by Harry Duke If there’s one thing this divided nation can agree on, it’s this: Dolly Parton is a national treasure. Consequently, anything affiliated with Ms. Parton automatically starts out with a heap of goodwill. So it is with 9 to 5: the Musical. The Novato Theater Company has a production running through October 12.…
by Cari Lynn Pace You won’t need any coffee to get fired up for this outrageous office comedy. With music and lyrics by Dolly Parton, and direction by Larry Williams, this show is an overtime winner. Novato Theater Company put in long hours to hire three female leads with confident voices and pencil-sharp acting skills.…
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…
Marin theatre companies have their collective fingers crossed that audiences will continue to come out and support them in 2025. The New Year in theatre begins with a classic comedy, a musical adaptation of a Sundance Film Festival favorite, and a political drama that was banned for decades in its native England. The Novato Theatre…
The Novato Theater Company closes out their 103rd season with a production of Michael Frayn’s award-winning farce Noises Off. The three-act comedy runs at the Novato Playhouse through July 14. Act I introduces us to stressed-out director Lloyd Dallas (Mike Pavone), who has his hands full at the final rehearsal of a touring production of…
It’s been almost 50 years since the antics of the British comedy troupe known as Monty Python’s Flying Circus were unleashed on an unsuspecting Texas audience by a Dallas PBS station. The BBC-produced series soon found a loyal American audience and a series of feature films followed. Python made it to Broadway in 2005 with…
If you’ve ever glanced at a flyer hanging from a community center bulletin board that offers an acting course and worried about the time commitment required, playwright Annie Baker’s got you covered. In Circle Mirror Transformation, now running at the Novato Theater Company through September 25, Baker covers in two hours what most courses do…
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House premiered in 1879 to great controversy. His look at the limitations and restrictions placed on women in a patriarchal society was considered quite scandalous at the time. Many consider it to be the beginning of modern feminist literature, though Ibsen himself denied that. Suffice it to say that…
Every thirty years or so, musical theatre manages to produce something to which the younger members of a generation latch onto. From Hair in the 1960’s through Hamilton today, composers and lyricists’ use of the music of their time has been an effective way to entice younger audiences into theaters. The 1990’s brought Jonathan Larson’s…
Directors will often change the setting or time period of an older, well-known play in the hopes of making it more accessible to contemporary audiences. Modernized Shakespeare plays are usually the best examples of this practice. Similarly, the Novato Theater Company has taken Oscar Wilde’s community-theatre staple The Importance of Being Earnest and plopped it…
North Bay Stage and Screen 