The Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum (Book); Harold Arlen & E.Y. Harburg (Music & Lyrics); Herbert Stothart (Background Music) Mountain Play From the opening notes of the Overture, bits of familiar tunes brighten more than three thousand faces as toes tap and heart beats quicken. Young and old alike have made once again their way up Mount Tamalpais in yellow … [Read more...] about The Wizard of Oz
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Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really
Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really Kate Hamill San Francisco Playhouse Since the 1897 publication of Bram Stoker's gothic horror novel Dracula, hundreds upon hundreds of adaptations in cartoons, films, plays, and musicals from amateur to Hollywood and Broadway have spread the tale of the iconic vampire, Count Dracula, who moves from Transylvania to England … [Read more...] about Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really
Anon(ymous)
Anon(ymous) Naomi Iizuka The Pear Theatre A young man is surrounded by people of many colors, races, and nationalities who answer his initial "Where I come from is far away from here" with memories of their own origins: "hills of green tea," "waterfalls taller than the tallest skyskraper," "monsoon rains," "the smell of fried squid," and many more. The … [Read more...] about Anon(ymous)
Flex
Flex Candice Jones San Francisco Playhouse The squeaks and stomps of tennies across maple, the grunts and grinds of girls blocking others bodies, and the sudden silence and swoosh of aiming and shooting for the basket fill the electric air as San Francisco Playhouse becomes a high school gym full of young women's dreams of a state, basketball championship and maybe … [Read more...] about Flex
La Belle et la Bête (The Beauty and the Beast)
La Belle et la Bête (The Beauty and the Beast) Philip Glass, Based on the Film by Jean Cocteau Opera Parallèle Fantastically blurring live stage performance with cinematic screening where reality and surrealism blend into an evening of spectacular entertainment, Opera Parallèle presents Philip Glass' 1994 opera, La Belle et la Bête (The Beauty and the Beast) while … [Read more...] about La Belle et la Bête (The Beauty and the Beast)
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee William Finn (Music & Lyrics); Rachel Sheinkin (Book) Conceived by Rebecca Feldman; Additional Material by Jay Reiss Foothill Music Theatre Maybe few people still have a dictionary anywhere near their desk or on their home's bookshelf. Maybe nearly everyone now relies on Gmail, MSWord, Google search, or AI to … [Read more...] about The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
After Happy
After Happy Patricia Milton Central Works A last-minute, desperate search for a Pirate Queen for the annual Pirate Festival in a community where most residents live under blue-tarp tents after a destructive hurricane named Happy. A bribery deal in process in Liberia for a Louisiana, family oil company to buy a forest where indigenous people live in order to give … [Read more...] about After Happy
Salome
Salome Richard Strauss (composer); Hedwig Lachmann (libretto) Based on French language play by Oscar Wilde West Bay Opera Among a number of Biblical women such as Jezebel and Delilah whose names to this day connote evil, betrayal, and manipulation, Salome has always engendered much distain, but also much fascination. After all, as recorded twice in … [Read more...] about Salome
Running After Shadows
Running After Shadows Vincent Terrell Durham City Lights Theater Company In the middle of his latest Instagram, live-stream "unboxing" as he practically is making love to his just-arrived garlic press and doing a one-man, conga line wearing his new, authentic, red, "America's Test Kitchen" apron, recent culinary convert Morgan Collins opens one more, unexpected … [Read more...] about Running After Shadows
The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer W.S. Gilbert (Libretto) & Arthur Sullivan (Music) Lamplighters Musical Theatre "Ring forth ye bells with clarion sound, Forget your knells, for joy abounds. Forget your notes of mournful lay, Sound forth your throats pure joy today." With full voices resounding in happy harmonies, a chorus of both the wealthy and the working class rejoice that … [Read more...] about The Sorcerer
Simple Mexican Pleasures
Simple Mexican Pleasures Eric Reyes Loo New Conservatory Theatre Center No one would possibly dare accuse Eric of even having one toe still in the closet -- not his friends, family, colleagues, or even a casual passer by on the streets of L.A. But when his boyfriend in Seattle sends him a text that "I think it's over" just as Eric is packing his hoards of … [Read more...] about Simple Mexican Pleasures
Cyrano
Cyrano Edmond Rostand, Adapted by Jeffrey Lo & Max Tachis Los Altos Stage Company From its premiere night in 1897 Paris when the audience was still applauding an hour after the final curtain fell, through multiple stagings on the Great White Way starring some of Broadway’s finest, and after hundreds of productions worldwide in multiple languages, Edmond … [Read more...] about Cyrano
The Underpants
The Underpants Steve Martin, Adapted from Carl Sternheim San Jose Stage Company Even though they were "clean cotton, neat, and perfectly ironed," when the young and beautiful Louise drops her bloomers while standing on a bench in Dusseldorf to see the passing king, heads quickly turn, male hearts skip a beat, and news of the scandal spreads fast -- especially when … [Read more...] about The Underpants
ShaXspeare Reimagined
Shaxspeare Reimagined From the Works of William Shakespeare Rebecca Clark, Victoria Evans-Erville, AeJay Antonis Marquis, James Mercer II, Dawn Monique Williams & William Thomas Hodgson, Directors African-American Shakespeare Company The thirty-nine plays of William Shakespeare have been revisited, revised, and reconceptualized in thousands of ways since … [Read more...] about ShaXspeare Reimagined
The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap Agatha Christie City Lights Theater Company For as much as any one of us decries the awful acts of gun violence we hear about on a near-daily basis, who among us does not like a juicy, suspenseful murder mystery? And who is better to tell such a tale than the master herself, Agatha Christie, the most-published novelist in history and the playwright … [Read more...] about The Mousetrap
