We get on an imaginary cable car with Sunshine, a free-spirited daughter of the sixties, on her quest to find a powerful person to help her fight City Hall, and the meter maids threatening to impound her shopping cart.
Anne Nygren Doherty's insightful, whimsical book and lyrics turn the city's stereotypes inside out and reveal the heart and soul of a place where the atypical is typical: where hippies, drifters and dreamers rub elbows with striving immigrants and the top 1% of the 1%. Audiences from around the world were both entertained and deeply moved by the hidden bonds that tie these seemingly disparate people together.
The original version, 2006
Before Sunshine, the show had four riders: ex-hippie billionaire DaveO; the homeless Harry's Wife, obsessed with marrying Gavin Newsom; Jeffrey, a gay wine merchant recently divorced from his lover; and Grace, a Chinese-immigrant souvenir shopkeeper. They struggled with their San Francisco dreams on a mysteriously broken-down, fogged-in cable car.
With Kal Berns as Jeffrey, Karen Hirst as Harry's Wife, Melissa Wong-Renati as Grace and Terry Rucker as DaveO.
Music by local composers Anne Doherty, Brad Erickson, Diane Sampson, Dwight Okamura and Chuck Ver Burg.
Musical arrangements by Trevor Doherty and Dwight Okamura. Directed by Anne Doherty.
Presented by Not Quite Opera.
