KRCB-FM: Second Row Center
187 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 5 years ago - ★★★★★ - 1 ratingHouse lights down. Cue the music. The curtain rises weekly on KRCB’s early-morning news segment Second Row Center.
There’s a lot of theatre in the Bay Area. With so many options and limited time and resources, how does one go about deciding just what to see? That’s where a critic can be of assistance.
Theatre critic Harry Duke has been knocking around Bay Area stages for twenty years since his days in the Sonoma State University Theatre Arts program. He’s turned what used to be post-show conversations with fellow artists into full-fledged reviews of Bay Area theatre that can be found in the Sonoma County Gazette and on the For All Events website. More than a simple recitation of a plot (you can look that up yourselves,) his reviews are honest evaluations of the components that make a good show good and a bad show bad.
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Episodes
By The Water - March 28, 2018
March 28, 2018 15:40 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBOne wouldn’t think that 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 1992 on New York’s Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy, the human and material devastation portrayed might just as well be set in Coffey Park today. The show opens with Marty and Mary Murphy (Mike Pavone and Mary Gannon Graham) retur...
Blackbird - March 20, 2018
March 21, 2018 13:26 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBAt 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 theatre’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 we see two people arguing in a hallway. The door to the breakroom opens, the lights are turned on and the two individuals enter the room. Not much is said, but...
Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter - March 14, 2018
March 14, 2018 14:24 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBWhile time may heal all wounds, a little human kindness along the way doesn’t hurt. That’s the basic 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 returning veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts. Recently discharged Marine Jenny Sutter (Jenna Rechsteiner) has returned to California after being physical...
The Realistic Joneses - March 7, 2018
March 07, 2018 14:33 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBOne 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 in their backyard talking about nothing (and talking about talking about nothing) when some new neighbors come over to introduce themselves. John and Pony Jones (Chris Gin...
Tenderly - February 28, 2018
February 28, 2018 14:29 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBAsk anyone under fifty years of age who Rosemary Clooney is and they’re likely to respond “George Clooney’s wife?” They’d be in the ballpark (she was his aunt) but what they probably don’t know is that she was an immensely popular musical performer who charted numerous hit songs in the 50’s and 60’s. Changes in the musical landscape combined with a struggle with mental health issues led to her star fading. After an onstage breakdown and years of therapy, she was the rare performer who manage...
Equus - February 21, 2018
February 21, 2018 14:21 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBWhy? It’s a question we seem to be asking ourselves daily as we wake up to the 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 Severt), a 17-year-old boy who has committed a horrific act of animal cruelty. Alan, a quiet boy, has taken a chance equestrian encounter in his yo...
South Pacific - February 14, 2018
February 14, 2018 14:37 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBWorld War II didn’t seem like ancient history in 1949 when South Pacific made its Broadway premiere. 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, Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan took a couple of the stories, softened some of the characters and created an immensely popular musical tale of wart...
Buried Child, Good People - February 7, 2018
February 07, 2018 14:47 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThe 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 ever with a very strong cast bringing Shepard’s oft macabre cast to life. John Craven (in a perfect melding of acto...
Disgraced - January 31, 2018
January 31, 2018 15:27 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBBlistering drama takes the stage at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre with the North Bay premiere of Ayad Akhtar’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced. Akhtar has taken the “friends drink to excess and soon truths are revealed” theatrical trope (along the lines of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and dragged it into the 21st century. Amir Kapoor (an intense Jared N. Wright) is a mergers and acquisitions attorney who’s changed his name and family history and abandoned his Muslim faith i...
The Dining Room - January 24, 2018
January 24, 2018 16:05 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThe plight of the vanishing New England WASP is the subject matter of A. R. Gurney’s The Dining Room, running now at Sonoma Arts Live. No, it’s not a science lecture on the more annoying cousin of the honeybee but a look at the cultural transformation of a specific component of 20th century America – the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Gurney, whose other works include Love Letters and Sylvia, uses 18 vignettes and about 50 characters to chart the rise and decline of upper middle-class Americ...
