Sacramento Theatre Company opened its 15 Cabaret production “Music of the Night: The Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber” Thursday night to a cheering capacity crowd. The popularity of the STC Cabaret productions combined with the huge popularity of Lloyd Webber has led STC to offer a second weekend the show. Lloyd Webber, along with his original lyricist Tim Rice, turned concept album concerts into mega hit shows around the world. In his opening remarks, STC producing director Michael Laun spoke about the cast having no shortage of favorite Lloyd Webber songs to the point of being able to do another whole show. The show runs chronologically from “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Add The Sacramento Theatre Company to your list of holiday activities this year: “A Christmas Carol,” which runs through Dec. 24 at the Wells Fargo Pavilion, captures the magic and joy of Christmas. The Dickens classic, adapted by Richard Hellesen, is the most consistently produced Christmas show that STC runs and has been a part of the holiday programs on and off for the last 24 years. For more than150 years Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” has been a classically loved and widely acclaimed story of the evolution of a Ebenezer Scrooge from a selfish and sour man to a generous and hospitable fellow. This heart-warming tale of redemption is a Christmas production that has reminded audie

Performer photos by Barry Wisdom "How Long Has This Been Going On?-A Tribute to George and Ira Gershwin" opened the fifth season of cabaret at Sacramento Theatre Company Thursday evening to an enthusiastic audience. Although the Gershwin's music goes back to the 1930s and George died tragically in 1937 at the age of 38 the music they created endures as some of the best examples of the Great American Songbook. Ira Gershwin went on to compose with several other lyricists living to the age of 87. STC producing director, Michael Laun who created the cabaret series, enlisted Jerry Lee ("Musical of Musicals the Musical!!," "Frankenstein"-recently closed at STC) one of Sacramento's best youn

“Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” by Richard Alfieri opened Saturday in Sacramento Theatre Company’s smaller Pollock Theatre. Lily Harrison, a senior retiree living in a high rise view condo in St. Petersburg, Florida books a series of dance lessons from the Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks company. Very quickly, Lily demonstrates how uptight and rigid she has become. Enter Michael Minetti, the young man that the dance lesson company has sent to give Lily lessons at her condo. Michael’s problem is that he is extremely poor at self-censoring and blurts out whatever he is thinking. Naturally, Lily and Michael start off on the wrong foot (pun intended) at the first dance lesson and succeeding

The works of Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz – whose most well-known work is “Wicked” – will be highlighted in a cabaret performance by the Sacramento Theatre Company next week. “From Godspell to Wicked” opens Thursday and is an homage to Schwartz’s works, which have spanned four decades, said Michael Laun, producing director for STC. “We have a little bit of everything,” he said. “ ‘Godspell’ was his first, we have some music from ‘Pippin’ ... and the last 30 minutes of the show is music from ‘Wicked.’ ” Also included in the performance is some of the music Schwartz composed for Disney movies such as “Pocahontas” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” The performance is a cabaret, and

Two shows opened for two different Sacramento theaters this weekend, set 40 years apart in very different locations and while each has its own unique cast and director, both plays have surprising underlying similarities. Both are essentially two-character plays. Both have a hysterical, unreasonable and totally self-centered female character. And both women become entwined with unsuspecting, clueless men. The Sacramento Theatre Company’s “Owl and the Pussycat” opened Saturday night on their small, intimate Pollock stage. As soon as the curtain rises, the audience finds itself in 1964 San Francisco. When is the last time you heard the word rat fink? “The Owl and the Pussycat” was writer

“The Owl and the Pussycat” will open Wednesday as a two-person production in Sacramento Theatre Company’s intimate Pollock stage. The script is the only live-theater piece that TV writer Bill Manhoff has done and offers a timeless and comedic look at love – and how difficult it can be. “Love isn’t easy, it’s always hard,” said Matt Miller, the theater’s artistic director and the director of the play. “But it can be funny when it’s somebody else.” Miller said the play, which was originally written in the early 1960s, takes two very different people who seem to have nothing in common and throws them together, where they develop an unmistakable mutual attraction. “The whole thing keeps you

The Sacramento Theatre Company kicked off their 2010-11 "Return to the Classics" season Saturday with Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” directed by STC Artistic Director Matt K. Miller. The play, set in midsummer 1895, gives scene to the characters of Wilde’s epic farce of mistaken identities. Two playboy best friends discover they both have scapegoat alter-egos, and antics ensue when both fall in love with ladies who believe them to be the alter-ego of the other. It’s complicated, twisted, wonderful and comical, but in the end it all gets sorted out as the two men find out the vital importance of being earnest/Ernest. The text has always served as a conduit for extreme so

STC Presents a special staged reading of  one of the country's most cherished playwrights. Battling themes of immigration and discrimination while in search for a lasting and true identity, the characters of "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" cross paths at a Pittsburgh boarding house where their journies are exposed and questioned as they embrace their deeper ancestral connections and work to transcend the trials of slavery and exploitation in an evolving America. "Set in 1911, and the second in the series of Mr. Wilson’s 10-play cycle of the African-American journey through the 20th century, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” is about nothing less than the migration and dispersal of a race and c