The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams The African-American Shakespeare Company In 1944, Tennessee Williams skyrocketed from near obscurity to wide-spread fame with the premiere of The Glass Menagerie, a play touted as a memory play both in the script and in its evident connections to the playwright and his family of an excessively attention-seeking mother, a mentally … [Read more...] about The Glass Menagerie
FANNIE: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer Cheryl L. West TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Despite having suffered polio as a child, a Mississippi sharecropper worked in the cotton fields twelve-to-eighteen-hour a day starting at the age of six in a state where 77% of the people were Black like she but where the minority whites ran 100% of everything. But then one day … [Read more...] about FANNIE: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Perfect Arrangement
Perfect Arrangement Topher Payne Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory The red stage light comes on, accompanied by a resounding ring; theme music fills the air; and lights come up on what could almost be a recreation of Lucy and Desi’s apartment. Canned applause joins in ushering to the stage another episode of Perfect Arrangement. But what starts out as a … [Read more...] about Perfect Arrangement
Richard II
Richard II William Shakespeare The Pear Theatre in Co-Production with Perspective Theatre Company Over four hundred years later, the plays of William Shakespeare often seem as if the Bard is writing about current events, recurring dilemmas, and a foreboding future of the 21st century. That is particularly true in 2023 as The Pear Theatre presents Richard II in a … [Read more...] about Richard II
Cambodian Rock Band
Cambodian Rock Band Lauren Yee, with Songs by Dengue Fever Berkeley Repertory Theatre Presenting the Signature Theatre Production in Association with Alley Theatre, ACT Theatre/5th Avenue & Center Theatre Group, A play about family displacement, trauma, and massive genocide is not a play one would normally expect often to laugh, to tap one’s foot to rock music, … [Read more...] about Cambodian Rock Band
Dear San Francisco
Dear San Francisco Shana Carroll & Gypsy Snider, Co-Creators A Production of The 7 Fingers at Club Fugazi San Francisco’s Club Fugazi is personally for me a sacred space where many memories were created during the more than twenty-five times I attended what became the world’s longest-running cabaret show during its forty-five-year history, Beach Blanket Babylon. … [Read more...] about Dear San Francisco
Anything Goes
Anything Goes Cole Porter (Music & Lyrics) P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay & Russell Crouse (Original Book) Timothy Crouse & John Weidman (New Book) 42nd Street Moon It only takes those first, several, familiar notes of the “Overture” to send a spreading wave of swaying shoulders, nodding heads, and tapping toes throughout the 42nd Street Moon … [Read more...] about Anything Goes
Justice: A New Musical
Justice: A New Musical Lauren M. Gunderson (Book); Bree Lowdermilk (Music); Kait Kerrigan (Lyrics) Marin Theatre Company “Equal Justice for All.” For 191 years, half of the U.S. population could justifiably question if that welcoming sign above the U.S. Supreme Court entrance really applied to them because from its founding in 1789 until September 21, 1981, no woman … [Read more...] about Justice: A New Musical
SIX
SIX Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss (Music, Lyrics & Book) BroadwaySF “Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.” These six words quickly conjure up for millions of people around the globe – folks who read even a bit of history, watched a few Netflix series, and/or played a few games of trivia at a local bar – the six wives of a king well known five … [Read more...] about SIX
The Travelers
The Travelers Luis Alfaro Magic Theatre, in Co-Production with Campo Santo A parable. An allegory. A dream. A mind-bending, fascinating fable. Any and all of these descriptors are possibilities to describe Luis Alfaro’s newest, stage creation, The Travelers, now in a gripping world premiere by Magic Theatre and Campo Santo – a co-production both ethereal and … [Read more...] about The Travelers
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Music); Lorenzo Da Ponte (Libretto) West Bay Opera How can an opera about an arrogant, despicable rake who travels throughout Europe seducing women for pure sport and then leaving them often after having promised marriage continue to be one of the most popular, most produced operas of all times? Why in this particular era of “Me … [Read more...] about Don Giovanni
The Headlands
The Headlands Christopher Chen American Conservatory Theater There are so many reasons to get your ticket today to see the West Coast premiere of Christopher Chen’s The Headlands at American Conservatory Theater before the last curtain on March 5: For anyone who lives in or near San Francisco, the play is like a SF love fest, featuring some of the most … [Read more...] about The Headlands
Satchmo at the Waldorf
Satchmo at the Waldorf Terry Teachout San Jose Stage Company Coughing and wheezing desperately for his next breath and with shoulders hunched as he stumbles toward the portable oxygen tank in the corner, the elderly man we see entering the large, backstage dressing room still is recognizable at first sight. After all, who else always has a white handkerchief hanging … [Read more...] about Satchmo at the Waldorf
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Picasso at the Lapin Agile Steve Martin Los Altos Stage Company In 1905, Pablo Picasso painted Au Lapin Agile that depicts a self-portrait of himself as a harlequin, a seamstress with whom he had a brief affair (Germaine Pichot), and the owner of the famous cabaret club in Paris’ Montmartre where he liked to hang out as a young man of twenty-five with other artists of … [Read more...] about Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Miss You Like Hell
Miss You Like Hell Quiara Alegría Hudes (Book & Lyrics); Erin McKeown (Music & Lyrics) City Lights Theater Company in Co-Production with Teatro Visión Many a book and movie through the years have chronicled “the great American road trip” across the continent as individuals, friends, and families have ventured into the plains, mountains, and lonely towns in … [Read more...] about Miss You Like Hell
