Last week, it was about highlighting the best of 2015 in Bay Area theater, and now, like being pushed by a mighty wind through a revolving door, we are peering into the first months of 2016, with some proposals of its intriguing offerings.
Realms of darkness
Three plays coming in early 2016 deal in very different ways with the escape hatch of the human mind. Two are set in the past, but The Nether takes place in a just-around-the-corner future. Running Jan. 19-March 5 at San Francisco Playhouse, playwright Jennifer Haley imagines a darkly evolved Internet where virtual fantasies can be played out �" up to and including violent pedophilia. It's a helpful outlet that keeps violent urges in a fantasy zone, argues the proprietor of such a service when a detective begins an investigation into what she sees as an infectious evil. sfplayhouse.org.
In some hazy unspecified past, a roomful of prisoners are led away one by one �" an offstage gunshot always follows �" until there is a last man standing. Time and place rip open as he awaits his fate in The Unfortunates, running Feb. 3-April 10 at ACT's Strand Theatre. He walks out of his cell into a surreal cabaret of grit and glitter where most of the cardinal sins are on display. Created by five writers for its premiere in 2013 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the musical riffs off the classic folksong "St. James Infirmary Blues," with a score that highlights the shared ancestry of blues, jazz, rock, R&B, and hip-hop. act-sf.org.
Celebrity, decadence, oppression, and fantasy feed the many lives in Dogeaters, running Feb. 3-28 at the Magic Theatre. Jessica Hagedorn's adaptation of her novel of the same name is set in Manila during the height of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos' reign, at the time when opposition leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated but the out-of-balance party continued with movie stars arriving for a film festival, the gay owner of a low-rent Studio 54 singing karaoke, rebels in the mountains planning attacks, the daughter of the slain politician seeking justice, and numerous other characters working their way through day-to-day life in a country of tarnished gilt. magictheatre.org.
Marquee names
Even the most jaded usually feel some frisson when a face you know from movies and television is in our midst. But the Oscar and Tony Award-winning Frances McDormand likely wasn't looking for star treatment when she signed on to play Lady Macbeth. The title role in Berkeley Rep's production of Macbeth, running Feb. 19-April 10, belongs to Northern Irish actor Conleth Hill, who may be best-known as the feared and fawning eunuch Varys on HBO's Game of Thrones. In this outing, he'll be on the throne himself. berkeleyrep.org.
Sean Hayes, who won a supporting actor Emmy for his work on Will & Grace, has also moved on up to the throne. In the role created by Jim Parsons on Broadway, he'll play none other than the Lord Almighty in An Act of God, David Javerbaum's comedy, running March 29-April 17 at the Golden Gate Theatre. From a kind of celestial talk-show couch, God delivers quips about his mysterious ways. "Gay, straight, bisexual, transgender; thou art all equally smitable in my eyes," he sweetly counsels his flock. shnsf.com.
Taylor Mac may not be a traditional household name, but the gender-defying Mac has built up a considerable reputation for his playwriting and performing. The Lily's Revenge was a five-hour phantasmagoria seen at the Magic Theatre in 2011, and Mac will be besting that mark during the run of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music as part of the Curran Theatre's Under Construction series. What we'll be seeing here are two three-hour installments of the entire show, with songs from 1776 to 1806 performed on Jan. 21-23, and songs from 1806 to 1836 on Jan. 26-27, with a six-hour marathon of both parts on Jan. 30. Outfitted in indescribably ornate costumes, Mac uses the songs for provocative looks at themes that played out during those times. sfcurran.com.
Queerly speaking
The city's two main LGBTQI theaters are examining parts of that letter parade from very different vantages. First up, Theatre Rhino looks back to when closet doors were being pried open. Noel Coward's A Song at Twilight, running Jan. 20-31 at Z Below Theatre, can be seen as his coming-out play, through he would have firmly denied it. First produced in 1966, it focuses on a famed elderly author whose heterosexual affairs and marriages have disguised his true homosexual nature that is now threatened with exposure. It was Somerset Maugham's life that seemed to most clearly parallel the character Coward himself played in the original production. therhino.org.
New Conservatory Theatre Center is presenting the world premiere of its first mainstage production by a genderqueer playwright featuring a genderqueer lead character. In MJ Kaufman's Sagittarius Ponderosa, running Jan. 22-Feb. 28, the character now known as Archer (but still Angela to his family) returns to Eastern Oregon to care for his dying father. An encounter with a handsome stranger in the forest illuminates a world in which past and present collide and there are no static identities. nctcsf.org.
Encore, encore
In some quarters, 2016 will spend part of its time looking a lot like 2015. Back by popular demand is the refrain for several theaters, where productions that bend gender in all sorts of ways make return appearances.
Star Trek Live! will take flight again at Oasis, running Jan. 6-23. Mudd's Women, an episode from the original TV series, is a good candidate for the cross-dressing treatment since the male characters who dominated the series are augmented by a bevy of beauties who are basically space-age versions of mail-order brides. sfoasis.com.
Club Inferno, cited last week as one of the best productions of 2015, is returning to the Hypnodrome on Feb. 4-March 5. That 2015 production itself was a revival, albeit one from 15 years before, but this new outing of Peter Fogel and Kelley Kittell's glam-rock visit to Dante's Nine Circles of Hell finally connected in the Thrillpeddlers' production. thrillpeddlers.com.
Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical returns to the city where the former Cockette and disco star broke into the big time and died much too soon in 1988 of AIDS. Brava Theatre is again the venue for the biographical musical built around Sylvester's life and songs, with co-director Anthony Wayne back to play the early breaker of gender boundaries on records, radio, concerts, and TV. brava.org.