San Francisco
(Bay Area)

MY HEAD SAID “STAY” BUT MY HEELS SAID “RUN” Since 2007 the Berkeley Playhouse is one of the few theaters in the Bay Area that offers classes and camps for youths. Consequently their shows feature large ensemble casts of young actors who sing and dance with passion. Past shows include Matilda The Musical, Cinderella Enchanted…

EVERYBODY WILL BE TALKING ABOUT RAY OF LIGHT’S EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE Now, it’s a legend. First there was the 2011 British television documentary  Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, which became a concept album for the hit musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, which opened on the West End in 2017, toured, then recorded and screened in…

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…

COME TO THIS CABARET Cabaret is a masterpiece of American musical theater that has been presented in a vast variety of musical and physical shapes and sizes since its premiere on Broadway in 1966. John Kander and Fred Ebb’s score has been cut, added to, and shifted around, and the mood and look have been…

A MUSICAL THEATRE EXPLOSION San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre Center is presenting a musical by the late Broadway composer, lyricist and playwright Jonathan Larson. If you have heard of the runaway smash hit Rent then you are familiar with Larson’s style. tick, tick… BOOM!  predates Rent by a few years, but the tight harmonies and quick…

A SONG WHICH HAS BECOME A STANDARD Harvey Fierstein wrote his semi-autobiographical Torch Song Trilogy in the late 1970s. In it,  Arnold Beckoff, a gay, Jewish man and professional drag queen and torch singer looks for love and family in the pre-AIDS world of New York City. The three one-act plays, the first of which, International…

Bay Area theater and music lovers are in for a treat, albeit one that needs adjustment before heading to Broadway. The Berkeley Repertory Theatre is now presenting Michael Mayer’s world premiere production of Galileo: A Rock Musical. It’s the story of the famous 17th-century scientist, astronomer and polymath Galileo Galilei, whose celestial observations advanced science…

FRAGILE GIRL, KOOKY MOM, POSSIBLY QUEER SON, HANDSOME CALLER, STURDY PRODUCTION The Glass Menagerie is likely the reason you’ve heard the name Tennessee Williams. The Glass Menagerie put Tennessee Williams on the map and led the way to American classics like A Streetcar Named Desire, Night of the Iguana, and Cat on a Hot Tin…

EXTREME ACTS IS EXTREMELY GOOD A performance artist recounts the greatest moments of her career, from work that got her started, to the performance that almost killed her in the exciting and emotional two-act two-hander Extreme Acts  by prolific playwright Lynne Kaufman, directed by Molly Noble. The show, which opened last night at The Marsh San…

BITCH, YOU AGING GOOD In the tradition ’80s sitcoms but with elements of telenovela melodrama, Bitch Slap! is a hilarious, over-the-top spoof comedy written and directed by San Francisco’s inaugural drag laureate D’Arcy Drollinger. Bitch Slap first opened in 2017 and is back on stage through May 18 at Oasis. D’Arcy Drollinger, Katya Smirnoff The…

YOU’LL WANT TO GET CAUGHT IN THIS LOOP A Strange Loop, a Pulitzer Prize winning, loosely autobiographical, one-act musical drama by Michael R. Jackson explores a myriad of themes related to identity, queerness, self-esteem, and religion. It first debuted off Broadway in 2019, won a Tony when it hit Broadway in 2022, and is now…

GLAD PLAID Forever Plaid, an Off-Broadway musical revue written in the late eighties by Stuart Ross, takes place in the in-between, or whatever exists between this life and the next. The Plaids, a prototypical guy group in appearance, harmonies and temperament, find themselves dead right at the top of the show. But, they have been…

New Conservatory Theatre Center is offering The Tutor, a gripping and thought-provoking three-person drama that tells a timely story of love, lies, survival, and culture. With insightful minimal staging by Sahar Assaf, the performers pile-drive Torange Yeghiazarian‘s whip-smart dialogue into a powerful intimate ride that never lets up. Debórah Eliezer, Lawrence Radecker, Maya Nazzal Debórah…

A MAJESTY OF DRAG QUEENS BECOMES A PRIDE OF LIONS Founded in 1977 The Castro District’s Theatre Rhinoceros is the longest-running queer theater in the nation. This month is the world premiere of non-binary playwright Roger Q. Mason’s boundary breaking play The Pride of Lions. 1928, New York City. Mae West’s play, The Pleasure Man,…

FREEDOM WRITER San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company (SFBATCO) is presenting a terrific production that tells the amazing true story of Bay Area icon Betty Reid Soskin, known to residents in the Bay Area as being the oldest ranger in National Park Service who retired two years ago at the age of 100 (she became…

THE STEPS TO SUCCESS They say that timing is everything. Timing certainly is everything in  The 39 Steps, the English spy spoof that occupies a delightful, often amazing, and even suspenseful two hours at the San Francisco Playhouse. A fun-filled comedy slapstick farce based on the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The 39 Steps takes place in pre-WWII…

A PIPELINE TO GREAT THEATER Theater can do more than entertain. A good drama can not only pull at your heartstrings, it has the ability to educate, influence and inform. Pipeline, now playing in San Francisco at the Taube Atrium Theater, is the story of Nya, (Leontyne Mbele-Mbong) an inner-city public school teacher, dedicated to…