Tag archives: SBCC Theatre Group
The 1985 film adaptation of Clue has become a beloved cult classic over the years for its clever way of turning the board game into a movie. Not so much the poorly-conceived 1997 Off-Broadway adaptation Clue: The Musical that planted the dagger firmly into the heart of the madcap murder mystery farce. Fortunately Sandy Rustin’s […]
Dillon Yuhasz played the fairly deranged title character in Young Frankenstein last year at SBCC Theatre Group. He was perhaps the sanest of the bunch in the over-the-top comic take on the famous monster movie. But as out there as that might have been, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Yuhasz’s current show, The Story of […]
Two cops. Three crooks. Eight doors. Go! So reads the first line of the synopsis for SBCC’s production of Unnecessary Farce, which closes out SBCC Theatre Group’s 2025-26 season at the Jurkowitz on campus, where it plays April 17-May 2. Farce was the first play by Paul Slade Smith, a successful Broadway actor turned playwright […]
War, both real and made up – as well as the battle between the sexes and the standoff between truth and fiction – runs through season-opening productions from the two major theater companies in town. To launch the season with a bang, Ensemble Theatre presents War of The Worlds: The Panic Broadcast while SBCC Theatre […]
The Theatre Group at SBCC opens its 80th season with Mel Brooks‘ musical adaptation of his own smash hit film Young Frankenstein in the first big professional production of the show that was boffo on Broadway, one that coincides with the 50th anniversary of the film earning an Oscar nomination. The plot finds Frederick Frankenstein […]
Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks’ musical adaptation of his classic comedy film, was nominated for Best Musical at the 2008 Tony Awards. Now a humorously horrifying new production kicks off two successive shows at the Ojai Art Center, both dealing with well-known dangerous characters but strictly for laughs. The present production is about the reluctant grandson […]
Playwright Ken Ludwig’s first produced work, 1986’s Lend Me a Tenor, won two Tony Awards and was called “one of the classic comedies of the 20th century” by The Washington Post. Six years later, his Crazy for You ran on Broadway for five years, on London’s West End for three, taking home both Tony and […]
Ensemble Theatre Company’s two upcoming presentations were already terrifically timely as they arrive within four months of November’s national election. That was part of the purpose behind ETC executive director Scott DeVine’s decision to schedule short productions of Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground and What the Constitution Means to Me as special events this summer. […]
SBCC Theatre Group closes out its 2023-24 season with Paul Slade Smith’s comedy The Outsider from April 10-27 in the Jurkowitz Theatre on SBCC’s West Campus. The comedy concerns a newly appointed governor of a small state who is terrified of public speaking and paralyzed by TV cameras, but great at actually governing. Determined to […]
“Who doesn’t want to play pirate?” That’s how Michael Bernard explained one of his big reasons for choosing a new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved adventure story Treasure Island to direct for SBCC Theatre Group’s next production at the Garvin Theatre. “It’s such a classic story and it’s a really fun show, which there […]
If Anikka Abbott’s career had taken a different turn, she might be about to sing a soprano role at the Granada in the Music Academy’s opera in Santa Barbara this weekend. As what happens in life, there’s been a bit of a detour, including serving as first runner-up to Miss Washington in the Miss America […]
Fresh from the over-the-top antics, physical pratfalls, and intentionally terrible timing of The Play That Goes Wrong, which pulled out the stops – and mantle pieces and body parts, but no punches on closing night last weekend – SBCC Theatre Group segues into a student production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, one […]
If campy and clever is your path to pleasure – at least in the theater – you can do no better than the mirth-making musical Something Rotten. The show, which earned 10 Tony nominations on Broadway just five years ago, takes place in the 1590s when the theatrically-minded Nick Bottom, whose lot is a lot […]
The Wolves, the first play by former college actress Sarah DeLappe to be produced and professionally written while she was still an undergraduate at Yale, was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Now, SBCC Theatre closes out its season with the local premiere of the piece, ostensibly about a girls’ indoor soccer […]
Not that anybody needs any more reasons to attend a Wilco concert whenever Jeff Tweedy and cohorts come to town, that is if intelligent heartfelt alt-country singer-songwriter meets crafty subtly experimental soundscapes floats your musical boat. (If it doesn’t, perhaps check your pulse or the contents of your metaphorical heart.) But us longtime locals also […]
If SBCC Theatre Group’s welcome back production at the Garvin Theatre this weekend evokes a feeling of deja vu, that might be because the show, now titled Here We Go Again! A Musical Revue is something of an update of one SBCC offered last fall. But while Looking Back, Looking Forward was made inside its […]
R. Michael Gros’s direction of Santa Barbara City College’s student production of Antigone represents both his debut of putting together a show via Zoom and his swan song at SBCC Theatre. That’s because, as he announced on his Facebook page early in the morning of November 4, Gros has submitted his formal retirement papers as […]
UCSB’s Department of Theater and Dance’s new season got underway last weekend with a reprise of its summer production of Immortal Longings, a serious take on deals on issues of power and corruption in Shakespeare adapted and directed by Irwin Appel. This weekend, Appel launches its first-ever Naked Shakes Solo Festival featuring renowned artists Debra […]
Grease was indeed the word at City College’s Garvin Theatre when the 1950s rock musical launched the Theatre Group’s latest season. Director Katie Laris has done a tip-top job with two excellent collaborators, UCSB choreographer Christina McCarthy and musical director David Potter, More than 150 auditioned for the colorful, energized show, with grueling rehearsals, four […]
Don’t talk to Peter Case about craft. The veteran singer-songwriter who started life as a power pop/punk rocker in such bands as The Plimsouls and The Nerves back in the 1970s and ’80s finds hearing that people love his “well-crafted songs” something close to an insult as it undercuts the artistry. Which seems reasonable, since […]
