Preview: 2025 North Bay Holiday Theatre

If there’s one word to describe North Bay theatre companies’ choices for their 2025 holiday productions, it’s “familiar”. One company is repeating their selections from last year while two others bring back chestnuts whose memories still linger from their successful mounting on other local stages. Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Theatre Company is the company with two…

MTJA Announces Nominees for 2025 Norbay Theater Awards

The Marquee Theater Journalists Association has announced the nominees for their 2025 MTJA Norbay Theater Awards. The Association, originally formed by a group of Sonoma County-based theater journalists in 2015 but dormant since the COVID pandemic in 2020, has reformed and restarted their awards program in affiliation with the North Bay Bohemian. There are 16…

MTJA Announces Resumption of Annual Theater Awards

The Marquee Theater Journalists Association, a North Bay-based critics group originally formed in 2015 but dormant since the pandemic, has announced their “rebooting” and the resumption of their annual theater awards program. The following message was emailed on September 1 to the leaders of the North Bay theatre community from MTJA member Harry Duke: Back…

Review: “The Real Housewives of Napa Valley” in Napa

Having never subjected myself to watching an episode of any of the hundred-or-so different entries in the “Real Housewives” franchise, I can’t speak as to the source material from which Barry Martin and Rob Broadhurst have derived their musical parody of the genre. I know enough based on the occasional clips that flow through my…

Review: “Oliver!” in Napa

Napa’s Lucky Penny Community Arts Center opened just about ten years ago with a production of Lionel Barts’ classic musical Oliver! The musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist has long been an audience favorite since its debut at a Southwest London theater in 1960. It’s a big show, in many ways, and not the…

Preview: 2024 North Bay Holiday Theatre

The holiday season will soon be upon us and with it a plethora of live theatre choices with which to escape pushy crowds, long lines, traffic, overbearing relatives, and the thought of what January 20, 2025 holds in store for our nation. There’s a conspicuous absence of productions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol this…