House lights down. Cue the music. The curtain rises weekly on KRCB’s early-morning news segment Second Row Center. There’s a lot of theatre in the Bay Area. With so many options and limited time and resources, how does one go about deciding just what to see? That’s where a critic can be of assistance. Theatre critic Harry Duke has been knocking around Bay Area stages for twenty years since his days in the Sonoma State University Theatre Arts program. He’s turned what used to be post-show conversations with fellow artists into full-fledged reviews of Bay Area theatre that can be found in the Sonoma County Gazette and on the For All Events website. More than a simple recitation of a plot (you can look that up yourselves,) his reviews are honest evaluations of the components that make a good show good and a bad show bad.
On December 4, 1956, a legendary jam session was held at rock and roll pioneer Sam Phillips’ Sun Records studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Johnny Cash, Je...
Anyone going to a performance of Hello, Dolly! - running now at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco through March 17 - with an appetite for a...
Sometimes the most interesting dramas are the simplest - a single set, a few characters, a conflict. “Naturalistic” plays, as they are sometimes refer...
Musical zombies rise from the dead to sing an evening of ‘50’s pop standards. Let me try that again. On February 4, 1964, The Plaids, an eastern Penns...
To see or not to see? That is the question. Anyone with even the slightest interest in theatre has probably seen a production or two of William Shakes...
Serial killing would seem to be rather ghoulish subject matter for a comedic play, yet Arsenic and Old Lace has been a reliable audience-pleaser for o...
When playwright August Wilson passed away in 2005, he left behind a body of work that has become a staple of the American theatre. As much a documenta...
Continuing with the tradition of theatre companies producing theatre about theatre, 6th Street Playhouse is presenting Ken Ludwig’s 1995 door-slamming...
It’s said that musicals are the bread and butter of community theatre, so here’s a list of the North Bay productions I toasted this past year. Here ar...
‘Tis the time for “Best of …” lists, so in the spirit of my illustrious predecessor and with a nod to the substantial differences in mounting a musica...