On December 4, 1956, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley held a once-in-a-lifetime jam session at rock and roll pioneer Sam Phillips’ legendary Sun Records studio. They were labeled the “Million Dollar Quartet” by a local journalist and that moniker was affixed to the recordings of the session released decades later.…
Spreckels Performing Arts Center, in Rohnert Park, is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this weekend with a free onstage musical event on Saturday, March 9, at 7:00 p.m. The show will feature “concert-style songs” showcasing some of Spreckels’ most popular and fondly remembered musicals, and will include a bit of a “look forward” to what Artistic…
For theater fans, theater writers and theater artists of all stripes, there are few times of year as exciting as that stretch of weeks in the late winter/early fall when theater companies take turns announcing the titles of the plays they will be producing in the following theatrical season. It’s a time for actors to…
Anyone going to a performance of Hello, Dolly! – running now at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco through March 17 – with an appetite for an enlightened look at male/female relationships is likely to leave quite hungry. The current national tour of the 2017 revival of the 1964 Broadway smash based on…
Sometimes the most interesting dramas are the simplest – a single set, a few characters, a conflict. “Naturalistic” plays, as they are sometimes referred, were the result of a movement in late 19th century European theatre to enhance the realism of plays with an understanding of how heredity and environment influence an individual. The most…
My guests on the Thursday, February 21 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were Diane Dragone, Clark Sterling, and Michael McGurk to talk about the Cinnabar Theater’s Broadway Bash. Click below to listen: **********
Musical zombies rise from the dead to sing an evening of ‘50’s pop standards. Let me try that again. On February 4, 1964, The Plaids, an eastern Pennsylvania-based vocal quartet, were headed for a major gig at the Fusel-Lounge at the Harrisburg Airport Hilton when their cherry red Mercury was broadsided by a bus full…
My guests on the Thursday, February 14 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were Elizabeth Craven and llana Niernberger from the Main Stage West production of After Miss Julie. Click below to listen: **********
“Satire,” said American playwright and humorist George S. Kaufman, “is what closes Saturday night.” That quote came to mind as a I sat in the audience at the Super Bowl Sunday matinée of Impeaching America at the Belrose in San Rafael. Actually, I was the audience at that particular performance. The allegorical political satire by…
“Who are you?” That’s the opening line from Laura Eason’s Sex with Strangers, running now through February 17 at Left Edge Theatre. It’s a question that lingers throughout the Diane Bailey-directed production. In the good ol’ days, getting to know someone meant hanging out, dating, talking on the phone for hours, etc. With the advent…
North Bay Stage and Screen 