Cinderella‘s magic survives a rewrite
Watching a made-for-television Cinderella by Rogers and Hammerstein is an important part of growing up in a musical theater-loving family. I’ve wasted evenings debating the…
Culture
Explore San Francisco and Bay Area culture through theater reviews, film, contemporary art, and creative events. Featuring original artwork by Loni Stark, film reviews by Jeanne Powell, and insights by ATCA member Clinton Stark.
Wrapped in fog, ‘The Lighthouse’ makes perfect music (Review)
Davies’ score is rife with unexpected turns, as irregularly unpredictable as the sound of creaking timbers on a New England whaling ship in a nor’easter,
BottleRock 2016: Ramsay, Morimoto, Florence to headline culinary stage
Napa is set to once again become the epicenter of all things music, food, and wine. BottleRock returns this month, and as we saw last year,…
A mostly happy Most Happy Fella at 42nd Street Moon
Mention Frank Loesser to a musical theater fan, and you’re sure to hear about Guys and Dolls. The Most Happy Fella is unlikely to be…
‘Into the Woods’ at Palo Alto Players (Review)
Into the Woods is a difficult show to perform, demanding split-second responses, with nary a rest. Fairytale characters busily weave their assorted tales, while simultaneously…
Top 10 arthouse films of the last 10 years
The arthouse. Ah, don’t we just love spending quality time there? If you’re like me, movies — films — are best when they don’t conform. Explosion-free…
‘The Lion’, a roaringly good new musical
“What makes a lion a lion?” Alone onstage with seven guitars, Benjamin Scheuer sings, “My father has an old guitar, and he plays me folk…
Stark Insider: Celebrating 10 years of San Francisco arts, indie film, music and wanderlust (Video)
10 years ago Loni and I started Stark Insider. I opened up a Netscape browser, loaded something called Typepad and “wrote” this piece of profundity. I guess…
The Art of Swordplay on set of ‘Cyrano’ (Video)
“It has timeless romantic inclinations.” Yes, and as I discovered when I visited the set of Cyrano, now playing at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, there’s no…
A swinging Belleville rendezvous at San Francisco Opera Lab
In 2004, Finding Nemo won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. It beat out a very different finalist: the bizarre French-Québécois film The Triplets…