Honky Tonk Angels - January 17, 2018
January 17, 2018 14:39 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBNorth Bay theatre kicks off the new year with 6th Street Playhouse’s Honky Tonk Angels, a country music revue by Ted Swindley. Swindley, best known for the community theatre staple Always, Patsy Kline, has taken about thirty country standards and wrapped the thinnest of stories around them to create a raucous and enjoyable evening of entertainment. It’s the tale of three would-be singers, each stuck in a rut, who decide to take a chance and follow their dreams of a singing career to Nashvi...
A Look Back at Sonoma County Theatre in 2017 (Part II) - January 10, 2018
January 10, 2018 14:37 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBAvoiding the typical “Best of…” lists that are commonplace at this time of year, last week I presented Part I of my 2017 “Special End of Year” Awards for local theatre. Here now is Part II: The “One is the Loneliest Number” Award - I’ve been asked a couple of times “If you could open up a theatre company in Sonoma Country, what kind of shows would you do?” Getting past the issue that no one in their right mind would open another theatre company in this area, my answer is “one-person shows....
A Look Back at Sonoma County Theatre in 2017 (Part I) - January 3, 2018
January 03, 2018 14:15 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBIt’s that time of year again for the usual “Best of…” lists where critics review their picks for the best (and sometimes worst) in music, movies, fashion, and the like and give people at holiday parties something to argue about. For the past three years my approach has been a little different as I prefer to offer a few “Special End of Year Awards” to Sonoma County theatres and artists. Here is Part I of my 2017 awards: The “Now You See It, Now You Don’t” Award - The Santa Rosa Junior Colleg...
Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge - December 20, 2017
December 20, 2017 23:29 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBIn comedy, timing is everything and the timing is so off in 6th Street Playhouse’s Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge that the fact that it still manages to extract any laughs at all from its audience is somewhat of a Christmas miracle. Plagued with pre-production challenges ranging from a change in director due to the fires to the untimely passing of its lead actor, director Jared Sakren and his cast have done their best to present local audiences an option for alternative holiday fun....
Daddy Long Legs - November 29, 2017
November 29, 2017 14:27 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBIf you like A.R. Gurney’s popular two-person play “Love Letters”, you’re going to love “Daddy Long Legs”, a musical adaptation of the 1912 novel by Jean Webster. Set at the turn of the 20th century, it’s the story of the relationship between an orphan and her mysterious benefactor as told – well, actually, sung – through a series of letters. Elly Lichenstein, Artistic Director of Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater, transports her directorial skills from the cozy confines of Cinnabar to the even cozi...
Bakersfield Mist - November 22, 2017
November 22, 2017 16:47 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBIn 1992, a retired truck driver named Teri Horton paid five dollars for a painting from a southern California thrift store to give as a gag gift to a friend. An incomprehensible series of dots, blotches and streaks, her friend refused her gift and Horton ending up trying to unload the gangly canvas at a yard sale. It caught the eye of a local high school art teacher who let her know she just might be in possession of a genuine Jackson Pollock painting worth millions. Horton’s response is unp...
2017 Holiday Plays - November 15, 2017
November 16, 2017 06:38 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThe holiday season will soon be upon us and Sonoma County Theatre companies will be providing plenty of opportunities to escape the bumper-to-bumper traffic, full parking lots, and crowded stores that are all too common at this time of year. Some will be presenting traditional Christmas programs while others will be giving audiences some theatrical refuge from this often-overwhelming season. Perhaps the most traditional will be 6th Street Playhouse’s production of Irving Berlin’s White Chris...
2nd Annual MTJA Awards - November 8, 2017
November 08, 2017 14:33 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBAt last count, Sonoma County had over twenty active theatre companies, ranging from the nomadic Pegasus Theatre Company to the theatre departments of the two local institutions of higher learning. From Petaluma to Cloverdale, from Monte Rio to Sonoma, the options available for those interested in live theatre in this county are plentiful. Two years ago, four Sonoma County based theatre critics – including your host - gathered to discuss the possibility of celebrating the best of local theatr...
