Conrad Frank

What did our critic think of RUTHLESS at New Conservatory Theatre Center?

New Conservatory Theatre Center presents limited run of sparkling special event, Katya: A Holiday Spectacular. San Francisco, CA (October 19, 2023) – Get ready for a dazzling holiday show featuring the talented Katya. Don't miss this festive extravaganza at NCTC!

 In December, New Conservatory Theatre Center will close out 2023 with a grand finale - Marvin Laird and Joel Paley’s razor-sharp and outrageously funny Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Award-winning hit, RUTHLESS!, directed by Dyan McBride.

What did our critic think of THE CONFESSIONS OF LILY DARE at New Conservatory Theatre Center?

New Conservatory Theatre Center has announced the line-up for a daring 2023-24 Season, continuing their decades-long commitment to creating new works with three world premieres, as well as producing two cult-hit musicals, a West Coast premiere, and an exciting limited holiday engagement with Katya Smirnoff-Skyy. 

In May, New Conservatory Theatre Center is overjoyed to conclude their daring 2022- 23 Season with Charles Busch's The Confession of Lily Dare. Starring Bay Area icon, J. Conrad Frank in the titular role of Lily Dare, this rags to riches to rags romp set in the hedonistic heyday of the Barbary Coast is a loving lampoon of the confession films of Hollywood's Golden Age.  

While preparing to bring another year of transformative Queer stories to San Francisco, New Conservatory Theatre Center has announced the official line-up of talented directors for the 22-23 Season.

New Conservatory Theatre Center is has announced the line-up for NCTC’s daring 2022-23 Season, with two world premieres, three West Coast premieres, an inspiring musical, and a holiday extravaganza from The Kinsey Sicks.

San Francisco’s Landmark Musical Theatre has announced the titles for the Company’s upcoming in-person 2021-2022 season.

Following a year of shuttered doors, Feinstein’s at the Nikko announced today they will reopen later this month with a lineup of fan favorites, Broadway stars, and local icons who will take the stage at San Francisco’s premier nightclub.

New Conservatory Theatre Center has announced the line-up for NCTC's 2020-21 subscription season, looking beyond the current closure of local theatres and forward to a healthy future after the COVID-19 crisis.

Ray of Light's (ROL's) production of The Rocky Horror Show filled me with hope for the youth of America. Lest that sound a bit strange, allow me to explain. Yes, ROL's a?oeRockya?? delivers in spades on the sexy entertainment value of this transgressive, go-for-broke show. But a?" it is also grounded in layers and layers of queer showbiz history even though it is presented by performers and designers who are way too young to have been around for the real thing. Taking the written-in-the-1970s-but-set-in-the-1950s show as its starting point, this production adds loopy gay cultural references from the 1930s right up to the present day - as if concocted by some crazed drag queen and thrown into a blender to see if it will explode. Surprisingly, it never does and it somehow all works.

In December, New Conservatory Theatre Center is thrilled to present the pulse-pounding smash-hit musical, Head Over Heels, directed by NCTC Founder & Artistic Director Ed Decker with musical direction by Mark Dietrich. Fall in love with a bold new musical set to the soundtrack of the most successful female rock band of all time, The Go-Go's.

Red Scare on Sunset is a high-camp and all-to-relevant play by Charles Busch, currently playing at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco.

In September, New Conservatory Theatre Center will kick off its 2018-2019 Season with the San Francisco premiere of the delectable, campy satire, Red Scare on Sunset. Directed by Allen Sawyer and starring San Francisco drag cabaret sensation, J. Conrad Frank, Red Scare on Sunset is full of "outrageous plot twists, chicanery and a finale that careens over the top" (LA Weekly). Written by the Tony-nominated playwright of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Charles Busch, this lavish comedy delightfully defangs the McCarthyism that took the world by storm. It's 1950's Hollywood and the Cold War is about to come knocking on silver-screen star Mary Dale's palatial front door: her husband's Method acting class is a front for the Communist party and threatens to destroy everything she holds dear. Mary must rally to defend her marriage, Hollywood and the American way in this outrageously funny and ironically timely parody.

In May, New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the musical extravaganza Howard Crabtree's When Pigs Fly. Told in high school he'd be big in show biz only 'when pigs fly,' Howard follows his heart anyway and creates the musical revue of his dreams. What they didn't know was he has a special talent to transform the most mundane objects - from shower curtains to garden hoses - into a showstopping costume spectacle. You can't help but pig out on this gleefully subversive over-the-top musical.

In January, New Conservatory Theatre Center is proud to offer audiences the world premiere of Tim Pinckney's Still at Risk directed by Dennis Lickteig. This takes a new look at the personal and political effects of HIV/AIDS on the LGBT community decades after the crisis through the play's main character Kevin, a surviving activist from the front lines of the AIDS crisis who is struggling to find purpose in a modern age of greater gay rights. When an unexpected event threatens to erase the history he was part of creating, his anger and passion are renewed. Deeply moving and possessing sharp humor, Still at Risk is a powerful look at the hazards of rewriting the past, and one man's attempt to move forward.

If you can find STUPID F@#%ING BIRD at Queens University, you'll find that this mash-up of Chekhov's 'The Seagull' is a goofy lark.

San Francisco's favorite Russian redhead, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, returns to Feinstein's at the Nikko on Thursday, October 6 at 8 p.m.for one performance of her newest show, Katya, A Bittersweet 90's Symphony. 

San Francisco's favorite Russian redhead, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, returns to Feinstein's at the Nikko with her newest show, Katya...Live from the Continental Baths!, today, Wednesday, June 15 at 7 p.m.