Regional productions of the Broadway hits are the subject of a legal dispute between competing theater operators.
The shows will go on.
A judge has refused a request by one of the nation’s largest theater owners to block San Francisco productions of “ Dear Evan Hansen ” and “ Harry Potter and the Cursed Child .”
The ruling, issued on Friday in the Court of Chancery in Delaware, pauses, at least for the moment, a bitter dispute between two prominent theater families, the Nederlanders and the Shorensteins, that were once allied and are now at odds.
The two families for decades jointly operated the three big commercial theaters in downtown San Francisco, but have been sparring for several years. Now Carole Shorenstein Hays owns and operates the Curran Theater, while the Nederlanders make the decisions at the Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters (although, complicating matters, Ms. Hays still has a 50 percent ownership stake there as well).
Nederlander San Francisco took legal action against Ms. Hays — not for the first time, but most recently — in September, seeking to block her from staging the two blockbuster shows at the Curran, arguing that doing so would violate an agreement between the families restricting competition.
