Coronado Playhouse has announced its ambitious 79th season, featuring a diverse assortment of main shows – including a free classic production, big musicals, new and exciting plays, and special events throughout the year.
Coronado Playhouse will continue last seasons’ addition of Saturday matinees. “The Saturday matinees have been successful for the Playhouse,” said Barron Henzel, former board president. “They have given our patrons more choices, as our Sunday matinees almost always sell out.”
“We are also offering simplified pricing for the new season,” he said. “All performances are $27. We offer shows Thursday to Saturday at 8pm, Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. We work hard to keep ticket prices accessible while maintaining the highest quality we can. A big thank you to all our members and donors who help us in this endeavor.”
The FREE Classic Series will continue for the 28th year, bringing audiences a quintessential Shakespeare that will appeal to the entire family.
- Current season ticket holders can renew beginning August 1 by visiting our website here or by contacting the box office at 619-435-4856 or [email protected].
- New subscribers can purchase their season beginning September 1.
- Single tickets will be available on October 1.
- Subscribe soon, before tickets go on sale to the public.
2024 season line-up
All Bark, No Bite
A Play by Kara Emily Krantz
A comedy with plenty of bite
January 12-February 4, 2024
Directed by Kian Kline-Chilton
Charlotte and Eugene live a quiet, no-nonsense lifestyle surrounded by sudoku and argyle. Robert and Bella are boisterous and messy and ridiculously in love. Then there’s the neighbor, Suzanne, who basically doesn’t know what’s going on, but definitely has something to say about it.
Hold on to your seats, you’re in for a delightfully surprising tale about connections. Sure, relationships can be exciting! But, they can also be confusing, unexpected and full of risk. They are almost always worth exploring; and if we’re willing to be vulnerable, they can fill the vacant spaces in our hearts.
And if they don’t work? Well, you can always get a dog.
All Bark, No Bite is a romantic comedy about relationships, and is built upon a clever conceit that is skillfully revealed in the opening minutes. This witty bite holds the audience for the rest of the show in this sweet and heartfelt play.
This comedic farce has legs. Lots of them.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
By William Shakespeare
28th Annual FREE Classic Series
March 8 – March 30, 2024
(No show on Easter Sunday, March 31)
Directed by Erin Petersen & Lu Garcia
Four young Athenians are in a romantic tangle. Lysander and Demetrius love Hermia; she loves Lysander and her friend Helena loves Demetrius. Hermia’s father, Egeus, commands Hermia to marry Demetrius, and Theseus supports the father’s right. All four young Athenians end up in the woods, where Puck, who serves the fairy king Oberon, puts flower juice on the eyes of Lysander, and then Demetrius, unintentionally causing both to love Helena. Oberon, who is quarreling with his wife, Titania, uses the flower juice on her eyes. She falls in love with Bottom, who now, thanks to Robin Goodfellow, wears an ass’s head.
As the lovers sleep, Robin Goodfellow restores Lysander’s love for Hermia, so that now each young woman is matched with the man she loves. Oberon disenchants Titania and removes Bottom’s ass’s head. The two young couples join the royal couple in getting married, and Bottom rejoins his friends to perform the play.
Set in a wooded fairy land under the light of the moon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a much-adored comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595 or 1596, and is one of his most popular and widely performed plays.
Tuck Everlasting
Book by Claudia Shear and Tim Federle
Music by Chris Miller
Lyrics by Nathan Tysen
Based on the novel Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
If you could live forever, would you?
April 26 – May 19, 2024
Directed by Desha Crownover
Eleven-year-old Winnie Foster yearns for a life of adventure beyond her white picket fence. She gets more than she could have imagined when she becomes unexpectedly entwined with the Tuck Family. When Winnie learns of the magic behind the Tuck’s unending youth, she must fight to protect their secret from those who would do anything for a chance at eternal life. As her adventure unfolds, Winnie faces an extraordinary choice: return to her life, or continue with the Tucks on their infinite journey.
