Sheriff Mirkarimi’s Wife Debuts One-Woman Play, Relive 2012 Suspension
Culture

Sheriff Mirkarimi’s Wife Debuts One-Woman Play, Relive 2012 Suspension

Eliana Lopez, wife of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who found herself in the middle of a political controversy in 2012 amid allegations of domestic…

And How Efficiently Traveled Was the Road to Wrestlemania, You Ask?
Bay Area

And How Efficiently Traveled Was the Road to Wrestlemania, You Ask?

The Road to Wrestlemania is a tag line (and probably copyrighted) that essentially describes the entire WWE’s collective journey to the biggest event of the…

Wrestlemania 31 At Levi’s Stadium Was The Showcase Of The Immortals
Culture

Wrestlemania 31 At Levi’s Stadium Was The Showcase Of The Immortals

Do you want to feel like a kid again? And I’m not even talking about being a kid in the arrested development, Peter Pan on…

Wrestlemania 31 Saturday: Axxess, Ringside with JR, and the 2015 Hall of Fame
Culture

Wrestlemania 31 Saturday: Axxess, Ringside with JR, and the 2015 Hall of Fame

Follow all the Appeal’s Wrestlemania 31 coverage as it happens at @SFAWrestlemania Walking into Axxess, WWE’s flagship fan experience at the San Jose Convention Center,…

Wrestlemania 31 Friday: WrestleCon, Pizza With John Cena, A Love Letter to NXT
Culture

Wrestlemania 31 Friday: WrestleCon, Pizza With John Cena, A Love Letter to NXT

Follow all the Appeal’s Wrestlemania 31 coverage as it happens at @SFAWrestlemania They don’t call it the Road to Wrestlemania for nothing. Wrestlemania 31 itself…

A Guide to Wrestlemania 31 For Non-Wrestling Fans
Culture

A Guide to Wrestlemania 31 For Non-Wrestling Fans

Follow all the Appeal’s Wrestlemania 31 coverage as it happens at @SFAWrestlemania For those keeping track at home, this weekend’s Wrestlemania, which goes down in…

Clean Yourself Up, Or Get Ribbed: Dame Edna’s Glorious Goodbye: The Farewell Tour
Culture

Clean Yourself Up, Or Get Ribbed: Dame Edna’s Glorious Goodbye: The Farewell Tour

Every time I go to the theater, I’m a little amazed by what people choose to wear. Theater tickets are, in general, not cheap, and…

Bring On The Dancing Boys: Newsies
Culture

Bring On The Dancing Boys: Newsies

I’m about ten years too old to have been overcome with Newsies fever in the early 90’s, but will admit it’s always seemed an odd…

A Fine Balance Between Dark And Light: Blithe Spirit
Culture

A Fine Balance Between Dark And Light: Blithe Spirit

Blithe Spirit, Noel Coward’s classic comedy about marriage, mortality, and spirits has landed in San Francisco for a brief twelve night run, featuring Angela Lansbury…

Preaching To The Choir: Kinky Boots
Culture

Preaching To The Choir: Kinky Boots

Kinky Boots, based on the 2005 movie, with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper, tells the story of a…

Theatrical Time Travel: I Love Lucy Live On Stage
Culture

Theatrical Time Travel: I Love Lucy Live On Stage

I Love Lucy Live On Stage seems like a weird concept for a theatrical show: recreate two episodes of the classic sitcom with performers imitating…

Jazz Hands And Hat Tipping: Chicago The Musical
Culture

Jazz Hands And Hat Tipping: Chicago The Musical

Here’s something I didn’t know prior to seeing the San Francisco premiere of Chicago the Musical at the Orpheum Theatre on Friday: it’s a comedy!…

Teatro ZinZanni Planning Return to Waterfront
Bay Area

Teatro ZinZanni Planning Return to Waterfront

A cultural attraction that left San Francisco nearly three years ago because of the America’s Cup yacht race may be reopening soon along the city’s…

