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

Who hasn't been tripped up by the slip of a finger while texting with family or been infuriated with ducking autocorrect? Who hasn’t mistakenly wished for the death of their grandfather in a text chain with a sibling and then found themselves exploring options for doing so? That's the premise of 'The Burdens,' the play now on stage at The 222...

Andrew Lloyd Webber bought the stage rights to the 2003 Richard Linklater/Mike White film starring Jack Black and joined with playwright Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey!) and lyricist Glen Slater (The Little Mermaid) to bring the tale of Dewey Finn’s transformation of a group of prep school students into rock stars to Broadway as a musical. It's now at the Raven Theater in Healdsburg.

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.

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

Reviewer Harry Duke last spent time with The Sugar Bean Sisters eight years ago at a production by the Spreckels Theatre Company in Rohnert Park. His general reaction at the time was that it was a very strange show. If anything, now it's stranger.

It’s that time of year when critics look back and attempt to encapsulate an entire year’s worth of productions into one easy-to-read list of the “best of” the year. Why? Because ...

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.

'Heisenberg' is the 80-minute, two-person play being staged this weekend at The 222. Just like the high school chemistry teacher in 'Breaking Bad,' the play takes its reference from the theoretical physicist who postulated that a thing cannot ever truly be measured—the so-called uncertainty principle.