Refuge Plays, The
Laura Pels Theater

In the first act of The Refuge Plays, Nathan Alan Davis’s massive family saga, the elderly matriarch Early (the magnificent Nicole Ari Parker) advises her great-grandson Ha-Ha (yes, that’s his name, played with sweet innocence by JJ Wynder) to read and re-read Ralph Ellison’s classic novel of African-American alienation, “Invisible Man.” She tells Ha-Ha that Ellison writes in code and you have to experience the book many times to crack the code and find the author’s meaning.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Aladdin
Marcus Performing Arts Center

Showman P.T. Barnum may have declared that his circus was the “greatest show on Earth,” but as far as musicals go, Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ may be the greatest musical to hit Milwaukee in a long time. The national touring production of this well-known show is currently playing through Sunday.

The show is a huge, well-organized musical machine, filled with Middle East flavor and paying homage to the 1992 animated film on which it is based. It’s not the only musical currently playing in town, but it’s certainly got the largest budget.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Once on this Island
West Coast Black Theater Troupe

A folktale told to TiMoune, a little Caribbean girl, Once on This Island becomes her story as a young girl who saves the life of a mixed-race nobleman hurt in a storm. Having fallen in love with him, she leaves the parents who adopted her and seeks him in his palace. Goddesses of the elements will go to watch over her in her quest of marriage, but there’ll be conflict not only with social and racial mores but also with opposing devilish-God. Besides, the prince’s choice may already been determined.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Gutenberg! The Musical
James Earl Jones Theater

Gutenberg! The Musical! is as sweet, light and fun as a big chocolate-chip cookie—and about as nourishing. But that’s okay. This fluffy, insider meta-musical for those who love musicals is nothing more than a diversion, mildly tweaking the conventions of Broadway and ribbing those who are obsessed with them.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Laughs in Spanish
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

In a bilingual twist on mother-daughter relations, Laughs in Spanish attempts to keep the comic vibe flowing in all but a few of the play’s more thoughtful moments. The play, which opens Milwaukee Chamber’s 49th season, is extremely successful in keeping things light while also tackling some more serious subjects.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Splash Hatch on the E Going Down
Next Act Theater

Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater opens its fall season with a sizzling urban drama, Splash Hatch on the E Going Down by Kia Corthron. This Wisconsin premiere is a not-to-be-missed highlight of Milwaukee’s current crop of plays. Corthron’s story focuses on the intimate tale of a young woman who faces both ends of the life spectrum, birth and death. Simultaneously, the 1997 play explores broader social issues in regards to race, poverty and environmental awareness.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Copenhagen
Unicorn Theater

Michael Frayn’s heady and intense Copenhagen, at Berkshire Theater Group, asks what if Adolph Hitler, had atomic bombs in his arsenal? The answer to that question lay with Nobel Laureate, Werner Heisenberg (Harry Smith), who headed the potential nuclear program for Nazi Germany. Kept on a short leash by the Gestapo, he went to great effort to deliver a paper in occupied Copenhagen.

Charles Giuliano
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
English
Barrington Stage

The play English, by Iranian-American playwright Sanaz Toossi, was selected by freshman artistic director, Alan Paul, well before it won the Pulitzer Prize in May. Because the original actress was unavailable she has stepped in to portray Elham. Thereby, the Barrington Stage production, directed by Knud Adams, is a double triumph. The play is complex, topical and timely while her acting proves to be utterly charming.

Charles Giuliano
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Melissa Etheridge: My Window
Circle in the Square

Melissa Etheridge was the rock queen of longing in 1980s and ’90s with soulful yearning ballads like “I’m the Only One” and “Come to My Window.” Her sandpaper voice caressed her lyrics producing a tender ache. In addition to her chart-topping music career, she has become an activist for climate change and LGBTQ rights, a breast cancer survivor, and supporter of research to end opioid abuse.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Jaja's African Hair Braiding
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

The workplace play is a tried and true template affording opportunities for dramatic conflict and comic interplay among staff and customers in a single setting. The formula has accommodated such diverse works as A Memory of Two Mondays, Superior Donuts, Glengarry Glen Ross, Skeleton Crew, Tabletop, Jitney, Steel Magnolias, Seared, and  Clyde’s. The “Barber Shop” film franchise is another example.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Parental Advisory: a breakbeat play
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

