J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan has been seen on stage in one form or another for well over 100 years. It’s survived being Disney-fied and even Christopher Walken-ized in a disastrous live television spectacle. The most popular adaptation is the 1954 musical starring Mary Martin. It’s that version that takes flight in a well-mounted production…
It’s here at last. The day Lucy London has been waiting for. Today is the day she learns how to fly. “I’m so excited! But also a little nervous,” admits London, who will be playing Wendy in Spreckels Performing Arts Center’s upcoming production of “Peter Pan.” “I’ve heard that it can hurt a little, when…
It’s been 35 years since La Cage aux Folles took Broadway by storm. What began in 1973 as a French stage farce followed by a series of films, the Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman musical was considered daring for its time with its portrayal of a happily domesticated male couple thrown for a loop by a…
The Santa Rosa Junior College theatre season ends with a production of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. It’s a fairy tale mash-up with elements of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood set to a classic Sondheim score. As in the original tales – and not like most…
Film, television and theater veteran Charles Siebert headlines the 6th Street Playhouse production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Miller’s Pulitzer Prize- and multi–Tony award–winning treatise on the elusiveness of the American dream is considered by many to be the greatest American play ever written. Nearly 70-years-old, in the hands of the right artistic…
I’ve been covering the San Francisco International Film Festival for ten years now for another web site. I’ve screened, reviewed and discussed well over one hundred films – some great, some good, and some real clunkers – and conducted numerous interviews over those ten years. This year’s festival, the 61st, runs April 4 through April…
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…
North Bay Stage and Screen 