Well, well helloooo, Dolly!
The Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! has spawned a national tour with the marvelous Betty Buckley as Dolly, and while the erstwhile star of Cats, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Sunset Boulevard may not be the first person you think of when you think of musical comedy, she attacks the material as a serious actor and delivers a deeply felt performance full of life and love.
Aside from dancing, Berkeley Rep Square is far from paradise
There are actually two competing musicals in Paradise Square: A New Musical now having its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. One of them is much better than the other.
Incredibly ambitious and overstuffed, Paradise Square wants to create excitement about a particular moment in American history with a wonderfully diverse cast and a score that blends show music, traditional music and contemporary sounds (sound familiar? can't blame producers for not wanting to throw away their shot). But this show, many years in the making, is still fuzzy, unfocused and only intermittently interesting.
Humans at their best in joyful Come From Away
Already a long-running hit on Broadway, Come From Away is now making its way around the country. The touring company at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre is extraordinary. A dozen performers play the passengers and the townsfolk with astonishing ease and remarkable versatility with just the shift of an accent or a small bit of costume (designs by Toni-Leslie James).
Waving through Evan Hansen's remarkable window
It's absolutely astonishing that a musical about pain, that is in itself a painful experience, can be so enjoyable. But that's what Dear Evan Hansen is: a deeply felt show that wrings tears but is so artfully crafted that is pain is also a pleasure.
This is also a show that managed, in the shadow of Hamilton a season before it, to become its own kind of phenomenon. Much of the credit went to original star Ben Platt, who originated the role of the title character, a high school senior whose discomfort in his own skin much less the world around him is palpable.
Enough with the clichés already in A Bronx Tale
If it feels like we've seen it all before, well, we have. The gangsters, the tormented teens, the tough streets of New York's deeze, dem, dose borough – it's all the same old stuff in the musical version of A Bronx Tale now at the Golden Gate Theatre as part of the SHNChazz Palminteri's autobiographical one-man show or the movie version that served as the feature directing debut of Robert De Niro or the upgraded one-man show that Paminteri took to Broadway and then around the country.
Slice of life served up sweet and tuneful in Waitress
Waitress is very much like one of the wacky pies its title character concocts – an odd combination of ingredients that come together in a surprisingly delightful way. As a musical, it's about ordinary life – low-paying jobs, abusive relationships, childhood trauma, the families we make as opposed to the ones we're born into – but it sings, often beautifully, about the deep pain and the little joys of everyday living, and it finds ways to make the ordinary soar with lyricism and expressive movement.
Rhythm almost gets you in On Your Feet
On Your Feet! The Emilio & Gloria Estefan Broadway Musical is exactly what you think it's going to be, and that's not a bad thing. Nor is it a great thing, but this amiable show lands squarely in the middle lane of enjoyable live musical entertainment. Is it a musical? Well, it's a jukebox musical, meaning it mixes pop songs into a narrative, and some of it lands very well and some of it not so much.
Kids rock in Lloyd Webber's middling School
p>What's the primary reason to see Andrew Lloyd Webber's School of Rock? It's elementary: the kids.
This grand-scale musical adaptation of the 2003 movie hit (screenplay by Mike White, direction by Richard Linklater) makes a lot of sense as far as movie-to-musical projects go because music – and a lot of it – is built right into the story of a baby-man who fakes being a substitute teacher at a private school and turns around the lives of his students by helping them form a rock band.
Soft Power electrifies at the Curran
Remarkable. Inspiring. Hilarious. Moving. There aren't enough descriptive words to fully express just how wonderful and fascinating and exhilarating it is to experience Soft Power the new musical by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori now at the Curran Theatre.
ACT's musical Moon never quite achieves lift off
There's a better musical struggling to emerge from the overgrown but amiable mess that is A Walk on the Moon, the world premiere that American Conservatory Theater is launching on the Geary Theater stage.
Based on the 1999 movie of the same name and featuring a book by Pamela Gray, who also wrote the screenplay, the musical is...
