'Beach Blanket Babylon' says goodbye with the performance of a lifetime

Datebook: If you and I are ever laid off from a job, maybe one we’ve held for decades, we won’t have to walk out of the office on the last day with hundreds watching. We won’t have to swallow all of our complicated feelings and put on the exuberant show that audiences expect — one that’s even bigger than usual, one that honors 45 years of existence and bids the world’s longest-running musical revue a proper farewell. We won’t have to somehow assure our spectators, and by extension the whole city, that it’s all going to be OK, that San Francisco will soldier on, when we ourselves are the ones who ought to be comforted, with our own, much deeper grieving to do.