Peggy Sue Dunigan - Page 5

"No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it ain't music." spoke jazz singer Billie Holiday. No singer duplicated Billie Holiday's inimitable voice or immortalized jazz singing and standards quite like this legendary diva.. While Holiday herself idolized Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, "Lady Day" as she was nicknamed, captured the audience's imagination while breaking their hearts when speaking of her tragic childhood. Unfortunately, the singer's personal demons in love and life were also legendary In a tribute to Holiday's career, Milwaukee Rep's opening Stackner Cabaret Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill features the award-winning Alexis J. Roston portraying the star in her declining years after release from a year's imprisonment on drug related charges, which plagued the star her entire life.

Knock on the card table and the Gin player who does so wins the game if ten points or less remain in their hand. Knock on Third Avenue Playhouse's door in Sturgeon Bay to appreciate their new production of the 1977 Pulitzer Prize wining play The Gin Game. In this fascinating battle of wills and wits, Weller and Fonsia fight for their dignity in a dilapidated nursing home, where the nurses become condescending and the Methodist church choir continually sings to entertain them.

Once again, Peninsula Players imports a fresh new play first produced in 2015 direct from Utah to Door County. Playwright Kenneth Jones' Alabama Story received a first regional premiere at the award-winning Fish Creek theater in a story where an innocent children's book by Garth Williams--'The Rabbits' Wedding'-incites civil unrest in Montgomery, Alabama, 1959.

When the audience arrives at American Players (APT) Up the Hill Theatre for the opening of William Shakespeare's King Lear, they might believe a presidential press conference will be staged. Green lawn expands into the audience, actors place contemporary white chairs in a distinct pattern and a glass podium greets the audience--and plenty of paparazzi appear to capture the King, the Duke of Gloucester and Duchess of Kent, and Lear's three daughters entering the lawn party. At night under the stars, the royal staging opens when the King appears announcing his 'retirement,' dividing his kingdom to his three progeny. Two dutiful daughters ascend to the podium pronouncing their love, while Cordelia speaks from the back row of chairs, the front of the Up The Hill Theatre. Goneril, Regan and Cordelia were 'dressed to kill', so to speak in sophisticated, fashion worthy coats and the appropriate fascinators, for English royalty, as were the men.This beginning places the audience firmly in a King Lear crafted for the current day, up to the very minute audiences.

What happens in Bucks County, Pennsylvania-Upper Back Eddy, Bucks County to be specific? Playwright Christopher Durang called Bucks Country home and set his award winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike in their country house right there. A place where almost nothing happens except a blue heron visits a pond on the property each morning that Vanya and Sonia wait for while drinking their morning coffee. Milwaukee Chamber Theater opens their 2016-2017 season in the Cabot Theatre with this 2012 Tony Award for Best Play that captures three siblings, one adopted, contemplating their midlife regrets and revelations. Or as Durang would say: 'Their hidden reservoirs that haven't been tapped.'

In a stellar setting at the Touchstone Theatre in Spring Green, a superb American Players Theatre (APT) cast plays out Samuel Beckett's Endgame. An uncomfortable production to watch on stage, Director Aaron Posner breathes humor and touching life into Beckett's classic one act tragicomedy, a treatise on the end of personal and possibly global life. The desolate, tiny room, which was noted by Beckett himself in the original stage directions to be completely empty, was designed void of any beauty except for a lone terrarium filled with sand and a few artifacts from the lost, viable earth along with loose pages and stacks of books, where Beckett's characters barely survive.

Could life be portrayed similar to a steaming cup of tea that eventually grows cool, and finally stone cold? That premise represents one possible physical property of energy, specifically heat, in Tom Stoppard's 1993 play titled Arcadia. At American Players Theatre (APT) Up the Hill stage, Stoppard's contemporary, complex and cunning production poses the duality to life and questions theoretical polar opposites such as order versus chaos. In this absorbing and provocative play where the heat of romantic love interferes with life's scientifically charted course, where the unpredictable and predetermined meet, this APT cast features excellent poetic form when playing what Stoppard also contemplated: 'It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.'

