San Francisco
(Bay Area)

MUSICAL SATIRE SUPREME Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions closes out its 2024-25 season with a screamingly funny spoof of an inexplicably popular TV franchise, in which five rich boozy women can’t stop bickering when their reality show is threatened with cancellation. A reboot – and rewrite – of a show that debuted last year, The Real…

THE RUMOR THAT RUMORS IS A SCREAM IS NO RUMOR The late playwright/screenwriter Neil Simon remains one of America’s most beloved creators of comedy. His plays often hinge on ludicrous setups, as in his classic Rumors, directed by Larry Williams at Sonoma Arts Live. Covering up evidence of poor judgment is a foolproof gambit that…

A PEG OF PIRATES, A NUTTY NURSE, AND A BRIG OF BOBBIES ALL IN A PITCH-PERFECT PARODY This beloved operetta by the legendary British duo W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan first launched in 1879 at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City (the only collaboration of the pair to premiere on Broadway, and not…

STYLIZED, STIRRING, AND SELDOM SEEN Pacific Overtures isn’t your typical Sondheim musical, nor is it often staged—which is precisely why this rare revival by Kunoichi Productions at Brava Theater feels like such a significant event. First premiering on Broadway in 1976, this haunting, intellectually ambitious piece–with a book by John Weidman–examines the Western “opening” of…

THROCKMORTON ROCKS THE UNDERWORLD If this world is going to hell, as some claim, there can be no better guides than the characters in this musical written by Anais Mitchell. Director Reba Gilbert’s double-cast performances of twenty-six young actors are mesmerizing as they sing and dance and drum out a train route to the underworld….

MAYHEM MIXED WITH MAGIC Novato Theatre Company considered a daunting task of shepherding thirty young actors ages 10 to 13 to stage Matilda the Musical, the Broadway hit by Dennis Kelly (book) and Tim Minchin (music and lyrics) based on the book written by Roald Dahl, the much-beloved children’s author. Those familiar with Dahl recognize him as the…

THE WAITING GAME HAS WRINKLES As Bette Davis’s sampler cushion said, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies.” We start to lose our memories. Our bodies start to ache as our strength and endurance fade. People that we love and care about die or move away. Bill Buell In the aves, now premiering at Berkeley…

WHERE THERE’S A WILL, THERE’S A BOOK Where do playwrights get their inspiration? Brava to Lauren Gunderson, who took hers from actual historical events and created a believable backstory with characters to support it. Malcolm Rodgers (John Hemminges) and Fred Pitts (Henry Condell) Three years after William Shakespeare’s passing in 1616, the Globe Theatre had…

ANOTHER WORTHY WAY TO WONDER AT THE WORLD On rare occasions even the most seasoned reviewers are confounded by the inadequacy of language to describe a production so beautiful and transcendent that words fail to do it justice. Such a production is multiple award-winning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which opened May…

SURVIVAL, STRUGGLE AND SMALL JOYS Young girls coming of age always makes for a good story usually filled with life-changing moments and lessons to be learned. In Lynn Nottage’s Crumbs from the Table of Joy, now playing at Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, our protagonist and narrator is Ernestine Crump (Anna Marie Sharpe), a 17-year-old senior…

The pleasure lies not in the cookies, but in the pattern the crumbs make when the cookies crumble. ~ Michael Korda Playwright Lynn Nottage is a national treasure—a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, and among the very best storytellers in mining nuance from ordinary circumstances and historical facts. Her heart-rending Intimate Apparel and Sweat…

SHAMELESS AND SUBLIME: ANAÏS NIN COMES ALIVE AT THE MARSH Anaïs Nin (1903–1977), the French-Cuban-American diarist, is best known as one of the original female writers of erotica. Starting at age 11, when she and her mother immigrated to the United States from Cuba, Nin began chronicling her life in her new country. Her diaries…

New Conservatory Theatre is premiering Eric Reyes Loo’s family dramedy about life, breakups and soul searching: Simple Mexican Pleasures. The show opens with Eric (Alex Rodriguez) reeling from a break up with his boyfriend that he didn’t see coming. Eric is of Latino heritage and lives in Los Angeles. He decides the time is right…

A TALE OF TWO CITIES Theater is all about storytelling, and stories don’t come any better crafted than Jon Robin Baitz’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated Other Desert Cities. The SF Bay Area is enjoying two simultaneous presentations of this compelling family drama—one directed by Dana Nelson-Isaacs at Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions through May 4, and the other…

August Wilson’s Two Trains Running takes place in 1969 in the working-class Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now on at American Conservatory Theater, it’s part of Wilson’s famous “Pittsburgh Cycle,” his series of ten plays that depict African-American life across different decades. His best-known work, Fences, portrayed the 1950s and premiered on stage in 1985…

LOVE AND CHANGE, SONOMA STYLE Dating and mating get fully examined and fully skewered in I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at Sonoma Arts Live in downtown Sonoma, through May 4. Ably helmed by North Bay veteran Carl Jordan in Andrews Hall at the Sonoma Community Center, the production is a series of musical…

FALSE WITNESS HAS NOT CHANGED An ear-splitting blast from a punk-rock band opens this thought-provoking glimpse into an ancient event. Playwrights Ellice Stevens and Billy Barrett pieced together actual court manuscripts from a 1612 Roman trial of rape, adding contemporary dialogue and raucous music to intensify the content. Maggie Mason, Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, Alicia M….

CYRANO GETS A CONFUSING NOSE JOB Why anyone involved in Los Altos Stage Company’s current production of Cyrano thought it would be a good idea to make Cyrano a woman—and without the trademark large proboscis at that—is a bit of a mystery. Cyrano de Bergerac remains a beloved staple of the stage, loosely based on…

Palo Alto Players’ Jersey Boys Finds the Beat, Even When the Staging Stumbles Opening night at Palo Alto Players’ Jersey Boys had the Lucie Stern audience itching to jump out of their seats and dance. And who could blame them? The hits keep coming in this crowd-pleasing jukebox musical about Frankie Valli and the Four…

COUCH SURFING AND CULTURAL BAGGAGE It makes sense that Jeffrey Lo—a Filipino artist who writes, directs, and knows the Peninsula theater scene inside and out—could write a play like Writing Fragments Home. It’s personal without being sentimental, funny without trying too hard, and it lands exactly where it needs to. I was at the near-sold-out…