Hangmen Martin McDonagh San Jose Stage Company Take your seat; fasten your seatbelt; and prepare for another dark comedy, rollercoaster ride on the Martin McDonagh Express, once again available for a sinister, laugh-filled ride as terrifically and terrifyingly staged by San Jose Stage Company where audiences have howled and cringed in equal measures five times in the … [Read more...] about Hangmen
The Kite Runner
The Kite Runner Adapted by Matthew Spangler, Based on the Novel by Khaled Hosseini Hammer Theatre and EnActe Arts “I became what I am today at the age of twelve; I remember the precise moment … It’s wrong what they say about the past, about how you can bury it because the past claws its way out.” And so near three decades later, on the west coast of a continent an … [Read more...] about The Kite Runner
Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord
Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord Kristina Wong American Conservatory Theatre With the hard rock and blues beats of J Roddy Watson and the Business blasting out, “I’ve been pulling threads, doing all kinds of evil,” a woman sits at her sewing machine and quickly whirls a piece of cloth through the machine’s needles, pulling out a mask – the kind we were all desperately … [Read more...] about Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord
Sign My Name to Freedom: The Unheard Songs of Betty Reid Soskin
Sign My Name to Freedom: The Unheard Songs of Betty Reid Soskin Michael Gene Sullivan (Book); Betty Reid Soskin (Lyrics); Betty Reid Soskin, Daniel Sovio & Others (Music) Concept by Jamie Zimmer Based on the Life, Music & Writing of Betty Reid Soskin San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company (SFBATCO) There are times when seeing a live, theatre production is … [Read more...] about Sign My Name to Freedom: The Unheard Songs of Betty Reid Soskin
The Pride of Lions
The Pride of Lions Roger Q. Mason Theatre Rhinoceros On October 1, 1928, Mae West opened her latest play, The Pleasure Man – a comic, murder mystery with a climatic Drag Ball spectacle, resulting in the show being raided in its first two – and only – performances before being permanently shut down by the New York vice squad. Over fifty performers were hauled off to … [Read more...] about The Pride of Lions
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream William Shakespeare Shotgun Players With costumes wonderfully strange, weird, and entirely fanciful and a setting that is dark, mystical, and mysterious as a vast forest in a dream might be, Shotgun Players opens A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a cast that bends genders, mixes races, and celebrates diversity in almost every dimension possible. … [Read more...] about A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Once
Once Enda Walsh (Book); Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglov (Music & Lyrics) (Based on the Movie by John Carney) Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory For over fifty-five years of its eighty-three-year history, Hillbarn Theatre has performed in its highly versatile and intimate black box setting, transforming its close-at-hand audiences to locations wonderful, wild, … [Read more...] about Once
Pipeline
Pipeline Dominique Morisseau African-American Shakespeare Company “It’s a gamble … You send your young man out into the world everyday … But you don’t know … You have no idea if they’re safe … No idea if someone will try to expire them because they are too young, or too Black, or too threatening … Or just too too.” Divorced and now single mom of a late teen son, Nya, … [Read more...] about Pipeline
The Far Country
The Far Country Lloyd Suh Berkeley Repertory Theatre “I do not want to take from America … I want to give to America.” So does the amiable, big-smiling Gee patiently make his case to the persistently doubtful U.S. Inspector to prove in 1909 that he is a naturalized American citizen who – like everyone living in Chinatown in 1906 – lost all his proof-of-birth papers in the … [Read more...] about The Far Country
The 39 Steps
The 39 Steps Adapted by Patrick Barlow Based on the Novel by John Buchan From the Movie by Alfred Hitchcock San Francisco Playhouse In Patrick Barlow’s 2005 theatrical adaptation of the 1915 John Buchan novel and the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film version of The 39 Steps, the suspense and dark natures of Hitchcock’s enduring thriller – ranked in 1999 by the British Film … [Read more...] about The 39 Steps
Queen
Queen Madhuri Shekar TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Produced in Collaboration with EnActe Seven billion bees over a ten-year period, just disappeared … not died, disappeared with no signs of their bodies remaining. Without honeybees, eventually 90% of the food grown in the world, gone. Why are the bees moving toward extinction at such an alarming rate? Is it a virus, … [Read more...] about Queen
Unpacking In P’Town
Unpacking in P’Town Jewelle Gomez New Conservatory Theatre Center “Nothing erodes a mountain of pain better than a river of friendship.” So claims Lydia, one of four, long-term friends from yesteryear’s vaudeville circuit days who are once again returning to Provincetown for their annual, summer reunion. And in 1959, there is pain aplenty in the air of laid-back, … [Read more...] about Unpacking In P’Town
Boss McGreedy
Boss McGreedy Gary Graves Central Works In his silk dressing robe, the “Boss” pours himself another whiskey as he listens to Dudley – his lawyer and friend since childhood – tell him there is a real possibility for a “remand,” if he will “just tell the truth.” The man who proudly boasts he built New York in his years as Commissioner of Public Works is also the … [Read more...] about Boss McGreedy
Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad
Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad Ashley Smiley Magic Theatre (with Campo Santo) In a week when San Franciscans hear the news of yet another landmark institution about to close its doors for good – Macy’s on Union Square – and when the Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte’s Sunday column is titled “We’re Losing San Francisco Bit by Bit, Aren’t We,” Magic Theatre in union with … [Read more...] about Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad
Falsettos
Falsettos William Finn (Music & Lyrics); William Finn & James Lapine (Book) 42nd Street Moon As state legislatures by the dozens pass anti-LGBTQ laws by the score, 42nd Street Moon’s opening of William Finn and James Lapine’s Falsettos could hardly be timelier. A compelling, well-voiced cast of seven under the sensitive, spot-on direction by Dennis Lickteig … [Read more...] about Falsettos
