Uncomfortable. Amused. Depressed. Angry. Confused. Challenged. Hopeful. Those are all states of mind and emotions I experienced while sitting in the audience of Pass Over, the Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu play that’s in the middle of its West Coast Premiere run at the Marin Theatre Company. The show that reopened a pandemic-shuttered Broadway runs in Mill Valley…
There may be no more venerable fictional character than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. From his first appearance in 1887’s A Study in Scarlet through a series of Hollywood adaptations and innumerable British television series, the deerstalker cap-clad detective and his associate Dr. Watson have entertained audiences for well over a century. The character…
2021 was supposed to be the year that live theatre came roaring back, and it did… for a while. By the end of the year, that roar had been replaced by a hacking cough symptomatic of exposure to the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Theatres once again began to cancel or postpone performances as casts…
As TV regularly demonstrates, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol can be adapted into just about any scenario. For theatre, just take the plot points and characters, plop them into a modern-day situation and locale, add some songs and – voila! – instant Christmas show! It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s basically what…
Fans of ‘50s and ‘60s pop music and the all-male or all-female groups that sang it looking to take a break from the holiday hustle and bustle might consider heading to Sonoma for some respite. Sonoma Arts Live is presenting Plaid Tidings and Winter Wonderettes in “rep”, two jukebox musicals draped in holiday trimmings that…
The ghost of an English author passed haunts North Bay theaters this holiday season with a couple of Charles Dickens-inspired productions running on local stages. Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse presents the musical Scrooge in Love! through Dec. 19. It’s Christmas Eve again and Ebenezer Scrooge (Brian Herndon) has spent the past year living a…
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…
North Bay Stage and Screen 