Broadway audiences didn’t know what they had in their midst when a new rock and roll musical, dealing with high school angst, drama, and romance, opened at the Eden Theatre in 1972. Six years later, the iconic film was released, a subsequent sequel, and two more Broadway revivals. When Grease gets done nowadays, it takes a strong vision and harnessing of nostalgia (and assumed nostalgia) for the title and the material to seem urgent, relevant, and applicable. Now, with respec

One of the earliest jukebox bio-musicals in our modern era is Alan Janes’s Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, a show that brings so many highlights of the era and titular singer with his band, The Crickets, to stage. The show really knows no version of “medley,” which expedites the running time in favor of the audience's attention span to hear the hits while not sitting through a full presentation of the artist’s life. However, director Mark Standriff has helmed a production that

Among the two times I’ve previously seen Dear Evan Hansen on stage–and that film we don’t talk about–I’ve never been able to crack why there’s such a hardcore love for and connection to Evan. To be fair, I was bawling when I first saw it on Broadway, but it was due to Michael Park’s (as Larry Murphy) hard-hearted softening in the finale of act one that got me. Platt nailed the role, but I didn’t walk away feeling more than entertained by a mostly great score. However, Shine!

The Spectral Raven Theatre Company is closing out Maria Coon’s four-act play, Balada de Muerte, a dramatization of La Llorona, an iconic figure in Mexican folklore. Written and directed by company owner and founder Maria Coon, Balada de Muerte is a script which reads and speaks with heart, horror, and haunting humanization while still finding its legs as a balanced production. Currently staged in the cozy, welcoming Dulce UpFront venue, Coon’s writing fully honors how Mexican

Day 2 of the Rogue Festival brought me to six very different performances across three different venues. Below are my thoughts! Rooted, Reaching: We Carry Each Other Aleno Dance Project brings a most-impressive feat of a show to the Hart’s Haven venue, and by that I mean the entire venue. Audiences will be treated to a six-part dance show that begins in the front of the bookstore, makes its way through the bookstore proper, has a couple of acts in the performance space, a pi

Friday night lights: Rogue-style brought me to three very different shows and my first guest spot for the Festival! Cassini LIVE (#933) Rogue 2026 kicked off, for me, with the newly award-winning Cassini LIVE, an operatic-cinematic theatrical piece that is sure to give you awe and pause. Led by live organist Tony Imperatice and singer Bernadette LaMontagne-Schenek, this show delivers an appreciation, if not a wholly engaging celestial lesson, on the Cassini mission to Saturn

There’s a daunting thrill when sitting down for a solo show. The comfort in knowing that one actor has decided to dedicate time for immense preparation, nuance, and allure to carry a whole show, perform a whole script, take up the entire stage, is one that comes from trust in the earliest moments of the play. The first time a solo performer takes on the mannerisms, or voice, or characteristics of the next character is when that trust is either earned or broken. Thankfully, Vi

I find the stage adaptation of Mary Poppins to be an absolute delight by being one of the stronger screen-to-stage adaptations in the Disney canon. The songs and plot hold true when done right in front of you, and the added plots and tunes service the whimsy of Poppins and Bert while supporting the lessons learned for the Banks family. Good Company Players is tapping away with a marvelous production of this classic, making this the very spoonful of musical theatre sugar you’l

Kicking off the 2026 Good Company Players’ 2nd Space season is David MacGregor’s Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear. This cozy, crafty mystery is helmed by Denise Graziani, who lets the comedy breathe and expositional reveals intrigue. The structure of a Sherlock Holmes tale is a time-tested source for entertainment, whether on the page, stage, or screen, and Graziani’s staging of the stellar cast fits this production perfectly. Gordon Moore takes on the tit

Every year, many people post their end-of-year highlights. I’ve done this same thing, in various forms, over the years, dating back to the Tumblr days. However, this past year I’ve read less, I’ve watched less, and I’ve listened to less. But not in a bad way. My high school theatre program is busier and more bustling than ever; I started my graduate work in pursuit of my MFA in Playwriting; and I–in partnership with my incredible wife, known in my writing as The Mrs.–have kep

Oscar Wilde’s Salome is a story that adapts the story of John the Baptist with message-and-moral-driven faithfulness, but set in more urgent, contemporary language. Princess Salome utilizes the power of allure and gift for discerning Herod’s weakness allows her to achieve a most dastardly, self-serving deed, and one that seems to not pay off how she had hoped. Summer Session-Plevney has helmed a sturdy, riveting production at Fresno City College's Theatre department by settin

A vibrant, poignant, and thoroughly entertaining production of Godspell is blessing the Fresno State University Theatre stage. John Michael Tebelak and Stephen Schwartz's parables set to music invites audiences to experience Jesus’ teachings while enjoying skit-style scenes and songs which take a vibe, a verse, or a plot point and give its musical due. Director J. Daniel Herring, in choreographic collaboration with Kenneth Balint and the cast, is delivering a superb, smart, a

Good Company Players is currently running an absolutely loverly production of the Lerner and Loewe classic, My Fair Lady . The story, on paper, is nearly outdated in its acceptance of gender and class roles; specifically how it assumes the higher position of privilege at the expense and degradation of those in the lower. But, when helmed by a director with a sharp eye for when those in power can be laughed at rather than with , audiences are in for a treat as entertaining as

Masquerade (#926) Thanks to the graciousness of my wife, I was able to finagle a trip in time to see the closing of The Phantom of the Opera before it left The Majestic Theatre a few years back. I was transfixed by the stage craft, engulfed in the story, and swept up by hearing the score and seeing the company deliver an iconic piece of mega commercial theatre. When I saw Masquerade , a currently running immersive iteration of … Phantom …, my guest and I had just one comment

While many Golden Age musicals are reaching the end of their mainstream relevancy, The Sound of Music only grows in its urgency while...

Bram Stoker created one of the most riveting, terrifying, and dramatically sound characters when he wrote Dracula. Gordon Greenberg and...

Disney’s Frozen is making its Central Valley premiere at Good Company Players, and this production serves as a frozen respite from the...

My first trip to Minnesota afforded me the pleasure in seeing The Guthrie Theater’s currently running production of Cabaret , a musical...

Just a year shy of this nation’s semi-quincentennial is a new production of 1776 playing at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater. Easier to say...

One of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, where gender roles and rivalrous dynamics are at the crux of the plot, The Taming of the Shrew...