Sacramento Theater Reviews

Review: PICKLEBALL Is A Hard Hitter At B St. Theatre
by Courtney Symes - August 26, 2024

Pickleball is the fastest growing game in the country, and you can experience it now, out of the heat and inside the B St. Theatre, with the aptly titled Pickleball. Jeff Daniels’s play is an amusing farce about the dangers of middle-aged competition and a reminder to not take life too seriously – j...

Review: Working Our Way Back to See JERSEY BOYS at Broadway At Music Circus
by Courtney Symes - August 21, 2024

Oh, what a night at Broadway at Music Circus! Their final show of the season is the Tony Award-winning Jersey Boys, The Story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, which tells the rags to riches story of the original New Jersey boy band, The Four Seasons. Director Glenn Casale has helmed another must...

Review: WAITRESS Serves the Entertainment at Broadway At Music Circus
by Courtney Symes - August 07, 2024

Waitress, the Tony-nominated musical with an all-female creative team, is heating up the round at Broadway at Music Circus. It boasts an incredible score by Grammy winner Sara Bareilles and a book by screenwriter Jessie Nelson. It was adapted from the independent film of the same name by screenwrite...

Review: HELP ME Plays at Freefall Stage
by Courtney Symes - August 04, 2024

Help Me is inspired by real-life scenarios shared on Tumblr and the #MeToo movement. Director Emma Eldridge of Freefall Stage has crafted this latest production as a labor of love sparked by righteous anger at the inequalities and danger women face every day....

Review: BLOOD OF THE LAMB Brings Rave Reviews to B St. Theatre
by Courtney Symes - August 01, 2024

There are few issues as polarizing as that of women’s reproductive rights in the United States. In the wake of the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, several states have enacted laws making abortion illegal, while many others have bans in place or are currently considering them. This is the crux ...

Review: You'll Go Crazy for ALWAYS...PATSY CLINE at Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival
by Courtney Symes - July 30, 2024

Patsy Cline made it past the cursed musicians’ age of twenty-seven, but not by much. She was killed in a plane crash at the age of thirty, leaving thousands of fans to mourn her memory and music. She is known for inspiring the next generation of women in country music and was the first solo female a...

Review: THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR is Beauty and Mirth at Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival
by Courtney Symes - July 27, 2024

Tucked into the beauty of Sand Harbor at Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park is a stage set against what is, arguably, one of the most exquisite views in the country. The Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival calls this stage home, and I was fortunate to experience the wonder of their offerings last weekend....

Review: Let SUNSET BLVD Lead You to Broadway At Music Circus
by Courtney Symes - July 24, 2024

The best part of summer is Broadway at Music Circus and, as we pass the halfway mark in the season, we are treated to the Tony Award-winning noir piece from Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sunset Blvd. It transports us back in time to a forgotten world of silent films, glamour, and a certain elegance that has ...

Review: Celebrate Tradition with FIDDLER ON THE ROOF at Broadway At Music Circus
by Courtney Symes - July 11, 2024

Tradition. How do we know when to let go and embrace the future? That’s the question at the heart of the latest triumph at Broadway at Music Circus. Beloved classic Fiddler on the Roof has itself become a tradition for theatre lovers worldwide. It was a favorite of mine as a child, and continues to ...

Review: Have the Best Day Ever with SPONGEBOB THE MUSICAL at Broadway At Music Circus
by Courtney Symes - June 27, 2024

Too hot outside? Come cool off with some of your favorite characters in Bikini Bottom. Broadway at Music Circus has transformed into the whimsical town under the sea for a limited time. The Spongebob Musical opened on Broadway in 2017 and its lovable characters have captured the hearts of the young ...

Review: NOW CIRCA THEN Closes the Season at Capital Stage
by Courtney Symes - June 25, 2024

Capital Stage is closing out its nineteenth season with a charming story of healing and self-discovery. Now Circa Then by Carly Mensch is a clever blend of worlds: past and present, immigrant and citizen, passion and apathy. In this show, life imitates art and the lines between those worlds blur, en...

Review: Transcendence Theatre's 'BROADWAY IN SONOMA' in the Magical Field of Dreams - If You Dream It, They Will Come
by Christina Mancuso - June 24, 2024

The Transcendence Theatre Company kicked off its 2024 summer season with ‘Summertime!’ in an actual field of dreams at Fazio Field baseball park in the heart of downtown Sonoma.  Now in its (lucky) 13th year, this company has certainly transcended nearly impossible obstacles to keep its vision alive...

