Leira Satlof and her team chose Clue: The Musical for Ferndale Repertory’s 2020 season because they thought people needed some fun. “We chose it because things were already kind of bad,” says Satlof, the theater’s artistic producing director. “We chose a season of things we thought were fun. We thought our patrons would appreciate it.” […]
Ferndale Repertory Theatre
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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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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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A Shakespearean Tragedy-Comedy Cocktail
The Winter’s Tale The canon of William Shakespeare is mostly discussed by superfans and laypeople alike as split between dramas — be they blood-soaked epics of kings or more intimate affairs — and comic frolics. There are a few that can’t be filed away so neatly. The Winter’s Tale, now onstage at North Coast Repertory […]
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Who’s Who?
Buddhism tells us that we are like a bunch of flowers: When we die, we become the raw material to make new flowers. But the original is never coming back. What we, the audience, want to do with this little gem is what the Usher (a friendly, matter-of-fact Jeff Cooper) asks us to consider (along […]
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Old Haunts
We’ve all been there. You’re a middle-aged “retired” (read, talentless) dancer, furtively packing to leave your husband for the umpteenth time, trying to convince your brother this one will stick while he blathers on about his fleet-footed fiancée. Oh, you haven’t? In that case, you may not identify with the setting of Ferndale Repertory Theater’s […]
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Murder Mystery with an English Twist
There’s nothing quite like a good murder mystery (especially a British one — I admit I may be biased on this point). That’s just what’s on offer with the latest production of Frederick Knott’s Dial ‘M’ for Murder at the North Coast Repertory Theatre. If you’re not familiar with the story from the Hitchcock movie, […]
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Free Spirits
The House That Will Not Stand The 2014 play The House that Will Not Stand, written by poet/playwright and Oakland native Marcus Gardley and now playing at Redwood Curtain Theatre under the direction of Michelle “Chelly” Purnell and Clint Rebik, is a spirited historical comedy with music and a voodoo spell, set in antebellum New […]
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NCRT’s The Tenth Muse Reminds Us to Take Nothing for Granted
In the late 17th century in what is now Mexico City, the convent of San Jeronimo was home to one of the most extensive libraries in the New World, presided over by Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz. She was a prolific and adventurous writer of poetry and plays, much beloved by the people of […]
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Nunsense: Sisters Doin’ it for Themselves
The Little Sisters of Hoboken are a welcoming lot, meeting and greeting us audience members as we obediently file into the auditorium and locate our seats for the opening of Nunsense (book and music by Dan Goggin) at Ferndale Repertory Theatre. After all, some of us may have less-than-pleasant memories of the times we didn’t […]
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On the Rocks
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? looms large in the collective mind. Born as a Tony Award-winning play from the pen of the great Edward Albee in 1962, it was adapted for the screen four years later. And this is how many people, myself included, were first introduced to this story — with Elizabeth Taylor and […]