Mention Frank Loesser to a musical theater fan, and you’re sure to hear about Guys and Dolls. The Most Happy Fella is unlikely to be discussed, because it is so rarely performed these days. It’s less consistently toe-tapping than Loesser’s more lasting hit, but it makes up for it...

Into the Woods is a difficult show to perform, demanding split-second responses, with nary a rest. Fairytale characters busily weave their assorted tales, while simultaneously operating on a whole different level to subtly remind us that these archetypes live in our heads, inhabiting some deep part of ourselves. These...

“What makes a lion a lion?” Alone onstage with seven guitars, Benjamin Scheuer sings, “My father has an old guitar, and he plays me folk songs.” That’s the start of Benjamin’s passion for music, but it’s also a cause for his troubled relationship with his father. Depressed and quick to...

In 2004, Finding Nemo won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. It beat out a very different finalist: the bizarre French-Québécois film The Triplets of Belleville. This near-silent movie with a swinging jazz score is an imaginative adventure set during the Tour de France. The cyclist Champion is...

"I think there is no world without theatre." - Edward Bond Looking for a show to see? Stark Insider is here to help. This edition of our theater and arts round-up includes new shows, some swashbuckling, mile high laughs, and a cinematic experience inside one of San Francisco's newest and most exciting...

Part of the tight fast-paced brilliance, sold here in a Mary Quant vision of primary colors and angular geometries, can be attributed to Kenneth Kelleher’s tight stage direction and the cast’s quick comic timing.

In The Marsh’s small San Francisco theater, watching Lorri Holt speak as Colette is like having a conversation with the most interesting person you have ever met. Writers Zack Rogow and Lorri Holt frame their play as a lecture in celebration of Gigi, but it’s more of a cozy...

Actor-comedian Sean Hayes delivers a swishy cross between Bill Buckley and Oprah.

"Children are made of glass. Children shatter." Maybe their parents do too. On Clover Road could have been a straight-ahead story about cults we've seen so many times before: parent searches for runaway child, finds them in remote location under the spell of a spiritual leader, proceeds to rescue them, and...

When she talks about how racist the Bay Area is, compared to NYC or Cleveland, her observation seems perfectly aligned with the Bay Area’s glacial coolness and assumed superiority that goes with occupying this stunning bit of heaven.