Review: Sonoma Arts Live’s ‘Ann’ – the story of politician Ann Richards – features outstanding performance by Libby Villari (‘Friday Night Lights,’ ‘Boyhood’)

The late, great Ann Richards, former governor of Texas and certified political icon,  had a colorful style and a commanding presence that inspired a generation of women, and a fair number of men, to enter the world of politics themselves. After Richard’s death of cancer in 2006, Emmy-winning actor Holland Taylor (‘Two-and-a-Half Men,’ ‘The L-Word,’ ‘Legally…

Review: MTC’s ‘Guards at the Taj’

There are works of art that are exciting and captivating to experience, but which quickly lose their initial spark of pleasure, diminishing in brightness the more you think of them. Guards at the Taj, by Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), does the exact opposite. It leaves one a bit stunned and baffled, then…