Latest news with #SanFranciscoPlayhouse
Axios
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
"My Fair Lady" enchants at San Francisco Playhouse
Fans of musical theater are in for a real treat: "My Fair Lady" has landed at the San Francisco Playhouse. Why it matters: The theater company is ending on a crowd favorite for the last show of the 2025 season. Devotees of the 1964 Audrey Hepburn film won't be disappointed. State of play: The musical's leads are all standouts. Adam Magill is a triumph as Henry Higgins and Jillian A. Smith brings a soaring voice and beautiful fragility as Eliza Dolittle. Don't sleep on the supporting cast — I could've watched Heather Orth deliver the withering glances of Henry Higgins' housekeeper Mrs. Pearce all night. Between the lines: Both the film and musical run for nearly three hours, but the Playhouse production is as well-paced as an Ascot race horse. The show hews closely to the film in keeping many beloved set pieces — such as the masterfully choreographed street-sweeper dance sequences and famous race scene, complete with elaborate monochrome costumes. My thought bubble: As an Aussie in America, I've heard my fair share of mangled Commonwealth accents onstage. But the cast largely passed the test of capturing London's varied accents, thanks to the production's dialect coaches. I was especially impressed by Eliza's elocutionary glow-up by Act II.
San Francisco Chronicle
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: ‘Curious Incident,' about autism, demonstrates the power of great direction
The hallmark of Susi Damilano direction is joie de vivre. When the producing director of San Francisco Playhouse helms a show, it bursts with delight in the small and ordinary. You picture her encountering a crabby or loathsome character in a script and marveling at how one strand of humanity weaves into the rich texture of our world. Yet this quality alone does not cover the extent of her skill. Damilano also has the high-flying imagination and the communicative power to make her vision contagious, and all those talents are on splendid display in 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,' which I saw Friday, May 9. Simon Stephens' adaptation of Mark Haddon's bestselling 2003 novel is about a teenage boy with a condition that's never named but that looks a lot like autism. To realize the world of Christopher (Brendan Looney) as he decides to investigate the gruesome killing of his neighbor's dog, Damilano marshals the full power of theatrical design and straight-play choreography. When the word 'dead' is first pronounced, a whole ensemble positioned about the perimeter gasps. When an overwhelmed Christopher crouches and moans, the ensemble joins him, rocking back and forth. That superlative cast morphs into not just a flurry of supercilious neighbors, overager classmates and harrumphing strangers but their inanimate surroundings, too. Thanks to the inspired movement direction of Bridgette Loriaux, they're the garish signs and advertisements that overstimulate Christopher's senses. They're the trundling train he tries to take by himself for the first time and the waves his mother (Liz Sklar) dives under at the beach. They're a buzzing electromagnetic field, the furniture in Christopher's household, a space capsule hoisting Christopher above earth's orbit and the Tetris blocks of his favorite video game. When Wiley Naman Strasser as Christopher's neighbor flings open his door, beady eyes darting, posture coiled as if to protect his drug stash, a whole addled, washout life materializes. When Laura Domingo as a friendlier neighbor dodders and trembles, you see not just her character's dotage but the climate of fear and repression that prevails in their neighborhood. Actors in larger roles are just as strong. Looney nails the way Christopher has always steamrolled through life at the same pitch, choosing just the right moments as the mystery unfurls to show how his character slowly realizes he doesn't always have to tell the thorough, literal truth at every moment. When his father, Ed (Mark P. Robinson), asks if he's going to behave, Christopher's 'yeah' becomes two syllables, the second trailing off a cliff of unshared plans. Sophia Alawi, as Christopher's teacher Siobhan, is saddled with much of the show's narration, but she finds ways to make it ferocious as she channels her pupil's voice — the way an adolescent might finally spill innermost thoughts to the stars after clutching them close to the chest. And the incisive adaptation itself models the art of suggestion. Flights of fancy into outer space say what cannot be said. Seeds of doubt and clues percuss with the precision of a symphony score. Emotional beats tighten, then pluck, your heartstrings as if they knew your deepest yearnings. The world pegs Christopher — with his inability to read social cues, his tendencies to pee his pants, recoil at touch and bay when he loses control — as the abnormal one. But 'Curious Incident' points out that the very fact that he doesn't make the assumptions most people do makes him a great detective, even as the mystery he's solving expands to cover his whole cosmos. It also demonstrates that everyone in Christopher's life is deeply flawed in their own way, burdening their loved ones, but maybe still worthy of forgiveness for it.
Axios
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
New play tackles MSG, coming of age through anime and '90s pop
A new play at San Francisco Playhouse challenges long-held stereotypes about Asian food, belonging and misinformation with a production inspired by anime and '90s pop culture. Driving the news: "Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play" follows Japanese American high schooler Ami as she struggles to fit in with her peers in 1999. When she discovers that her family helped create MSG — the chemical basis for umami, often stigmatized in the U.S. — she's devastated. Yes, but: A mysterious new girl at school soon compels her to find the truth. Driving the news: Lauded as " frenetic and fantastical" by BroadwayWorld, it will run from Thursday through March 8 at the San Francisco Playhouse. State of play: Keiko Green, whose screen credits include Hulu's "Interior Chinatown," began writing the play during the pandemic. Her grandfather was a food scientist who worked for Ajinomoto, the Japanese company that created MSG in the early 1900s. Her mother would only mention his job as a professor during Green's childhood in Georgia, however, and it soon became clear she was ashamed of their family's association with MSG, Green said. "I grew up in a super, super white area with very few other Asian kids," Green said. "Looking back ... those things feel so connected, my own shame and internal racism and my mom's shame." It wasn't until her 20s that Green learned the truth about MSG and how studies have debunked baseless narratives about the additive making food unhealthy. What she's saying: "What's interesting about the play is it's so fun, it's silly, it's pop culture, it's all of those things," Green told Axios. "But it really is tackling just that feeling of being invisible [and] misunderstood ... and I think it's so related to our food." "It's a really relatable coming-of-age story, where people will see themselves," Green said. "I hope people laugh so much that their stomachs hurt and ... I hope a lot of people learn something new." Go deeper: New campaign aims to address racist stereotypes around MSG
