Spreckels announces 2019/2020 season

On Saturday night, as part of Spreckels Performing Arts Center’s big party celebrating its 30th anniversary, Artistic Director Sheri Lee Miller announced Spreckels Theatre Company’s ambitious, premiere-filled 2019/2020 season. Anchored by a number of major North Bay debuts, the season – which will begin this August – will feature two plays and four musicals, a…

Review: “Spring Awakening” in Novato

Totally fucked. That, dear readers, sums up the teen angst expressed via song in Spring Awakening, Marin Musical Theatre Company’s latest offering. It runs at the NTC Playhouse in Novato through March 16. Based on German playwright Frank Wedekind’s controversial 1891 play that dealt frankly with teenage sexuality, playwright Steven Sater and musician Duncan Sheik…

Review: “Million Dollar Quartet” in Santa Rosa

On December 4, 1956, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley held a once-in-a-lifetime jam session at rock and roll pioneer Sam Phillips’ legendary Sun Records studio. They were labeled the “Million Dollar Quartet” by a local journalist and that moniker was affixed to the recordings of the session released decades later.…

Spreckels to announce new season at free celebration this weekend

Spreckels Performing Arts Center, in Rohnert Park, is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this weekend with a free onstage musical event on Saturday, March 9, at 7:00 p.m. The show will feature “concert-style songs” showcasing some of Spreckels’ most popular and fondly remembered musicals, and will include a bit of a “look forward” to what Artistic…

Cinnabar, MTC announce 2019/2020 seasons

For theater fans, theater writers and theater artists of all stripes, there are few times of year as exciting as that stretch of weeks in the late winter/early fall when theater companies take turns announcing the titles of the plays they will be producing in the following theatrical season. It’s a time for actors to…

Review: “After Miss Julie” in Sebastopol

Sometimes the most interesting dramas are the simplest – a single set, a few characters, a conflict. “Naturalistic” plays, as they are sometimes referred, were the result of a movement in late 19th century European theatre to enhance the realism of plays with an understanding of how heredity and environment influence an individual. The most…

Review: “Forever Plaid” in Napa

Musical zombies rise from the dead to sing an evening of ‘50’s pop standards. Let me try that again. On February 4, 1964, The Plaids, an eastern Pennsylvania-based vocal quartet, were headed for a major gig at the Fusel-Lounge at the Harrisburg Airport Hilton when their cherry red Mercury was broadsided by a bus full…

Review: “Impeaching America” in San Rafael

“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…