Much Ado About Nothing
Selby Botanical Gardens

Deceit and deception, rather than “much ado about nothing” are, as scholar Bertrand Evans wrote, at the core of Shakespeare’s comedy. Their effects, though, are overwhelmed by Asolo Conservatory students getting down to extensive comic business in an outdoor, in-the-round production. Director Jonathan Epstein has seen to it that as much as possible feels contemporary yet textually true. Not bad.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Our Town
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse

The Milwaukee Repertory Theater is no stranger to the classic Our Town, written in the 1930s by Madison, Wis.-born Thornton Wilder. This production is the fourth that the Milwaukee Rep has staged in its 64-year history.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Ghosts of War
The Den

At the very outset, our narrator warns us, "I am G.I. Joe Schmo. They will not make movies about me. There will be no video games revolving around my involvement in the war. When people write nonfiction books about the Iraq war, I will not be in them."

He's probably right, too. SPC Schmo, you see, is a United States Army reservist (a "weekend warrior" to his active-duty counterparts).

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Doubt
Milwaukee Chamber Theater - Cabot Theater

Milwaukee Chamber Theater ends its current season by entering the uncertain world of John Patrick Stanley’s Doubt: A Parable. While the shock factor of priests abusing children has somewhat subsided in the more recent wake of school shootings, there is still much to appreciate in Shanley’s well-crafted play.

Doubt premiered at the Manhattan Theater Club in New York in 2004 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 2005. It takes a hard-hitting look at the Catholic Church, American society, sexism, racism, and education.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Mean Girls
August Wilson Theater

Mean Girls is big, loud, splashy, and fun. I sat next to a high school principal from Palm Springs, and he informed me that not only had he seen the movie dozens of times, but also that the kids at his school knew the dialogue by heart. So, it’s best that the play faithfully follows the film. Cady Heron (Erika Henningsen) has been home schooled all her life. She and her parents have just relocated from Africa to Illinois.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Lobby Hero
Helen Hayes Theater

Wrapped in hard-boiled dialogue and more laughs than you'd expect, Lobby Hero, Kenneth Lonergan's exploration of sexual and racial discrimination, the legal system, and pondering ideals versus rules are as relevant today as it was in its 2001 premiere. In Second Stage's Broadway inauguration at the Hayes Theater, a snappy, first-rate cast play flawed people coping with the pressures of real life and intersecting in the lobby of a grade-D apartment building.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Carousel
Imperial Theater

There is nothing like live theater. And every once in a while, we get to experience an unforgettable moment. Last night, near the very end of the performance of Carousel, there was a disturbance in the house. The actors left the stage, the curtain came down, and everyone in the audience wondered what had happened and how the actors would react. Renee Fleming was just about to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” one of the most challenging and beloved songs in musical history.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Significant Other
Geffen Playhouse - Gil Cates Theater

Significant Other is a group portrait of four friends, all in their twenties, who are looking for love in this, the second decade of the 21st century. Sounds like the setup for a sitcom—and that’s just what much of the play seemed to be, what with its kooky characters, gag-filled dialogue, and fast-paced action in a variety of upscale, urban settings.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Down the Rocky Road and All the Way to Bedlam
Nox Arca Studio

Whether exemplifying the technological utopias of the 1890s, the space operas of the 1930s, the social commentaries of the 1960s or the cyberpunk nihilism of the 1990s, all science fiction must mirror its own cultural context or risk its viewers wasting valuable time orienting themselves within its dramatic universe, instead of heeding its author's lesson.

The premise for D.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
I and You
Next Act Theater

A pair of teens find friendship while completing a school assignment in I and You, an award-winning play by Lauren Gunderson. The production is by Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater, which has a long association with Gunderson. In fact, is a way of closing the circle that began with the start of this season. Next Act won critical acclaim last fall for producing another Gunderson play: Silent Sky. Both productions were directed by David Cescarini, Next Act’s producing artistic director.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Hamlet
The Broad Stage

Bedlam is a New York-based company specializing in speed-read versions of the classics. Having won plaudits a few years ago for its go-go production of Hamlet (done on alternate nights with Shaw’s Saint Joan), the company has taken to the road with it, including a two-week run in Santa Monica at The Broad Stage.

