Testing Family Ties and the Bonds of Sisterhood

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By Ande Jacobson

Dragon Productions Theatre is known for presenting avant-garde works, but where do they come from? Their current production of playwright Colette Freedman’s “Sister Cities” has an interesting genesis. Inspired by her best friend Jill Gascoine’s claim that she was retiring from the stage and would only act again if she could play a corpse, Freedman set out to write a play built around a dead body. Of course she couldn’t have a corpse as a central character without a compelling back story, including something about the corpse’s family and how the death occurred. Drawing from her own experience and recalling her aunt who had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”, she wove ALS into the story as well. Continue reading →

And So Goes Momma Rose

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By Ande Jacobson

Enter the world of vaudeville, the original variety show, and for the performers a tough life traveling from city to city, trying to keep their acts fresh. A Broadway sensation loosely based on the memoirs of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee that debuted in 1959, “Gypsy” takes us into that world as we follow the mother of all stage mothers, Momma Rose, doing her level best to promote her daughters Baby June and Louise and take them to stardom while the age of vaudeville fades away. Continue reading →

Life Goes On

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By Ande Jacobson

War, loss, the future, family, and career comprise many of the themes in Lanford Wilson’s “Fifth of July”. This is the first play written (and the last chronologically) in Wilson’s Talley Trilogy following the Talley family. Continue reading →

A Look at the Sensible 19th Century

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By Ande Jacobson

Picture a 19th century English country estate, complete with a residence surrounded by picturesque grounds extending as far as the eye can see in Sussex. Then picture a somewhat smaller country cottage amidst a modest estate in Devonshire. From there, envision lodgings near Portman Square in London, and finally a manor house in Somersetshire. Continue reading →

Forty and Nine – a State of Mind

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By Ande Jacobson

City Lights Theater Company has a reputation for presenting edgy and provocative works, and its current production of “Nine” is no exception. Debuting in 1982 and winning five Tony Awards that year, “Nine” is a musical extravaganza, full of life, color, and romantic fantasy based on Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical film, “8 1/2”, with a book by Arthur Kopit and music by Maury Yeston. Continue reading →

Dependence on Strangers

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Andrew Harkins as Stanley & Meredith Hagedorn* as Blanche (member of Actors’ Equity Association)

By Ande Jacobson

Tennessee Williams is acclaimed by critics and his colleagues alike as one of America’s greatest playwrights with works including “The Glass Menagerie”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, and his groundbreaking 1948 Pulitzer Prize winner, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, which is Dragon Productions’ current show. Arthur Miller wrote in Regarding Streetcar, his 2004 introduction to New Directions Books’ edition of “Streetcar”, that it was Williams’ “writing itself that left one excited and elevated” as he described his own experience when first seeing the play in 1947. Continue reading →

Coffee Anyone?

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By Ande Jacobson

Continuing its 2011 summer repertory series, California Theatre Center (CTC) adds “Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee” to the mix. Originally written as a three-act play by Christie in 1930, and incidentally the only Christie play featuring her indelible detective Hercule Poirot, this is a production not to be missed. While it’s a little formulaic as part of the murder mystery genre, Poirot’s application of his “little gray cells” and gentle humor keep the audience enthralled through his final resolution. Continue reading →

Pear Avenue’s Season Closes from the Inner Circle of American Classics

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By Ande Jacobson

The Washington Post includes Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” as part of an inner circle of ground-breaking American plays.  Pear Avenue Theatre closes its Americana season with Hansberry’s landmark work and treats it with the deference and appreciation it deserves. Continue reading →

Saratoga’s hills will soon be alive with WVLO’s “The Sound of Music”

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Maria and the CaptainBy Ande Jacobson

West Valley Light Opera (WVLO) is bringing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s beloved family classic, The Sound of Music, to the Saratoga Civic Theater soon.  The show opens Saturday, 25 June and will run Fridays – Sundays through Saturday, 23 July. Continue reading →

CTC Serves Up an Entertaining Evening

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Corinne Bupp / Justin Karr

By Ande Jacobson

Commedia dell’arte, or “comedy of craft” is an old Italian style of theatre born of several stock characters related to specific social types, e.g. a merchant, a doctor, a servant, etc. Physical comedy is standard within this genre, and so it is with California Theatre Center’s latest installment of their summer repertory series. Originally written by Carlo Goldoni in 1743, The Servant of Two Masters is intended as a farce as it chronicles the antics of Truffaldino, a servant who finds himself in the employ of two masters, although the story starts before he and the audience are introduced. Continue reading →