Steel Magnolias - November 1, 2017
November 06, 2017 16:12 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThe unique bonds of female friendship are at the heart of Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, now in the middle of its run at Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse. Based on the life of Harling’s sister, the show debuted off-Broadway in 1987 and shortly thereafter was adapted into the successful film starring Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine and Julia Roberts in an early Academy Award-nominated role. Set in a Louisiana hair salon, it’s the tale of a group of small-town Southern “belles”...
Mary Shelley's Body - October 25, 2017
October 25, 2017 13:45 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MB“Am I supposed to be retelling my creature’s story or confessing my own?” – so asks Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, author of Frankenstein and the protagonist in Petaluma playwright (and former Second Row Center Host) David Templeton’s latest theatrical piece Mary Shelley’s Body, now in its premiere engagement at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West. Templeton, whose previous plays are autobiographical, ventures into historical fiction with this stage adaptation of his same-named novella published last y...
SPAMALOT - October 18, 2017
October 18, 2017 14:39 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThe old axiom “the show must go on” traces its origins back to traveling circuses when, if an animal got loose, the ringmaster and the band tried to keep things going so that the crowd would not panic. Well, there’s one hell of an ‘animal’ running loose in Sonoma County right now and the folks at the Spreckels Theatre Company have decided their show must go on. They’ve gone ahead and opened their production of Monty Python’s Spamalot at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park wit...
Constellations - September 20, 2017
September 20, 2017 14:02 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBBack in my college days when, after the ingestion of a substantial quantity of adult beverages, the conversation topic amongst my friends inevitably steered to the meaning of life, my standard contribution was that life had no meaning, it was simply the sum of the choices we make. I then proceeded to a) throw up, b) pass out, or c) grab another beverage. See? Choices. Who hasn’t put themselves in the position to wonder “What if?” or played the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” game when it comes ...
Sideways - September 13, 2017
September 13, 2017 15:39 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBTwo shows hit North Bay stages whose titles audiences may recognize from their somewhat better-known film adaptations. First up is Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre’s presentation of Sideways, author Rex Pickett’s re-working of his 2004 novel which was adapted by filmmaker Alexander Payne into the multi award-winning film. Adapting Pickett’s tale of a weeklong road trip/bachelor party through Central California wine country to a small, intimate stage would seem to be a bit of a challenge, but d...
Elephant Man & Man of La Mancha - September 6, 2017
September 06, 2017 12:03 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBTitular roles don’t come more challenging than those of Miguel de Cervantes, the Man of La Mancha and John Merrick, better known as The Elephant Man, so why not increase the challenge by casting the roles with performers whose fortés are outside of standard theatre? Cinnabar Theater Director Elly Lichenstein has Daniel Cilli, primarily an opera singer, in the dual role of Cervantes and Don Quixote, while Michael Tabib of Curtain Call Theatre has cast stand-up comedian James Rowan as Merrick....
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown - August 30, 2017
August 30, 2017 13:37 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBA citizen of Santa Rosa who criticizes anything Charles Schulz / “Peanuts”- related runs the risk of being run out of town on the next Smart Train. This theatre critic took on that risk and attended the opening night performance of the 6th Street Playhouse production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I’m happy to report that I won’t be taking an unscheduled rail trip anytime soon. Simplicity was one of the keys to the success of Schulz’s creation – simplicity of drawing, simplicity of ch...
The Farce Awakens - August 9, 2017
August 18, 2017 16:11 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBAccording to IMDB, the budget for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an estimated $245,000,000.00. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here in saying the budget for the Redwood Theatre Company’s production of Brittany Law’s original musical parody The Farce Awakens was about 1/245,000,000th of that. Cardboard sets, Super Soakers for ray guns, and a droid costume consisting of an oversized t-shirt and bike helmet equal a show with production values that would make Edward D. Wood, Jr. bl...