In honor of hip hop’s 50th anniversary, Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Parental Advisory, a breakbeat play. The Rep’s intimate Stiemke Studio stage has been turned into a recording studio for the show, with theater patrons representing a sort-of concert audience.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2023
Up on the Roof
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

The title “Up on the Roof” refers to the Brill Building on NYC’s Broadway. There songwriters created new songs with sounds and sensibilities in the 1950s through ‘60s. Florida Studio Theatre’s Court Cabaret stages many of those hits whose popularity has endured. So has the fame of song creating teams, now being emulated by four pleasing FST performers with Broadway-like pianist and visual projections.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2023
Purlie Victorious
Music Box Theater

In these touchy political times, it’s exciting to see a satiric comedy that takes risks and isn’t afraid it might offend someone. At the Music Box Theater, audiences are laughing hysterically at racism and violations of civil rights.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
September 2023
Swing State
Minetta Lane Theater

The opening moments of Rebecca Gilman’s moving new play Swing State, now at the Minetta Lane Theater after an acclaimed run at Chicago’s Goodman Theater, searingly combine the ordinary with the depths of angst. In a lived-in Wisconsin farmhouse, a woman in her 60s is performing the most routine of tasks, mixing eggs and flour.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
September 2023
Infinite Life
Atlantic Theater - Linda Gross Theater

Annie Baker offers us another painful but beautiful slice of life in her play, Infinite Life at Atlantic Theater Company. As she did in such weird, wonderful works as Circle Mirror Transformation, The Aliens, and John, Baker dissects a seemingly mundane situation with little theatricality but with such unexpected humor and heartbreaking reality that we recognize ourselves in its quiet, shatteringly relatable moments.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
September 2023
Country Sunshine: The Legendary Ladies of Nashville with Katie Deal
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stackner Cabaret

As usual, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater opened its fall season with an aperitif at its intimate Stackner Cabaret before unloading the “big guns” of a major production in its much-larger theater. This year’s Stackner Cabaret 2023 season debut is Country Sunshine: The Legendary Ladies of Nashville with Katie Deal. As advertised in the title, this is a tribute to many past and current country singers who combined southern charm and flashy outfits with powerful voices.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2023
Pay the Writer
Pershing Square Signature Center - Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater

Playwright Tawni O’Dell uses the same gag twice in her new play Pay the Writer at the Signature Center (the play is not a production of the Signature Theater Company, but is renting the space). African-American literary lion Cyrus Holt (a robust Ron Canada) twice stops himself after uttering an eloquent observation on life, says “That’s good” and rushes to jot it down in a notebook for future reference.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2023
Creedence Clearwater Remixed!
Florida Studio Theater - Goldstein Cabaret

Blending the history of band Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) and biography of the creator of most of its original songs, Creedence Clearwater Remixed! aims to connect with audiences who love CCR’s music. Florida Studio Theater’s Goldstein Cabaret has never been more colorful than now with its changing lighted “scenery” or the plaids and the checkered shirts worn by performers or the images suggested by CCR’s songs.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2023
Rock & Roll Man
New World Stages

The jukebox genre, incorporating established pop or rock hit tunes without or without a biographical storyline to tie them together, has been flooding Broadway for decades with specimens ranging from top-shelf (MJ, Mamma Mia, Jersey Boys, Beautiful: The Carol King Musical) to bottom of the barrel (Good Vibrations, Leader of the Pack, Baby, It’s You). Rock & Roll Man, the latest entry in the nostalgia sweepstakes now at Off-Broadway’s New World Stages, falls somewhere in the middle.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2023
Back to the Future
Winter Garden Theater

In Broadway’s The Shark Is Broken, Robert Shaw complains about the proliferation of sequels and remakes in popular movies. That disease has overtaken Broadway, as well. Prime example: Back to the Future, the musical version of the popular 1985 sci-fi film comedy now on Broadway after an award-winning run in the West End. At least Shark offers a different spin on Jaws, but Future is a retread of a familiar favorite.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2023
Shark is Broken, The
John Golden Theater

“What do you think it’s about?,” asks Alex Brightman, referring to the deeper meaning of “Jaws,” the movie his character Richard Dreyfuss is filming with co-stars Roy Scheider (Colin Donnell) and Robert Shaw (Ian Shaw, playing his father). After Dreyfuss and Scheider posit weighty theories on responsibility and destiny, the no-nonsense Shaw answers, “It’s about a shark!”

