Shows I saw - 2013

I may not have read much last year, but I saw a ton of shows, which break down into 5 categories (category 6 was sadly retired a few years back).

1. "Straight" theater, non-Shakespeare:
   Bookkeepers, No Man's Land, Our Practical Heaven, Sherlock Holmes - the Final Adventure, Sometimes Cloudy - Sometimes Clear, the Haunting, the King Stag, the Spanish Tragedy, the Tenth Muse, the Woman in Black, Waiting for Godot.
   
2. Shakespeare:
   Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, King Lear (twice), Macbeth, the Taming of the Shrew, the Tempest, the Winter's Tale.
   
3. Opera:
   
   • LOTS of Verdi: i Lombardi, i Due Foscari, Giovanna d'Arco (twice), Alzira, i Masnadieri, la Battaglia di Legnano, la Traviata, Falstaff.
     
   • Lots of Wagner too: die Feen, das Liebesverbot, Rienzi, the Flying Dutchman, die Meistersinger.
     
   • also l'Incorinazione di Poppea (twice), Admeto, Cosi Fan Tutte, Maria Stuarda, le Troyens, Faust, Mefistofele, the Tales of Hoffman, Andrea Chenier, Ariadne auf Naxos, the Turn of the Screw, the Gospel of Mary Magdalen, Dolores Claiborne.
   
   
4. Musicals:
   110 in the Shade; Kinky Boots; the Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder; the Landing; 1776.
   
5. Rap, Hip-Hop or Folk Act:
   
   
   • Golden Girls Live! Guys in dresses acting out Golden Girls episodes
     
   • Kinsey Sicks 20th Anniversary at the Castro Theater
     
   • Trolley Dances -- site-specific dance performances in San Francisco
     
   • Pet Shop Boys in concert
     
   • Magic acts at the "Magic Garage," a cool performance space that a magic aficionado made in, yes, his garage in Cupertino
     
   • Driven Bananas, a one-woman show, part of SF Fringe

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Best & Worsts?

1. Hard to pick a favorite non-Shakes non-singing performance - international stars Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart in Godot or Bay Area star Julian Lopez-Morillas in Spanish Tragedy? Tiebreaker goes to Julian, because like me he won 2 days on Jeopardy! No worst, loved all of it.
   
2. OSF's Lear was amazing, but, hey, I saw Tempest at the Reconstructed Globe in London, so that wins. On the other extreme, SF Shake's Macbeth was a campy howler, not to be missed for the wrong reasons.
   
3. I loved getting to travel & see opera productions in other countries, & in particular to check off my to-do list the last Wagner operas I'd never seen, and all but one of the early Verdi works; but the single best production was right at home, SF Opera's Mefistofele, a brief respite in the company's slide... because they also supplied the worst opera I saw; not the 2 still-born "world premieres" but a listless and ramshackle Tales of Hoffman. Turns out Hoffman isn't as idiot-proof as I'd thought.
   
4. Worst musical I saw is easy, the Landing, Kander's first post-Ebb work, not hateful bad but weak and sickly, so I feel sorry for it. The rest were all great, but Gentleman's Guide is the one I'm telling people to go see, superb work but it might not get the press it deserves.
   
5. Everything in Category 5 was wonderful and great and they're all the Best and nobody is the worst, because I don't go to enough rap, hip hop or folk acts.

Next - exciting recaps of the places I went and the times I had my car's oil changed! I can't wait! Can you? Yes. You can.