Review: “Once Upon a Mattress” at Sonoma Arts Live

by Cari Lynn Pace * Sonoma Arts Live’s season-closing Once Upon a Mattress holds plenty of delights. This Tony-award nominated 1959 musical with a book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller & Marshall Barer and lyrics by Barer and music by Mary Rogers runs through August 2. Based on the ageless fairy tale The Princess and…

Review: “Hairspray” at San Francisco Playhouse

by Cari Lynn Pace * Hairspray is the Tony Award-winning, Broadway-busting musical based on the same-titled 1988 movie by John Waters now running at San Francisco Playhouse. With a book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, Hairspray soars with music by Marc Shaiman and clever lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Whittman. Masterfully directed by Bill…

Award-winning SRHS ArtQuest program loses teacher

Cites “cumulative effect of years of cuts, instability, neglect, and diminishing support”. by Harry Duke * Santa Rosa High School’s award-winning ArtQuest Theatre program has lost Jereme Anglin as a Theatre Arts teacher. In a lengthy letter of resignation submitted to the Santa Rosa High School Administration and Santa Rosa City Schools on June 29,…

Review: “The Secret Garden, the Musical” in Rohnert Park

by Barry Willis * This coming weekend (June 26-28) closes Cinnabar Theater’s sumptuous production of The Secret Garden, an operetta of hope and triumph by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon, based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Norman. It’s 1906 and an orphan girl named Mary Lennox (Violet Spears) has returned to England from India, where…

Review: “La rondine” in Petaluma

by Harry Duke * Opera is the theatre art with which I have the least familiarity. Interestingly enough, the very first live performance of any kind that I remember attending as a child (excluding Disney on Ice) was a production of Bizet’s Carmen but since that 5th or 6th grade adventure, the number of opportunities…