May theater openings include several contemporary comedies, a classic drama (albeit one with a nontraditional ending) and two festivals, but let’s start with a multidisciplinary world premiere at San Francisco’s venerable Magic Theatre.
The Ni¿¿er Lovers
Since it opened in Berkeley in 1967, the Magic has gone through many changes, as long-running theaters do. Its founder, the late John Lion, might not recognize his creation at all, but artistic director Sean San José and gang remain true to Lion’s original concept: The Magic is still the intrepid new-plays-centric company it’s always been, now rising to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Marc Anthony Thompson is a prominent composer and musician who has collaborated on new work with solo writer-performer Roger Guenveur Smith, but this play, with its near-unprintable title, is the first full one he’s written. In it, a couple escapes from slavery; the tale is presented as a “nouveau minstrel show,” complete with music, dance and plenty of humor. Thompson describes it as “musical/theater/visual infotainment.” He writes that it’s historically rooted, and that he looked into his own family history as he explored identity, sexuality, love—and Blackness.
The all-Black ensemble of five, which includes such local treasures as Rotimi Agbabiaka and Donald Lacy, Jr., portrays characters of many races in what is likely to be a fresh, wildly entertaining and deep look at a dark topic. San José directs.
Magic Theatre, Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D, 3rd Floor, SF. May 3-21. Tickets: $30-$70. (415) 441-8822, magictheatre.org
The Confession of Lily Dare
Playwright, performer and certified drag legend Charles Busch is known for crazy comedies like “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom,” but also for the more sedate, award-winning Broadway comedy “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,” which ran for 777 performances. (Busch also starred in the film version of his play “Die Mommie Die.”)
“The Confession of Lily Dare,” now in its regional premiere at New Conservatory Theatre Center, is not sedate. In this, Busch’s latest play, which ran off-Broadway a few years ago, the titular Lily (played here by J. Conrad Frank, pronouns: he/him) goes from convent girl to chanteuse to madame of a brothel. It’s described as “comic melodrama,” recalling the pre-code cinema era with its confessional-style tearjerkers. (Did we mention Lily is devoted to the child she was forced to abandon?) It’s set on our own super-seedy Barbary Coast. F. Allen Sawyer directs a cast of six.
New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness Ave., SF. May 12-June 11. Tickets: $25-$65. (415) 861-8972, nctcsf.org
Chinglish
This comedy of cultural and linguistic conflicts by award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly” and others) opened on Broadway in 2011; Berkeley Rep staged the West Coast premiere in 2012. The play was updated in 2015 to represent changing U.S. relations with China, as San Francisco Playhouse notes in the advance publicity for its upcoming production.
Chinglish itself is, of course, that familiar and often hilarious broken English that shows up most often in various instruction manuals of products imported from China with awkward direct translations from the Chinese language. In Hwang’s play, an American businessman (played here by Michael Barrett Austin) arrives in China hoping to work out a good deal for his company, but confounding differences — everything from customs to language — interfere. Hwang has said that he thought of writing the play when he toured an arts center in China — impressive except for the absurdly translated signs in English.
San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St., SF. May 4-June 10. Tickets: $15-$100. (415) 677-9596, sfplayhouse.org
Border People
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And a special treat: the return of one of San Francisco solo performer-writer Dan Hoyle’s most engaging pieces, “Border People,” directed by and developed with the invaluable Charlie Varon.
When he first premiered this piece at The Marsh in 2019, I wrote, in my review, that the 11 characters he embodies — black, white, Latinx, gay or straight, male and female — “connects us to the ‘other’ in the way that intimate theater at its very best can do.”
After the 2016 election, Hoyle — a gifted actor — interviewed everyday people on the borders of Canada and Mexico, and in the projects of New York. From there, he crafted these monologues, which range from heartbreaking to funny. The characters that emerge from these interviews range from a Korean martial arts expert to a Mexican who’d immigrated here as a little kid and who was deported back across the border. “All my life I thought I was an American,” he says. “Now I’m an exile.” Some characters are composites; all are distinct individuals, crafted entirely without the aid of costumes or props — basically just Dan and a stool on an empty stage, presenting the type of gem-like, journalistically inspired show that he has perfected over the years.
The Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia St., SF. May 26-June 24. Tickets: $25-$100. themarsh.org
Romeo & Juliet
As for the one classic: African-American Shakespeare Company has been around since 1994, but this is only the second time it has presented Shakespeare’s enduring tragedy of teenage love amidst warring families.
However, artistic director L. Peter Callender’s new adaptation features a new ending. As he explains in a press release, “This production comes from me being ultra-sensitive about teen suicide and dead bodies of color on stage. Plus with so much death and sadness in the world, I felt the need to do something with an uplifting end while still telling the story Mr. Shakespeare wrote.” He premiered it in Florida but now it’s back home, with Khari Haynes and Shelby Ronea playing the perhaps not-so-ill-fated pair of young lovers.
Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter St., SF. May 12-28. african-americanshakes.org or cityboxoffice.com
FestivalS
And finally, just in, these two longtime springtime festivals:
• PlayGround’s 27th annual Festival of New Works, a month-long extravaganza of new plays, both long and short, some fully staged, some staged readings, by a dozen different writers.
Potrero Stage, 1695 18th St., SF. May 8-28. Tickets: $10-50. (415) 992-6677, playground-sf.org/festival
• Afro Solo Theatre Company presents its free 29th annual Afro Solo Arts Festival, this year subtitled “Black Voices—Standing Our Ground,” a series of various performances in assorted disciplines. The roster of performances includes new work by longtime local actor/playwright Brian Freeman.
StageWerx Theater, 446 Valencia St., SF. May 12-27 (June 9 & 10 at Potrero Stage). afrosolosf.org