Not only does Bedlam race through Shakespeare’s classic text, it does it with a stripped-down cast of four, Aubie Merrylees, Aundria Brown, Kahil Garcia and Sam Massaro.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Children of a Lesser God
Studio 54

Lauren Ridloff is a mime, a dancer, an enchanted being who is impossible not to watch at all times. When she signs as Sarah, the deaf woman who refuses to speak like those in the hearing world, she reveals a language full of animation, emotion, and grace. Her face, hands, and entire body vividly describe what she wants to get across. Enter James Leeds, who has been hired to teach verbal speech at the school for the deaf where Sarah is employed as a maid. As played by former “Dawson’s Creek” matinee idol Joshua Jackson, he’s charming, handsome, and driven.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Honor Killing
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

For the world premiere of Honor Killing, Florida Studio Theatre has brought a universal cause to the stage via globe spanning technology. Through videos, projections, cell phone and skype transmissions, the audience can even expand to examine a mortal incident in Pakistan the like of which affects too many worldwide. Since mainly women suffer such ritual deaths, a feminist journalist takes on professional and personal risks to break a story that might help her get the custom buried.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Top Girls
Studio Theater

Renaissance Theaterworks is indeed “Top Girl” among Milwaukee’s professional theater companies. It is a woman-founded, woman-run group that is celebrating its 25th season. Over the years, Renaissance has won numerous awards and grants. Renaissance has saved the best for the end of its current season, closing with Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls.

Seen by this reviewer almost 30 years ago at New York’s Public Theater, Top Girls hasn’t lost its punch – or its humor. During the current #metoo movement, the play seems timelier than ever.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Gloria
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

In a Manhattan magazine office in the 2010s, a group of Millennials are anything but the editorial assistants they’ve been hired to be. They banter more than they write. They flippingly or antagonistically cut into each other’s conversation more than anything they edit for their precarious publication. They obviously hate their lives and maybe each other. Gloria’s different. She actually does something about both office and inhabitants.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Three Tall Women
Golden Theater

In Three Tall Women, Edward Albee painted a brilliantly caustic portrait of a tyrannical old woman through the lens of three women at various points of life, illuminating the absurdist battle for survival. These "three tall women" earned Albee his third Pulitzer Prize in 1994 and, after his years in Broadway's shadow, they revived his place on a top rung of American theater.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Rosenkranz Mysteries: Physician Magician, The
Royal George Theater

If the notion of a physician who professes to believe in magic makes you uncomfortable, remember that the initial step in any scientific discovery is a perceptual one: First you observe that something works, and then you search for the secret of why it works. The shamans of yore may have bowed to expedience in the execution of their practice, relying on divine intervention for explanation of its efficacy, but medical technology today continues to acknowledge the importance of unseen factors in determining the outcome of pathogenic wars.

Ricardo Rosenkranz—that's Dr.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Spitfire Grill, The
Windy City Cafe

The location of the diner lending The Spitfire Grill its title is identified in the playbill as "Northern Wisconsin" (though textual clues indicate the state's southwestern counties)—specifically, an economically depressed town ironically named Gilead. Here the young Perchance "Percy" Talbot arrives, after serving time in prison, seeking sanctuary and a fresh start. As she struggles to overcome the suspicions of the citizens, we learn that they, too, chafe under regrets too long unacknowledged.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Three Tall Women
Golden Theater

It would be difficult to think of Three Tall Women with a cast that’s anything less than stellar. How privileged we are to be able to behold Glenda Jackson, the force of nature, as A, whom we understand to be patterned after author Edward Albee’s mother. This is her first return to Broadway in 30 years, and it was well worth the wait. At 79, now through with a career in politics, Jackson has all the sass and vitality needed to power this demanding vehicle.

Ably supporting her are two fine actors, Laurie Metcalf as B and Alison Pill as C.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Lobby Hero
Helen Hayes Theater

What if you are asked to provide a false alibi for someone you love? Add to that pressure the fact that you are an intensely law-abiding citizen at heart, that you are pretty sure your loved one is guilty, and that you know that he may not receive a fair trial? Would you do it? What if you’re a police officer, and you know your partner is doing something he’s not supposed to do while on duty? What if this cop has protected you, then lied to you and threatened your job? The questions in Lobby Hero aren’t easy ones.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
How I Learned to Drive
The Artistic Home

Throughout the ages, love obsessive, forbidden and/or undying has been exalted in Romantic literature. Pity the man who pledges his heart to a damsel herself little more than a child, however. (Before you go "eeew," remember that this category includes Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll and Elvis Presley.) Not only must he suffer the censure of society and, in many instances, the law, but his devotion is doomed to end in disaster and ruin. Little girls don't remain little girls, you see, but grow into adult women, who leave youthful companions to follow their own path.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Three Tall Women
Golden Theater

