San Francisco
(Bay Area)

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…

STROP THE PRESSES! A NEW RAZOR-SHARP BARBER COMES TO TOWN Gioachino Rossini’s frolicsome 1816 comic opera  The Barber of Seville  is superbly realized with ebullience and verve in San Francisco Opera’s new production. The first night cast (one of two) was a sparkling SF Opera debut for both Mexican tenor Javier Camarena as Count Almaviva and zesty…

A BEAUTIFUL ADAPTATION The British indie My Beautiful Laundrette was praised when it came out for its multi-layered portrait of the immigrant experience, and is now best remembered for Daniel Day Lewis’s screen debut, not to mention putting Channel Four Films and director Stephen Frears on the map. Adapted for the stage by Andy Graham…

ON A WING AND A PRAYER The original 1938 Broadway production of Rodgers and Hart’s I Married an Angel (choreographed by George Balanchine and directed by newcomer Joshua Logan no less) ran a respectable 338 performances, the national tour of which concluded right here at the Curran Theater in San Francisco (the 1942 film version…

IF ONLY OUR CURRENT CONGRESS WAS THIS MUCH FUN Who would think that a musical featuring a bunch of middle-aged white men talking politics could be fun? But that’s the miracle of Frank Galati’s production of 1776. the rousing revival of the 1969 musical classic currently at A.C.T.   Peter Stone’s witty dialogue and Sherman Edwards’…

I SAY YOU WANT THIS REVOLUTION After the Revolution is a chewy new play about family dynamics and the difficulty of making moral judgments, especially after the fact. For audiences thirsting for a literate, intelligent, stimulating, and accessible new play, it will fill the bill nicely. The Amy Herzog 2010 drama premiered Off Broadway and…

HEAVEN OR HELL? I surmise that  opinions will be all over the map for San Francisco Opera’s production of Mefistofele, Arrigo Boito’s 1868 take on the Faust legend. To begin with, this is a clunky, fragmented  and uneven  opera. There are a few memorable tunes, especially for the chorus, and there are some juicy parts. And while the…

SOUND AND FURY INDEED The idea of site-specific theater’”theatre which is performed in unconventional spaces compatible to the script’”is nothing new, but it seems to be gaining ground. From New York (Then She Fell) to Los Angeles (The Manor) to Chicago (The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe) to Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Willful), theater practitioners are…

A PRAIRIE THEATER COMPANION As many newer plays fail to grasp the art of storytelling, Word for Word Performing Arts Company offers compelling narratives via short stories which are performed literally, well, word for word. Their 20th anniversary production is a seamless compendium of Zona Gale stories which take place in the town of Friendship…

GOOD PEOPLE GETS BAY AREA PREMIERE Having seen productions of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People at both the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles and Steppenwolf in Chicago, I can attest that this is the playwright’s best work (it is currently the most produced play in America). Knowing the quality and professionalism of Marin Theatre Company, whose…