From a colorful “Garden of D’Lights” to iconic classical works and a new take on the Zodiac Killer, there’s a lot of cool stuff to catch this weekend.
Here’s a partial rundown.
Classical picks: Messiah, ‘Butterfly,’ Panto
The Bay Area’s classical music community will be hitting plenty of high notes this week, with a range of works to enjoy: a British panto, a beloved oratorio, and one of the world’s great operas. Each brings delights for the holidays.
Enjoy a panto: It’s one of our top picks for the season — the annual “Peter Pan” panto at the Presidio, which promises a trippy journey to Neverland with live music and a cast of top Bay Area performers. Now, in a wonderful way to get re-acquainted with the timeless characters — Peter, Tinkerbell, and Captain Hook — you can experience them in the fun-loving British tradition.
Details: Through Dec. 28; Presidio Theatre, San Francisco; $16.50-$66; presidiotheatre.org.
“Handel” with care: There are many “Messiah’s “to choose from this season, and we’re looking forward to this one, with Director Lawrence Kohl leading the Pacific Chamber Orchestra in Handel’s great oratorio. Four fine vocalists — soprano Raven McMillon, alto Sara Couden, tenor Ricardo Garcia, and bass Matt Boehler — are the soloists.
Details: 3 p.m. Nov. 30; Bankhead Theater, Livermore; $25-$85; livermorearts.org.
A beautiful “Butterfly”: It’s not too late to experience the wonders of “Madama Butterfly” in the final performance of Opera San Jose’s new production; directed by Michelle Cuizon, conducted by Joseph Marcheso, and featuring Artist-in-Residence Emily Michiko Jensen, making her role debut as the beautiful Cio-Cio San. Jensen’s joined by Christopher Oglesby as Pinkerton, Eugene Brancoveanu is Sharpless, and, in her company debut, Kayla Nanto is Suzuki.
Details: 2 p.m. Nov. 29 and 30; California Theatre, San Jose: $61.50-$221.50; OperaSJ.org.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
Happy glowing holidays
What’s better than a beautiful garden full of strange cacti and succulents?
How about when they’re decked out with lights and glowing apparatuses, looking like a Christmas-tree farm imported from an alien and radioactive planet?
Once again it’s time for the Garden of D’Lights at Walnut Creek’s Ruth Bancroft Garden, a 3½-acre parcel that – as it so happens – last year ranked as the most beautiful garden in the world on Tripadvisor. Running on select nights until Jan. 11, the annual show offers the chance to see desert-adapted plants turned into spiny silhouettes by the force of visible-from-space holiday lights.
“See the garden and plant collection transform into a dazzling, water-wise wonderland illuminated with thousands of colorful lights, sculptures and lasers,” writes the Bancroft staff. “The nursery will be open for evening shopping, with hot cocoa and spiced wine available to enjoy as you wander through the lights.”
The evening show features three entry times, available rain or shine: 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tours are self-guided, so visitors can take plenty of time basking in the radiance and examining the sculptures and installations, which are largely built by local artists.
Details: Open on select nights through Jan. 11; 1552 Bancroft Road, Walnut Creek; adult admission is $29 plus fees, ages 5-17 is $16 and children under 4 get in free; ruthbancroftgarden.org.
— John Metcalfe, Staff
McCartney’s other great band
If you’re looking for a simply fab gift for the Paul McCartney fan in your family — even if said Paul McCartney fan happens to be you — then we highly recommend checking out “Wings.”
This newly released self-titled set is a superb anthology of Sir Paul’s second-best-known band — Wings. Of course, the collection includes all the big hits — “Band on the Run, “Live and Let Die,” “Jet,” “Let ‘Em In,” etc. Yet, it also features a number of incredibly worthy offerings that have somehow slipped into the background over the decades. Collectively, these tracks showcase why Wings deserves to be ranked among the finest bands of ’70s.
“Wings” is available in a number of different formats for McCartney fans. The one we’d most want to have, of course, is the limited edition three-LP color vinyl set. Yet, “Wings” is also being offered as a single LP; both as a single CD and a two-CD set; and on Blu-ray. The latter marking the first time these Wings tunes have been made available on a physical format in Dolby Atmos.
And, of course, it’s available to stream via multiple services.
Details: For pricing and other information, visit paulmccartney.com.
— Jim Harrington, Staff
Laughter is the best medicine
Long Island, New York-born comedian Tim Dillon was always a performer with a lot on his mind and an eagerness to address topical, relevant subjects. His 2022 Netflix comedy special “Tim Dillon: A Real Hero,” tackled such topics as fast food, Texas and the entertainment industry (he had a small role on “Sesame Street” as a lad). Although he had always been interested in politics and cultural trends he didn’t regularly and openly address national politics until the 2024 election.
Now, he does. A lot. In his popular podcast, “The Tim Dillon Show,” and on his 2024 Netflix comedy special, he dives into the election and its aftermath and other contemporary political matters. He says he comedy tilts to the conservative side but adds that he doesn’t line up consistently with either party. He generated headlines when he interviewed JD Vance a week before the 2024 election. He’s certainly not adverse to controversy. Like several several comedians, he drew fire for agreeing to be booked at Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia — despite the country’s human rights record — only to get fired from the same festival for making jokes about the country’s labor practices on his podcast.
