Ring in the new musicals

Now that the holiday hoopla has come to a close, it’s time to enjoy the beginning of the new year, and three theater companies are pulling out the stops, ready to entertain and enthrall with musical-theater productions:

First, Runaway Stage Productions brings the laughs with Young Frankenstein, opening on Friday, January 3. After Mel Brooks met soaring success with his musical The Producers, a stage adaptation of the film of the same name, Brooks decided to take a chance on adapting his 1974 film Young Frankenstein into a stage musical as well. Silly and witty, the stage musical enacts the journey of Dr. Frankenstein as he first denies his grandfather’s legacy and then follows in his footsteps, actually succeeding in reanimating a corpse. It should be a fun “roll in ze hay.”

Davis Musical Theatre Company’s Cabaret lures the audience in at the top of the show with the seductive song, “Willkommen.” Follow the ghoulish Emcee into the Kit Kat Klub, a seedy nightclub in 1931 Berlin, just as the Nazis are beginning their rise to power. The show follows Kit Kat Klub headliner Sally Bowles as she falls for American writer Clifford Bradshaw. As the cabaret falls, Germany falls to the power of the Nazis. Leave the kids at home for this one. It also opens on Friday, January 3.

Finally, the Sacramento Theatre Company keeps it real with Closer Than Ever, a musical revue by Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire. The show contains no spoken dialogue, but “self-contained songs” about aging, security, midlife crises, friendship and unrequited love. It opens on Wednesday, January 8.