Maggie Yates - Page 2

Ensemble Theatre Company re-opens the doors at the New Vic with the production of 'Tenderly, The Rosemary Clooney Musical.' This play is a concert experience with a live band that weaves songs from Ms. Clooney’s heyday into a birth-to-death narrative of her life.

Two famous actresses are set to perform their versions of a play at the same theater, one day apart. In this quick-witted farce, the author and fellow actors’ issues with these leading ladies seem to be the problems of utmost importance until a Russian revolutionary enters the scene and threatens to blow up the theater.

Breaking news! The police have been dispatched to Boddy Manor on a homicide call. Our reporters are on the scene, trying to determine the details of who killed whom, where in the manor the body was found, and how was the murder was committed! The suspects include a Miss Scarlet, Mrs. Peacock, Mrs. White, Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and Mr. Green—all guests of the mansion’s occupant, the late Mr. Boddy.

Don Pasquale, directed by Josh Shaw, is a comic opera that pits the vivacious young Norina (Jana McIntyre) and her lover, Ernesto (Matthew Grills), against Ernesto's blustering, elderly uncle, Don Pasquale (Andrew Potter).

Check out the final installments of Improvability, Spring 2020, on Friday nights at 8 p.m. on zoom. Information available at the website: https://www.facebook.com/ucsbimprovability

To get involved, visit TheOutleProject.art, check out the current prompt, and submit! Follow on Instagram at PowerTheOutlet and on Facebook to see the work others have created.

Written and performed in a time when hashtags such as #MeToo and #BelieveWomen exemplify the changing social dynamic, Kate Cortesi's new play, 'Love,' examines the uncertainties beyond the slogans by drawing and redrawing the unsteady lines of power dynamics related to gender and consent. 

Director Brian McDonald does a nice job of keeping the actors rotating around the multiple microphones on stage (or having them add and remove costuming items) to distinguish between multiple characters. The staging is dynamic and the sight gags are clever, and the actors give pleasant and efficient performances, bringing out the warmth and hopefulness of this holiday tale. Ensemble's production highlights humor and heart for an agreeable, well-produced night of festive entertainment.

'I and the Village' is a dark coming-of-age story that explores the actions of a young girl, an outsider in her small American town, who breaks under the strain of underachieved orthodoxy and enters into an armed battle against society. The RTC production at the Community Arts Workshop this weekend will be the play's American debut. '(It) asks us to examine our society's reaction to non-conformity and people who are different,' says RTC actor Lucan Nelson. 'It also asks open questions about America's casual gun use. Any American community will see themselves in this script.'

Overall, 'A Winter's Tale' has visual richness, but the text is all over the place, and additional elements like modern pop music and choreographed slow-motion stage crosses pile superflua onto an existing wealth of 'eclectic' narrative components.

Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, currently on stage at the New Vic Theater, has been noted as a 'problematic' play due to a murky tone that's neither overtly comedic nor tragic. Director Jonathan Fox's production of this story of corruption and temptation is brazenly menacing, with a stylized Gotham City vibe that reads more like a cautionary parable than an exercise in realism. It's a complicated tale that, especially in a particularly sensitive culture, parades examples of that most glorious and horrific tradition of powerful men exploiting, humiliating, and silencing women.

Shakespeare's story of powerful men exploiting their authority seems less outlandish with each modern headline about abuse and harassment, especially in terms of the power differential between the genders. Lily Gibson, who plays Isabella, describes the play as 'almost disturbingly modern,' and Richard Baird, who plays Angelo, calls Measure for Measure an examination of human nature and how power corrupts. 'Particularly in light of the #metoo movement,' he says, 'this play isn't just relevant--it's true.'

Ensemble Theatre Company is going into their summer break on a lighter note with Mark St. Germain's 'Dancing Lessons,' a story of self-discovery through new motion, directed by Saundra McClain.

It's a mad world this summer for the ladies of the Happy Trails baking club, who venture beyond the gates of their retirement community and hit the road. This cross-country expedition is an exploration of the past that brings the four friends closer to together as they visit the place where each lost their virginity.

An upbeat piece, 'Into the Beautiful North' brushes against self-awareness without being preachy by providing likable characters in stylized peril and a timely expression of another side of the "border crisis." The cast hits the comedic notes while sustains the eagerness that fuels the journey.

In Santa Barbara, Ensemble's end of season production is a rom-com about an odd couple that comes together while learning to dance. SBCAST, an art space yet underutilized by the theatre community, will host Dogstar Theater Company's drink-and-walk exhibit of scenes and short plays. In Carpinteria, catch DramaDog's production of The Lost Virginity Tours, a comedy that takes four women on a road trip of memories as they visit the sights of first love. Up in Isla Vista, UCSB is producing the student one-act plays and a main-stage play about a young woman's heroine's journey over the border. Out in the valley, PCPA presents a raucous contemporary Broadway musical in the outdoor amphitheater in Solvang for theatre under the stars.

This high-school-musical season, I got a sneak peek at Santa Barbara High's 'Matilda: The Musical,' with a tour of the innovative set. It's a found-art, craftsy manifestation of the outlandish imagination of 'Matilda' author Roald Dahl. If you didn't read Matilda as a child, get ready for an underdog story featuring an extraordinary girl who inspires her fellow classmates to rise against the oppression of their terrifying headmistress, 'The Trunchbull'.

Ensemble's production features many of the interesting aspects of this search for identity: a grumpy grandpa with a dark secret; an old Ukrainian woman who's mind has been warped by trauma and isolation; an underdog translator with a tenuous mastery of English; and an emotionally clumsy college kid who mistakes the trauma of his family for personal depth. But the adaptation from novel to stage is clunky, clouding an otherwise dramatic origin story.

Out of the Box's FUN HOME is more than a story of one woman leaning into her queer identity while her father crumbles under the weight of hiding his-it's about familial legacy and the unsettling loss of innocence that occurs when you realize your parents are only human.

In celebration of women's history, Dramadogs, A Theater Company presents 'Women Who Defied the Odds,' a series of monologues that offer the fascinating first-person stories of women from history who helped shape our culture.