After moving out of its longtime home at 16th and Capp Streets in 2009, Theatre Rhinoceros has hung its hat at various venues. The Eureka Theatre has increasingly been used each season, and all shows in the just-announced 2016-17 season will take place at the downtown Jackson Street theater. It's enough for Rhino to bill it as the "Eureka! We've Found a Home!" season. It's also the 39th season for Rhino, which claims the title as "the world's oldest continuously producing professional queer theater."
There are six productions in the new season, an eclectic mix to be sure, with one foreseeable entry: a world premiere from the theater's executive director John Fisher. Also on the bill are a splashy Broadway musical, two intimate dramas, a popular psychological mystery from the 1970s, and an annual New Year's Eve revue. For a special summer event, Rhino will move outdoors for another of its deconstructions of a Shakespeare play.
The season opens Sept. 24 with The Brothers Size, the second part of Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers/Sisters Plays trilogy about African American life in southern Louisiana. A trio of Bay Area theaters presented all three plays in coordinated fashion in 2010, but they also work as standalone dramas. The Brothers Size is the story of two siblings, a younger brother just out of prison and his older, more industrious brother, working out their relationship, made more complicated when another ex-prisoner arrives on the scene offering further erotic temptations to the younger brother. Darryl V. Jones, professor of theater at Cal State East Bay, will direct the production.
Equus, Peter Shaffer's London and Broadway hit of the 1970s, will canter in on Nov. 25. The play focuses on a psychiatrist's efforts to comprehend a teenage boy's destructive obsession with horses, with actors in stylized horse attire sharing the stage with the human characters.
It will be the Bay Area premiere for Win Wells' Gertrude Stein and a Companion, starting performances on Dec. 28. The two-character play focuses on Stein and Alice B. Toklas as they reminisce about their lives together. Ernest Hemingway is a frequent topic of conversation, especially because he dismissively wrote about Toklas in A Moveable Feast as simply Stein's "companion." The play had an off-Broadway run in New York in 1986, which came three years after its author's death.
Rhino's tradition of celebrating New Year's Eve with the cast and creators of the Foodies! and Shopping! musicals continues in an evening of comedy and song on Dec. 31. Another tradition, the annual new play by Fisher, returns on Feb. 27, when Ding Dong! begins performances. In the play, a San Francisco drag party turns into an uncharted evening of self-discoveries.
The subscription series concludes with Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which begins its run on May 27. Using popular pop tunes, this is the musicalized version of the 1994 Australian movie about a troupe of drag performers making their way via a tricked-out bus through the not-always-welcoming Outback to an important gig. The musical debuted in Sydney in 2006, followed by its London and Broadway runs.
The special event that will get Rhino out from under the Eureka's stage lights and into the sunlight is Lear! at Yerba Buena Gardens on July 7-9. King Lear gets the Fisher treatment previously applied in the outdoor walkabout productions of Titus! and Timon! It's a co-production with the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.
Subscription tickets ($135-$155) to the six-play series are now on sale. Go to therhino.org.
Popping another cork
Exotic dancer and amateur sleuth Champagne White is back for another round of action, adventure, and aggressively bad taste. Writer-director D'Arcy Drollinger is also the star of Disastrous, running Aug. 25-Sept. 17 at Oasis. This is the third "whitesploitation" movie parody from Drollinger, following the wildly popular Shit and Champagne and Champagne White and the Temple of Poon. Champagne veterans Matthew Martin, Steven LeMay, James Arthur, Adam Roy, and Nancy French are back for more action. Tickets at sfoasis.com.
Remy & rainbows
Rainbow Logic: Arm and Arm with Remy Charlip won't premiere until November at CounterPulse, but this celebration of the iconic choreographer, author, and illustrator will be previewed on Aug. 21 at Chochmat Halev Synagogue in Berkeley. Simple Magic: Reclaiming Our Ancestry is the title of the event that combines lecture and performance about the gay Jewish American artist. Seth Eisen's Eye Zen company is creating the multi-disciplinary work that will be presented in conjunction with the Contemporary Jewish Museum in the fall. For tickets to the Aug. 21 event, go to eyezen.org.