Marin theatre companies have their collective fingers crossed that audiences will continue to come out and support them in 2025. The New Year in theatre begins with a classic comedy, a musical adaptation of a Sundance Film Festival favorite, and a political drama that was banned for decades in its native England.

The Novato Theatre Company opens things up in the county with their production of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter.  Written before Blithe Spirit but not produced till after Spirit’s record-breaking London run (it was interrupted by a little thing called World War II), it’s a light comedy about a harried, narcissistic actor in the throngs of a mid-life crisis trying to leave for a tour despite multiple distractions.  Carl Jordan directs the show which opens January 23. novatotheatercompany.org 

The Ross Valley Players go from farce to folk and follow up December’s well-received production of Coward’s Blithe Spirit with James Valcq and Fred Alley’s The Spitfire Grill. Based on the same-titled Lee David Zlotoff film from 1996 which won the Audience Award at that year’s Sundance Film Festival, the musical adaptation premiered off-Broadway in 2001. It’s the story of a young parolee trying to restart her life by taking a job at a small-town diner. Small towns being small towns, there are secrets to be revealed.

Besides the addition of music, there are some significant changes to the film’s story and the show apparently underwent another round of revisions last year. So even if you’ve seen it before, maybe you haven’t seen it before. The show opens at the Barn in the Marin Art and Garden Center on January 24. rossvalleyplayers.com

Marin Theatre brings perhaps the area’s most interesting production to their stage in early February with their presentation of Harley Granville-Barker’s Waste, a show written in 1906 that had a troubled production history.

Granville-Barker’s play about sex, religion, and politics was refused a license to be performed in Great Britain in 1907 and a revised version didn’t get a fully-staged, public production in England until 1936. Possible reasons for the ban vary from the unacceptability of addressing the issue of abortion on stage to the outrageousness of portraying British political leaders in a less-than-flattering light.   

A.C.T. Artistic Director Emerita Carey Perloff makes her Marin Theatre debut with Marin Theatre’s Artistic Director Lance Gardner taking on the lead role of a British politician mired in scandal. The show begins previews in Mill Valley on February 6. marintheatre.org

Marin audiences have three very distinctive productions from which to choose to satiate their live theatre appetites. Be a glutton and check out all three.

This preview originally appeared in the Pacific Sun.