seisdedos, Matt FarrellPossession of the device leads Jean to forging (in every sense of the word) relationships with the dead man’s mother (Lynn Stevenson), his wife (Mary DeLorenzo), his female friend of an undetermined nature (Skylar Saltz) and, most importantly for Jean, his stationery-loving brother (Matt Farrell).
This all happens in a fairly linear manner, but when the second act opens with a monologue by the corpse, a trip to purgatory, and a choreographed number featuring the entire cast, all bets are off as to what the hell is really going on here.
The play, which premiered in 2007, may have been a prescient warning that despite all of the information that now can be held in one’s hand, there’s a price to pay in the disconnection from actual human contact.
Director Diane Bailey has a cast of Raven regulars at work here with Farrell’s performance of note as the brother of his mother’s “only son”. Skylar Saltz has some fun at the “other” woman and a “business” associate of the dead man.
Dead Man’s Cell Phone is an odd play that will not be to everyone’s taste. If you do see it and can figure out what the hell the ballet is about, give me a call. My cell phone number is [number redacted].
‘Dead Man’s Cell Phone’ runs through May 26 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater, 115 North St., Healdsburg. Thurs – Sat, 7:30 pm; Sun, 2 pm. $10–$25. 707.433.6335. raventheater.org.
Photos by Ray Mabry
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the The Healdsburg Tribune.
My guests on the May 9 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Matt Farrell and Jeanette Seisdedos from the Raven Players production of Dead Man’s Cell Phone. The show runs at the Raven Performing Arts Theater in Healdsburg through May 26.
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Click HERE for more information on the show.
Large scale, family-friendly theatre returns to the North Bay with the Spreckels Theatre Company production of The Wind in the Willows. Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame adapted Kenneth Grahame’s classic 1908 novel in collaboration with composer George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe (the same team that adapted Mary Poppins for the stage.) The musical runs at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park through May 19.
Grahame’s tale of the adventures of some English countryside critters is more or less intact, with a few new additions that bring some gender parity to the story.
The inquisitive and perpetually positive Mole (Sean O’Brien) happens upon the river loving Rat (Nelson Brown) and a fast friendship develops. Their mutual acquaintance, the speed-loving Toad (Tim Setzer), invites them to Toad Hall. They are soon gallivanting about in Toad’s horse-drawn carriage when a new-fangled automobile causes them to crash. Toad becomes obsessed with cars and is soon responsible for a number of wrecks and close-calls. Mole and Rat seek the help of Badger (Mary Gannon Graham) in breaking Toad of his dangerous obsession. Toad responds by stealing a car, getting arrested, and being sent to prison. Soon Toad Hall is occupied by the Chief Weasel (Keene Hudson) and his minions. What will become of Toad and Toad Hall?
Rat (Nelson Brown) and Mole (Sean O’Brien) and assorted other crittersDirector Sheri Lee Miller has mounted a bright and colorful production that lovers of the source material should enjoy. The show is well cast with O’Brien and Brown both marvelous as the fast friends. Setzer gives a very animated performance as Toad, and Mary Gannon Graham is, as always, a rock of stability as Badger.
There’s strong work from the ensemble, with special notice of the lovely vocal work done by Ted Smith and Katie Foster as Mr. and Mrs. Hedgehog.
The costuming by Donnie Frank was on-point without being excessive, and Eddy Hansen’s lighting design was key in communicating some of the tougher-to-stage action.
Tim Setzer as ToadSound was an issue at the opening night performance. Most musicals have the advantage of audience familiarity with the songs. That is not the case here, which means hearing the lyrics delivered with crystal clarity is important. Many of Setzer’s songs were overpowered by the orchestra. Either his mic needs to come up, or the orchestra needs to come down.
Sound issues led to the show actually being stopped in mid-second act. Kudos to the cast for picking it right back up. Corrective measures have apparently been taken to prevent a reoccurrence.
The 12-piece orchestra under the direction of Lucas Sherman does a good job of delivering Stiles’ pleasant but stylistically-inconsistent score. Many songs seemed to go on a bit long and their repetitiveness made the show feel longer than its two hours and twenty minutes (including intermission) running time.
The vocals are generally strong, with the aforementioned Smith and Foster’s delivery of “The Hedgehog’s Nightmare” a highlight.
Karen Miles’ choreography, particularly in the large-scale production numbers like “We’re Taking Over the Hall”, lacks precision in its execution, but who’s to say how vermin would dance?
Chief Weasel (Keene Hudson) and his minions are “…Taking over the Hall”.What The Wind in the Willows is really about has been debated for decades. The focus of this amiable production is clearly a celebration of friendship. No matter what, “A Friend is Still a Friend” (though some might argue there are limitations.)
Not a bad lesson for us all.
‘The Wind in the Willows’ runs through May 19 in the Codding Theater at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $10 – $20. 707.588.3400. spreckelsonline.com
Photos by Jeff Thomas
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the May 2 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Sean O’Brien and Keene Hudson from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of The Wind in the Willows. The show runs at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park through May 19.
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Click HERE for more information on the show.
by John Henry MartinYou’ve probably heard of this new age, hippy dippy thing that many people, overwhelmed with today’s hectic pace of life, are doing: a silent retreat. This is where you go to a retreat center for a few days or even a week, and do not speak to anyone the entire time. The idea behind this practice is to eliminate things that are distracting you in your daily life, so that you can deal with what is going on inside your head. In this way, you purify your thoughts and reenter the world a more calm and peaceful person.
Well, in Valley Players’ latest production, Bess Wohl’s Small Mouth Sounds, a silent retreat with six participants and a retreat leader – who’s a disorganized ego maniac – go through all the drama of an existential crisis – and come out enlightened, but not in the way they all expected. (It never happens the way you expect anyway.)
There, however, is one little hitch – this is a silent retreat. That means no talking. And yet, this is theater, the very nature of which requires talking. How is one to create a play for a drama to unfold when all the characters must remain speechless? This is why I love Valley Players. They never shy away from a challenge.
What ends up happening is that, for nearly the entire play, the actors end up pantomiming their characters, enhancing their actions with, what academics refer to as, “nonlinguistic emotive vocalizations.” These are sounds the actors make with their mouths that add emotion and direction to the message they are trying to convey. But the sounds are not words.
A word about terminology: nonlinguistic is different than non-verbal. Nonlinguistic sounds are those made using the human voice, but the sound does not correlate with a word. Whereas something that is nonverbal, like a cue, is a physical thing that someone does to send a message which does not use the voice at all – like a facial expression or a hand gesture.
Telling a story without words – only using nonlinguistic sounds and nonverbal movements – is a fairly common game that students play in acting classes. It prevents the actor from depending on the meaning of the word to convey the message and forces them to use their entire body to get their point across. In this way, it was a huge challenge for the actors – one that they were able to execute pretty successfully.
And that is where the rather bizarre title of the play comes from. Wohl calls these “small mouth sounds.”
Now, the whole point of a play like this is for many unrelated people to come together and clash with one another. It is therefore important that many types of people be represented. But how can I identify them when hardly anybody spoke, and the only times their names were used were in the program? I’ll have to use my powers of deduction to determine who was who.
Richard Pallaziol as Jan and Amy Hall as JudyI know who Jan is, because he is played by Valley Players regular Richard Pallaziol. He is an older-than-middle-aged man, a bit dowdy, but cheerful and ready to be enlightened.
Judy and Joan – I have no way of telling apart – are played by Amy Hall and Linda Howard. I think they were a lesbian couple. They come in arguing about who gave who what directions. Everyone else is silent and their argument is especially piercing. Their relationship seems to be on the rocks.
I know that Bridget Folan played Alicia because Bridget has been in many other Valley Players productions, particularly a starring role in The Tin Woman a few years back. She enters late with headphones on, unaware that Taylor Swift is blaring from her iPhone.
That leaves Ned and Rodney, played by either Fernando Espinoza or Luis Marks. One of them is an authoritative yogi who brings his own prayer shawl and plants himself on the floor, effortlessly in full lotus while everyone else sits uncomfortably in folding chairs. The other one is an overly insecure guy very much afraid of offending everyone or violating any unspoken rules about being on a silent retreat.
(Right after writing that, I got an email from June Reif and Debbie Baumann, two of the mistresses behind Valley Players, who confirmed for me that Ned was the insecure guy, played by Fernando Espinoza and Rodney was the yogi, played by Luis Marks.)
Luis Marks as Rodney and Fernando Espinoza as NedAnd then there is Bonnie Gamble who plays the Teacher. She is unseen for the entire play, addressing the six supplicants in a booming voice, like a God. Except, this teacher is the least peaceful, the least insightful or enlightened person anyone would want to lead a retreat. All of the participants cringe at her opening parable about a frog who lives at the bottom of the well and is coerced into going to see the ocean by another frog. Then upon seeing the ocean, the first frog unceremoniously dies. The teacher chuckles as she relates this and the participants’ eyes go wide with bewilderment, incredulous that they are going to be led by someone so…weird. And that is when you know this play will be a satire.
It is a satire because silent retreats are supposed to be peaceful, but this one is not. There is skinny dipping in a lake, a ferocious bear, pot smoking, and a heartbreaking misunderstanding that leads to the end of a relationship. And that is not to mention Ned’s incredible monologue where he talks about how his skull was fractured in six places in a rock-climbing accident, his wife left him for his brother while he was in the hospital, his identity was stolen, his house burned down, his credit rating was ruined by the identity thieves and he had no money to rebuild. Espinoza’s performance was extremely touching and funny at the same time.
Though I have to say, by the time intermission rolled around, the characters’ silence felt like a gimmick that started to get old. I got impatient because it felt like the actors were using crutches when their legs were just fine.
Also, usually, in most silent retreats, the facilitators do their best to limit your interactions with the other participants. In this one, however, everyone seems to be all over one another.
What the play does get right about silent retreats, though, is what happens at the end. While there was a whole lot of drama, the characters come away changed, for the better, as people usually do. And this is memorialized in a ceremony in the last scene where they burn a piece of paper on which they wrote their intentions at the beginning of the retreat.
The end also included a small surprise about Jan, which was one of the most brilliant plot twists I have seen in a long time. It took advantage of the fact that you never heard Jan speak a word the entire play.
But, when the play ended, I reflected on all the things that happened. Especially how extremely different the six participants in the retreat were – which created moments that were hilarious, terrifying, depressing, clever and poignant. The play seemed to have every emotion that a drama could offer. And it was all tied together with the bonhomie everyone feels when they share an experience – or a tribulation. So, I felt like I got the benefits of the silent retreat, the same way the characters in this play did. Except, my vow of silence was limited to two hours as an audience member. I don’t know if I could handle two days.
‘Small Mouth Sounds’ runs through May 12 at the Yountville Community Center, 6516 Washington St, Yountville. Friday & Saturday, 7:00 pm; Sunday, 2 pm. $25-$28. 707.948.6273. valley-players.com
Photos by Mike Padua
John Henry Martin is a Napa-based writer who covered theater and arts for the Napa Valley Register from 2018 to 2021.
My guests on the April 25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Logan Witthaus and Jace Hassler from the Santa Rosa Junior College Student Production Club presentation of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. The show runs in the Frank Chong Studio Theatre on the Santa Rosa campus of the SRJC through April 28.
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My guests on the April 18 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Trevor Hoffman and Nathan Cummings from the Cinnabar Theater production of Shipwrecked! An Entertainment: The Amazing Adventures of Louis De Rougement (As Told by Himself). The show runs in Petaluma through April 28.
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My guests on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the 04/11/24 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were Carmen Mitchell and Alexandria Collis for a discussion of Redwood Ice Theatre Company’s upcoming Glitter Games and what the future holds for Redwood Theatre Company. The Glitter Games happen on Saturday, April 13 @ 7:00 pm at Snoopy’s Home Ice in Santa Rosa.
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My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the 04/11/24 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were Maeve Smith and Jaime Love from Sonoma Arts Live for a discussion of their upcoming production of The Hello Girls and a preview of next season. The Hello Girls opens April 19 and runs through May 5.
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Healdsburg’s The 222 concludes its season of professional drama with The Mountaintop, co-directed by Aldo Billingsley and Rebecca Novick. Playwright Katori Hall’s 2009 imagining of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last night on Earth runs through April 14.
It’s late in the evening of April 3, 1968 and Dr. King (Ron Chapman) has returned to room 306 of The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He’s just delivered his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop sermon and is struggling to craft a speech in support of the local sanitation workers who are on strike for equitable pay, improved working conditions, and safety.
After sending his friend Ralph Abernathy out for a pack of cigarettes, he calls down to the front desk in search of a cup of coffee. A knock at the door heralds the arrival of motel maid Camae (Sam Jackson) with the coffee. Dr. King invites her in with the hope of bumming a cigarette from her. Their casual conversation soon deepens into a discussion of civil rights, the movement, and the violence that seems to attach itself to peaceful protest.
The conversations lead to moments of self-reflection, doubt and even flirtation that culminate in a pillow fight and physical exhaustion. A slip of the tongue brings Dr. King to the realization that Camae isn’t who she appears to be. The play then goes in an unexpected direction, ultimately ending in the devastating event of which we all are too aware.
Ron Chapman, Sam JacksonPlaywright Hall has said that she wanted to bring Dr. King off the pedestal he’s been placed upon and back down to Earth, where he can be seen as an ordinary man who achieved extraordinary things, as a way for other ordinary people to appreciate their own capabilities.
So we meet an iconic figure who has holes in his socks and a foot odor problem. We hear him talking on the phone with his wife and speaking of his children. We see him treat the vows of marriage as less than sacrosanct.
Playing an icon can never be easy for an actor, and playing one stripped of everything that made them an icon must be doubly challenging. Chapman delivers on the playwright’s desire for “ordinariness” in the character while dutifully delivering hints of the cadence of Dr. King’s voice so that the audience never loses a sense of who this ordinary man is.
The bombast is delivered by Jackson as Camae but to reveal much about the character’s journey would rob the audience of their own discovery. Suffice it to say that Jackson absolutely glows in the role.
Previous productions at The 222 used minimal technical elements, but this show utilizes a lighting design, a sound design, and projections. While they were all functional, they will need to up their game in this department.
The Mountaintop was written in the time of the Obama Presidency, when there was a sense that our country had reached a new level in dealing with the issues of race. The backsliding over the last fifteen years and the coarsening of our national character casts a shadow over the play that, despite its culminating tragedy, originally managed to have a somewhat hopeful ending.
Sadly, that hope has been replaced by fear.
‘The Mountaintop’ runs through April 14 at The 222 in The Paul Mahder Gallery, 222 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg. Friday & Saturday, 7:30 pm; Sunday, 2 pm. $45-$105. Students free with ID. 707.473.9152. the222.org
Photos by Paul Mahder
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Healdsburg Tribune.
The impending apocalypse means it’s time to head to the local bar. That’s the premise of Alison Carr’s quirky play The Last Quiz Night On Earth in which the end is nigh, but the liquor still flows. Left Edge Theatre’s latest production runs at The California in Santa Rosa through April 13th.
As an asteroid hurtles towards Earth, the patrons of the Four Horsemen Bar in Chicago, composed of both cast and audience members, gather for one final quiz night. Implausibly, there’s no anarchy found. Rather, patrons sit nonchalantly, while the characters flurry around them, and, in between quiz rounds, try to repair old regrets as the clock winds down on civilization
Playwright Carr presents an imaginative premise, but the script, with its clunky format, doesn’t do the actors justice. The six quiz portions of the show dampen any character momentum. Trivia king Rav (earnestly hammy Danny Bañales) is perpetually leaving the stage to engage in some odd task, even when confronted by former flame Fran (Nora Summers). Serena Elize Flores, commanding as bar owner Kathy, does what she can to compel the distracted audience, who are in real time ordering drinks, and talking amongst themselves, trying to guess trivia answers.
Other crucial scenes lose their grounding in reality – Kathy’s estranged brother Bobby (Mike Schaeffer) spends the first part of the show trying to flee in Kathy’s car instead of using precious time to make amends. When his intentions are revealed in the last minutes, they fall flat.
Nora Summers, Danny Bañales , Serena Elize Flores, Mike SchaefferUltimately, the script is what lets this production down. Human connections are dismissed by snappy one-liners or outbursts of song. The characters avoid any sort of collision course with their feelings, as what would be realistically devastating relationship truths emerge.
