San Francisco
(Bay Area)

PUSH/PULL PACKS A PUNCH Berkeley’s Central Works is known for offering local Bay Area writers workshops and the opportunity for new playwrights to debut their works on stage with an audience. The offering at hand is Harry Davis‘s triumphant Push/Pull, performed in the small and intimate setting of The Berkeley City Club. For the world premiere,…

A MUSICAL THAT CURVES IN CONCENTRIC CIRCLES Fly by Night, an affecting chamber musical which premiered in 2014 at Playwrights Horizon, has been described as a “darkly comic rock-fable,” and that’s about as accurate as any attempt to define this quirky show. With a book, music, and lyrics by Kim Rosenstock, Will Connolly, and Michael…

WHO ARE YOU ASKING TO THE PROM? It may not be high school or college prom season just yet, but in the San Francisco Bay Area, at least three theatre companies have decided it’s time to dust off their corsages and take The Prom for a spin. And given the recent American political events that…

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR RISES AGAIN. ROCK ON. Rock operas don’t come much more iconic than Jesus Christ Superstar, and Berkeley Playhouse’s electric new production makes it feel as urgent and incendiary as ever. With a timeless score by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, this show has been rattling the rafters of theaters since its…

YOU GOTTA HAVE HEART Two young immigrant women find joy and hope in a budding friendship in Lloyd Suh’s The Heart Sellers, at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre through March 9. The show moves to TheatreWorks in Mountain View for a three-week run in April. Adroitly directed by Jennifer Chang, the two-actor 90-minute one-act, an uproarious comedy…

FANTASTIC FROGGY Jennifer Haley’s audacious graphic novel Froggy comes roaring to life on the Margaret Lesher Theatre’s big stage in Walnut Creek, and it’s one of the freshest theatrical offerings anywhere. Jamella Cross (Froggy) At its core a tale of a young woman who falls for a flaky third-tier actor, Froggy is a dark comedy spoofing…

WHAT—OR WHOM—SHALL BE DISCARDED? Marin Theatre Company has never shied away from provocative material, and its current production, Waste, is no exception. Waste tells the story of politically ambitious and idealistic Henry Trebell (Lance Gardner) and the loss of his political dreams when his affair with Mrs. O’Connell (Liz Sklar), a married woman, becomes public…

A SUSPENSEFUL ONE-MAN MURDER MYSTERY The Gay community in San Francisco was shocked and terrified by a series of murders between 1974-75 committed by a serial killer known as “The Doodler.” Believed to have killed between six and sixteen men, most of whom were gay, he was known for meeting his victims in bars, and…

WELL-SEASONED THEATER IS LOADED WITH FLAVOR Welcome to 1999, a time of hysteria over the impending Y2K crisis, widespread fear of monosodium glutamate (MSG), crude video games and crude popular culture. In the midst of all this wanders a Japanese-American high school girl named Ami (Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer), wrestling with her cultural identity, arguing with…

Currently playing at The New Conservatory Theater, Francis Grey and the Case of His Dead Boyfriend is a whirlwind one-man mystery that fuses elements of classic whodunits, camp, film noir, and drag—all packed into a breakneck, one-hour experience. This world premiere, written, directed, and performed by the multi-talented Nathan Tylutki, is a theatrical high-wire act…

THE THING ABOUT GREAT THEATER Directed by Tyne Rafaeli, Berkeley Rep’s world premiere production of The Thing About Jellyfish delivers an emotionally resonant adaptation of Ali Benjamin’s beloved coming-of-age novel, weaving together grief, wonder, and the mysteries of growing up with an ethereal, dreamlike quality, as a young girl on the cusp of adolescence searches…

THERE’S A HOT HIT COOKING IN ROSS In ancient biblical texts, Gilead is not only a place of final peace, but also invokes healing and hope. How appropriate that playwrights James Valcq and Fred Alley chose this name as the location of The Spitfire Grill, a café in a down-on-its-luck small town, grown smaller by…

SIX DEGREES SPOOFS UPPER-CLASS PRETENTIONS Sonoma Arts Live (SAL) has launched an ambitious production of Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare’s now-classic tale of belief and deception among New York City socialites. Purportedly based on a real story, Six Degrees played on Broadway before becoming a 1993 film starring Donald Sutherland and, from the Lincoln…

NOSTALGIA NEVER GETS OLD When The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams premiered on Broadway in 1945, it became his first major success. Nearly 80 years later, the play remains relevant, touching on themes of family conflict, personal failure, and the power of memory. At the heart of the story is a fractured family: an angry…

THE MINUTE THAT CHANGED POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING FOREVER On September 7, 1964, a 60-second TV ad transformed American politics. Known as “Daisy Girl,” it featured a young girl counting daisy petals, followed by a countdown and a nuclear explosion. The ad became iconic for its emotional, innovative approach to negative political advertising. It’s even better known…

A PRESENT LAUGHTER THAT UPENDS THE PAST Britain’s beloved playwright Sir Noël Coward crafted this lighthearted, autobiographical comedy as a showcase for his own flamboyant celebrity. A renowned bon vivant, Coward dazzled as a writer, singer, and performer, with friends and admirers orbiting his stardom. Adapting this blithe farce, director Carl Jordan brings a radical…

A SPONTANEOUS MOCKERY OF JUSTICE, INDEED Now on for a short run through January 26 at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Theater, Synergy Theater brings an improvised spoof of the iconic TV series Law & Order. Complete with the signature “Chung Chung” between scenes, this show offers a hilarious and unpredictable take on the long-running crime drama….

LAUGH-A-MINUTE FUN When English playwright Michael Frayn wrote his slapstick farce in 1982, it bore little resemblance to the production that opened Saturday night at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto.  It started out as a one-act play called Exits, but was later expanded into the production Palo Alto Players is offering theatergoers. Noises…