Jukebox musicals have become the bread and butter for a lot of community theatres. Minimal casts, simple sets and the built-in audience that comes with a show about a popular singer or musical group are tough for an artistic director to resist. In 1988, playwright Ted Swindley took 27 songs recorded by Patsy Cline and…
My guests on the Thursday, July 19 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were director Steven David Martin and actors Christi Calson and Haley Hollis from the Raven Players ‘Raven on the Road’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Click below to hear that interview. *** For more information, go to www.raventheater.org
An eerie sense of discomfort and anxiety begins to arise roughly halfway through the remarkable, entertaining, gripping, and disturbing new documentary ‘Three Identical Strangers.’ Once it starts, it only builds, continuing till long after the credits roll. Directed by Tim Wardle (“One Killer Punch”), this surprise hit (from CNN Films and England’s Channel 4) related…
My guests on the Thursday, July 12 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were director Michael Ross and actress Karen Pinomaki from Sonoma Arts Live’s Always… Patsy Cline. Click below to hear that interview. *** For more information, go to sonomaartslive.org
High-flying aerial acts. Breathtaking acrobatics. Gorgeous, ethereal music. Mesmerizing dance. A woman walking on glass bottles. And a whole lot of outrageous stuff with chairs. That’s “Levity,” a weirdly wondrous, tough-to-explain live touring show from LadyBeast Productions, of New Orleans. The company was formed five years ago, with the intention of putting a contemporary, highly…
The Hunchback of Notre Dame was originally scheduled last season at the Spreckels Theatre Company. The musical, whose development started in Germany and ended in New Jersey (having never made it to Broadway), is an atypical Disney production. More Les Misérables than Little Mermaid, it’s an interesting amalgam of Victor Hugo’s gothic novel and music from…
Guests on my Thursday, July 5 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon included director David Lear and actors John Browning and Sydney McNulty from the Shakespeare in the Cannery’s closing production of Shakespeare in Love. The interview begins at the 2:15 mark. Click below to hear that interview. *** For more information, go to http://www.shakespeareinthecannery.com
One might think that the talents behind Downton Abbey and Phantom of the Opera would be odd choices to make a Broadway musical out of a 2003 movie starring Jack Black. One would be correct. School of Rock, now on the San Francisco stop of its national tour, is Julian Fellowes’ and Sir Andrew Lloyd…
On Friday and Saturday, July 13 and 14, Novato Theater Company will host the popular Sonoma County-based touring show Cash & King, featuring singer-actor Steven Kent and a band of local musicians putting a highly personal spin on the traditional tribute show. During the two-act production – which has been playing to sold-out houses in…
The first dinosaur movie I ever remember seeing was Irwin Allen’s ‘The Lost World.’ I was five-years-old when I saw it at the Grove Theater in downtown Upland, in Southern California. From watching that film – about an expedition to a remote jungle where dinosaurs still exist – I learned a number of things. I…