Directors Argo Thompson and Jenny Hollingworth have attempted a literally immersive theater experience, but don’t achieve it in the way with which casual theater-goers may be accustomed to viewing a show, or being asked to participate in one. Thus, the novelty of having a drink delivered to you mid-scene AND while a trivia game is occurring, just led to rowdy theatergoers. We often lose the unmiked actors and their voices. As the play is originally set in an English pub, some colloquialisms stick out like a sore thumb.
This is a valiant experiment in theater-making helmed by enthusiastic directors and a capable cast, and patrons may enjoy a unique night out, but the script doesn’t allow these artists to achieve anything dramatically impactful.
Left Edge Theatre’s ‘The Last Quiz Night on Earth’ runs through April 13 at The California Theatre. 528 7th Street, Santa Rosa. Thu – Fri, 7:30pm; Sat., 1pm. $20–$29. 707.664.7529.leftedgetheatre.com
Photos by Dana Hunt
Caitlin Strom-Martin is a Sonoma County-based actor and playwright, and reads for several national play festival committees.
My guest on the April 4 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Brad Surosky, Executive Director at Transcendence Theatre Company, for a discussion of the changes in store for the company this year and a preview of their “Broadway in Sonoma” season.
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Click HERE for more information on the show.
If an asteroid was headed straight for Earth and the total destruction of the planet imminent, would you:
a) Head for home and the family
b) Head for church and prayer
c) Head for a bar and a trivia contest
If you answered “c”, then Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre has a show for you. Alison Carr’s The Last Quiz Night on Earth runs at The California through April 13.
The bar area of the California has been transformed into The Four Horsemen pub, where proprietor Kathy (Serena Elize Flores) has decided the best way to face the impending apocalypse is to just keep on keeping on, which means Quiz Night at the pub will go on. Genial host Rav (Danny Bañales) has five rounds of trivia ready to go, and the bartender is ready to serve you the drink of your choice (at regular prices, just in case the asteroid doesn’t hit.)
Audience members are encouraged to form teams and compete. Questions are along the lines of “What is the coldest planet in our solar system?”, “Globophobia is the fear of what?”, and “What actress has received the most Oscar nominations but zero wins?”
Amongst the five rounds of trivia, two other visitors arrive at the bar. Bobby (Mike Schaeffer) appears to have a strained relationship with Kathy. Fran (Nora Summers) seems to want to have a relationship with Rav. These personal dramas play out as the audience plays trivia.
Will the interpersonal conflicts be resolved? Will the Earth be pulverized?
Mike Schaeffer, Serena Elize Flores, Danny Bañales, Nora SummersSPOILER ALERT – Yes, and yes.
Directors Jenny Hollingworth and Argo Thompson bring a uniquely immersive/interactive experience to the North Bay that works better from the trivia perspective than it does as theater. Anyone who’s ever gone to a trivia night knows how engaged the teams can be and a good deal of the first act’s drama gets lost amongst the chatter.
The ‘drama’ per se is pretty perfunctory but the actors handle it well and get more of an opportunity to shine in the second act simply because there’s less trivia to steal focus.
The bar stays open after the 2-hour performance concludes and audiences can stay for karaoke after the Friday night shows. The show is scheduled to continue on as a monthly event as long as audiences continue to show up.
The Last Quiz Night on Earth is a pleasant little theatrical diversion.
Oh. Neptune, balloons, and Glenn Close. Don’t worry, the questions change weekly.
Left Edge Theatre’s ‘The Last Quiz Night on Earth’ runs through April 13 at The California Theatre. 528 7th Street, Santa Rosa. Thu – Fri, 7:30pm; Sat., 1pm. $20–$29. 707.664.7529.leftedgetheatre.com
Photos by Dana Hunt
This review originally appeard in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the March 29 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Steven Lasiter and Jennifer Barnaba from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Million Dollar Quartet. The show runs in Santa Rosa through May 4.
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Healdsburg’s Raven Players is one of the few local companies to wear the phrase “community theater” as a badge of honor. Absent a delusion of grandeur and pretenses of ‘Broadway quality’, the Players simply make the commitment to be a place that all are welcome, both on and off the stage. Their casts are frequently composed of a mixture of stage veterans and newcomers, and what their shows may lack in production values or experience is often made up for by the energy and heart displayed by the participants. Their seasons lean to the familiar, with occasional presentations of original or lesser-known works.
You can’t get any more familiar than The Wizard of Oz. Who hasn’t seen the classic 1939 film a couple of hundred times? John Kane and the Royal Shakespeare Company adapted the film for the stage in 1987, retained all of the original dialogue and songs, and added just a wee bit more of both. Raven Players Artistic Director Steven David Martin has a double-cast production of this version running at the Raven Performing Arts Theater through April 7.
Dorothy Gale (Joanna Burrill, alternating with Eily Carniglia) runs away from her Kansas home to save her little dog Toto (a stuffed animal to start that transmogrifies into the precocious William Young) from the heinous Miss Gulch (Kate Edery). Transported via tornado to the Land of Oz, Dorothy seeks a way home with the assistance of a scarecrow (Bohn Connor/Elliot Davis), a tin man (Joe Caruselle/Dan Murray) and a cowardly lion (Nicholas Augusta/Evan Espinoza). Glinda the Good Witch (Katie Watts-Whitaker) sends them off to see the Wizard (Craig Peoples/Matt Farrell) while avoiding the Wicked Witch of the West (Edery).
The munchkins, talking trees, flying monkeys, and jitterbugs that are met along the way are all energetically played by youth, many of whom are members of the Young at Heart Theatre program.
Bohn Connor, William Young, Joanna Burrill, Joe Caruselle, Nicholas Augusta The veteran performers in the cast keep the show grounded, while the youthful ensemble’s energy and enthusiasm kept the show’s tempo and pace up and moving through its two-and-one-half hour running time. This went a long way in keeping the numerous younger members of the audience engaged.
Director Martin and his team have upped the Raven’s usual production values and added substantial projections, smoke, bubbles, and other special effects to the mix. There’s an eight-piece live orchestra under the direction of Kelly Considine delivering the live music and Jeanine Gray brings a touch of modernity to the traditional costumes.
Knowing the dialogue and lyrics helps as sound continues to be an issue at the Raven. The orchestra frequently overpowered the singing.
It takes brains, courage, and a whole lot of heart to mount a production like The Wizard of Oz.
There’s no place like… Healdsburg.
‘The Wizard of Oz’ runs through April 7 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater, 115 North St., Healdsburg. Thurs – Sat, 7:30 pm; Sat & Sun, 2 pm. $10–$40. 707.433.6335. raventheater.org.
Photos by Dennis Whitaker | Astra Digital Marketing
This review appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Healdsburg Tribune.
The Addams Family first appeared on the scene in 1938 in a series of single panel comics drawn by cartoonist Charles Addams and published in the New Yorker magazine and have been a presence in American pop culture ever since. Fairly dark and macabre in nature, the original tone was lightened significantly for the 1960’s…
The proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” takes on added meaning for those rearing a child with special needs or chronic illnesses. The usual ‘village’ of family and friends grows exponentially as caregivers and support services enter the mix. It’s a world with which playwright Amy Herzog is very familiar. Mary Jane is her tale of a single mother trying to get by in that world and the village that supports her. Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre has a production running at The California through Sept. 16.
Mary Jane (Caitlin Strom-Martin) is the mother of Alex, a two-year-old boy born prematurely with cerebral palsy and a host of other medical issues. They live in a cramped New York apartment where Alex receives 24/7 care. Alex is never seen, but his presence is always felt via the ever-present beeping of his heart monitor.
In the first act, we meet Ruthie (Mary DeLorenzo), the building superintendent who looks the other way at some modifications to the child-proofing of the apartment. Sherry (Mercedes Murphy) is an attentive home health care nurse for whom the affectionate term “angel of mercy” would seem to have been written. Brianne (Sarah Dunnavant) is a new mother of a child with special needs in search of guidance from what stroller to buy to how to navigate the bureaucracies with which she’ll now have to deal. Sherry brings her niece Amelia (Lexus Fletcher) to visit when Alex’s health takes a turn for the worse.
Mercedes Murphy and Caitlin-Strom MartinThe second act takes place in a New York hospital where May Jane’s village expands to include Alex’s doctor (Murphy), a music therapist (Fletcher), another parent (Dunnavant), and a Buddhist hospital chaplain (DeLorenzo).
As someone who has worked for decades with students with special needs and their parents, I can attest to the truthfulness of Herzog’s script and the brilliance of Strom-Martin’s performance. She captures everything I’ve ever seen in a parent of a child with special needs from the fierceness of their advocacy to their struggles with and occasional obliviousness to the reality of their situations.
Herzog balances the script’s heaviness with moments of good humor and director Beulah Vega and her cast handle both well. It is a perfect combination of a well-written script with clear, purposeful direction and an excellent ensemble of actors.
Mary Jane is more than an exploration of motherhood and female bonds. Issues of self-sacrifice, guilt, faith and even our often-impersonal health care system come into play. It’s not an easy show to watch, but for audiences seeking to be challenged or looking for something other than a remount of a well-worn show, it’s worth the effort.
Left Edge Theatre’s ‘Mary Jane’ runs through September 16 at The California Theatre. 528 7th Street, Santa Rosa. Thu – Fri, 7:30pm; Sat., 1pm. $20–$29. 707.664.PLAY. leftedgetheatre.com
Photos by Dana Hunt
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the August 31 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were director Brad Surosky and choreographer Michael Callahan from the Transcendece Theatre Company production of An Enchanted Evening. Click below to listen: **** Click HERE for more information on the show.
My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the August 31broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were cast members Mary DeLorenzo and Mercedes Murphy from the Left Edge Theatre production of Mary Jane. Click below to listen: **** Click HERE for more information on the show.
What happens when Hollywood comes to town is a well-worn plot device best exemplified by the classic ‘Mayberry Goes Hollywood’ episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Mayberry’s reactions to the arrival of a film company in their quaint Southern town was played for gentle humor as the residents go about changing everything about the town…
Mill Valley’s Curtain Theatre must not have gotten the memo about Summer Shakespeare al fresco in Marin requiring a production of Twelfth Night (two other companies are doing it.) Instead of a comedy, Mill Valley’s Old Mill Park Amphitheatre is the scene of great tragedy as the company presents Romeo & Juliet through Sept. 4.…
North Bay fans of Shakespeare “under the sun” have at least four options this summer including two – count ‘em – two different productions of Twelfth Night going up in Marin. Sonoma County’s entry in this summer of Shakespeare ‘fest’ is The Comedy of Errors. Healdsburg’s Raven Players return to West Plaza Park with a…
This one time… at theater camp… Dear Evan Hansen‘s Ben Platt plays a 14-year-old middle schooler who… Just kidding. I never went to theater camp, but I was involved in enough theater from elementary through high school that I recognized a lot of the characters and situations in this film. It’s an affectionate look at…
There was a period of time when musical theatre creators temporarily averted their gaze from Hollywood as a prime source for material and looked to the British film industry instead. Films like Billy Elliot and Kinky Boots had very successful musical adaptations on Broadway, but the trend started with The Full Monty. Transcendence Theatre Company…
The name Damon Runyon probably means little to most today, but in the early to mid-twentieth century he was a celebrated journalist, sports columnist, and author. His short stories about New York and Broadway contained such colorful characters that the term “Runyonesque” was coined to describe the type of gamblers, gangsters, hoods, and show people…
Several North Bay theatre artists move to the big screen (well, a big television screen, at least) with War of the Wills. It’s the hoary old “spend the night in a haunted house and inherit a million dollars” plot with a few adjustments. The Sonoma County-lensed thriller is now available for rent on Amazon Prime.…
If Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has the feeling of a school show done large, it should come as no surprise that it was originally commissioned by a London Prep School as a piece for their boys’ choir. This early collaboration of a then-teenage composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and twenty-something lyricist Tim Rice started…
It’s interesting that the budget for this film is approximately the same as “Asteroid City” (somewhere in the 25 MM range). Anderson’s film was shot in Spain, with government subsidies. “You Hurt My Feelings” was shot in New York. It’s amazing what 25 MM will get you (or not get you) depending on where you…
The Venn diagram that displays the relationship between lovers of the works of William Shakespeare and musical theatre probably shows very little overlap. Nevertheless, if you’re in either category – and especially if you’re in that overlap – you should head to Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse and catch one of their remaining performances of…
The 222 is a non-profit, member-supported arts, culture, and entertainment venue that’s housed in the Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg. Open since 2021, to date it’s presented musical programs, literary readings, film presentations, and other community events. Professional theatre now enters that mix with a series of productions programmed by well-known Bay Area theatre artist…
My guests on the final Theatre Thursday broadcast on June 1 on The Drive on KSRO were David Lear and Lorenzo Alviso from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Something Rotten! Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more information:
Watch it, Mill Valley! Your quiet little burg is currently under siege from what may be (according to some pundits and politicians) the greatest threat our nation faces in these troubled times. Lock your windows and bolt your doors because attendees of the latest show at the Throckmorton Theatre have reported multiple sightings of… drag queens! They’re easy to spot as they’re attired in their full regalia, from their outrageous hair helmets/wigs right down to their… Kinky Boots!
Kinky Boots the Musical, running at the Throckmorton through June 4, traces its roots back to a 1999 BBC documentary about a struggling English shoe manufacturer that staved off closure by creating a brand of women’s shoes for men. A 2005 feature film based its story on the doc, which became the basis for the Harvey Fierstein/Cyndi Lauper musical that took Broadway by storm in 2012.
The cast of “Kinky Boots the Musical”Charlie Price (Sieiman Alahmadieh) has no interest in continuing in the family shoe business and heads to London with his fiancé Nicola (Kaylee Miltersen) for a career in real estate. His father’s passing leads to his return where he discovers the business is in serious financial trouble. He returns to London in search of a financial rescue when he comes upon a woman being harassed by a man. He intervenes, is knocked unconscious, and wakes up in the dressing room of a drag club where he discovers the woman he was attempting to rescue is Lola (Adam Green), the club headliner. Seeking to make small talk, he notices the shoddy footwear Lola uses isn’t designed to hold the weight of man.
Charlie returns to the factory and, after a prodding from an assembly line worker (Sarah Jiang) to find an underserved niche market to save the company, enlists Lola to design a line of footwear for men who dress like women. All he has to do is get his employees to buy in and the money to finance a trip to Milan for a runway debut.
Deeper than the economic storyline, Kinky Boots is a tale of fathers and sons, family and friends, passion and prejudice, and accepting someone (including yourself) for who they are.
Director Adam Maggio’s cast brings energy and genuine emotion to the stage. Green and Alahmadieh are well matched in the leads and their delivery of “Not My Father’s Son” was an emotional gut punch.
The combined efforts of the Kinky Boots creative team result in a joyous and life-affirming show. Drag someone out to see it.
‘Kinky Boots’ runs through June 4 at the Throckmorton Theatre. 142 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley. Fri & Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2:00pm. $29-$48. 415.383.9600. throckmortontheatre.org
Photos by Throckmorton Theatre
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the Pacific Sun.
Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse has announced a major restructuring in staff and leadership.
Managing Director Anne Clark and Artistic Director Jared Sakren will leave their positions at the end of May. Clark has been Managing Director of the Playhouse since 2020. Sakren joined the Playhouse in 2015 as Executive Director and took on the Artistic Director’s duties upon Craig Miller’s departure in 2018.
Clark is joining the team at Mill Valley’s 142 Throckmorton Theatre as Development Director. Sakren’s plans are unknown.
Anne Clark and Jared SakrenA press release states that the restructuring is being done “to align with current economic realities and to ensure their ability to maintain their steadfast commitment to deliver exceptional live theatre and educational programming to Sonoma County.”
This restructuring will result in an 30% reduction of the theatre’s current staff, driving a reduction in operating expenses. “Budget pressures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic combined with the recent AB5 compensation law has more than tripled the cost of presenting live theatre,” said Dorothy Beattie, 6th Street’s executive board president. “We can no longer sustain three executive positions and must shift our model.”
Aja Gianola-Norris and Jonathen BlueThe theatre will seek a new executive leader to navigate both the artistic and business aspects of running a theatre. During the transition, Director of Education Aja Gianola-Norris will serve as interim executive director.
Replacing Gianola-Norris as 6th Street Director of Education is Jonathen Blue, who begins his new role on June 1st. Blue has previously been a teacher and performer at 6th Street.
