Fire Shut Up in My Bones
Metropolitan Opera (as simulcast to cinemas)

The same week I took in Broadway’s Caroline, or Change revival, I attended a cinema simulcast of the last performance of the historical production of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the Metropolitan Opera’s first presentation by a black composer. Like Caroline, Fire addresses hot-button issues of race and community and features a fascinating score (by Terrence Blanchard) brimming with multiple influences.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Chicken and Biscuits
Circle in the Square

While Broadway theaters were shuttered and demonstrations erupted across the country protesting the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white police officer, the industry underwent a reckoning to be more inclusive and diverse. As stages are slowly reopening, the number of productions written by African-Americans like Keenan Scott II’s  Thoughts of a Colored Man and Douglas Lyons’s  Chicken and Biscuits has increased above the usual token two or three per season. The latter play premiered at the Queens Theater in Feb.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Thoughts of a Colored Man
John Golden Theater

While Broadway theaters were shuttered and demonstrations erupted across the country protesting the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white police officer, the industry underwent a reckoning to be more inclusive and diverse. As stages are slowly reopening, the number of productions written by African-Americans like Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of a Colored Man and Douglas Lyons’s Chicken and Biscuits has increased above the usual token two or three per season.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Letters of Suresh
Terry Kiser Theater

Second Stage has started its Off-Broadway season with Letter of Suresh, Rajiv Joseph’s companion play to his Animals Out of Paper. This is one of those plays where the characters speak directly to the audience throughout without any direct interaction and the plot revolves around the convention of a series of total strangers pouring their hearts out to each other in letters.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Lehman Trilogy, The
Nederlander Theater

While some current smaller-scale shows, like Is this a Room?, lose a degree of intimacy in their transfers from Off-Broadway to on, The Lehman Trilogy undergoes a metamorphosis in the opposite direction. This Italian play about the American financial empire played a limited run in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory after a smash London engagement at the National Theater. Now, set designer Es Devlin’s huge cube of a revolving set fits neatly into the Nederlander Theater and provides a memorable experience which is both vast and up-close. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Lackawanna Blues
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s off-Broadway solo show, Lackawanna Blues, has found its way to Broadway without losing its snap. Originally presented at the Public Theater in 2001, Blues is the author-star-director’s autobiographical tribute to his beloved foster mother Nanny Crosby, who maintained a boarding house of eccentric characters in the titular upstate New York town while raising him.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Dana H.
Lyceum Theater

After a long absence due to COVID, Broadway is slowly starting to come back. But the majority of new productions are not the typical Main Stem fare of jukebox musicals, revivals, or tuners based on popular movies. Most recent openings have been transfers or returns of unconventional Off-Broadway offerings. Two of them, Is this a Room and  Dana H., playing in repertory after award-winning runs at the Vineyard Theater, are derived from transcripts of recordings of real people living frightening events.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Is this a Room?
Lyceum Theater

After a long absence due to COVID, Broadway is slowly starting to come back. But the majority of new productions are not the typical Main Stem fare of jukebox musicals, revivals, or tuners based on popular movies. Most recent openings have been transfers or returns of unconventional Off-Broadway offerings. Two of them, Is this a Room and  Dana H., playing in repertory after award-winning runs at the Vineyard Theater, are derived from transcripts of recordings of real people living frightening events.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Step Kids
First Stage

Milwaukee’s nationally acclaimed children’s theater, First Stage, embarks on a new project this fall. The company is staging the second year of its “Amplify – BIPOC Short Play Series.” The project combines live and streaming versions of new work that has been created especially for this series. Due to the pandemic, last year’s version offered streaming-only productions. The plays and musicals in this series have been created by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and each one centers on the current viewpoints of young people.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Lehman Trilogy, The
Nederlander Theater

The Lehman Trilogy is a saga of the vitality brought to this country by immigrants, good-old American know-how, and overweening ambition. Three brothers, Henry (Simon Russell Beale), Emanuel (Adrian Lester), and Mayer (Adam Godley) make their way to America. While we never understand how they came to make Mobile, Alabama their home base, it’s from here that the Lehman Brothers begin to make their fortune. First, they deal in garments.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Chicken and Biscuits
Circle in the Square

