Any year that starts off with a visit from Angela Lansbury is ipso facto a memorable year. A tough act to follow, for sure, but many more theatrically memorable moments were to come in the wake of her run in Blithe Spirit at the Golden Gate Theatre. Those memories include productions, performances, and events, and as 2015 gets ready to take its final bow, it's time to offer up one more round of applause in the following casually coordinated fashion.
Triple plays
Carl Lumbly and Danny Scheie, two Bay Area-based actors of considerably different demeanors, each added three considerably different roles to their bulging resumes. For Lumbly, the trajectory was often about finding the humor in difficult situations, while Sheie could breathe humanity into farcical roles.
The best of Lumbly's 2015 local endeavors just happened to be in one of the year's top productions: Between Riverside and Crazy. In Stephen Aldry Guirgis' play, Lumbly played a bitter ex-cop, a role filled with surprises that he expertly revealed in director Irene Lewis' sharp production at ACT's Geary Theater. That was also the site of Lumbly's delightful performance as a curmudgeon who upends traditional stereotypes in Kwame Kwei-Armah's Let There Be Love. San Francisco Playhouse also made fine use of Lumbly's talents in Tree, Julie Hebert's play about a woman searching for family ties and the man who wants to keep them buried.
Danny Scheie started his year upon the stage in a small but choice role of a frantic waiter in Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors at Berkeley Rep, then headed to California Shakespeare Festival for Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep, which gave him the chance to show off his versatility in a series of quick-changes roles. But his juiciest performance was still to come, playing a diabolical architect in Amy Freed's The Monster-Builder at Aurora Theatre.
Musical unveilings
Three new musicals were successfully introduced to Bay Area audiences in 2015, most recently at the Eureka Theatre, where 42nd Street Moon presented Scrooge in Love! Written by veteran Broadway composer Larry Grossman along with rising talents Kellen Blair and Duane Poole, this sequel to Dickens' A Christmas Carol was smart and tuneful, while the multi-talented Jason Graae brought glad tidings to the title role.
There was also Broadway talent behind the charming Amelie, a New Musical, which had its world premiere at Berkeley Rep. Considerable imagination was brought by director Pam MacKinnon, librettist Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss), and songwriters Daniel Messe and Nathan Tysen to converting the whimsical French movie into a stage entertainment. If it felt at times like a work still in progress, it was still an enticing musical bouquet.
The infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 and a gay romance in the present found unexpectedly potent connections in the premiere of Triangle at TheatreWorks. A cast of strong performers and Meredith McDonough's fluid staging communicated the heart of the bittersweet story through composer Curtis Moore and Thomas Mizer's pop-scented score.
Curtain raisers
Several vintage venues were put to new uses in 2015, one in an interim fashion, another as a reclaimed landmark, and the third as a new home for drag stars, gay performers, and allied artists. With the Curran Theatre undergoing renovations and no longer one of the SHN sites for touring shows, owner Carole Shorenstein Hayes has been putting the stage itself to clever use. A wonderfully diverse collection of intimate, short-run productions have both the performers and the audiences together on stage as part of the Under Construction series, while also providing an eerie view of a vast, empty theater and a Phantom -worthy chandelier.
While maintaining its home base at the Geary Theater, ACT made good on its promise to turn the derelict Strand Theater on Market Street into an alternate venue for its productions. The handsome rehab on a tough block was a prescient investment in the changing Mid-Market landscape, and has made use of a higher quotient of local talent than is usually featured at the Geary.
Oasis officially opened on Dec. 31, 2014, but we're going to rule it a 2015 happening since that's when its theatrical self first took to the stage. The new bar and cabaret space has been many things in the past, but the SoMa locale had been vacant for five years when Heklina and D'Arcy Drollinger opened it up as Oasis. Drollinger took centerstage with a revival of his "whitesploitation" parody Shit and Champagne, and then had another rip-roaring hit with the sequel Champagne White and the Temple of Poon. Later in the year, drag kings and queens riotously shared the spotlight in Star Trek Live! Mudd's Women.
Strange melodies
Two SF theater companies that have established themselves as skilled surveyors of the musical fringes came up with some of the best-of-the-year entertainment. Club Inferno finally took full flight on its not-so-angelic wings at the Hypnodrome, where Thrillpeddlers gave the musical a second chance after not quite gaining full altitude 15 years ago at a now-defunct SoMa night spot. With Thrillpeddlers' majordomo Russell Blackwood in the director's chair, the Kelly Kittell-Peter Fogel musical tour of Hades through a glam rocker's eyes proved so popular that a new run is now set to open in February.
You can predict that Ray of Light Theatre will mine unpredictable musical veins, and with Lizzie, the troupe hit the mother lode. Director Eliza Leoni helmed this fearsome staging of Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt's hard-rocking musical about Lizzie Borden, with the cast fully aboard the full-steam-ahead production at the Victoria Theatre.
And in conclusion
We couldn't let the year come to an end without acknowledging several other memorable events, starting with the happy/sad staging of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play at ACT's Geary Theatre. Happy, because Anne Washburn's strangely elegant glimpse into the future where The Simpsons gains mythical status was so brightly conceived in director Mark Rucker's production. And sad, because that was to be his final work before his unexpected death at age 56.
Aurora Theatre provided theatergoers with a top-flight visit to Mud Blue Sky, Marisa Wegrzyn's melancholy comedy directed by Tom Ross about a trio of flight attendants trying to have a hotel-room party during a layover in Chicago. The baggage they carry is much heavier than their wheeled valises, and a series of strange adventures ensues on this single night, with Jamie Jones leading the excellent cast as the sardonic leader of these professional vagabonds.
New Conservatory Theatre Center scored an ambitious success with director Dennis Lickteig's polished production of The Nance, Douglas Carter Beane's comedy-drama about the waning days of burlesque in New York, and in particular, a stock sissy character that authorities have deemed immoral. In the role created on Broadway by Nathan Lane, P.A. Cooley breathed his own life into the born-to-be-sad Chauncey Miles, who loses more than his job amid homophobic civic panic as New York prepares for the 1939 World's Fair.