Folks looking for some live holiday entertainment can check out a couple of seasonal sequels now on stage in the North Bay. The Marin Theatre Company is hosting the premiere of Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s sequel to their sequel of their sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Georgiana & Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley…
Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon return to Pemberley Manor for The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley, a sequel of sorts to their roaringly successful Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley. Both take place in the extended world of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The Spreckels Theatre Company hosts The Wickhams in their Condiotti theater through Dec. 12.…
Sarah Ruhl’s How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, running at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre through Nov. 21, is a tough play to synopsize. The show opens in the living room of the suburban New Jersey home of Jane and Michael (Angela Squire and Anthony Martinez). They are gathered around their coffee table with…
Directors will often change the setting or time period of an older, well-known play in the hopes of making it more accessible to contemporary audiences. Modernized Shakespeare plays are usually the best examples of this practice. Similarly, the Novato Theater Company has taken Oscar Wilde’s community-theatre staple The Importance of Being Earnest and plopped it…
What do a 20th century Midwest American housewife turned author and a 19th century one-eared Dutch Post-Impressionist painter have in common? Well, they’re the subjects of two solo shows running now on North Bay stages. Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions is presenting Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End for a short run while Santa Rosa’s 6th Street…
“Fully Committed” is the term a pricey New York restaurant demands its reservations clerks use to inform potential guests that there’s no room for them at the table. It also describes what an actor has to be to take on 40 characters in a solo show that centers on the harried life of one of…
There may be no group more deserving of a laugh right now than the theatre community as pandemic-related closures and cancellations led to a general lack of mirth for folks who enjoy going to theatre and the artists who create it. North Bay companies are aiming to bring the funny back by programming several broad…
The centuries-old debate on just who did write the plays attributed to William Shakespeare takes center stage at the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center with their presentation of Amy Freed’s The Beard of Avon. Freed comes down squarely on the side of those who think Edward De Vere deserves the lion’s share of the credit and…
Billy Wilder’s 1950 film noir classic Sunset Boulevard reeks of cynicism. The story of a hack Hollywood writer who stumbles into an opportunistic relationship with a faded silent screen star is a tragedy of operatic proportions. The film’s star, Gloria Swanson, spent years trying to bring a radically altered musical version to the stage and…
One way theatre companies have responded to the pandemic and its related restrictions is to produce smaller shows. Solo performances, two-handers, small-cast dramas and comedies and stripped-down musicals have been the season openers on most local stages. Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse opens their GK Hardt Theatre with Murder for Two, a title that neatly…
North Bay Stage and Screen 