San Francisco Playhouse's revival of the eight-Tony-winning musical plays Union Square through September 12. Here's the performance grid, the price ladder, and how to shave the cheapest seats down to $47.
San Francisco Playhouse's revival of Hairspray — the eight-Tony-winning musical about a big-hearted Baltimore teenager who dances her way onto 1962 television and starts dismantling the show's segregationist rules — closes September 12. That leaves about four weekends to catch it at 450 Post Street, up on the second floor of the Kensington Park Hotel just off Union Square. If you've been meaning to go, here's the practical version, plus a way to undercut the sticker price.
The schedule first. Performances run Tuesday through Sunday, dark on Mondays: Tuesday and Thursday at 7 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m., per the Playhouse's production page (external source, opens in a new tab). The run ends with a final weekend, closing Saturday, Sept. 12. Budget about two hours and forty-five minutes in your seat — the show is 2 hours 20 minutes plus a 15-minute intermission.
Now the money. The Playhouse lists tickets at $52 to $145. The SF Funcheap events calendar is carrying a promo code — FUNCHEAP — that takes $5 off and drops the fees-included floor to $47. It's a modest cut, but it lands on the cheapest seats, which are also the first to disappear. The code was live as of this week; confirm it applies at checkout before you commit, because venue promo codes tend to vanish without notice.
Why this production and not a touring cast passing through: this is a full local staging, directed by Playhouse founder Bill English with choreography by Phoenyx Rose, and it's cast deep. Ella Ruth Francis plays Tracy Turnblad, Jonathan Chisolm takes the Edna Turnblad drag role that Harvey Fierstein and John Travolta made famous, and Jeannine Anderson is Motormouth Maybelle. The Playhouse's page quotes the San Francisco Chronicle's Lily Janiak calling it a staging that "finds the soul beneath the beehive" — the polite way of saying it's more than a jukebox spin through "You Can't Stop the Beat." It plays as a genuine all-ages crowd show; bring the kids and the parents both.
A few insider notes. This is an intimate house, not a cavernous road-show barn, so sightlines are forgiving — but the low-price seats sell out earliest, so book ahead rather than walking up. Skip the parking ordeal: the theater sits two blocks from Powell Street BART and Muni and the Union Square garages, and hunting street parking downtown on a show night is a fool's errand. If you need accessibility support, the Playhouse partners with Gravity Access Services for live audio description and haptic tours on select dates — check the official calendar for which performances.
If you've only got one window: take a Wednesday 2 p.m. matinee with the FUNCHEAP code, ride BART to Powell, and you're back on the street by a quarter to five with the afternoon still in front of you.

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