Conversations overheard during the intermission of a show often provide fascinating insights into an audience’s immediate reaction to what they’re experiencing. Topics can range from the temperature in the theater (“too cold”) to the running time of the first act (“too long”) to the volume level of the actors when delivering dialogue (“too low.”).
All of the aforementioned comments were overheard during intermission at a recent performance of Smart People at Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse plus one more. An audience member, in a discussion with their seat mate about why they wanted to leave at intermission, gave the following as one of their reasons – the show was “too woke.”
Now “woke” is a term I’ve grown accustomed to dripping off the lips of conservative TV pundits and politicians, but when asked to define what they mean by it and they’re often at a rare loss for words. They might be surprised that the term actually originated in the Black community as an expression of encouragement to stay alert to racial and social injustice. Not a bad thing, right?
Unless you’re a member of the community with an overwhelming history of inflicting those injustices.
Jenni Kim-Etimos, Bethiah Benson, Keene Hudson, Marcus Peterson-SpainWhich brings us back to the show itself. Lydia Diamond’s script adds prejudice to the old “nature vs. nurture” debate via the interactions of four ‘smart people’. Brian White (Marcus Peterson-Spain) is a neuropsychologist whose research aims to prove that “all whites are racist.” His best friend Jackson Moore (Keene Hudson) is an intern who thinks his skills are being questioned because of his skin color.
Both of their paths are crossed by Ginny Yang (Jenni Kim-Etimos) and Valerie Johnston (Bethiah Benson). Ginny is seeking assistance for some research she is doing on Asian-American women while Valerie, a recent MFA in acting graduate, is struggling to get cast in anything other than the stereotypical roles usually offered to young black women. How these four come together is a bit of stretch, but what is said when they do is often smart, provocative, unsettling, and funny.
Director David L. Yen has four strong performers in the leads but blocking choices left a good deal of their performances unheard or unwitnessed at times by portions of the audience. Vocal amplification would have helped.
Diamond’s overstuffed script may be a bit too brainy for its own good as she adds sexism, classism, and a whole lot of smart jargon to the mix, but too woke?
Hardly.
Here’s to more “woke theatre” in our community.
‘Smart People’ runs through May 28 on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 W. Sixth Street, Santa Rosa. Thurs-Sat., 7:30pm; Sat-Sun, 2pm. $22–$44. 707.523.4185. 6thstreeetplayhouse.com
Photos by Eric Chazankin
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the May 18 broadcast of The Drive on KSRO were stage manager John Ruzika and cast member Keene Hudson from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Smart People.
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My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the May 18 broadcast of The Drive on KSRO were director Katie Watts-Whitaker and cast member Steven David Martin from the Raven Players production of Hay Fever.
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Eccentric families have long been a source of humor for popular entertainments from TV’s Addams Family to film’s Royal Tenenbaums. Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It with You may be the preeminent stage production on the subject and is one of the most produced plays since its premiere in 1936, but Noël Coward beat them to the punch a decade earlier with Hay Fever. The Raven Players bring Coward’s Bliss family to the Raven Performing Arts Theater’s stage in a production that runs through May 28.
Meet the Bliss family: Father David (Steven David Martin) is a novelist hard at work on his latest tome. Mother Judith (Ashley Kennedy) is a recently-retired stage star contemplating a return to the theater. Adult siblings Sorel (Aimee Drew) and Simon (Troy Thomas Evans) banter with each other while lounging around the estate.
With amorous intentions on their minds and unbeknownst to the other, each family member has invited a guest for the weekend, much to the consternation of harried housekeeper Clara (Beneicka Brown). Sandy Tyrell (Bohn Connor), a pugilist-in-training and admirer of Judith’s, is the first to arrive. Richard Greatham (Matt Farrell), a “diplomatist” with whom Sorel is taken, arrives with Jackie Coryton (Kate Edery) who David has invited to interview for his book. Socialite Myra Arundel (Jeanette Seisdedos), Simon’s invitee, is the last to arrive.
The weekend leads to couplings and de-couplings and re-couplings before the guests all come to the same conclusion – the Blisses are all too in love with themselves to have time for anyone else. Exit, stage right.
Most of the cast of “Hay Fever”Director Katie Watts-Whitaker has a good ensemble at work here. The material is slight and there really isn’t much of a plot, so it’s all about the characters and each cast member does well with theirs. Drew gives the most grounded performance as Sorel, while Connor gives an intricate physical performance as the brawny boxer. Evans’s spoiled Simon, Kennedy’s flighty Judith, Farrell’s befuddled Richard, Martin’s pompous David, Edery’s confused Jackie, and Seisdedos’s scheming Myra aren’t the most sympathetic of folk with which an audience can identify, but there’s always Brown’s put-upon housekeeper (even if she makes lousy haddock.)
Hay Fever is the kind of show where you end up laughing at people and not really with them. It’s a comedy of self-centeredness and egotism. What a relief to know that since its premiere almost 100 years ago that those kinds of people no longer exist.
Right?
‘Hay Fever’ runs through May 28 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater, 115 North St., Healdsburg. Thursday–Saturday, 7:30 pm; Sunday, 2 pm. $10–$25. 707.433.6335. raventheater.org
Photos by Ray Mabry
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Healdsburg Tribune.
My guest on the May 11 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on KSRO was Jennifer Boesing from the Mountain Play production of Into the Woods.
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Large-scale, family-friendly musical theatre returns to the North Bay with the Spreckels Theatre Company’s production of Tuck Everlasting. The stage adaptation of Natalie Babbitt’s 1975 children’s novel about immortality had a very brief life on Broadway in 2016. If the Spreckels production – running in Rohnert Park through May 21 – is any indication, the show should find great favor among regional and community theater audiences.
Purists of the Babbitt original may take issue with some of the changes made by Claudia Shear and Tim Federle to the book, but the heart of the story is still there. Young Winnie Foster (Molly Belle Hart) is starting to chafe at the restraints put on her by her still-in-mourning-for-her-husband mother (Erin Henninger). With the support of her Nana (Kimberly Kalember), she wants to go to the traveling fair but her mother says no. What’s a plucky young girl to do?
Molly Belle Hart, Nico AlvaRun away, of course! As she traverses through the family woods, she comes upon a young teen named Jesse (Nico Alva) drinking from a spring. As she prepares to drink from the spring, he stops her. Jesse’s older brother Miles (Samuel J. Gleason) shows up and fears that Winnie will reveal the location of the spring. The boys decide to kidnap Winnie and take her to the Tuck family cabin deep into the woods.
Father Angus (Larry Williams) and mother Mae (Tika Moon) join the boys in telling Winnie the Tuck family story – how they came to realize that drinking from that spring gave them immortality and the difficulties that has presented. Winnie agrees to keep their secret and will return home to her mother in the morning but, kids being kids, sneaks off to the fair with Jesse. There they meet up with the villainous Man in the Yellow Suit (Tim Setzer) who’s been searching for the spring for decades. Trouble ensues.
While there’s good work done by the stage veterans (Moon, Kalember and Setzer in particular), a show like this sinks or swims on the talent of its young leads. Thankfully, director Emily Cornelius has two very talented performers at the helm. The simply outstanding Hart finds the right balance of charm and rebelliousness for her character and possesses a terrific singing voice. She is matched well with the personable Alva. In supporting roles, Gleason continues to demonstrate why he’s one of the best young performers working on North Bay stages today and Chase Thompson also scores as a junior deputy searching for Winnie.
The show’s large ensemble shines throughout the show principally in choreography that was a collaborative effort between Cornelius, Karen Miles, and the cast. Movement and dancing are a very strong part of this production, culminating in a 10-minute ballet representing the entirety of Winnie’s life that may go a little over the head of younger audience members.
Cast and ensemble from “Tuck Everlasting”An on-stage, 10-piece orchestra under the leadership of music director Janis Dunson Wilson deftly handles Chris Miller’s score and the set design by Eddy Hansen and Elizabeth Bazzano works well in conjunction with an effective use of projections by Chris Schloemp to transport the audience to rural 19th-century New Hampshire. Costume designer Donnie Frank has dressed the cast well and has come up with one helluva yellow suit.
Tuck Everlasting is a great show with which to introduce the wonder and joy of live theater to younger audiences that should keep more seasoned theatre-goers engaged as well.
‘Tuck Everlasting’ runs through May 21 in the Codding Theater at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $12 – $36. 707.588.3400. spreckelsonline.com
Photos by Jeff Thomas
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the May 4 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on KSRO were Larry Williams, Nico Alva, and Molly Belle Hart from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of Tuck Everlasting.
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Lovers of musical theatre in general and the works of Stephen Sondheim in particular would do well to head out to Sonoma and catch Sonoma Arts Live’s Side by Side by Sondheim. The musical revue runs on the Rotary Stage in Andrews Hall through May 7.
Like most musical revues, there’s not much of a plot. Four musical theatre artists (Dani Beem, Jonathen Blue, Alexei Ryan, and Maeve Smith) gather in a Manhattan apartment for cocktails and song. That’s it.
As the show was originally produced in 1976, the material consists of Sondheim’s early works beginning with his work as a lyricist on shows like West Side Story and Gypsy and running through his 1970’s triumphs as composer/lyricist with shows like Company, Follies, and A Little Night Music. Fans expecting songs from shows like Sweeney Todd or Into the Woods will have to wait for an updated sequel.
Set in an upscale NY apartment – the kind of apartment where two pianos would be the norm – four unnamed individuals enter to the tune of “Comedy Tonight” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the show is off and running.
Dani Beem, Alexei Ryan, Maeve Smith, Jonathen BlueAn on-stage narrator (Rick Love) provides some background information for each number which is helpful as the song list includes several numbers cut from shows as well as some of Sondheim’s lesser-known film and television work.
Director Andrew Smith has a perfect cast of four delivering the oft-challenging Sondheim material. Each shine with their solo work while gelling perfectly in the ensemble numbers. Highlights include Maeve Smith’s harried rendition of “Getting Married Today” from Company, Alexei Ryan’s beautiful delivery of “I Remember” from Evening Primrose (a rarely-seen 1966 television production), Jonathen Blue’s moving delivery of “Being Alive” from Company, and Dani Beem’s beautifully understated reprisal of her work in a recent production of A Little Night Music with “Send in the Clowns”.
The tone is lightened with some wonderful comedic numbers including “The Boy from…” which Sondheim anonymously contributed to The Mad Show (a musical revue based on Mad magazine!) and “Can That Boy Foxtrot!” which was cut from Follies.
Those two on-stage pianos are used by musical director Ellen Patterson and pianist Sergio Cabada to provide the lively musical accompaniment for the singers.
Two hours in the company of four talented performers doing the work of one of the giants of American musical theatre makes for a very pleasant evening or afternoon’s entertainment.
‘Side by Side by Sondheim’ runs through May 7 on the Rotary Stage at Andrews Hall in the Sonoma Community Center, 276 E. Napa St., Sonoma. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm, $25–$42. 707.484.4874 sonomaartslive.org.
Photos by Miller Oberlin
Award-winning scholar Professor Joshua S. Goldstein and legendary three-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone joined Harry Duke on The Drive on KSRO for a conversation about their film Nuclear Now.
The documentary will have two screenings on May 1 at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol.
The film, co-written by Goldstein and Stone with narration and direction by Stone, makes that case that if we’re serious about reducing carbon emissions and mitigating the effects of global warming in a world with an ever-increasing demand for electrity, that we’re going to have to consider nuclear power as the means to do so.
The film covers our nation’s love/hate relationship with nuclear power from President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program to the “No Nukes” movement of the 1970’s as well as how other countries have either embraced or turned their back on nuclear power.
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My guests on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segmenst on the April 20 broadcast of The Drive on KSRO were Farrah McAdam and Aleen Phelps from the Sonoma State University Spring Dance 2023 program.
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My guest on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the April 20 broadcast of The Drive on KSRO was Andrew Smith, director of the Sonoma Arts Live production of Side by Side by Sondheim.
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When it comes to jukebox musicals, Always… Patsy Cline may be North Bay theatergoers’ favorite. That’s evidenced by the number of productions put on in the area in recent years. Sonoma Arts Live reprised their 2018 production late last year, and now Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse has mounted a Jared Sakren-directed production that runs through Apr. 30.
The production stars Shannon Rider as Patsy Cline and Liz Jahren as Louise Seger, a Houston housewife who turned a chance encounter with Cline at a Texas honky tonk in 1961 into a pen pal relationship that lasted until Cline’s untimely death in 1963. Both performers have taken a crack at the roles in the past, and the two actually shared the stage for a weekend of performances back in 2008.
Using the framing device of the letters shared between the two and Louise’s reminiscences, the Ted Swindley-created show contains 26 musical numbers including such classics as “Walkin’ After Midnight”, “I Fall to Pieces”, and “Crazy”. Rider, a seasoned singer and actor, delivers the goods as Patsy, and Jahren really works the room as Seger. She regularly interacts with the audience from leading them to join in on communal clapping to dancing in the aisle with an audience member or two.
An on-stage, six-piece band under the musical direction of Nate Riebli provides the terrific musical accompaniment with Jennifer Barnaba, Steve Cairns, Steve Lassiter, and Anthony Martin providing nice backup vocals as “The Jordanaires”. The bulk of the performance area represents Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry and Houston’s Esquire Ballroom with Louise’s kitchen occupying the left of the stage. It’s a nicely detailed and very functional stage design by Carrie Mullen. Great period costuming by Pamela Johnson adds to the sense of time and place.
What detracts from that sense is the introduction of on-stage advertising to the Playhouse. It’s tough to mentally transport yourself to the Grand Ole Opry in 1961 when a slide show featuring local restaurants and businesses is prominently displayed behind the band. The shout-out to a local country radio station from Louise didn’t help either. In these financially-trying times for all, it’s understandable that theatre companies would seek additional sources of revenue but the obtrusiveness of this approach really takes one out of the world of the show. At the very least, the use of a graphic designer to create ads in the style of the era might help them blend better into the scenery.
The artists are working too hard to be upstaged by the ads.
‘Always… Patsy Cline’ runs through April 30 in the GK Hardt Theatre at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 W. Sixth Street, Santa Rosa. Thurs-Sat., 7:30pm; Sat-Sun, 2pm. $26–$45. Masking recommended. 707.523.4185. 6thstreeetplayhouse.com
Photos by Eric Chazankin
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guests on the April 13 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Laura Downing-Lee, Michael Coury Murdock, Austin Aquino-Harrison, and Gwenevieve Nelson from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of The Addams Family Musical.
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My guests on the April 6 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on KSRO were M. Graham Smith and Byron Guo from the Cinnabar Theater production of Tiger Style!
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Director of the new documentary film WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS? John Scheinfeld and BS&T co-founder/drummer Bobby Colomby joined us on The Drive today for a fascinating conversation about the film. It screens at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley on Saturday, April 8 at 1 pm and the Rialto Cinemas Sonoma County in Sebastopol on Thursday, April 13 at 7 pm.
In June 1970, hot off their spectacular Grammy® win for Album of the Year (besting The Beatles’ “Abbey Road”), Blood, Sweat & Tears becomes the first American rock band to perform behind the Iron Curtain, doing concerts in Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland on a tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
Upon their return, the band becomes a victim of the significant societal upheaval and culture wars in a polarized America, divided as much then as it is now. Political criticism typically comes from one side or the other. But in 1970, Blood, Sweat & Tears find themselves in the crossfire from both the Right AND the Left and the group suffers greatly as a result. Suddenly, they are no longer hip and cool and lose support from fans, the media, concert bookers and the recording industry.
Through documentary footage shot during the Iron Curtain tour (and thought to be lost) and present-day interviews with band members and historians, as well as the unsealing of government records, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS? unravels the details of this extraordinary year in the life of the band.
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One would think that the regular killing of students and staff on American school campuses would lead to some sort of meaningful change in how our nation deals with the issue of guns. Sadly, as we read the news reports and watch the horrifying video footage of the latest school shooting (as of the date of this review’s submission, in Nashville), it’s clear that nothing has really changed.
We see the same images – parents clutching their children, young people in shock with tears rolling down their faces and their mouths covered, gurneys transporting the covered bodies of tiny victims – and we hear the same platitudes (thoughts and prayers, etc.) from our “leaders” who offer comfort to the survivors with one hand while accepting campaign contributions from the gun lobby with the other, over and over and over again.
