Tag archives: theater
Don’t make this mix-up mistake: The marvelously mesmerizing performance of MOMIX Alice at the Granada in October was actually a make-up from a date postponed by the water damage at the theater last winter. So American Theatre Guild’s 2024-25 season of Broadway at the Granada isn’t getting underway until November 26-27, when the official North […]
If truth be told, UCSB Theater’s Annie Torsiglieri probably would have preferred that The Threepenny Opera, which she is directing at UCSB’s Performing Arts Theater, wouldn’t have turned out quite so resonant for its November 15-23 run. But she very intentionally chose Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s groundbreaking musical – and dark satirical commentary on […]
Santa Barbara’s three major public high schools’ theaters are all buzzing this weekend with their big fall productions. SBHS’s Teenage Wasteland is an original piece of theater created by the Theatre Department’s 19 performers, including three student designers and eight ensemble members who have come up with a combined performance, concert, love story, fashion show […]
The Westmont Theatre Arts Department staged a hilarious version of John Buchan’s The 39 Steps that brought plenty of laughs through an unrelenting barrage of creative set-design gags and physical comedy. Director Mitchell Thomas masterfully squeezes out every laugh while navigating a plot that doesn’t take itself seriously. This was good lighthearted fun at its […]
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre’s 13 Tongues at the Granada brought the sights and sounds of Taiwan’s legendary night markets to life in all their human and spiritual dimensions. Mixing traditional storytelling with futuristic imagery and shifting between folk, classical and electronic music sources, the energized production, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series, […]
For the last several years, New Beginnings’ annual fall fundraiser has moved beyond the typical wine-and-dine gala concept to actually put the focus on the longtime nonprofit’s areas of service – via presenting a theatrical event that mirrors themes of issues it works to combat. This year’s offering, The Boys Next Door, examines issues of […]
DramaDogs Theater Company is celebrating three decades of presenting compelling and largely offbeat theater with a new production called HERE! This Moment for Women, featuring a series of dramatic short plays and monologues by contemporary playwrights E. M. Lewis and James Still. The pieces highlight women’s grit, resiliency, longing, sorrow and wonder, such that, collectively, […]
Westmont theatre offers The 39 Steps – a fast-paced murder mystery and international espionage plot, encompassing numerous characters played by just five actors – from October 25-26 at 7:30 pm and October 31 at 9 pm, November 1-2 at 7:30 pm and November 2 at 2 pm, all in Porter Theatre. Purchase tickets, which cost […]
Back in 1924, when Edward A. Johnson celebrated the opening of his spectacular Granada Theatre, he arranged for a program that highlighted the flexibility of the new venue. In addition to one of the first-ever 3-D movies, cartoons, a ballet performance, and the world premiere of Mae Murray’s Mademoiselle Midnight, he hired Antonio P. Sarli […]
Jonathan Fox was both surprised and moved when he saw Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers in its original Broadway run back in the early 1990s, back when he was still a grad student in New York. “I was familiar with his earlier plays like The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park, so I was […]
In a strange twist of fate, The 39 Steps itself is actually being showcased in another venue over the next two weekends. The Alcazar Ensemble will present Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play, Joe Landry’s stage adaptation of three of Hitchcock’s most renowned stories, October 11-13 and 18-20 at the Carpinteria venue. The thrilling world […]
Ventura playwright Kieron Barry’s latest work, Spy for Spy, is a two-character romantic comedy that’s also a memory play, and a mixed-up one at that. There are six scenes that serve as snapshots of significant moments in the relationship between high-strung lawyer Sarah and free-spirited aspiring actress Molly. These include when they first fall in […]
The decorous sunken lawn in front of Pierre Lafond is ordinarily a still point of shade-dappled peace, the calming eye of any given day’s hurricane. The trees lean in with leafy solicitude, birdsong seasons the scented air, and the good people of Montecito engage in lively conversation, gesturing and gabbing. Into this bucolic set piece […]
Critics have unanimously praised Florian Zeller’s The Father, a play that takes the unusual perspective of presenting the world from the vantage of an elderly but still elegant man going through progressive stages of dementia. His shifting and relative reality – including concepts of such taken-for-granted facts as time and place – wreaks havoc on […]
Elings Park’s two-production experiment in bringing Shakespeare to its charming Godric Grove amphitheater this summer winds up with a pair of performances of Much Ado About Nothing from UCSB’s Naked Shakes, the Irwin Appel-founded-and-directed company that employs minimal props and costumes to keep the focus on the acting and the Bard’s prose. Ado, which boasts […]
The Alcazar Ensemble is staging a second weekend September 6-8 of the Hanne Pedersen Playwright Competition. That competition features four one-act plays from tri-county authors in honor of its late namesake, one of the co-founders of the Carpinteria Community Theatre. Sophie Goldstein’s This House is Legacy traces a neighborhood that no longer exists but has […]
Recovery from the pandemic is still a part of our world, and if there’s anything that hasn’t fully come back, it might be our shared experiences of humor and magic. Combining those two for an immersive weekend is the point behind the first annual Comedy & Magic Festival at the Alcazar Theatre in Carpinteria. Fourteen […]
If Donald Trump can re-post deepfake AI images implying that Taylor Swift has endorsed him in response to her terrorist threat-canceled European shows, there’s certainly no reason that Out of the Box theater company – which is much more politically/socially aligned with Swift’s actual proclivities – can’t co-opt the title of the pop singer’s massive, […]
Ensemble Theatre’s Pay It Forward: Legends of Broadway benefit event last weekend was a smashing success, a sold-out soirée of song which even had some special surprises, including an appearance by the Gay Men’s Chorus augmenting the half-dozen veterans of the New York stage, screen and TV as they all celebrated the music of 10 […]
Social gridlock reigned at the Ensemble Theatre Company’s New Vic when it staged a sold-out Play It Forward: Legends of Broadway which raised more than $50,000 for the theater’s education and outreach programs. The celebratory concert, featuring the music of the greatest musical theater composers of our time, and veterans of the Great White Way […]
