A Distinct Society Kareem Fahmy TheatreWorks Silicon Valley An executive order on January 27, 2017, by a president barely one week in office barred citizens from seven countries – all majority Muslim – from entering the United States. Protests, legal challenges, and suits followed; but in the meantime, border agencies began reacting and enacting, often changing … [Read more...] about A Distinct Society
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Grand Horizons
Grand Horizons Bess Wohl San Jose Stage Company As the Beach Boys in the background sing joyfully their upbeat harmonies of “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older … to live together in the world where we belong,” a couple clearly pushing well into their seventies goes about prep for dinner – she pulling the roast from the oven and arranging it ever so properly on their … [Read more...] about Grand Horizons
The Triumph of Love
The Triumph of Love Pierre De Marivaux, Translated by Stephen Wadsworth Shotgun Players Gender confusions left and right that lead to infatuations built on false pretenses. A cunning princess plotting to capture the love of a naïve prince who has been taught his whole life to hate and eventually usurp her. Loves built on mounting lies leading to three planned … [Read more...] about The Triumph of Love
Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit Noël Coward City Lights Theater Company The world was at war; England was constantly threatened from the skies; the fear of death of self and of loved ones was on everyone’s mind. What better time to write a three-act farce about a séance gone haywire recalling an author’s dead wife from the beyond – a ghost only he can see and a ghost who has devilish … [Read more...] about Blithe Spirit
Merrily We Roll Along
Merrily We Roll Along Stephen Sondheim (Music & Lyrics); George Furth (Book) Based on the Original Play by George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart 42nd Street Moon 6 a.m., October 1957, on a rooftop of a New York apartment building, two friends look to the sky, searching for the world’s first orbiting satellite. Frank has just been released from the Army and is about … [Read more...] about Merrily We Roll Along
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof Joseph Stein (Book); Jerry Bock (Music); Sheldon Harnick (Lyrics) BroadwaySF After its record-setting, award-winning initial run on Broadway in 1964; its five Broadway revivals since; countless openings on local and touring stages globally and in towns and cities from coast to coast in America – not to mention the 1971 film whose scenes are now … [Read more...] about Fiddler on the Roof
FANNIE: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer Cheryl L. West TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Despite having suffered polio as a child, a Mississippi sharecropper worked in the cotton fields twelve-to-eighteen-hour a day starting at the age of six in a state where 77% of the people were Black like she but where the minority whites ran 100% of everything. But then one day … [Read more...] about FANNIE: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Perfect Arrangement
Perfect Arrangement Topher Payne Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory The red stage light comes on, accompanied by a resounding ring; theme music fills the air; and lights come up on what could almost be a recreation of Lucy and Desi’s apartment. Canned applause joins in ushering to the stage another episode of Perfect Arrangement. But what starts out as a … [Read more...] about Perfect Arrangement
Richard II
Richard II William Shakespeare The Pear Theatre in Co-Production with Perspective Theatre Company Over four hundred years later, the plays of William Shakespeare often seem as if the Bard is writing about current events, recurring dilemmas, and a foreboding future of the 21st century. That is particularly true in 2023 as The Pear Theatre presents Richard II in a … [Read more...] about Richard II
Cambodian Rock Band
Cambodian Rock Band Lauren Yee, with Songs by Dengue Fever Berkeley Repertory Theatre Presenting the Signature Theatre Production in Association with Alley Theatre, ACT Theatre/5th Avenue & Center Theatre Group, A play about family displacement, trauma, and massive genocide is not a play one would normally expect often to laugh, to tap one’s foot to rock music, … [Read more...] about Cambodian Rock Band
Dear San Francisco
Dear San Francisco Shana Carroll & Gypsy Snider, Co-Creators A Production of The 7 Fingers at Club Fugazi San Francisco’s Club Fugazi is personally for me a sacred space where many memories were created during the more than twenty-five times I attended what became the world’s longest-running cabaret show during its forty-five-year history, Beach Blanket Babylon. … [Read more...] about Dear San Francisco
The Headlands
The Headlands Christopher Chen American Conservatory Theater There are so many reasons to get your ticket today to see the West Coast premiere of Christopher Chen’s The Headlands at American Conservatory Theater before the last curtain on March 5: For anyone who lives in or near San Francisco, the play is like a SF love fest, featuring some of the most … [Read more...] about The Headlands
Satchmo at the Waldorf
Satchmo at the Waldorf Terry Teachout San Jose Stage Company Coughing and wheezing desperately for his next breath and with shoulders hunched as he stumbles toward the portable oxygen tank in the corner, the elderly man we see entering the large, backstage dressing room still is recognizable at first sight. After all, who else always has a white handkerchief hanging … [Read more...] about Satchmo at the Waldorf
Paradise Blue
Paradise Blue Dominique Morisseau Aurora Theatre Company In Aurora Theatre Company’s award-winning Detroit ’67 in 2018, the sounds of Detroit’s homegrown, Motown music were the background beat of Dominique Morisseau’s funny and frightening, heart-warming and heart-stopping play, Detroit ’67, the first of a trilogy about her hometown and a story that explodes amidst … [Read more...] about Paradise Blue
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 Dave Malloy Shotgun Players Having opened November 15, 2022, Shotgun Players’ audience-immersive, modern-sounding opera set in a Russian cabaret setting of 1812 – Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy – has already received the highest of accolades from both my fellow critics and especially from … [Read more...] about Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812
