San Francisco Playhouse's 23rd Season to Include Into the Woods, Hairspray

San Francisco Playhouse announced its 23rd season, which will include two musicals and four plays presented at its home theater in San Francisco’s Union Square theater district.

The season will kick off with Michael Frayn’s comedy Noises Off (September 25-November 8), which follows a dysfunctional theater troupe onstage and backstage as they struggle to stage the mediocre play Nothing On.

Next up is Into the Woods (November 20-January 17, 2026), Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical featuring fairytale characters in an exploration of what happens after happily ever after.

Tony Award-winning M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang’s reimagining Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, will run February 5, 2026-March 14, 2026.

The West Coast premiere of Candrice Jones’ Flex will run March 26, 2026-May 2, 2026. Set in 1998, the play spotlights the Lady Train high school basketball team in Plainnole, Arkansas. As the players dream of going pro, they must face the pressures of being young, Black, and female in the rural South. Developed at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Ground Floor, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of the Arts, and National New Play Network’s National Showcase of New Plays, the co-world premiere of Flex was staged by TheatreSquared and Theatre Outfit before its New York premiere at Lincoln Center Theater.

The season continues with the Bay Area premiere of Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really (May 14, 2026-June 27, 2026) by Kate Hamill (Sense and Sensibility), commissioned by and originally staged at Classic Stage Company. This comic drama turns Bram Stoker’s gothic horror classic on its head, skewers power dynamics, and slays traditional women’s roles.

The season will conclude with the Tony-winning musical Hairspray (July 10, 2026-September 12, 2026), featuring a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Smash) and a book by Mark O’Donnell (Cry-Baby) and Thomas Meehan (Annie). Set in 1962 Baltimore, the musical is about lovable plus-size teen Tracy Turnblad, who dreams of dancing on the popular TV teen dance program.