Fall Theater Preview

Silicon Valley residents can count themselves lucky to be surrounded by leading theater companies. Here’s a roundup of the fall’s most promising theatrical productions.

Palo Alto’s TheatreWorks provides a transition into the fall season with The Light in the Piazza (Aug. 25–Sept. 19), a musical romance set in Italy. The play is notable for Adam Gretel’s adventurous, Tony Award–winning score, which has more in common with classical music and opera than with traditional show tunes.

This production will feature a five-piece chamber orchestra and a cast singing in both English and Italian. A show of this level of sophistication will be in good hands with artistic director Robert Kelley. “He’s particularly good at taking those large, grand-scale musicals and making sure they still have a really intimate, emotional appeal,” says casting director Leslie Martinson.Next up at TheatreWorks will be Superior Donuts (Oct. 6–31), a warm and humorous play from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tracy Letts. The play focuses on a run-down Chicago donut shop, an aging manager and an ambitious young employee who wants to reinvigorate the business. “It’s very much a play about what happens when a hopeless guy meets a guy with nothing but hope,” says Martinson.

San Jose Repertory Theatre will launch its season on Sept. 2 with the West Coast premiere of Black Pearl Sings!. Set in the 1930s, this drama tells the story of Susannah, a researcher who sets out to record genuine African American songs. She finds what she is looking for in Pearl Johnson, a prisoner and treasure trove of authentic music, but the two women are suspicious of one another.

“They have to learn to communicate with each other,” says director Rick Lombardo. “They have to learn how to trust each other. ... It’s about trying to figure out how you begin to understand someone who is so distinctly different from yourself.”

Pearl is soon singing, and Susannah joins in. “Over the course of the show they sing about 11 or 12 amazing folk songs, all a cappella,” says Lombardo. “So it’s also about the incredible power of the unaccompanied human voice. It’s a really wonderful night of theater.”

The Rep’s other shows include a visit from the Flying Karamazov Brothers, a medical thriller called Secret Order, and Backwards in High Heels, a musical about Ginger Rogers.

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