Does a comic opera from 1910 resonate with contemporary audiences? The answer would be with certainty, yes. Third Avenue Playhouse's Madame Sherry with original book/lyrics by Otto Harbach and music by Karl L. Hoschna, would be completely entertaining in the under James Valcq's impressive adaptation and direction along with a talented acting troupe who possess triple threats---they act, dance and sing. Valcq adapted the vintage comic opera from a found script and stage manager's notes discovered in New York's Public library and produces this effervescent theater experience on stage in Sturgeon Bay. With more than 20 songs, romantic smooching and clever choreography, Madame Sherry rings in summer entertainment and chases away any cloudy skies appearing on the horizon, literally or figuratively.

'Everything which is necessary, the entire thing, the whole shebang.' This was the original meaning of the British slang term 'the full monty,' before the 1997 British film of the same name. At Peninsula Players (PPT) in August 2016, everything which is necessary, the whole shebang, appears on stage in their marvelous production of The Full Monty. Ever since the 1997 British version heralded this cult classic term, these words have transformed in meaning to mean, 'full nudity.' Which is exactly the meaning Terrence McNally, (book), and David Yazbek (lyrics and music) displayed in their 2000 adaptation musical production reset in Buffalo, New York and applies to six unemployed steel workers. Or named in an alternate title completely reality, 21st century: Desperate Men, Desperate Moves, Desperate Mania.

While William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar dramatically retells history through rich verse, Door Shakespeare at Baileys Harbor's Bjorklunden gives the play a fiercely human touch in this intimate garden setting. Here a serene rose garden might be enjoyed before the show, directly accessible from the bleacher theater seating. While Director and Milwaukee Rep Artistic Associate James Pickering focuses Shakespeare's political tragedy on the personal relationships between Brutus and Caesar, Cassius and Brutus or Brutus and Portia, Marc Anthony weaves between these relationships before laying rest to the murdered dictator in his famous, 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen' oration... In the lush garden on this moonlit stage, the tragic drama acquires a highly intimate and personal interpretation between the litany of interconnections crossing the moral lines between friends and foes, honor and honesty.

'The course of true love never did run smooth'...so quotes William Shakespeare in his popular comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. Door Shakespeare heightens that famous line in this rousing, high energy romp at Bjorklunden Garden in Baileys Harbor this summer. Former Milwaukee Rep Artistic Director and Door County resident Joseph Hanreddy personally stamps Shakespeare's forest fairies and lover's magic with an inventive blend of mayhem that includes some countryfied music for the audience's pleasure.

On any given Sunday afternoon or weekday evening, Third Avenue Playhouse (TAP) presents enthralling theatrical happenings that make audiences crave indoor (and air conditioned) time and space, that relates to the Newtonian.. This July, Sturgeon Bay's year round performing arts center presents a fairly new and contemporary play titled Isaac's Eye that subtly asks the question: "Would you rather be famous for centuries and die alone or have someone who loved you say "I'm happy that you lived?" by delving into the life of Sir Isaac Newton.

n a year when the country tries to discern the truth about numerous politician's pasts, presents and futures, Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband attempts to make some sense of blackmail and corruption in the government institutions and individuals who serve their citizens. American Players Theatre takes their audiences Up The Hill for Wilde's summer visual delight. This fascinating production captivates the eye along with the ear dressing the cast in lavish period costumes designed by Matthew J. Lefebvre amid a cream and golden gilded stage, period rooms, courtesy of Scenic Designer Takeshi Kata.

Long ago and far away in an ice age near the fictional town of Excelsior, New Jersey, playwright Thornton Wilder placed the supposedly All American Antrobus family-two adults, two children and their luscious looking maid. They survive dinosaurs and disasters in The Skin of Our Teeth, Wilder's Pulitzer Prize Winning 1942 play at Off the Wall Theater (OTW) through July 3. Artistic Director Dale Gutzman assembles an eclectic, extensive cast transcending the floods, hurricanes, war and 5000 years of marriage, a true miracle, to relate Wilder's menagerie of time frames and philosophical journeys on how the human species copes over centuries.

