Front Row

The story behind Terrence McNally’s 2014 play Mothers and Sons first emerged in the playwright’s 1988 film André’s Mother, in which Katharine Gerard, the eponymous mother, meets Cal, André’s lover, at the memorial service for her son. Fast forward a couple of decades (McNally took a little creative license with the passage of time) and […]

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to retain affection for a character after he uses the word “indubitably,” as a punchline. But if the writers and directors of Batboy: The Musical can cram pointy-eared creatures of the night, inter-species orgies, papier-mâché cow heads, questions of moral relativity and sentience versus soul into a play inspired by […]

Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is an unsubtle tale of mistaken identity. It’s one of the Bard’s more accessible plays and one of his few true farces. Staging Shakespeare is challenging for even top-tier theater companies, but North Coast Repertory’s production pushes a lot of the right buttons for a family-friendly, though slightly naughty, night […]

The people and legacy of Ireland have long loomed large in literature, cinema and the stage. So much so, that with its elements of sorrow, longing, upheaval and loss, it can risk veering into well-trod territory, or even cliché, never mind that these are vital moving parts to the historical character of the people. And […]

Rudyard Kipling wrote the original Jungle Book stories in the 1890s while living in Vermont, but the root of the stories lies in colonial India, where he spent time as a child and young adult. There, stories abound of children snatched from villages by wolves, a very few of whom returned as children crawling on […]

Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, known formally as Der Ring des Nibelungen, is a four-part gesamtkunstwerk (bear with me here) from the mid-19th century that is staged in four parts with a total running time of up to 16 hours. It isn’t something that’s overwhelmingly familiar to most people — outside of opera fanatics — in […]

Louisa May Alcott’s iconic 1860s-era novel Little Women may seem an unlikely choice for a musical, but one person’s impossible task is another’s irresistible challenge. Much in the vein of the admonition that one chooses to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard, Alcott’s oft-adapted künstlerroman found its […]

If you’re looking to inject a little magic into the holiday season, Li’l Red in the Redwoods would be a fine place to start. Based on the classic Little Red Riding Hood folk tale, this production draws on myriad sources from around the world, including the cultures and traditions of the multinational cast. The “Little […]

As a story, It’s a Wonderful Life took an odd path to the near-iconographic status it now enjoys. Frank Capra’s 1946 film, while not really bombing, was greeted with middling reviews and less-than-boffo box office, and fell into the lesser ranks of Capra’s pictures. An expired copyright in the mid-’70s opened up the movie’s availability […]