For The Fans: Pippin
Culture

For The Fans: Pippin

I’ve gone to a lot of musicals in the past year or so, but the majority of them have had pretty simple stories, and songs…

Completely Believable Barbra: Buyer & Cellar
Culture

Completely Believable Barbra: Buyer & Cellar

Barbra Streisand has a basement full of crap she’s collected over the years. Really, who doesn’t, in some form or another? But Barbra’s basement is…

Entertaining And Slightly Exhausting: Motown: The Musical
Culture

Entertaining And Slightly Exhausting: Motown: The Musical

It’s too bad Berry Gordy can’t make an on-stage appearance at the end of every performance of Motown: The Musical, as he did at San…

Falling Slowly: Once, the Musical
Culture

Falling Slowly: Once, the Musical

I liked the 2006 film Once well enough, but didn’t fall madly in love with it as many of its fans did. I certainly understood…

Completely Crazy: Cirque Dreams Holidaze
Culture

Completely Crazy: Cirque Dreams Holidaze

Before attending the San Francisco premiere of Cirque Dreams Holidaze, I had dinner down the street at Cafe Royale. (Just OK; my coq au vin…

Controversial Classic: Porgy and Bess
Culture

Controversial Classic: Porgy and Bess

Ira and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess is a classic and historical opera not without its share of controversies, dating back to its 1935 premiere….

A Real Sense Of Magic: Peter And The Starcatcher
Culture

A Real Sense Of Magic: Peter And The Starcatcher

Peter and the Starcatcher is an odd bit of theater. Not exactly a musical, although it has a few musical numbers. Not exactly a child’s…

For The Fans: The Wizard of Oz
Culture

For The Fans: The Wizard of Oz

In the past three weeks, I’ve gone to see three live musicals, which, for someone who isn’t exactly musical theater’s biggest fan, is a lot….

Some Kind of Wonderful: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical
Culture

Some Kind of Wonderful: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is, as the title would suggest, about Carole King, the singer and songwriter whose career began as a teenage songwriter,…

There Won’t Be Blood: Carrie: The Musical
Culture

There Won’t Be Blood: Carrie: The Musical

I’ve been obsessed with the Carrie musical since its brief and disastrous Broadway run way back in 1988. There was no Internet then, so I’m…

Sparkly But Standard: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical
Culture

Sparkly But Standard: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical

If you saw the 1994 movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, liked the costumes, but felt the actual drag performances were kind…

Have An Old TV? This SF Theater Wants It
Culture

Have An Old TV? This SF Theater Wants It

A San Francisco theater is asking for donations of unwanted tube TVs that will be smashed as part of an upcoming show about the life…

True Romance: A.C.T. Stages Arcadia
Culture

True Romance: A.C.T. Stages Arcadia

What a year for Bay Area Tom Stoppard fans. Shotgun Players in Berkeley treated us to a staggeringly good production of Shipwreck, the second installment…

Scotland’s Pride: Black Watch at ACT
Events

Scotland’s Pride: Black Watch at ACT

One of the first productions to come out of the recently established National Theatre of Scotland, Black Watch takes up the story of the country’s…

A Very Mild Nightmare: ‘Stuck Elevator’ at ACT
Culture

A Very Mild Nightmare: ‘Stuck Elevator’ at ACT

“I remember at one point I thought it might have to be a guy screaming in Chinese for an hour on stage,” says Byron Au…

Before There Was Timberlake: Jersey Boys

My first introduction to The Four Seasons came from the 1979 Phillip Kaufman movie The Wanderers, centered on gangs in early 1960s Bronx, New York….

Absurd Humanity: The Chairs at Cutting Ball Theater

Theater of the absurd, the catchall term for the works of post-World War II writers like Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, is to…

Just Crass: Dead Metaphor at A.C.T.

Dead Metaphor, George F. Walker’s political “black comedy” now running at American Conservatory Theater, begins at a job placement agency for veterans, with what unfortunately…