The World’s Longest running Musical
book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt
directed by Dianne Shuster

EXTENDED THROUGH AUGUST 21ST!
Regular Performances: Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m., matinees Saturday 3pm.
The SF Playhouse ends its first season with The Fantasticks. After a 42-year run, The Fantasticks closed in New York in January of 2002 with the distinction of being the world’s longest continuously running musical, not to mention one of the most beloved. This summer, the magic lives on at the SF Playhouse with artistic director Bill English leading the cast as El Gallo.
Rich in imagery and lyrical appeal, The Fantasticks is a story about young love, parents, the world, and human nature, but most of all about young love. Beautiful melodies, among them the hit songs “Try To Remember” and “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” sparkle throughout the comedy and evoke the agony and rapture of being young, full of dreams, and giddy with love.
Tom Jones (Book and Lyrics) and Harvey Schmidt (Music) created The Fantasticks in the spirit of a whimsical Romeo & Juliet. The Boy and The Girl grow up next door to each other separated by a wall their feuding fathers built to keep them apart. Knowing their children would do anything they said “no” to; the forbidden wall makes The Boy and The Girl fall wildly in love with each other. Once they discover their fathers actually planned the whole thing to get them together, their romance suffers a series of whimsical and melodramatic developments. In the end, aided by a mysterious swashbuckling dream-weaver and his comical associates, the lovers mature, and love conquers all.

by Michele Lowe
directed by Bill English
Apr. 9th – May 15th

Take three delicious, malicious wives, add three scheming, unloving husbands, and chill. That’s the recipe for Michele Lowe’s tantalizing dark comedy, THE SMELL OF THE KILL The Smell of the Kill is “nice, mean fun…a deft little anti-love story… light-hearted, cold-hearted” (Newsday), that “boasts lines and scenes that have the audience laughing as uproariously as The Producers” (Variety).
Featured: Zehra Berkman, Stacy Ross*, Susi Damilano
*appears courtesy of actors equity

by Rebecca Gilman
directed by Bill English
Previews 2/4 & 2/5
Opening Gala: Friday 2/6
Feb. 6 – Mar. 3, 2004

Rebecca Gilman has become one of the most prolific and celebrated playwrights in America. Her award-winning plays (“Spinning Into Butter,” “Boy Gets Girl” and “Blue Serge”) are controversial treatments of contemporary social issues and this, Gilman’s first play is no exception.The Glory of Living focuses on 15-year-old Lisa,who tries to escape a miserable life with her prostitute mother by running away with, and eventually marrying,an ex-con named Clint.
In Lisa, Gilman has created a riveting portrait of a young woman whose most striking quality is not her capacity for evil but the depth of her emptiness. Set in the American South, The Glory of Living is based on a true story. “The springboard for the play,” Gilman says, “came from a real Alabama murder during my senior year of college. The criminal was a young girl who had not been taught to value her own life, so she could not be expected to value anyone else’s.”
Featured: Lauren English, Janna Sobel, and Matt Kline.

by Renee Taylor & Joseph Bologna
directed by Bill English
Dec. 5th – Jan. 9th, 2004

This is the hilarious story of the romance between Theda Blau (Kimberly Richards), a struggling B-movie actress and wannabe playwright desperately seeking love and success in New York and Vito Pignoli (Louis Parnell), a hugely successful television commercial director.
Theda convinces Vito to become her partner in dramaturgy and marriage…playwright desperately seeking love and success in New York and Vito Pignoli (Louis Parnell), a hugely successful television commercial director. Theda convinces Vito to become her partner in dramaturgy and marriage…by holding him hostage in her apartment on a snowy Christmas Eve. Based on the real life romance of Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna, who were in town last summer performing their newest hit, If You Leave Me…I’m Going With You…