Gypsy - July 19, 2017
July 19, 2017 13:40 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBMusicals are the bread and butter of community theatre. They’re usually crowd pleasers and with their large casts they can bank on a crowd of family and friends to fill a good portion of the house. They require a certain amount of space and a certain level of talent. Directors often cast for singing talent and cross their fingers that acting-wise their choices will be sufficient or that their audiences will be somewhat forgiving. No such worries with the Sonoma Arts Live production of Gypsy,...
George M! - June 28, 2017
June 28, 2017 14:03 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBGeorge M. Cohan was known as “the man who owned Broadway” in the first two decades of the twentieth century. A prolific playwright and composer of hundreds of songs, today he’s mostly known as the answer to the trivia question “Whose statue can be found opposite Times Square between 45th and 47th Street?” He is considered by many to be the father of the American musical, which is why he deserves a better show about him than the one written by Michael Stewart and John & Francine Pascal. Georg...
Becky's New Car - June 21, 2017
June 21, 2017 13:43 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBMiddle-aged angst takes center stage at the Sonoma Community Center as Becky’s New Car pulls into Sonoma Arts Live. Steven Dietz’s bittersweet comedy runs through June 25. Becky Foster has reached the “Is that all there is?” stage in her life. She’s got a job that overworks her, co-workers that don’t appreciate her and a grown, psychology-majoring son living in her basement. On the plus side, she has a loving, doting husband who’s willing to work roofing jobs hours away to keep his family in...
Clue: The Musical - June 14, 2017
June 14, 2017 12:57 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBYour enjoyment of Clue: The Musical, now running at Napa’s Lucky Penny Community Arts Center, may be wholly dependent on two factors – 1.) Your familiarity with and affection for the classic board game upon which it is based and 2.) Your familiarity with and affection for the performing artists involved. Both of those will go a long way in getting you through the show which, though cast with top comedic talent, suffers from a weak script and unimaginative score. First produced in Balti...
Beauty and the Beast - June 7, 2017
June 07, 2017 13:28 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBIf you haven’t had a chance in the last 104 years to check out the Mountain Play, now’s as good a time as any. This year brings an enjoyable production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to the Cushing Memorial Amphitheater atop Mt. Tamalpais and while it’s a trek to get there, it’s a trek worth taking. Based on a French fairytale (which is the source of innumerable film, television, and stage adaptations) and adapted by Disney into a highly successful animated film in 1991, it premiered on Br...
The Money Shot - May 31, 2017
May 31, 2017 14:08 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MB“Vapid” and “vacuous” are two terms that come to mind when discussing the characters in The Money Shot, Neil LaBute’s theatrical thumb-in-the-eye to Hollywood that closes out the 2016/2017 season at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre. LaBute, who’s written such harsh but interesting plays as In the Company of Men and The Shape of Things, has also spent time as a writer and director in Hollywood. If this play is any indication, he has not enjoyed his time there. It’s set at the Hollywood Hills ...
A Masterpiece of Comic... Timing - May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 15:11 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBBig shot Broadway producer Jerry Cobb has a problem. He’s in desperate need of a big comedy hit to impress the Hollywood bigwigs and pave his way to fame and fortune on the left coast. He’s rented a suite in one of Arizona’s finest hotels where he and Charlie Bascher, his assistant, await the arrival of Broadway wunderkind playwright Danny “Nebraska” Jones. Things aren’t going well as there are slight temperature control issues with their rooms and things don’t get much better when Jones arri...
Guards at the Taj - May 17, 2017
May 17, 2017 12:54 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBIt’s 1648 and the splendiferous Taj Mahal awaits its opening. Humayun and Babur, the two lowliest members of Emperor Shah Jahan’s Royal Guards, are assigned the lowliest duty at the lowliest post. They are stationed at the outside gate and forbidden to look in. Humayun dreams of being reassigned to the Emperor’s harem. Babur dreams of bigger things. Babur can’t help but to steal a gaze at the magnificent edifice, and soon their dreams turn to nightmares. So goes the tale of playwright Rajiv...
