Kirby Ward News

The Rubicon Theatre Company brings back a Rodgers & Hammerstein classic, 'South Pacific,' in a uniquely intimate two-piano version, featuring stellar performances and a ravishing set design. This one will be talked about for years to come.

Rubicon Theatre's 20th Anniversary Season culminates with a two-piano version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's soaring epic South Pacific, helmed by award-winning director KATHARINE FARMER and featuring a cast of 28 led by Tony honoree BEN DAVIS (Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme) and MADISON CLAIRE PARKS (Luisa in The Fantasticks Off-Broadway).

This Thursday, December 7 marks the anniversary of the air raid on Pearl Harbor in which Japanese planes attacked a United States Naval Air Base in the Territory of Hawaii in the Pacific. Thousands of Americans lost their lives or were injured, and more than 300 ships were destroyed. The event brought citizens together in support of U.S. participation in the war. President Roosevelt addressed the nation, calling the event, 'a day that will live in infamy.'

SOUTH PACIFIC is the final show of Rubicon Theatre Company's 20th Anniversary Season. Winner of eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, SOUTH PACIFIC is set on an exotic island during World War II. The plot follows two love stories about seeming-opposites brought together by the circumstances of war and torn apart by prejudice and fear. SOUTH PACIFIC is based on James Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Tales of the South Pacific." The timeless score includes beautiful ballads such as "Younger than Springtime" and "Some Enchanted Evening," as well as exuberant up-tempo songs like "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy," and driving anthems like the ever-timely "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught."

Rubicon Theatre's 20th Anniversary Season culminates with a two-piano version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's soaring epic South Pacific, helmed by award-winning director KATHARINE FARMER and featuring a cast of 28 led by Tony honoree BEN DAVIS (Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme) and MADISON CLAIRE PARKS (Luisa in The Fantasticks Off-Broadway). 

Rubicon Theatre Producing Artistic Director KARYL LYNN BURNS today announced programming for the company's JANET AND MARK L. GOLDENSON 2018-2019 Broadway Concert Series. According to Burns, the series offers an opportunity for audiences to enjoy the talents and personal stories and insights of some of the best and brightest concert and cabaret stars of the West End, Broadway and the West Coast.

The musical is a send-up of the cult classic movie and other sci-fi films and TV shows of the 1950s, melded with plot elements from "The Tempest" along with dialogue bits from multiple Shakespeare plays. That was part of the fun for me, catching so many Shakespearean quotes perfectly placed in the dialogue of Bob Carlton's musical set on a spaceship sometime in the future, featuring a galaxy of 1950's and 1960's rock and roll classics including "Wipeout," "Good Vibrations," "Great Balls of Fire," "All Shook Up," "Monster Mash" and "We Gotta Get Out of this Place." And what an outrageously fabulous band under the musical direction of Trevor Wheetman and Omar D. Brancato, both of whom rocked the house on guitars while believably playing Ensign crew members onstage.

Get ready to blast off as Rubicon Theatre Company presents the hilarious, out-of-this-world musical RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, returning to Ventura after its acclaimed run in 2016. Winner of the Olivier Award for Best Musical, this fabulously campy send-up of "Forbidden Planet" and other sci-fi films and TV shows of the 1950s and 1960's melds plot elements from The Tempestwith language from multiple plays by Shakespeare. Set on a spaceship sometime in the future, the show features a galaxy of rock-and-roll classics, including "Wipeout," "Good Vibrations," "Great Balls of Fire," "All Shook Up, and "Monster Mash." The jukebox musical spoof rockets into orbit just in time for Halloween - with a gala costume party on Saturday, October 20 at 7:00 p.m. followed by an after-party at Rhumb Line on the Harbor. Low-priced previews are October 17-19. The show runs Wednesdays through Sundays through November 4.

Rubicon Theatre presents the World Premiere of I DIG ROCK & ROLL MUSIC which opens this Saturday, September 1 at 7:00 p.m. at Rubicon Theatre, 1006 E. Main Street in Ventura's Downtown Cultural District. A co-production with Laguna Playhouse, the event continues through September 16 at Rubicon Theatre and runs September 19 through 23 at Laguna.

Winner of five Tony Awards, including Best Book and Best Original Score, The Drowsy Chaperone is a loving send-up of the Jazz Age musical, featuring one show-stopping number after another.  

Rubicon Theatre presents a timely and trenchant production of Shakespeare's tragedy KING LEAR as the centerpiece of the company's 20th Anniversary Season. Directed by Co-Founder James O'Neil, the production features a 20-member cast led by acclaimed actor and company memberGeorge Ball, who has starred in previous Rubicon productions of All My Sons, Man of La Mancha, and Jacques Brel… (New York, L.A., and international companies of the latter).

Join Kirby Ward, Joan Hess, and the Utah Symphony February 9 and 10, 2018 for an evening full of entertainment, featuring live dancers and Hollywood golden-age classics from composers like Gershwin, Bernstein and Berlin on the Abravanel Hall stage, conducted by Assistant Conductor Conner Gray Covington. Tickets range from $15-$83 and can be purchased at utahsymphony.org or by calling 801-533-6683.

Music Director Thierry Fischer and President & CEO Paul Meecham today announced the Utah Symphony's 2017-18 season, which includes a Saint-Saens symphony cycle recorded live for the Hyperion label, marking the first recording of the composer's complete symphonies by an American orchestra.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra presents song-and-dance standards from the golden age of Hollywood musicals in a Valentine's-weekend pops program, February 10-12 in Red Bank, Newark and New Brunswick. Broadway veterans Joan Hess and Kirby Ward join the Orchestra and guest conductor Gemma New, performing classics inspired by Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and Eleanor Powell.

Before Mamma Mia!, before The Marvelous Wonderettes, and before Jersey Boys, there was Return to the Forbidden Planet, an Off-Broadway space farce that was one of the first musicals to incorporate pop hits into its score. A spoof of the 1956 cult sci-fi film, Forbidden Planet, Bob Carlton's musical utilizes the language and general storyline of William Shakespeare's The Tempest in relating the adventures of an interstellar space ship, which is drawn to a mysterious planet by a mad scientist and his beauteous daughter. The show is being staged at the Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura in a colorful, lively production directed and choreographed by Kirby Ward.

Rubicon Theatre Company lands a winner with its latest musical comedy RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET by Bob Carlton. The silly sci-fi confection is two hours of deliciously kitschy fun accompanied by a rock and roll score that blasts out more than twenty hits from the '50s and '60s and a dynamite cast that spews planetary puns and classical text faster than the speed of light.

Rubicon Theatre Company has announced the complete cast of RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, a fabulously campy send up of 'Forbidden Planet' and other sci-fi film and TV shows of the 1950s which melds plot elements from The Tempest with language from multiple plays by Shakespeare.

Get ready to blast off on opening night for RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET at Rubicon Theatre Company this Saturday, October 29, and BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Rubicon Theatre Company presents RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, a fabulously campy send up of 'Forbidden Planet' and other sci-fi film and TV shows of the 1950s which melds plot elements from The Tempest with language from multiple plays by Shakespeare.

Rubicon Theatre Company has announced the complete cast of RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, a fabulously campy send up of 'Forbidden Planet' and other sci-fi film and TV shows of the 1950s which melds plot elements from The Tempest with language from multiple plays by Shakespeare.