Jerome Kern. Richard Rogers. Oscar Hammerstein II. Stephen Sondheim. Jimmy Buffett. Something seems off there. Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Gypsy, Escape to Margaritaville. Something really seems off there. “Ol’ Man River”, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin”, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, “Cheeseburger in Paradise”. Ok, I think you see where this is going. In the pantheon of…
Theatrical adaptations of popular movies populate American theaters to an often-nauseating extent. Often transmogrified into musicals, producers mount them in the belief there’s a built-in audience guaranteed to show up and buy tickets en masse. While successful Bay Area runs of such shows as Mrs. Doubtfire and Back to the Future might be proving their…
The name Clifford Odets probably means little to the modern theatregoer, but there was a time he was considered a titan of American theatre, fitting somewhere in between Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller. His “working class dramas” of the 1930s (like Waiting for Lefty) were extremely popular with audiences and influential with up and coming…
My guests on the first of two “Theatre Thursday” segments on 03/13/25 on The Drive on 95.5 were Clark Lewis and Jeff Savage from the Roustabout Theater Company production of Awake and Sing! The show runs in the Carsten Cabaret of the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa through March 30. Click…
My guests on the 03/06/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Shanay Howell and Tajai Britten from the 6th Street Playhouse production of Clyde’s. The show runs in Santa Rosa on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse through March 23. Click below to listen: ********** Click HERE for more information on…
For folks who think local theatre has gotten too repetitive, has Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse got a show for you. Groundhog Day: The Musical, based on the popular 1993 film starring Bill Murray, is running (and running, and running…) in their GK Hardt Theatre through Feb. 23. The show, with a book by the…
Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre continues to push the boundaries for North Bay theatre audiences with another provocative production, this time with a show whose title is usually redacted in print. Steven Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**ker with the Hat runs at The California though February 22. Guirgis, who won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama…
My guests on the 01/16/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Trevor Hoffmann and Zane Walters from the Cinnabar Theater production of Gutenberg! the Musical! The show runs in Warren Auditorium in Ives Hall on the campus of Sonoma State University through January 26. Click below to listen: ********** Click HERE for…
My guests on the 01/09/25 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 were Bronwen Shears and Nadia Hill from the 6th Street Playhouse production of What the Constitution Means to Me. The show runs in Santa Rosa through January 26. Click below to listen: ********** Click HERE for more information on the show.
North Bay theatre companies have their collective fingers crossed that audiences will continue to come out and support them in 2025. Holiday-themed shows now give way to the usual mixture of comedies, dramas, and musicals from classics to contemporary works to a short play festival. Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse gets things going in early…
North Bay Stage and Screen 