.Blame It on the Bubbly

A little night music in Walnut Creek

SAT 12/27

No masked disguise or gate-crashing are needed to get a head start on New Year’s celebrations in Walnut Creek this year. You’re invited to the Diablo Light Opera Company’s one-night-only performance of the year-end perennial Die Fledermaus, Johann Strauss’ operetta celebrating adultery, masked identities, and comic vengeance. Oh, and champagne, of course, which is included along with wine and fancy desserts in the $75 ticket price. More than forty singers and musicians from Bay Area opera companies evoke 18th-century Vienna and a riotous evening of aristocrats partying hard before that inevitable jail sentence. The performance is dedicated to the company’s late artistic director Rhoda Klitsner, who served there for more than forty years and had planned to direct the 2003 production. The performance begins 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Shadelands Arts Center, 111 North Wiget Lane at Ygnacio Valley Boulevard, Walnut Creek. Tickets are available on a limited basis from 925-798-1300. — Frako Loden

12/24-12/28

My Guv’nor

The state we’re in

Californians should be used to offbeat gubernatorial campaigns by now, but English playwright David Edgar has a thing or two he wants us to know about state-level American politics in his character-rich play Continental Divide. Both halves of the two-part drama, Mothers Against and Daughters of the Revolution, are in their final days at the Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre (2025 Addison St., Berkeley, through December 28), and it doesn’t matter which one you see first, but critics seem to agree: See them in any case. For more info, visit BerkeleyRep.org — Kelly Vance

12/24-1/11

Nun but the Brave

What’s black and white, prays the rosary, and lays them in the aisles (figuratively speaking, of course)? Yes, it’s Meshuggah-Nuns! The fifth installment of playwright Dan Goggin’s broadly comic spoof of Roman Catholic nuns — he’ll eventually run out of plays on words — finds the Little Sisters of Hoboken on a cruise ship interacting with Jewish folks. Imagine the hilarious mix-ups! According to Express theater critic Lisa Drostova, it’s all good-natured if irreparably corny, full of the kind of jokes any parochial-school veteran has heard a hundred times by age sixteen: the Village People singing “Matzo, Matzo Man,” etc. Meshuggah-Nuns is truly slaying them at Willows Theatre in Concord (1975 Diamond Blvd.). It’s been extended through January 11, with a special New Year’s Eve show. Call 925-798-1300 or visit WillowsTheatre.org for tix. –Kelly Vance

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