Sweat Lynn Nottage Palo Alto Players Stories are how we often best learn new truths about the world around us. Lynn Nottage -- the first and only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times -- clearly understands the power of narratives to deliver messages and to raise questions that we in the mostly liberal and Blue Bay Area somehow have missed while … [Read more...] about Sweat
4.5 E
Co-Founders
Co-Founders Ryan Nicole Austin, Beau Lewis, Adesha Adefela Music Team Led by Victoria Theodore American Conservatory Theater For seven years, Esata has been coding in her mother's West Oakland basement, creating an interacting avatar of her deceased father, Cyril -- an incredible accomplishment for someone non-degreed who learned to code with her dad on an Atari … [Read more...] about Co-Founders
The Cher Show
The Cher Show Rick Elice (Book); Various Artists (Music & Lyrics) Broadway San Jose Born in El Centro, California of an Armenian-American truck driver father with drug and gambling problems and a mixed-European-heritage, actress and model mother (parents who divorced when she was ten months old), Cheryl Sarkisian was mocked at school in the 1950s as a … [Read more...] about The Cher Show
Art
Art Yasmina Reza Shotgun Players The choice that Shotgun Players surely made months ago to open the 2025 season with Art -- the 1998 Tony Award for Best Play by French playwright Yasmina Reza and translated to English by Christopher Hampton -- proves to be brilliant as we are in the midst of Trump's first hundred days. As we watch three best friends with a … [Read more...] about Art
Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical
Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical Min Kahng (Book, Music & Lyrics) TheaterWorks Silicon Valley, in Co-Production with Center Repertory Company Reminiscent of Sondheim's Passion, the musical now in its world premiere at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley also opens in the midst of a hot, bedroom scene of lovemaking, with arms and bodies … [Read more...] about Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical
Waste
Waste Harley Granville-Barker Adapted by Carey Perloff Marin Theatre "Oh what practical, sentimental children you men are, you and your consciousness, you and your laws. You drive us to distraction and sometimes death by your stupidities. Poor women!" Is it any wonder that in an England with its toes still in the deeply moralistic waters of the recently … [Read more...] about Waste
Urinetown
Urinetown the Musical Mark Hollmann (Music & Lyrics); Greg Kotis (Book & Lyrics) South Bay Musical Theatre Capitalists who care more about cash than care of the people; legislators fawning over CEO’s and accepting bribes on the side; devastating droughts, shrinking water tables, and dubious responses by government officials; authoritarian threats and promised … [Read more...] about Urinetown
DRAGCULA: A Parody in Living Greyscale
DRAGCULA: A Parody in Living Greyscale Adapted by Chris Steele from Bram Stoker’s Dracula Poltergeist Theatre Project, Potatoes Mashed Comedy & Oasis Arts The 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula by Irish author Bram Stoker not only is now considered one of the great classics of English literature, the Transylvanian tale of vampires, blood, and sexual suggestions by … [Read more...] about DRAGCULA: A Parody in Living Greyscale
Evita
Evita Andrew Lloyd Webber (Music); Tim Rice (Lyrics) San Francisco Playhouse With music that ranges from solemn classical, hip-swishing Latin, and grinding rock to soaring ballads and anthems, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita leaves any audience member with enough memorable earworms for a full night’s worth of dreams. The endurance of Webber’s music coupled with lyrics by … [Read more...] about Evita
Chaplin and Keaton on the Set of Limelight
Chaplin and Keaton on the Set of Limelight Greg Lam The Pear Theatre One was known worldwide for his bamboo cane, derby hat, toothbrush mustache, too-small black jacket, and a walk more like a penguin than a man. The other’s big screen image familiar to all was a clean-shaven face smothered in thick, white makeup; a deadpan expression with smile totally absent; baggy … [Read more...] about Chaplin and Keaton on the Set of Limelight
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
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
Florencia en el Amazonas
Florencia en el Amazonas (Florence in the Amazon) Daniel Catân (Music); Marcela Fuentes-Berain (Libretto) Based on the Writings of Gabriel Garcia Márquez) Opera San José The romantic drama of multiple loves lost, denied, and finally found intertwine with the Amazon’s alluring myths and fantasy in Opera San José’s magnificent dip into the waters of Daniel Catán’s … [Read more...] about Florencia en el Amazonas
Tiger Style!
Tiger Style! Mike Lew TheatreWorks Silicon Valley The thirty-something Chen siblings’ lives are a mess, and they are looking for someone to blame. Sure, MD/PhD Jennifer is a successful oncologist and also a classical pianist who has played Carnegie Hall; but her do-nothing boyfriend of three years is walking out on her because she is too dominant and no fun. … [Read more...] about Tiger Style!
