Theater Review: DEAR SAN FRANCISCO: A HIGH-FLYING LOVE STORY (The 7 Fingers at Club Fugazi)

CIRQUE AND THE CITY

During Dear San Francisco at Club Fugazi in North Beach, one could be forgiven for feeling like you’d jumped into a Cirque Du Soleil production, and that’s fine as the founders of this San Francisco based cirque troupe worked there for a time. The intimate and immersive resident production was created by Bay Area natives Gypsy Snider and Shana Carroll, co-founders of The 7 Fingers, their independent troupe which began in Montreal. (Berkeley native Carroll is among the nominations for this year’s Tony Awards for choreography, with Jesse Robb, of Water for Elephants, a musical about a Depression-era circus now on Broadway.)

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the historic Club Fugazi theater space in North Beach, one of San Francisco’s gorgeous and historic neighborhoods full of shops, dining and apartments. This theater had San Francisco mojo too, it was home to the early works of The Grateful Dead, Robin Williams, Theloneus Monk, and the 45-year run of Beach Blanket Babylon.

The presence of The 7 Fingers at Club Fugazi, as well as the show itself, are love letters to San Francisco. With strong Bay Area roots, Snider and Carroll saw an opportunity to create something new for Bay Area audiences, and what they created was Club Fugazi Experiences, re-opening the historic venue in September 2021. As you enter you are handed a Dear San Francisco postcard and invited to write your own love letter to the city by the bay, some of which are used in the show.

At the center of Dear San Francisco is cirque-style acrobatics, trapeze, various flying rigs, flips, jumps, near misses, and other stunt work to keep the entire space electric with collective fear and anticipation. But the heart of the production is the charismatic cast and eclectic multi-media presentation. All multi-talented cirque performers — no small feat on its own — the entire cast of Dear San Francisco are also engaging, gorgeous and have surprising talents like singing, or playing an instrument, which have been masterfully woven into the script.

Bay Area native Dominic Cruz is a natural performer with a billion-watt smile and the acrobatic pedigree to match, and Zoe Shubert performs a dizzying Aerial Straps routine. The Diabolo act by Shengnan Pan and Enmeng Song, performed while sharing the story of how they met and fell in love had me weepy, as did the myriad references to Frisco culture from the AIDS crisis to the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes that changed the face of the city.

The level of production on display from performance to technical support, lighting to sound, projections to rigging is top notch inside the modern Club Fugazi; the music by composer Colin Gagné is catchy and original, mixing hard-hitting electronic music with more organic live pieces; and the service in the house is top-notch too with servers that work the entire show.

In 90 minutes at Club Fugazi I learned a little about San Francisco history and one of its historic performance venues, then I laughed, I cried, and I held my breath along with a couple hundred of my neighbors. Dear San Francisco is a local production that is breaking the mold of what live theater can be, and is as perfect of a night out in San Francisco as you can get.

“I never knew a home until I met you. Dear San Francisco.”