Arts & Entertainment 'My Fair Lady' Brings Fresh But Old-School Broadway Vigor to the Orpheum The latest touring production of 'My Fair Lady' opened Wednesday at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco — the first new show to play there in almost three years following 'Hamilton's extended residency.
Arts & Entertainment 'Jesus Christ Superstar' In Its 50th Anniversary Tour Is a Brash and Unrelenting Take on the Rock Opera The latest touring production of the musical, celebrating the show's 50th anniversary, is a stripped-down version of the show with the band on stage that is akin to a concert production, but with a lot of costumes and kinetic dancing by the disciples.
Arts & Entertainment ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ at Oasis Is Even More Queer Than the Original 'Rocky Horror Picture Show’ A rebooted ‘Rocky Horror’ is playing onstage at Oasis, to time warp you back to the old midnight movie experience with an added meaty loaf of dirty drag humor.
Arts & Entertainment 'BratPack,' a Gloriously Funny Mashup of 80s Movies and Music, Opens at Feinstein's at the Nikko Especially for children of the 80s, the canon of movies put out by John Hughes and other directors of the so-called Brat Pack of actors are cultural touchstones not to be messed with. But at the same time, they are fairly formulaic products of their time, and they are ripe for parody.
Arts & Entertainment Sting’s ‘The Last Ship’ Is a Glorious Depiction of Bleakness and Desolation Sting’s new musical, starring Sting basically playing Sting, sets sail for the month at the Golden Gate Theatre following its brief Broadway run, and it's buoyed by its spectacular score.
Arts & Entertainment 'Gatz' Pays Homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Words... All Of Them Across the six hours of 'Gatz' at Berkeley Rep, one realizes this version of 'The Great Gatsby' isn't a staged reading so much as it is an experiment in bringing a book to the stage, and a piece of theater about reading itself.
Arts & Entertainment 'The SpongeBob Musical' Is Ridiculously Clever and Gloriously Dumb Fun A creative team led by director Tina Landau and a slew of talented pop-star songwriters created a critical darling out of unlikely material, garnering 12 Tony nominations in the 2018 season, and now 'The SpongeBob Musical' is on tour.
Arts & Entertainment Nia Vardalos's 'Tiny Beautiful Things' Is a Moving Winter Balm at SF Playhouse Adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), Tiny Beautiful Things recounts the story of Cheryl Strayed’s experiences as an anonymous advice writer whose column “Dear Sugar” on The Rumpus made her something of an enigmatic national phenomenon.
Arts & Entertainment Tony Hale Delights In the Curious, Somewhat Uneven 'Wakey, Wakey' at A.C.T. With Wakey Wakey, playwright Will Eno has created an almost-one-man show that seems to be a 90-minute vigil hosted by a dying man who wants to say some profound things before he goes, and yet really isn't sure what to say.
Arts & Entertainment 'Becky Nurse of Salem' Dissects the Cliché of the Witch-Hunt The latest world premiere at Berkeley Rep by playwright Sarah Ruhl is a complex and darkly funny look at the Salem Witch Trials through the lens of contemporary American malaise, the #MeToo movement, and Donald Trump.
Arts & Entertainment 'Summer: The Donna Summer Musical' Takes the Jukebox Musical To a Trite New Low While it's a fact of modern musical theater that jukebox musicals of both the biographical and non-biographical sort are popular money-makers, it's almost universally true that they tend to be despised by critics.
Arts & Entertainment What You Need To Know (or Brush Up On) To Best Enjoy 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' While it's not inconceivable that someone who has little or no memory of the movies or never read the books could still enjoy the new play, you'll have a much better time if you know/remember some key facts and people.
Arts & Entertainment 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' Is a Wild Ride and Dazzling Piece of Theater Sunday marked the opening day of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the epic, Tony Award-winning, two-part play at The Curran in San Francisco. And in its scale and its own fantastical forms of stage wizardry, it's a production that is difficult to compare to anything else.
Arts & Entertainment 'The Tale of Despereaux' Is a Delightful Musical Fairy Tale Fit for the Holidays Much like it did in seasons past with productions like 'The Wild Bride' and 'The Composer Is Dead, Berkeley Rep' has brought a jolly, family-friendly bit of entertainment to its main stage for this holiday season complete with a few puppets.
Arts & Entertainment 'Testmatch' at ACT's Strand Theater Is a Strange But Satisfying Lens on Cricket ACT's latest production is a world premiere by an American- and British-trained playwright about the game of cricket, in particular women's cricket, and it spans three centuries and two continents in a brisk 90 minutes.
Arts & Entertainment 'Top Girls' at A.C.T. Presents a Difficult But Compelling Feminist Allegory It's a complicated, non-linear play that has been further rearranged in this production, and it asks a litany of questions about modern womanhood that remain relevant today.
Arts & Entertainment 'The Good Person of Szechwan' Brings Updated Brecht to Cal Shakes Once again, CalShakes delivers a refreshing new look at an old play, with the help of a contemporary adaptation by the great Tony Kushner.
Arts & Entertainment 'Cabaret' Feels Darker And More Prescient Than Ever In SF Playhouse's New Production Certain geopolitical moments have a way of casting new light on older works of theater, and giving them a prescience they may not have had even ten or fifteen years ago. That is likely what SF Playhouse was banking on in putting Cabaret in its current season.
Arts & Entertainment ACT's 'Rhinoceros' Is Freshly Hilarious And Unsettlingly Relevant Eugene Ionesco's 1959 absurdist comedy about propaganda and herd mentalities feels profoundly resonant today in ways that Ionesco, sadly, probably could have foreseen.
Arts & Entertainment 'American Psycho' The Musical Is A Well Executed, Visually Dazzling Romp A new musical based on the cult-hit movie based on the extremely terrible novel, ‘American Psycho’ makes stylish use of the Victoria Theatre stage.
Arts & Entertainment 'Vanity Fair' At ACT Is a Study In Delightful, Scrappy Storytelling Actor and playwright Kate Hamill clearly has a love for the women of 19th Century English literature, specifically the independent-minded, put-upon women of Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray's beloved novel, 'Vanity Fair.'
Arts & Entertainment 'The Jungle' Tells The Loud, Visceral, Messy Story of a Real-Life Refugee Camp Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson's play The Jungle, which had its West Coast premiere last week at The Curran, is a stirring and unique theatrical experience, one which ought to serve as a paradigm for documentary-style storytelling.
Arts & Entertainment 'Home' At Berkeley Rep Is A Study In Wordless, Magical Theater Originally presented at and created for the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater, Geoff Sobelle's Home is a unique — and uniquely haunting — theater experience.
Arts & Entertainment 'Falsettos' Is an Essential, Original Musical About Crafting LGBT Families William Finn's brilliant 1992 musical Falsettos captures both the awkwardness and the joy of forging a gay identity in mid-life, and the difficulties of building a family around — and in spite of — that identity.
Arts & Entertainment ACT's 'The Great Leap' Tells A Very San Francisco Tale With Global Reach Lauren Yee's The Great Leap tells a story with so much connection to San Francisco, it seems odd that the play actually premiered last year in Denver before moving on to a six-week run in New York.
