Dear Evan Hanson is returning to the Bay Area next winter, the West End and Broadway hit Six is coming to town next year, and ACT is bringing in a new show by the acrobat troupe that created Dear San Francisco.
The upcoming season lineups for Broadway SF and American Conservatory Theater (ACT) are out, marking the first full season arrays for either theater group in two years.
Broadway SF previously announced the shifting of some of its touring shows that were planned for the 2019-2020 season into 2021, but we all know how last year went — and theaters really only began reopening last fall. This year, in the current Broadway SF season, we still have 2019 Tony winner Hadestown to look forward to (June 7 to July 3), as well as The Prom (June 21 to July 17), the Tony-winning revival of Oklahoma! (August 16 to September 11), and 2021 Tony winner Moulin Rouge (September 7 to November 6). Also, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Aaron Sorkin stage adaptation of the Harper Lee play, comes to the Golden Gate Theater September 13 to October 9.
Now we have the lineup for the 2022-2023 season, which includes some other recent Broadway hits including the Alanis Morissette jukebox musical Jagged Little Pill, which opens October 11 at the Golden Gate; and Disney's Frozen musical, which opens at the Orpheum on November 18.
Also coming are the Beetlejuice musical (December 7-31), Mean Girls (January 31 to February 26), and Six, the modern musical about the wives of Henry VIII (February 21 to April 29). Tina - The Tina Turner Musical will also arrive in August 2023.
Notably, after it was the subject of a lawsuit brought by Broadway SF's precursor, SHN, Dear Evan Hanson is returning to an SF stage in January 2023, playing for four weeks at the Orpheum. The Tony-winning musical came to the Curran in 2018, and SHN then took its former partner, Carole Shorenstein Hays, to court over a breach of a non-compete agreement — a suit that Hays ultimately lost. This led to her ceding control of the Curran, which she owns, to British theater group ATG (Ambassador Theatre Group), which also now runs the Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters after taking those over from the New York-based Nederlander organization, the other half of the former SHN (which stood for Shorenstein Hays Nederlander). It remains unclear, if and when Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ever closes, if Hays will again curate shows at the Curran.
Also of note, starting with the opening Moulin Rouge in September, the Orpheum is getting a new on-site VIP lounge experience that you can book for a $95 upcharge.
Find Broadway SF tickets here.
Over at ACT's Geary Theater, there's kind of an odd and eclectic season set for the fall and spring, beginning with Passengers, a show by the Montreal-based acrobatic performance group 7 Fingers. The group, and its cofounders Gypsy Snider and Shana Carroll, created the kinetic Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story, which has been playing since last fall at Club Fugazi in North Beach. And with Passengers, Carroll has directed a likely equally acrobatic, dance-centric show centered on train travel, which opens September 15.
Actor and highly skilled clown Bill Irwin will spend a week at the Geary in October with his ode to Samuel Beckett, On Beckett — which previously played at the theater in 2017. And the first actual ACT-produced production of the next season (that isn't A Christmas Carol) won't premiere until February 9. That will be the new play The Headlands by Christopher Chen, directed by ACT Artistic Director Pam McKinnon. (The SF-set play had a brief run in February-March 2020 at Lincoln Center in New York.)
Weirdly, though maybe not so weird given that the theater probably really needs some revenue flowing in after two years of being dark, ACT is doing a new musical stage adaptation of The Wizard of Oz next June (2023), directed by Sam Pinkleton. And then in August 2023, the world premiere of the Soul Train musical, originally scheduled for 2020, will finally happen.
See the season preview trailer below, and find ACT tickets here.
Top image: Abby Mueller (Jane Seymour), Samantha Pauly (Katherine Howard), Adrianna Hicks (Catherine of Aragon), Andrea Macasaet (Anne Boleyn), Brittney Mack (Anna of Cleves), & Anna Uzele (Catherine Parr). Photo by Joan Marcus
