On Stage – December

HEAD OVER HEELS:  San Francisco – I loved this show when I saw it on Broadway last year.  It’s production this month at San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre is the first regional production I have noticed, and I’m tempted to fly there just to see it again.  The music is all from the Go Go’s catalogue.  The show opens with “We’ve Got the Beat,” and it turns out that a mythical kingdom is powered by their beat.  A non-binary oracle (Drag Race’s Peppermint played it on Broadway) tells the royal family that they are in danger of losing their beat unless certain things are made to happen.  The king sets out to prevent those things from happening, and along the line, one of the king’s daughters is in love with a shepherd who has to disguise himself in bad drag to enter the palace. The king ends up falling in love with her/him.  The other princess falls in love with her lady bodyguard.  It’s all enjoyable silliness, but the speed and ease with which it is delivered, all to the Go Go’s beat, is a true joy!  (www.nctcsf.org) 12/6 – 1/12/20.

HAMILTON:  Los Angeles, San Francisco – The BIG ONE has returned to the west coast, and tickets are once more at a premium, though not quite as much so as on their previous tour.  There are still some tickets direct from the Orpheum in San Francisco – and of course, plenty of high-priced re-sales from scalpers.  For the Hollywood Pantages season, tickets have been on sale for a month or two for past patrons and have just gone on sale to the general public.  Although the tickets are still 2 to 4 times the price of other touring musicals, they’re nowhere near the $2,000 a seat that Broadway was fetching.  However, don’t delay!  I have never purchased a theatre ticket for 8 months in the future, but I did for this show, and I’m damned excited!  San Francisco Orpheum (www.orpheumtheatresanfrancisco.org) now through 5/31/20; Los Angeles Pantages (www.HollywoodPantages.com) 3/12/20 – 9/20/20.

SWAN LAKE:  Los Angeles – Matthew Bourne’s ballet retelling of Swan Lake as a homoerotic fantasy.  The show was first seen on London’s West End in 1995 and has had many world tours since then.  The current production, playing at the Los Angeles Ahmanson Theatre, has been updated and streamlined, but retains the basic plot of a lonely Prince who has hallucinations of a dark, leather-clad stranger and a flock of threatening but erotically enticing swans, a shirtless all-male ensemble.  The music is still gay composer Pyter Tchaikovsky’s, but any perceived stuffiness of grand ballet is gone, and this production is thrilling and beautiful in equal measure.  Bourne only presents his works at a very limited number of American venues, and we are lucky that the Ahmanson is one of his favorites! (www.centertheatregroup.org) 12/3 – 1/5/20.

THE MOST FABULOUS STORY EVER TOLD:  San Francisco — Theatre has charms in the largest and smallest of venues, and I recently attended an unlikely little theatre hidden away in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin district.  After skirting around tents on the sidewalk, I found The Exit Theatre to actually be quite a slick and inviting complex.  This production was presented by Left Coast Theatre Company, one of San Francisco’s three gay companies.  The script, by Paul Rudd, starts in the Garden of Eden where naked Adam meets his life mate, Steve.  They discover that the soft parts of their faces feel good when they connect them, and other parts of their anatomies do funny things as well.  Then, they meet Jane and Mabel, the other residents of the Garden.  When they are ejected from the Garden, the four of them find themselves living in different periods of time, always asking the question:  Can two gay couples find God?  The production is slick, the performers talented, the scenic elements make good use of a limited budget and the theatre is small enough that there’s a feeling that you are watching the show in your living room.  (http://www.theexit.org/most/) now through 12/14.