by Cari Lynn Pace If you expect this rock music show to be loud and in-your-face, you are correct. What you may not expect is how Alanis Morissette’s emotional songs resonate in today’s angry world. Drug use? Sexual predators? Political privilege? Color bias? Lover infidelity? They’re all here, exploding from the intimate Novato Theater Company…
by Barry Willis In the early 1970s, in the wake of the phenomenal success of the groundbreaking musical “Hair” came a spate of hippie-era religious-themed productions—“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” and “Godspell” among them. This last-mentioned show is enjoying a revival with some contemporary updates at Lucky Penny Productions in Napa.…
My guest on the 03/19/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 was Michael Tabib, Artistic Director of Curtain Call Theatre of Monte Rio, and director of their current production of The Glass Menagerie. The show is being performed at the Russian River Hall in Monte Rio through March 29. Click below to listen:…
by Barry Willis Teenage angst gets a full workout in ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| at American Conservatory Theater’s Strand Theater on Market Street in San Francisco, through April 19. Set in the East Bay, the story is about four girls in a summer music program, preparing for a final concert before they…
My guests on the 03/12/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Mary Samson and David Yen from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Marjorie Prime. The show runs on 6th Street’s Monroe Stage in Santa Rosa through March 29. Click below to listen: ********** Click HERE for more information on the show.
by Harry Duke After a couple of rabble-rousing, politically-bent productions, Petaluma’s Mercury Theater shifts to British comedy with their production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives. The Michael Fontaine-directed production runs through Mar. 21. The play, written in 1930, has served as a vehicle for some of the top performers of the past century, including Elizabeth…
by Cari Lynn Pace If you are a fan of Stephen Sondheim, you will be delighted with this Throckmorton Theatre production of Company. If you don’t care for Sondheim’s repetitive musical style, you will still be delighted with this production. It’s a show filled with non-stop energy. Company focuses on bachelor Bobby’s 35th birthday and…
Berkeley Rep’s Uneven “All My Sons” by Barry Willis A week has passed since the press opener of Berkeley Rep’s revamp of Arthur Miller’s enduring family drama All My Sons. Presumably some of the hysteria around this production has faded a bit, but during opening week there was plenty of it among the critical community.…
by Harry Duke For centuries France has produced such famous playwrights as Molière, Beaumarchais, Rostand, Sartre, and Ionesco and such plays as Tartuffe, The Marriage of Figaro, Cyrano de Bergerac, No Exit, and Rhinoceros. And yet, according to the Guinness World Record organization, the most performed French play in the world is a 1960s sex…
By Beulah F. Vega Napa Valley College has opened it’s two weekend (02/27- 03/08) run of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. The almost three-hour-long show tells the story of a baker (Gabriel Logan Reyes) and his wife (Lindsay Stark) who must go into the woods to gather the ingredients needed to lift a curse their…
by Beulah F. Vega Napa County’s Valley Players presents the Jones Hope Wooten comedy The Savannah Sipping Society at the Rutherford Grange through March 15. Directed by Debbie Baumann, this look at women of a certain age brings a perspective often missing from the stages around our area. Middle-aged Randa Covington (Christina Julian) finds herself…
by Cari Lynn Pace A Parisian bachelor, armed with only an airline flight schedule and a disapproving maid, successfully juggles simultaneous romances with three gorgeous flight attendants. It’s a setup for international disaster when an American buddy visits and endeavors to learn relationships from the master. Marc Camoletti’s Boeing Boeing, directed by Justin Smith, is…
My guests on the 02/26/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Michael Fontaine and Zane Walters from the Mercury Theater production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives. The show runs in “the little red schoolhouse on the hill” in Petaluma from March 6 through March 21. Click below to listen: ********** Click HERE…
My guests on the 02/19/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Isiah Carter and Lexus Fletcher from the Left Edge Theatre production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South-West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915. The…
by Cari Lynn Pace Ten contestants vie for a shiny red pickup, a publicity gimmick by a car dealership in Longview, Texas. Whoever can keep a hand on the truck the longest wins the keys to drive off with it. Hands on a Hardbody keeps you guessing how long the contestants will last and who…
North Bay Stage and Screen 