Review: “Evil Dead: The Musical” in Healdsburg

If the lack of a splatter zone is what’s kept you from returning to live theater, do the Raven Players have a show for you. Evil Dead: The Musical is running at the Raven Performing Arts Theater in Healdsburg through October 29. Based on the Sam Raimi classic cult horror film trilogy, playwright George Reinblatt…

Review: “Hello, Dolly!” in Rohnert Park

North Bay audiences finally got a chance to say “hello” to Dolly Gallagher Levi after the curtain rose on the bureaucratically-delayed Spreckels Theatre Company production of Hello, Dolly! Veteran director Elly Lichenstein makes her Spreckels debut with the Jerry Herman classic now running at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park through Oct 15. …

Interview – Spreckels’ “Hello, Dolly!”

My guests on the “Theatre Thursday” segment on the September 28 broadcast of The Drive on 95.5 were Elly Lichenstein and Sheri Lee Miller from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of Hello, Dolly! Due to some administrative issues, the show’s scheduled September 29 opening has been temporarily delayed. Click the link at the bottom of…

Review: “The Addams Family Musical” in Napa

The Addams Family first appeared on the scene in 1938 in a series of single panel comics drawn by cartoonist Charles Addams and published in the New Yorker magazine and has been a presence in American pop culture ever since. Fairly dark and macabre in nature, the original tone was lightened significantly for the 1960’s…

Review: “Theater Camp”

Dear Evan Hansen‘s Ben Platt plays a 14-year-old middle schooler who… Just kidding. I never went to theater camp, but I was involved in enough theater from elementary through high school that I recognized a lot of the characters and situations in this film. It’s an affectionate look at the world of youth theatre, best…

Review: “The Full Monty” in Glen Ellen

There was a period of time when musical theatre creators temporarily averted their gaze from Hollywood as a prime source for material and looked to the British film industry instead. Films like Billy Elliot and Kinky Boots had very successful musical adaptations on Broadway, but the trend started with The Full Monty. Transcendence Theatre Company…

Review: “Guys and Dolls” in Sonoma

The name Damon Runyon probably means little to most today, but in the early to mid-twentieth century he was a celebrated journalist, sports columnist, and author. His short stories about New York and Broadway contained such colorful characters that the term “Runyonesque” was coined to describe the type of gamblers, gangsters, hoods, and show people…