In other words, if you’re looking for hard-hitting humor this weekend — the kind that fits the national mood — you might want to venture to San Jose Improv, where Dillon is set to perform 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. Nov. 28, 7 and 9:30 p.m. Nov. 29 and 6 p.m. Nov. 30.
Details: Tickets are $43.19-$113.80; improv.com/sanjose.
— Randy McMullen, Staff
Zodiac Killer case gets a quirky look
Director/producer Charlie Shackleton ran into a massive roadblock while seeking to gain the rights to adapt late CHP officer Lyndon Lafferty’s book “The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge” into a documentary. He needed to switch gears when Lafferty’s family pulled their support from the project.
The result is “The Zodiac Killer Project,” an experimental film that in part examines elements of Lafferty’s investigation as it explores and questions the nature of true-crime documentaries and podcasts. Lafferty’s probe pinned the rash of killings that terrorized the Bay Area in the ‘70s on a particular person. Shackleton’s edgy, often pointed documentary visits the streets of Vallejo and other key locales in the book for a trance-like experience that might, in the end, find you questioning your own true-crime watching diet.
Shackleton also ventures into details and hypotheticals as he relates how he would have framed his original investigative documentary had he been able to make it. The film premiered at Sundance this year and is now coming to select theaters.
Details: Not rated; 1 hour, 31 minutes; opens Nov. 28 at the Roxie theater in San Francisco.
– Randy Myers, correspondent
Your freebie of the week
The city of San Jose apparently believes that the key to celebrating the holidays is to make sure each and every centimeter of downtown is bathed in jubilant sights and sounds. And it is hard to argue with the philosophy. And even if you did, we doubt anyone would pay attention. The city seems committed to its annual explosion of well-lighted holiday merriment. This year, in fact, things are getting even brighter. The centerpiece to all this bliss is the annual free Christmas in the Park, which has served up a downtown holiday celebration for some 45 years and returns to Plaza de Cesar Chavez in downtown San Jose at 6 p.m. Nov. 28. The walk-through attraction features some 40 musical and animated exhibits, live entertainment, a centerpiece 60-foot-tall Community Giving Tree, holiday food and drink, and more. The attraction runs through Jan. 1; more information is at christmasinthepark.com.
More San Jose holiday fun – of the ticketed variety – is available at the annual Blinky’s Drive-Thru Light Show, a dazzling attraction offered at the nearby Santa Clara County Fairgrounds (admission runs $25-$40 per car; more information is at christmasinthepark.com). And this year brings the brand new San Jose Holiday Lights show, a five-acre display at Discovery Meadow Park, next door to the Children’s Discovery Museum. The ticketed event offers illuminated sculptures, a Christmas scene, a Mexican desert landscape and a garden full of such fanciful attractions as a giant caterpillar and giant candies. The event, part of the city’s Doca Festival, runs through Jan. 4; tickets are $19-$45; go to docafestival.com.
— Bay City News Service
The E Train comes home
Her full name is Sheila Cecilia Escovedo but everyone knows her as Sheila E., the extraordinarily talented musician, singer, songwriter, actor and all-around musical dynamo. She grew up in Oakland with a musical legend – percussionist and bandleader Pete Escovedo – as her father and a family chock full of musical stars. But Sheila has more than established her fame and reputation on her own terms (though she frequently performs with her father). And she impressed fellow musicians from the very start, kicking off her career with keyboard wizard George Duke’s band. Her first solo recording, “The Glamorous Life” brought her mainstream success in the mid-1980s and she has gone on to be a revered singer-songwriter-musician, nicknamed The Queen of Percussion, with a musical resume that covers jazz, funk, R&B, Latin and pop. Her latest album is “Hella FonkE,” which includes the single “Oakland N Da House” and features guest appearances from Too $hort and Trombone Shorty. Sheila E. will spotlight the recording when she returns to her East Bay stamping grounds with a three-night, six-show stand, Nov. 28-30, at Yoshi’s in Oakland, backed by her band, the E-Train.
Details: Tickets are $69-$129. Go to yoshis.com.
— Bay City News Service
Orchestra is In the pink
Motor along with Barbie in her open-air Barbiemobile as she travels from her perfectly pastel fantasy land to the real world outside — where a variety of shocking discoveries await her. The San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Sarah Hicks, will be your musical guide, playing the live score that Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt wrote for director Greta Gerwig’s multiple Oscar-nominated film. (It won one, for best original song, for Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”) The 2023 movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling plays out on a giant screen over the musicians’ heads.
Details: There are two screenings this weekend, one at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 28 and the other at 2 p.m. Nov. 29; tickets are $29.50-$149; sfsymphony.
— Bay City News Service
Rockin’ out in Hayward
If the hard-driving blues with a psychedelic twist is your bag, hurry to The Bistro in Hayward on Nov. 29 night to hear Bluesadelix play its brand of it from 8 to 11 p.m. The East Bay venue, which bills itself as “a beer drinking pub with a music problem,” has no cover charge for the bands presented on a near nightly basis. Appetizers are available along with a variety of brews on tap. Formed in 2019, Bluesadelix is made up of five seasoned veterans of the rock, blues and folk music worlds, with songwriters “Papa” Robert Hill and Mark Ungar providing most of the numbers, while Deirdre McCarthy, Scott Irwin and Kristoph Klover play along.
Details: The Bistro is located at 1001 B St. in Hayward, phone number 510-833-3470 (they do not take reservations). More information is at www.bluesadelix.com.
— Bay City News Service