The weather may not be the best gauge of the seasons around these parts, but those theaters that arise when the year's calendar has flipped six pages are one way to know that summer is at hand. California Shakespeare Theater is the first big gun to herald the approaching solstice, launching its 39th season with Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone's unusual take on The Tempest .
The namesake playwright will bookend the season at the Bruns Amphitheater in the hills near Orinda, with The Tempest beginning performances on May 30, and Hamlet arising on Sept. 19 under Liesl Tommy's direction. The season's middle will be filled first with Spunk (previews begin July 4), a trio of stories by Harlem Renaissance figure Zora Neale Hurston, adapted by George C. Wolfe and with music by Chic Street Man. Patricia McGregor will direct. Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (Aug. 8) comes with ACT connections, with ACT acting mainstay Rene Augesen as Ruth, second wife of a novelist bedeviled by the ghost of his first wife, and staged by ACT Associate Artistic Director Mark Rucker (Once in a Lifetime, Maple and Vine ).
The Tempest was part of Cal Shakes' debut season in 1974, and Moscone's production will be the theater's seventh staging of the magic-infused play. Veteran Shakespearean actor Michael Winters heads the cast as deposed-duke-turned-sorcerer Prospero, which is his second go at the role. He first played Prospero for the Seattle Shakespeare Company in 2009.
"One of the reasons I'm so excited to do it at Cal Shakes is that I know Jonathan's production will be completely different and provocative, so it'll be like starting from scratch," said Winters, who may be known to TV viewers as the fussily self-serving small-town power broker Taylor Doose on Gilmore Girls.
In an example of the transparently theatrical nature of Moscone's concept, Winters also plays the drunken steward Stephano. A cast of six shuttles among all the characters, and three dancers add atmospheric population to the island where Prospero is exiled. Choreographer Erika Chong Shuch also plays the spirit Ariel, and the other principals include James Carpenter, Catherine Castellanos, Emily Kitchens, and Nicholas Pelczar.
Single tickets to each of the four productions are now on sale, as are season subscriptions, at www.calshakes.org or (510) 548-9666.
Cook's new recipe
Illness forced the Rrazz Room to postpone Elaine Stritch's May engagement, but the replacement act is hardly second-tier. Broadway star and cabaret legend Barbara Cook will be performing May 29-June 12, and even if you've seen her before, you have never heard her sing these songs before.
At 84, she purposefully challenged herself to create a new repertoire that she introduced last month at Feinstein's in New York. No Sondheim. No Rodgers and Hammerstein. But you will hear an a cappella medley of "The House of the Rising Sun" and "Bye Bye Blackbird." John Lennon's "Imagine" and Dan Hicks' "I Don't Want Love" are also in the set.
The latter is one of the tongue-twisting "list" songs that she set out to learn, a grouping that also includes "Makin' Whoopee" and "Let's Do It." For traditionalists, there are such standards as "The Nearness of You," "When Sunny Gets Blue," and "Georgia on My Mind."
In New York, she told audiences that this is the first show for which she chose all the songs herself. Good choices, apparently. "In each," wrote The New York Times' Stephen Holden, "she located its universal sweet spot and extended herself as if she were telling her own personal stories of happiness and loss." Tickets are available at www.therrazzroom.com.
Diva dramas
The 11th DIVAfest is underway at the Exit Theatre, anchored by three solo plays running in repertory. Girl in, but not of, the Hood, created and performed by Genevieve Jessee, focuses on a young woman's reluctant return to her mother's home in a rough Oakland neighborhood. Pussy, created and performed by Maura Halloran, concerns a love-on-the-rocks lesbian couple, their homophobic bi-curious landlady, and a homicidal cat. Alma Colorada, created and performed by Catherine Debon, is based on a true story of Spanish/Basque resistance fighters during World War II.
DIVAfest, running through May 26, also includes Songwriter Saturdays that showcases rising Bay Area singer-songwriters, Diva or Die Burlesque that puts a new spin on an old form, and a workshop production of Margery Fairchild's behind-the-scenes comedy-drama Pas de Quatre. A full calendar of DIVAfest events is available at www.theexit.org.
Magic witchery
The Magic Theatre is closing out its current season with the world premiere of Bruja, Luis Alfaro's contemporary Latino variation on the Medea myth. Bruja, the Spanish word for witch, brings the Los Angeles playwright back to the Greeks as well as to the Magic, where his Chicano-populated Oedipus el Rey had its premiere in 2010.
The Magic's Artistic Director Loretta Greco is staging the production, which features Sabina Zuniga Varela as scorned wife Medea, as well as Armando Rodriguez, Sean San Jose, Wilma Bonet, and Carlos Aguirre. Bruja will run May 24-June 24. Following the June 3 matinee, the playwright and the director will take to the stage for a dialogue about the creative process leading up to the premiere. Ticket info at www.magictheatre.org.