Little Women Jason Howland (Music), Mindi Dickstein (Lyrics), Allan Knee (Book) Based on the Novel by Louisa May Alcott South Bay Musical Theatre A beloved novel written over 150 years ago about a family of four sisters during the last two years of the Civil War has since been adapted seven times to film; multiple times to television; four, to the stage; twice, … [Read more...] about Little Women
Best Bet
Hershey Felder: The Piano and Me
Hershey Felder: The Piano and Me Hershey Felder, Book Music by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Bartók, Gershwin & More TheatreWorks Silicon Valley After creating and performing the past thirty years in some six thousand live performances and eighteen films the musical biographies of sixteen famed composers (Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Beethoven, … [Read more...] about Hershey Felder: The Piano and Me
Sunday in the Park with George
Sunday in the Park with George Stephen Sondheim (Music & Lyrics); James Lapine (Book) Shotgun Players Birds happily chirping, tall trees climbing on all sides with hints of limbs hanging from above, a glimpsing view of a lake and its graceful boats, and everywhere from the ground up, rich and varied greens filling in the scene. As we enter what we expect to be … [Read more...] about Sunday in the Park with George
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady Alan Jay Lerner (Book & Lyrics); Frederick Lowe (Music) San Francisco Playhouse With a long history of season-ending, summer-long, sizzling musicals that consistently sell-out -- classics like Cabaret, Evita, Follies, A Chorus Line -- San Francisco Playhouse once again takes a much-loved, much-produced audience favorite and opens an exuberant, … [Read more...] about My Fair Lady
Constellations
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
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
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
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
