The predominant story in Bay Area theatre in the past year continues to be company closures and the regular announcement of emergency fund raisers to stave off further closures. No theatre company is immune to the financial pressures created by the combination of the increase in costs of doing business and the reduction of income…
If live theatre, which is in crisis, ends up in a doom spiral, it won’t be for a lack of talent and energy from the current generation of performing artists. The stages at College of Marin and Santa Rosa Junior College recently hosted productions featuring some very good work by their youthful casts. Napa Valley…
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…
Within the last year we’ve lost Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim and each passing brought to mind their most successful collaboration – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The original Broadway production nabbed eight of the nine Tonys for which it was nominated and has become a Halloween-season staple of community theatres. After…
My guest on the second “Theatre Thursday” segment on the August 11 broadcast of The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO was Craig Miller. He’s back in the North Bay performing Every Brilliant Thing at the Lucky Penny Community Arts Center in Napa and at 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa. Click below to listen:…
Napa’s Lucky Penny Community Arts Center has been transformed into a high school gymnasium dolled up for the prom for their presentation of Roger Bean’s The Marvelous Wonderettes. The nostalgic jukebox musical runs through Mar. 13. It’s 1958 and Springfield High’s Songleader Squad has been asked to entertain at the Senior Prom. The four perky…
Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions have annnounced their 2022-2023 season of plays and musicals. The company’s 14th season is expected to be their first full season since 2018-19 and will launch in September 2022 at the Lucky Penny Community Arts Center. The following productions are currently scheduled: VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE September 9-25,…
As TV regularly demonstrates, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol can be adapted into just about any scenario. For theatre, just take the plot points and characters, plop them into a modern-day situation and locale, add some songs and – voila! – instant Christmas show! It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s basically what…
What do a 20th century Midwest American housewife turned author and a 19th century one-eared Dutch Post-Impressionist painter have in common? Well, they’re the subjects of two solo shows running now on North Bay stages. Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions is presenting Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End for a short run while Santa Rosa’s 6th Street…
What’s a community theatre to do when it wants to put on a large-scale family musical in the age of COVID? Well, if you’re Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions, you hire Scottie Woodard to direct the show and follow his lead in assembling a really creative design team and cast. Their production of Disney’s The Little…
