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 […]
North Coast Repertory Theatre
Posted inArts + Scene
Border Dispute
Neighbors can be odd. Next-door neighbors even more so. You’re not under the same roof, like siblings. But you are expected to get along with them, albeit for reasons of geography rather than genetics, and, like family, you don’t always get to choose them. In the comedy Native Gardens by Karen Zacarias, the first offering […]
Posted inArts + Scene
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, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Hedwig Postponed Due to Injury
It looks like the 20-odd stitches Hedwig and the Angry Inch star Morgan Cox got last week haven’t quite healed up enough to go on with the show. During last Saturday’s performance at North Coast Repertory Theatre, a staged struggle over a bottle went awry when the bottle accidentally slipped from actor Jo Kuzelka’s grip […]
Posted inArts + Scene
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 […]
Posted inArts + Scene
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 […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Crowns and Coke
The meaning of the word “Shakespearian” is elusive when tossed around by wags and pundits, and it’s occasionally used with a little laziness. It’s dispatched to label something as being multi-layered, and also looking deep into the souls of people who are contradictory and perhaps doomed of their own making. King Lear has great fame, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Circus within a Circus
Plays offer a look into a different era, with modern productions taking on material written centuries ago. But Pippin affords a chance to see a dual track on that: The era in which it was first staged is the early 1970s. To see it now is a glimpse into that era, but also into a […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Conversations Across Time and Space
My good friend Tom is very much a man of science and mathematics, and also the smartest person I know. I talk with him about all manner of things and while he may have a way of viewing the entire universe in terms of equations and probability, he also sees connections down to art and […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Alternative Farce
The truth is a tricky thing. It can be objective or subjective, slippery or elusive. It can be deep and bitter and hard to hear. It is rarely absolute. More rarely, it can be very funny. Now, lying — that’s funny. Not so much when it’s done to you but in the service of comedy, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Can’t Buy Me Love
The 1937 Pulitzer Prize-winning play You Can’t Take It With You, now on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, is a madcap comedy about an eccentric extended American family. A few columns ago I quoted an interview I did with Jason Robards Jr. backstage on Broadway. The play he was doing was the […]