In comedy, timing is everything, and the timing is so off in 6th Street Playhouse’s Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, the fact that it manages to extract any laughs from its audience is somewhat of a Christmas miracle. Plagued with pre-production challenges ranging from a change in director to the untimely passing of its lead…
I don’t know if it’s the time of year or an undiagnosed coronary issue, but I’ve found my heart warmed twice by local theatre productions now running. First, it was the Main Stage West production of Daddy Long Legs that started an atrial flutter and now it’s the Spreckels Theatre Company’s Little Women, the Musical…
If you like A.R. Gurney’s popular two-person play “Love Letters”, you’re going to love “Daddy Long Legs”, a musical adaptation of the 1912 novel by Jean Webster. Set at the turn of the 20th century, it’s the story of the relationship between an orphan and her mysterious benefactor as told – well, actually, sung –…
In 1992, a retired truck driver named Teri Horton paid five dollars for a painting from a southern California thrift store to give as a gag gift to a friend. An incomprehensible series of dots, blotches and streaks, her friend refused her gift and Horton ending up trying to unload the gangly canvas at a…
“Am I supposed to be retelling my creature’s story or confessing my own?” asks Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein and the protagonist in Petaluma playwright David Templeton’s latest theatrical piece “Mary Shelley’s Body,” now in its premiere engagement at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West. Templeton, the Argus-Courier features editor, whose previous plays are autobiographical, ventures…
In the average 24-hour-day, we make thousands of decisions, never knowing when a seemingly innocuous choice – grabbing coffee at Starbucks (where the future love of our life is standing in line) or Peets (where a runaway car is about to kill 12 patrons) – could have life-changing repercussions. Speaking of choices. Right now, at…
The late, great Ann Richards, former governor of Texas and certified political icon, had a colorful style and a commanding presence that inspired a generation of women, and a fair number of men, to enter the world of politics themselves. After Richard’s death of cancer in 2006, Emmy-winning actor Holland Taylor (‘Two-and-a-Half Men,’ ‘The L-Word,’ ‘Legally…
There are works of art that are exciting and captivating to experience, but which quickly lose their initial spark of pleasure, diminishing in brightness the more you think of them. Guards at the Taj, by Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), does the exact opposite. It leaves one a bit stunned and baffled, then…
Last weekend, two Neil Simon plays opened in the North Bay, each a demonstration of the legendary playwright’s mastery of rat-a-tat dialogue, skillful one-liners and flawed but relatable characters. At San Rafael’s Belrose Theater, Marin Onstage presents The Sunshine Boys, Simon’s 1972 hit about a long-feuding former vaudeville duo lured into reuniting for a television special.…
‘Hold still and sip the pain.” It’s a brief, swift line, uttered kindly but fiercely by the wise, wary slave Azucar (Cathleen Riddley), combing the hair of the impulsive, 13-year-old Zuri (Dezi Soley). Azucar’s simple sentence is a strong early example of how playwright Star Finch will be weaving words together in the stunning world…
North Bay Stage and Screen 