A big part of what makes this a great theater town is its range of companies. The Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse are still gearing up for their first big productions of 2026, but many other San Diego stages are already humming with life.
Here are seven shows playing this weekend in San Diego County: straight plays and musicals, comedies and dramas, and even some vintage silliness from Monty Python.
The Trip to Bountiful
Thomas Wolfe may have published You Can’t Go Home Again in 1940, but Horton Foote put the claim to the test 13 years later with this play about an aging woman who longs to escape the Houston apartment she shares with her son and his wife and return to the titular town where she grew up. It turns out market forces (to say nothing of the forces of war) were busy reshaping the American landscape even way back when. Still, what’s that old line about the journey and the destination? Robert Smyth directs. Runs through March 1.
- Where: Lamb’s Players Theatre, 1142 Orange Avenue, Coronado
- When: Wed 2 & 7pm, Thu 7pm, Fri 7pm, Sat 7pm
- Cost: $48-$98, discounts for seniors and veterans
- Get tickets
Louisa Gillis
North Coast Rep worked with playwright Joanna McClelland Glass to bring this new play to the stage, workshopping and honing the script through what director David Ellenstein calls a “series of rich, collaborative exchanges with the amazing Joanna.” (Oh, to be a fly on the wall during a series of rich collaborative exchanges between artistic types!) Especially when they bust out the adjective “searing” to describe the drama of a story billed as a “masterfully crafted battle of wits and words” in which “secrets unravel and alliances shift as a brilliant but fractured family grapples with the power of forgiveness and the price of letting go.” Runs through February 8.
- Where: North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe, Suite D, Solana Beach
- When: Wed 7 pm, Thu 7 pm, Fri 8 pm, Sat 2 & 8 pm, Sun 2 & 7 pm
- Cost: $68.50-$80.50, discounts for seniors
- Get tickets
Of Mice and Men
It may be an old standby, a story so deep in the American consciousness that it got the Looney Tunes treatment, but if you ain’t seen it, it’s new to you! The straightforward promo copy serves the play well: “A story of enduring friendship, John Steinbeck’s classic novel is more than 85 years old, but with themes of economic migration, racism, and prejudice, it remains a parable for our times. George and Lennie are migrants with a dream; a dream of a better life, a place where they can belong, where Lennie feels safe, and George can be somebody. But this is the Great Depression, when not many dreams come true in a time where a few have plenty, but most have nothing. When the friends take a job on Curley’s farm…” well, you’ll just have to see it to learn the rest. Directed by Teri Brown. Runs through February 1
- Where: Lamplighters Community Theatre, 5915 Severin, La Mesa
- When: Fri 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm (check website for exceptions)
- Cost: $30, discounts for seniors and veterans
- Get tickets
Dead Moose
Well now: a world premiere musical — not at La Jolla Playhouse, which seems to send one or two of ’em to Broadway each year, but at Oceanside’s Sunshine Brooks Theater. Speaking of the Playhouse: last year, they gave us The Heart, a musical about a young man hovering between life and death and the moral and religious questions raised by his situation. Here, we have creator and director Tyler Tafolla’s story of Job (ding ding ding!), “an eighteen-year-old who miraculously survives a car accident with a moose. Returning home from the hospital, he begins to reassess his life, grappling with questions of death, fate, and religion. All the while, the nagging voice of the dead moose lingers in his head, pushing and provoking him at every turn.” Runs through February 1. (Ages 14+)
- Where: Sunshine Brooks Theater, 217 North Coast Highway, Oceanside
- When: Fri 8 pm, Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 pm
- Cost: $43
- Get tickets
Donna Orbits the Moon
Hey, remember Alfonso Cuarón’s film Gravity, which was essentially a one-woman drama starring Sandra Bullock as a woman so existentially unmoored that she’s literally floating in space? Here we have Susan Clausen in a one-woman comedy about a woman who is a “loving mother, a devoted wife, and a minor celebrity to all the bake sale planners in town — but something is making her spacey, and she’s not sure what it is.” And just as astronaut Bullock got advice from the not-really-there George Clooney, Donna “will need to pass through space and through time — all the while listening to an unlikely voice — and try to break free from her gravitational pull to learn just how she can land.” Directed by Kandace Crystal. Runs through February 15.
- Where: Scripps Ranch Theatre, 9783 Avenue of Nations, Alliant University Campus, San Diego
- When: Fri 7:30 pm, Sat 2 & 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm
- Cost: $30-$52
- Get tickets
Red Light Winter
It’s theater, people — not TV, and not Hollywood. There’s bound to be something that pushes the boundaries a bit, especially when it’s pitched as “an unflinching exploration of desire, intimacy, and the fragility of human connection,” and tells the story of to friends who head out for a night of indulgence in Amsterdam and meet up with a gal named Christina for a red-light district hookup that turns into something…more. “A meditation on loneliness, obsession, and the lingering power of memory.” Small wonder that there’s an alert for strong sexual content and nudity. Directed by Marti Gobel. Runs through January 24.
- Where: Light Box Theatre, 2590 Truxton Road, San Diego
- When: Thu 7 pm, Fri 7 pm, Sat 4 & 8 pm
- Cost: $40 (Discounts for seniors, veterans, and students)
- Get tickets
Monty Python’s Edukational Show
If you are of a certain age — more to the point, if you are the person writing this paragraph — you may have had the experience of introducing your kids to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the film that introduced you to the howlingly funny humor of the English comedy troupe Monty Python. And you may have been mortified, horrified, baffled, bufuddled, flummoxed, and otherwise stunned to discover that they didn’t think it was quite as funny as you did back when you were their age. But at least one of them took to it, even going so far as to search out Python sketches on YouTube. Here, Trinity Theatre Company stages an 80-minute revue of classic Python sketches, stitched together for the stage. Larry Groznic, call your date! Runs through January 25.
- Where: Trinity Theatre Company, 1640 Camino Del Rio N, Suite 129
- When: Fri 7 pm, Sat 7 pm, Sun 2 pm
- Cost: $30
- Get tickets
