Skylight Sings
online

Milwaukee audiences who have been wishing for a glimpse of Skylight Music Theater performers will be pleased to learn that a Skylight-sponsored holiday-themed showcase is on view virtually through January 10, 2020. Skylight Sings: A Holiday Special from Our Home at the Cabot Theater has a stocking-full of musical gifts for the whole family, ranging from traditional seasonal music to Broadway show tunes, pop adaptations and, of course, a smattering of comedy.

Anne SIegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
We Need a Little Christmas: A Holiday Concert Under the Stars
Asolo Terrace Stage

The title, “We Need a Little Christmas,” aptly conveys the sentiments of participants and audience for a scripted musical formed like a not-intimate cabaret concert.  The “need” is amply met by a quartet of singers (including a narrator) and a spectacular technical crew that creates a true spectacle of light and sound.  A live orchestra off to one side of the specially constructed Terrace Stage of Asolo Rep seems to urge every musical number happening across the center.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
Chimes, The
online

Before Henry W. Longfellow heard the bells on Christmas Day, or George Bailey came to embrace his not-ungenerous fate—indeed, barely a year after Scrooge awoke from his ghostly holiday gallivant—Charles Dickens attempted to repeat the success of his bestselling holiday fable with a parable of New Year's epiphany, inspired by the Genoese cathedral bells he encountered while vacationing in Italy.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
Burning Bluebeard
online

It's only natural for a show conceived in a former funeral home, where the characters remind us that we are an audience watching a Christmas play about an audience that died while watching a Christmas play, to benefit from the ambience of its real-life environment.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins
online

Who doesn't like a good trickster fable? Whether the hero is a Norwegian teenager named Peer Gynt, a Chinese Monkey named Sun Wu Kong, a West African Spider named Anansi, or our own American Br'er Rabbit, we never tire of hearing how the Clever triumph over the Powerful.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
This Wonderful Life

The whole crew of Bedford Falls is gathered together once again for a live replay of the 1946 film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Except that, in 2020, the entire show is performed by a single actor, Nate Burger, a staple of the American Players Theater cast in Spring Green, Wis. This is APT’s first venture into virtual theater-making, and they make quite a splash with this terrific show.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
What is Left, Burns
online

It's 2020, in the midst of a nationwide health crisis. In one conference-call window on our screens is American Lit professor Keith—now middle-aged, divorced, estranged from his grown son, and recently relocated to Manhattan on the eve of his retirement. In the other window is former protegé Ronnie, now a successful young West Coast poet deserving of his former mentor's congratulations.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
Estella Scrooge
online

Streaming Musicals’s new holiday offering Estella Scrooge goes even further into stage-video hybrid territory with truly dazzling special effects—Tyler Milliron is listed as director of photography and editor, and Zach Wilson is credited with production art design. Subtitled “A Christmas Carol with a Twist,” this update on the immortal Christmas tale of a miser’s reclamation through the intercession of three spirits is a visual treat and chock-a-block with cuddly good intentions but feels forced and phony.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
APT Holidames
American Players Theater

Although viewers are most often gazing at these three actresses while sitting on a hillside under a starry moon, now there’s a chance to see them in a far more intimate setting. Holidames: Tangled in Tinsel is more like a valentine to American Players Theater (APT) subscribers than a Christmas gift. It is broadcast virtually, right to one’s home. The talented women (under the spicy direction of Keira Fromm) undertake a veritable variety show of skits, songs, poems and even a bit of Charles Dickens to bring merriment to all.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2020
Bette Davis ain't for Sissies
online

Of all the celebs channeled by drag queens and female impersonators, Bette Davis, like flies to honey, has always been at the top of every performers list. Her mannerisms, her clipped New England cadences, her famous lines like “fasten your seatbelt this is going to be a bumpy night,” and the forever dangling cigarette in her airborne hand, like the actress herself, are legendary.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
November 2020
Christians, The
online