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2023
Cymbeline
Forest Home Cemetery & Arboretum

Milwaukee’s Optimist Theater is best-known for producing its annual Shakespeare in the Park series, which travels to various venues throughout the local community in July and August. Over the years, Optimist has produced many of Shakespeare’s most-beloved works, but for its tenth (and current) season, it has chosen Cymbeline.

This rarely produced play is considered problematic for reasons not the least of which is where to put it in the Shakespearean canon. While not quite a tragedy, Cymbeline has comic elements, too.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2023
Comedy of Tenors, A
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

The time is 1936. The place is a Paris pink-and-blue, lavish apartment with adjoining balcony. Opera producer Saunders is harboring star tenor Tito Merelli and wife Maria while awaiting two other opera tenors to join Tito in an enterprising “Three Tenors Concert.” They don’t appear, and that’s where fun (for audiences) begins.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2023
Here Lies Love
Broadway Theater

After beginning life as a 2010 concept album, then two separate off-Broadway runs at the Public Theater (2013 and again the following season), engagements at London’s National Theatre and Seattle Rep, Here Lies Love, the immersive disco musical charting the tumultuous rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, the capricious first lady of the Philippines, has arrived on Broadway. The result is unlike any other Broadway show currently running or in recent memory.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2023
Feelin' Groovy 8: 9 Weeks of Peace and Music
Music Box Theater

Houston’s Music Box Theater continues to amaze audiences with their seemingly bottomless reservoir of musical creativity and comedy flair. With its long-running and very talented quintet of regular stars, Rebekah Dahl, Brad Scarborough, Kristina Sullivan, Cay Taylor, and Luke Wrobel, the brilliant troupe has been delighting full house crowds for more than a dozen years. That popularity shows no signs of a let up.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Rock & Roll Man
New World Stages

OK, so they weren’t exactly dancing in the aisles at New World Stages the night I attended Rock & Roll Man. However, what the audience was doing to show their love for everything that was flashing before their eyes during the musical’s fast-paced, two-act, wonder-filled 2 hours and 20 minutes was hooting, hollering, whistling, laughing, clapping, snapping their fingers, gyrating in their seats and most surprising of all shedding nostalgic tears of joy, all of this while basking in the glorious glow of rock & roll.

Ed Rubin
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Cottage, The
Hayes Theater

 If you’re looking for a fizzy cocktail to help you cool off from the global triple-digit heat wave, you couldn’t find a funnier or more intoxicating concoction than Sandy Rustin’s bubbly The Cottage. Set in the bucolic English countryside in the 1920s, Rustin’s theatrical bauble is a combination of lighter-than-air Noel Coward romantic mix-up and Georges Feydeau bedroom farce, with a dash of absurdist meta-theatricality.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
All Play (13th Annual Sarasota Improv Festival Finale)
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

A highlight of Florida Studio Theatre’s 13th Annual “Improv Festival” was the “All Party” gathering for improvisations delivered by the first spontaneous troupes or groups to volunteer to perform them. FST’s Director of Improvisation, Will Luera, announced subjects to be improvised, okayed the order of improvisors, and even determined the time some of
the skits ended. 

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Flex
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

You don’t need a working knowledge of basketball to enjoy Flex, Candrice Jones’s infectious and fast-paced new play on friendship and competition in a high-school girls team at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, but it would help. There is a lot of talk about point guards, fouling, and free throws, but the more important themes involve the limits and responsibilities of teamwork and the roles of gender and race in sports and class.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
MC Hammersmith
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

Highlighting the 13th Annual Florida Studio Theater “Improv Festival”, after its COVID-related absence since 2019, British Will Naameh performed as star improvisor MC Hammersmith on the last Festival day, at 4 and 9 p.m. Basically a rapper, he accomplished also a few variations on his signature freestyle creation and delivery.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Guys and Dolls
Class Act Theater

