Something Rotten Karey Kirkpatrick & John O’Farrell (Book); Wayne & Karey Kirkpatrick (Music & Lyrics) Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory With eyes sparkling their excitement and a spry body moving almost like a stringed puppet, the Minstrel sings, “Welcome to the Renaissance, where we ooh and ahh you with ambiance ... where everything is new.” Touting … [Read more...] about Something Rotten
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A Strange Loop
A Strange Loop Michael R. Jackson (Book, Music & Lyrics) American Conservatory Theater, in Co-Production with Central Theatre Group Two minutes until the intermission of The Lion King ends. The usher – who just happens to be named Usher – dings the ‘bing-bong-bing’ warning to scurry folks back to their seats. Recurring thoughts begin swarming in his head – often … [Read more...] about A Strange Loop
The Tutor
The Tutor Torange Yeghiazarian New Conservatory Theatre Center, In Partnership with Golden Threads Productions “Everyone knows that everyone is lying … Eventually you learn what you can get away with publicly, and the rest, you manage privately … It may seem like a lot to juggle; but practice, daily practice makes perfect," declares the young Baran, soon after … [Read more...] about The Tutor
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
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
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 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
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
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola Gioachino Rossini (Composer): Jacopi Ferretti (Original Italian Libretto); Donald Pippin (English Libretto) Pocket Opera Music that excites the imagination and pleases the senses; voices that soar with their clarity and amaze with their electricity; an adapted, English libretto that teases and titillates with its rhymes and rhythms; acting that elicits … [Read more...] about La Cenerentola
Big Data
Big Data Kate Attwell American Conservatory Theater A stranger shows up at the door, and you let him in, not knowing quite why. He settles in as if he knows the place and begins asking mundane but also personal questions and taking some notes. Somehow, he seems already to know a lot about you and describes aspects of yourself, your inner desires, and even dreams for … [Read more...] about Big Data
Rigoletto
Rigoletto Giuseppe Verdi Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave Opera San José Little wonder it is that from its Vienna premiere in 1851 until the twenty-first century, Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto is one of the world’s most-beloved, most-performed operas. Soaring in music that includes famous, widely recognized arias that are difficult for an audience member not to … [Read more...] about Rigoletto
Manahatta
Manahatta Mary Kathryn Nagle Aurora Theatre Company Two American stories, four centuries apart, interlock in their telling, with characters, events, motives, triumphs, and tragedies strikingly similar in Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta, which premiered in 2018 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Now in an intimately engrossing and enlightening production at Aurora … [Read more...] about Manahatta