We hear the voices and stories of the victims’ families and the survivors, but then the news cycle changes, the outrage dims and the voices grow faint. Until the next “event”.
Amye Archer and Loren Kleinman released an anthology of those voices and stories in 2019. They titled it If I Don’t Make It, I Love You. The title comes from a text sent by a 15-year-old girl to her mother as she hid in a closet at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, during the mass shooting there in 2018.
Craig PeoplesHealdsburg’s Raven Players Artistic Director Steven David Martin read the book, was profoundly moved, and reached out to the editors for permission to adapt some of the stories for the stage. Together with ten local writers and thirteen local actors, they’ve created a two-night program running at the Raven Performing Arts Center in Healdsburg through April 9.
Each 65-minute program consists of seven narratives. There is little overlap between the two programs so it is not necessary to see both to get the full impact. Each scene involves one or two actors speaking the words of the surviving victims or victims’ family members. Projections sear the names and ages of the dead into one’s consciousness. 6 years old. 7 years old. 67 years old. The lists go on.
Each scene is an emotional gut punch. The two that were most impactful were “Right Place at the Right Time” (adapted by Teri Amara Boero, performed by Katie Watts-Whitaker), a daughter’s story of the loss of her teacher father and the purpose it brought to her life, and “Nick” (adapted by Scott Lummer, performed by Craig Peoples), a father’s story of the loss of his son and his inability to offer his forgiveness.
The audience is placed on stage which means seating is limited, but this show demands intimacy. It is an uncomfortable evening of theatre, as it should be. It is documentation of a continuing national tragedy. It is documentation of our continuing national shame.
‘If I Don’t Make It, I Love You’ runs through Apr 9 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater, 115 North St., Healdsburg. Thursday–Saturday, 7:30 pm; Sunday, 2 pm. $10–$25. 707.433.6335. raventheater.org
Photos by Ray Mabry
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Healdsburg Tribune.
Documentary film producer/director Lisa Cortés joined me on The Drive for an interview about her latest film Little Richard: I Am Everything. It’s screening across the country for one night only (including at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol) on Tuesday, April 11th.
The film tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock n’ roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions. In interviews with family, musicians, and cutting-edge Black and queer scholars, the film reveals how Richard created an art form for ultimate self-expression, yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself.
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My guests on the March 30 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on KSRO were Shannon Rider and Liz Jahren from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Always… Patsy Cline.
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Fans of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice have had a plethora of adaptations of the 19th century novel from which to choose, from the trio of Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon theatrical extensions of the story to the recent gay-themed film Fire Island, which transported reasonable facsimiles of Austen’s characters from Hertfordshire, England to the gay mecca off of Long Island, New York.
There are at least three musical adaptations as well including one with Marin County roots. Pride & Prejudice, The Musical with music and lyrics by long-time Marin County resident Rita Abrams makes its North Bay debut in Ross. The Phoebe Moyer-directed Ross Valley Players production runs through Apr. 16.
Josie Brown’s book of the show sticks pretty faithfully to the Austen original. The Bennet house is all aflutter as Mrs. Bennet (Jill Wagoner) sets about finding suitable (read that ‘rich’) husbands for her five daughters. Visiting squire Charles Bingley (Justin Hernandez) has his eyes on eldest Bennet daughter Jane (Amy Dietz) while his companion Fitzwilliam Darcy (Evan Held) finds himself put off by and then strangely attracted to second-eldest daughter Elizabeth (Lily Jackson).
Lily Jackson, Evan HeldAn unwelcome proposal by a distant cousin (Charles Evans) and youngest sibling Lydia (Alexandra Fry) running off with a gentleman of questionable character (Heren Patel) further complicate things for the Bennets, but all will, of course, work out in the end.
Director Moyer has a solid ensemble at work here, starting with Geoffrey Colton as the Bennet patriarch and Wagoner as his wife. Both bring gravitas and humor to their characters. Hernandez, Held, Dietz, and Jackson are well cast and possess fine singing voices.
Abrams’s clever and affecting songs – performed to music tracks – are a welcome addition though a couple felt tonally out of place as did some odd choreography. The costume and lighting designs (by Adriana Gutierrez and Frank Sarubbi) brought a great sense of time and place to the show.
With a running time of close to three hours, the show lost steam as the evening progressed. “Staged” set changes added time to an already lengthy show and the audience, at first receptive, soon grew weary of the process. The show also lurched into first gear whenever the character of Mr. Collins appeared.
Despite these issues, there’s a lot of good work being done here. Austen-philes would do well to consider a trip to Ross to quench their Bennet thirst.
‘Pride & Prejudice, The Musical’ runs Thurs – Sun through Apr. 16 at the Barn Theatre in the Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross. Thurs, 7:30; Fri & Sat, 8 pm; Sun, 2 pm. $15-$35. 415.383.1100. Masking required. rossvalleyplayers.com.
Photos by Robin Jackson
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the Pacific Sun.
Fans of corporate dramas like Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and Jerry Sterner’s Other People’s Money might do well to check out the last couple of performances of Dry Powder. The California in Santa Rosa is hosting the Left Edge Theatre production of the Sara Burgess drama through March 26.
It’s set in the offices of KMM, a Capital Management/Private Equity firm headed by Rick (Mike Schaeffer). Rick’s dealing with the blowback from throwing an exceptionally lavish engagement party (with just one elephant) while his firm lays off thousands of employees from a recent acquisition.
Junior Partner Seth (Michael Girts) thinks he has a win/win for the firm with a proposed buyout of a California-based luggage company. Seth’s built a relationship with the CEO of that company (Mark Bradbury) and come up with a plan that will make money for KMM and give the luggage company the means to expand while maintaining local production and staffing levels. Saving an American company and American jobs might take some heat off of KMM.
Michael Girts, Gillian EichenbergerJunior Partner Jenny (Gillian Eichenberger) thinks only of a win for KMM. That means buying the luggage company, shipping production overseas, and laying off all but four of the company’s 653 employees. Sure, Seth’s proposal might make KMM some money, but Jenny’s would make them more money. And isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?
Burgess has written a tight, 95-minute dramedy that director Jenny Hollingworth has cast well. Schaeffer is very strong as Rick, a man under incredible pressure, much of which has been created by his own hand. He’s a man who gives the outward appearance of being in control but inside is starting to crack under the financial pressure that comes from investors fleeing a magnet for bad publicity.
Girts does well representing a more humanistic side to business while Eichenberger is ice cold as the numbers-driven Jenny. Their interplay is the source of most of this shows biting humor. Bradbury radiates earnestness as the concerned leader of his company, but… watch out.
The show was originally produced “in the round”, as it is here, though it’s actually more of a square at The California. The audience surrounds the stage on four sides, which often leads to action being out of sight of some of the audience. Further sight line issues occur if seated in the second row of the floor-level seating. The audience member seated next to me kept moving from seat to seat in an attempt to keep her eye on the action. Woe is you if you’re seated behind a tall person. Clarity is sacrificed for some intimacy and immersion, but I’m not sure it’s a reasonable trade-off.
You don’t need an MBA to decipher the financial machinations at play in Dry Powder (which is a term that refers to the cash on hand at a firm that can be readily invested) and anyone with any knowledge of business, finance, Wall Street ethos, or any of the many films and plays on the subject will find no real surprises in the script. (It even has shades of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.) Burgess may be preaching to the choir of the evils of unfettered capitalism, but it’s an entertaining (If well-worn) sermon.
You won’t leave the theater feeling good about the world of high finance, but you should leave feeling good about theatre (if you sit in one of the raised-level seats.)
Left Edge Theatre’s ‘Dry Powder’ runs through March 26 at The California Theatre. 528 7th Street, Santa Rosa. Thu – Sat, 7:30pm; Sun., 2pm. $22–$40. 707.536.1620. leftedgetheatre.com
Photos by Eric Chazankin
My guests on the March 23 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on KSRO were Steven David Martin, Grace Warden, and Heather Berger from the Raven Players production of If I Don’t Make It, I Love You.
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A lot of “firsts” were achieved when Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway in 1959. It was the first time Broadway produced a play written by a Black woman and the first Broadway show helmed by a Black director. The show was a critical and commercial success and spawned a film featuring many of the original Broadway cast, multiple television adaptations and numerous revivals.
Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse has been attempting to mount a production for the last few years. The challenges in casting a show requiring 10 of 11 roles to be performed by actors of color compounded by the pandemic led to several postponements. The curtain has finally gone up on the Playhouse’s Monroe Stage with a production scheduled to run through Mar. 26.
It was worth the wait.
KT Masala, Terrance SmithThree generations of the Younger family occupy a cramped two-bedroom apartment in Chicago. Mama Lena (KT Masala) is awaiting an insurance settlement from the passing of her husband. Her adult son Walter Lee (Terrance Smith) is tired of his life as a chauffeur and sees the money as an opportunity to move up and own a business. Her daughter Beneatha (Amara Lawson-Chavanu) dreams of medical school.
Mama Lena wants no part of Walter Lee’s business proposition and decides to use a portion of the settlement to put a down payment on a home, a decision supported by Walter Lee’s wife Ruth (Ash’Lee P. Lackey). Eschewing the cheaper-built but more expensive homes available in black neighborhoods, Lena chooses a home in a white development. This prompts a visit from Karl Lindner (Jeff Coté) of the Clybourne Park Improvement Association. It seems the neighbors want to buy Mama out, which may become necessary due to some poor choices on Walter Lee’s part.
First time director Leontyne Mbele-Mbong makes an impressive directorial debut here. The wide casting net thrown throughout Northern California landed an impressive troupe led with a blistering performance by Smith and a moving one by Lackey. Masala was clearly struggling with some lines but delivered in her most powerful scenes. Lawson-Chavanu’s character may be the most dynamic, as the agent through which Hansberry raises the issue of assimilation courtesy of two distinct suitors (Rodney Fierce and Mark Anthony).
The genius of A Raisin in the Sun is that Hansberry has the audience identify with the universal challenges faced by the Younger family and then exposes them to the additional weight imposed by systemic and “casual” racism. It’s both a heart-wrenching family drama and a social commentary.
It’s a terrific production of a great American play.
‘A Raisin in the Sun’ runs through Mar. 26 on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 W. Sixth Street, Santa Rosa. Thurs-Sat., 7:30pm; Sat-Sun, 2pm. $22–$43. 707.523.4185. 6thstreeetplayhouse.com
Photos by Eric Chazankin
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guest on the second of two Theatre Thursday segments on the March 2 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke was Leontyne Mbele-Mbong, director of the 6th Street Playhouse production of “A Raisin in the Sun”.
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Our guests on the first of two Theatre Thursday segments on the March 2 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Leslie McCauley, Trevor Braskamp, and Nate Musser from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of Gloria.
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Ky Boyd hosted Greg Laemmle, head of the Laemmle theater chain in Los Angeles, on the Rialto Cinemas Big Friday Movie Segment on the The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO. Greg is the centerpiece of the new documentary Only in Theatres, which tells the story of the the 84-year old family-owned movie theater chain and the Laemmles’ attempts to keep their art house cinemas going in the age of streaming and a pandemic.
The film will screen at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol on Wednesday, March 1 at 7pm. Greg Laemmle and director Raphael Sbarge will be in attendance and holding a Q & A after the screening.
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My guest on the February 23 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke was Robert Zelenka, Artistic Director of the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center and director of their upcoming production of Swimming in the Shallows.
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Some Stephen Sondheim musicals are more recognizable and identifiable than others. Sweeney Todd? Murderous barber. Into the Woods? Fractured fairy tales. Assassins? Assassins. A Little Night Music? Ummm… clowns?
Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, now running at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park through Feb. 26, received a dozen Tony nominations in 1973 and won six including Best Musical. Most people know it for the Grammy-winning song “Send in the Clowns”. A melancholy rumination on a life filled with regret, it became a standard for Frank Sinatra and a hit for Judy Collins.
Based on the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, the show is basically a sex comedy. Everybody either is having or wants to have sex with someone else in the show.
It’s the summer of 1900 somewhere in Sweden, and middle-aged lawyer Fredrik Egerman (Larry Williams) has been waiting for eleven months to consummate the marriage between him and his eighteen-year-old bride Anne (Brenna Sammon). Fredrick’s son Henrik (Samuel J. Gleason) tries to balance his studies for the ministry with his carnal desires. He seeks to relieve some of the pressure with dalliances with a house servant (Kaela Mariano), but that pressure is compounded by his feelings for his young step-mother.
A night at the theatre brings stage star Desiree Armfeldt (Daniela Innocenti Beem) back into Fredrik’s life and into her bed, much to the consternation of Desiree’s current fling, the insanely jealous but also-married Count Carl-Magnus Malcom (Michael C. Murdock). Things come to a head when everyone ends up spending a weekend at the estate of Desiree’s mother Madame Armfeldt (Eileen Morris).
Members of the company of “A Little Night Music”Director Sheri Lee Miller has gathered a cast of North Bay veterans and up-and-coming young talent and produced a very sweet, amusing, and melodious show. The veterans are veterans for a reason. Highlights from them include a terrific comedic performance by Taylor Bartolucci as the weary but had-it-up-to-here-with-her-wandering-husband Countess Charlotte Malcom. Beem delivers a wonderfully understated and incredibly poignant rendition of the show’s best-known tune.
The younger folks acquit themselves quite nicely as well. Gleason and Sammons bring earnestness to their characters, and Molly Belle Hart is a delight as Desiree’s young daughter Fredrika.
Musical director Janis Dunson Wilson expertly guides a 12-piece orchestra through the often-challenging Sondheim score. A quintet (Brandy Noveh, Stacy Rutz, Ariana LaMark-Arbitter, Michael Arbitter, and Sean O’Brien) does a very nice job musically bridging the scene changes.
By show’s end, everybody ends up in the arms of the right person. It would be great if this show ends up being seen by sizeable audiences.
Send in the crowds.
‘A Little Night Music’ runs through Feb. 26 at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $12 – $36. 707.588.3400. spreckelsonline.com
Photos by Jeff Thomas
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
My guests on the second of two February 16 “Theatre Thursday” segments on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Keith Baker and Ivy Miller, the leadership team at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West, about the decision to close the theatre.
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My guest on the first of two February 16 “Theatre Thursday” segments on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO was Taylor Diffenderfer. Taylor is currently appearing on stage in Sebastopol in Open, which turns out to be Main Stage West’s final production .
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Legendary music and film producer Lou Adler joined Ky Boyd on the Rialto Cinemas Big Friday Movie Segment on the February 10 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke. Lou joined them for a discussion about the release of the concert documentary Carole King Home Again: Live in Central Park
The new film presents musical icon Carole King’s triumphant May 26, 1973 homecoming concert on The Great Lawn of New York City’s Central Park before an estimated audience of 100,000. Directed by George Scott and produced by Lou Adler and John McDermott, the film presents the complete multi-camera 16mm footage filmed and recorded by Adler in 1973 but never before released.
Alongside the complete performance footage is the behind the scenes story of King’s remarkable transformation from an in demand, staff songwriter beloved for such timeless Goffin and King classics as “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” to an iconic artist in her own right. The May 1973 performance captured King at her critical and commercial peak, basking in the enormous popularity of her definitive album Tapestry and previewing her follow-up album Fantasy.
The film is currently screening at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol.
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My guests on the February 9 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Dani Beem and Larry Williams from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of A Little Night Music.
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Sonoma Arts Live brings a little retro-television to the Rotary Stage in Sonoma with Sidekicked, a one-woman show about actress Vivian Vance. Vance is best known as America’s favorite TV neighbor Ethel Mertz, a character she played for nine seasons alongside Lucille Ball. The Michael Ross-directed show runs in Sonoma through Feb. 19.
It’s 1960 and the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (the successor series to the original I Love Lucy) is about to be filmed. Tensions are high at the studio. Lucy and Desi are only speaking to each other through intermediaries (Ball filed for divorce from Arnaz the next day) and Vivian Vance (Libby Oberlin) is dealing with the realization that her love/hate relationship with the character of Ethel Mertz might still get the best of her. She’s asked her analyst to stop by her dressing room for some support to get her through the day’s shoot, and she has a lot to say.
Libby OberlinThat’s the somewhat-hackneyed premise that playwright Kim Powers uses to spin his fan-inspired autobiographical tale of the life and times of Vance. From her upbringing in a strictly religious family with a dismissive mother that looked down on her life and career choices, through a series of failed marriages and a particularly abusive husband, we get to know lesser-known aspects of Vance’s life including her battle with mental illness and her willingness to speak publicly about it.
