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: A Journey Into Self
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: The Lovers' Tale
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
Tiny House

As theaters across the country announce the return of live, post-pandemic performances, the number of Zoom and virtual shows has waned. But companies are presenting intriguing and innovative offerings via the Internet. Perhaps this hybrid of theater and technology will become a permanent new media, expanding the possibilities and accessibility of intimate performances. One such computer-broadcast play is Michael Gotch’s pleasant and proficient family comedy Tiny House, presented by the Westport Country Playhouse through July 18.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
Tevye in New York!
The Wallis

Live theater returns to The Wallis with the world premiere of Tom Dugan’s one-man show, Tevye in New York!. Dugan, whose previous solo shows were Wiesenthal and The Jackie Kennedy Project (which he directed), takes on the persona of Tevye the Milkman, the flamboyant patriarch in Fiddler on the Roof.  Dugan asks us to believe that Tevye has gone on to a new life as an immigrant in New York’s Lower East Side, where he sells ice-cream out of a pushcart on the corner of Delancey and Orchard.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
My Lord, What a Night
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

The exclamatory title is what all the characters experience in Deborah Brevoort’s play detailing a 1937 link forged between Albert Einstein and Marian Anderson.  She’d just ended an appreciated concert at Princeton but been denied a room at all-white Nassau Inn. Her admirer Albert Einstein, who’d experienced anti-Semitic danger in Germany, then invited the diva to stay in his campus home.  Their friendship, affected by visits from a Jewish academic administrator and a black woman civil rights activist, must end in important decisions for all four.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2021
Minnesota
online

Playwright Justin Tanner bares his soul in Minnesota, his gripping and revelatory monologue which is now streaming online in a production directed by Lisa James.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Dingleberries
online

Susan Chenet's self-described "crappy comedy" hearkens to the "Hollywood-is-Full-of-Greedheads" plays—vitriolic diatribes penned by incensed playwrights following their initial forays into big-time industry screenwriting.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Tennessee Rising
Cell Theater

The night I attended a live production of Jacob Storms’s one man show, Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams, held at the Cell Theater in New York City, it was raining lightly. Though the playwright-actor was protected by a small overhang which covered the staging area, the umbrella holding, stage-facing audience, seated outside in the theater’s lovely garden, was not. Ironically, this being a second rain date, it was touch and go as to whether this play would go on at all.

Ed Rubin
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Ride Share
online

In 1990, Will Kern's long-running Hellcab documented the work-day of a Chicago cabbie on a Christmas eve conspicuously lacking in holiday spirit—a stygian slog rife with scenes of contention, selfishness, misanthropy,  exploitation, and misery beyond our humble servant's power to remedy. Ah, but just when the ugliness of the universe brings him to the brink of a cosmological crisis, his despair is alleviated by one of those tiny miracles that spring up when most needed.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Great Balls of Fire
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

Just as Jerry Lee Lewis shaped  Rock & Roll, Jason Cohen embodies him and his super-energetic performances in “Great Balls of Fire.”  He gets help from a multi-talented band, who often back Cohen lyrically as well as instrumentally. No doubt, though, from madcap antics to keyboard tricks to crooning love lyrics, Cohen becomes Lewis, the central singer and musician.  His “trick” is to also stay himself paying a tribute to the earlier star.  

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Titanic (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry, 1912)
online

When choosing between recording fact or legend, the saying goes, what usually endures is the legend—in this case, the real-life morality fable of the sumptuous trans-Atlantic cruise ship that crashed into an iceberg in 1912, killing most (but not all) of the personnel aboard.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Best of Brink Briefs

See listing under Best of Br!nk Br!efs (exclamation points for the letter i)

Best of Br!nk Br!efs
Renaissance Theaterworks

Renaissance Theaterworks, Milwaukee’s only women-founded and women-run company, ends what must have been an exceptionally difficult season (as it was for all theater companies nationwide) with its annual 10-minute play festival, called “Br!nk Br!efs.” The current production incorporates some of the “best” short plays from past seasons, interspersed with some new ones. All of the plays presented here were written by women playwrights living in the Midwest.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Sophie Tucker: Last of the Red-Hot Mamas
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

To celebrate the opening of a season long delayed by pandemic restrictions,  Sophie Tucker: Last of the Red Hot Mamas returns to Florida Studio Theatre where the show originated in 2000. The latest in subsequent reprises, this year’s has more scenic opulence. That matches goings-on as an older, wiser-cracking Kathy Halenda interprets Sophie Tucker’s big fat life.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2021

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