LAKEPORT, Calif. – The recent Lake County Symphony’s “Day at the Opera” featuring dramatic mezzo soprano Heather McFadden was a resounding success by all accounts.

Read more …

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The 1950 animated musical, “Cinderella,” screens at the Soper Reese Theatre on Tuesday, Dec. 11, at 1 and 6 p.m.

Read more …

LOWER LAKE, Calif. – The Lower Lake High Drama Club presents ”Elf, the Musical” to celebrate the holiday season.

Performances will take place at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7, and Saturday, Dec. 8, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9, in the Lower Lake High multipurpose room.

“Elf, the Musical” is based on the New Line Cinema film written by David Berenbaum and starring Will Ferrell.

Buddy, a young orphan, mistakenly crawls into Santa's bag of gifts and is transported to the North Pole.

The would-be elf is raised, unaware that he is actually a human, until his enormous size and poor toy-making abilities cause him to face the truth.

With Santa's permission, Buddy embarks on a journey to New York City to find his birth father and discover his true identity.

The cast of Elf is 28 members strong including students ranging from third to 11th grades.

“There are a lot of first timers in the cast,” said Director Tracy Lahr, “but you would never know it. The kids have worked so hard to make this play truly spectacular and completely entertaining.”

The cast includes Steven Beckstead, Veronica Campbell, Natalee Clifford, Stacy Lopez, Mackenzie Thrasher, Liberty Fuchs, Aleesa Beckstead, Brooke Benson, Teresa Burrows, Aubrey Weese, Abby Tucker, Maria Nevills, Madison Martin, Edward Pacheco, Raelynn Guerra, Kaycie Meckfessel, Reagan Bailey, Johnathan Lopez-Workman, Evelyn Campbell, Josh Fortanel, Cole Doud, Joseph Bickham, Kea-Lani Caberos, Madalyn Chernoh, Samantha Reed, Austin Camberg, Jessi Teal-Buck and Irianna Milano.

Ticket prices are: adults, $7; senior citizens, $6; students, $5.

Lower Lake High School is located at 9430 Lake St.

I love accounts of people meeting up with wild creatures, as in Elizabeth Bishop's great poem, "The Moose," and here's another such encounter from Sonja Johanson, who is from Maine.

Johanson's most recent chapbook is “Trees in Our Dooryards” from Redbird Chapbooks.

Three Deer in Oquossoc

East will take me back. I drive
west. I wend between snowbanks,
until the road delivers me
to a sleeping boat launch.

They stand on the frozen ramp;
watch me with coats that are
better than mine. Ice houses
and snowmobiles edge the distance.

I have to turn around, I say
to them, I went the wrong
way. They stamp and chuff.
No, they tell me, this is the way.

American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2015 by Sonja Johanson, "Three Deer in Oquossoc," from Plum Tree Tavern, (2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Sonja Johanson and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2018 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Blues Hall of Fame inductee Joe Louis Walker is a legendary, boundary-pushing icon of modern blues – a leading light who has played his electric guitar with the likes of B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters.

He makes a special appearance in Lake County on Sunday, Dec. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport.

Walker is one of the greatest bluesmen of his generation. He is a four-time Blues Music Award winner, Blues Foundation Contemporary Male Artist of the year, and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Blues Album of the Year for his latest release, “Everybody Wants a Piece.” The New York Times calls him “… a singer with a Cadillac of a voice. He delivers no-nonsense, gutsy blues. His guitar solos are fast, wiry and incisive, moaning with bluesy despair.” Rolling Stone simply calls him “ferocious.”

For more information on Joe Louis Walker, including videos and photos, go to www.joelouiswalker.com.

Tickets are on sale now for $25, $20 and $15. All seats are reserved. The theater’s dance floor will be open. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Tickets are available online at www.SoperReeseTheatre.com, or at The Travel Center, 1265 S. Main, Lakeport, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information call 707-263-0577.

The Soper Reese Theatre is located at 275 S. Main St., Lakeport.

‘BODYGUARD’ ON NETFLIX

Netflix offers variety not easily obtained on network or cable television. For one thing, it makes interesting foreign programs readily available for binge-watching.

