Jerome Kern. Richard Rogers. Oscar Hammerstein II. Stephen Sondheim. Jimmy Buffett. Something seems off there. Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Gypsy, Escape to Margaritaville. Something really seems off there. “Ol’ Man River”, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin”, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, “Cheeseburger in Paradise”. Ok, I think you see where this is going. In the pantheon of…
My guests on the second of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on 04/03/25 on The Drive on 95.5 were director Dana Hunt and actor Dylan James Pereira from the Left Edge Theatre production of The Shark is Broken. The show runs at The California in Santa Rosa through April 11. Click below to listen: ********** Click…
Theatrical adaptations of popular movies populate American theaters to an often-nauseating extent. Often transmogrified into musicals, producers mount them in the belief there’s a built-in audience guaranteed to show up and buy tickets en masse. While successful Bay Area runs of such shows as Mrs. Doubtfire and Back to the Future might be proving their…
My guests on the 03/06/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Shanay Howell and Tajai Britten from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Clyde’s. The show runs in Santa Rosa on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse through March 23. Click below to listen: ********** Click HERE for more information on…
I recently ventured out of my usual “sphere of attendance” of North Bay theatre after receiving an invitation from Contra Costa County’s Pittsburg Theatre Company to join them for their season opener. They’ve titled their season “Rising from the Ashes 2025” as they recover from a devasting warehouse fire where they basically lost everything from…
My guests on the 02/27/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were director Ely Sonny Orquiza and dramaturg Estrella Gonzalez from the Sonoma State University School of Performing Arts production of Perfect Arrangement. We chatted about the show and the impact of the budget issues at SSU on the students and the program.…
For folks who think local theatre has gotten too repetitive, has Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse got a show for you. Groundhog Day: The Musical, based on the popular 1993 film starring Bill Murray, is running (and running, and running…) in their GK Hardt Theatre through Feb. 23. The show, with a book by the…
Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre continues to push the boundaries for North Bay theatre audiences with another provocative production, this time with a show whose title is usually redacted in print. Steven Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**ker with the Hat runs at The California though February 22. Guirgis, who won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama…
‘Six Degrees of Separation’ is the concept that every individual on the planet can be connected to every other individual through six or fewer social connections. First posited in the late 1920s, it entered the cultural lexicon via John Guare’s same-named play in 1990, so much so that a parlor game in which participants were…
For audiences who didn’t get their fill of Noël Coward with the recent Ross Valley Players production of Blithe Spirit, the Novato Theater Company is offering a second helping of Coward comedy with their production of Present Laughter. The show runs in Novato through February 16. But Coward purists beware. Audiences expecting a traditional production…
North Bay Stage and Screen 