Fall preview: Theatre
It's still summer when autumn arrives, at least as far as local theaters' fall seasons are concerned. And in the autumnal spirit of abundance, serving platters are again piled high with offerings that should please a myriad of theatrical tastes. Categories are provided below to help focus this look at highlights spilling from the seasonal cornucopia.
Making their debuts
That most desirable of labels �" world premiere �" turns up with reduced frequency this fall. But the first attraction in this category is promising enough to make up for the shortage. Amelie, A New Musical runs Aug. 28-Oct. 4 at Berkeley Rep, and if it can capture but a fraction of the charms of the 2001 French movie, it could be a winner. Nobody is talking Broadway yet, at least not out loud.
Samantha Barks (Eponine in the movie Les Miserables ) takes the title role as a young woman in a fanciful Paris who benignly orchestrates the world around her. The film has been adapted by Craig Lucas, whose work includes Prelude of a Kiss on Broadway and Longtime Companion on screen. The songs are by Daniel Messe and Nathan Tysen, and Tony Award-winner Pam MacKinnon is directing.
A very different sort of world premiere will bring ACT back to its second home at the Strand Theater. Monstress, running Sept. 16-Nov. 22, is the result of ACT's commissioning program, with local playwrights adapting two of the short stories that make up Lysley Tenorio's Monstress, about the Filipino-American experience. Philip Kan Gotanda's Save the I-Hotel focuses on the relationship between two men living in SF's threatened landmark residential hotel. Sean San Jose's adaptation of the title story follows a Filipina actress and her B-movie director-husband as they chase the Hollywood dream.
Sarah rules
The Bay Area can't claim playwright Sarah Ruhl as one of its own, but rare is the season when at least one of her plays does not turn up. This fall brings three plays by Ruhl, following such previous productions as Dead Man's Cellphone, In the Next Room (the vibrator play), The Clean House, and several others.
Marin Theatre Company is opening its season with Ruhl's latest play, The Oldest Boy, running Sept. 10-Oct. 4. Seen at Lincoln Center Theatre last year, it explores the dilemma raised when a couple's 3-year-old American son is identified as the reincarnation of a beloved Tibetan teacher who must be sent to India if he is to fulfill his calling.
Another recent Ruhl play, Stage Kiss, will play Nov. 11-Jan. 9 at San Francisco Playhouse. The backstage comedy finds two performers whose past affair is uncomfortably recalled as they find themselves cast in a play about a man and woman with a past affair. Meanwhile, Shotgun Players is looking back to Ruhl's 2003 Eurydice, running through Sept. 20, in which she puts a quirky spin on the Orpheus myth of his wife's descent into the underworld.
Comrades, queers & kids
New Conservatory Theatre Center, the city's most prolific presenter of theater for the "queer and allied communities," opens its season with three very different plays new to the area.
First is Michael Kerrigan's For the Love of Comrades, running Sept. 4-Oct. 11. It's the U.S. premiere of the play that debuted in Northern Ireland in 2013 under the tabloid-inspired title Pits and Perverts. The time is 1984, when gay activists rallied behind striking miners in an epic showdown with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The unlikely alliance also inspired the 2014 movie Pride.
The Nance, running Oct. 1-Nov. 2, stars P.A. Cooley in the role that brought acclaim to original Broadway star Nathan Lane in 2013. Set during the waning days of burlesque, the play takes its title from a stock character, a stereotypically effeminate man played by a presumably straight performer. But in Douglas Carter Beane's story, the stage nance is also an indiscreet gay man whose personal and professional travails alternate with scenes from the burlesque show itself.
To procreate or not, that is the subject upsetting the balance between two lesbian couples in The Kid Thing. Running Nov. 6-Dec. 3, Sarah Gubbins' comedy-drama starts off with casual dinner-party banter when one couple surprises the other with news of a coming child. The second couple has never discussed having kids, but the newly introduced topic sends them into soul-searching arguments.
Pulitzer pair
Berkeley Rep and ACT are both introducing recent Pulitzer Prize-winning plays to the Bay Area. The 2015 winner Between Riverside and Crazy, running Sept. 2-27 at ACT's Geary Theater, comes from the author of The Motherfucker with the Hat and Jesus Hopped the "A" Train. In his newest play, Stephen Adly Guirgis tells the story of an ex-cop and his recently paroled son struggling to hold onto their rent-stabilized apartment as sketchy houseguests arrive and old wounds are opened.
Disgraced, the 2013 Pulitzer winner, brings forth the dilemma of a thoroughly assimilated Pakistani Muslim man living in New York whose heritage catches up with him in unnerving ways. Ayad Akhtar's play, seen on Broadway last year, runs Nov. 6-Dec. 20 at Berkeley Rep.
Getting in tune
A Broadway hit, a near-miss, and a curiosity are among the locally produced musicals headed to local stages this fall. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is the Broadway hit, introducing the newly created Bay Area Musicals! with performances Nov. 28-Dec. 19 at Marines Memorial Theatre. BAM! founder and artistic director Matthew McCoy is staging the 1961 show. The season will continue with Hair and La Cage aux Folles.
Noel Coward wrote the book and score for Sail Away, a 1961 Broadway musical that elevated Elaine Stritch from supporting player to starring role during the out-of-town tryouts. The show ran a modest 167 performances and is seldom revived, making it a prime candidate for a 42nd Street Moon production. The tale of a brash American divorcee working as a cruise director will run Oct. 28-Nov. 15 at the Eureka Theatre.
The musical Lizzie has been a long time evolving into its current form, starting as a short theatre/rock show in 1990. Through various developmental productions, the musical took its final form in 2013 as a mostly sung-through rock musical featuring four women to tell the notorious story of alleged 19th-century ax murderer Lizzie Borden. The musical's local debut will run Sept. 25-Oct. 17 under the aegis of Ray of Light Theatre at the Victoria Theatre.
On the road
Two of the fall attractions on SHN's schedule of touring Broadway musicals deserve special attention, one for its star and the other for the show itself. That star is Idina Menzel, who powered If/Then during its Broadway recent run. In the musical by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal), Menzel plays a newly divorced newcomer to New York whose two best friends suggest different trajectories for her new life, and the musical alternates between these scenarios. Joined on tour by other original cast members, Menzel got most of the credit for the show's original popularity. It runs Nov. 10-Dec. 6 at the Orpheum Theatre.
On the other hand, in the case of A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder, coming to the Golden Gate on Dec. 1-17, it's the musical that is the attraction. A sleeper hit that opened on Broadway in 2013 and took home the Tony Award for Best Musical the following year, it's a frolicsome story of a mass murderer told in deliberately old-school fashion. The plot centers on a young Englishman who attempts to elevate his social standing by murdering members of his wealthy family �" and all eight victims are played by the actor whose character is doing them in.