Name one person worth passing through the gates of Hades for while singing a song so sorrowful the stones would weep--A parent? A child? A partner? Perhaps even a true friend? American Players Theatre stages Eurydice, steampunk style in the Touchstone Theatre, recreating Sarah Ruhl's ethereal, surreal play examining love and the lengths someone would travel to serve that love. Based on the Greek myth of lovers Eurydice and musical rock star Orpheus, the child of Calliope and perhaps the God Apollo, Ruhl transforms the myth with a tale in tribute to her own father. Directed by Londoner Tyne Rafaeli, this production acquires a spiritual ambiance drawing the audience into Ruhl's and Rafaeli's underworld where Orpheus searches for Eurydice and literal sobs, tears flowing freely, were heard in the audience on opening day.

Under the stars in Peninsula State Park for the 2016 season, Northern Sky Theater (NST) stages their latest World Premiere, Doctor! Doctor! Milwaukee's Matt Zembrowski, who grew up sitting in the state park audiences since he was 12, dreamed  of writing a musical for the former American Folklore Theater, now Northern Sky, his entire life and this season fulfills that vision. Books, lyrics and music composed and written by Zembrowski, a considerable artistic feat, recommend the play as 'a prescription for laughter,' which the new musical delivered for opening week audiences. NST's talented acting troupe produce lighthearted laughter for an enthusiastic Door County crowd.

Arthur Miller's 1949 Pulitzer Prize winning play Death of a Salesman might be considered by critics the most influential play of the 20th century. American Players Theatre presents a visceral, gut-wrenching production at the Up the Hill Theatre, the scenery drenched in depression glass colored green.: A green bedspread on a tarnished brass bed, a green ice box stands behind a humble green table and four chairs. Envisioned by Scenic Designer Michael Ganio, did he and veteran Director Kenneth Albers infer Willy Loman suffer from depression, was green with envy for his his brother Ben and friend Charley? Or did this particular hue represent the institutional green characterizing hospitals and mental asylums in the '40's and '50's symbolizing the breakdown between a person's memory and reality that Willy and his family struggle with?

Outside the Touchstone Theatre in Spring Green, American Players Theatre (APT) stages an exuberant African Dance accompanied by the thunder of drums and keyboard. The impromptu performance celebrates the legacy of color about to be admired on stage in a production of Carlyle Brown's The African Company Presents Richard III. Set in 1821 New York, the play focuses on actual historical events where a small African-American theater company produced their production of Shakespeare's Richard III on the exact same night  the famous Park Theatre owned by Daniel Price opened their production featuring English actor Julius Booth as the deformed king.

Quite refreshing and revitalizing as a summer breeze, American Players Theater (APT) opened their 2016 Up the Hill season in Spring Green with a wild version of William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Directed by the well-known David Frank, this condensed Comedy revisits a slight nod to Lewis Carroll's 'The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland.' The production plays broadly by quoting  Shakespeare's verse with a tongue in cheek delivery also heightened by Victorian costumes designed by Fabio Tablini.  The imaginative designer envisioned two Dromios which might resemble Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, clothed in wide striped pants, vivid colored jackets and huge straw hats. The story set amid an Ephesus where square marble columns and a great gate placed on the left Up The Hill stage fashioned by Scenic Designer Nayna Ramey, gives Ephesus a rather dream like quality. 

Gilbert and Sullivan returned to the Cabot Theatre when Skylight Music Theatre presented the iconic duo's comic Pirates of Penzance. The popular G&S operetta had opened the curtains nine times at the Broadway Theatre Center, and when directed by Shawna Lucey, a strong feminine element appears in these familiar women--Ruth, Mabel and Major General Stanley's bevy of beautiful daughters. their wits up against Frederic and his 'orphan' band of tender hearted pirates.