Theatre Rhinoceros has announced its 38th season, opening with a new play by its executive director and closing with a classic comedy by Noel Coward. The five-show season will take place at several venues around the city, with Eureka Theatre continuing to be its principal home base.
A new play by Executive Director John Fisher has often been part of a Rhino season since he took over the theater's top spot in 2003. Shakespeare Goes to War is Fisher's newest offering, running Nov. 3-29 at Thick House. "Everything I know about Shakespeare, I learned from my high school drama teacher," Fisher says. "This is his story."
A Song at Twilight, the first of two Noel Coward plays in the 38th season, runs Jan. 20-31 at a location to be announced. It was first produced in 1966 with Coward in the central role as a closeted writer of considerable renown confronted with love letters he wrote to a young swain years ago. The character was generally perceived to be based on Somerset Maugham, and many also saw it as the closest that Coward ever came to publically acknowledging his own homosexuality.
A straight white couple who missed the biological baby boat decide to adopt a child from Africa, while their best friends, a black lesbian couple, offer slightly wary encouragement in The Call, running Feb. 20-March 12 at Eureka Theatre. Early enthusiasm for the adoption wanes as worries and realities begin to mount in playwright Tanya Banfield's recent off-Broadway success. Barfield, a biracial lesbian, herself adopted two children from Ethiopia.
It's a return to Noel Coward for the season's final show. Present Laughter, running May 21-June 19 at Eureka Theatre, was described by the playwright as "a very light comedy and written with the sensible object of providing me with a bravura part." That part, which Coward played in the original 1942 production, is an actor facing a middle-age crisis and dealing with an onslaught of admirers, employees, and an estranged wife.
The season will also include a one-night-only performance of Are We Almost There? on Dec. 31 at the Eureka Theatre. Subtitled The Travel Musical, it's part of a series of comic revues by Morris Bobrow, including Foodies! The Musical and Shopping! The Musical, that all have had long runs at the Shelton Theatre. Rhino season tickets are now on sale at therhino.org.
Come to the cabarets
Feinstein's at the Nikko, which has been without a New York counterpart since flagship Feinstein's at the Regency closed in 2012, is joining forces with Manhattan's 54 Below. The new operation will be called Feinstein's/54 Below. According to The New York Times, 54 Below has been hemorrhaging money while Feinstein's at the Nikko has thrived. A collaborative relationship between the two clubs is planned.
Michael Feinstein will help inaugurate his new namesake club with a late December engagement, but its SF counterpart will see him first, on Oct. 7-11. A new booking of note at the Nikko location is playwright-actor-drag artiste Charles Busch, who returns with a new show on Oct. 23-24. That Girl/That Boy is a collection of songs, characters, and reminiscences. Tickets at hotelnikkosf.com.
Meanwhile, up the hill at the Fairmont Hotel, Bay Area Cabaret is readying its new season for the Venetian Room. It launches with an opening-night gala on Oct. 4 with Stephanie Blythe performing We'll Meet Again: The Songs of Kate Smith. Blythe, a noted mezzo-soprano, is a crossover artist who moves among opera, musical theater, and popular songs. She's currently starring as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd with SF Opera.
The season continues with two performances by Jane Monheit on Nov. 8. The jazz and pop vocalist will perform a greatest-hits collection of her most requested songs, as well as a preview of her upcoming Ella Fitzgerald album.
Broadway couple Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley return to the series on Dec. 13 with Broadway and Beyond, made up of songs from the musicals in which they have appeared, as well as selections from the Great American Songbook.
Guitarist John Pizzarelli and vocalist Jessica Molaskey, another husband-wife team, have two performances set for Jan. 10. When Grownup Songs debuted in 2014, Stephen Holden in The New York Times praised the couple's "ability to infuse pop and jazz with a Chekhovian wisdom about life�s ups and downs."
Broadway veteran Emily Skinner makes her SF concert debut on March 6 with Broadway, Her Way. The star of such musicals as Side Show on Broadway and A Little Night Music at ACT, she is headed this fall to Tokyo for the debut of The Prince of Broadway, a Hal Prince retrospective that has its sights on Broadway.
Patina Miller, who won a Tony Award in 2013 as the Leading Player in the revival of Pippin, makes her West Coast concert debut on April 17. Performing her songs from her recent Lincoln Center concert, she'll weave her own story of a little southern girl with big dreams with classic popular and Broadway songs.
Sisters Ann Campton Callaway and Liz Callaway, who each have their own performing careers, are reuniting for From West Side Story to Wicked to conclude the BAC season. Both series and individual tickets are now on sale. Call (415) 392-4400 or go to bayareacabaret.org.