by Cari Lynn Pace A Chorus Line opens with a backstage look at dozens of dancers trying out for a part in a new show. The live music is energizing and brassy; the director of the audition is pushy and demanding. After dance eliminations, only seventeen remain onstage. They’re exhausted and nervous as they urgently…
by Cari Lynn Pace Where do playwrights come up with the ideas for such laughable plots? Featherbaby, David Templeton’s latest play, features a young woman and her foul-mouthed and aggressively possessive parrot, a bird who schemes to separate its owner from her suitors. Just imagine Spreckels Theatre Company having a casting call to audition actors…
By Harry Duke The Jacobethan Theatre Workshop’s Shakespeare in the Park(ing Lot) summer series concludes with a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. The Shakespeare comedy features one of the Bard’s greatest characters as well as the usual masquerading and comeuppances.The show has two remaining performances – Saturday, August 23, at 7:30 pm, and…
by Harry Duke It’s been fourteen years since the Transcendence Theatre Company landed and took root in the Sonoma Valley with their Broadway-caliber musical revues. They added the occasional fully-produced Broadway show to their repertoire in 2018 with A Chorus Line and in 2023 they showed The Full Monty in Glen Ellen. After a few…
By Cari Lynn Pace When I was 20, I listened to Carole King’s album Tapestry so often it’s a wonder the phonograph needle didn’t cut through to the other side. I sang along with the gusto of youth and the emotion of young love. I was nurtured by all the heartfelt lyrics to “It’s Too…
by Harry Duke The “green-eyed monster” is running amok in the field next to the 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa with the Jacobethan Theatre Workshop’s Shakespeare in the Park(ing Lot) production of Othello. The show has two remaining performances – Saturday, August 9, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, August 10, at 6:00 pm. After…
by Harry Duke For years, Healdsburg’s Raven Players has been presenting a summer Shakespeare production “under the stars” at the perfectly serviceable but rather bland West Plaza Park. They’ve upgraded a bit this year by relocating to Bacchus Landing for their production of Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Wine & Event Center is hosting the…
Fans of the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels will be pleased to hear that the Broadway musical adaptation sticks pretty close to the Steve Martin/Michael Caine comedy. Sonoma Arts Live has a production directed by Carl Jordan running on the Rotary Stage at the Sonoma Community Center through July 27. Suave and debonair con man Lawrence…
I last spent time with The Sugar Bean Sisters eight years ago at a production by the Spreckels Theatre Company in Rohnert Park. My general reaction at the time was that it was a very strange show. The sisters have returned to Sonoma County – Cloverdale to be exact – with a production running at…
by Beulah F. Vega San Francisco’s Magic Theatre is just a quick hop over the Golden Gate and should be on the radar of every North Bay theatre lover. Their current production of Luis Alfaro’s Aztlán, which they commissioned, has had its run extended through July 20. Kinan Valdez directs the story which flits between…
North Bay Stage and Screen 