Purple reigns at SHN's Orpheum
When I originally reviewed the musical version of The Color Purple based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and the Steven Spielberg's 1985 movie version, I felt the production was too Broadway slick and the score was too bland. The only thing that worked – and indeed the thing that saved that October 2007 touring production – was Walker's story and her powerful characters. (Read the review here.)
That was only 11 years ago, but The Color Purple is back.
Ga-ga for Go-Go's in giddy Head Over Heels
How thrilling to find the songs of the Go-Go's fashioned into a fizzy new jukebox musical, Head Over Heels with the inventive concept of folding the punky-poppy '80s tunes folded into a (greatly) adapted version of Sir Philip Sidney's late 16th-century Arcadia. You've got song and text separated by more than four centuries, so it's a mash-up of sensibilities with lots of room for cheeky humor and the exploding of gender norms.
Floating on air in rock musical Weightless
In this version of the story, adapted by Dan Moses and Kate Kilbane, the horrible things aren't quite as godawful as they are in Ovid (the cannibalism, for instance, is absent), but they're still pretty bad, and they (surprise surprise) fit right into our collective #MeToo moment.
Galaxy of emotions surround Bright Star at the Curran
Steve Martin and Edie Brickell's Bright Star is a beautiful musical, especially if you have a penchant for bluegrass music and florid stories with twists, turns and not-so-surprising surprises.
It feels like a quintessentially American musical in several ways, the first being that glorious, banjo-heavy bluegrass, which brings to life a story that stretches from the 1920s to the 1940s in North Carolina.
Shotgun's Black Rider dances with the devil
Thirteen years ago – such an appropriate number of years – American Conservatory Theater made some sort of deal with the devil to get The Black Rider onto the stage of the Geary Theater. Now Berkeley's Shotgun Players revive this decidedly adult fairy tale under the guidance of director Mark Jackson, and the results are heartily satisfying.
Disney's Aladdin flies high at the Orpheum
There is no question in my mind, that of all Disney's animated film to Broadway adaptations, Aladdin is the most thoroughly successful. For The Lion King stage adaptation, Julie Taymor offered eye-popping spectacle and stagecraft in service to a flimsy story and even flimsier characters. Beauty and the Beast, Disney’s first Broadway venture, was fun and dazzling but only a ride vehicle away from being a theme park attraction. The less said about the misguided Tarzan and missed opportunities of The Little Mermaid the better.
Succumb to temptation and see Ain't Too Proud at Berkeley Rep
When Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations is in its groove, this world-premiere musical at Berkeley Repertory Theatre is absolutely electrifying. Featuring all or part of 30 songs from the '60s and '70s Motown era, the music alone is alone is enough to make this a must-see theatrical event, but it's clear that this musical biography is going places (namely Broadway).
S'Just All Right: Gershwin score saves American in Paris
An American in Paris, adapted by writer Craig Lucas and directed and choreographed by a member of ballet world royalty, Christopher Wheeldon, is a decidedly uneven affair. It wants to be part serious musical (the darkness of Paris after World War II and the Nazi occupation), part musical comedy (three guys in love with one girl!) and part contemporary and ballet dance show. Call it a ballet-sical (mullet doesn't quite work). Whatever it is, it doesn't quite work.
Something wickedly delightful in Something Rotten
Thank you, Something Rotten!. I need that.
Sometimes you ned light and froth and delectable show tunes to lift you out of the quagmire of our something-more-than-rotten times, and this musical, now at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the SHN season, is just the ticket.
SF Playhouse La Cage celebrates Herman show tunes
Let us all take a moment to praise the national treasure that is Jerry Herman, the musical theater maestro behind three massive hits: Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage aux Folles. It's an opportune time to toast Mr. Herman: his Dolly is back on Broadway in a ravishing production starring the divine (and Tony-winning) Bette Midler, and closer to home, San Francisco Playhouse just opened a sweet and funny production of La Cage.