Drama

"Macbeth stomped about the stage more concerned with his manly swagger than any of the events taking place in the play. If his desire was to make Macbeth a raging, petulant symbol of toxic masculinity, then Witthaus was quite effective. I hope this was the intention," says critic Caitlin Strom-Martin

For the past four years there’s been a new stage in town: The 222. Located inside the Paul Mahder Gallery on Healdsburg Avenue, the risers and lights are used for many other kinds of performance art at The 222.. We spoke with Aldo Billingslea, the producer of the Theater series at The 222, to learn about the challenges and advantages of theater in Healdsburg.

The Raven Players’ offerings begin as soon as Thursday, July 31, with the performance of one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, "Two Gentlemen of Verona," at the newest Raven venue, Bacchus Landing. While it’s technically not part of the Raven Players’ season, it fits the playbill nonetheless.

Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day is a play with deep Bay Area roots. Originally commissioned by Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre and first performed in 2018, it won the 2019 San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Original Script and Theatre Bay Area’s Will Glickman Award for best new play to premiere in the Bay Area. It's now at Healdsburg's Raven Theater, until Sept. 21.

'Two Gentlemen of Verona' is one of Shakespeare’s earlier works. I’ve always thought it was one of the Bard’s easier plays to follow, written before he got all “Shakespeare-y.” It’s the tale of besties Valentine and Proteus whose friendship is tested by, of course, a woman.

There are some great production elements here. Director Emilie Talbot’s staging is clean and very effective for The 222’s unorthodox space. The costumes by Naomi Arnst are excellent. The choice of the yellow dress is especially perfect for clueing the audience into the setting of the show and the time period...

This coming weekend sees three shows hit the floorboards, with another in the wings. From Cloverdale to Windsor, and back to Healdsburg.

Local drama takes another step forward with the next play at the Raven, "Who Will Dance with Pancho Villa?" But the production, which opens on Jan. 22 for an eight-performance run, is hardly new. Gabriel Fraire and his brother John wrote it over 30 years ago and it had its first off-Broadway performance in New York in 1994.

Even those who haven’t read the book or watched the movie probably know the plot: Francesca Johnson (Katie Watts-Whitaker) is a disillusioned Italian war bride now stuck in an Iowa farmhouse with a stereotypical American farmer (Matthew T. Witthaus) as a husband. Her husband and the kids have gone to the fair, leaving Francesca alone for four days... Entanglements ensue.

The play exhibits all the hallmarks of a classic Noël Coward comedy: an early 20th-century setting, an English countryside abode, philandering spouses, lots of drinking and smoking, and witty banter delivered in British accents. That it was written in 2013 is given away by the addition of two non-Coward-esque elements—mass murder and flatulence.