Tarzan - May 10, 2017
May 11, 2017 00:57 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBIn recent years, when you entered the Spreckels Performing Arts Center’s Codding Theater you found yourself in an undersea world, or on the deck of the Titanic, or in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Currently, you’ll find yourself in an African jungle as the Spreckels Theatre Company presents Disney’s Musical Tarzan, running now through May 21. It’s a stage adaptation of the 2009 animated film and follows the “origin” story pretty closely. Stranded in the African jungle and soon orphaned, ...
Songs For A New World - May 3, 2017
May 03, 2017 14:07 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBSongs for a New World is not a typical piece of American musical theatre. There is no book or “story”, per se, with a standard beginning, middle and end. There are no characters to follow from Act I to Act II. There are no lavish production numbers and set and costuming are minimal. “Songs…” is exactly what it says it is – a collection of stories told through song. They are by composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years, Honeymoon in Vegas) and were apparently written over sev...
Breeders - April 26, 2017
April 27, 2017 00:45 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBSonoma County is, some would say blessed, others might say cursed, with a lot of theatre. Currently running or recently closed shows range from classic fare like The Odd Couple, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Children’s Hour to more modern shows like Race or The Birds. If you’re looking for something completely original, you tend to have to travel a bit which brings us to the FaultLine Theater Company of San Francisco. They’re a group of young theatre artists committed to the development ...
The Birds - April 19, 2017
April 19, 2017 13:56 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBBefore attempting to explain what Conor McPherson’s The Birds is, running now at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West, best make it clear what it isn’t. It is not a stage adaptation of the Alfred Hitchcock film. It’s not set in Bodega Bay, there is no schoolhouse full of screaming children, and no one is trapped in a phone booth by marauding sea gulls. Nor is it a straightforward adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s original 1952 novella. It’s not set in post WWII England. It’s not about a war veteran ...
The Odd Couple - April 12, 2017
April 17, 2017 22:57 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThere’s a certain segment of the “thea-tuh” community that turns its collective nose up at the mere mention of a mainstream, commercially-successful playwright. One of my most vivid college memories is of a member of the Theatre Arts faculty nearly having a stroke at the mention of the possibility of scheduling a Neil Simon play in the season. These artists often measure success by how badly attended their productions are, reveling in the confirmation of how unique and right they are about wh...
Visiting Mr. Green - March 29, 2017
April 06, 2017 16:41 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThere’s a nice, little show running in the 6th Street Playhouse Studio Theatre right now. You’ve probably never heard of it, though it’s been around a little over 20 years. In those twenty-plus years, it’s been translated into 23 languages and been produced all over the world to the tune of about 500 productions. Just this year, it’s played or is currently playing in such far-away places as Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, and Romania. Which b...
Sugar Bean Sisters - April 5, 2017
April 05, 2017 13:02 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBA title like The Sugar Bean Sisters may conjure up images of sweet Southern belles, mint julips, or quaint sibling rivalries that end in hugs, forgiveness and tears. Perhaps it invokes memories of the female singing groups of by-gone days like the Andrews Sisters Wrong. Faye Clementine and Willie Mae Nettles are living out their lives in their ramshackle family home in swamp-side Sugar Bean, Florida. Once a happy family of five, they’re down to two after Mama’s passing, Papa’s hanging (by ...
The Handoff - March 22, 2017
March 22, 2017 16:52 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThe Handoff… DAVID: The art of theater and the inevitability of change - they’ve gone together from the beginning of, well, of theater. And I’m not talking about the pocket change that most theater artists earn for their work, or the mundane kinds of change - like ‘scenery changes’ and ‘quick changes in the dressing room. The art form itself has changed over the centuries, from a single bard standing in the square reciting an epic poem, to Greek choruses expounding exposition, to men playin...
