Cabrillo Playhouse continues its 2026-27 season November 13 with The Salonnieres, a witty period comedy by Liz Duffy Adams that travels to pre-Revolutionary Paris, where storytelling can be an act of rebellion and the most dangerous ideas are sometimes hidden inside a fairy tale.
Madeleine, a young woman fresh from the convent, learns that her debt-ridden father has promised her in marriage to an older nobleman. Rather than accept her fate, she flees to the literary salon of her late mother’s friends, aristocratic women who gather to exchange ideas and disguise radical politics within reinvented folk tales. When Madeleine’s intended husband arrives, the women must turn their considerable wit and imagination toward a more immediate challenge: saving her from the marriage.
The play draws inspiration from the women who presided over the influential literary salons of 17th-century France, intellectual gatherings where literature, philosophy and politics were discussed and debated. Adams uses that world to play with familiar fairy-tale conventions while exploring who gets to tell the story, who gets to shape its ending and what happens when women begin questioning the roles assigned to them.
Directing the Cabrillo production is Angela Cruz, a UC Irvine MFA directing graduate whose recent credits include Symbiotic at Curtis Theatre and Medea at Chapman University.
“What I love about The Salonnieres is how storytelling is used as an act of resistance” Cruz says. “It’s smart and very funny, but Liz Duffy Adams has given us a play that is fiercely contemporary in spirit, asking urgent questions about sisterhood, class complacency, and the stories we tell to survive.
Although revolution is gathering outside the salon doors, The Salonnieres is very much a comedy, combining sharp dialogue, larger-than-life personalities and the familiar language of fairy tales with questions about class, power, friendship and independence. The result is a play set centuries ago that finds plenty to say about who has a voice and what can happen when that voice is finally heard.
The Salonnieres runs November 13 through December 13 at Cabrillo Playhouse, 202 Avenida Cabrillo in San Clemente, with no performances Thanksgiving weekend. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., with additional Saturday matinees November 21 and December 12. Tickets and performance information are available at CabrilloPlayhouse.org.