by Cari Lynn Pace In a departure from their typical productions, Ross Valley Players delivers the complex and tense thriller Wait Until Dark. Based on the 1966 Broadway cliffhanger which led to the famous Audrey Hepburn movie, this script has been adapted by Jerry Hatcher from Frederick Knott’s original play. Knott wrote spine-tingling plots, including…
Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 parable play/farce about the dangers of complacency and appeasement is, as is said much too frequently today, as timely as ever. It’s a shame eight U.S. Senators haven’t had a chance to see it. It’s the second show in the first full season for Petaluma’s Mercury Theater, the newest theatrical kid on…
My guests on the 11/13/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Laura Downing-Lee, Waylon Hessler, and Nora Summers from the 6th Street Playhouse production of A Christmas Story: The Musical. This show runs in 6th Street’s GK Hardt Theatre from November 21 through December 21. Click below to listen: ********** Click…
by Cari Lynn Pace Sweeney Todd is the malevolent plot likely inspired by the campfire song “Dunderbeck’s Machine” which my Dad sang to us as youngsters. We boisterously sang along as mean old Dunderbeck turned critters into sausages, ultimately getting his just reward. Stephen Sondheim created an amped-up plot of human gruesomeness in this entertaining…
by Harry Duke Much has been said and written about the (then) Marin Theatre Company’s 2017 production of Thomas Bradshaw’s Thomas and Sally. Bradshaw’s historical fiction used a conversation between college students as the framing device to explore the possible relationship between Founding Father Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. To say the Jasson…
If there’s one word to describe North Bay theatre companies’ choices for their 2025 holiday productions, it’s “familiar”. One company is repeating their selections from last year while two others bring back chestnuts whose memories still linger from their successful mounting on other local stages. Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Theatre Company is the company with two…
My guests on the 11/06/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were Sarah Wintermeyer and Chase Thompson from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theater Arts production of Ride the Cyclone: The Musical. This rollercoaster of a show runs in the Burbank Auditorium on the SRJC campus from November 14 through November 23.…
by Cari Lynn Pace Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks weaves historical facts with imagined emotions in this play-within-a-play about Thomas Jefferson and his slave mistress Sally Hemmings. It’s a powerhouse story that digs deep into the consciousness of today’s sense of propriety. A present-day small theatre troupe rehearses and wrestles with their unfinished period play…
My guests on the 10/30/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Keith Baker and Kevin Bordi from the Mercury Theater production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui. The parable play about the rise of an American gangster runs at the old Cinnabar Theater building in Petaluma from October 31…
My guests on the 10/23/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Matthew Witthaus and Katie Watts-Whitaker from the Raven Players’ production of Willliam Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The audience is invited to sit on the stage and surround the performers at the Raven Performing Arts Theater in Healdsburg from October 24 through November 9.…
North Bay Stage and Screen 