Written by David Templeton “We’re not technically drinking, I want that to be absolutely clear,” Petaluma stage director-and-actor Larry Williams pointed out, on a recent St. Patrick’s Day Sunday, as a pair of tall, colorful, impossibly sweet-looking margaritas – one blended, one on the rocks – appeared at our table. “This isn’t alcohol consumption. It’s…
Playwright Ayad Akhtar burst on the theatrical scene in 2013 with Disgraced, a searing drama about identity politics and Islamophobia which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2016, Marin Theatre Company presented Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand, a play that took on capitalism and Islamic fanaticism. Gender issues in the Islamic community are the…
“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…
When Joe Orton’s Loot opened in Cambridge, England in 1965 it created such a scandal that the Lord Chamberlain, England’s official theatre “censor” until 1968, ordered revisions and deletions before it could run on London’s West End. It’s running now at the Novato Theater Company through February 10. Orton’s look at the savage hypocrisy beneath…
Mysteries and thrillers present interesting challenges for critics. We want to give audiences enough of an idea of the plot to pique their interest without giving away any of the twists, turns and surprises audiences should discover for themselves. Well, here goes. Playwright Sidney Bruhl, once a successful writer of theatrical thrillers, is tired of…
Serial killing would seem to be rather ghoulish subject matter for a comedic play, yet Arsenic and Old Lace has been a reliable audience-pleaser for over seventy-five years. Sonoma Arts Live has a production running through February 10. Joseph Kesselring’s tale of the Brewster sisters and their penchant for helping lonely old men meet their…
Theatre companies love to produce theatre about theatre. 6th Street Playhouse gets in the act with Ken Ludwig’s 1995 door-slamming farce Moon Over Buffalo, running through February 3. Buffalo’s Erlanger Theater is hosting the repertory company of George and Charlotte Hay (Dodds Delzell & Madeleine Ashe), grade-B actors and grade-A hams who never made it…
My guests on the Thursday, January 17 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were Michael Ross and Karen Pinomaki from the Sonoma Arts Live production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Click below to listen: **********
My guests on the Thursday, January 10 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were Dodds Delzell and Chandler Parrott-Thomas from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Moon Over Buffalo. Click below to listen: **********
North Bay Stage and Screen 