San Francisco Playhouse to Present STOREFRONT CHURCH, Begin. 11/26

San Francisco Playhouse will welcome the holiday season with John Patrick Shanley's Storefront Church.

Storefront Church, like Bell Book and Candle and Period of Adjustment before it, is San Francisco Playhouse's "outside the box" response to the more traditional Holiday entertainment. San Francisco Playhouse delves deeper to find the intimate stories that happen to real people during the bittersweet holiday season. From Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley (Doubt), Storefront Church brings us to a wintery Bronx, where capitalists devour giant gingerbread houses, a disenchanted preacher rediscovers his faith, and a Scrooge-like atheist loan officer experiences a glorious Holiday rebirth.

Directed by Joy Carlin and starring popular Bay Area actors Derek Fischer, Rod Gnapp*, Carl Lumbly*, Gabriel Marin*, Ray Reinhardt* and Gloria Weinstock*, Storefront Church is a contemporary Holiday story: funny and touching, asking questions of us, showing both the good and bad sides of people but ultimately an uplifting and inspiring story.

Storefront Church joins Doubt and Defiance to complete Tony, Oscar and Pulitzer winner John Patrick Shanley's "Church and State" trilogy where, as in all his best works, he calls out authority figures and tests their mettle with moral issues. Shanley elaborates: "I think, with the third play, it all comes to a landing place. I feel a sense of resolution about it. I'm quite pleased with Storefront Church. What it says is very applicable to the time we're living in. There is a dearth of places for people who have a spiritual hunger to satisfy, and there's a dearth of places for people who have the hunger for community to satisfy."

The show runs: Previews 11.26 & 11.27 at 8pm and 11.29 at 3 and 8pm, Tuesday to Thursday 7pm, Friday and Saturday 8pm; Matinees: 3pm Saturday and 2pm Sunday on 12.8, 12.15, 12.22, 12.29, 1.5; Added: Sunday 12.22 at 7pm. No show: 11.28, 12.24, 12.25 and 1.1

For tickets ($30-$100) box office: 415-677-9596, or www.sfplayhouse.org.

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