It’s only a few months before the 26th anniversary of the first American appearance of Edward Albee’s masterpiece, Three Tall Women, yet we’ve seen surprisingly few revivals. It’s admittedly difficult to perform, but hundreds of our high schools have performed the extremely demanding constant dance numbers of A Chorus Line without even one cast member who can really dance. Certainly those who love Albee’s plays can rejoice at this masterful new version.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Angels in America
Neil Simon Theater

A commendable theater experience, London's National Theatre's revival of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, has arrived at the Neil Simon Theater with the same powerful significance it had at the time of its original production in the early 1990's. Looking back to that time of the chaos surrounding AIDS and the Cold War, a timeliness continues, strikingly emphasized by an estimable cast of actors whose impressive energy delves into the American mind and soul.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Angels in America
Neil Simon Theater

Angels in America deserves highest marks for several reasons. The sheer audacity of staging nearly eight hours of theater is a major challenge in itself; add to this the responsibility of presenting an iconic play with the fresh perspective of years and hindsight; and to top it off, both Andrew Garfield as the stricken Prior Walter and Nathan Lane as the repugnant Roy Cohn give earth-shatteringly brilliant performances. This is the go big or go home moment of the season, and the audience that takes in the pageant is dazzled.

However, everything is not perfect.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Women Laughing Alone with Salad
Theater Wit

Vance Packard first blew the whistle on Madison Avenue in 1957, so it should come as no surprise in 2018 to hear that advertisers are out to manipulate us into spending money on their products. Sheila Callaghan, however, also sees our cultural values reflected in this seemingly benign capitalistic propaganda—specifically, the proliferation of images depicting the solitary bliss of attractive young women smiling open-mouthed as they cheerfully fork fresh green plant fiber past teeth unmarked by chlorophyll stains.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Merchant on Venice
The Greenhouse

There's this Hindu import-export mogul operating out of Los Angeles, you see—Venice Boulevard, to be exact. His Hollywood homey plans to woo a Monterey-county heiress to finance his next movie, but in order to raise travel money, they must secure a loan from the Muslim moneylender that both have previously vilified for his conservative practices. The Shia broker agrees to provide them the necessary funds, contingent on a contract involving collateral too grotesque to be taken seriously—perhaps.

Wait! Didn't Shakespeare write a play very similar to this in 1596?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Frozen
St. James Theater

Frozen is heartwarming. Yes, this is one of many word plays engendered by the stage adaptation of the Disney blockbuster movie. The film, in turn, was loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, “The Snow Queen.” If you know anything about the works of HCA, you know that there’s plenty of Danish gloom combined with the Disney pizzazz. But the most important question at the end of the day is whether or not the musical is entertaining.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Always...Patsy Cline
Stackner Cabaret

A timely retelling of the story of one of country music’s greatest stars gets off on the right note, with a young Patsy Cline (Kelley Faulkner) warbling one of her songs. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater is reviving its hit show of 2012, when Faulkner first channeled the unforgettable Patsy Cline in Always … Patsy Cline.

In the same month as the production debuts, A PBS-TV documentary on Patsy Cline also airs. This March marks 54 years after Cline died tragically in a private plane accident.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Things They Carried, The
Florida Studio Theater - Bowne's Lab Theater

As a story, The Things They Carried gives a chilling personal account by an aging Viet Nam veteran about before, during, and after he was drafted into the army. Actor-narrator David Sitler stoutly acts out the story, colored by extraordinary lighting and realistic sound. But this adaptation basically retains a narrative structure in which there’s neither a sustained conflict nor an end that grows from it.

The engaging story begins with Tim’s long, impressive account of his fellow soldiers in Nam.

Marie J> Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Distant Observer: Tokyo/New York Correspondence
La MaMa

Distant Observer: Tokyo/New York Correspondence, presented by La MaMa at La Mama, was written by two playwrights, one in New York and one in Tokyo. The segments of the final script alternate between the work of the two of them. The play, then, is modeled after a renga, a Japanese verse form in which multiple writers collaborate.

