RTC Tracks ‘Two Trains,’ Three Plays, in Two Weeks
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 14, 2025

The Santa Barbara Symphony isn’t the only local arts organization to try something new at the start of 2025. Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre is serving as launch partner for this season’s national tour by The Acting Company, the veteran ensemble co-founded in 1972 by John Houseman with the first graduating class of the Drama Division of […]

Lights Up! Goes Carnivore for Christmas 
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 10, 2024

The teen theatre company Lights Up! launches its seventh season with an unusual offering during the holiday season: the sci-fi horror romantic comedy/rock musical Little Shop of Horrors. An off-beat work from Howard Ashman and Alan Menken – better known for their Disney musicals The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin – Shop […]

 

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Christmas Concerts Comes to Town
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 10, 2024

The Lobero Theatre has two holiday concerts in the lineup for this week, including Johnnyswim, the American folk-pop duo of married singer-songwriters Amanda Sudano and Abner Ramirez, presenting their Johnnyswim Christmas show on December 10. Two days later, it’s the return of “Christmas with The Petersens,” the concert full of Christmas classics delivered the way […]

A Match Made in Shamayim
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 3, 2024

It’s a tradition, or a cliché, that Jewish families head out to Chinese restaurants for dinner on Christmas Day (at least mine always did). So maybe it’s appropriate to think of I Married a Golem!, a new theatrical work by Kalinka founder Fred Nadis, in terms of ordering off a family dinner menu. As in […]

Dorrance Turns ‘Cracker’ into a Downtown Dance Rave 
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 3, 2024

Does Santa Barbara really need another performance of The Nutcracker? What with the long-running productions from Festival Ballet (December 14-15 at the Arlington) and State Street Ballet (December 21-22 at the Granada) – both of which feature large casts, special guest stars and a live orchestra – plus myriad one-offs from several smaller dance schools […]

Mystery, Mayhem and Mirth: New Broadway Season Opens with ‘Clue’
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 26, 2024

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 […]

The Threepenny Opera: More Meaningful than Ever
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 19, 2024

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 […]

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  • SBCC Does Christmas Before Thanksgiving 
    By Steven Libowitz   |   November 19, 2024

    SBCC Theatre jumps the gun on the holiday season, turning to Tony Award-winning playwright Christopher Durang’s Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge for its student showcase, even before the campus collectively takes a break to talk – er, eat – turkey. A twist on the classic A Christmas Carol, Binge gets all unhinged in a […]

    All in the Family 
    By Steven Libowitz   |   October 29, 2024

    Out of the Box Theatre Company kicks off its new season with something different a few blocks up from its usual home at Center Stage. Family Album – a song collection by Joe Iconis, composer-lyricist of the Broadway hit Be More Chill and several other musicals – will be performed just once in a concert-style […]

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    Doggy Bag of Drama: Theater Company Turns 30 
    By Steven Libowitz   |   October 22, 2024

    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, […]

    Theater Performs ‘39 Steps’ at Speed of Fun
    By Scott Craig   |   October 22, 2024

    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 […]

    ‘Dracula’ Doesn’t Suck
    By Richard Mineards   |   October 22, 2024

    Ensemble Theatre Company opened its latest season at the New Vic with Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, directed by veteran actor Jamie Torcellini and written by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen. The five-member cast played a variety of characters with the blood-sucking count portrayed perfectly – not to mention amusingly – by muscle-bound hunk Adam […]

    Bonkers in Yonkers
    By Steven Libowitz   |   October 15, 2024

    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 […]

    ETC’s ‘Dracula’: Count on the Laughter
    By Steven Libowitz   |   October 15, 2024

    While Lost in Yonkers walks a fine line between poignancy and humor, there’s no such balancing act in the play that opens Ensemble Theatre Company’s 46th season this month. Unless you count the challenge of mastering the fast pacing, quick-change scenes, joke-filled dialog and sheer physicality of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, Gordon Greenberg and […]

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