William S. Kowinski

In the OSF production of Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle, Weinberl (Rex Young, right) appears in the nick of time, as an astonished Zangler (Tony DeBruno, center) reacts and Christopher (Tasso Feldman) looks on. Photo by David Cooper. Playwright Tom Stoppard, who turned 70 on July 3, is having quite a year. After a triumphant […]

They ride beneath a diamond blue evening sky, with the silhouetted solitude of gold-green hills surrounding, and passing of course the wide phantom waters of the Blue Lake. They walk from quiet streets through the unassuming fence into the big backyard called the Rooney Amphitheatre. They seem mostly of the current theatre-going age: early to […]

In his roundup of summer Shakespeare in the Bay Area, San Francisco Chronicle drama critic Robert Hurwitt noted the predominance of plays dealing with "bloody, conniving or inept abuses of power," including five separate productions of Macbeth. Even the four productions of The Tempest fit the trend, he writes, since "as famous as it is […]

Arnold Saint Subber — his name even sounds like a musical comedy character — wasn’t the first to notice that backstage goings-on sometimes mirror the scenes onstage, and even exceed them in dramatic pretense and flamboyant comedy. Nor would he be the last. But while serving as stage manager for a production of Shakespeare’s The […]

In the town of Monroeville, Alabama, a rich man’s son was caught joyriding in a stolen car. His father persuaded the sheriff not to arrest the boy, but to leave the punishment up to him. He imposed three years of house arrest, but it turned into a life sentence when the young man found he […]

Though the most enduring character in the Henry IV plays is Falstaff (wildly popular in Shakespeare’s time and later the subject of a novel, symphony, several operas and Orson Welles’ amazing film, The Chimes At Midnight) they are mainly about Prince Hal, and his journey to become the heroic Henry V. The play of that […]

North Coast stages were relatively quiet in recent weeks (which is about to change – see below) so it was a good time to catch the early offerings at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Four of the eventual 11 plays this season are playing now. Two will continue through the summer (Shakespeare’s As You […]

In cities across the country big and small, new artistic energies have often found focus in abandoned industrial districts, where fine old buildings with lots of space offer opportunities for lofts, studios and performance venues, plus the people-oriented businesses that come to surround them. Now and again the old Creamery in Arcata, in the largely […]

There’s a particular interest in a writer seeing a play about a writer who is too much the observer and not enough the participant in his own life, especially when one is among those reviewers who began as a participant in theatre – as a playwright, actor, director and even a song composer, and whose […]