Creators of “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” indeed have succeeded in their mission to capture the paradoxical and simultaneous feelings of isolation and shared experience that characterized Sept. 9, 2020 in the Bay Area.
The world-premiere musical, a collaboration between San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company and Z Space onstage at Z Space through Oct. 5, looks and feels quite real. Audiences are immediately taken back to the not-too distant past when we all somehow learned to live during a global pandemic, and the morning we awoke to an atmosphere resembling a creepy scene from a movie.
Written by Julius Ernesto Rea with an eye to the weird, daily-life details—from forming pods, to disheartening Zoom meetings, to worrying about loved ones across the world—the show provides a vivid snapshot of one day in the lives of four young people whose connections cleverly unfold in two acts.
And even though the characters say they’re facing the apocalypse, the show’s uniformly melodic R&B (and gospel) tunes by Olivia Kuper Harris and David Michael Ott offer up compassion, passion and hope.
The leads, all providing terrifically likable and relatable performances, are up to the singing and acting challenges. Nina-Sophia Pacheco is Amari, a high-school science teacher navigating a relatively new relationship, getting over an old one, leading unsatisfying classes online, and trying, with frustration, to help her sick brother.
William I. Schmidt plays her sibling QC, who’s in denial, struggling with long COVID but also needing to break out.
Audrey Degon plays Alé, a high schooler who, while attuned to class assignments, must resort to desperate measures to pay for online therapy sessions; and Roeen Nooran plays Rayan, Amari’s sweetheart who’s working several jobs including food delivery and maintaining communication with his mom, who’s overseas and scarily coughing a lot.
SFBATCO cofounder Rodney Earl Jackson Jr. directs the proceedings with precision and choreographer Vince Chan provides the lively, always appealing ensemble with infectious hip-hop moves.
A large and clearly hard-working team put together the scenery and colorful, constantly changing artistic video backdrops that vividly place “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” in the Bay Area, from the ever-present Zoom windows to the modern San Francisco skyline.
While nature served up a bleak atmosphere that day in September, the artists and producers in SFBATCO and Z Space are serving up a thoughtful and spiritual remembrance of a truly unique, transformative time for everyone.
The San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company and Z Space production of “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” runs through Oct. 5 at Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$69 at sfbatco.org/orange-tickets.