‘Good sex is like downhill skiing,” says Dr. Ruth Westheimer early on in Main Stage West’s engaging, surprise-packed solo-show Becoming Dr. Ruth. “Both require instinct, good movement and a willingness to take risks.” That description, apparently, applies to Westheimer herself. Throughout the unexpectedly rich script by playwright Mark St. Germain, the true details of Dr. Ruth’s…
“It’s never final,” the saying goes, “until it’s vinyl.” Sonoma songwriter and instrumentalist Cliff Goldmacher is certainly not the first working musician to utter those words, though his long career as a successful crafter of songs has definitely convinced him of its truth. Goldmacher estimates that, to date, he has written over 1,000 songs, some…
One year ago, on the eve of his annual tour to Northern California, singer-songwriter John McCutcheon was diagnosed with lung cancer. Fortunately, that diagnosis turned out to be wrong. What McCutcheon actually had was a severe lung infection. Still, his condition was serious enough to keep him off the road, and he was forced to…
Here we go. Again. Having viewed over a hundred plays in 2016, on stages all around the Bay Area and beyond, it’s now my yearly responsibility to name my 10 favorites. As 2016 turned out to be an especially strong year for theater—ironically marked by many theater companies struggling for audiences—my task was particularly difficult this time…
‘It started as a dream—literally,” says Sharon McNight, describing how her affection for the music of late vaudeville legend Sophie Tucker became the one-woman-show Red Hot Mama. A Tony-award nominee for her lead performance in the 1989 fantasy-musical Starmites, McNight will be bringing her acclaimed solo show to the Cinnabar Theater for a three-weekend run beginning Jan.…
BRIEF NOTE: I wrote this story in 2003, and it is still one of the favorite fictional pieces I ever put to paper. Originally, the ending was left slightly ambiguous, as I intended. Occasionally, near the Winter Solstice, I’ve found ways to offer the story back to the world, in reprints, radio plays, and…
Sonoma’s Abbey Lee has won the award for Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Musical by the Sonoma County-based Marquee Theater Journalists Association. A 2007 graduate of Sonoma Valley High School, Lee was honored by the MTJA for her work in 6th Street Playhouse’s recent production of the Marx Brothers’ musical “Animal Crackers.” “I’m really thrilled,”…
“Having so much archival material to draw on, that was such a blessing,” says Ruth Negga (Preacher, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), who plays Mildred Loving in Jeff Nichols’ beautifully crafted drama Loving, the story of Mildred and Richard Loving. It was their marriage, declared illegal in the state of Virginia in 1958, that led to the U.S. Supreme…
Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews debuted off Broadway in 2012. The popular play, now running at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre, potently throws together three very different Jewish family members, just after the burial of their grandfather. Daphna (Emily Kron) is intensely religious, but her two wealthy cousins, Jonah (Brady Morales-Woolery) and Liam (Dean Linnard), are less so.…
On Monday, November 14th, a gathering was held at the Local Barrel Tap Room in Santa Rosa to celebrate the outstanding work done by the local theatre community for the 2015 – 2016 season. Here is the full list of the 2016 nominees and recipients of the inaugural Marquee Theater Journalists Association Awards with winners…
