We laughed and laughed and never stopped laughing. Sight gags and pratfalls and scenic backgrounds spinning out of control and Peter Pan cra...

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley fills the Live Oak Theater with cheeky humor. As the characters treat serious matters like…

Co-founder and producing director Susi Damilano is at it again. Her previous comic stagings include Noises Off, Clue, The 39 Steps and the successful…

Transformative, innovative, and hauntingly memorable. These words encapsulate the reaction to Oakland Theater Project’s production of KING LEAR. The story…

by Joanne Engelhardt Director Dennis M. Lickteig decided to update Noel Coward’s somewhat-archaic play, “Private Lives” by doing a gender switch for two of its five characters. But was it successfu…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s powerful drama about a man spiraling into oblivion, is the latest triumph for Ross Valley Players at The Barn Theater above the Marin Art &a…

To many, Death of a Salesman is the classic American play. From its Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Broadway debut in 1949 through multiple revivals, theatre companies return again and again …

I wasn’t sure what to make of Oakland Theatre Project’s take on King Lear that opened at Z Space on September 25th. What I am sure of - you won’t see a…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Spreckels Theatre Company opens their 2026/27 season with the North Bay premiere of the contemporary musical Dear Evan Hansen. Written by Steven Levenson, with music and lyrics …

Danny Collins as Roger Thornhill. All photos by Rich Soublet II. It’s 1959, and several identically clad advertising exec types gyrate wildly on stage to a flailing choreography drawing from the tw…

What did our critic think of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS at New Conservatory Theatre Center? Little Shop of Horrors, whose star is a bloodthirsty flora, plants…

LEGALLY BLONDE explodes onto the stage at Berkeley Playhouse with a joie de vivre that lights up the house. The high energy dancing, powerful vocals and…

From across the pond, acclaimed director Emma Rice’s latest adaptation North by Northwest makes its West Coast debut, turning Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Welcome to Putnam County, where a middle school spelling bee championship takes place with a ragtag collection of juveniles and two clearly biased judges. William Finn wrote the…

by Harry Duke * Musical theatre is an art form that rarely comes with a trigger warning. One wouldn’t think that a show as innocuous as The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee would need an aler…

by Barry Willis * Theatergoers have a few more days to see CenterREP’s bold reimagining of the Tennessee Williams classic The Glass Menagerie. Performed by an all-Equity cast on a shabby-elegant mu…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Cinnabar Theater opens its 54th season with the nostalgia-filled musical Bye Bye Birdie, now running in the Warren Auditorium at Sonoma State University through Oct. 4. The Broa…

What did our critic think of THE GLASS MENAGERIE at Center Rep?

by Harry Duke * The age-old art versus commerce debate takes center stage in The 222’s production of John Logan’s Red. Amy Kossow directs the factually-based but fictionally woven two-hander about …

"POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive," onstage in Berkeley’s Live Oak Theater, may be just

by Cari Lynn Pace * Don’t hate me, but I have never been much of a fan of Stephen Sondheim musicals (except for West Side Story.) Sondheim’s Follies, now being presented by Sonoma Arts Live t…

by Joanne Engelhardt It’s difficult to imagine a more nearly flawless theatrical production playing in the Bay Area right now than Palo Alto Players’ current offering of “A Gentleman’s Guide…

by Barry Willis * Decades of Cuba’s revolution unfold in the microcosm of an elaborate kitchen in a stately old home in Eduardo Machado’s The Cook, at Berkeley Rep’s Peet’s Theatre through October …

by Cari Lynn Pace * Lucky Penny Productions really delivers on Freaky Friday, the Musical, a hilarious stage musical based on Mary Rodgers novel and the two Disney movies from 1976 and 2003. This h…

Machado’s taut, breathtaking dialogue, the sharply defined acting, and David Mendizábal’s precise direction serve up top-notch theater. Director Mendizábal uses comedy as a brilliant garnish.

What did our critic think of AFRICAN STEW at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre?

A love of food sustains houseworker Gladys over a forty-year arc that coincides with the social, economic and political changes wrought by the Cuban…

by Joanne Engelhardt When she wrote, “The Revolutionists,” playwright Lauren Gunderson was deciding to have fun with that little thing called the French Revolution. It’s definitely not …

“The White Chip,” a one-act play at Marin Theatre, might easily have slipped into being an "alcohol-is-evil" sermon if not for the skills of playwright

VANYA and SONIA and MASHA and SPIKE is a delightful romp with equal measures of nostalgia and hope for the future. With rapid-fire dialogue and…

by Cari Lynn Pace * I was hesitant to invite my friend to join me for Marin Theatre’s Bay Area premiere of The White Chip, now running in Mill Valley through Sep. 20. This semi-autobiographical com…

by Barry Willis * The black-box Condiotti Theatre at Spreckels Performing Arts Center morphs into Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, a 17th-century courtroom, a torture chamber, an execution site, and mo…

by Cari Lynn Pace * Mercury Theater has done a masterful job presenting the hopes and dreams of a hardworking, self-sustaining seamstress in Intimate Apparel. This award-winning story by Lynn Notta…