Is there a family that doesn’t have a few skeletons in the closet? Surely not the new preacher, Reginald Mabry (Norm Lewis) and his nearly perfect wife, Baneatta (Cleo King). But pretty soon, things begin to unravel. Son Kenny (Devere Rogers) comes to his grandpas’ funeral with a friend, Logan (Michael Urie), who’s not only white but also Jewish, and much more than just a friend.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Eubie
Westcoast Black Theater Troupe - Donnelly Theater

What was it like to enjoy performances of Eubie Blake’s music back in the days it was created and presented by Black people? Today’s Westcoast Black Theater Troupe’s audiences can experience that intimacy yet grandeur, under Jim Weaver’s direction, in Eubie. Adam Spencer’s simple set with background for screening and descending steps on both sides of the wide-area, black-floored stage nicely allows for both impressive scene-setting and commentary projections.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Six
Brooks Atkinson Theater

What a joy it is to be able to be part of the audience seeing a Broadway show again! Before the lights go up, before the music starts, before the cast appears, people are already filled with excitement. The enthusiasm doesn’t ebb until well after the show is overa— especially since the performers invite us to stand up, clap, and join in the fun.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Makin' Cake
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

Dasha Kelly Hamilton is not Betty Crocker. She makes that clear in the first moments of Makin’ Cake, her 50-minute performance art piece that had a one night only performance at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stiemke Studio on October 8. Hamilton is currently Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate, and she created this performance piece as a commission from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (yes, the same Kohler as in the company that manufactures faucets and toilets).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Sex with Strangers
Beverly Hills Playhouse

In the revival of Sex with Strangers, which was first performed by Steppenwolf in 2011, Cameron Meyer plays Olivia, a serious but unsuccessful novelist who meets Ethan (Casey King), a hack writer who has become rich cranking out erotic tales on the internet.  The meeting takes place on a snowy March night at a Writer’s Retreat in rural Michigan. Olivia is 40, Ethan 28—and a stud.  The collision of opposites is intense, visceral and fiery.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Wanderers, The
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

Planned to start Florida Studio Theater’s Winter Cabaret Series last year, The Wanderers got stopped by pandemic-caused closing of FST’s venues. But the four guys who “wander around the world of hit ‘50s and ‘60s harmony groups” have finally lodged melodiously at FST, starting Fall 2021.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
What Happened? The Michaels Abroad
Hunter College - Frederick Loewe Theater

 “I don’t know” is the answer the characters in Richard Nelson’s What Happened? The Michaels Abroad give when asked what they will do next after a year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gathered in an apartment in Angers, France for a dance festival, the Michaels and their friends ponder their future in an uncertain world.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Wolfe & the Bird, The
Matrix Theater

There’s a lot of courage and talent in evidence at the Matrix, where Rachel Parker is performing her one-woman show, The Wolfe & the Bird, directed by Alina Phelan.

Any actor taking on a solo show is doing a brave thing -- you’re out there poised on a tightrope -- but to try and do it on a limited budget, in the face of a pandemic, is additionally gutsy.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Three Viewings
Next Act Theater

In its first post-pandemic performance, Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater returns to familiar territory. The company is reviving Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings, which it first offered to audiences in 1997. Director Edward Morgan guides the current production; in doing so, he creates a moving portrait of small-town midwestern life.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Last of the Love Letters, The
Atlantic Theater - Linda Gross Theater

 At first, Ngozi Anyanwu’s The Last of the Love Letters seems like a conventional breakup story. The audience enters the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater to find Anyanwu herself on stage as a character listed in the digital program as “You.” (The others are enigmatically called You No. 2 and Person.) This You is scribbling in a notebook, evidently she is writing the missive alluded to in the title.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Enigmatist, The
Geffen Playhouse - Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

