Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks & Thomas Meehan (Book); Mel Brooks (Music & Lyrics) Los Altos Stage Company When it comes to parody and farce, who does it better than Mel Brooks? Whether garnering tear-producing laughs by satirizing Star Wars movies (Spaceballs), Alfred Hitchcock thrillers (Anxiety), westerns (Blazing Saddles), Broadway (Producers), and so much … [Read more...] about Young Frankenstein
Musical
Everybody’s Talking about Jamie
Everybody’s Talking about Jamie Dan Gillespie Sells (Score) & Tom MacRae (Book & Lyrics) Based Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, Directed by Jenny Popplewell Ray of Light Theatre What better way for a San Francisco audience to celebrate Pride Month than enjoying to the hilt a joyous, upbeat, and totally inspiring coming out story of a sixteen-year-old whose only dream … [Read more...] about Everybody’s Talking about Jamie
Kinky Boots
Kinky Boots Cyndi Lauper (Music & Lyrics); Harvey Fierstein (Book) Mountain Play Celebrating Pride Month with full glitz and gusto, Mountain Play opens its 111th season on Mount Tamalpais with Harvey Fierstein (book) and Cyndi Lauper’s (music and lyrics) Kinky Boots, the 2013 musical that took the country by storm and won thirteen Tony nominations and ultimately … [Read more...] about Kinky Boots
tick, tick … Boom!
tick, tick… BOOM! Jonathan Larson (Book, Music & Lyrics); David Auburn, Script Consultant New Conservatory Theatre Center “Maybe I really have written the show that will reinvent musicals for our generation, the Hair of the ‘90s.” With that hope, a struggling playwright and composer heads to a workshop production of the musical he has been writing for five years. … [Read more...] about tick, tick … Boom!
Galileo
Galileo Danny Strong (Book); Michael Weiner & Zoe Sarnack (Music & Lyrics) Berkeley Repertory Theatre From one side we hear, “Science asks the questions; the Bible has the answers;” from the opposing view, “The Scriptures is a book about going to heaven; it is not a book about how the heavens go.” Sounds like countering arguments made in some current, state … [Read more...] about Galileo
The Music Man
The Music Man Meredith Wilson (Book, Music & Lyrics) Palo Alto Players Musicals often burst onto the stage with numbers that arouse an audience to peak attention and leave fond impressions (and earworms) that can last a lifetime. Among the dozens of opening numbers that are my big-sound, big-number favorites are the likes of Belle entering the village in Beauty and the … [Read more...] about The Music Man
Forever Plaid
Forever Plaid Stuart Ross (Book); James Raitt (Musical Continuity, Supervision & Arrangements) 42nd Street Moon If ever there were a musical whose subtitle should be “Oldies But Goldies,” it would have to be Stuart Ross’s (book) Forever Plaid, a 25+-song collection from close-harmony, all-male (and usually white) groups of the 1950s like the The Four Aces, The Four … [Read more...] about Forever Plaid
Something Rotten
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
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
Ruddygorre Or, The Bruja’s Curse
Ruddygore Or, The Bruja’s Curse W.S. Gilbert (Libretto) & Arthur Sullivan (Score) Adapted by David Euresti Lamplighters Musical Theatre The Company that for seventy-one years has entertained Bay Area audiences with its Gilbert and Sullivan fare has taken one of the pair’s Victorian parodies of the English, nineteenth-century melodrama, Ruddygore, and married it … [Read more...] about Ruddygorre Or, The Bruja’s Curse
Rent
Rent Jonathan Larson (Book, Music & Lyrics) Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory In January 1996, onto a Broadway stage burst a sexy, soaring musical daring to bestow unforgettable faces and personalities to seven artists struggling to survive not only their 1989, East Village poverty, but also the plague of AIDS/HIV that appeared ready to wipe out an entire … [Read more...] about Rent
A Little Night Music
A Little Night Music Stephen Sondheim (Music & Lyrics); Hugh Wheeler (Book) South Bay Musical Theatre In a rich, reverberating blend of harmonies, an elaborately attired quintet sings snippets of fuller songs soon to come of the on-again, off-again love affairs and marriages we are about to witness: “Unpack the luggage, la-la-la; pack the luggage, la-la-la.” ... … [Read more...] about A Little Night Music
Falsettos
Falsettos William Finn (Music & Lyrics); William Finn & James Lapine (Book) The Pear Theatre For me as an avid theatregoer and a critic, nothing is more upsetting than to see the applaudable efforts of a talented cast squandered by the choices and/or oversights by those who direct the production, both stage and musical. Unfortunately, such was the case in … [Read more...] about Falsettos
A Chorus Line
A Chorus Line James Kirkwood and Nicolas Dante (Book): Marvin Hamlisch (Music); Edward Kleban (Lyrics) Originally Conceived by Michael Bennett San Francisco Playhouse What is immediately striking as the twenty-four dancing hopefuls both sprint and shuffle onto the stage is the wide variety of shapes, sizes, races, and ages among them. At first glance, many of them is … [Read more...] about A Chorus Line
