MILWAUKEE, WI THEATER REVIEWS

When Dickens wrote his timeless Christmas story about mid 19th century London audiences often push aside, especially at the holidays, he wanted his audiences to be transformed into seeing their world  in a new way. In 2016, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater produces their 41st incarnation of Char...

Written 30 plus years ago in 1985, the late Milwaukee playwright Larry Shue's award winning Foreigner first debuted at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. After playing Broadway in the 80's, and reprised by numerous theaters across the country on an annual basis, Foreigner returns to the Quadracci Powe...

What defines a family--those people who love by sacrificing their own life for someone else? In a lavish production where Chris March's luscious costumes touch the senses, Skylight Music Theater stages the 1983 Broadway musical La Cage Aux Folles. Scenic Designer Liliana Duque Piñeiro complements M...

This season Milwaukee Repertory Theater's Stackner Cabaret warms the holidays with the Great American Songbook: A tribute to the incomparable composer Irving Berlin in the musical revue I Love A Piano. When an old forlorn piano with one broken note magically reveals the instrument's history during ...

In an on-stage adventure that will thrill any secret buccaneer, Theater RED world premieres Bonny Anne Bonny in collaboration with the Department of Theatre at Milwaukee's Wisconsin Lutheran College's (WLC). Set in the WLC Performing Arts Center's Raabe Theatre, WLC students along with Director Chr...

You can feel fall. The breaking of a stick. The shattering of leaves. It's unusual to fall victim to this intense experience in the aggressively muggy, unending days of August in Milwaukee. And yet you'll feel this beginning with the first chord of Optimist Theatre's production of Shakespeare's trag...

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 glas...

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...

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 treatis...

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'...

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...

'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...

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 ...

'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 an...

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 fair...

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...

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 Pulitz...

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, surre...

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...

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 Co...

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 Carrol...

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 th...

If ever a story captured the wonder of childhood dreams and fantasies, then Lewis Carroll's novel 'Alice's Adventures In Wonderland' travels to this hidden places in the heart and mind. Milwaukee Ballet's absolutely astonishing production of Alice (in wonderland) transports Carroll's magical stories...

Twenty years and 21st century technology bring Kevin Henkes' beloved picture book, Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse to First Stage this May and June to send their audiences into summer on a brilliant high. In a production combining three Henkes' stories, including 'Chester's Way' and 'Julius, Baby of t...

“A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind,” quotes Eugène Ionesco, the author of the Boulevard Theatre's charming and provocative production Bald Soprano.. Ionesco, considered one of the forerunners of absurd/surreal theater, wrote the one-act play (90 minutes, no intermission) at th...