Sutton Foster, who officially opens the new Feinstein’s at the Nikko nightclub today, is a charming contradiction to the George Bernard Shaw maxim, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”
Foster clearly can do. She racked up five Tony nominations in the past decade — for all but one of her past six Broadway gigs — and won twice, for “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Anything Goes.”
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“Black Watch” has been taking audiences by storm ever since its 2006 debut at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival.
Based on interviews with Scottish soldiers returning from the war in Iraq, the National Theatre of Scotland’s high-octane multimedia production combines movement, music, video and dialogue to create an urgent, often harrowing theater piece told from the soldiers’ point of view.
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As if Jason Graae isn’t busy enough in “Little Me,” he’s taking two of his nights off to perform in a concert of Frank Loesser tunes with 42nd Street Moon company members and Tony nominee Emily Skinner (“Side Show”), who is making her San Francisco debut.
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Those not familiar with “Little Me,” the final show in 42nd Street Moon’s current season, could be surprised to discover that the title character is a lady named Belle Poitrine who, much like Lorelei Lee, comes from “the other side of the tracks” in search of a little fame, a lotta fortune and, of course, true love.
It’s an irony not lost on Los Angeles-based actor Jason Graae, who headlines the revival of the Cy Coleman-Carolyn Leigh musical opening Saturday; it originally starred Sid Caesar in 1962 and was revived in 1999 with Martin Short.
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Local writer Dan Harder’s modern noir mystery, “A Killer Story,” onstage at the Marsh in Berkeley, starts at the end. All three characters — hard-boiled gumshoe Rick (Ryan O’Donnell), sexy blonde Laura (Madeline H.D. Brown) and obsessive scientist Jerry (Robert Parsons) — are behind bars.
Reverting to the beginning, Rick tells us how they got here. His only mistake, he claims, was in his timing.
At play’s end, awaiting trial, he says he told “too good a story.”
It’s a clever conceit.
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Spectacle-wearing Michele Dumoulin, who plays Velma in a stage show based on the iconic “Scooby-Doo” gang, admits that some aspects of her role aren’t that different from her everyday life.
“In the show, I push the glasses up the bridge of my nose, and with my normal glasses, I usually touch the lens. Because there’s no lens in my stage glasses, I end up poking myself in the eye! ” says the 23-year-old actress with a laugh.
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Exciting, fast-paced, kinetic — these aren’t words usually associated with “Pericles, Prince of Tyre.” With its convoluted plot, multiple locales and huge cast of characters, Shakespeare’s sprawling late-life romance can add up to a very long night.
That’s what makes the new Berkeley Repertory Theatre production a welcome surprise. Director Mark Wing-Davey delivers a buoyant, ingeniously theatrical staging — one that almost triumphs over the play’s flaws, but not quite.
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Playwright (and acclaimed Culture Clash writer-performer) Richard Montoya wrote “The River” for the small, intrepid company Campo Santo, where it is having its world premiere.
More specifically, Montoya and Campo Santo’s Sean San Jose collaborated on the project, with the memory of Campo Santo co-founder-actor Luis Saguar, who died in 2009, in mind.
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Like its undocumented protagonist struggling to find a place in the city of strangers, “Stuck Elevator,” a world premiere at American Conservatory Theater, resists easy categorization.
It is musical, but not really “a musical.” It is occasionally operatic, more than just a song cycle, and yet not wholly any of the above.
On the surface, it is 81 hours in the life of Guang, an undocumented Chinese immigrant who is trapped in the titular device.
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If the big-box jukebox musicals leave you full but unsatisfied, you might want to try the creative and tuneful sampler “Show Me Yours” at the Alcove Theater.
Subtitled “Songs of Innocence & Experience,” the focus of this collection is original works by Pen and Piano, the Alcove’s resident company of composers, lyricists and hyphenates of the New Musical Theater of San Francisco.While the subject matter — vagaries of romantic relationships — is hardly new and not every song is a winner, the approach is frequently fresh and engagingly played.
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