A&E

A Wednesday night “reveal” party was held at the Raven Theater last week, but the answer didn’t come in pink or blue. Rather, it was the lineup for the next season of productions planned for the venerable community Performing Arts Theater on North Street. “Many...

Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina”

The Healdsburg Museum continues its newest exhibition, “Trails to Fitch Mountain,” about the human and natural history of our local landmarks, the mountain and the river, until Oct. 13. Plus salsa and bluegrass, theater and farmers markets, surf-rock and more...

The Healdsburg Plaza will once again be transformed into an expansive open-air gallery of sculpture, metalwork, glass art and painting—not just oils, but watercolor, acrylic, chalk and anything else that can make a two-dimensional space come alive. There will be fabric arts, woodworkers, ceramics and a hatmaker, some new to Healdsburg but many return participants, in the Healdsburg Arts Festival, 2025.

On any given Friday night during the fall, millions of people

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle opens in 1996, with the  discovery of the old board game on a sandy beach. When the box is opened, a video game cartridge is inside which just happens to fit the Sony Play Station the teen-aged son has in his bedroom. We then flash forward 20 years, where (echoing the plot points of the The Breakfast Club), four teens end up in detention for various reasons: Spencer, the Wimp (Alex Wolf) is called into the principal’s office for writing a history paper for  Fridge, the Jock (Ser’Darius Blain); Bethany, the Babe (Madison Iseman) is busted for using her cell phone during a test;  and Martha, the Brain (Morgan Turner), talks back to her PE teacher. The foursome discover the Jumanji video game in the school basement, and are magically transformed into the game avatars they select. The wimp becomes  Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), a muscular, self-effacing “expert” with a “smoldering look.”  The brain develops sex appeal, long, shapely legs, and deadly martial arts skills as Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan) who is clad in a ridiculous,  midriff-baring jungle outfit.  The Jock becomes the wise-cracking, short-statured zoologist named Franklin “Mouse” Finbar (Kevin Hart), and when the babe selected “the curvy genius cartographer” named Dr. Shelly Oberon, she did not envision Jack Black’s body. It takes awhile for the teens to learn to utilize their avatar’s skill sets, but fortunately, the game gives them two extra lives.

Fair warning that this is the sort of play to which audience members will want to bring tissues. It is not a fluffy play by any means, forcing its audience to listen carefully and think deeply about difficult topics.