M. BUTTERFLY & More Lead San Francisco / Bay Area's Winter 2026 Top Theatre Shows

M. Butterfly

San Francisco Playhouse - Now through March 14, 2026

San Francisco Playhouse will present the Tony Award-winning M. Butterfly, written by David Henry Hwang (Chinglish, Yellow Face, Soft Power, and operas The Monkey King, Dream of the Red Chamber). Inspired by the real-life trial of Bernard Boursicot, this breathtaking drama reimagines Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly through the story of a French diplomat’s 20-year affair with a Chinese opera singer. This trailblazing and poignant play illuminates the radical politics of cross-cultural relations, gender identity, illusion, and desire. Bridgette Loriaux, who provided movement direction for last season’s hit production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at San Francisco Playhouse, returns to direct this production. Dean Linnard stars as French diplomat Gallimard opposite Edric Young as Chinese opera singer Song Liling.

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Running After Shadows

City Lights Theater Company - January 15, 2026 through February 08, 2026

Morgan Collins is on a culinary journey. He used to buy his cookware at the 99-cent store, and is now a budding gourmet and an America’s Test Kitchen devotee. But today, as he unboxes his new garlic press live on Instagram, he also opens something completely unexpected. This box brings him face to face with childhood memories and the pain left by his absentee father. Both poignant and funny, this story of human connection was commissioned by City Lights as part of a series of solo plays by writers in the BIPOC community.

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Takes All Kinds

The Marsh San Francisco - January 10, 2026 through February 21, 2026

Nationally touring and widely acclaimed, Dan Hoyle’s journalistic-theater triumph Takes All Kinds kicks off its next leg of performances with a strictly limited engagement at The Marsh San Francisco. Directed by Aldo Billingslea and developed with Charlie Varon and Michael Moran, Takes All Kinds debuted at The Marsh where it received critical raves, and has since played to packed houses across the United States. In this 70-minute work, Hoyle recreates real conversations with a wide array of Americans he met on the front lines of today’s political tensions—including a formerly conservative preacher’s son, voting rights activists in Atlanta, a former gang member-turned-social worker, and many others. Takes All Kinds captures the heart-wrenching, funny, and complex stories of people navigating the present, offering tender and inspiring portraits of everyday Americans turned unlikely changemakers.

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Spanish Stew

The Marsh Berkeley - January 17, 2026 through February 22, 2026

The Marsh Berkeley welcomes audiences to the pulse of 1976 with Marga Gomez’s Spanish Stew, the acclaimed writer/performer’s 15th solo work. The comedy follows Gomez’s youthful history when, after being abruptly outed by her flamboyant mother, young Marga flees her parents in Manhattan and follows her college girlfriend to San Francisco. After they break up in the Haight over dietary differences, Marga finds new girlfriends, cults, weird roommates, and a survival job at a bohemian cafe where she must recreate a treasured family recipe to stay in San Francisco. Spanish Stew overflows with warmth, wit and revelations over families of origin and the Bay Area Queer, punk and radical families we choose.

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The Cherry Orchard

Marin Theatre - January 29, 2026 through February 22, 2026

Marin Theatre presents Anton Chekhov’s classic “The Cherry Orchard.” American Conservatory Theater Artistic Director Emerita Carey Perloff, who helmed Marin Theatre’s wildly successful production of “Waste” last season, returns to direct the Russian playwright’s final work. Set at the turn of the 20th century, an aristocratic matriarch returns home to her family’s estate, which has fallen into debt. The house and beautiful cherry orchard are set to be auctioned off while the family resists solutions, desperate to preserve their way of life and ignore the changing times. Director Perloff leads a stellar cast of Bay Area theatre veterans including Lance Gardner, Liz Sklar, Anthony Fusco, Danny Scheie, Leontyne Mbele-Mbong, Jomar Tagatac, Howard Swain, Joseph Patrick O’Malley, Rosie Hallett, and Anna Takayo, alongside New York actors Molly Ranson and Joel Morel.

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Dial M for Murder

City Lights Theater Company - March 12, 2026 through April 12, 2026

Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, who wrote City Lights’ 2015 hit Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, now brings us a new version of a celebrated mystery that inspired Hitchcock’s masterpiece. Tony is convinced that his wife Margot has been cheating on him with Maxine. Now it seems that the affair is over, but in his jealousy Tony spins a web of suspicion and deception that will ensnare them both in danger, recrimination and murder. In this updated thriller, writes The Times of San Diego, “the pace is quicker, the dialogue is snappier, the women are smarter and more complex. But the motive for murder remains the same.”

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