Arts & Entertainment 'It Can't Happen Here' At Berkeley Rep Is A Timely If Heavy-Handed Political Cautionary Tale Frightened and dismayed by this dumpster fire of an election year, the creative team at Berkeley Rep decided to fast-track the adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's scarily prescient 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here,
Arts & Entertainment Aerial Dance Grapples With Domestic Violence In <i>Grace and Delia Are Gone</i> You may not expect an acrobatic, circus-style aerial performance to explore the topic of violence against women. But this improbable concept achieves great heights in Grace and Delia Are Gone, a new dance
Arts & Entertainment 'King Charles III' Is A Witty Dramedy Tailor-Made For Royal Watchers And Shakespeare Nerds The year is 2020, say, and beloved English monarch Elizabeth II has just died that's perhaps jumping the gun in terms of a prediction, though, given that she's only 90 this year and
Arts & Entertainment Our 12 Fringiest Picks For The San Francisco Fringe Festival Theater fans who lack the money or clout to get tickets to Hedwig, The King and I, or any of the other best Bay Area theater productions this fall get an outstanding annual
Arts & Entertainment Fall Theater Preview: New Plays Explore San Francisco's Past, England's Future, And More As Labor Day passes, we start to say goodbye to whatever high hopes we had for making the most of our oh-so-wintry summer months, but we start to hope for another couple months
Arts & Entertainment San Francisco Dates For 'Hamilton' Run Finally Confirmed The Grammy, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize winning musical Hamilton is coming to San Francisco next spring, and we now for the first time have the official dates for the five-month run. The Mercury
Arts & Entertainment <em>Misfit Cabaret</em> Stars A Talented Nightclub Diva Stuck In A Screwball Variety Show You won’t find a more magnificent and talented nightclub singer belting it out on a San Francisco stage this weekend than Kat Robichaud, whose lounge revue Misfit Cabaret opened last night at
Arts & Entertainment The Hellraising History Of The SF Mime Troupe Founded in 1959, San Francisco Mime Troupe have been jam-packing Dolores Park for a July 4 show for years and years. But they weren't always called the “San Francisco Mime Troupe," they didn’
Arts & Entertainment <em>Adventures in Tech (with Pillow Talk on the Side)</em> Is A Funny Look Inside The Life Of An Accidental Techie As city officials, residents, and popular culture endlessly debate the tech sector's multifaceted impact on the Bay Area, Adventures in Tech (with Pillow Talk on the Side), which opened last night at PianoFight,
Arts & Entertainment Go Do This Thing: Watch The Amazing Acro-Cats Do Tricks, Play Music Have you ever wanted to see talented cats perform acrobatic stunts? Of course you have. How about rock-star cats jamming out some serious tunes? Double of course you have. Well guess what, dear
Arts & Entertainment Video: Hear Oakland's Own Daveed Diggs Talk About Winning His First Tony Award For 'Hamilton' Oakland-born hip-hop artist turned Broadway star Daveed Diggs took home the Tony Award Sunday night for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance in the dual roles of the Marquis de
Arts & Entertainment For Brava's Long-Planned Expansion, A Crowdfunding Campaign And Targeted Opening Though the profitability/profligacy of Super Bowl 50 is still the subject of debate, the event did right by one set of local artists in the form a of a $200,000 grant
Arts & Entertainment <i>For Peter Pan On Her 70th Birthday</i> At Berkeley Rep Is A Moving, Marvelous Surprise Playwright Sarah Ruhl has become a favorite at Berkeley Rep over the past decade, beginning with a production of her play Eurydice in 2004. That play, which imagined an Alice in Wonderland-like underworld,
Arts & Entertainment <i>The Last Five Years</i> At ACT Walks You Through A Failed Relationship, But Only Scratches The Surface I always admire an experiment on the stage, whether it falls apart before the end, or succeeds wildly, or falters a lot from the start, or succeeds just enough to keep my attention
Arts & Entertainment Immersive Theater Piece <i>The Speakeasy</i> Returns This Summer In Permanent North Beach Home Boxcar Theatre's hit immersive theater experience from 2014, The Speakeasy (see SFist's review here) is being revived this August in a new space in North Beach/Chinatown and like its first incarnation, the
Arts & Entertainment Mary Zimmerman's <i>Treasure Island</i> At Berkeley Rep Is A Dazzling And Smart Adventure Ride Director and playwright Mary Zimmerman is something of a legend at Berkeley Rep, having brought her stunning Metamorphoses there in 1999 before going on to win a Tony Award for direction after taking
Arts & Entertainment <i>The Lion</i> At ACT's Strand Theater Is A Deeply Moving Musical Marvel Ben Scheuer is a natural born storyteller who was given a traumatic story to tell: his own. He lost his father at the age of 13, and at 28 he was diagnosed with
Arts & Entertainment Shotgun Players' <i>Hamlet</i> (With Roulette Casting) Is A Meta Dive Into Shakespeare's Most Lyrical Tragedy If I describe to you the premise of Berkeley-based Shotgun Players' new season-opening production of Hamlet, you're likely going to write it off as some sort of stunt, and the Shakespeare purists might
Arts & Entertainment Video: Local Theater Calls Out The Ghost Of The Bold Italic For Declaring Arts Scene Dead Although you probably didn't realize it, The Bold Italic is still around. The once-popular blog was shut down last April after its parent company decided that it didn't feel like supporting the publication
Arts & Entertainment Mirkarimi's Wife And Gascon's Wife To Star In SF Production Of 'The Vagina Monologues' What's this? It appears that the wives of two sworn enemies in SF politics, District Attorney George Gascon and former Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, are going to share a stage this weekend in a
Arts & Entertainment Go Do This Thing: Danny Scheie In 'House Tour' At Z Space This, dear readers, is not a review. Rather, it is an exhortation: Go see Z Space's new comedy by playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb starring the arrestingly funny Danny Scheie. Titled A House Tour
Arts & Entertainment 'An Act Of God' Starring Sean Hayes Is A Smart, Mostly Light-Hearted Take On The Maker Sean Hayes the performer is not to be confused with the character of Jack McFarland on Will & Grace that he's blessed (or doomed) to be branded with as his career-defining role. And
Arts & Entertainment Pre-Broadway Premiere Of 'Roman Holiday' Comes To SF, Along With Acclaimed Revamp Of 'Into The Woods' Today SHN announced their full regular season of shows, following their earlier announcement in January that Hamilton would be part of the 2016-2017 season along with the Tony Award-winning play The Curious Incident
Arts & Entertainment 'Twisted Cabaret' Juggles Audience Discomfort For Maximum Comic Value Thursday night’s opening of Twisted Cabaret at the Great Star Theater contained a circus trick so graphic and repulsive that even Tourettes Without Regrets host Jamie DeWolf ran from his second-row seat
Arts & Entertainment 'The Realistic Joneses' Is A Realistic Portrayal Of The Awkwardness Of Illness, And Also Not Just open as of last night at ACT, The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno is a sometimes difficult, awkwardly funny, and starkly modern play that delves into the lives of two couples suffering
