Tag archives: Rubicon Theatre

Rubicon Theatre Company brings both the old and the new to its Laurel Street space on August 16, when Emmy & L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award-winning actor and longtime RTC member Joe Spano (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue) stars in a benefit staged reading of King of the Wild Frontier, a new one-man play by […]

Robert Sternin and Prudence Fraser, the longtime Montecito couple with 40 years of massive successes in TV sitcoms and more, swear that their brand new jukebox musical Somebody to Love isn’t about their own lives, even though the story begins in the early 1970s, right around the same time the couple first got together as […]

Last February 2, Rubicon Theatre Company closed out its first-ever partnership to launch the national winter tour by The Acting Company, the veteran New York ensemble co-founded in 1972 by John Houseman via the first dramatic graduating class of The Juilliard School. Exactly 10 months later, RTC and TAC – the latter of which served […]

If all 30-plus shows that make up Ventura LIVE ‘25 at the Rubicon Theatre sold out the venue’s 110 seats, the total audience wouldn’t even reach the capacity of a single concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl. But the breadth and depth of talent coming to the intimate theater in downtown Ventura from August 20 […]

Romantic comedies are notorious for generally lacking depth or containing many thought-provoking moments, lest they get in the way of the jokes and romance. In Constellations, on the other hand, audiences are not only entertained but also challenged to consider the continuum of free will versus fate, and our perceptions of time, place and much […]

In a quirky coincidence, Rubicon Theatre is also opening a musical mashup this week, one that also takes place in a single setting. A Cowboy Lullaby, the latest original piece by the Ventura company veterans James O’Neil and Dan Wheetman, grew out of a jam session on closing night of a show based on the […]

I only managed to catch the first act of Jesus Christ Superstar at Center Stage last weekend, but even 45 minutes of Out of the Box’s local star-studded production was enough to rock my world. The all-female/non-binary cast put a somewhat provocative perspective on the sensational rock opera full of indelible songs by future Broadway […]

About 15 years ago, Broadway actress Anne Torsiglieri, who over her career has appeared in Miss Saigon, Top Girls, Parade, and Blood Brothers as well as the official national tour of Les Miserables, found herself totally unprepared for a role.  She’d won awards for her portrayal of Catherine Sloper in The Heiress at Berkeley Rep, […]

Although he handily won both of his presidential elections, Dwight David Eisenhower wasn’t looked upon as a very effective chief executive a year after his term ended in the early 1960s. That’s the impetus for Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, the new one-man show getting its first local production at the Rubicon in Ventura following […]

In something of a coincidence, Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre also stages a poetic, powerful and poignant family story, J for J – theater veteran Jenny Sullivan’s semi-autobiographical memory play about her relationship with her developmentally disabled older brother, Johnny. The title comes from a phrase her father – famed Hollywood actor Barry Sullivan (The Great Gatsby, […]

Ensemble’s Johnny Cash tribute/story-through-song musical revue winds up its run at the New Vic with a final extended weekend through December 17. The Alcazar Theatre in Carpinteria has a second and final weekend helping of its homegrown adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street featuring an all-local cast and production crew, also closing December 17, the […]

In a strange coincidence, three Broadway music revues have arrived on our shores in sequence, and, as it turns out, you have your choice to see any of them for one night on Thursday, December 7. The Cher Show winds up its two-day run at the Granada, Ensemble’s Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny […]

Given the small and rather insular nature of the local theater scene, Santa Barbara’s Ensemble Theatre Company and Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre Company don’t often open productions the same week, let alone ones that kick off their respective seasons. What’s rarer still is that both of the plays are tackling exceedingly current topics that resonate in […]

The title role in Jesus Christ Superstar was neither the first nor the last major part in a musical or movie for Ted Neeley, as he had a record deal at 22, played the lead role of Claude in both the New York and Los Angeles productions of the breakthrough rock musical Hair, and later […]

TV and film writer-producer Jonathan Prince – whose adaptation and book for the world premiere of a musical based on Dark of the Moon opens at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura this weekend – wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way; least of all the discovery that several big theatrical icons had previously […]

Despite being nominated for the Outer Critics and Drama League Awards and hailed by The New York Times’ critic as a rare “funny and moving, wonderful and weird” play from the “most singular voice of his generation, [one that’s] humane, literate, and slyly hilarious,” Will Eno’s 2004 The Realistic Joneses is only now having its […]

New York Magazine called Ain’t Misbehavin’ the perfect Broadway musical when it premiered back in 1978, the show celebrating the music of Thomas “Fats” Waller and the joint is a jumpin’ scene of 1930s Harlem. Considered among the first major musical revues, Ain’t Misbehavin’ went on to win three Tony Awards, including best musical, and […]

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, the 2008 multiple Tony Award-winning musical that presaged Miranda’s even more astounding success with Hamilton, has been seen in town several times, including a PCPA production in 2016, Santa Barbara High two years later, and, in the 2021 film adaptation, just two months ago at the Sunken Gardens.  But never […]