License to Thrill: James Bond hit theme songs at Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater

Amid the ongoing pandemic, an escapist evening of live music and entertaining trivia, from possibly the most popular film franchise of all time, sounds like an easy remedy for restlessness.

It’s certainly working out well for singer, actress and music tutor Deborah del Mastro.

“I was hired to do an all-Bond show for a New Year’s party in 2011,” del Mastro recalled. “Originally, it was just another project for me. But people absolutely loved it, and I went, ‘Wow! This is cool!’”

Since then, she has presented the show all over Northern California.

Well-known in the Bay Area from her performances as Sister Robert Anne in musical comedies from the popular “Nunsense” franchise, del Mastro, who lives in Martinez, will bring her Bond bonanza to Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater for a performance Sunday.

Del Mastro has packed her “James Bond Experience” shows with sly nods to the 007 legend and with rich detail from 25 films over the past 60 years.

Her backup instrumental quartet is named for the way Bond likes his martinis: Shaken, Not Stirred. And her act includes two “Bond Girls,” one of them played by her daughter, Sarah Helen.

The Bond show is part of Cinnabar’s “Sundays at 7” concert series. The program was initiated to supplement the theater’s regular season of stage plays. The September and October concerts were canceled due to COVID-19 concerns. The series returned in December with SoCo Phil Brass and Strings and continued with Oakland jazz singer Kenny Washington in January.

“The concert series is designed to broaden our audience,” said Diane Dragone, executive director at Cinnabar.

It would be hard to find a more effectively broad audience than that of the James Bond films, which have enjoyed a global audience for decades.

“James Bond is so much a part of our culture. In the early ’60s, during the Cold War, we thought of spies as the good guys, and the good guys always won,” del Mastro said.

“We’ve got fun trivia about those times, and the actors, the action, the Bond girls and the villains,” she added.

One bit of trivia is the story of Australian actor George Lazenby, the first to follow Sean Connery in the role of Bond, starring in “On Her Majesty's Secret Service” in 1969.

“George Lazenby was a offered a seven-film contract to play Bond after that,” del Mastro contends, “but he didn’t want to be typecast.”

Another anecdote concerns actor Richard Kiel (an imposing presence at 7 feet, 2 inches), who played the villainous Jaws in “The Spy Who Loved Me” in 1977 and “Moonraker” in 1979. For the role, he wore a metallic mouthpiece.

“It was so painful, he could only wear it for few minutes at a time,” del Mastro said.

Personally, del Mastro prefers the current James Bond, played by Daniel Craig, who closed out his run as 007 with “No Time to Die,” released earlier this year. But her show is designed to appeal to Bond fans from all decades.

“You can ask someone who discovered the films in the ’70s who their favorite was and they’ll say Roger Moore, who brought more humor to the role. In the ’80s, it was Pierce Brosnan,” del Mastro said.

“If you were born in 2000, you know Daniel Craig as Bond,” she said. “The earlier films were very tongue-in-cheek. Craig is very different. People across the board have an opinion.”

For many, the best Bond will always be the first, Sean Connery, who kicked off the franchise with “Dr. No” in 1962.

However, looking at the early films in a modern context, del Mastro has done some reevaluation.

“As a woman in this era, I am aware that the original Bond movies are misogynistic and sexist,” she said.

Her “James Bond Experience,” however, is the work of a fan, not a critic.

“I was a big fan of James Bond,” del Mastro said. “I was just fascinated with the whole series.”