City Lights Theatre Company

Covering The San Francisco Bay Area & Sacramento Valley Since 2001

City Lights Theatre • 529 S Second St, San Jose, CA 95112

Plays • Musicals • Opera • Dance

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Upcoming Production

• NOV 19 - DEC 20, 2026 •

The 1940s Radio Hour / Musical Comedy

For Tickets & Info:

It is December 21, 1942, and a live radio broadcast at Manhattan’s Hotel Astor is about to turn backstage disorder into entertainment. The Mutual Manhattan Variety Cavalcade has music to deliver, personalities to manage, and precious little room for anything to go wrong. Naturally, the people involved have other ideas. A frazzled producer tries to keep the program moving while a tipsy leading singer and an ambitious delivery boy complicate the business of sounding effortlessly professional. Meanwhile, a trumpet-playing sound effects man faces a future that reaches beyond the microphone. Walton Jones’s musical comedy invites the audience into the studio, where the polished world heard over the radio meets the much less polished world making it happen. Familiar songs including “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” give the evening its swing, while vintage sound effects reveal the ingenuity behind the illusion. Wartime uncertainty sits beyond the broadcast, lending warmth and longing to the laughter. With holiday spirit, bustling personalities, and melodies that carry their own memories, this theatrical visit to radio’s golden age celebrates the people working to keep a little joy on the air.

Coming Soon

• OPENS JAN 21, 2027 • Based on a Totally True Story / Play Based on a Totally True Story is a contemporary comedy play about Ethan Keene, a young playwright and comic book writer whose career is suddenly speeding faster than he can steer. When a veteran Hollywood producer takes interest in turning one of his plays into a horror movie, Ethan finds himself pulled into a dizzying world of meetings, rewrites, deadlines, and big promises. But while his professional life starts glowing with possibility, his personal life gets messier by the minute. His relationship with his boyfriend is under strain, his father remains a complicated presence, and Ethan must figure out whether success is worth anything if it leaves his real life sitting in the lobby. Fast, funny, and full of showbiz chaos, the play blends coming-of-age comedy, workplace satire, and heartfelt personal drama into a sharp look at ambition, love, family, and the strange business of turning pain into art.
• OPENS MAR 11, 2027 • Aresenic and Old Lace / Play Arsenic and Old Lace is a dark comedy stage play wrapped in the charm of an old-fashioned mystery, where polite manners and deadly secrets collide inside a cozy Brooklyn home. The story follows drama critic Mortimer Brewster, a man who believes he has finally escaped his family’s strange reputation after becoming engaged to the woman he loves. His plans for a peaceful future quickly unravel when he discovers that his sweet elderly aunts have been hiding a shocking hobby behind their tea cups, lace curtains, and cheerful hospitality. As Mortimer scrambles to keep his sanity, the house fills with eccentric relatives, nervous police officers, suspicious visitors, and increasingly chaotic misunderstandings that pile up faster than he can control. What makes the production so entertaining is the way it balances witty dialogue, frantic energy, and creepy surprises without ever losing its playful spirit. Packed with sharp humor, quirky characters, and nonstop confusion, Arsenic and Old Lace turns murder into a hilariously twisted game of manners that keeps audiences laughing while wondering just how much madness can fit under one roof.
• OPENS MAY 13, 2027 • Dream Hou$e / Play Dream Hou$e is a sharp, surreal play and satirical family drama about two Latina sisters who appear on an HGTV-style reality show to sell their family home in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Patricia and Julia see the house as more than property, but also as a ticket, a burden, a memory box, and maybe their last chance to turn family history into financial security. As the cameras roll, the sisters perform the cheerful language of renovation television, smiling through staged charm while old wounds, ancestral echoes, and uneasy questions creep through the walls. The play blends comedy, drama, and magical realism into a lively story about home, heritage, ambition, and the strange price of “progress.” What begins as a glossy real estate opportunity slowly becomes a tug-of-war between past and future, with each sister forced to ask what can be sold, what must be protected, and whether cashing in means giving something sacred away.
• OPENS JUL 15, 2027 • Company / Musical Company is a musical comedy about Robert, a single New Yorker turning 35 while surrounded by married friends who adore him, tease him, and constantly wonder why he has not settled down. Through lively dinners, awkward dates, birthday surprises, and brutally funny conversations, Robert watches the couples around him wrestle with love, boredom, jealousy, loyalty, compromise, and the strange comfort of having someone there. Rather than following a simple beginning-to-end plot, the musical unfolds like snapshots from modern adult life, each one pulling Robert deeper into the question he keeps avoiding: is freedom enough, or does being alive require the risk of real connection? Witty, stylish, and emotionally sneaky, Company turns marriage into both a comedy routine and a mirror, showing relationships as messy, exhausting, hilarious, and sometimes worth the trouble. With its clever songs and grown-up humor, the show invites audiences into a buzzing circle of friends where everyone has advice, nobody has all the answers, and love is anything but simple.