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North 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 Nashville. There’s Angela (played by Daniela Innocenti Beem), queen of her double wide who’s having trouble standing by her man (cue Tammy Wynette). Darlene (played by Abbey Lee), is struggling with being a coal miner’s daughter (cue Loretta Lynn) and the loss of her boyfriend Billy Joe (cue Bobbie Gentry). Finally, there’s Sue Ellen (played by Amy Webber), who’s fed up with the chauvinist boss at her 9 to 5 job (cue, of course, Dolly Parton). Act I begins with their backstories and their individual decisions that it’s time fo

Avoiding 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.” Why? Well, this year we had Patrick Varner as a Streisand employee, Libby Villari as a former Texas governor, Sheri Lee Miller as a ghost, and David Yen as a disgruntled Christmas elf. All were highly entertaining and each came down to a single performer and an audience. The “No, I’ve Got Something in My Eye” Award – I found myself quite taken with two holiday presentations (that aren’t really holiday plays.) Main Stage West’s Daddy Long Legs and Spreckels’ Little Women, the Musical took me by surprise. Credit the per

It’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 College production of It Can’t Happen Here opened on October 6 and closed on October 8. The adaptation of the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel about the rise of a populist blow-hard to the Presidency had a lot to say about our current political climate, but not a lot of people had a chance to see it. Its run was cut short with the closure of the SRJC campus as a result of the fires. The “Show Must Go On” Award – There were many theatre companies that understandably postponed their runs during the North Bay fires. Cinnabar Arts and S

In 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. Christopher Durang’s musical parody of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – with detours through the worlds of Oliver Twist, The Gift of the Magi, and It’s a Wonderful Life amongst others– has not aged well since its 2002 premiere. Full of political and pop cultural references that might have seemed dated even them (Remember Enron and Kenneth Lay? Harry and Leona Helmsley? TV’s Touched by an Angel?), it follows Ebenezer Scrooge (played by Kit Grimm) on his Christmas Eve journey through his past as guided by an incompetent ghos

If 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 cozier confines of Sebastopol’s Main Stage West for this production. Jerusha Abbott (Madison Genovese), the oldest orphan at the John Grier Home, is surprised to learn that a trustee who’s been impressed with her writing will provide her with a college education under a very particular set of circumstances. She must write him regularly with the knowledge that he will never respond. He will remain anonymous with her letters simply to be addressed to “Mr. Smith”. Jerusha imagines him to be a trustee whose shadow she caught a

In 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 unprintable, but it was the beginning of a decades-long quest to determine the authenticity of the painting and its true value. That’s the backstory to Bakersfield Mist, playwright Stephen Sachs’s fictionalized take on Horton’s quest running now at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre. Set in a Bakersfield trailer park, it’s a two-character comedy of desperation that imagines the meeting between ex-bartender Maude Gutman (played by Sandra Ish at her blowsy best) and art connoisseur Lionel Percy (a prickly Mike Pavone.) Gutman ha

The 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 Christmas, a stage musical based on the popular 1954 film starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. It’s the story of a couple of song-and-dance men who come to the rescue of their old Army commander who’s now the proprietor of a failing Vermont lodge. Looks like they’re gonna put on a show to save the lodge, and do it while singing a bunch of classic Irving Berlin songs like “Happy Holidays”, “Blue Skies” and, of course, the title tune. The show opens on the GK Hardt stage December 1st and runs through December 23rd. In their sm

At 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 theatre through an awards process. All were members of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, an organization that has for the past 41 years recognized excellence in theatre produced in the nine bay area counties with an annual awards ceremony. Theatre Bay Area, the largest regional theatre service organization in North America, started their own awards program four years ago, also for productions throughout the Bay Area. While Sonoma County has made a respectable showing in these awards over the past few years –

The 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” of all ages and statuses who gather to gossip, share recipes, and occasionally get their hair done. There’s Truvy (Jennifer Peck), the bubbly proprietor and chief conduit of all local information, Annelle (Crystal Carpenter Wilson), the new girl in town who hires on at the salon as the show begins, Shelby (Ellen Rawley), an independent young woman about to be married, M’Lynn (Jill K. Wagoner), Shelby’s lovingly-controlling mother, Ouiser (mollie boice), the town “character”, and Clairee (Kate Brickley), widow of the mayo

“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 year in Worde Horde’s anthology “Eternal Frankenstein”. The play opens, as most good ghost stories do, in a graveyard where we find Mary Shelley (Sheri Lee Miller) atop her tomb and coming to grips with the realization that she is dead. She finds herself trapped by an invisible force and begins to review her life with the hope of revealing the reason for her purgatorial existence. Her upbringing by a stern father, her romance with the married Percy Shelley, their eventual marriage after the suicide of Shelley’s wife, an

The 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 with the intent of completing its run through October 29. I had mixed emotions about the decision. Most theatre companies have cancelled or postponed their productions. The air quality in the area is horrendous. Cell phones constantly beep with notices of the latest evacuations or fire updates. Thousands of people have lost their homes or have been evacuated from them. Roads are closed. Emergency vehicles from around our state and others are filling the streets. One cast member from this production is recovering from burn

Back 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 to the choices we’ve made in life. Well, British playwright Nick Payne plays that game theatrically with his characters in his 2012 play Constellations, which is running in its North Bay premiere engagement at Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse. It’s a two-character piece that follows the relationship of quantum physicist Marianne (Melissa Claire) and bee-keeper Roland (Jared Wright) from their first meet through a multitude of life situations. Each situation lasts but a few minutes and is presented multiple times, with

Two 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 director/set designer Argo Thompson and his Left Edge team – in collaboration with Pickett – make it work. It’s well cast with Ron Severdia as Miles, a frustrated, unpublished author who’s sunk so low as to steal money from his mother to pay the rent and Chris Ginesi as Jack, Miles’ best friend and groom-to-be who’s a whirling dervish of positivity and testosterone. Jack sees the trip as his last chance to score before settling down. Miles just wants to get out of LA and escape into his own viticulturally-devised world. Th

Titular 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. Both gentlemen do honor to their characters. La Mancha is set in the bowels of a 16th century Spanish prison, where Cervantes awaits his fate at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Stripped of his belongings by the other prisoners, Cervantes pleads for the return of his manuscript of Don Quixote and demands a trial. His defense will be a reenactment of his story of honor and love. He will play the title role with his also-imprisoned manservant (Michael Van Why) as Sancho Panza. Other prisoners are drafted into roles a

A 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 character, simplicity of style. This simplicity masked the complexity of emotions and behaviors that Schulz was able to address in his long-running comic strip. Director Marty Pistone honors both the simplicity and complexity of Schulz’s style with his sure-footed direction of this production. His diverse cast, while bearing slight physical resemblance to the world-renowned characters, captures each one’s inner character - Dominic Williams’ angst-ridden Charlie Brown, Cooper Bennett’s quiet but self-assured intellectual Li