‘Six Degrees of Separation’ is the concept that every individual on the planet can be connected to every other individual through six or fewer social connections. First posited in the late 1920s, it entered the cultural lexicon via John Guare’s same-named play in 1990, so much so that a parlor game in which participants were…
For audiences who didn’t get their fill of Noël Coward with the recent Ross Valley Players production of Blithe Spirit, the Novato Theater Company is offering a second helping of Coward comedy with their production of Present Laughter. The show runs in Novato through February 16. But Coward purists beware. Audiences expecting a traditional production…
It’s time for this critic to take an end-of-year look back at local theatre. To start, I’m happy to report that no theatres closed in this area. As a matter of fact, there’s a new company in town with the formation of Petaluma’s Mercury Theater. So, continuing on that positive note, here, in chronological order,…
Dear Santa, I know it’s been a few years since I last wrote you a letter, but there’s a sense of fear and anxiety permeating the world right now about what the New Year will bring and the possibility that by the end of 2025 you’ll be in jail for not giving Donald the landslide…
From the very first word uttered on stage in POTUS or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive’, it’s clear you are in for a very atypical Sonoma County theatre presentation. The word is number four on George Carlin’s list of seven dirty words, and you will hear it, along…
Napa’s Lucky Penny Community Arts Center opened just about ten years ago with a production of Lionel Barts’ classic musical Oliver! The musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist has long been an audience favorite since its debut at a Southwest London theater in 1960. It’s a big show, in many ways, and not the…
Old-fashioned holiday musicals don’t get much more old-fashioned than Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. The David Ives and Paul Blake adaptation of the 1954 film that starred Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen runs at Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse through Dec. 22. Fans of the film won’t be disappointed as it’s a faithful…
Theatergoers in search of a big dollop of holiday nostalgia would do well to seek out the Spreckels Theatre Company production of It’s a Wonderful Life – A Live Radio Play. The Condiotti Experimental Theatre at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park hosts the Jenny Hollingworth-directed show through Dec. 15. Based on Frank…
Audiences headed for a performance of the Raven Players’ production of Cinderella who are expecting anything along the lines of a Disney musical are in for a bit of a surprise. This particular production, running at the Raven Performing Arts Theater in Healdsburg through Dec. 1, is done in the style of a British pantomime,…
Several hundred costume-clad theatre goers filled the Santa Rosa Junior College’s Burbank Auditorium on Halloween night for the opening of their production of Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show. This was quite a change from my initial Rocky Horror experience in 1978 when my brother and three of our friends were joined by just one…
North Bay Stage and Screen 