The timeliness of San Jose Playhouse’s new production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Assassins” may have been a little too close for comfort.
The show was set to open last Saturday night, but — as we all know — that afternoon an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump happened in Pennsylvania. “Assassins” uses several historical Presidential assassins and would-be assassins as characters to look at their impact on American culture and history, with songs and some laughs thrown in.
San Jose Playhouse’s Scott and Shannon Guggenheim made the quick correct decision to postpone the sold-out opening night show by a day to give the cast, crew and audience a chance to process the events of the day. The show — now seeming more relevant than ever — did make its debut Sunday and it continues this weekend and through Aug. 4 at downtown San Jose’s 3Below Theater.
Tickets are available at 3belowtheaters.com/assassins.
LYRIC FESTIVAL RETURNS: Lyric Theatre of San Jose can boast about its status as one of the city’s oldest surviving performing arts groups — tracing its roots back to its founding in 1973 as the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of San Jose. Of course, “surviving” is the key word there, as nearly all theater companies have been struggling to get audiences back to pre-pandemic levels and have turned to innovative ways to bring in the crowds.
Lyric Theatre’s contribution to that is the San Jose Light Opera Festival, now in its third year, which will showcase 12 performances of three shows over the next three weekends at the Hammer Theatre Center in downtown San Jose. This year’s shows are “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The Best of Cole Porter” and “The Red Mill,” with the latter two shows led by music director Michael Taylor, an opera and orchestral composer. The schedule and tickets are available online at www.lyrictheatre.org or at the Hammer Theatre box office.
MORE MUSICAL NOTES: San Jose’s City Lights Theatre Company is bringing back “Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show” for a third time, following successful runs in 2003 and 2013. If you’re not up on your adaptations, this is the original 1973 musical that the cult-classic movie was based on, but it’s got most of the same fun campy elements and popular songs from the movie. Opening night on July 20 has been long sold out, but you can get tickets for the rest of the run through Aug. 25 at www.cltc.org.
And to satisfy fans of the midnight movie screenings of “Rocky Horror,” City Lights plans its own midnight show at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 16. The company got a huge crowd when it did this for the first time back in 2013. “The theater that night was jam-packed. There was literally nowhere else to put anybody,” set designer Ron Gasparinetti said.
If you’re looking for a more contemporary musical this month, WVLO Musical Theatre Company is closing its 58th season with a production of the musical “The Wedding Singer,” based on the hit 1998 Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore movie. There are five performances between July 19 and July 27, and you can get more information at www.wvlo.org.
TREASURE HUNTING: My mind must have been firmly lodged in baseball season when I heard that Preservation Action Council of San Jose’s huge Rummage Sale this weekend included a collection of 200 miniature pitchers because my mind pictured bobbleheads of Major League hurlers and not tiny drinkware accessories. But that goes to show the wide variety of items available at the sale, which takes up a good chunk of the 200 block of South 13th Street in downtown San Jose’s Naglee Park neighborhood.
The sale includes antiques like a hand-crank Victrola phonograph, furniture, dishes, history books and San Jose memorabilia. It starts July 19, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and continues July 20, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pro tip: Come by Friday afternoon, and there should be root beer floats available. Perfect for those little pitchers.
