San Francisco
(Bay Area)

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT Beginning November 26, 42nd Street Moon will revist  one of its earliest hits, the mirthful 1943 farce Something for the Boys. This rarely performed boisterous musical is a fascinating look into a time when Broadway was about to undergo significant changes from silly book musicals into classier fare. Even though Cole Porter’s…

PROMISING PROMISES, I PROMISE The premise of Promises, Promises is one you are probably familiar with even if you have never seen the 1968 musical, which opens in a splashy revival at San Francisco Playhouse this week. An ambitious junior executive, Chuck Baxter, wants to move up the corporate ladder. In return for promises of…

LES MIZ DIRECTOR JOHN CAIRD BRINGS LA BOHÈME TO SFO San Francisco Opera’s crowd-pleasing rendition of La Bohème, which opened on Friday night, offers vocal enchantment unhampered by a boiler plate production. It’s hard to go wrong (in general) with Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 opera–a relatively light tragedy buoyed with easy-to-love characters, provocative music, and a…

GRANTING YOUR WISH FOR A FUN OPERA Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) was written in 1817 during the bel canto era when operas were written to showcase beautiful singing, and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s charming witty, whimsical, and heartfelt San Francisco Opera production’”running November 9–26, 2014 at the War Memorial Opera House’”will showcase as Angelina (aka Cinderella)…

REIMAGINING THE REIMAGINED AT  NCTC No one can deny why Romeo and Juliet has achieved cult status. Not only is Shakespeare’s comic tragedy one of the most enduring stories ever told, but it is a miracle of construction, containing highly relatable and seemingly countless universal themes and motifs that magically intertwine: War, bad timing, kinship, honor,…

COOL RACH TAKES BACK SEAT TO HOT BARTí“K It’s a strange thing about expectations. San Francisco Symphony made it clear who the headliner was for last night’s program, but Slovakian guest conductor Juraj Valčuha’s rendition of Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin outdid pianist Garrick Ohlsson’s Rach III. Valčuha kicked-off the first half with Steven Stucky’s brief,…

SWAN IN A MILLION Featuring a live performance by the Berkeley Symphony with guest conductor Nicolette Fraillon, The Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake comes to Zellerbach Hall this weekend, October 16-19, 2014. While this is one of the world’s favorite ballets, expect this rendition’”created by Australian choreographer Graeme Murphy’”to be unlike any that have come before….

DO I FEAR A WALTZ? Musicals are generally “lost” for any one of a number of reasons: the libretto may be filled with once topical socio-political humor now meaningless to contemporary audiences; it’s too expensive to produce; the score may have gone out of fashion; or the show itself just doesn’t work. The latter is…

THE GREATER GOOD When is “enough” enough? Where do you draw the line? How far would you be willing to go for the “Greater Good”? These are some of the difficult questions posed by playwright Aaron Loeb’s darkly hilarious and deeply disturbing satire, Ideation, which opened San Francisco Playhouse’s 12th season.   Originally developed and produced…

JOURNEY BEYOND THE STARS Stanley Kubrick’s decision to use the first section of Richard Strauss’s exquisite Also Sprach Zarathustra, Opus 30 (1896) to underscore the opening sequence of his classic 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey may have been a master stroke; but the average moviegoer was, and still is, unfamiliar with the entire symphonic…

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN As a child, I always hated clowns. At best they were weird; at worst just plain scary. And, to top it off, they weren’t even funny, at least not to me. Why then were they always hovering at birthday parties like some ill-dressed stalker? Was there something I was missing?…

THIS WICKED MAGIC SHOW WILL CAST AN ENCHANTED GODSPELL Teddy Bear’s; Fanny’s; Trinity Place; 132 Bush; the Plush Room; The Mint; Josie’s; the list goes on and on. Time was when San Francisco was overrun with cabarets and showrooms; a close-knit circuit of performance venues, where, for a small cover charge and the price of…

THE CAT’S MEOW MEOW: PURRRRRFECT When you hear the words “performance art,” do you envision a motionless Marina Abramovic allowing a 10-foot boa constrictor to wrap itself around her head? Well, prepare to have your preconceptions, and your mind, blown away by the fabulous Meow Meow.   This gorgeous and accomplished singer, dancer, librettist, lyricist, comedienne,…

SUSANNAH SOARS IN SAN FRANCISCO Susannah may be a tragedy, but the San Francisco Opera production is worthy of a hoedown celebration.   This near-perfect production is one of the best operas I’ve seen in the past decade. 88-year-old composer and librettist Carlisle Floyd was in attendance on opening night, so it was an emotional experience…

HE COULD HAVE SUNG ALL NIGHT Handsome, self-effacing, and charmingly humble, singer/songwriter, Broadway actor (Xanadu, Finian’s Rainbow) and film/TV star (United 93, 30 Rock) Cheyenne Jackson could do no wrong in the eyes of his adoring fans, who packed Davies Symphony Hall for the premiere performance of Hello, Gorgeous!, his newly created tribute to songs…