A lot of “firsts” were achieved when Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway in 1959. It was the first time Broadway produced a play written by a Black woman and the first Broadway show helmed by a Black director. The show was a critical and commercial success and spawned a film…
Some Stephen Sondheim musicals are more recognizable and identifiable than others. Sweeney Todd? Murderous barber. Into the Woods? Fractured fairy tales. Assassins? Assassins. A Little Night Music? Ummm… clowns? Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, now running at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park through Feb. 26, received a dozen Tony nominations in 1973…
Sonoma Arts Live brings a little retro-television to the Rotary Stage in Sonoma with Sidekicked, a one-woman show about actress Vivian Vance. Vance is best known as America’s favorite TV neighbor Ethel Mertz, a character she played for nine seasons alongside Lucille Ball. The Michael Ross-directed show runs in Sonoma through Feb. 19. It’s 1960…
Mounting a production of a little-known play in these pandemic and inflationary-influenced times is something of a risk for most theater companies. Audiences have yet to return in full-force to live theatre, so a significant leap of faith is required to produce material that has little to no track record. Healdsburg’s Raven Players and the…
North Bay theatre in the New Year kicks off with Cinnabar Theater’s production of the two-hander Daddy Long Legs. Former Cinnabar Artistic Director Elly Lichenstein returns to direct John Caird and Paul Gordon’s musical adaptation of the popular novel by Jean Webster that was first published in 1912. The production runs in Petaluma through Jan.…
North Bay audiences seeking a little lightweight, somewhat-holiday-themed entertainment would do well to head out to Sebastopol and check out Ham for the Holidays. Written by Santa Rosa High School dropout-turned-game-show-contestant-turned-college-professor Shad Willingham, it runs at Main Stage West through Dec. 30. It’s Christmas Eve, 1939, and the tiny hamlet of Hamlin, GA is buried…
About once a year now, The Mountain Play comes down from atop Mt. Tam’s 3,750-seat Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre and joins forces with the Ross Valley Players to present a classic Broadway musical in the 99-seat Barn Theater at the Marin Art and Garden Center. This year it’s Gypsy, A Musical Fable, the Arthur Laurents/Jule Styne/Stephen…
Folks who like their fairy-tale endings in the “and they lived happily ever after” vein may find themselves challenged by Marisela Treviño Orta’s The River Bride. Part Brazilian folklore and part Brothers Grimm at their grimmest, it’s the tale of two sisters and the men in their lives. Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse has a…
Play titles don’t get more succinct than The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong. You get both an approximate run time and a plot synopsis in six simple words. It’s an abridged version of The Play That Goes Wrong, which was itself expanded from its original one-act roots after becoming a hit in London where it…
The roots of racism run deep in the American housing market. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry addressed the issue in 1959 with A Raisin in the Sun, the first play written by an African-American woman performed on Broadway and the first to have an African-American director. Playwright Bruce Norris took Hansberry’s story and in 2010 wrote a…
North Bay Stage and Screen 