Kinky Boots Cyndi Lauper (Music & Lyrics); Harvey Fierstein (Book) Mountain Play Celebrating Pride Month with full glitz and gusto, Mountain Play opens its 111th season on Mount Tamalpais with Harvey Fierstein (book) and Cyndi Lauper’s (music and lyrics) Kinky Boots, the 2013 musical that took the country by storm and won thirteen Tony nominations and ultimately … [Read more...] about Kinky Boots
Dear San Francisco
Dear San Francisco Shana Carroll & Gypsy Snider, Co-Creators A Production of The 7 Fingers at Club Fugazi Co-created by choreographic superstars Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider, Dear San Francisco is ninety-minutes of breath-taking, heart-pumping acrobatics; aerial exhibitions; vaulting bodies; juggling of hats and umbrellas; hoop diving; and so much more. But what … [Read more...] about Dear San Francisco
The Lehman Trilogy
The Lehman Trilogy Stefano Massini Adapted by Ben Power American Conservatory Theater It is a story whose ending we already too well know. The world’s fourth largest investment bank files for the biggest bankruptcy in American history, sending Wall Street into panic and initiating the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the collapse of numerous, other banking … [Read more...] about The Lehman Trilogy
Pear Slices 2024
Pear Slices 2024 Various Playwrights Pear Theatre Pigs seeking shelter, zombies released by the millions, precious memories found in a flower garden, Juliet’s visitor in Romeo’s tomb, Tarot cards coming to life. These are just some of the glimpses from this year’s crop of Pear Slices 2024, the near-twentieth annual array of eight, original, one-act plays produced by … [Read more...] about Pear Slices 2024
Best Available
Best Available Jonathan Spector Shotgun Players What happens when we get to peek behind the curtain of a well-respected, nonprofit theater that is currently looking for a new artistic director after the former one suddenly resigned under mysterious circumstances? To answer that question for a hypothetical theater company – the City Repertory Company – acclaimed, … [Read more...] about Best Available
tick, tick … Boom!
tick, tick… BOOM! Jonathan Larson (Book, Music & Lyrics); David Auburn, Script Consultant New Conservatory Theatre Center “Maybe I really have written the show that will reinvent musicals for our generation, the Hair of the ‘90s.” With that hope, a struggling playwright and composer heads to a workshop production of the musical he has been writing for five years. … [Read more...] about tick, tick … Boom!
Galileo
Galileo Danny Strong (Book); Michael Weiner & Zoe Sarnack (Music & Lyrics) Berkeley Repertory Theatre From one side we hear, “Science asks the questions; the Bible has the answers;” from the opposing view, “The Scriptures is a book about going to heaven; it is not a book about how the heavens go.” Sounds like countering arguments made in some current, state … [Read more...] about Galileo
Torch Song
Torch Song Harvey Fierstein Marin Theatre With strut and style, Virginia Ham strolls into the spotlight in full drag glory to lip sing with wonderfully exaggerated aplomb a queen’s torch anthem. By the time she has wowed us with mimicked words escaping her Mammoth-Cave-sized mouth; with eyes ready any moment to pop out of their sockets; and with hands that flit, flip, … [Read more...] about Torch Song
The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew William Shakespeare Modern Verse Translation by Amy Freed and Play On Shakespeare African-American Shakespeare Company Like his Merchant of Venice with its many antisemitic references, William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew – even for all its underlying silliness – is often viewed as a difficult work to swallow by modern audiences, given what … [Read more...] about The Taming of the Shrew
The Music Man
The Music Man Meredith Wilson (Book, Music & Lyrics) Palo Alto Players Musicals often burst onto the stage with numbers that arouse an audience to peak attention and leave fond impressions (and earworms) that can last a lifetime. Among the dozens of opening numbers that are my big-sound, big-number favorites are the likes of Belle entering the village in Beauty and the … [Read more...] about The Music Man
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams San Francisco Playhouse As we enter the theatre, we immediately notice at the stage’s corner a young man intently smoking, looking one moment longingly into a non-descript distance and writing the next with much intent into a small notebook clasped tightly in his hand. In between, he rummages through a collection of records, … [Read more...] about The Glass Menagerie
The Chinese Lady
The Chinese Lady Lloyd Suh The Pear Theatre A young girl barely fourteen dressed and in make-up of her traditional, royal Chinese background sits in a small room surrounded by reminders of her Chinese heritage. With sparkling personality and sweet smile, she tells us that while her lips are moving, she is not speaking; that the words we hear are not hers; and that the … [Read more...] about The Chinese Lady
Love Letters
Love Letters A.R. Gurney The Pear Theatre A.R. Gurney’s 1989-premiering Love Letters has been performed hundreds of times by theatres on-and-off-Broadway, coast-to-coast, and internationally, featuring thousands of couples – often the biggest names in show biz – who generally star in the two-hander show only one night. By design of the playwright, actors do not see a … [Read more...] about Love Letters
Adventures with Alice
Adventures with Alice Ava Roy Adapted from Lewis Carroll We Players Leave all logic behind; put away the need for plotline; forget understanding exactly what is happening at all times; readily accept questions with no answers and riddles with no solutions. Anyone ready to meet these requirements is more than eligible to plunge into a two-hour, thirty-minute whirlwind … [Read more...] about Adventures with Alice
Blue Door
Blue Door Tanya Barfield Aurora Theatre Company Like Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, Lewis heads to bed, soon to toss and turn and to spend a night confronted by the ghosts of his life – in his case, direct-line ancestors stretching over a hundred years. As one ghost announces, “This is a summoning” for this distinguished, Black, mathematics professor who before … [Read more...] about Blue Door