Sometimes, life’s events seem to merge perfectly with the theme of a particular play. So it is with The Christians, written by award-winning, New York-based playwright Lucas Hnath (pronounced NAYth). A lively and thought-provoking look at Christianity, the play’s focus is also universal in terms of asking us about our personal beliefs, and what those beliefs say about us.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2020
Great Divorce, The
online

C.S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce, a novel, in 1945. The title derives from William Blake’s 1793 poem “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” It presents us with a set of travelers who take a bus from Hell to the outskirts of heaven and are offered the opportunity to enter heaven if they repent--that is, acknowledge their error. Most of the travelers decline the offer, wedded to their tragic flaw.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
November 2020
She Kills Monsters
online

Family-friendly First Stage continues its season of entirely virtual plays with She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms . This play was first performed at New York’s Flea Theater in 2011. It has had productions in various cities throughout the U.S., and over time it became one of the most-performed shows by U.S. high schools. The First Stage production is taken from the play’s recently released virtual version. It is a gripping, powerful look at some of the adult issues that teens face today.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2020
Fragments
online

If Dee Dee Batteast's No AIDS, No Maids represented a sorely needed caveat for casting agents, directors and audiences alike on looking beyond cultural stereotypes, Karissa Murrell Myers’s Fragments now makes a case for a segment of our population likewise ignored, not based in demographical misapprehension, but in excessive reliance on taxonomical convenience.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2020
Every Waiting Heart
online

Surprising as it may be to devout secularists, even religious communities hold "singles night" events—albeit declaring their purpose to be facilitation of ecclesiastically-approved marital attachments—and if Annette's Mom had just chosen to test the waters in the dating pool of a different denomination than that of a rock-ribbed sect whose adherents equate "strength" with discipline, obedience and self-denial, it might have saved both mother and daughter considerable pain.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2020
Spin, The
online

In an unnamed American metropolis, the Public Works Director has been discovered to have a cache of pedophile images on his work computer, but even under house arrest awaiting trial, he threatens to reveal the identities of his fellow perpetrators, active and unwitting alike.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2020
Coastal Elites
online

A pre and post-COVID-19-slanted offering muchly peppered with condemnation of Trump and the current administration – it was presented one time only this past September--was HBO’s Coastal Elites. Originally written to be performed as a play at New York City’s Public Theater by playwright, and novelist Paul Rudnick, widely known for his humorous and satirical writings which regularly appear in the New Yorker, and directed by Matthew Jay Roach (“Meet the Fockers,” “Trumbo,” “Bombshell”), the closing of all theaters in the city nixed that idea.

Ed Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Line, The
online

Ever since Covid19 shut down our theaters, movie houses, museums, concert halls, opera houses, jazz clubs, and stadiums – in short, our entire country’s entertainment industry – thus robbing thousands upon thousands of singers, actors, writers, producers, directors, musicians, athletes and countless others, of their livelihood, not to mention their raison d’etre, a marked increase in entertainment offerings on TV, cable, online, blogs, websites and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Disney ensued.

Ed Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Black Magic
online

Even if her late grandmother hadn't been a New Orleans spiritualist practicing under the agnomen of "Tituba" (after the Obeah sorceress referenced in the Salem Witch Trials), her death would still have left some big shoes for her granddaughter to fill. Eldest sibling Sasha's filial responsibilities include forsaking her roommates on the South Side of Chicago and moving into a two-bedroom apartment so that her college-bound brother can qualify for in-state tuition, even as she struggles to pay off her own student loans on a barista's wages.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Quest for Solomon's Treasure, The
online

Family-friendly First Stage, one of the country’s leading theaters for young audiences, begins its full season of entirely virtual plays with The Quest for Solomon’s Treasure . This world premiere is an original weekly serial that debuted on October 4, with installments arriving each Sunday. There are seven installments in this series. Solomon’s Treasure was created by veteran playwright John Maclay, who has debuted a number of popular First Stage shows over the years.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Weekend Comedy
online