"Race" - March 15, 2017
March 16, 2017 23:33 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBIt has been argued, effectively, that the person most qualified to talk about race and racism is the victim of that racism – not those who, consciously or unconsciously, are benefiting from that racism, or any system of inequality in which they have it better, more or less, than everyone else. Clearly aware of the arguments, pro and con, playwright David Mamet – a white guy – and never one to shy away from taboos or controversy - has stepped into the conversation with his 2009 drama ‘Race,’ ...
"Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf" - March 8, 2017
March 08, 2017 14:11 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBThere’s a line that comes about halfway through Edward Albee’s classic play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Unlike so much of the rest of Albee’s brutal and brilliant drama, it’s not a line full of anger or recrimination, or witty humor, or caustic observation. As such, it stands out like a whisper in a rainstorm. It is uttered by an extremely inebriated young woman named Honey, curled up on a couch after a period of extreme alcohol-fueled nausea, making her barely-conscious remark in res...
"Mojada" - March 1, 2017
March 02, 2017 14:20 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBWell, it’s spring, and the annual Oregon Shakespeare Festival has kicked off its 2017 season with four new shows – out of an eventual total of eleven —the majority of them playing for the next nine months in Ashland, Oregon. The First Four include a frisky stage adaptation of the film ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ and two plays by William Shakespeare – a bloody and visceral staging of ‘Julius Caesar’ and a highly entertaining take on the father-son history ‘Richard IV, Part One.’ Taken together, t...
"Hand To God" - February 22, 2017
February 22, 2017 14:29 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBI’m not sure what it is, but there’s just something appealing—if that’s the word—about watching a puppet – especially a cute puppet – talking dirty … dropping F-bombs, describing sex acts, saying things that puppets don’t normally get to say. Maybe that’s because, over the last seventy-five years or so — beginning with Kukla Fran and Ollie and Howdy Doody, all the way to Sesame Street and Mister Rogers — television has enforced the idea that puppets are for kids. That’s not true. Consider P...
"Evita" - January 25, 2017
February 16, 2017 02:56 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBPowered by some pretty spectacular voices, Sonoma Arts Live’s clever, minimalized production of Webber-and-Rice’s iconic musical “Evita” scores major points for musicality, invention and sheer guts, emphasizing the politically ominous rags-to-riches story of its heroine by removing the massive cast and the elaborate dance numbers for which the beloved stage show first became known. On the medium-sized stage at Andrews Hall - in the historic Sonoma Community Center, just off the Sonoma plaza ...
"Native Son" - February 1, 2017
February 16, 2017 02:56 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBBeauty, one could argue, isn’t always very pretty. Especially in the case of great literature. Richard Wright’s 1940 masterpiece Native Son—considered one of the most important and powerful American novels ever published— is one great example. A bestseller upon publication, the novel has been alternately praised and condemned over the years since, often drawing kudos and criticism for the very same things—mainly, the brutal honesty, stark realism, and shocking violence of Wright’s supremel...
"You Got Older," "Buyer & Cellar" - February 8, 2017
February 16, 2017 02:56 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBPlaywright Clare Barron, a New York theater artist with a fast-rising reputation for crafting quirky comedy-dramas with the ring of truth and an affection for damaged people, is finally getting her shot in the North Bay, where Left Edge Theater has just opened the West Coast premiere of her oddball play ‘You Got Older.’ Skillfully directed by Argo Thompson, ‘You Got Older’ follows a struggling, twenty-something lawyer named Rae, who’s recently lost her job, her apartment, her boyfriend, and...
"1776" "One Stone" - February 15, 2017
February 16, 2017 02:56 - 4 minutes - 1.83 MBTruly effective plays are often built on big ideas. And ideas don’t get much bigger than the Birth of America – or E = mc 2, which happen to be the subjects of two shows currently being performed by a pair of prominent Sonoma County theater companies. One’s a classic, rarely performed due to the monumental size of its cast, The other is brand new, notable for the minimalism of its scope, in the face of the gargantuan themes it dares to tackle. Let’s start with the classic - Spreckels Theater...