Review: TOPDOG/UNDERDOG Rises to the Top at Celebration Arts
by Courtney Symes - June 18, 2024

Celebration Arts’ season of Black Girl Magic continues with its production of TOPDOG/UNDERDOG. Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks became the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this work in 2002. In 2023 it won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play....

Review: THE NEWLYWED GAME Wins at B St. Theatre
by Courtney Symes - June 15, 2024

I’m old enough to remember when “The Newlywed Game” was live on television…before reruns. It was fascinating to discover how well couples knew each other; so, when the B St. Theatre announced their production of The Newlywed Game, the winner of the 2023 New Comedies Festival, I knew it was going to ...

Review: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at Big Idea Theatre
by Courtney Symes - June 14, 2024

‘Tis the season for Shakespeare! Big Idea Theatre is now showing their gender-bending version of Much Ado About Nothing, just in time to celebrate Pride. This modernized take is playing through June 29th....

Review: Come On Along to 42ND STREET at Broadway At Music Circus
by Courtney Symes - June 13, 2024

Glamour, glitz, and gams galore! You’ll get this and more with 42nd Street, which opens up the 72nd Broadway at Music Circus season. This love letter to Broadway actually didn’t start there. It took over forty years after the film was released to be made into a Broadway musical. It made its debut at...

Review: THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO at Freefall Stage
by Courtney Symes - June 11, 2024

Long before Walt Disney, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio entertained children in a weekly Italian magazine. In 1883 it was turned into a novel and has since inspired many adaptations, including the play currently running at Freefall Stage. The True Adventures of Pinocchio, adapted by Louis Lippa, is showi...

Review: THE GOAT is Brilliant Comedy at The Stage At Burke Junction
by Courtney Symes - June 08, 2024

Edward Albee, whose odd middle-aged characters have fascinated American theatre-goers since 1962’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, explores what is perhaps his most interesting family dynamic in the 2002 Tony Award-winning play The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? The play is, as you might imagine, about a ...

Review: THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM at Black Point Theatre
by Courtney Symes - May 15, 2024

Death becomes her…I think. Or maybe it becomes him. Someone might be dead. Or not. Florian Zeller’s The Height of the Storm leaves many unanswered questions at the Black Point Theatre, ones that I’m not sure I will ever understand. I suppose that’s the point, as Zeller said, “…For me the theatre is,...

Review: CRY IT OUT Delivers the Laughs at Capital Stage
by Courtney Symes - May 10, 2024

Just in time for Mother’s Day, Capital Stage has revealed a play that is perfect for celebrating mothers. It also happens to be my favorite of their offerings to date. Cry it Out, by Molly Smith Metzler, tackles an important conversation that often gets overlooked, and does it with insight, grace, a...

Review: COME FROM AWAY at Gallo Center For The Arts
by Courtney Symes - May 06, 2024

September 11, 2001, is a date that is seared into the consciousness of everyone old enough to remember the events of that day. While the tragedy was overwhelming, the courage and solidarity that emerged was overflowing. Come From Away shows some of the best of humanity and leaves us with hope that h...

Review: THE ODD COUPLE-FEMALE VERSION at Women's Theatre Collective
by Courtney Symes - May 02, 2024

When we hear The Odd Couple, most people imagine the 1970s television series starring Walter Matthau and Art Carney. What some might not know was that it originated as a Neil Simon play on Broadway in 1965. After the success of the film and television versions, Simon adapted the play in 1985 to feat...

Review: Student Spotlight on ALICE BY HEART at The Stage At Burke Junction
by Courtney Symes - April 27, 2024

I had a unique opportunity last weekend to experience a completely student-run production of a show that has intrigued me since I first heard of it. Alice by Heart is a musical with music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics and book by Steven Sater (with Jessie Nelson), the duo responsible for Spring Awakeni...

Review: WIPEOUT Rides a Wave of Success at B Street Theatre
by Courtney Symes - April 26, 2024

The B Street Theatre has been riding a wave of hit after hit, continuing with Aurora Real de Asua’s surfing comedy, Wipeout. Set in one of my favorite locales, Santa Cruz, Wipeout explores the friendship between three unique women. Rolling surfboards, a hunky instructor, and the bluntness that comes...

Review: ANNIE is Earning Ovations at Broadway Sacramento
by Courtney Symes - April 17, 2024

America’s most endearing, optimistic orphan is back in Sacramento and she has a powerful posse of bunkmates backing her up. Almost fifty years after her debut, Annie is as relevant as ever and still stealing hearts with her smarts and sass. After taking home seven Tony Awards in 1977, the show went ...