NTC announces season, posts call for directors

Well. It’s begun. As happens at the beginning of each new year, a number of theaters are starting to announce the shows that will make up the next theatrical season. First out of the gate is Novato Theater Company, which earlier this week sent out a press release describing its 2016-17 season, along with an open…

Opera on Tap comes to Petaluma

“I watch a lot of football,” proclaimed Jessie Neilson, of San Francisco’s Opera on Tap, where her official title is “co-managing diva.” “So many of the commercials they play during football games use classical music, and a lot of those pieces are from operas,” she said. “Whenever a football commercial needs something dramatic, it’s almost…

Review: ‘Into the Woods’

Rating: ★★★½ (Out of five) — (Theater-at-Large) A strong ensemble of North Bay performers, bolstered by uniformly fine singing voices, is the primary magic ingredient in Theater-at-Large’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Resurrected for a reprise run at Spreckels Performing Arts Center, this is an encore staging of the delightfully dark fairy-tale mashup that…

Review: ‘Mahalia Jackson: Just As I Am’

Rating: ★★★★ (Out of five) — Cinnabar Theater “Sometimes,” exhorts actress Sharon E. Scott, stirringly embodying the rich voice and sassy-sweet attitude of the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. “Sometimes, God turns your life upside down—so you can help turn things right side up.” In the sensational, heartbreaking and soul-lifting biographical theater piece Mahalia Jackson: Just…

Santa Rosa Junior College to refurbish and upgrade Burbank Auditorium

January 6 — In a recently distributed message from Frank Chong, President of the Santa Rosa Junior College, it was announced that the school’s much-used Burbank Auditorium – home to SRJC’s Theater Arts program and the popular Summer Repertory Theatre program – will be getting a long-delayed upgrade and remodeling. Using grant money’s set aside for the improvement…

Kicking off 2016 with a buzz and a bang

Much in the way that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the most talked-about movie of 2015, the North Bay theater scene already has its share of shows that are receiving major advance buzz. Stephen Sondheim’s dark-tinged musical fairy tale Into the Woods is staged often but rarely well. The music is hard, the cast is large, and there is…