San Francisco
(Bay Area)

LET THIS SILLY BLONDE MUSICAL ENTERTAIN YOU Post-pandemic, as the world is seemingly opening up, local theater and the arts have not rebounded. Many venues are suffering or have gone out of business. In every local theater production I have seen in The Bay Area in 2024, as soon as the curtain goes down, cast…

WHAT’S ALL THE HOO-HA? Last Saturday, Berkeley’s Shotgun Players opened a play by Jen Silverman which is so provocative that some publications won’t publish its full title: Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties; In Essence, A Queer and Occasionally Hazardous Exploration; Do You Remember When You Were In Middle School And You Read About…

MEHVITA Eva Perón is back on stage downtown as San Francisco Playhouse stages the classic Broadway musical Evita. Inspired by a radio documentary about Perón, the first lady of Argentina, Evita  began as a 1976 rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, the authors of  Jesus Christ Superstar; it was staged as a musical on…

ROUTE 66 WAS ONE MOTHER OF A ROAD Now playing at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, Mother Road is an epic journey of self-discovery and family — a sequel to the famous 1939 John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath in which we follow the sad travels of Tom Joad and his family, who flee the…

A COMPELLING ECO-DYSTOPIAN STORY The destruction of tropical ecosystems has been a worldwide concern since the 1960s. Through June 23, San Francisco’s Magic Theatre examines the crisis in a personal manner with Naomi Iizuka’s Garuda’s Wing, Directed by prolific actor/director (and university professor) Margo Hall, it’s an eco-dystopian tale spanning approximately five decades in the…

MY HEAD SAID “STAY” BUT MY HEELS SAID “RUN” Since 2007 the Berkeley Playhouse is one of the few theaters in the Bay Area that offers classes and camps for youths. Consequently their shows feature large ensemble casts of young actors who sing and dance with passion. Past shows include Matilda The Musical, Cinderella Enchanted…

EVERYBODY WILL BE TALKING ABOUT RAY OF LIGHT’S EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE Now, it’s a legend. First there was the 2011 British television documentary  Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, which became a concept album for the hit musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, which opened on the West End in 2017, toured, then recorded and screened in…

CIRQUE AND THE CITY During Dear San Francisco at Club Fugazi in North Beach, one could be forgiven for feeling like you’d jumped into a Cirque Du Soleil production, and that’s fine as the founders of this San Francisco based cirque troupe worked there for a time. The intimate and immersive resident production was created…

COME TO THIS CABARET Cabaret is a masterpiece of American musical theater that has been presented in a vast variety of musical and physical shapes and sizes since its premiere on Broadway in 1966. John Kander and Fred Ebb’s score has been cut, added to, and shifted around, and the mood and look have been…

A MUSICAL THEATRE EXPLOSION San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre Center is presenting a musical by the late Broadway composer, lyricist and playwright Jonathan Larson. If you have heard of the runaway smash hit Rent then you are familiar with Larson’s style. tick, tick… BOOM!  predates Rent by a few years, but the tight harmonies and quick…

A SONG WHICH HAS BECOME A STANDARD Harvey Fierstein wrote his semi-autobiographical Torch Song Trilogy in the late 1970s. In it,  Arnold Beckoff, a gay, Jewish man and professional drag queen and torch singer looks for love and family in the pre-AIDS world of New York City. The three one-act plays, the first of which, International…

Bay Area theater and music lovers are in for a treat, albeit one that needs adjustment before heading to Broadway. The Berkeley Repertory Theatre is now presenting Michael Mayer’s world premiere production of Galileo: A Rock Musical. It’s the story of the famous 17th-century scientist, astronomer and polymath Galileo Galilei, whose celestial observations advanced science…

FRAGILE GIRL, KOOKY MOM, POSSIBLY QUEER SON, HANDSOME CALLER, STURDY PRODUCTION The Glass Menagerie is likely the reason you’ve heard the name Tennessee Williams. The Glass Menagerie put Tennessee Williams on the map and led the way to American classics like A Streetcar Named Desire, Night of the Iguana, and Cat on a Hot Tin…