If there’s one word to describe North Bay theatre companies’ choices for their 2025 holiday productions, it’s “familiar”. One company is repeating their selections from last year while two others bring back chestnuts whose memories still linger from their successful mounting on other local stages.

Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Theatre Company is the company with two returning productions from 2024. It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play is, as its title implies, the 1946 Frank Capra film performed as a 1940s live radio broadcast in front of a studio audience. Five actors in period costume, live Foley sound effects, and a beloved story all combine to present the quintessential holiday show. It goes on-air in Spreckels’ Condiotti Black Box Theatre on Nov. 21 

Spreckels is also remounting the devastating All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. It’s the story of one Christmas during World War I when the guns went silent and enemies became friends. Some of the North Bay’s best performers give voice to the soldiers and military leaders through their letters and official correspondence and join together as an a capella choir to bring the music, a mixture of reverent Christmas classics with war songs of the era, to life. It may be the most emotionally-impactful 70 minutes I spent last year. It runs for three performances only, Dec. 12 – Dec. 14. (spreckelsonline.com)

For those seeking a lighter holiday show, two companies are producing musical stage adaptations of classic Christmas movies.  

Santa Rosa’s 6^th Street Playhouse will be presenting A Christmas Story, the Musical. Based on the 1983 Bob Clark film that runs 24 hours on a couple of cable channels, the adventures of Ralphie and his desire for a Red Ryder Carbine-action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle are set to songs by the same two guys responsible for Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman. Scott Farkus starts terrorizing Railroad Square on Nov. 21. (6thstreetplayhouse.com)

Sonoma Arts Live goes a little more traditional with Scrooge: the Musical. Based on the 1970 film starring Albert Finney (which was itself based on A Christmas Carol), the Academy award-nominated score by Leslie Bricusse has been carried over to the stage version. Four ghosts start haunting Sonoma Dec. 5. (sonomartslive.com)

If staged Christmas carols are your thing, Cinnabar Theater presents The Holiday Songbook at Sonoma State University the weekend of Dec. 19 (cinnabartheater.org)

Transcendence Theatre Company brings their Broadway Holiday production to two venues this year. The Sonoma County Day School will host the musical revue Dec. 13 & 14, while Sonoma’s Sebastiani Theatre will be hosting four performances Dec. 18 – 21. (bestnightever.org)

Lucky Penny Productions unleashes the Herdman kids in the musical version of Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever in Napa on Dec. 5. (luckypennynapa.com)

Spend a night or afternoon not shopping and support live theatre.

This preview originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.