It’s nerd heaven at the Geffen Playhouse, with magician and New York Times “cruciverbalist” (crossword puzzle creator) David Kwong at the center of it.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Full Monty, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

After many quiet months of pandemic life, Milwaukee’s fall theater season opens with a “bang” as Skylight Music Theatre launches the Broadway musical, The Full Monty. The Tony Award-winning musical is especially relevant today, as it deals with people coping with hard times. Long-term unemployment? Difficulty paying the bills? Struggling with weight gain? Feeling isolated and lonely? The Full Monty contains all of that, and more. The show emphasizes the importance of friends and family in making it through tough times together.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Jukebox Saturday Night
Florida Studio Theater - Bowen Lab

In their fourth FST Cabaret End-of-Summer into Fall musical, The Swingaroos glory in presenting five decades of pop favorites in their signature swing style.  They show off the top 1920’s to 1960’s music that people ordered on juke boxes across the nation. No surprise, then, that Act I claims “Happy Days Are Here Again” and Act II starts with  “Put Another Nickel In” for “Music! Music! Music!”

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Birds in the Moon 
Santa Monica Parking Lot #27

Some call it a chamber opera. Others insist it’s simply musical theater—even a glorified carny show. Birds in the Moon incorporates all of those elements in a dazzling, far-out production which was just seen in L.A. As conceived by Mark Grey, who wrote the libretto and score, the show marked Broad Stages’ return to live theater after 18 months of Covid isolation.  Performed on a container stage in a Santa Monica parking lot, Birds in the Moon is a mobile show conceived for two performers, a string quartet, electronic music, and a video operator.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Iliad, An
Touchstone Thetaer

This summer, while audiences were flocking to the large, outdoor theater in Spring Green, Wis., to view Shakespeare under the stars, another small miracle was taking place inside the intimate (200-seat) Touchstone Theatre. American Players Theatre, which operates these two venues, welcomed far smaller crowds to see An Iliad.

The APT production dazzles with its power. Words such as “mesmerizing” and “gripping” don’t begin to describe the experience waiting here.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Pass Over
August Wilson Theater

The first Broadway show to open since the pandemic shutdown of March 2020 is appropriately a blast of fresh air for the naughty, bawdy Great Bright Way. After productions in Chicago in 2017 and at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway Clara Tow Theatre in 2018, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over arrives freighted with history and portend, heralding a new moment in commercial New York theater.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Things I Could Never Tell Steven, The
PrideArts Broadway

Steven is missing, to begin with—not dead, like Marley; or imprisoned, like Edmond Dante—but merely in retreat from his intimate acquaintances. Since these include his parents (male and female), spouse (female), and paramour (male), Steven's absence is the focus of much concern—not to mention disruption of carefully-planned social schedules and lately, furtive misgivings regarding the reasons for his flight.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Pretty Fire
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

The first Milwaukee Black Theater Festival grew out of a response to the George Floyd killings of 2020. A few members of Milwaukee’s theater community gathered after the tragedy to discuss how to heal the community, and how to attract more black audiences to mainstream theaters that were considered primarily-white enterprises. Thus, according to co-founder Malkia Stampley (see below), the Milwaukee Black Theater Festival became the first of its kind, not only in Milwaukee, but throughout the Midwest.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Merry Wives
Delacorte Theater

Merry Wives, Jocelyn Bioh’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s bawdy comedy of laundry baskets and bedroom antics, is a significant event not because of its slight whimsy but because it marks a return to live theater after nearly a year and a half of COVID restrictions. This first production at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater since the shuttering of stages due to the pandemic in March 2020 is a celebration of the power of theater to unify a community and needs to be cheered for that. The show itself is fun and silly, perfect for a light summer frolic.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
For Love or Money
Broadwater Black Box

”Ye cannot serve God and Mammon” said the bible.  Mitch Feinstein tried to do both, as he confesses in his one-man show, For Love or Money, now running at the 2021 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
La Divina: The Last Interview of Maria Callas
Hudson Guild Theater