Who would have thought that one of Milwaukee’s smallest theater companies would be the first to offer its audiences two tantalizing choices: to see an in-person performance, or stay home and watch a virtual production? Village Playhouse, located in a Milwaukee suburb, has done just that with Weekend Comedy. Prospective theatergoers can choose to see one of six live performances, with capacity restrictions of 20 people per show. (Social distancing will be provided in the audience seating.) Those with COVID concerns can opt to view a filmed version at home.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Box and Cox
online

There's these two guys, you see, and they're roommates—they just don't know it yet. This is because Mr. Cox is a hatter who works days, while Mr. Box is a printer who works nights, and Mrs. Bouncer, their landlady, has discovered she can charge two rents for the same furnished apartment.  To be sure, Mr. Cox has detected a lingering odor of cigar smoke in his quarters, and Mr.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Sylvia
Cort Theater

A Tony award-winner last season for You Can't Take It With You, Annaleigh Ashford is the prettiest, most cunning, cute, coquettish little flirt ever to be picked up in Central Park. She is no dog, but yes she is. . . actually a dog in A.R. Gurney's whimsical 1995 comedy Sylvia, a wonderful revival of which has opened at the Cort Theater.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2015
War of the Worlds, A
online

Nothing makes an imperialist nation more nervous than the prospect of payback, so the timeliness of H.G. Wells’s fictional musings on the projected conquest of his native England in 1897 is easy to dismiss nowadays. The United States is protected from large-scale aggression by its global surroundings, of course, but that didn't stop radio listeners in 1938 from reacting with alarm to a dramatic adaptation of this prototype for apocalyptic-invasion fiction.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Give Me Your Hand
online streaming

The Broadway League recently announced that the hiatus for all of its member theaters has been extended until June of 2021. That means at least seven more months of no live performances on New York stages. Fortunately, many Off-Broadway companies are filling the gap with Zoom and virtual performances. The Irish Repertory Theater has been cleverly adapting performances pieces to the new media with actors filming from separate locations or acting in a properly socially distanced space.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
No AIDS, No Maids: Stories I Can't F**ckin Hear No More
online

Dee Dee Batteast is a six-feet-tall, African-American, heterosexual female actor—traits making her the perfect candidate for stereotyping by clueless directors still mired down in outdated social tropes (but quick on the dialect humor). Her thin, white, gay male actor chum fares no better.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Run the Beast Down

Tottenham was once a quiet semi-rural suburb north of London where Charlie's parents lived in a bungalow with a back-yard garden abutting forests teeming with wildlife. Their son now lives in a former government housing project undergoing gentrification, having landed a posh corporate job requiring him to dress expensively, commute daily to the city's financial district, drink with the lads after work and neglect his girl friend.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2020
Women Laughing Alone with Salad
online

The Constructivists, a fledgling Milwaukee theater company, is back this fall with Women Laughing Alone with Salad. It consists of a four-day virtual production that is a treat for theatergoers and social media watchers alike.

In the space of 100 minutes, the audience becomes deeply involved in the main character, a 29-year-old bachelor named Guy (Rob Schreiner), and three of the women in his life: his live-in girlfriend Tori (Paige Bourne); his mother Sandy (Sabra Michelle); and a mysterious woman he meets on a rooftop bar, Meredith (Liz Ehrler).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2020
Rastus and Hattie

Since their inception in 1920, robots in fiction have typically looked like humans and talked like machines.

Nowadays, in our age of Westworld-style technology, "bots" can be heard discoursing in the soothing tones of nannies and yoga instructors, but trade practice among real-life manufacturers of mobile mannequins advises strenuously against precision accuracy in replicating androids and gynoids (even sex dolls are carefully crafted to evidence overt reminders of their artificial infrastructures).

