Intense drama. Complex characters. Challenging themes. You won’t find any of these in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, running through Oct. 27 at Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Performing Arts Center. What you will find is a very entertaining, macabre musical that is a perfect theatrical compliment to the Halloween season. Upon his mother’s passing,…
There aren’t a lot of plays that explore Native American history or the modern-day social and political issues that continue to challenge that community. Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Sovereignty, running at the Marin Theatre Company through Oct. 20, attempts to do both in about two hours. Sarah Ridge Polson (Elizabeth Frances) returns to the Cherokee Nation…
In sports, the term ‘ringer’ generally refers to the practice of using a clearly superior competitor in order to gain an unfair advantage. In theatrical terms, it can be used to describe the importation of outside talent in the hope of drawing a larger-than-normal audience. In both cases, the hope is that the player/performer will…
When Little Shop of Horrors opened in New York in 1982, it was in a small 98-seat Off-Off-Broadway theatre. Its success led to its move Off-Broadway to Manhattan’s 299-seat Orpheum Theatre where it ran for five years. It had a chance to move to the Great White Way, but playwright/lyricist Howard Ashman felt the show…
It’s a virtual Merman-palooza in the North Bay as two theatre companies present ‘musical fables’ with Ethel Merman connections. Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse has Gypsy running through Oct. 20 while Sonoma Arts Live has Merman’s Apprentice, an original musical with a fictional Merman character, running through Oct. 13. Merman’s Apprentice is a throw-back to…
Halloween comes early to North Bay stages with two productions more commonly seen around that particular holiday. Monte Rio’s Curtain Call Theatre recreates The Haunting of Hill House through Sep. 28 while Healdsburg’s Raven Players present the serial-killing comedy Arsenic and Old Lace through Sep. 29. Shirley Jackson’s 1958 novel The Haunting of Hill House…
In a recent conversation about on-stage diversity (and the lack thereof in the North Bay), a local theatre company’s Artistic Director posed this question: “When will you know when we’ve achieved it?” My response: “When I look at a cast photo and no one stands out.” A cast photo from the Marin Shakespeare Company production…
