Two Pulitzer Prize–winning dramas have hit North Bay stages. The first is the Raven Players’ production of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers. Simon, whose best-known works are comedies tinged with a little melancholy (The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys), won the 1991 Pulitzer for Yonkers, a melancholy family drama tinged with comedy. With their mother deceased and their…
In Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg assesses Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro with the criticism that it has “too many notes.” Cinnabar Theater’s current production suffers from the opposite—it’s missing a few. Amadeus is actually the story of Antonio Salieri (Richard Pallaziol), the most celebrated composer of his time. Salieri has dedicated his life to God and mankind in…
Sonoma County artists and theatres took five production awards and one Special Award at the 42nd Annual San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle (SFBATCC) Excellence in Theatre Awards Gala. The event was held on Monday, March 26th at San Francisco’s historic Victoria Theatre. Over 300 members of the community gathered as 67 production awards…
“Salieri is a great villain.” So suggests actor Richard Pallaziol, describing the 19th Century Italian composer — and rumored poisoner of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. “Unlike Shakespearean villains,” he says, “who always eventually recognize their villainy, Salieri believes that he is the aggrieved party. He’s not the villain. He thinks he’s the victim.” Pallaziol is currently…
One wouldn’t think a play that deals with the wreckage left behind by a natural disaster would be particularly attractive to North Bay residents right now, but Sharyn Rothstein’s By the Water speaks to what our community is going through. While it’s set in 2012 on New York’s Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy, the human and material…
At a post-show Q & A following the opening night performance of Main Stage West’s Blackbird, director David Lear stated he felt that one of theater’s responsibilities is to make an audience “a little uncomfortable.” He more than succeeds with this production. The lights come up and through the windows of a darkened employee break room…
While time may heal all wounds, a little human kindness along the way doesn’t hurt. That’s the takeaway from the Santa Rosa Junior College production of Julie Marie Myatt’s Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter. Originally produced in 2008 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, it was one of the first works to address the issues faced by…
One of the oddest plays I’ve seen in a while, Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses isn’t particularly real in its examination of two suburban couples who share the same surname. It does, however, often ring true. Set in an unnamed town, Bob and Jennifer Jones (Chris Schloemp and Melissa Claire) are spending a quiet evening…
“Fans of The Room are not like the fans of any other cult film,” says author/actor Greg Sestero, speaking on the phone from Paris, France. Earlier that evening, Sestero had attended a sold-out screening of The Disaster Artist, the Oscar-nominated film based on his book of the same name. The bestselling memoir describes the making…
Ask anyone under fifty years of age who Rosemary Clooney is and they’re likely to respond “George Clooney’s wife?” They’d be in the ballpark (she was his aunt) but what they probably don’t know is that she was an immensely popular musical performer who charted numerous hit songs in the 50’s and 60’s. Changes in…