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2020
Incidental Moments of the Day

Dr. Anthony Fauci recently predicted we may not be able to sit safely in theaters until the end of 2021. If that is the case, we’ll have to make do with the new hybrid form of theater, the Zoom play of which Richard Nelson has become the main practitioner. His latest piece, Incidental Moments of the Day: The Apple Family: Life on Zoom is his deepest and most profound of a Zoom trilogy, examining the impact of national social currents without descending into political propaganda or overt symbolism.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
September 2020
Insulted Belarus(sia)
online

Online readings are our theater's response to the Covid crisis. Arlekin Players Theater and Cherry Orchard Festival do a very fine job of it in their reading - presented on Zoom - of Insulted. Belarus(sia), a new play by Andrei Kureichik that examines the current political events in Belarus - namely, the demonstrations and arrests following the bogus re-election of Aleksandr Lukashenko. The playwright, Andrei Kureichik, sits on the coordinating council of the protest movement. The reading was screened twice, once in Russian and once in English.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
September 2020
We're Gonna Die
online

"To be, or not to be" may have once been a dilemma to beguile wealthy Danish princes, but the riddle baffling us today is why we continue to endure so many terrible things—pain, sorrow, injury, abandonment, imminent extinction. What can we do to halt these "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" and what solace can we offer to those undergoing them?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2020
Pride and Prejudice
online

For starters, what we've got are two wealthy young bachelors, two broke young bachelors, five genteel-poor young misses and one rich old battle-axe—but this is 1813 England, when only male heirs could legally inherit property, making the sole means of acquiring wherewithal (or "digging for gold" as we call it nowadays) sufficient to secure a comfortable future was to marry it.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2020
Pursuit of Happiness, The: A Boho Exploration of Freedom

The projected shuttering of theater facilities for the remainder of the year ruled out cozy big-crowds-in-tiny-spaces musical pageants, but that didn't stop BoHo Theater invoking their special talent for inviting every playgoer to share in an intimate conversation with its onstage personnel. Since you can't get much more intimate than a heart-to-heart conducted in your own home, online stream seemed a fitting venue for BoHo's first production following their five Jeffs awarded in June.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2020
State vs. Natasha Banina

State vs. Natasha Banina is a livestream monologue presented by The Arlekin Players Theater. The script is based on Natasha’s Dream by the Russian playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich. The monologue is directed by Igor Golyak and performed by Darya Denisova.

The video monologue was streamed twice this month on Zoom, once in Russian with subtitles and once in English. I watched the Russian—having the great advantage of not understanding Russian; thus, the event was enhanced by language as intonation.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
August 2020
Love Noel: The Songs and Letters of Noel Coward
online streaming

The intimate environs of cabaret will probably be the last aspect of the entertainment industry to return to normal in this COVID world. Patrons squeezed shoulder to shoulder at tiny tables, mere inches away from performers projecting potentially infectious air particles is a scary atmosphere these days. Until a reliable vaccine becomes available, we will probably not be enjoying this unique, direct art form.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2020
Bette Davis ain't for Sissies

Never mind Baby Jane!

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2020
Tempest, The
online

Shakespeare's Tempest features four disparate plot lines introduced by one of the longest expository speeches in western literature. Despite its many encumbrances, however—did I mention the dream sequences and the elaborate musical-fantasy pageant?—its tone must emerge as lighter-than-air at all times, lest the sparkling veil of illusion rendering its events possible is revealed to be mere tawdry tinsel.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2020
Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, The
Westside Theater (Downstairs)

The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey should be on your short list of Off-Broadway plays to be seen this summer. It is an absorbing, poignant, and cleverly conceived one-man/multi-character play written and performed by James Lecesne. Not knowing what to expect, as I hadn't seen or read any reviews that accompanied its short run at Dixon Place, I can urge even to those who avoid one-person shows not to miss this heart-breaking story about the need for acceptance, the presence of intolerance, and the challenge to be all you can be.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
July 2015
Line, The
online (youtube)

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the closures of theaters and reinforced the feeling of being in suspended animation. With no live dramatic reaction to this national crisis which has brought all of our lives to a near screeching halt, it feels as if there has been scant considered reflection or introspection—just talking heads endlessly pontificating on cable news shows and a disconnected chief executive engaging in magical thinking.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2020

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