Based on the best-selling children’s classic by Natalie Babbitt and adapted for the stage by Claudia Shear and Tim Federle, Tuck Everlasting features a soaring score from Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen.
Tuck Everlasting premiered at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 2015 before transferring to Broadway in 2016 where it won the Theatre World Award. It received many other nominations and awards, including Outstanding Musical Production.
Directed by Casey Nicholaw, the original Broadway production featured Sarah Charles Lewis, Carolee Carmello, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Robert Lenzi, Terrence Mann and Michael Park.
Nine, the Musical
Book by Arthur Kopit
Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston
Adapted from the Italian by Mario Fratti
June 21 – July 14, 2024
(No show Thursday, July 4)
Directed by Blake McCarty
Celebrated but impetuous film director Guido Contini, succumbing to the pressures of filming his latest film epic, suffers a midlife crisis which blocks his creative impulses and entangles him in a web of romantic difficulties in early-1960s Venice. One by one, women from his past and present – including his mother, his wife, his mistress, and his leading lady – haunt, instruct, scold, seduce and encourage him until this Casanova finally learns to grow up.
Nine is based on the 1963 autobiographical film 8½ by Federico Fellini. It is a musical with extraordinarily powerful music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and an inventive book by Arthur Kopit.
The original Broadway production opened in 1982 and ran for 729 performances, starring Raul Julia and directed by Tommy Tune. The musical won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and has enjoyed a number of revivals. A film adaptation was released in 2009.
Exit, Pursued by a Bear
By Lauren Gunderson
A dark revenge comedy
August 16 – September 8, 2024
Directed by Kira Blaskovich
After years of abuse, Nan is finally ready to teach her abusive husband Kyle a lesson. With some assistance by her longtime best friend Simon (acting as her emotional, and actual, cheerleader) and an optimistic stripper named Sweetheart, Nan wants to make Kyle understand what he’s done is wrong before taking her final revenge. They hatch a plan inspired by Shakespeare’s immortal stage direction in The Winter’s Tale: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” With a flair for theatrics, the group tapes a drunk Kyle to a chair and reenact scenes from the couple’s painful past. In the piece de resistance, they plan to cover the room in meat and honey so Kyle will be mauled by a bear.
Through this night of emotional trials and ridiculous theatrics, Nan and Kyle are both freed from their past in this dark and smart revenge comedy.
Subtitled as “A Revenge Comedy,” Gunderson delivers nothing less, as the fast paced action screams towards Kyle’s fate. As the laughs roll, Gunderson cleverly confronts the issue of domestic abuse but at the same time walks the fine line between painful tragedy and unseemly comedy by examining multiple perspectives of those involved, each flawed, contradictory, and human.
Exit, Pursued by a Bear is the first of three plays in the author’s “Shakespeare Cycle”, a series of contemporary comedies based on Shakespeare’s plays. Other plays in the series include Toil and Trouble and The Taming.
Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by Hugh Wheeler
From an Adaptation by Christopher Bond
A musical thriller
October 11 – November 3, 2024
Directed by Leah Osterman
The infamous Sweeney Todd, an unjustly exiled barber, returns to nineteenth century London, seeking vengeance against the lecherous judge who framed him and ravaged his young wife. The road to revenge leads Todd to Mrs. Lovett, a resourceful proprietress of a failing pie shop, above which he opens a new barber practice. Mrs. Lovett’s luck sharply shifts when Todd’s lust for blood inspires the integration of a secret ingredient into her meat pies that has the people of London lining up. And the carnage has only just begun!
Sweeney Todd has become a bloody, worldwide success since being awarded eight Tony Awards for its Broadway premiere in 1979. Stephen Sondheim’s and Hugh Wheeler’s tasty, thrilling, theatrical treat has simultaneously shocked, awed and delighted audiences across the world. It has been revived in many productions as well as inspired a film adaptation.
Sweeney Todd features some of the most chilling music ever written for the stage, this masterpiece is sure to both thrill and delight audiences. It is based on the 1970 play Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond. The character of Sweeney Todd first appeared in a Victorian penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls.
