It seems like a long time ago now. Not only the late 19th century, when the tales about Jews in Czarist Russia written by Sholem Aleichem took place, or even 1905, when Fiddler on the Roof (based on those stories) is set. But also the early 1960s, when this musical was created — when several […]
theater
Posted inArts + Scene
‘Othello’ in Arcata
When Venice was a great power, its most trusted military leader was Othello, a Moor. In secret, Othello wooed the daughter of a Venetian noble, Brabantio, and as the play opens their secret marriage is about to be revealed. I ago, a trusted officer who may or may not be seriously aggrieved at being passed […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Topical Theatre
In times like these that try the soul, public crises lead to private cries of conscience, and to the inquiries numbered among the obsessions of art. Theatre, arguably the most public and the most intimate of arts, inevitably responds. There are several examples this coming week on North Coast stages, each addressing a different (though […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Bending Gender
This past Sunday was intended to be a very gay day for me. Unfortunately, Humboldt County’s annual Gay Pride festival and parade were pretty much rained out, so I lazed about on the couch for the morning. The cause was not lost, however, since I still made it over to the HSU campus for a […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Madness
Greedy financiers and rapacious corporate exploiters ready to do anything to get more oil to wage more war might well inspire the shock and awe of recognition, especially through the words of Jean Giradoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot, currently at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka. Written in the midst of World War II, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Gem of the Season
There’s a little more than a month left in the current Oregon Shakespeare Festival season, and a couple of the plays I liked and wrote about are still running ( As You Like It, Stoppard’s On the Razzle ), as well as a few I will write about later in the column (Lisa Loomer’s Distracted […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Go Straight to ‘Sideways’
For a magazine piece on the trials and tribulations of young aspiring artists in New York, I once talked to many actors and others in the theatre in different stages of their careers about their beginning years. A lot of people have had crappy jobs, but actors probably have more than most, partly because they […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Manic About Titanic — HLOC show sails into final weekend
When the basic story is so familiar, and the narrative trajectory so extravagantly simple (big unsinkable ship sinks on maiden voyage), it all depends on how it’s done. The Humboldt Light Opera Company does the musical Titanic very, very well. The production excels in every aspect, creating a stylish, polished, harmonized and entertaining whole, with […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Shue, nerd — NCRT’s new production trapped in the ’80s
If you’re interested in a summer night out, perhaps contributing to a worthy cause while seeing some friends and having some laughs, the North Coast Repertory Theatre production of The Nerd will probably satisfy. If your demands and desires are greater, maybe not so much. This comedy is set in Terre Haute, Ind., in the […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Full Stoppard: A cuckoo clock goes mad in Ashland
In the OSF production of Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle, Weinberl (Rex Young, right) appears in the nick of time, as an astonished Zangler (Tony DeBruno, center) reacts and Christopher (Tasso Feldman) looks on. Photo by David Cooper. Playwright Tom Stoppard, who turned 70 on July 3, is having quite a year. After a triumphant […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Another festival, another show — Collective joy at Dell’Arte’s Mad River Fest
They ride beneath a diamond blue evening sky, with the silhouetted solitude of gold-green hills surrounding, and passing of course the wide phantom waters of the Blue Lake. They walk from quiet streets through the unassuming fence into the big backyard called the Rooney Amphitheatre. They seem mostly of the current theatre-going age: early to […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Hello, Tartuffe…
In his roundup of summer Shakespeare in the Bay Area, San Francisco Chronicle drama critic Robert Hurwitt noted the predominance of plays dealing with "bloody, conniving or inept abuses of power," including five separate productions of Macbeth. Even the four productions of The Tempest fit the trend, he writes, since "as famous as it is […]