Constellations Nick Payne The Pear Theatre He is a beekeeper. She is a Cambridge physicist. She can wax on forever starry eyed about subjects like quantum mechanics, string theory, and cosmology. He likes to explain how female bees are the workers and male drones exist only to have sex with the queen, after which their penises are ripped off and they die. She … [Read more...] about Constellations
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A Grand Night for Singing — An American Songfest
A Grand Night for Singing -- An American Songfest Ronny Michael Greenberg, Curator Merola Opera Program From 1300 initial applicants and 650 in-person auditions, twenty-eight singers, pianists, and directors have been selected in 2025 for the nation's preeminent opera training program whose annual participants arrive from all over the world. In addition to their … [Read more...] about A Grand Night for Singing — An American Songfest
Annunciation
Annunciation Lauren Groff Word for Word and Z Space "It is only now when I know myself to be good and bad in equal measures." That announcement of sorts -- or "annunciation" -- comes after our unnamed narrator has recalled a year much earlier in her life post college graduation when she headed across the country to land initially in San Francisco, California with … [Read more...] about Annunciation
Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical
Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical Ashley Robinson (Book); Dan Gillespie Sells (Music); Shakina (Lyrics) Based on the Play by Ed Graczyk It's hot and dusty in McCarthy, Texas where it has not rained in three years. But in the summer of 1975, the loyal "Disciples of James Dean" are mopping the sweat from their brows as they gather … [Read more...] about Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical
Sweat
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
Sweet Charity
Sweet Charity Neil Simon (Book); Cy Coleman (Music); Dorothy Fields (Music) San Jose Stage Company (The Stage) Sometimes there are so many aspects of a spectacular production that it is almost impossible to know where to begin. That is especially true for San Jose Stage Company's current summer hit-in-the-making, Sweet Charity. First, the 1967-premiering musical … [Read more...] about Sweet Charity
Next to Normal
Next to Normal Brian Yorkey (Book & Lyrics); Tom Kitt (Music) Ray of Light Theatre Lifelong mental disease, paralyzing grief, severe depression, feelings by a child of a parent's abandonment, drug abuse, the questionable practices of modern psychiatry, suicide. While not the subjects normally associated with the Great American Musical, Brian Yorkey (book and … [Read more...] about Next to Normal
Harvey Milk Reimagined
Harvey Milk Reimagined Stewart Wallace (Composer); Michael Korie (Librettist) Opera Parallèle "And shame to rage, And rage to pride, And pride to hope, And hope will never be silent." At the age of forty-eight and just days before his assassination, the first out gay elected city official in California reflects his own life's journey in a climatic moment of … [Read more...] about Harvey Milk Reimagined
The Cake
The Cake Bekah Brunstetter City Lights Theater Company For Della, the ingredients for the perfect cake are two: "You gotta get the real stuff" and "you gotta follow the directions." That means "full fat" and "not your eggs that were ever caged" or "ever went to the movies," and it means "give your time and your worship to directions." Doing so -- according to … [Read more...] about The Cake
Brigadoon
Brigadoon Alan Jay Lerner (Book & Lyrics); Frederick Lowe (Music) South Bay Musical Theatre "When you love someone deeply, anything is possible ... even miracles." In times such as we are now experiencing where more and more people are either deeply losing hope, becoming daily more cynical, or just checking out, the idea of miracles probably for most seems a … [Read more...] about Brigadoon
Otello
Otello Giuseppi Verdi (Music); Arigo Boito (Libretto) West Bay Opera After his successful Aida premiered in 1871, the great Giuseppi Verdi decided with firm finality to retire from opera composition; but the librettist Arigo Boito had other ideas. Boito's persistent temptations for Verdi to tackle one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, Othello, finally led to a … [Read more...] about Otello
Parade
Parade Alfred Uhry (Book); Jason Robert Brown (Music & Lyrics); Hal Prince (Co-conceived); Daniel Felsenfeld (Orchestrations) BroadwaySF It is 1913 in Atlanta, not quite fifty years after the city lay in total ashes at the end of the Civil War. An annual, Memorial Day parade is in progress; but in this parade, there are no signs of American flags -- only … [Read more...] about Parade
Yellow Face
Yellow Face David Henry Hwang Shotgun Players Following a decade in the 1990s when Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson railed against the growing influence of Chinese Americans and questioned where their loyalties really lay (going famously after nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee as a traitor), David Henry Hwang opened in 2007 his play, Yellow Face, a brilliantly scripted … [Read more...] about Yellow Face
Crumbs from the Table of Joy
Crumbs from the Table of Joy Lynn Nottage Aurora Theatre Company For seventeen-year-old Ernestine Crump on the verge of her high school gradation, life sometimes "feels like floating out of your body, entering the Milky Way and getting stuck in it just as its curdling." That is especially true for this young Black girl living in lily-white Brooklyn in 1950. After … [Read more...] about Crumbs from the Table of Joy
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Simon Stephens, Based on the Novel by Mark Haddon San Francisco Playhouse A boy of fifteen years, three months, three days can count from a fast moving train the exact number of trees on a hillside, of clouds in the sky, and of hues of green in the meadows passing by. He notes without hesitation that his neighbor … [Read more...] about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
