Mother Road Octavio Solis Berkeley Repertory Theatre Seventy-plus years have passed since the Joad family of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath joined a parade of desperate migrant farmers, all leaving their starving lives in Dust-Bowl-ravaged Oklahoma of the 1930s while looking for the lush life they saw painted on fruit crates from California. Two Joads – a mother and … [Read more...] about Mother Road
Garuda’s Wing
Garuda’s Wing Naomi Iizuka Magic Theatre in a Co-Production with Campo Santo “I’m going to tell you a story, and then maybe you’ll remember.” The last line of Naomi Iizuka’s latest play, Garuda’s Wing, is clearly aimed at us, the audience. The story we have witnessed over the past ninety minutes in Magic Theatre and Campo Santo’s world premiere production has been … [Read more...] about Garuda’s Wing
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Jeffrey Lane (Book); David Yazbek (Music & Lyrics) San Jose Stage Company Filled with more corn than an Iowa field in mid-summer, San Jose Stage Company’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is overflowing with groaner puns, slapstick silliness, sexual innuendos, and sophomoric vulgarity the likes of high-school boys making fart jokes. Based on the … [Read more...] about Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Being Alive: A Sondheim Celebration
When he was just fourteen and called by Robert Kelley to come and play the piano for a local theatre’s rehearsal session, could then young William Liberatore ever imagine that nearly five decades later in 2024 he would be opening his fiftieth show as music director with that same company, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley – a show he and Kelley, the company’s founder and now- … [Read more...] about Being Alive: A Sondheim Celebration
Young Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks & Thomas Meehan (Book); Mel Brooks (Music & Lyrics) Los Altos Stage Company When it comes to parody and farce, who does it better than Mel Brooks? Whether garnering tear-producing laughs by satirizing Star Wars movies (Spaceballs), Alfred Hitchcock thrillers (Anxiety), westerns (Blazing Saddles), Broadway (Producers), and so much … [Read more...] about Young Frankenstein
Everybody’s Talking about Jamie
Everybody’s Talking about Jamie Dan Gillespie Sells (Score) & Tom MacRae (Book & Lyrics) Based Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, Directed by Jenny Popplewell Ray of Light Theatre What better way for a San Francisco audience to celebrate Pride Month than enjoying to the hilt a joyous, upbeat, and totally inspiring coming out story of a sixteen-year-old whose only dream … [Read more...] about Everybody’s Talking about Jamie
Kinky Boots
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
