‘Girls’ going bare for a cause
1 “Calendar Girls”: When a woman in a rural British town loses her husband to leukemia, she and a group of friends band together to raise funds for a local hospital. Their plan: selling a calendar full of nude photos of everyday women doing everyday chores. Naturally, the idea raises a fuss. The story, based on real events, was adapted into a charming film comedy starring Helen Mirren that was a surprise runaway hit. Now a stage version is getting a run at San Jose’s City Lights Theater.
Details: Previews tonight and Friday, main run is Nov. 19-Dec. 18; $19-$21 previews, $21-$42 main run, cltc.org
2
Jeff Richards: The comedian and Walnut Creek native reportedly has the distinction of being the only performer to have been a cast member of both “Saturday Night Live” (where his recurring “Drunk Girl” routine was a hit) and its rival comedy show “MadTV.” His comic specialty is celebrity impressions, which cover subjects ranging from Al Franken to Rush Limbaugh to Dustin Hoffman. He’s back in his old stamping grounds tonight, headlining a night of comedy at the Orinda Theatre. Griffin Daley, Suzy Vincent and Ira Summer are also on the bill. Details: 8 p.m.; $20; lamorindatheatres.com. 3 Elvin Bishop: As legend has it, the Bay Area blues icon was a lad living in rural Oklahoma when the sound of Jimmy Reed’s blues harmonica on the radio mesmerized and confounded him. Years later, as a college student in Chicago, he dove headlong into the emerging electric blues scene, playing countless gigs and joining the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Bishop’s guitar work has always embraced rural and urban blues motifs and packed plenty of emotion. He’s performing a string of Northern California shows behind his most recent album, “Can’t Even Do Wrong Right.”
Details: 8 p.m. Friday at Freight & Salvage, Berkeley; $36-$38; 510-644-2020, thefreight.org; 8 p.m. Dec. 2 at Club Fox, Redwood City; $28-$32; 831-334-1153, www.clubfoxrwc.com; 4 p.m. Dec. 11 at Moe’s Alley, Santa Cruz; $25-$30; 831479-1854, www.moesalley. com; 7 and 9:30 p.m. Dec. 17 at Biscuits and Blues, San Francisco; $45; 415-2922583, www.biscuitsandblues.com. 4 “/Peh-Lo-Tah/”: Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a man of many talents and ideas. The head of programming and pedagogy at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is an award-winning writer, director and performer. He’s also a soccer fan, and he uses the sport as the foundation for his new evening-length theater/dance multimedia work that explores the ties between sports, art, race and the politics of identity. The new work debuts this weekend at YBCA.
Details: 8 p.m. FridaySaturday, 5 p.m. Sunday; $25-$35; ybca.org. 5 “The Night Alive”: Irish playwright Conor McPherson is known for infusing his plays about struggling everyday people with a sense that their endeavors are tugging at something bigger than their own lives. Such is the case with this 2013 play, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award winner, about a hard-luck middle-aged man who rescues a prostitute from a beating and forges a fragile friendship with her. “Night Alive” is getting its Bay Area