We also get the better-known details of her time on I Love Lucy – Lucy’s desire to “frump her up” and the mutual hatred shared between her and co-star William Frawley. There’s also plenty of “Do you remember the episode when…?” points of reference for the audience to wax nostalgic, a markedly lazy bit of scriptwriting.
Oberlin does her best with the paint-by-numbers script, particularly when she’s mimicking the other cast members of the show. While she possesses little physical or vocal resemblance to Vance herself, Oberlin does fully commit to the character and by the end of the show’s 95 minutes (including intermission) one should gain an appreciation for Vance beyond her work as Ethel Mertz, at least pre-1960. While her career reached its apex with I Love Lucy, Vance apparently found personal happiness later in life.
Sidekicked contains little for folks unfamiliar with the work of Vivian Vance. Fortunately, that only leaves a potential audience in the millions.
‘Sidekicked’ runs through February 19 on the Rotary Stage at Andrews Hall in the Sonoma Community Center, 276 E. Napa St., Sonoma. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm, $25–$42. 707.484.4874 sonomaartslive.org.
Photos by Miller Oberlin
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
My guests on the second February 2 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Danielle Cain and John Craven from the Left Edge Theatre production of The Children.
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My guests on the February 2 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Michael Ross and Libby Oberlin from the Sonoma Arts Live production of Sidekicked.
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Actor Cameron Britton joined Ky Boyd on the Rialto Cinemas Big Friday Movie Segment on the The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO. Cameron is a native of Sonoma County and was an active member of Sebastopol’s Analy High School theatre program before graduating in 2004. He’s built a substantial film and television career culminating in a 2018 Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his work on the Netflix series Mindhunter.
Cameron is currently appearing on the big screen in A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks.
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My guest on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the January 26 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO was James Newman, the Artistic Director for the last 16 years of the Santa Rosa Junior College’s nationally-known Summer Repertory Theatre program, to discuss the recent announcement of the program’s cancellation.
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My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the January 26 broadcast of the The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Gillian Eichenberger and Noah Sternhill from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Little Shop of Horrors.
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Mounting a production of a little-known play in these pandemic and inflationary-influenced times is something of a risk for most theater companies. Audiences have yet to return in full-force to live theatre, so a significant leap of faith is required to produce material that has little to no track record.
Healdsburg’s Raven Players and the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center have joined together to take that leap with a co-production of Gabriel and John Fraire’s Cesar Died Today. The show recently ran for four performances at the Raven Performing Arts Theater and now moves on to the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center for performances on Jan. 28 and 29.
The play isn’t completely unfamiliar to local audiences as it had a staged reading one year ago as part of the Raven’s ScripTease program. Originally produced in 1996 by the New Latino Visions Company at New York’s Brooklyn College, Oz Montelongo Medina directs the Raven/CPAC West Coast premiere.
Labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez has passed away on the day Mother Guerrero (Rosa Reynoza) has asked her family to gather for a special announcement. Daughter Gracie (Sky Hernandez-Simard) was once a part of the Chavez movement but marriage and a career in nursing now occupy her time. Son Robert (Ignacio Ayala Aguilar) sees assimilation as the way to success at a financial services firm but that success is being threatened. Youngest son Cesar (Evan Espinoza) finds his indecisiveness in everything (including on how to pronounce his name) has put his college scholarships in jeopardy.
Evan Espinoza, Ignacio Ayala Aguilar, Paloma Victoria, Rodriguez, Irizarry, Sky Hernandez-SimardMother’s announcement that they are to be featured as “Hispanic Family of the Year” in a national magazine sets off a series of family arguments and debates (including whether they’re Hispanic at all) and none of them wish to participate with the article. What’s a mother to do? Rely on her faith and an impish spirit (Paloma Victoria Rodriguez Irizarry) to set things straight.
Playwrights Gabriel and John Fraire try to cover a lot of material in their 80-minute family dramedy. The script affirms its college origins with a heavy reliance on expositional material that comes off as more of a lecture than a theatrical piece but there’s also some good-natured humor and laugh out loud moments. The play’s best moments are when the family is allowed to be a family, with Reynoza’s Mother the warm center of a lovingly bickering unit.
It’s also nice to see more progress in increasing the diversity of voices on local stages.
‘Cesar Died Today’ runs through Jan. 29 at the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center, 209 N. Cloverdale Blvd., Cloverdale. Saturday, 7:30pm; Sunday, 2pm. $25. 707.894.2219. Masking is strongly encouraged. cloverdaleperformingarts.com
Photos by Ray Mabry
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Healdsburg Tribune.
My guests on a special January 18 “Theatre Wednesday” segment on the The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were playwright Gabriel Fraire and cast member Sky Hernandez from the Raven Players/Cloverdale Performing Arts Center co-production of Cesar Died Today.
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North Bay theatre in the New Year kicks off with Cinnabar Theater’s production of the two-hander Daddy Long Legs. Former Cinnabar Artistic Director Elly Lichenstein returns to direct John Caird and Paul Gordon’s musical adaptation of the popular novel by Jean Webster that was first published in 1912. The production runs in Petaluma through Jan. 22.
The epistolary format of the novel remains as the story of orphan Jerusha Abbott (Brittany Law Hasbany) and her unseen benefactor Jervis Pendleton (Zachary Hasbany) unfolds through a series of letters set to music.
Jerusha is surprised to learn that a trustee of the orphanage will provide for her college education under certain conditions. The trustee will remain anonymous, and Jerusha must write “Mr. Smith” regularly with the understanding that he will never respond. Jerusha imagines him to be a trustee whose shadow she caught a glimpse of one evening. His legs were long and spindly and she imagines him to be quite old. Consequently, she chooses to address him as “Daddy Long Legs.”
Old Mr. Smith is actually young Jervis Pendleton, a philanthropist who is at first amused but soon enchanted by Jerusha’s musings on college life and personal growth. He ends up violating his own conditions by responding to Jerusha, albeit as a fictional member of his staff. Jervis takes advantage of an opportunity for them to meet while maintaining his anonymity and their relationship deepens.
What will it take for Jervis to admit who he is and how will Jerusha react?
Brittany Law Hasbany and Zachary HasbanyTwenty-first-century eyes may see this story a bit differently than a set of early twentieth-century peepers might have at the time. Jervis’s “courting” of Jerusha then might be considered “catfishing” today, and issues of status, power, and control lurk in the background. The “daddy” thing can be a bit creepy, but having a real-life married couple in the leads provides some relief as their genuine affection for each other and chemistry helped take the edge off.
Both are talented performers who deliver songs like “Who is This Man?”, “She Thinks I’m Old,” and “The Secret of Happiness” with humor and heart. Excellent accompaniment was provided by a three-piece orchestra consisting of Brett Strader (piano/conductor), Isaac Carter (guitar) and Gwyneth Davis (cello).
One’s enjoyment of the show might be affected by one’s appreciation for it as a period piece. It runs a bit long, as the script and songs are occasionally repetitive, but charm does win out in the end.
‘Daddy Long Legs’ runs through Jan. 22 at Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Fri–Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $25–$45. Masking is encouraged. 707.763.8920. cinnabartheater.org
Photos by Victoria Von Thal
This review appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
My guests on the January 12 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Katie Foster and Emma LeFever from the 6th Street Playhouse production of A Year with Frog and Toad.
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My guests on the January 5 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Brittany Law-Hasbany and Brett Strader from the Cinnabar Theater produtcion of Daddy Longlegs.
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Between health-related closures, dwindling audiences, casting challenges, and a couple of big changes in company leadership, there was almost as much drama off-stage as on in the North Bay theatre community in the past year.
There was an assumption by some that pandemic-weary audiences (and theatre companies) would seek relief in comedies and small-scale musicals and, to a certain extent, they did, but dramatic plays continued to be a welcome option for local audiences.
Here are my “Top Torn Tickets” for the best and/or most interesting dramas produced in the North Bay in 2022:
Clybourne Park – Raven Players – Bruce Norris’s Pulitzer Prize-winning continuation of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” got a solid mounting from this Healdsburg company.
A Doll’s House, Part 2 – Novato Theater Company – This production of Lucas Hnath’s sequel to Ibsen’s 138-year-old-drama packed a lot in its 85 intermission-less minutes.
The Glass Menagerie – Main Stage West – The now 75-year-old Tennessee Williams classic may be draped in the trappings of its time, but its look at the illusions we create to get through life and the pain and regret that comes with the shattering of those illusions still hit hard courtesy the work of four actors at the top of their game.
Master Class – Sonoma Arts Live – Libby Oberlin was first class as diva Maria Callas in this simply staged but very effective production.
Misery – Cinnabar Theater – You knew what you were getting when you took your seat at this stage adaptation based on the screenplay of the Stephen King novel. That it was still able to deliver a jolt or two despite the familiarity of the material is a credit to director Tim Kniffin and the cast.
One Flea Spare – Main Stage West – A show set during the Great Plague in a quarantined household might have been a little too on-the-nose for some, but its look at what sequestration can do to people (and what people can do to each other) was absolutely absorbing.
The River Bride – 6th Street Playhouse – Despite the occasional train whistle and ambient sounds of local automobile traffic, this production of an Amazonian-set fable managed to – through set, sound, and performance – transport you to a different world.
The Sound Inside – Marin Theatre Company – Theatre didn’t get any more unsettling than this look at the relationship between a college professor and a student. Challenging in both presentation and subject matter, it’s a rare play in which everything isn’t tied neatly up at the end.
Here’s hoping the shows go on in 2023.
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian, Pacific Sun, and the Healdsburg Tribune.
My guests on the December 29 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke were Cinnabar Theater’s Executive Director Diane Dragone and singer/musician Deb Del Mastro for a conversation about their Swingin’ New Year’s Eve Party and what’s coming up in the New Year for Cinnabar Theater.
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Live theatre continued its steady march to some semblance of normalcy in 2022, but health related-closures continue to take their toll on the North Bay theatre community. After a promising start to the year evidenced by an increase in the number and scale of productions presented by local companies, the end of the year brought another round of COVID and flu-related cancellations and closures.
But march on they did, and ‘tis time to recognize the best and/or most interesting stage work done over the past year. Here are my “Top Torn Tickets” for North Bay musicals and comedies produced in 2022:
Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Sonoma Arts Live – A talented cast brought energy, joy, and a refreshing blast of diversity to the valley with this tribute to the music of Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller.
Almost, Maine – Spreckels Theatre Company – A series of short two-handers on the subject of love that ran from the whimsical to the bittersweet, its simplicity made it the theatrical equivalent of comfort food.
Fun Home – Left Edge Theatre – Another welcome blast of diversity in both subject matter and casting.
The Government Inspector – Ross Valley Players – Nikolai Gogol’s takedown of the dishonesty, greed, and stupidity that runs rampant in government is fictional comedic gold. Fictional?
Hair – 6th Street Playhouse – Proving what shocked audiences in the 1960’s can still surprise staid Sonoma County audiences today, a beautifully diverse cast let it all hang out while letting the sunshine in.
Hank Williams: Lost Highway – 6th Street Playhouse – A standard jukebox musical elevated by superb live music with the added bonus of local blues legend Levi Lloyd making his theatrical debut.
The Music Man – Spreckels Theatre Company – The curtain finally went up on this oft-pandemic-delayed production which, while a bit too idyllic in its presentation of small-town America, was very entertaining.
Rent – Marin Musical Theatre Company & Novato Theater Company – What this show lacked in finesse was more than made up for by its cast’s energy, enthusiasm, and heart.
Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Lucky Penny Productions – A surprisingly robust production of this large-scale musical by this tiny Napa company.
Two Gentlemen of Verona – Curtain Theatre – Shakespeare can often be laborious. Shakespeare can also be hilarious. Thankfully, this outdoor production of the Bard’s first work was the latter.
Woody Guthrie’s American Song – Raven Players – Bringing a musical production to Healdsburg’s Downtown Plaza had to be quite a challenge. Challenge met.
Next up, a look back at the dramas that stood out on North Bay stages in 2022.
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian, Pacific Sun, and the Healdsburg Tribune.
North Bay audiences seeking a little lightweight, somewhat-holiday-themed entertainment would do well to head out to Sebastopol and check out Ham for the Holidays. Written by Santa Rosa High School dropout-turned-game-show-contestant-turned-college-professor Shad Willingham, it runs at Main Stage West through Dec. 30.
It’s Christmas Eve, 1939, and the tiny hamlet of Hamlin, GA is buried in snow from an unexpected southern blizzard. Local ham magnate and radio station WHAM owner Cab Hoxton (Dodds Delzell) is in a tizzy preparing for the arrival of the great Orson Welles, who for some unfathomable reason has agreed to do a live broadcast from the station.
Postman Sam Wainwright (Keene Hudson) delivers Welles’s script, but station flunky Timmy Wilkins (Zane Walters) manages to lose it. To add insult to injury, Welles is stuck in a snowbound train, so how in the world will the show go on?
John Craven, Zane Walters, Maureen O’NeillWell, blustery radio actor and playwright Dexter Armstrong (Garet Waterhouse) has an ‘original’ play (Attack of the Space Robots from Outer Space) that with just a little tweaking can be turned into a Christmas show. As far as an actor with the stature of Welles, local Shakespearean-trained ham Dick McCann (John Craven) would be a suitable replacement as long as he doesn’t have a narcoleptic episode in the middle of the broadcast.
Add an actress who insists on costume changes for radio (Maureen O’Neill), the station owner’s bungling daughter (Dale Leonheart), and a malfunctioning studio heater and it’s no surprise when everything, of course, goes wrong.
Yes, it’s The (Radio) Play That Goes Wrong which means lots of slapstick silliness. There’s no great message to be found here; in fact, no message at all. The only thing being delivered are good-natured laughs via director Emily Cornelius’s hard-working cast.
They deliver those laughs on a well-detailed but somewhat anachronistically-appointed set by David Lear and in nice period costuming by Tracy Hinman. Keith Baker’s sound design also gives a big assist.
Ham for the Holidays is the type of show you don’t want to overthink. It’s very reminiscent of an extended sketch from one of television’s great variety shows of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. It exists solely to elicit laughs and perhaps fond memories for some of days of yore. It’s theatre for the MeTV crowd.
‘Ham for the Holidays’ runs through Dec. 30 at Main Stage West, 104 N. Main St., Sebastopol. Thu-Sat at 8:00pm; Sun, 5pm. $20-$32. Masking required. 707.823.0177. mainstagewest.com
Photos by Lauren Heney
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
North Bay theatre companies continue to take illness-related hits with announced cancellations at three different companies.
Sebastopol’s Main Stage West lost this weekend’s performances of Ham for the Holidays to an undisclosed illness. The company hopes to reopen the show on Thursday, December 22 and close with a final performance on Friday, December 30.
Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Theatre Company cancelled the three closing-weekend performances of the rarely performed musical Man with a Load of Mischief. Social media posts indicate it is a flu-related closure.
The Mountain Play/Ross Valley Players production of the musical Gypsy, A Musical Fable lost its final two perfomances to COVID cases in their production group.
All three companies noted that the cancellations were done with the health and safety of their artists, staffs, and patrons in mind.
My guest on the December 15 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke was Keith Baker, Producing Artistic Director of Sebastopol’s Main Stage West for a conversation about their production of Ham for the Holidays and running a theatre company in the age of COVID.
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Documentary filmmaker Marc Shaffer joined Steve Jaxon, Harry Duke, and Isi Vega on the Rialto Cinemas Big Friday Movie Segment on the December 9 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO for a discussion about his film Exposing Muybridge, screening soon at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol.
Ambition, betrayal, murder, deception… and the birth of moving pictures! Exposing Muybridge is the first feature documentary to bring the fantastical story of trailblazing 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge to life.
There will be a Q & A with the director following the 1 pm and 7 pm showings on Thursday, December 15.
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My guests on the December 8 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were director Sheri Lee Miller and cast member Michael Murdock from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of Man with a Load of Mischief.
