Khan!!! The Musical! A Parody Trek-Tacular by Brent Black and Alina Roth, now entering its final weekend at Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre, is exactly as described in the title and every bit as fun as it sounds. I had assumed the Venn diagram of Trekkies and musical theater fans was two nearly separate circles, but the […]
Arts + Scene
Reviews, interviews and upcoming highlights from the week in visual and performing arts around Humboldt County.
Posted inScreens
‘Outcome’ and ‘Apex’ Almost Summit
OUTCOME. Jonah Hill’s second scripted feature — following Mid90s (2018), the documentary Stutz (2022) and number of music videos and episodes of television — might be seen as a response to the erosion of his public image after the leaking of some controlling, sexist text messages to his former girlfriend. Obviously, I can’t say that […]
Posted inArts + Scene
‘A Living Celebration’ of Cinco de Mayo
The third consecutive year of the Cinco de Mayo cultural celebration at the Old Town Gazebo in Eureka on Saturday, May 2, offered the large crowd in attendance an opportunity to experience Mexican culture and heritage, eat traditional Mexican food, and enjoy Latine dance and music. Family-friendly fun for children included clowns/payasitos, a bounce house, […]
Posted inPoetry
April Showers
The clouds are leaden with raincoming down in streams over thesea green tree tops of redwoods feedingancient roots, which scientists have discoveredcommunicate with one another, linking themas a family.Leah and I head into the forest on soil the color ofburnt coffee, pale redwood brambles insertingthemselves into her paws, a slick banana slugcurled up at our […]
Posted inScreens
‘Michael’ is Bad
MICHAEL struggles to be genuine amid the soaring vocals and thrilling moves of a rising Jackson. Action director Antoine Fuqua, best known for the critically acclaimed crime thriller Training Day, turns a new leaf into the biopic genre as he attempts to tell a story about a brief time in the life of Michael Jackson. […]
Posted inPoetry
Winter Was
Winter was the blackest nightAnd the gray of dayLady Fern grew ghostly whiteThe woods stayed red and fey Winter was a barren bushFrost on raven wingsThe lonesome brrrr of varied thrushA wren who’s seldom seen Winter was a snow-capped mountPlumes of horses’ breath Fluffy foxes, frozen fountsAlders miming death Winter was a flooded marshWhale calves on […]
Posted inScreens
Beneath the Surface
NORMAL boasts more than enough bona fides to excite a certain kind of audience (me): a script by creator of John Wick (2014) Derek Kolstad, again collaborating with star Bob Odenkirk (Nobody, 2021); Ben Wheatley directing; the promise of small-town, Main Street gunplay. Any one of which should be sufficient to assure a good time […]
Posted inPoetry
Beginning
Beginning is the color of a red poppy It tastes like a fresh papaya coated with a ripe lime It lives in an ending, patiently waiting its turn A beginning is a wave, rolling, like an uncontrollable wagon, flying across the colored sand It’s a palm tree, dancing in the wind like a ballerina Even […]
Posted inScreens
‘The Drama’s’ Uncomfortable Romance
THE DRAMA. The immersive paranoid magical realism of Dream Scenario (2023) made it tempting to presume to know what to expect from writer/director/editor Kristoffer Borgli: another fantasia set against the vagaries of the modern world, defined by wild departures from that reality and underpinned by bleak, comic hysteria. To indulge that temptation would have been […]
Posted inFront Row
‘Bat Boy’s’ Bloody, Messy Fun
Let there be blood. Not blood represented in scarlet scarves pulled from a jugular like a macabre magic trick, but thick and tacky liquid lifeforce spilled across the stage splattering the audience with its faint metallic scent. Bat Boy: The Musical can be the production to do it. Perhaps it even should be that production. […]
Posted inScreens
An Anti-Star Turn in ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’
MIKE & NICK & NICK & ALICE. Setting aside his questionable politics for the moment (which may be an understandably impossible task for much of the potential audience), Vince Vaughn remains one of the old-school Hollywood stars who seems to get the brief. And he’s one for whom, despite my own reservations, I continue to […]
Posted inFront Row
‘Sherwood’ Makes Merry in Ferndale
Had I known Ferndale Repertory Theatre’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood is a complete “huzzah” and “tally-ho” audience-inclusive affair, I’d have rethought my regular theater attire in favor of Renaissance fair garb. Though the show doesn’t take it to the extremity of a Rocky Horror Show cult, this production pleasantly invites the audience to […]