Shelley Cooper makes us believe she is Maria Callas in La Divina, her one-woman show about the legendary opera singer. That’s no small feat, as Callas was a prodigious force on stage, not only as a singer but an actress. Fortunately, Cooper excels in both those departments, having appeared in such previous musical-theatre roles as South Pacific, The Barber of Seville, and Sweeney Todd, to name but a few. She has also worked as a director/choreographer.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
School Girls, Or, The African Mean Girls Play
Goodman Theater

Don't be fooled by the title. If you arrive at the Goodman Theater expecting a cross-ethnic copy of the seminal 2004 Hollywood film involving spoiled, shallow, WASP-y suburban teenagers and their clueless parents, you won't find it at this long-awaited return to one-room live-action entertainment. The setting of Jocelyn Bioh's play is the West African republic of Ghana in 1986, and the stakes are much higher for the young women lucky enough to receive an education at the Aburi Girls Secondary School.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Midsummer Night’s Dream, A
Greendale Gazebo Park

There is perhaps no scenery more suitable for A Midsummer Night’s Dream than a park. In the Optimist Theater’s production, a lovely green expanse of lawn, surrounded by mature trees, was an ideal setting for their truncated version of Shakespeare’s comedy.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Rounding Third
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

In Round Third’s small American town, a Little League baseball team includes two boys whose fathers coach the players. Brusque Don, veteran head coach, comes on as a man who owns all (us audience “players” too) and the game. His opening talk insists winning is everything. When modest businessman Michael stumbles in late, he’s made assistant coach. Still he has his say — that playing ball must primarily make each player happy. Don and Michael are obviously an Odd Couple.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
Todd Robbins's Haunt Quest
Soho Playhouse

Todd Robbins is our host for and the only cast in Haunt Quest, a “séance play.”

The evening I attended included an audience of ten, socially distanced on folding chairs in a bare room. This arrangement is part of the event’s idiosyncratic charm. We’re not in a show; we’re at a séance, a paranormal inquiry, with nothing so vulgar as a program.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
Fruma-Sarah
cell theater

It’s appropriate that the first indoor production with live actors I’m reviewing since the COVID pandemic shut down all NYC stages over a year ago is a celebration of theater and how it can heal communities and create families. E. Dale Smith’s Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings) is such a celebration but this backstage comedy is flawed and somewhat forced. Fortunately, that prickly comedienne Jackie Hoffman makes it fly. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
Winter's Tale, The
Havenswood State Forest

Under a towering grove of old-growth trees, on an exceptionally balmy evening, the Summit Players were hurriedly making preparations for their latest production of free Shakespeare in Wisconsin parks. This year’s production is a lesser-known play, The Winter’s Tale.

As in past years, the play has been trimmed to a 75-minute show without intermission. This makes it a perfect length for squirmy kids (who are a most welcome part of the audience), and for older audiences who want to transport themselves into a brief foray into Shakespeare-lite.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
Shades of Buble: A Three-Man Tribute to Michael Buble
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

The Three “Shades” of Canadian Michael Bublé’s musical repertoire are: Sinatra’s and his type of songs, well-liked contemporary pop tunes, and finally Motown and Rock hits. Going through representative selections at Florida Studio Theater, three men sing and act in different “shades” but also in excellent harmony together. What’s old seems new again, and what’s new is up-to-the-minute relevant.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
Octoroon, An
The Fountain

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins launches an all-out farcical attack on America’s history of slavery in An Octoroon, now in its West Coast premiere in an outdoor production at the Fountain Theater, directed by Judith Moreland.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
Fruma-Sarah
Cell Theater

The very mention of the New York City’s own wildly popular actress and comedian Jackie Hoffman – she of 1000 facial expressions, bodily quirks, a score of well-placed adlibs, and a mesmerizing voice that takes you prisoner with a waterfall of precisely enunciated words – signals that somewhere lurking around a corner is yet another not-to-be-missed Hoffman Happening.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
July 2021

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