Those familiar with the witty short stories of newspaper columnist Damon Runyon may also be acquainted with the types of gangsters, gamblers, hustlers, and floozies that populated the 1940’s Manhattan and Brooklyn prohibition underworld of which he wrote.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Divas Three: Celebration of the Great Female Vocalists from the ‘60s Through the ‘90s  
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

Title and subtitle tell what the show at Florida Studio Theatre during its summertime season of visiting troupes is all about. Vocalists highlighted are Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Carole King, Cher, Celine Dion, Bette Midler, and Aretha Franklin.  Still each of the trio of performers brings in her own personality, along with each wearing stunning sequined costumes in different styles but matching colors.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Hamlet
Delacorte Theater

Hamlet, which I saw in previews, is The Public Theater’s major production in Central Park this summer. Director Kenny Leon has given us an interpretation with a solid foundation as a domestic tragedy, plus some terrific acting. But Mr. Leon peppers the production with such a variety of spices that we’re sometimes bewildered. His combining of styles that we find in the show is simultaneously post-modernist and Elizabethan.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Just for Us
Hudson Theater

Alex Edelman begins his Broadway one-man show Just for Us at the Hudson Theater with fairly standard jokes about gorillas and horses, but he soon makes a detour into deeper territory by recreating a bizarre and unexpectedly illuminating real-life experience. After keeping track of anti-Semitic posters on his Twitter feed, the Jewish comedian received a tweeted invitation to a white supremacist meeting in Queens, NY. That encounter forms the basis of Edelman’s hilarious and insightful monologue which goes beyond stand-up into social commentary.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Great Gatsby, The: The Immersive Show
Park Central Hotel

 A pair of current Off-Broadway productions present nontraditional interpretations of two of the most iconic male protagonists in Western literature—Hamlet, the indecisive melancholy Dane, and Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire and symbol of American ambition. Both shows display gimmicky staging to plumb the depths of William Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observations on the human condition, but they obscure the richer insights of both works, resulting in flashy productions and incomplete renderings of the original.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Hamlet
Delacorte Theater

 A pair of current Off-Broadway productions present nontraditional interpretations of two of the most iconic male protagonists in Western literature—Hamlet, the indecisive melancholy Dane, and Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire and symbol of American ambition. Both shows display gimmicky staging to plumb the depths of William Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observations on the human condition, but they obscure the richer insights of both works, resulting in flashy productions and incomplete renderings of the original.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2023
Black Pearl Sings!
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

With 19 relevant songs Black Pearl Sings! returns to Florida Studio Theater, which helped in its development. The drama concerns a convicted black murderer who needs parole to search for her daughter and a white musicologist who must find ur-African and American songs by black slaves to publish and promulgate. This should get her a long-denied Harvard professorship controlled by white men and, in the past, stolen from her by one. Will the women get together to achieve their ends?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Bad Cinderella
Imperial Theater

Little did Andrew Lloyd Webber know when he saddled his most recent musical with the ill-chosen name “Bad Cinderella” that he was handing theater critics here in New York a cudgel with which to beat his latest Broadway production to a pulp.

And beat it they did, savagely so, to the point of forcing it to close at the Imperial Theatre on June 4, 2023 after only 33 previews, 85 regular performances, with a loss rumored to be near $19 million dollars.

Ed Rubin
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Comeuppance, The
Pershing Square Signature Center

Remember when theater used to be of the moment and reflect what was going on outside the auditorium politically and socially? How playwrights were like doctors forcing us to gaze upon an X-ray of our societal ailments? Such intense examination in our otherwise escapist entertainment fare does occur upon occasion and should be celebrated. Two current Off-Broadway productions, The Doctor and The Comeuppance, offer an unblinkered diagnosis of the current divided state, and while it may not provide a pretty picture, these X-rays are illuminating and gripping.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Doctor, The
Park Avenue Armory

Remember when theater used to be of the moment and reflect what was going on outside the auditorium politically and socially? How playwrights were like doctors forcing us to gaze upon an X-ray of our societal ailments? Such intense examination in our otherwise escapist entertainment fare does occur upon occasion and should be celebrated. Two current Off-Broadway productions, The Doctor and The Comeuppance, offer an unblinkered diagnosis of the current divided state, and while it may not provide a pretty picture, these X-rays are illuminating and gripping.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2023

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