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My guests on the second of two ‘Theatre Thursday” segments on the December 1 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Jeff Coté and Erin Solorio from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Scrooge in Love. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
My guests on the first of two ‘Theatre Thursday” segments on the December 1 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Michael Ross and Karen Pinomaki from the Sonoma Arts Live production of Always… Patsy Cline. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
About once a year now, The Mountain Play comes down from atop Mt. Tam’s 3,750-seat Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre and joins forces with the Ross Valley Players to present a classic Broadway musical in the 99-seat Barn Theater at the Marin Art and Garden Center. This year it’s Gypsy, A Musical Fable, the Arthur Laurents/Jule Styne/Stephen…
My guest on a special “Theatre Wednesday” segment on the November 23 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO was Dyan McBride from the Mountain Play/Ross Valley Players production of Gypsy. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
Folks who like their fairy-tale endings in the “and they lived happily ever after” vein may find themselves challenged by Marisela Treviño Orta’s The River Bride. Part Brazilian folklore and part Brothers Grimm at their grimmest, it’s the tale of two sisters and the men in their lives. Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse has a…
The Marin Theatre Company (MTC) Board of Directors and Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer Meredith Suttles announced today that Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis will depart the North Bay theatre company after 17 seasons at the helm. “I am honored to have served as the artistic leader of this organization for 17 incredible seasons,” said Minadakis. “It has been…
Our guest on the second of two Theatre Thursday segments on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO was David Templeton for a discussion of two upcoming performances of his one-man Christmas show Polar Bears as well as the return of his Twisted Christmas show as a benefit performance for comedian Will…
My guests on the first of two Theatre Thursday segments on the November 17 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Reed Martin and Samuel J. Gleason from the SRJC Theatre Arts production of The SpongeBob Musical. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more information:
Play titles don’t get more succinct than The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong. You get both an approximate run time and a plot synopsis in six simple words. It’s an abridged version of The Play That Goes Wrong, which was itself expanded from its original one-act roots after becoming a hit in London where it…
My guests on the November 10 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke were Bethany Regan and Terrance Smith from the 6th Street Playhouse production of The River Bride. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
The roots of racism run deep in the American housing market. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry addressed the issue in 1959 with A Raisin in the Sun, the first play written by an African-American woman performed on Broadway and the first to have an African-American director. Playwright Bruce Norris took Hansberry’s story and in 2010 wrote a…
Within the last year we’ve lost Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim and each passing brought to mind their most successful collaboration – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The original Broadway production nabbed eight of the nine Tonys for which it was nominated and has become a Halloween-season staple of community theatres. After…
Adaptations of the works of Stephen King for film and television have been hit or miss over the years. For every The Shining or ‘Salem’s Lot, there’s a Firestarter or The Langoliers. Mainstream theatrical adaptations have been limited to a 2018 musical version of Carrie (a major Broadway flop but cult hit) and Misery, which…
Filmmaker Kathlyn Horan joined The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO for a discussion about her film The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile. Trailblazing, hell-raising country music legend Tanya Tucker defied the standards of how a woman in country music was supposed to behave. Decades after Tanya slipped from the…
My guest on the October 20 “Theatre Thursday” segment of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO was Tim Kniffin, director of the Cinnabar Theater production of Stephen King’s Misery. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
Steve’s guest on the October 13 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO was playwright David Templeton for a discussion about his “warm up” fundraising performances of Polar Bears. David is taking his autobiographical show to the United Solo Theatre Festival in NYC in late October. Click below…
American musical theatre doesn’t get any more old-fashioned than it does with The Music Man. Broadway is currently hosting a revival of Meredith Willson’s melodic tale of con man Harold Hill and Marian the Librarian but North Bay audiences looking to travel back to turn-of-the-century River City, Iowa need only head to Rohnert Park. The…
My guests on the September 22 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Elizabeth Dale and Miriam Valencia from the SRJC Theatre Arts production of Stand and Deliver. Miriam’s dad Carlos joined in the conversation to tell of his experience meeting Jaime Escalante. Click below to listen:…
If you’ve ever glanced at a flyer hanging from a community center bulletin board that offers an acting course and worried about the time commitment required, playwright Annie Baker’s got you covered. In Circle Mirror Transformation, now running at the Novato Theater Company through September 25, Baker covers in two hours what most courses do…
Sonoma County theatre is taking a beating at the hands of the continuing COVID pandemic. The Cloverdale Performing Arts Center/Raven Players presentation of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) was cancelled before it opened and the Left Edge Theatre run of Fun Home was cut short. Both had cast members come down with COVID.…
We did a special “Theatre Thursday”segment on the Friday, September 15 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO with Michael Ross, director of the Spreckels Theatre Company production of The Music Man. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more information:
My guests on the September 15 “Theatre Thursday” segment of The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Erin Solorio and Michael Strelo-Smith for a conversation about the 6th Street Playhouse production of Cabaret. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
My guests on the September 1 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon & Harry Duke on KSRO were Aja Gianola-Norris and Selena Elize from the upcoming Sonoma Arts Live production of Ain’t Misbehavin’. Contrary to what I say at the opening of the interview, the show opens on September 9. Click below…
Marin County’s venerable Curtain Theatre returns to the Old Mill Park Amphitheatre in Mill Valley for their more-or-less annual offering of Shakespeare al fresco. This year it’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, what many consider the Bard’s first (but still lesser-known) play. If you find Shakespeare difficult to follow, fear not! The plot is fairly simple…
My guests on the August 25 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Left Edge Theatre’s Argo Thompson and Emily Jansen-Adan from their season-opening production of Fun Home, which will also be the inaugural production at The California, downtown Santa Rosa’s newest entertainment venue. Click below to listen: **** Click…
Jane Austen’s Bennet sisters have enjoyed something of a theatrical renaissance in the last few years courtesy of Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s Christmas in Pemberley triptych. For those unfamiliar with those works, they took the characters and plot line from Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and continued the story by moving the focus off of…
Fall is usually marked by the local theatre community with a series of ambitious announcements heralding the shows each company plans to produce for their new season. COVID continues to be a factor as companies optimistically make plans while struggling to fill casts and schedule rehearsals. Some companies have reacted to the continued uncertainty surrounding…
Documentary filmmaker Lori Miller joined Steve Jaxon, Harry Duke, and Ky Boyd on the Rialto Cinemas Big Friday Movie Segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO for a discussion about her film Living Wine, now showing at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol. The film follows the journeys of natural winemakers in Northern California…
A fun interview on today’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO with Blake McIver and Emerson Collins about their show I Dreamed a Dreamgirl, running this weekend at Sonoma Arts Live. Click below to listen: Click the graphic below for more information:
For many people, when they drive past a homeless encampment or encounter a hungry person asking for spare cash, they quickly choose from a very short list of actions: looking the other way, offering help, writing letters to public officials or making a mental note to “do something” in the future. When Petaluma writer Nathaniel…
Local filmmaker C.M. Conway and star Cassie returned to The Drive to tell us about the reception her film received at the recent Summerfield Cinemas public premiere and about its upcoming screening at the Occidental Center for the Arts. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more information:
Documentary filmmaker Katherine Parsons joined Steve Jaxon, Harry Duke, and Ky Boyd on the Rialto Cinemas Big Friday Movie Segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO for a discussion about her film The Fire Cats: Save Something Small, having its West Coast premiere on Sunday, August 14 at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol.…
My guest on the second “Theatre Thursday” segment on the August 11 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Craig Miller. He’s back in the North Bay performing Every Brilliant Thing at the Lucky Penny Community Arts Center in Napa and at 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa. Click below to listen:…
My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on the August 11 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Sheri Lee Miller, director, and Deborah Yarchun, playwright, for a discussion about the Spreckels Theatre Company’s season-opening world premiere production of Atlas, the Lonely Gibbon. Click below to listen: **** Click…
My guests on a special “Theatre Wednesday” on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Laura Downing-Lee, Matt Cadigan, and Miranda Jane Williams from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Pride & Prejudice. Click below to listen: **** Click graphic below for more info:
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced the theatre community to be even more creative than usual to survive, a struggle for many companies even in the best of times. As theatres dealt with dwindling audiences, theatre artists dealt with dwindling opportunities as theatres postponed or cancelled performances or worse, shut their doors completely. Streaming theatre was…
My guests on a second August 4 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Education Director Aja Gianola-Norris, Co-Assistant Director and Choeographer Peri Zoe Yildirim-Stanley, and lead performer Katie Winkelman from 6th Street Playhouse’s Young Adult production of Legally Blonde Jr. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below…
My guests on one of two August 4 “Theatre Thurday” segments on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Evangeline Edwards and Jill Price from Summer Repertory Theatre’s season-ending production of Silent Sky. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
Bay Area filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine joined us on the Monday, August 1 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO for a discussion about their documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song. The film is currently screening at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol. Click HERE to visit the Rialto Cinemas…
My guests on the July 28 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Craig Peoples and Dan Stryker from the Raven Players production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
After successfully bring live theatre to Healdsburg’s Downtown Plaza recently with a successful run of Woody Guthrie’s American Song, the Raven Players return to the West Plaza Park with some ol’, reliable Shakespeare al fresco. They’ve been producing Shakespeare (or Shakespeare-ish) plays there for a few years now and have a production of Twelfth Night…
“I hate theatre.” No, that’s not the long-suspected confession of a theatre critic. It’s the opening line from Sonoma Arts Live’s production of The Drowsy Chaperone. The show runs through July 31. That line, followed by a litany of complaints about modern theatre (shows are too long, actors shouldn’t interact with the audience, Elton John,…
My guest on the July 21 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Craig Miller, former 6th Street Playhouse Artistic Director and current Assistant Professor of Acting and Directing at the University of Idaho about his upcoming benefit performances at 6th Street of the one-person show Every Brilliant Thing. Click…
An interview with filmmaker C.M. Conway about her film “How to Successfully Fail in Hollywood” which will have its premiere screening in Santa Rosa on Saturday, July 16 at the Summerfield Cinemas in Santa Rosa. Click below to listen: Click the graphic below from more info:
My guest on the July 14 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Maeve Smith from the Sonoma Arts Live production of The Drowsy Chaperone. Click below to listen: Click the graphic below for more info:
My guests on the July 7 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Robert Bauer and Adam Paulson from the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center to talk about their upcoming production of Butterflies are Free. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
My guests on the June 30 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Tika Moon and Matthew Witthaus from the Raven Players production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more information:
The Raven Players bring live outdoor entertainment to Healdsburg’s Downtown Plaza with their production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song: A Truly American Musical. Peter Glazer’s adaptation of the writings and songs of “America’s premiere folk poet” runs weekends July 1 through July 10. The show, which premiered in 1988, has Northern California roots as playwright…
My guest on the June 23 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was James Newman, Artistic Director of the Summer Repertory Theatre Festival. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
It’s been over 40 years since Dolly Parton made her film debut in 9 to 5 and the title tune topped the charts. The film and song (which garnered Parton an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song) became markers in the struggle for parity in the workplace for women. Thank goodness it was achieved…
My guest on a special June 17 “Theatre Friday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Argo Thompson for a discussion about The California, a new downtown entertainment venue and the future home of Left Edge Theatre that’s scheduled to open in September of this year. Click below to listen: **** Click…
My guest on the June 16 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Anne Clark from the 6th Street Playhouse production of 9 to 5, the Musical. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
Audiences who don’t mind leaving a theatre a bit unsettled would do well to check out the West Coast premiere of Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside at Mill Valley’s Marin Theatre Company.The Jasson Minadakis-directed show runs through June 19. The lights come up on a solitary female figure. “A middle-aged professor of undergraduate Creative Writing…
Feline conspiracy theorists who believe that cats are plotting to take over the world might count playwright Jen Silverman as an ally to their cause with Wink, Silverman’s absurd look at the nature of human transformation… and a vengeful cat. Sebastopol’s Main Stage West has a production running through June 25. Sophie (Ilana Niernberger)…
My guest on a special “Theatre Wednesday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was actor Zane Walters, currently appearing in the Sonoma Arts Live production of The 39 Steps. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
My guests on the June 9 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were director Elly Lichenstein and actor Gene Wright from the Cinnabar Theater production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
The Mountain Play returns to the Cushing Memorial Amphitheater atop Mount Tamalpais with a boisterous production of the Jerry Herman classic Hello, Dolly! Directed by Jay Manley, the quintessential American musical runs Sundays (and one Saturday) though June 19. Matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi (Dyan McBride) has been hired by well-known Yonkers, New York half-a-millionaire and…
Recent news about the relocation of Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre from the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts to something called “The California” led many people to ask “What is ‘The California’?” Well, The California is a new arts and entertainment venue that is scheduled to open its doors at 528 7th Street in…
My guests on the June 1 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were director James Pelican and actor John Browning from the Main Stage West production of Wink. Ckick below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more information:
Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre, a resident theatre company of the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts since its opening in 2015, has announced a relocation scheduled for September of this year. Left Edge and its associated Young Actors Studio will become resident theatre companies at The California, a new 199-seat cabaret-style theater scheduled to…
My guests on the May 26, 2022 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Paige Picard and Abbey Lee from the upcoming Left Edge Theatre production of Clare Barron’s Dance Nation. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more information :
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House premiered in 1879 to great controversy. His look at the limitations and restrictions placed on women in a patriarchal society was considered quite scandalous at the time. Many consider it to be the beginning of modern feminist literature, though Ibsen himself denied that. Suffice it to say that…
My guest on the May 19 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Bethany Regan, who plays Rosali in the 6th Street Playhouse production of Real Women Have Curves, now running through June 5. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more information:
William Shakespeare, who wrote a couple of plays, never had one actually published in his lifetime. They existed, often in pieces, in hand-scrawled scripts and in the memories of the actors who performed them. If not for Shakespeare’s friends and colleagues’ efforts to preserve his work for posterity, high school drama students would have a…
Mill Valley’s Throckmorton Theatre is alive with The Sound of Music. Their production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic runs through May 29. The show stars Katrina Lauren McGraw – a recent recipient of a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Principal Performance in a Musical – in the role of Maria Rainer, a…
My guests on the May 12 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Steven David Martin and Katie Watts-Whitaker from the Raven Players for a discussion of their participation in the Worldwide Readings for Ukraine Project and their upcoming production of The Book of Will. Click below to listen: ****…
After a two-year pandemic-induced delay, Matilda the Musical finally hits the expansive Codding Stage at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park. The musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s tale of a gifted little girl navigating a treacherous world runs through May 22. Matilda Wormwood (played by Gigi Bruce Low, alternating with Anja Kao Nielsen)…
The good ol’ USA has never had a lock on corrupt, windbag politicians as evidenced by Russian dramatist Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector. Originally published in 1836, Gogol’s takedown of the dishonesty, greed, and stupidity that runs rampant in government is considered by many to be one of the world’s greatest comedies. Director Lisa Morse…
My guests on the May 5 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Sheri Lee Miller, Madison Scarbrough, Gigi Bruce Low, and Anja Kao Nielsen from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of Matilda, the Musical. Click below to listen: *** Click the graphic below for more info:
The Borscht Belt comes to wine country with the Sonoma Arts Live presentation of Saturday Night at Grossinger’s. The musical with book and lyrics by Stephen Cole and music by Claibe Richardson runs in Sonoma through May 8. It’s co-directed by Larry Williams and SAL Artistic Director Jaime Weiser Love. The Borscht Belt is an…
To some in the theatre world, the sourcing of an Adam Sandler movie as the basis for a musical was the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Needless to say, American musical theatre did not come to an end with the arrival of The Wedding Singer on Broadway. The show managed to snag five Tony nominations,…
Steve Lasiter, Jennifer Barnaba, and Levi Lloyd stopped by The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO again to promote the last weekend of performances of Hank Williams: Lost Highway as well as a musical benefit for 6th Street Playhouse. They played some tunes, too! Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more…
My guests on the April 21 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Laura Downing-Lee, Max Bohlke-Slater, Ileene Christianson-Torres, and Reed Martin from the Santa Rosa Junior College production of The Wedding Singer. Click below to listen: **** Click the graphic below for more info:
Playwriting is often a form of artistic exorcism. Many a play have been written to bring a form of closure to unresolved conflicts, strained relationships, or traumatic experiences and to release the hold that personal demons have on their authors. For playwright Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), that demon happened to be his…
Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre has announced their 2022/2023 season and a change in company leadership and staffing. Argo Thompson, the company’s founding Artistic Director, is turning over the artistic reins to the team of David L. Yen and Sandra Ish. “Left Edge has a plan for growing the company”, said Thompson. “I have decided…
Welcome to Almost, Maine. You won’t find it on a map as its citizens were never organized enough to get it declared an official town. The almost-town has a mill, a bar, a snowmobiling club, and a couple of dozen residents whose main activity is falling in (or out) of love.