“Bodyguard,” a political thriller in the backdrop of terrorism on the home front, is a BBC series that drew huge audiences in the United Kingdom and apparently for the good reason of riveting, intriguing drama.

London police officer David Budd (Richard Madden) is on a train trip with his two young children when his alert senses tell him that something is wrong. Before long, he’s defusing a female suicide bomber’s mission to blow up the train.

At once, the off-duty police sergeant demonstrates an uncanny ability to talk down a terrified young woman who has been brainwashed by her cowardly husband to carry out a terrorist attack, and he risks his own life in doing so.

Uptight in his demeanor, Sgt. Budd, a war veteran who suffers from PTSD and a broken marriage, demonstrates that he remains so cool in a tense situation that he is promoted as a protection officer for dignitaries.

His new assignment is to protect Britain’s Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes), an ambitious politician with a hardened stance on enhancing counter-terrorism efforts in the wake of increasing threats to national security.

Budd, who still hangs out with a disfigured war buddy with a grudge against the government, may not be in sync with the ardent views of the cabinet minister, but he is the consummate professional in most respects.

Before too long, an assassination attempt on the home secretary is foiled when Budd’s level-headed skills come into play. But the question remains, who is behind this plot and what lies ahead?

Though Julia and Budd develop a relationship that goes beyond the professional, the police officer is never far removed from inner turmoil about his wartime experiences or the fact that he eagerly wants to reunite with his estranged wife Vicky (Sophie Rundle).

While the square-jawed Budd remains stoic most of the time, he’s keenly observing the machinations of adversarial security services, where Julia is not above prodding the various agencies with sharp questions about their handling of terror plots.

“Bodyguard” has plenty of intrigue, to say nothing of corruption, duplicity and backstabbing, that should not be revealed, but suffice it to say there are many twists and turns to make this political potboiler worthy of the popularity it garnered with British viewers.



‘ELITE’ ON NETFLIX

A Spanish import, “Elite” is a murder mystery wrapped into a teen drama about three working class kids who get enrolled in an exclusive private school where the clash between them and the wealthy students is inevitable.

“Elite” may conjure up memories of so many American teenage dramas, such as “Gossip Girl,” “The O.C.,” “Riverdale,” and likely several more but with a lot of sex, profanity and drug use.

The story unfolds in two levels, the past and the present. Aside from a student walking the school halls covered in blood in the opening episode, the beginning may seem like the present, but it isn’t, because the three outsiders are first introduced in the past.

The present is all about a police investigator questioning everyone about the murder of a student. The scholarship kids, Samuel (Itzan Escamilla), Christian (Miguel Herran) and Nadia (Mina El Hammani), will face interrogations just like everyone else.

The arrival of three strangers to preppy Las Encinas stirs controversy and social ostracism. Chief tormentor of the new kids is Guzman (Miguel Bernardeau), an arrogant snob who fashions himself as the leader of his inner circle of equally obnoxious classmates.

The hostile environment proves challenging for the sensitive Samuel, who works as a waiter to support his family, and for the industrious Nadia, a Muslim girl trying to live up to her family’s ideals even as the school requires her to ditch wearing a hijab to class.

On the other hand, Christian, the smooth talkative sort who is not easily intimidated, doesn’t mind confronting the social mores, going even further when he ends up in a love triangle with free-spirited Carla (Ester Exposito) and the voyeuristic Polo (Alvaro Rico).

The social order at the ritzy school is soon disrupted when rebellious Marina (Maria Pedraza), Guzman’s sister, takes a liking to Samuel, inviting him to her glamorous debutante party that she just as easily would forego but for the wishes of her ostentatious parents.

Home life creates other problems for Samuel when his older brother Nano (Danna Paolo), carrying a large chip on his shoulders, is released from prison and that the fact he owes money to some criminals causes grief for the entire family.

“Elite” runs through every possible scenario of teen angst, from the closeted son of the principal with a drug problem and insecure bullies to jealous overachievers and promiscuous girls with latent regrets.

For those willing to take the ride, “Elite” lends itself, like many Netflix series, to binge-watching, more so to discover the twists to solving the murder mystery.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.