After highly praised runs in New York, London, and Edinburgh, the award-winning solo musical The Lion will play a strictly limited engagement at A.C.T.'s Strand Theater (1127 Market St., San Francisco) April 19-May 1, 2016.
A good storyteller uses everything he has. So Benjamin Scheuer uses his guitar-actually, six guitars-in The Lion, a wholly original musical experience that tells one man's gripping coming-of-age story. Named one of the "Top 10 Best Theatrical Performances of 2015" by the Huffington Post, the award-winning songwriter inspires and disarms with his honesty, joy, and emotional depth as he leads you on a rock 'n' roll journey from boyhood to manhood, through pain and healing, to discover the redemptive power of music.
The performance schedule for The Lion is as follows: Tuesday-Friday at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. Single tickets (ranging from $25-$55) are available at the A.C.T. Box Office at 415.749.2228 or online at www.act-sf.org. Prices are subject to change without notice.
Hailed as "absolutely the best original musical of the year so far, on either side of the Atlantic" by The Stage (UK), The Lion tells the autobiographical story of Scheuer losing his father at a young age and later fighting (and winning) a battle with stage IV Hodgkin's Lymphoma. That battle is also chronicled in the book Between Two Spaces, which features photography by Riya Lerner and text from Scheuer's journals. Half of the proceeds from the book are donated to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
The Lion premiered off Broadway in June 2014 at Manhattan Theatre Club and later returned to New York City in a commercial run at the Lynn Redgrave Theater. Scheuer has performed the show at the St. James Theatre in London, where it won the 2014 Off West End Theatre Award for Best New Musical. The Lion has since been touring the United States, including a recent sold-out run at Portland Center Stage. Scheuer was the recipient of the 2015 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. In addition, Scheuer also earned a Theatre World Award for "Outstanding Debut Performance in New York." The off-Broadway production received nominations from the Lucille Lortel Awards and the Outer Critics Circle Awards. Additional awards for The Lion include the 2013 ASCAP FoundationCole Porter Award for Songwriting and the 2013 Musical Theatre Network Award for Best Lyrics. The show will be seen at venues such as Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and Arena Stage, throughout the 2015-2016 season.
Benjamin Scheuer has toured with Mary Chapin Carpenter, and has performed at venues including Lincoln Center in New York and the Royal Albert Hall in London. He records and performs with his band Escapist Papers, whose second album, "The Bridge" (produced by Geoff Kraly), was released in 2014. Scheuer is currently at work on an album called "Songs from The Lion." He has been a writer-in-residence at Goodspeed Musicals, the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company, and the Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriters Project. He has been commissioned to write a new show by Williamstown Theatre Festival.
