In the pantheon of great American plays, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is surely in the upper tier. Perhaps the most personal of Williams’ works, its name recognition, small cast, simple setting, and straight-forward storytelling have made it a staple of community theatres. Its ease of staging, however, belies its complexity and the quality of…
Bring Down the House By Rosa Joshi and Kate Wisniewski Adapted from William Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is drawing close to wrapping up its ten-year-long commitment to staging all of Shakespeare’s plays within a single decade. That’s 36 shows in ten seasons, with crowd-pleasers like “A Midsummer…
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM By William Shakespeare Directed by Joseph Haj REVIEWED BY DAVID TEMPLETON I have seen enough productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” over the course of my theatergoing life –- at least two dozen of them — that I literally cannot recall anything about the majority of them. That will not be…
My guests on the Thursday, March 5 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were Leslie McCauley, Daniel Dow, Allyson Bray, and Samantha Bohlke-Slater from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of The Cripple of Inishmaan. Click below to listen: **********
It used to be that when a theater company announced its next season of shows, they did so in a mailer. Sent through the actual, you know, mail. But that was long ago. Eventually, thanks to technological innovations, such announcements went on to be made via the internet, through website updates, email campaigns, and then,…
Numerous North Bay Theatre companies have reached out to their subscribers and potential theatre-goers to address their concerns about attending productions in the wake of the Coronavirus. Theater companies, many of whom operate with very thin margins, are assuring their audiences that they are taking all the recommended steps to ensure the health and safety…
The Hunchback of Notre Dame finally makes its North Bay debut with a production offered up by a local music education center. Cotati’s Music to My Ears is presenting the musical at the new Rancho Cotate High School Theatre Arts Auditorium in Rohnert Park through March 8. A blend of Victor Hugo’s gothic novel and…
The plight of British laborers dealing with the changing economic world in the 1980’s has been a major plot element in a number of successful musicals. From the redundant steel workers of The Full Monty to the striking coal miners of Billy Elliot, the issue of (mostly) men dealing with job elimination often took a…
My guest on the Thursday, February 27 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon was producer/director Beulah Vega from the Heroines, Harpies, and Harlots – A Woman Speaks program, part of the Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival being held at 6th Street Playhouse. Click below to listen: **********
There’s irony to be found in the fact that a guy with the surname “Coffin” wrote one of the liveliest theatrical productions I’ve attended in a while. Five Course Love by playwright/composer Greg Coffin is the show and it runs through March 1 at the Lucky Penny Community Arts Center in Napa. The show consists…
North Bay Stage and Screen 