It was hardly one of the best of occasions, however we’ve seen so much worse. After a protracted dry spell out and in of quarantine, 2022 noticed the primary full 12 months of in-person theater on Bay Space phases since 2019, even when productions have been nonetheless fewer and fewer robustly attended than in pre-COVID days.
It’s been a 12 months of upheaval and renewal, with the departures of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s longtime managing director Susie Medak and a bunch of inventive administrators, together with California Shakespeare Theater’s Eric Ting, San Francisco Shakespeare Competition’s Rebecca Ennals, AlterTheater’s Jeanette Harrison and Marin Theatre Firm’s Jasson Minadakis.
Level Richmond’s Masquers Playhouse reopened after six years of rebuilding. San Francisco’s venerable EXIT Theatre closed its doorways, and San Jose’s Dragon Productions Theatre Firm shut down. Cal Shakes has introduced that it won't stage any productions of its personal subsequent 12 months.
Amid all that, there was a complete lot of wonderful theater on native phases. Right here, in no specific order, are 10 of probably the most memorable moments in Bay Space that I used to be lucky sufficient to witness this 12 months.
“Indecent,” San Francisco Playhouse: Paula Vogel’s masterful play is centered across the 1923 Broadway premiere of Sholem Asch’s Yiddish drama “God of Vengeance” that acquired the entire forged arrested for obscenity, nevertheless it tells a a lot bigger story of the controversy that accompanied that play from the start, juxtaposed with the rising tide of antisemitism in Europe. Director Susi Damilano gave it a hauntingly resonant manufacturing with a fabulous forged shifting easily from position to position in a fantastically theatrical play inside a play.
“Dana H.,” Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Playwright Lucas Hnath’s gripping one-person play tells the story of his mom’s months-long abduction in her personal phrases and her personal voice, embodied by Jordan Baker in a surprising efficiency wherein it’s straightforward to neglect that she’s lip-syncing to the actual Dana’s recorded interviews. Each the true story and director Les Waters’ staging have been gut-wrenchingly visceral and rapid on this uncommon post-Broadway engagement of a dazzlingly distinctive drama.
“Hadestown,” BroadwaySF: Orpheus lastly got here to the Orpheum in writer-composer Anaïs Mitchell’s enthralling 2019 Broadway hit with irresistibly catchy folk-jazz-blues-pop songs and a beautiful, energetic and heartbreaking tackle the tragic story of Eurydice and Orpheus’ descent into Hades, set in a Melancholy-era Speakeasy. Kimberly Marable particularly stole the present as a party-loving Persephone, queen of the underworld.
“the ripple, the wave that carried me dwelling,” Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Christina Anderson’s world premiere drama spans many years (and their respective fashions) in recounting one household’s story of lobbying to combine public swimming swimming pools in a single Kansas metropolis and the toll it took on their relationships. It was powerfully informed with fantastically eloquent language peppered with humor and nice performances in director Jackson Homosexual’s glorious manufacturing.
“This A lot I Know,” Aurora Theatre Firm: Simply as Oakland playwright Jonathan Spector’s final sensible Aurora world premiere, “Eureka Day,” opened in London, he returned to the Berkeley firm to unveil this delightfully brain-tickling examination of the character of fact and notion. Inventive director Josh Costello’s compelling staging featured great performances by Rajesh Bose as a compulsively pedantic psychology professor, Anna Ishida as his grief-racked spouse and as Stalin’s imposing daughter, and Kenny Toll as a semi-reformed white supremacist.
“Goddess,” Berkeley Repertory Theatre: A musical about an African goddess of music had higher dazzle in that division, and this world premiere actually delivered. With a e-book by Jocelyn Bioh and songs by Michael Thurber, “Goddess” sweeps you up with propulsive rhythms, electrifying choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie, gorgeous vocals by Amber Iman because the titular deity in disguise as a Kenyan nightclub singer and loads of humor and coronary heart. Plenty of musicals have made their means from Berkeley Rep to Broadway in recent times, and this one overflows with vitality that ought to carry it there.
“Colonialism Is Horrible, however Pho Is Scrumptious,” Aurora Theatre Firm: One other nice world premiere at Aurora was Dustin H. Chinn’s time-hopping triptych of scenes on 1889 and 1999 Vietnam and present-day Brooklyn, every centered indirectly round soup as a car to playfully however poignantly discover problems with colonialism, delicacies and cultural appropriation.
“Natasha, Pierre & the Nice Comet of 1812,” Shotgun Gamers: Previous Shotgun collaborator Dave Malloy’s acclaimed Broadway “electro-pop opera,” based mostly on a bit of Tolstoy’s “Struggle and Peace,” lastly makes its solution to the Bay Space, and it’s magnificent. With a terrific forged and a luxurious rating in an eclectic mixture of kinds, it’s hilarious and heartbreaking and dizzyingly dazzling. This one’s nonetheless operating by means of Feb. 5 and is effectively price testing ($7-$75; www.shotgunplayers.org).
“The Sound Inside,” Marin Theatre Firm: Adam Rapp’s drama facilities round a disturbingly obsessive inventive writing scholar and the Yale professor who’s troublingly fascinated with him. There’s no means it will probably finish effectively, however precisely the place it’s headed retains you on the sting of your seat. And actors Denmo Ibrahim and Tyler Miclean made that rigidity palpable in MTC inventive director Jasson Minadakis’ spare and suspenseful manufacturing.
“Moulin Rouge!,” BroadwaySF: No stage musical might be extra decadent than Baz Luhrmann’s fever dream of a 2001 film, however this Tony Award-winning 2018 Broadway hit offers it a superb shot with much more insanely jam-packed mashups of pop hits from the intervening many years in addition to the breadth of the twentieth century. And its tragicomic love story of bohemian artists, courtesans and aristocrats in a lurid Paris cabaret circa 1900 is as over-the-top as ever.
Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and comply with him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.