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: “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: “Sex with Strangers” in Santa Rosa

“Who are you?” That’s the opening line from Laura Eason’s Sex with Strangers, running now through February 17 at Left Edge Theatre. It’s a question that lingers throughout the Diane Bailey-directed production. In the good ol’ days, getting to know someone meant hanging out, dating, talking on the phone for hours, etc. With the advent…

Review: “Hamlet” in Rohnert Park

To see or not to see? That is the question. Anyone with even the slightest interest in theatre has probably seen a production or two of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in their lifetime.  Considered by many to be Shakespeare’s – if not the world’s – greatest play, it’s one-third ghost story, one-third dysfunctional family drama, and…