Just as time is a somewhat fluid concept in James Joyce’s Ulysses, so it is in Steven Dietz’s hauntingly moving 2015 play Bloomsday, now in production at Redwood Curtain Theatre. Bloomsday is celebrated in Dublin every year on June 16 — the day on which Leopold Bloom, the central character in Ulysses, wanders the streets […]
Front Row
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Welcome to the Fun House
Or rather Fun Home – the Bechdel kids’ name for the inherited funeral home they grew up in and the latest production at Ferndale Repertory Theatre. Alison Bechdel, oldest of the three children, published a groundbreaking graphic autobiography of the same name in 2006, charting her coming-of-age and coming-out as she watches her parents’ marriage […]
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Is This the Real Life?
Are we here right now? And if we are, can we trust what we see before us? The idea of life as a complete or occasional dream state isn’t new — it goes back millennia, stretching through Mahayana Buddhism to the ancient Greeks and into the Renaissance. In the past few decades, the idea that […]
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Together, We Are Strong
Scout’s Honor: The Whichever Scouts vs. The Energy Monster This year’s holiday show at the Arcata Playhouse, Scout’s Honor: The Whichever Scouts vs. the Energy Monster, combines traditional English pantomime with topical humor and a wealth of local talent for an unbeatably fun time. The Whichever Scouts are the most mismatched troop you are ever […]
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Brave Girls
Return to Oz After battling high winds on State Route 299, I was braced for Dell’Arte’s 2019 holiday show, Return to Oz, and the on-stage hurricane that carries Dorothy away from the world where Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, and everyone at school think she’s a little crazy and back to a version of L. Frank […]
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Christian Rock
Before Evita, before Cats, before becoming a household name from the West End to Broadway, Andrew Lloyd Webber made a mark a half-century back in the nascent genre of rock opera. Along with his career collaborator lyricist Tim Rice, he wrote Jesus Christ Superstar, now a long way from its point of origin but lively […]
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Grief, Loss and Parallel Universes
Rabbit Hole When we hear the phrase “going down a rabbit hole” today, we tend to think of the endless distractions dangled in front of us by the internet. But there are many other less voluntary reasons people dive down rabbit holes and the loss of a loved one is the one playwright David Lindsay-Abaire […]
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Heathers is Very
The 1980s are a decade remembered as a little more feckless, joyous and callow than they in fact were. In line with that recollection is a whole era of teen movies. Some were fun; many are unwatchable now. But in 1989, as the decade churned to a close, there was the movie Heathers, from the […]
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All for One and One for All
France was still embroiled in revolution when the story of The Three Musketeers first appeared in 1844. So, even though the story itself is set in the early 17th century, the battle between republicans and monarchists for the soul of the nation was still being hotly contested. Ken Ludwig’s fun, high-energy adaptation of the Alexandre […]
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Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave …
If you’re looking for lighthearted entertainment that will have you wondering who did it right until the very end, you’ll have a lot of fun with North Coast Repterory Theatre’s latest production. Spider’s Web is deservedly one of Dame Agatha’s most popular staged works, second only in performance numbers to The Mousetrap. It has all […]
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The (French) Women’s Revolution
The Revolutionists takes a fresh look at the French Revolution through the experiences of four women, three real and one composite. Two are familiar: Queen Marie Antoinette (Kaitlyn Samuel Rosin) and Charlotte Corday (Holly Portman). But chances are you’ve never heard of playwright Olympe de Gouges (Alexandra Blouin) or activist Marianne Angelle (Lakia Solomon), who […]
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Fool Me Once
First performed in France in 1664, Molière’s Tartuffe is a comedy for the ages — a hypocritical individual seeks to relieve an impressionable gentleman of his wealth, possessions and social standing by means of flattery and persuasion. Currently on stage at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, the play perfectly illustrates the willingness of some people […]