The Novato Theater Company closes out their 103rd season with a production of Michael Frayn’s award-winning farce Noises Off. The three-act comedy runs at the Novato Playhouse through July 14. Act I introduces us to stressed-out director Lloyd Dallas (Mike Pavone), who has his hands full at the final rehearsal of a touring production of…
‘April is the cruelest month’ is the opening line to T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land, but June has been no picnic for the North Bay theatre community either. Transportation issues marred the opening of the Mountain Play while bouts of illness plagued other productions. Napa’s Lucky Penny had to utilize an actor…
Salonen’s Symphony of Disgust Last Sunday, I attended a very interesting program at Davies Symphony Hall. It was a groundbreaking collaboration with Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, as well as the performance of a rarely done operatic monologue by Arnold Schoenberg. Here’s a spoiler: they were successful in that they did happen, not because they should…
North Bay theaters seem to be in the middle of a Karen Zacarías mini-festival with the Ross Valley Players well-received run of the playwright’s The Book Club Play coming to an end while Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse is in the middle of their run of Native Gardens. Both plays poke fun at suburban life…
In a London in the not-too-distant future, the British government has imposed a strict limitation on the number of words any individual can speak in a twenty-four-hour time period. That’s the basic premise of Sam Steiner’s Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons. The “whys?” for the limitations are barely addressed (and the “hows?” never are) in…
It’s been more than forty years since Harvey Fierstein exploded into our cultural consciousness with Torch Song Trilogy. At a time when being gay could get you thrown out of the military and the concept of marriage equality was considered a fantasy, the story of a gay man (and a drag queen at that) searching…
“Is this funny? I think it’s sad.” That comment was murmured from one audience member to her seatmate after other audience members chuckled at the recent Mother’s Day matinee performance of Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone. The Raven Players production runs through May 26 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater in Healdsburg. It’s a…
Large scale, family-friendly theatre returns to the North Bay with the Spreckels Theatre Company production of The Wind in the Willows. Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame adapted Kenneth Grahame’s classic 1908 novel in collaboration with composer George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe (the same team that adapted Mary Poppins for the stage.) The musical…
You’ve probably heard of this new age, hippy dippy thing that many people, overwhelmed with today’s hectic pace of life, are doing: a silent retreat. This is where you go to a retreat center for a few days or even a week, and do not speak to anyone the entire time. The idea behind this…
Healdsburg’s The 222 concludes its season of professional drama with The Mountaintop, co-directed by Aldo Billingsley and Rebecca Novick. Playwright Katori Hall’s 2009 imagining of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last night on Earth runs through April 14. It’s late in the evening of April 3, 1968 and Dr. King (Ron Chapman) has returned to…
North Bay Stage and Screen 