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The Bay Area is blessed with many great performing artists, and Sam Jackson (for the sake of clarity – she!) and William Thomas Hodgson (he) are among the finest.  Jackson portrays both females, and Hodgson both males.  And both actors are scintillating.

Keenan Scott, playwright, objected to the widespread notion that black men don’t express themselves. In his play, Thoughts of a Colored Man, they do. Our conventional notions of black silence are shattered by a rich rhetorical tradition of the group that Eldridge Cleaver called the most challenged in American society. In some ways not much has changed since Cleaver made that statement over a half century ago. Black men have an expiration date that expires before everyone elses'.

During the wild and crazy days of WBCN, which is now celebrated with a movie and book, Al Perry functioned as the adult in the room. As station manager he kept the lid on. Respected and loved by those who knew and worked with him Al passed on November 6.

“Così Fan Tutte” was the last of three collaborations by perhaps the strongest composition team in opera history.  Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte had previously written “Le Nozze di Figaro” and “Don Giovanni.”  Acknowledging the significance of this unplanned trilogy, San Francisco Opera is presenting them all over a three-season period. 

It's time for sweating to the oldies. Or is it time for oldies to be sweating. Ok gang, all together now. Get off the couch, Start with a five pound potato sack in each hand.

Theatre Lab, the professional resident company at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, is giving Jennifer Lane's two-hander, "To Fall in Love" its Southeastern premiere production. In the play, an estranged couple turns to a study that scientists claim can help people fall in love in order to save their marriage. The study features 36 questions that each individual asks the other.

Stephen Sondheim was a Class if 1950 graduate of Williams College. Regarded as an icon of American theatre he passed recently at 91. We repost tributes by several members of the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA).

The Ted Rosenthal Trio with special guest vocalist Karrin Allyson will perform their Wonderland holiday show in a one-time event this Sunday, December 5 in Lenox, Mass. Performing jazz versions of holiday favorites and more, they will be appearing at the Gateways Inn in two shows, at 5 and 7pm.  

Alongside the commissions, Works & Process will present performance excerpts and artists discussions of new works prior to their premieres at leading organizations including BAAD!, BAM, Boston Ballet, Federal Hall, Glimmerglass Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet. Taking place in the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Written by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon and directed by Ariel Bock, The Wickhams features many familiar characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as well as some new faces: a no-nonsense housekeeper, a spirited new maid, and a love-sick, enterprising footman. The staff is deeply engaged in holiday preparations at Pemberley, the estate of Elizabeth and Darcy.

It may sound like ‘Heresy’ to some of my colleagues, but for me personally, the gifts that resided inside the genius that was Stephen Sondheim was an acquired taste.

If you like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol performed by shadow puppets with special effects from an overhead projector, Manual Cinema has an adaptation of the holiday classic for you. Its 2020 virtual production of the Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol is available for viewing this year and it’s still quirky and delightful, even though it retains its earlier pandemic theme. (Yes, we’re still in the damnable pandemic or endemic, so enjoy this view of it.)

In "The People Downstairs," versatile and prolific South Florida playwright Michael McKeever presents the Anne Frank story from the perspective of the people who hid the 13-year-old girl and others during World War II. Palm Beach Dramaworks (PBD) in West Palm Beach is presenting the world premiere.

“The Sound of Music”, is a show that the whole family can enjoy. It’s based on an inspirational true story of the famous Austrian von Trapp Family Singers and their escape to Switzerland on the eve of Germany’s 1938 Anschluss, and it’s annexing of Austria prior to World War II that will break out one year later.

As ever in our prayers a universal wish.

The magic of this play lies in the everyday ordinariness of each character’s lives which frequently tend to echo our own. I might add, when the lights went down there was not a dry eye in the house. Nor was there a heart left untouched.

 Lynn Nottage, the first female American playwright to win two Pulitzers, has created the story for MJ, the musical celebrating Michael Jackson.  It has been due on Broadway for a while.  The opening date is now postponed until February.  Previews opened this week. If it stays in previews until the line of tickets dwindles, it will be a financial success.  If it formally opens to reviews, it will succeed despite pederasty accusations.

Shakespeare & Company announces  the first three titles slated for production during its 45th Season, beginning in June 2022. Two works by Shakespeare and a modern production will open the season, which also marks the one-year anniversary of The New Spruce Theatre – Shakespeare & Company’s 500-seat amphitheater, constructed in the summer of 2021.

Donald Shambroom’s art embraces a hybrid notion of the societal whole and the individual as its own kind of whole. He leans on the structure of a visual language derived from Rauschenberg to insert images of faces known from mass media side by side with those of people in his immediate family. Sometimes there is text given the same weight as the faces and bodies.

Roundabout Theater is mounting Alice Childress’ play, Trouble in Mind. It premiered off Broadway in 1957 to excellent reviews. Transfer to Broadway failed when the producers demanded changes the playwright refused to make. Now we get a look.

Flying Over Sunset, a new musical with book by James Lapine and music by Tom Kitt premieres at the Lincoln Center Theater. It features Aldous Huxley ( Harry Hadden-Paton), Cary Grant (Tony Yazbeck)and Claire Boothe Luce (Carmen Cusack), who all experimented with LSD in the 1950s. Both Huxley and Luce wanted to expand their horizons. Grant went to a psychiatrist for a supervised dose of the drug at the recommendation of his then wife, Betsy Drake.

The Woman in Black has drawn sufficient audience to run on London’s West End for over 30 years – second in longevity only to Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap.”  It’s had productions around the world and has been translated into 14 languages.  Not bad bona fides. Produced by American Conservatory Theater it plays at ACT’s Strand Theater, 1127 Market St., San Francisco.

In the dead of winter baby it's cold outside. It's time to curl up on the couch and hunker down with Netflix and Amazon. Here is a cheat sheet of what we've been watching.

This very special concert features the amazing flutist Andrea Brachfeld with Insight: Bill O’Connell, piano; Harvie S, bass; and Jason Tiemann, drums

The Streets of New York laugh and cry as they burst into song in Charlotte Moore’s production. Everyone you've ever met is on stage. Celebrate the holidays at the Irish Repertory Theatre