The creative method is interesting, but Distant Observer reflects nothing of this dyad process. It simply makes no difference, as we can’t discriminate between the style of the two writers, at least in translation.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Bright Star
Hobby Center

With claims of being “inspired by real events,” and with fine direction from Walter Bobbie, the current Theater Under the Stars production of the Broadway musical, Bright Star, has no shortage of charms.

A delightful collaboration of music and story by Steve Martin & Edie Brickell, the show has a compelling book by Mr. Martin and pleasant lyrics from songwriter, Brickell.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea
The Den

Tribal histories featuring forced migrations can exacerbate the propensity of young people to speculate on fanciful origin stories beyond those imparted by their immediate kin. Who knows what secrets may lurk beneath the prosaic (read: boring) lineage promulgated by parents bent on steering adolescent imaginations toward practical considerations? Dontrell Jones III is grateful for the scholarship at Johns Hopkins University awaiting him at the end of this, his 18th summer, but when his ancestors call to him in a dream, a spiritual odyssey is inevitable.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Shooter
TheaterLab

Sam Graber’s skillfully written play Shooter is a study of “a pre-emptive shooting massacre.” Jim has shot to death a would-be mass killer and seriously wounded a student in order to prevent the killer from “shooting up a high school.” We learn this through well-placed delayed exposition after meeting Jim and his attorney—an old buddy—in the first scene. Most of the play consists of flashbacks. Its scenes fill in the back story and relate the circumstances that lead to Jim’s preoccupation with his handgun.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Extreme Whether
La MaMa

Karen Malpede’s play Extreme Whether, presented by Theater Three Collaborative at La MaMa, describes itself as “a Cli-Fi drama.” Its concern is climate change, and it explores the issue through a family drama. John is a climate scientist, Rebecca West his live-in colleague. Living with them are his 13-year-old daughter and an older gentleman called Uncle. John’s sister, Jeanne, and her husband, Frank, are visitors. The home is on protected land that John and Jeanne have inherited.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
At Home at the Zoo
Pershing Square Signature Center

In 1958, Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, a one-act play destined to become an American classic, premiered in Berlin paired with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. Almost a half century later, Albee created Homelife as a prologue to The Zoo Story, and in 2009, the two one-act plays were combined as At Home at the Zoo, currently in production at the Pershing Square Signature Theater.

Interesting: The opening line in the Act I, “Homelife,” is "We should talk," Ann's comment to her husband, Peter, in their Upper East Side apartment.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Roe
Florida State Uuniversity Center for the Performing Arts -Mertz Theatre

Powerfully going beyond a courtroom drama, Roe depicts a controversial Supreme Court decision and the polarized movements it generated. A turbulent history proves inseparable from the biographies of Norma McCorvey, depicted as plaintiff Jane Roe, and her lawyer Sarah Weddington. As their lives continue to affect continuation of women’s most personal rights, are there also responsibilities? Do answers appear in the superbly written and wonderfully acted, directed, produced drama at Asolo Rep?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Until the Flood
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

When the riots erupted in Ferguson, Missouri about four years ago (after a young black man died in a police shooting), the nation took notice. Although those headlines have since faded, the rippling waves of emotion sparked by this tragic event have been captured and expressed by Dael Orlandersmith. The the Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright is the author of Until the Flood. The show is performed as a one-woman piece that lasts a bit more than an hour.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Escape to Margaritaville
Marquis Theater

If “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)” is your idea of an idyllic Escape to Margaritaville, this is the show for you. If you’re a Parrothead and can sing along to all the Jimmy Buffett songs offered here (as many in the audience apparently are), you’ll be right at home. Despite a talented cast and the obvious technical expertise it took to put on this production, I found myself yearning for The Band’s Visit and Come from Away, musicals with real heart and better tunes.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Price, The
The Players' Backstage

Contrary to Arthur Miller’s title, The Price involves not one but a number of past-paid prices that will bring out a family’s values. How those will determine their future and that of an appraiser of their inherited furniture ends the dramatic story. Two Chairs Company presents all in an intimate space so actors and audience share a close-up emotional experience. They also partake of Miller’s powerful social and philosophical views.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Three on a Match
IATI Theater

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, New York City based IATI Theater Todo Vanguardia, which is devoted to contemporary, cutting-edge Latino works, could not have selected a more compelling and beautifully crafted play than Rhett Martinez’s Three on a Match, which examines state-sponsored terrorism in Latin America during the 70s and 80s, and by a short stretch of the imagination, similar horrors currently going on in other parts of the world.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
March 2018

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