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Riding off the high from last night's Tony Awards telecast -- which were, for lack of a better work, stupid -- we bring you word that Haight the Musical will premier this week at the first-ever Hollywood Fringe Festival. more ›

On Monday, St. Mary's instructor Louis Lebherz was ordered to apologize to his class and complete diversity training after instructing a student to sing a certain song from Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat, "Ol' Man River". It seems Lebherz made the student croon the "original version" of the ditty in front of the class, which included the following lyrics: "Niggers all work on de Mississippi/Niggers all work while de white folks play...". Altered versions of the song include substituting the racial epithet with "darkies" (changed in 1938 by Paul Roberson who sang the song in the original show), with "colored folks" for the 1946 revival, and elimination altogether with the infamous line now typically reading, "Here we all work on de Mississippi..." (Another example of musical theater cleaning up its act, i f you will, is Sondheim's "You Could Dive A Person Crazy," which now substitutes the line "...if a person was a fag" with "...if a person was a drag.") more ›

The reign of tourist terror at 8th and Market will finally end, or at least ebb, come September as SHN announces the closing date of Wicked. The musical, centered on the friendship between the two famed witches of Oz, originally did its pre-Broadway tryout in SF before becoming the most beloved show among tweens and less musical-theater-snobby gays. It will end its run here on September 5th, only to return, like a comet, or a yeast infection, in a couple of years. SF's production, to date, has grossed some $75 million. [SF Citizen] more ›

Theater fans may have heard about the 2008 Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific, which took home a bunch of Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical, Best Direction and Best Scenic Design. That production is now starting its national tour with a new cast, which kicked off this week at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, and we can see what at least some of the fuss was about over the original production. It's a grand tribute to mid-twentieth century American musicals and boisterously faithful to one of the favorite scores of the genre. And with all its glorification of the unsung heroes who waited out much of WWII on quiet islands in the South Pacific, it gives modern audiences a glimpse of the rabid, just-post-war nostalgia for wartime stories that American audiences had in the late 1940s and 50s. more ›

There probably hasn't been a true rock opera produced for the stage since "The Who's Tommy" -- "Rent" and "Spring Awakening" come from more pop traditions in our book and basically amount to musical theater scores with electric guitar on top -- but Green Day's "American Idiot," which just had its world premiere at Berkeley Rep, definitely qualifies. The music is urgent, driving, and loud. Whatever you feel about Green Day, there's a theatricality and consistent narrative element to their music that lends itself well to staging, and it's accomplished in this show with a lot of art and only a little of the cheesiness that many associate with musicals. more ›