Opening presents is a big part of the holiday season, but opening shows definitely is not. The hiatus always means a new year arrives with a burst of theatrical openings before settling into more regular patterns of scheduling. Here is an effort to sort through and give some order to the January deluge as 2015 begins its strut upon the stage.
All Americans
A pair of contemporary playwrights known for their individualistic visions of American society will help launch the new year on stage. Theatre Rhino fires first, with David Mamet's The Anarchist running Jan. 2-17 at the Eureka Theatre. This recent Broadway entry focuses on a woman convicted for a radical political action that turned deadly. In her 35 years in prison, she has accepted both God and her lesbianism. She verbally duels with the prison warden, a woman with her own personal prisons, on why she deserves her freedom.
Sam Shepard provided the Magic Theatre with its early voice, and the Magic gave him an early home. As part of the theater's ongoing Sheparding America celebration, the Magic will stage A Lie of the Mind on Jan. 28-Feb. 22. Originally presented in New York in 1985, Shepard again uses a rugged Western setting for a story of two families drawn together and pulled apart by a savage act of spousal abuse perpetrated by a member of one family upon a member of a second clan.
Typically British
Britons Tom Stoppard and Noel Coward are two titans of the 20th-century theater who found distinctive styles in capturing their homeland's psyche. ACT provided the American debut for Stoppard's Indian Ink in 1999, and will revisit the time- and continent-jumping play Jan 14-Feb. 8. Set both in 1930s India where an adventurous British poet may have found her soulmate in an Indian painter, and in 1980s England where long-held secrets are unraveled, the play offers a study in contrast between cultures and artistic expression.
And what could help provide a brighter start to the year than knowing that Angela Lansbury will soon be in our astral plane as she arrives as the psychic Madame Arcati? Lansbury's performance in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit won her rapturous notices in London and New York (and added another Tony to her mantle-busting collection). A short North American tour of the arch comedy includes a Jan. 20-Feb. 1 run at the Golden Gate Theatre.
Retransmissions
Two popular productions that blur gender lines return to inaugurate a new SoMa venue and bid farewell to an old one. Shit & Champagne will be the first stage attraction at Oasis, a new cabaret theater, bar, and nightclub that D'Arcy Drollinger and Trannyshack's Heklina have spearheaded. Drollinger is also the star and author of S&C, a scatological "whitespoitation" satire that had a long run last year at Rebel. The revival runs Jan. 8-Feb. 14.
Returning after a hiatus following multiple holdovers, Hedwig and the Angry Inch will make its absolutely last stand at the Boxcar Theatre on Jan. 14-25 before the group permanently vacates its SoMa space while in search of a new venue. Director Nick Olivero's reimagined version of the John Cameron Mitchell-Stephen Trask musical now has multiple performers sharing the title role of a surgically and psychologically damaged rock singer who didn't fully make an MTF transition as planned.
Visiting relatives
Plays about unexpected guests who push the traditional boundaries of family will herald the start of the year for San Francisco Playhouse and New Conservatory Theatre Center. Playwright Julie Hebert's Tree, running Jan. 20-March 13, follows the ramifications when a white Southern woman shows up at the door of a black Chicagoan claiming to be his half-sister. She knew her father only as an angry racist, and sees in the interracial affair a source of possible redemption �" while her half-sibling thinks this climb up the family tree can only upset his own home.
In Harbor, running Jan. 23-March 1 at NCTC, playwright Chad Beguelin takes a lighter approach as Kevin and Ted, a married gay couple living in Sag Harbor, have their manicured world upended when Ted's pothead sister and her teenage daughter arrive for an extended stay. Ted hates children, and it turns out his unmarried sister is also pregnant again. The comedy goes into some dark territory before finding an unexpected conclusion.
Without labels
Two noteworthy January openings just aren't going to fit into any category here. The first is a world premiere at Berkeley Rep that takes on America's passion for a game that is often injurious and sometimes lethal. X's and O's (A Football Love Story) is a docudrama based on stories conducted with players, their families, and fans. Playwright KJ Sanchez calls himself a football "superfan," and collaborator Jenny Mercein is the daughter of former Super Bowl-winning player Chuck Mercein. It runs Jan. 16-March 1.
Lamplighters, known for its love of Gilbert and Sullivan, will make one of its more intriguing strays from its base repertoire. The troupe is taking on Candide, the musical adaptation of Voltaire's social satire that had a bumpy initial ride on Broadway in 1956 despite a score by Leonard Bernstein and a libretto by Lillian Hellman. With considerable revisions, the operetta found Broadway success in a 1974 revival, and more revisions and restorations in the coming years were capped by a version prepared for the Royal Shakespeare Company. That is the Candide that Lamplighters will present first at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Jan. 30-Feb. 1 before traveling to Walnut Creek and Mountain View.