That’s the premise behind John Cariani’s Almost, Maine. It’s a series of short two-handers on the subject of love that run from the whimsical to the bittersweet. Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Performing Arts Center has a production directed by Anderson Templeton running now through April 10.
Each member of the ensemble cast of six (John Browning, Skylar Evans, Serena Elize Flores, Molly Larsen-Shine, Allie Nordby, Brandon Wilson) takes on multiple roles as we meet the various denizens of the frigid burg.
Brandon Wilson, John Browning Pete (Evans) and Ginnette (Nordby) attempt to redefine what closeness means to a relationship. Glory (Flores) is camped out on the property of East (Wilson) with the hopes of witnessing the northern lights and perhaps mending her broken heart, which she carries in a paper sack. Jimmy (Browning) is hanging out at the local tavern when he runs into an old flame (Nordby). Steve (Evans), who can feel no pain, is minding his own business when Marvalyn (Flores) whacks him in the head with an ironing board. Gayle (Larsen-Shine) has come to with a dozen mail sacks containing all the love Lendall (Browning) has given her. She’s returning it and wants all the love she’s given him returned as well. It’s not an equal trade. Randy (Browning) and Chad (Wilson) are surprised to find themselves literally falling for each other. Phil (Browning) and Marci (Flores) are skating on thin ice. Hope (Nordby) arrives at the house of an old beau seeking to rekindle the relationship but finds a stranger (Evans) living there now. Dave (Wilson) has gifted Rhonda (Larsen-Shine) with a piece of artwork with a hidden meaning. Will she see it?
Cariani doesn’t avoid the painful part of love but doesn’t lean heavily into it. The play’s best gag comes at the conclusion of the darkest vignette.
Templeton’s cast have good chemistry and are given ample opportunities to display their versatility. Wilson in particular demonstrates why he is one of the area’s best comedic character actors.
Andrew Patton’s set design (a snow bank, a bench, two door frames) is beautiful in its simplicity. Chris Schloemp’s projections bring the Northern Lights to the North Bay. Costume Designer Donnie Frank may have cleared local thrift store racks of every stitch of Eddie Bauer/North Face/REI clothing to appropriately drape the cast.
Allie Nordby, Skylar Evans Originally produced in 2004, Almost, Maine had a very short Off-Broadway run before winding up as one of the most-produced plays in North American high schools. Some elements seem dated (there’s an awful lot of nonconsensual kissing going on), but overall it’s quaint, quirky, and generally harmless.
Almost, Maine is the theatrical equivalent of comfort food. Nothing fancy, but you’ll feel better after a good helping.
‘Almost, Maine’ runs through April 10 at Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. Thursday – Saturday, 7:30pm; Sunday, 2pm; $12 – $26. 707.588.3400. Proof of vaccination is not required to attend. Masking is optional. spreckelsonline.com
Photos by Jeff Thomas
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
My guests on the March 24 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Redwood Ice Theatre Company Executive Director Carmen Mitchell and local hockey players Blake Johnson and Angus Brodeur for a discussion of their participation in The Glitter Games.
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We hosted the Sonoma International Film Festival‘s Artistic Director Kevin W. McNeely and Program Director Steve Shor on the Monday, March 20 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO for a preview of this year’s upcoming festival.
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Every thirty years or so, musical theatre manages to produce something to which the younger members of a generation latch onto. From Hair in the 1960’s through Hamilton today, composers and lyricists’ use of the music of their time has been an effective way to entice younger audiences into theaters.
The 1990’s brought Jonathan Larson’s Rent, which transplanted Puccini’s opera La bohème from Paristo New York’s East Village Alphabet City and transformed its painters and poets to filmmakers and rock stars. The show went on to win four Tonys and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Its success was not witnessed by Larson, who passed away on the show’s Off-Broadway opening night. The Marin Musical Theatre Company and Novato Theater Company have a co-production running in Novato through April 10.
It’s the tale of an artistic community struggling to survive though the ‘80’s, the grunge movement, urban gentrification, the AIDS crisis, and the interpersonal conflicts that come with life. Roommates Roger (an intense Nelson Brown) and Mark (a genial Jake Gale) resolve not to pay any rent to their former friend and landlord Benny (Arup Chakrabarti), who plans to turn an adjoining lot into a “cyber arts studio” and evict the artists and squatters living there.
From top: Jake Gale, Gary Stanford, Jr., Shayla Lawler, Nelson Brown, Ensemble Mark, a wannabe filmmaker, serves as the narrator of the story. Through him we meet Roger, who’s afraid of succumbing to AIDS before he writes one great song. Roger is pursued by Mimi (Trixie Aballa), who has addiction issues. Mark still pines after his ex Joanne (Anna Vorperian) who left him for Maureen (Shayla Lawler). There’s also Tom Collins (Gary Stanford, Jr.) and his crossdressing partner Angel (Stephen Kanaski). All of their stories are delivered through song via a pounding hard rock score, vigorously delivered by musical director Daniel Savio’s four-piece band
Director Jenny Boynton has a large, diverse cast at work and several really stood out. Lawler brings the right amount of New York attitude to Maureen. Angel is the heart and soul of the show, and Kanaski, in tandem with Stanford’s Collins, brought a true sense of love – and the heartbreak of loss – to their characters.
The vocals were sometimes iffy, as is often the case with scream singing, but the energy the cast brought to the stage was invigorating. The entire ensemble comes through with “Seasons of Love”.
The pandemic led to a dearth of large-scale musicals on local stages. Rent was overdue.
’Rent’ runs through April 10 at the Novato Theater Company, 5420 Nave Drive, Ste. C, Novato. Fri & Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $18–$30. 415.883.4498. Proof of vaccination is required to attend. Masking is optional. novatotheatercompany.org.
Photos by Katie Wickes
This review was originally published in an edited version in the Pacific Sun and North Bay Bohemian.
Joining me on the March 17 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Anderson Templeton and Molly Larsen-Shine from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of Almost, Maine.
We apologize for the incomplete audio.
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Santa Rosa’s Roustabout Theater is best known as one of the leading theatrical training and performance programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a focus on youth ages 11 to 20, their Apprentice Program and Summer Theater Camp productions lean toward lighter fare, like this summer’s scheduled production of The SpongeBob Musical.
Roustabout also has a Professional Ensemble component consisting of program staff, graduates and guest artists and once a year or so put up a more “mature” production. Previous works include Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and Noël Coward’s Hay Fever.
With their scheduled production of Mary Page Marlowe jettisoned by the pandemic, Roustabout returns with Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Apologia. The Clark Lewis-directed show runs in the Carsten Cabaret in the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts through March 27.
‘Apologia’ is defined as a formal, written defense of one’s opinions or conduct. It’s also the title that renowned art historian Kristin Miller (Kate Brickley) has chosen for her autobiography. She makes clear to the family and friends gathered to celebrate her birthday at her English countryside home that it’s not be confused with an apology.
Jared N. Wright, Jessie Raskin, Kate Brickley, Ellen Rawley, Bill Davis Her son Peter (Jared N. Wright) has come with his American girlfriend Trudi (Jessie Rankin) seeking just that or at least an explanation as to why her text is devoid of any mention of him or his brother Simon (Bohn Connor) and, more so, why she never fought for their return after being taken away by their father as children. The siblings’ erasure has sent Simon over the deep end, leaving his not-soap-opera (“It’s more of a serialized drama that follows the trajectories of various people’s lives.”) actress wife Claire (Ellen Rawley) to attend solo. They are soon joined by Kristin’s gay best friend Hugh (Bill Davis), whose purpose seems to be to utter Oscar Wilde-like bons mots. Simon eventually shows up, words are exchanged, and nothing is really resolved.
Campbell’s script delves into such well-worn issues as 60’s radicalism and idealism, religion, capitalism, patriarchies, and the sacrifices one makes in life, but there’s really nothing new here. It’s your typical dysfunctional family reunion. The moments of humor and emotional depth only highlight the shallowness of what surrounds them. Are we really still debating whether a woman can have both a career and a family? And where’s the search for accountability for the father’s actions?
The cast is good, and Connor in particular impresses in a confrontation scene, but some still need to shake off some understandable rust.
But don’t we all?
‘Apologia’ runs through March 27 in the Carsten Cabaret at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. 50 Mark West Springs Rd., Santa Rosa. Fri–Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $20–$26. 707.546.3600. Proof of vaccination or a negative commercial test within 48 hours of performance required. Masking required if unvaccinated. roustabout-theater.org
Photos by Tamara DeMello
This review was originally published in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
Sonoma Community Center’s Creative Programs Manager Eric Jackson joined Steve and Harry on The Drive with Steve Jaxon for a discussion about his path from Broadway to Sonoma, the Center’s many Arts Education programs including a new Live Exploratory Arts program (Music, Movement, & Theatre) and their upcoming 12th Annual “Trashion Fashion Show” (and related events.)
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My guests on the March 10 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Laura Downing-Lee, Theo Marvin, and Alex Delzell from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
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Napa’s Lucky Penny Community Arts Center has been transformed into a high school gymnasium dolled up for the prom for their presentation of Roger Bean’s The Marvelous Wonderettes. The nostalgic jukebox musical runs through Mar. 13.
It’s 1958 and Springfield High’s Songleader Squad has been asked to entertain at the Senior Prom. The four perky squad members (Vida Mae Fernandez, Jenny Veilleux, Andrea Dennison-Laufer, Kirsten Pieschke) have dubbed themselves “The Marvelous Wonderettes” and are prepared to sing a plethora of ‘50’s hits for their classmates’ entertainment.
They’ll also musically deal with young love (“Dream Lover”, “Stupid Cupid”), cheating boyfriends (“Lipstick on Your Collar”), and clandestine crushes (“Secret Love”), especially the ones that involve a member of the teaching staff (“Born Too Late”, “Teacher’s Pet”).
Jenny Veilleux, Vida Mae Fernandez, Andrea Dennison-Laufer, Kirsten Pieschke The Wonderettes return to the Springfield gymnasium in the second act to entertain at the class of ‘58’s ten-year reunion. They’re older, somewhat wiser, married and in one case, pregnant.
While it’s 1968, song-wise it’s the early sixties as the girls musically relate the changes in their lives. Missy (Veilleux) has been dating the teacher of her dreams (it’s ok, they waited till she was out of college) and has expectations of an engagement (“With This Ring”). Betty Jean (Dennison-Laufer) is having relationship problems (“It’s My Party”), Cindy Lou (Fernandez) snagged the “Son of a Preacher Man”, but ended up losing the “Leader of the Pack”, and all is not well with Suzy (Pieschke) and her high school sweetheart as she demands a little “Respect”.
Director/Choreographer Scottie Woodard, having recently performed in a similarly-constructed show about a male singing group (Plaid Tidings), no doubt brought that experience and an appreciation for the material to this production. He also brought one performer (Veilleux) over from Bean’s holiday extension of the show (Winter Wonderettes) that ran in rep with Tidings to reprise her character.
The ladies are in good voice and complement each other well. Music Director Ellen Patterson leads a jaunty three-piece band through the classic pop score. Barbara McFadden drapes the ladies in era-appropriate attire from colorful prom gowns to vinyl go-go boots. Brian Watson’s set manages to squeeze all the elements of a cavernous high school gymnasium into the small Lucky Penny space.
Yes, the story is slight, but that’s not the point. It’s all about the songs, and the overwhelmingly baby-boomerish audience bopped along with each tune. A good time was had by all.
‘The Marvelous Wonderettes’ runs through Mar. 13 at the Lucky Penny Community Arts Center. 1758 Industrial Way, Napa. Thurs, 7pm; Fri–Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. $25–$42. 707.266.6305. Proof of vaccination and masking are required to attend. luckypennynapa.com
Photos by Barry Martin
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
My guests on the March 3 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Clark Lewis and Kate Brickley from the Roustabout Theater Company’s Professional Ensemble production of Apologia.
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North Bay playwright David Templeton has been named as one of five finalists for the 2022 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) New Play Award and Citations. The award and citations recognize the playwrights of the best scripts that premiered professionally outside of New York City in 2021.
Templeton’s Galatea, which premiered at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park in September of 2021, is a rare theatrical foray into science fiction. It’s set aboard an earth-orbiting space station in the year 2167 where robot specialist Dr. Margaret Mailer is interviewing Seventy-One, a recently discovered “synthetic”. It is the last known survivor of the spaceship Galatea, a craft that mysteriously disappeared over one hundred years prior and whose wreckage had been discovered decades later.
Seventy-One’s memories of events are spotty at best. Whether those lapses of memory are genuine malfunctions or purposeful deceptions is what must be determined as answers are sought to the question “What happened to the Galatea?”
David Templeton The script, which ATCA judges called “inventive” and “suspenseful”, was originally scheduled to premiere in March of 2020 but fell victim to pandemic-necessitated closures. It was previously recognized with an Honorable Mention by the 2020 Theatre Bay Area Will Glickman Award committee. That Award is usually presented to the Bay Area’s best new produced play, but eligibility was expanded to include plays whose productions were suspended due to the pandemic.
In 1977, ATCA began to honor new plays produced at regional theaters outside New York City. No play is eligible if it has gone on to a New York production within the award year. Since 2000, the award has been generously funded by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.
The five finalists were selected from eligible scripts recommended by ATCA members from around the country and evaluated by a committee of theater journalists.
The top award of $25,000 and two citations of $7,500 each, plus commemorative plaques, will be presented on April 9 at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif. At $40,000, Steinberg/ATCA is the largest national new play award program of its kind.
The American Theatre Critics Association is the only national association of professional theater critics in the United States. Since the inception of its New Play Award, honorees have included Lanford Wilson, Marsha Norman, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Lynn Nottage, Adrienne Kennedy, Donald Margulies, Moises Kaufman, Craig Lucas, Nilo Cruz, Lauren Yee, Horton Foote and Qui Nguyen. Last year’s honoree was Her Honor, Jane Byrne by J. Nicole Brooks.
Click HERE for a complete list of this year’s finalists.
This article subsequently appeared in an edited version on the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun websites.
A “classic” is defined as something judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind. In theatre, it can be a mark of a quality script that is at the mercy of the artists producing it. I’ve seen plenty of non-classic productions of classic plays. The Glass Menagerie, running at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West through March 5, is not one of those.
The Tennessee Williams memory play about the Wingfield family was written over 75 years ago. While it may be draped in the trappings of its time, its look at the illusions we create to get through life and the pain and regret that comes with the shattering of those illusions still resonates today.
The type of run-down apartment where the fire escape is the means of entering and exiting is the home of faded Southern belle Amanda Wingfield (Sheri Lee Miller), her son Tom (Keith Baker) and her daughter Laura (Ivy Rose Miller). Tom spends his days toiling at a warehouse and his nights at the “movies” dreaming of getting out and living an adventurous life. Laura, a fragile girl, lives an isolated life spent playing records on the Victrola and maintaining her collection of glass figurines. Amanda is worried about Laura’s future, and harangues Tom about bringing “gentlemen callers” in from his work. Tom acquiesces and invites his co-worker Jim (Damion Lee Matthews) over for dinner. What seems like a promising possibility quickly fades into harsh reality.
Damion Lee Matthews, Ivy Rose Miller Williams’ characters are bucket-list roles for actors, and director Elizabeth Craven has four actors, including a newcomer to the area, at the top of their game. Mother and daughter are played by mother and daughter Sheri Lee and Ivy Rose Miller, which can’t help but add a deeper dimension to the characterizations. Baker channels Philip Seymour Hoffman in physical demeanor, vocal intonation, and stage presence while newcomer Matthews expertly threads the needle with Jim, a character that has illusions of his own.
I’m always impressed by the sets placed on the tiny Sebastopol stage and David Lear and director Craven’s design manages to make the space feel larger and yet claustrophobic at the same time. The period costume design (especially Amanda’s “gown”) by Adrianna Gutierrez provided strong support to the characters and the story.
A sense of regret runs thick through The Glass Menagerie. It is not a sense you will feel after attending this production.
‘The Glass Menagerie’ runs Thurs–Sat through March 5 at Main Stage West, 104 N. Main St., Sebastopol. Thurs–Sat at 8pm; $20–$32. Proof of vaccination with ID and masking required. 707.823.0177. mainstagewest.com
Photos by Lauren Heney
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
My guest on the February 24 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Jenny Hollingworth, director of one of the short plays in Left Edge Theatre’s Hindsight 2022 International Festival of Short Plays.
