One wouldn’t think a play that deals with the wreckage left behind by a natural disaster would be particularly attractive to North Bay residents right now, but Sharyn Rothstein’s By the Water speaks to what our community is going through. While it’s set in 2012 on New York’s Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy, the human and material…
At a post-show Q & A following the opening night performance of Main Stage West’s Blackbird, director David Lear stated he felt that one of theater’s responsibilities is to make an audience “a little uncomfortable.” He more than succeeds with this production. The lights come up and through the windows of a darkened employee break room…
While time may heal all wounds, a little human kindness along the way doesn’t hurt. That’s the takeaway from the Santa Rosa Junior College production of Julie Marie Myatt’s Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter. Originally produced in 2008 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, it was one of the first works to address the issues faced by…
One of the oddest plays I’ve seen in a while, Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses isn’t particularly real in its examination of two suburban couples who share the same surname. It does, however, often ring true. Set in an unnamed town, Bob and Jennifer Jones (Chris Schloemp and Melissa Claire) are spending a quiet evening…
Why? It’s a question we ask ourselves daily as we wake up to news of the latest national tragedy or act of incomprehensible behavior. That too-oft-asked question with the most elusive of answers is at the heart of Peter Shaffer’s Equus. Psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Craig Miller) is asked to take on the case of Alan Strang (Ryan…
World War II didn’t seem like ancient history in 1949 when South Pacific made its Broadway debut. Sadly, its warnings of the damage that bigotry and prejudice can do aren’t ancient history now as it bows at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center. Based on James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tales of the South Pacific, Richard Rodgers,…
The choices in life that haunt you take center stage in two terrific productions running now in North Bay theatres. Sebastopol’s Main Stage West is presenting Sam Shepard’s Buried Child while Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater has David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People. Shepard’s forty-year-old, Pulitzer-Prize-winning look at the implosion of the American nuclear family seems as fresh as…
To Sonoma County film fans — including roughly 100 Santa Rosa Junior College cinema students per semester — there is no movie-going experience quite like the Petaluma Film Alliance’s year-long movie-and-lecture series at Petaluma’s Carole L. Ellis Auditorium. Open to the public as well as to students, taking place every Wednesday evening during school term,…
The San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle has announced the recipients of its four Special Awards for 2018. The Special Awards will be presented as part of its 42nd Annual Excellence in Theatre Awards Gala to be held on Monday, March 26, 2018 at San Francisco’s historic Victoria Theatre. The event will be hosted…
Ross Brown is washing dishes. Wine glasses, to be specific – props in the upcoming production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People,” opening this weekend at Cinnabar Theater. Brown, of Cotati, is the show’s stage manager, a role he often fills at Cinnabar, along with a number of other theaters and performance spaces around the North…
North Bay Stage and Screen 