Stage Fog: The Love Edition
If you haven't booked your Valentine's Day restaurant reservations yet, you're in trouble. Lucky for you, our local theater companies have shows much more unique than prix fixe menus anyway. From improv to Broadway to Internet escapades, they have something for every sexual predilection. Some of them even have dinner, too.
How We First Met at Purple Onion
How did you meet your girlfriend or boyfriend, wife or husband? Was it in a chat room, at Folsom Street Fair, or did he help you pick up the contents of your bag after you performed a perfect face plant in front of him? Love telling the story to all your friends and even perfect strangers? Well, the actors of How We First Met will never get tired of hearing it. At each performance, an audience couple is interviewed about their true-life love stories while actors re-create the romantic--or embarrassing--moments in improvised sketches and songs. Past stories have included a mid-30-year-old mom who divorced her husband for an 18-year-old guy, and a man who proposed to his girlfriend as a sort of finale to the actors' performance. This year the audience gets to pick which couple's story will be staged, and a special February 14 show includes a three-course dinner. How We First Met is for everyone, no matter your sexual or political preference, and no matter whether you've been married for years or just suffered through your first date. And it sure beats The Bachelor.
Through February 25
How We First Met audience couple Taylor Forester and Ken Fried watch their story being re-created. Photo by Tracy Dethlefs.
Miss-matches.com at Shelton Theater
When relationships go wrong--especially the sex part--women are often all too happy to blame the guy. But Leslie freely admits screwing up her own sex life. After suffering through an unhappy marriage, Leslie roamed the sexual purgatory also known as the Internet--X-rated chat rooms, dating websites, steamy e-mails. She corresponded with countless men and even met a few of them. OK, 300 of them. In keeping with the nature of Leslie's solo show, she's created a dating center in the theater's lobby where you can post a Match.com profile--and take your own journey through purgatory.
Through March 25
A Little Bit in Love: Love Songs from Broadway at Phoenix Theater
Ah, doesn't Broadway make love look so easy? Boy meets girl, they fall in love, sing to each other with perfect pitch, dance without stepping on each other's toes, have their little first fight and make up--all in about two hours plus intermission. (Well, except in West Side Story, but that's really a Shakespeare tragedy, so of course he dies in the end.) Ray of Light Theatre, the company that brought us one of the best musical love stories last year with Bat Boy (where a half-bat half-boy falls in love with a beautiful blonde girl), picks out some of the best Broadway love songs of all time for a perfectly romantic evening (the Valentine's shows include a champagne toast and an optional rose bouquet). So if you're tone deaf and have two left feet, leave it to Ray of Light to provide the serenade instead.
February 14 through 19
Loveplay at Old Oakland Theatre
Combining sex with intellectual substance, Moira Buffini's Loveplay follows over 2,000 years of seductions, flirtations and other sexual transactions that take place on one spot in London. From randy Roman soldiers to uptight Victorians to modern dating games, this U.S. premiere by the excellent TheatreFirst features 6 actors playing about 30 parts in a fast-paced meaty play that titillates the mind as well as the, you know.
February 9 through March 5
For more stage options, check out the listings at the Guardian, the Express, the SF Weekly, and the calendar on Theatre Bay Area's website.