Reviewing a mystery/thriller is always a challenge. One wants to leave a play’s twists and turns for the audience to discover on their own, but in evaluating the play one can’t but help give a bit away. This is my way of saying this entire review should be prefaced with a ‘spoiler alert’. You have…
As a graduate of a University Theatre Arts program, I well remember how important it was to have an audience fill the seats at our performances. Having an audience, a real audience (not just one composed of friends and family and students looking for some easy extra credit for their English class) made all the…
As jukebox musicals go, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is a pretty darn good one and the production at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park through October 13 is a pretty darn good one, too. While most jukebox musicals use a flimsy book as connecting material for a plethora of songs by a…
As I read the program’s synopsis of Opera Modesto’s production of The Marriage of Figaro in my seat in the Gallo Center, waiting for Annalisa Winberg and her husband Roy Stevens to welcome everyone (by encouraging us to yell “bravo!” and “brava!” and “bravissimo!” like they do in Italy), I learned something very interesting: The…
By Beulah F. Vega When playwright Will Arbery was asked what his play Heroes of the Fourth Turning was about, he had a simple answer: “Listening.” Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre has a production closing Saturday, September 21 with a 1:00 pm matinee performance at The California. Set in 2017 soon after the election of…
Cinnabar Theater opens their 52nd season on the road with a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic Oklahoma! Having vacated the little red schoolhouse on the hill in Petaluma while awaiting construction of their new theatre, Cinnabar is utilizing the Warren Auditorium at Sonoma State University for their mainstage performances. It runs there through…
Mel Brooks followed up his incredibly successful Broadway adaptation of his film The Producers with a musical adaptation of what he considers his finest film, Young Frankenstein. Not nearly as successful with audiences or critics as The Producers, it’s still a solid show for fans of the film and others looking for light amusement. Sonoma…
Musicals seem to be the season openers of choice for North Bay theatre companies with two more joining the Spreckels Theatre Company run of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. 6th Street Playhouse is hosting 4 Guys Named José… And Una Mujer Named María! in their GK Hardt Theatre while Sonoma Arts Live brings Young…
Former Windsor resident Francine Schwartz has long remembered the stories her mother and grandmother told her about living in occupied France during World War II and of the German soldiers billeted in their home. For the last decade, she has been working on a piece based on her family history and what began as a…
by Bob Duxbury Heroes of the Fourth Turning caused a stir when it was first produced in 2019, not least because the normally liberal theater community produced an energetic defense of conservative Catholic doctrine adapted for popular consumption from the cerebral The Fourth Turning. The book, by William Strauss and Neil Howe, is a favorite…
North Bay Stage and Screen 