Forget that college lit classes made you avoid Shakespeare like the plague. This month, the African-American Shakespeare Company draws the curtain on their 16th season with a soulful jazz revival of Twelfth Night. Boasting an original score by local jazz maestro Marcus Shelby, the oft-adapted Elizabethan comedy has gotten a modern makeover. The noir production travels back to San Francisco in the 1940s to recall tales of young love, loss, and mistaken identity, all to the sound of brass and big band. It’s the human condition wrapped up in one very sultry package.

Through May 1; African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St., 415-762-2071, african-americanshakes.org