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The name Maria Callas means little these days to people unversed in the world of opera, but to those in the know the American-born Greek soprano will always be “La Divina”. Callas passed away in 1977 at the age of 53. Memories of her might have faded completely from the stage but for playwright Terrence McNally’s Master Class, currently running on the Rotary Stage at the Sonoma Community Center. The Carl Jordan-directed production runs through Feb. 27.
A master class is a class given to students of a particular discipline (like music) by an expert of that discipline. Callas taught a few of these at the Juilliard School in the early 1970’s, where playwright McNally was apparently in attendance. Twenty-five years later, McNally’s fictional take on that experience opened on Broadway and won the Tony for Best Play.
Libby Oberlin Andrews Hall is turned into a rehearsal hall/classroom and the audience into students as Callas (Libby Oberlin) prepares to take on three singers. The grand dame enters and assures the audience that the evening is about the students and not about her.
Riiiiiiiight.
The first student, Sophie (Emily Evans), is cut off after a single note. A young, doltish Southern California-educated Tenor (Robert Dornaus) puts Callas off with his desire to be rich and famous. Sharon (Morgan Harrington) exits after Callas insults her dress, but returns and ends up giving Maria as good as she gets.
Callas is blunt, caustic, withering, and unequivocal in her critiques of the students. They all have the ability and the talent, but what they all lack is the essence of truth required of great art. That truth is born of pain and sacrifice and Callas delivers several interior monologues that speak to the pain she’s suffered and the sacrifices she’s made for her art.
Oberlin is first class in Master Class. Oberlin’s background in teaching was a definite asset in interpreting the role, particularly in a moment of incredulity when she discovers a student has failed to bring a pencil to class, though I’m not sure Callas’ method of tearing-down-to-build stronger would fly in today’s world.
The students’ musical performances, when allowed to deliver them, were also first rate as was the accompaniment of John Partridge.
Audiences with an interest in any art form will appreciate the passion Callas had for her work and the overall excellence put into this simply-staged production.
‘Master Class’ runs through Feb. 27 at Andrews Hall in the Sonoma Community Center, 276 E. Napa St., Sonoma. Thurs–Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $25–$37. Proof of vaccination with ID and masking are required to attend. 866.710.8942. sonomaartslive.org.
Photos by Miller Oberlin
This review was originally published in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
My guests on the Thursday, February 17 Theatre Thursday segment on The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Lulu Thompsxn and Rae Veraflor from the Left Edge Theatre production of Either.
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There may be no more venerable fictional character than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. From his first appearance in 1887’s A Study in Scarlet through a series of Hollywood adaptations and innumerable British television series, the deerstalker cap-clad detective and his associate Dr. Watson have entertained audiences for well over a century.
The character entered the public domain decades ago and authors, screenwriters, and playwrights have had a field day since then coming up with new adventures for the intrepid duo. Recent iterations make significant changes to locale, time period, and even gender. Playwright Katie Forgette takes a more traditional approach with Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Jersey Lily, though she adds some historical characters and situations to the story. The Ross Valley Players have a production running through Feb. 20.
David L. Yen Holmes (David L. Yen) and Watson (Alex Ross) are bantering at 221-B Baker St when a mysterious lady arrives seeking Holmes’ help. It turns out to be well-known socialite and actress Lilli Langtry (Ellen Brooks) – the title’s ‘Jersey Lily’ – and her good friend Oscar Wilde (Izaak Heath). Wilde turns out to be a friend of Holmes who occasionally helps Wilde out with suggested titles for his plays. (He’s currently working on The Importance of Being Forthright.)
Letters have been purloined from Ms. Langtry detailing a clandestine relationship with the Prince of Wales. Coincidentally, Holmes has been tasked by Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s government to seek the return of some Crown Jewels the Prince gifted Langtry during the relationship. The game’s afoot as Holmes encounters various nefarious characters (Tamar Cohn, Joseph Alvarado) including his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty (Michel B. Harris) as he attempts to save a lady’s reputation and avoid a royal scandal.
Ellen Brooks Forgette has a lot going on in her script, the problem is most of it goes on off-stage making most of the dialogue expository. Act I consists of 30 minutes of talk at Holmes’ and then 30 minutes of talk at Langtry’s, while Act II consists of 30 minutes of talk at the villains’ lair, a sword fight, and then 30 minutes of talk/explanation back at Baker Street.
Director Phoebe Moyer’s cast of North Bay regulars is game and – while limited by the script – deliver solid character work. Yen is a good vessel for Holmes’ dry humor while Ross nicely avoids Nigel Bruce-like buffoonery as Watson. Brooks makes for an alternately charming and remorseful Langtry. Heath’s Oscar Wilde is quite amusing and has the best lines in the show, as is to be expected since Forgette has sprinkled her script liberally with Wilde’s own bon mots.
Production values are slight, leaving it to costume designer Michael Berg to give the show its sense of time and place.
Familiarity and affection for the characters goes a long way towards enjoying the show, but there’s very little mystery in the two-and-a-half-hours it takes for Holmes to solve the case. The real mystery here is how playwright Forgette could combine such great characters with an interesting premise and deliver such a flat script.
‘Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Jersey Lily’ runs through Feb. 20 at the Barn Theatre in the Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross. Thurs., 7:30 pm; Fri. & Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm. $15–$30. Masks, proof of COVID vaccination, and ID required.415.456.9555. rossvalleyplayers.com
My guests on the Wednesday, February 9 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Keith Baker and Elizabeth Craven from the upcoming Main Stage West production of The Glass Menagerie.
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Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions have annnounced their 2022-2023 season of plays and musicals. The company’s 14th season is expected to be their first full season since 2018-19 and will launch in September 2022 at the Lucky Penny Community Arts Center. The following productions are currently scheduled:
VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE
September 9-25, 2022
Middle-aged siblings Vanya and Sonia share a home in Bucks County, PA, where they bicker and complain about the circumstances of their lives. Suddenly, their movie-star sister, Masha, swoops in with her new boy toy, Spike. Old resentments flare up, eventually leading to threats to sell the house. Also on the scene are sassy maid Cassandra, who can predict the future, and a lovely young aspiring actress named Nina, whose prettiness somewhat worries the imperious Masha. The 2013 Tony Award for Best Play went to this black comedy by Christopher Durang.
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
October 21-November 6, 2022
Originally scheduled to open one week after the 2020 pandemic-initiated shutdown, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Tony Award-winning musical about an unjustly exiled and imprisoned barber who returns to 19th century London seeking vengeance against the lecherous judge who framed him and ravaged his young wife will finally take the stage in Napa.
A NAPA VALLEY CHRISTMAS CAROL
December 2-18, 2022
This modern adaptation of the Dickens classic – written by Lucky Penny co-founder Barry Martin with original music and lyrics by Rob Broadhurst – premiered during the 2021 holiday season and will return for another holiday run. Winery owner Alexander Yuge is a financial success but his heartless attitude earns him few friends. Even his loyal nephew Joe Patchett wonders what’s gone wrong. But a familiar yet mysterious group of Christmas Eve visitors help Yuge remember what really matters.
SAVING SANTA
December 3-18, 2022
What happens when Santa’s sleigh crash lands on Mt. St. Helena on Christmas Eve? Can a frantic elf get help from the people of Napa Valley to save Santa and save Christmas? Another original holiday creation with a local flair and featuring new original songs by Rob Broadhurst, this show for kids will run with different curtain times during the same weekends as A Napa Valley Christmas Carol.
DISNEY’S DESCENDANTS: THE MUSICAL A Young Actors Production
January 27-February 12, 2023
It is present-day, and in the kingdom of Auradon, all of Disney’s beloved heroes and royalty are living happily ever after, safe from the terrifying villains and troublesome sidekicks they have banished to the magic-free Isle of the Lost. That is until Ben, the benevolent teenage son of Belle and King Adam (The Beast), offers a chance of redemption for the troublemaking offspring of the evilest villains. The children of Maleficent, the Evil Queen, Cruella De Vil, and Jafar – are welcomed to Auradon Prep to attend school with the children of their parents’ sworn enemies. Will they follow in their parents’ wicked footsteps or learn to be good? Based on the popular Disney Channel Original Movies, it’s a brand-new musical comedy featuring the characters and songs from the films.
AND THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND
March 10-26, 2023
This musical showcases the songs of John Kander and Fred Ebb, Broadway legends who brought the world the music of Cabaret, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, and collaborated on classics including “New York, New York” and “My Coloring Book.”
SILENT SKY
April 21-May 7, 2023
When Henrietta Leavitt began work at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s, she wasn’t allowed to touch a telescope or express an original idea. Instead, she joined a group of female “computers,” charting the stars for a renowned astronomer who calculated projects in “girl hours” and had no time for the women’s probing theories. As Henrietta, in her free time, attempted to measure the light and distance of stars, she also took measure of her life on Earth, trying to balance her dedication to science with family obligations and the possibility of love. This true story of 19th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt was written by the Bay Area’s Lauren Gunderson. It explores a woman’s place in society during a time of immense scientific discoveries, when women’s ideas were dismissed until men claimed credit for them.
THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL 10TH Anniversary Revival
June 2-18, 2023
In 2012, Lucky Penny brought this musical to the Napa Valley Playhouse in Napa. This tenth anniversary revival will star much of the original cast. Break out your best Trailer Trash attire and get ready for the show the creators David Nehls and Betsy Kelso call “an all-American musical odyssey through agoraphobia, adultery, hysterical pregnancy, strippers, huffing, electric chairs, flan, roadkill, toll collecting, spray cheese, guns, and disco.”
Learn more about Lucky Penny at www.luckypennynapa.com.
The Marin Shakespeare Company announced today the appointment of Raphael Massie as the company’s new Artistic Director.
After 33 years at the company helm, co-founder Robert Currier will transition to Artistic Director Emeritus and continue to play a large part in the development of the Company’s indoor venue – The Center for Performing Arts, Education & Social Justice – that is currently under construction in downtown San Rafael. Leslie Currier will remain in the position of Managing Director.
Raphael Massie Mr. Massie comes to MSC with more than 20 years of acting, directing, education, and literary experience — most recently as an Artistic Associate at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In addition to extensive acting, directing, and dramaturgical work, Massie was an Actor, Resident Artist, and Director with the Elm Shakespeare Company and Collective Consciousness Theatre and held faculty positions at Southern Connecticut State University and the Regional Center for the Arts.
He has studied and worked at Shakespeare & Company and was awarded the Drama League of New York Classical Fellowship for Directors of Color in 2013. Massie earned his MFA in Theatre Practice: Staging Shakespeare from the University of Exeter in the UK and holds undergraduate degrees both in Theatre and Education.
Planning for the Marin Theatre Company’s 2022 summer season at Forest Meadows Amphitheatre is apparently underway and has yet to be announced.
For more information on the Company, go to marinshakespeare.org
My guest on the “Theatre Thursday” segment of the February 3 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Libby Oberlin, who plays the role of Maria Callas in the upcoming Sonoma Arts Live production of Master Class.
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My guests on the February 2 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were director Aja Gianola-Norris and performer Jamin Jollo from the upcoming 6th Street Playhouse production of Hair.
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- EDITOR’S NOTE – An incorrect website is given at the end of the segment. Go to www.6thstreetplayhouse.com for more information or ticketing.
My guests on the Tuesday, February 1 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Samantha Kimpel of Creative Sonoma and Nikko Kimzin of Kimzin Creative for a discussion about Sonoma County’s Arts and Cultural Equity Fellowship program.
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My “Theatre Thursday” guests on the January 27 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO were Steven David Martin, Artistic Director for Healdsburg’s Raven Players, and Gabriel Fraire, playwright, for a discussion about the Raven Players Scriptease program and the January 31, 2022 staged reading of John and Gabriel Fraire’s Cesar Died Today.
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Omicron and a Health Order put North Bay theatre on pause (again)
North Bay theatre came back with a vengeance in mid-2021 when restrictions were lifted and theaters could once more welcome audiences inside. Almost every theatre company in the region returned to live production with solo shows, comedies, and the occasional musical.
The New Year brought news of Omicron, a more contagious variant of the coronavirus, and an explosion of new cases. Some theatre companies found it difficult to proceed with rehearsals after positive COVID test results were reported by cast and crew members. Other companies found it challenging to open with the Sonoma County Health Officer’s order restricting large indoor gatherings.
Consequently, live theatre finds itself once more scrambling. These are the shows originally scheduled to open from mid-January through early February that have moved their opening dates and/or adjusted their runs:
Amy and the Orphans – Cinnabar Theater – Petaluma – The opening of this poignant comedy about siblings reuniting after the funeral of their father is delayed till Feb. 11.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abr.) – Raven Players – Healdsburg – The Raven’s remount of this irreverent, amusing summary of all Shakespeare’s works now runs Feb. 11 – 20.
Either – Left Edge Theatre – Santa Rosa – The U.S. premiere of Ruby Thomas’s new play about relationships is now scheduled for Feb. 11 – 20.
The Glass Menagerie – Main Stage West – Sebastopol – The Tennessee Williams classic will now run Feb. 11 – Feb. 25.
Hair – 6th Street Playhouse – Santa Rosa – The self-proclaimed American Tribal Love-Rock Musical has had its opening rescheduled for Feb. 12.
The Legend of Georgia McBride – 6th Street Playhouse – Santa Rosa – This homage to the drag queens who mentored the playwright through his own coming out is now scheduled for Feb. 17 – Mar. 20.
Master Class – Sonoma Arts Live – Sonoma – Diva Maria Callas will be left waiting till Feb. 11 – 27
The Music Man – Spreckels Theatre Company – Rohnert Park – The quintessential all-American musical has been postponed till the Fall of ’22.
Pass Over – Marin Theatre Company – opening moved to Feb. 2
Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Jersey Lily – Ross Valley Players – Ross – The case won’t be opened till Feb. 4.
The Who’s Tommy – Novato Theater Company – Novato – “We’re Not Gonna Take It” may be this show’s motto after experiencing its second postponement, having closed after a single preview performance in March ’20. The new opening date is TBD.
All these dates are (of course) subject to change. Check each company’s website for the latest information.
This article originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.
2021 was supposed to be the year that live theatre came roaring back, and it did… for a while. By the end of the year, that roar had been replaced by a hacking cough symptomatic of exposure to the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Theatres once again began to cancel or postpone performances as casts and crews (and audiences) found themselves laid up.
It’s too early to tell what impact the latest chapter in our pandemic saga will have on the overall health of the performing arts community, but recognition is due to the companies and artists who made the effort to engage with live audiences while they could.
Here are my “Top Torn Tickets” for 2021, a recognition of the best and/or most interesting stage work done over another truncated theatre season in the North Bay:
Patty from HR: A Zoom with a View – Main Stage West – Anyone who suffered through an insipid Zoom meeting in the last two years would appreciate what performer Michael Phillis did with his character of Patty, the technologically-incompetent leader of the worst Zoom meeting imaginable.
Galatea – Spreckels Theatre Company – Science fiction is rarely presented on the stage. One of the questions raised by this very interesting original work by David Templeton is “Why is that?”
Cry It Out – Cinnabar Theater – Playwright Molly Smith Metzler’s excellently performed bittersweet comedy about modern-day motherhood showed us that the pedestal upon which we place that position is often laid on a foundation of quicksand.
Disney’s The Little Mermaid – Lucky Penny Productions – Director Scottie Woodard brought some very clever solutions to the challenges inherent in presenting a large-scale musical in a small space in the time of COVID.
The God of Hell & The Beard of Avon – Cloverdale Performing Arts Center – Credit the folks in Cloverdale for presenting some very off-the-wall works and doing them well.
Vincent – 6th Street Playhouse – ‘Solo shows’ were proven to be an efficient and exposure-minimizing way to present live theatre. Actor Jean-Michel Richaud has been touring with this production for several years now but his presentation was fresh and riveting.
How to Transcend a Happy Marriage – Left Edge Theatre – This Sarah Ruhl-penned show had everything – laugh-out-loud comedy, drama, social commentary, deer hunting, an orgy. It just could have done without the egg-laying human/bird.
Georgiana & Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley – Marin Theatre Company – The book was closed on playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margot Malcon’s imaginative continuation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice with this third holiday-themed trip to Pemberley. Or was it?
May the curtain continue to rise for us all in 2022.
This article originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun.