Theatre

Solana Beach company is staging Paul Slade Smith’s comedy about a camera-shy policy wonk who suddenly becomes a governor

Here comes “Fly,” a new Wendy-centered musical opening at La Jolla Playhouse Feb. 18. And it’s offering a whole new Pan-orama, with a re-imagined Wendy taking center stage. Book-writer (and co-lyricist) Rajiv Joseph is a playwright best known for his Pulitzer Prize-nominated “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” and “Guards at the Taj,” which had a controversial production at the Playhouse in 2016. (I loved it.) “Fly” is an offbeat take on J.M. Barrie’s “Peter and Wendy,” a 1911 novel that was the Scottish-born, London-based writer’s follow-up to his hugely successful 1904 play “Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Never Grow Up.”

“The Great Leap,” a basketball-centric play, is coming to Old Town San Diego’s Cygnet Theatre Jan. 22, 2020. Written by multi-award-winner Lauren Yee, it was one of the 10 most-produced plays in the United States in 2019, along with her “Cambodian Rock Band,” recently staged at La Jolla Playhouse. “The Great Leap,” which premiered in Denver in 2018, is about an American basketball team going to China for an exhibition game. There’s more than a game at stake; there are long-buried personal histories, a clash of dreams and ambitions, and the main setting is Beijing in 1989, when student protesters were about to be massacred in Tienanmen Square. With all this going on, there’s still plenty of humor — one of the playwright’s conspicuous gifts.

When the Playwrights Project unveiled its 35th annual iteration of its Plays by Young Writers Festival, a familiar North County name popped up: Izzy Ster, a 16-year-old Carmel Valley resident and junior at Canyon Crest Academy.