San Francisco
(Bay Area)

RENAISSANCE MAN Marc Davis. He is one of those Americans who touched the lives of millions, yet few except rabid Disney fans would be able to place his name. Even those who claim to know everything Disneyland are in wonderment when I point out Davis’ many contributions to the Park. As an artist for WED…

TWO TONY’S UNITE FOR ONE OF THE BIGGEST THEATER EVENTS OF THE YEAR For anybody starved for smart and thrilling playwriting, your destination is Berkeley Rep, which is unfurling the West Coast premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, which officially opens…

A ROAD TRIP YOU HAVE TO TAKE Some may not know this, but Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actor, ex-cowboy, and musician Sam Shepard is also an amazing short story writer. After reading Cruising Paradise (1997), a potpourri of tales, ruminations, and ostensibly first-person recollections with similar themes and obsessions, I thought that these stories’”desolate but riotous,…

A HOWLINGLY FUNNY BASKERVILLES SPOOF IS MORE THAN ELEMENTARY It turns out that you can teach an old dog new tricks, proven by TheatreWorks’ contemporary stage-spoof treatment of the 1901 Sherlock Holmes classic The Hound of the Baskervilles. Initially, as a longtime fan of Holmes and Watson and of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literature, I…

PATOIS, DIALECTS AND DELIVERY LEAVE US IN THE WOODS Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, currently making a West coast premiere at San Francisco Playhouse, presents a darkly comic tale from the fringes of society, involving squatters and dope-taking teenagers who are up against soulless cogs in the local government’s bureaucratic wheel.   Director Bill English’s ambitious production is…

DIME STORE PROPAGANDA One of the problems with watching a play that has an agenda, political or otherwise, is the difficulty of enjoying with a good conscience even those parts that work; knowing the playwright’s intentions to be dishonest (in that he’s serving up propaganda as art), one feels foolish being affected emotionally, as though…

SPIRITS MATERIALIZE A SPIRITED CHRISTMAS IN SONG AND DANCE Anyone with a soft spot for holiday song and dance through history must attend the California Revels lofty production of The Christmas Revels: Spirits of Haddon Hall at Oakland’s Scottish Rite Theater. Don’t look for polished theatrical sophistication here. Rather, enjoy what you’ll find instead: High-spirited…

SHINE: THIS CONCERT’S SO BRIGHT, I GOTTA WEAR SHADES ‘Tis the season for a plethora of performing arts doing their best to pierce your inner Scrooge and inject you with holiday spirit. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus did just that at their annual holiday concert, held for the first time at the War Memorial…

THIS SEASON, SMUIN IS A SHOO-IN It’s such a beautifully simple idea that I often ponder why great dance companies don’t offer a seasonal treat as the Bay Area’s Smuin Ballet does. Instead of the same yearly program (you know, that Tchaikovsky chestnut), Michael Smuin created The Christmas Ballet, a changeable program which is divided…

SUPPORTING TRADITION Whereas other major companies trot out their tried-and-true but tired old annual cash-cow renditions of The Nutcracker, San Francisco Ballet’s version is a gift that makes me anticipate the holiday season. With no shortage of overblown and underwhelming productions of this holiday chestnut, SF Ballet, the country’s oldest professional ballet company and the…

THANK YOU FOR BEING A DRAG QUEEN Now at the Victoria Theatre, Trannyshack’s drag version of classic holiday-themed The Golden Girls episodes seems to grow in popularity every year. Since its inception in 2005 when it was performed for a select crowd of friends, it has outgrown the living room and two subsequent South of…

A BRIGHT NEW PRODUCTION Salvation can’t come soon enough when you’re a long-term, low-wage slave worker at the local Hobby Lobby. Samuel D. Hunter’s tragicomic look at life within the cultural wasteland of post-Capitalist middle America in the Obie award-winning A Bright New Boise  goes beyond the stereotypes in an imaginative Bay Area premiere by Berkeley’s…

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS San Francisco’s Magic Theatre prides itself on cultivating new plays and giving up-and-coming playwrights the opportunity to produce new and thought provoking theater.   The estimable company lives up to this manifesto by presenting the world premiere of Arlington, an innovative show which takes the audience on an entertaining…

GET THE HOOK The story of Peter Pan, about that mischievous little flying boy who doesn’t want to grow up, has been told in numerous forms since J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play and subsequent 1911 novel Peter and Wendy. The adventures of the Lost Boys and the Darling children was musicalized for Broadway in 1954, with…