by Cari Lynn Pace * Cinnabar Theater opens its 54th season with the nostalgia-filled musical Bye Bye Birdie, now running in the Warren Auditorium at Sonoma State University through Oct. 4. The Broadway musical (with book by Michael Stewart, music by Charles Strouse, and lyrics by Lee Adams) won several Tony Awards in 1961 including…
The Marquee Theater Journalists Association has announced the nominees for their 2026 MTJA Norbay Theater Awards. The Association was originally formed by a group of Sonoma County-based theater journalists in 2015 with the intent of developing a critically-based awards program to acknowledge outstanding work done by the local theater community. It held Awards ceremonies from…
My guests on the 09/17/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM were cast members Noah Evans and Molly Larsen-Shine from the Cinnabar Theater production of Bye Bye Birdie. The classic musical runs in the Warren Theater on the campus of Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park through October 4. Click below to…
by Harry Duke * The age-old art versus commerce debate takes center stage in The 222’s production of John Logan’s Red. Amy Kossow directs the factually-based but fictionally woven two-hander about artist Mark Rothko that’s now running at the Paul Mahder Gallery in downtown Healdsburg through Sept. 20. For those unfamiliar with Rothko, he’s generally…
by Cari Lynn Pace * Don’t hate me, but I have never been much of a fan of Stephen Sondheim musicals (except for West Side Story.) Sondheim’s Follies, now being presented by Sonoma Arts Live through September 27 on the Rotary Stage at the Sonoma Community Center, changed my sentimental mind. James Goldman wrote the…
My guest on the 09/10/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM was director Michael Tabib from the Curtain Call Theatre production of Ronald Harwood’s Quartet. The comedy about a group of bickering retired opera singers reuniting for one last performance runs through September 26 at the Russian River Hall in Monte Rio.…
by Barry Willis * The black-box Condiotti Theatre at Spreckels Performing Arts Center morphs into Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, a 17th-century courtroom, a torture chamber, an execution site, and more in Bill Cain’s Equivocation, now running in Rohnert Park through September 13. Adroitly directed by Spreckels’ artistic director Sheri Lee Miller, Cain’s 2009 play melds real…
by Cari Lynn Pace * Mercury Theater has done a masterful job presenting the hopes and dreams of a hardworking, self-sustaining seamstress in Intimate Apparel. This award-winning story by Lynn Nottage is presented by Mercury Theater at the old Cinnabar theater on top of a hill in Petaluma. The show runs through Sep. 13. It’s…
Beulah Vega guest hosted the 09/03/26 “Theatre Thursday” segment on The Drive on 95.5 FM and interviewed cast member Mercedes Murphy and director Leontyne Mbele-Mbong from the Mercury Theater production of Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel. The intimate drama runs in the little red schoolhouse on the hill in Petaluma through September 13. Click HERE for…
by Barry Willis * Playwright Lynn Nottage is a national treasure. Her plays such as Sweat, Clyde’s, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, and The Secret Life of Bees are always popular, always entertaining, and always thought-provoking. They tend to run in unexpected directions, which only partly explains their enormous appeal. Petaluma’s Mercury Theater is…
