MILWAUKEE, WI THEATER REVIEWS

Opening night at the Pabst Theatre this December celebrated the 40th Anniversary of Milwaukee Rep's A Christmas Carol. The city's mayor Tom Barrett was on hand with an executive from Wells Fargo, the production's corporate sponsor. Each man echoed that theater, especially this longstanding tradition...

In the 50th anniversary year of the award winning, animated television special, the live production A Charlie Brown Christmas captured the imagination of Milwaukee audiences this past weekend. First Stage presents a theatrical interpretation of the beloved holiday classic, adapted by Eric Schaeffer ...

'I know of only one duty,' said George Bernard Shaw, 'And that is to love.' While Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) presents a trilogy of one acts titled Love Stories--- including Shaw's short, three-scene play titled 'Village Wooing'---next door to the Studio Theatre the Skylight Music Theatre featur...

Milwaukee Repertory Theater transports London's inimitable West End theater tradition to Milwaukee on their Quadracci Powerhouse stage. One of the theater's most successful playwrights, Agatha Christie, and her murder mystery The Mousetrap, haunt and humor theatergoers this November and December. T...

Assembling an amazing array of talent appearing on the Cabot Theatre Stage, the Skylight Music Theatre's My Fair Lady lingers in the audience's mind long after their standing ovations.---just as Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's magnificent musical did when the production first opened on Broa...

In a backstage dressing room of New York's Metropolitan Opera, Enrico Caruso appears as David Cecsarini, Artistic Director of Next Act Theater. The company's perfectly paired production also features Christopher Tramantana as Caruso's faithful valet, Mario. In playwright William Luce's Bravo, Caru...

Every time Guys on Ice takes to the stage writer and lyricist Fred Alley's spirit soars again. Milwaukee Rep's Stackner Cabaret presents this unique musical for the holiday season directed by Northern Sky Theater Artistic Director Jeffrey Herbst and also Alley's boyhood friend. .Music Director and c...

Boulevard Ensemble Theatre opened their 30th season at the East Side Plymouth Church presenting an absolutley charming romance Handle with Care. Award-winning author and playwright Jason Odell Williams' wrote a heartwarming comedy and intertwines several religious traditions when a young Jewish wom...

American Players Theatre (APT) stages Pierre D. Marivaux's romantic romp The Game of Love and Chance surrounded by the warmth of Spring Green's Touchstone Theatre. What could be more enchanting and elegant on their intimate stage than a golden Rococo chandelier illuminating Nathan Stuber's mimimal a...

An evening at Artistic Director Dale Gutzman's Off the Wall Theatre (OTWT) continually thrills the intellect and imagination while raising the heart rate. To honor a French theater tradition beginning at the turn of the 20th century (1897), OTWT stages a Milwaukee Grand Guignol, a production consi...

Renaissance Theaterworks (RTW) inhabits the Studio Theater at the Broadway Theatre Center and presents a true ballad--a dramatic narrative told over generations often set to music and dance--where this powerful tale recounts the life of 14 year-old Emmett Till. Over the thrid October weekend, Ifa ...

When the curtainss opened in Uhlein Hall last weekend at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, Milwaukee Ballet unfolded Michael Pink's world renowned Dracula to a mesmerized audience. While the stage Dracula seduced his prey, the ballet company danced with sensual abandon in technical beau...

What does somenone do when his or her world is turned upside down and there's no where to go? James Henry, the litlte boy in author Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach discovers this dilemma after a terrible accident places him alone in an orphanage. That is, until his two aunts Spiker and Spo...

n revealing a true story through an autobiographical musical, songwriter Benjamin Scheuer performs his coming of age titled The LIon. Milwaukee Rep's Stiemke Studio presents this up-close and personal production after being named an outstanding solo performance on both sides of the Atlantic. On stag...

Take one college philosophy student, her two Jewish parents, one an English teacher, the other an event/wedding planner, and an Irish Catholic uncle and throw thiem in a South Philiadelphia aparment for a Monday night football game. This eclectic mix of characters on stage ponders moral questions fr...

The romance of letter writing centers Milwaukee Chamber Theatre's (MCT) Midwest premiere of Dear Elizabeth. Playwright Sarah Ruhl's character study of Pulitzer Prize winners Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell carries the two writers through their 30 plus year friendship, the ups and downs in produci...

The glitter and shimmer of show business underscores the 'American Dream' at Milwaukee Rep this October. The mulit-award winning  Broadway production Dreamgirls, floods the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater with showstopping light, song and an equally award-winning cast to dazzle Milwaukee audiences....

n a new season celebrating creative women, Skylight Music Opera opens with an elegant tribute to composer Giacomo Puccini's Tosca. Jill Anna Ponasik, Artistic Director of Milwaukee Opera Theatre, weaves the libretto by Luigi Illica and Amanda Holden's English translastion into a visually stunning an...

Stage Door Theatre Company discovers a 'fine way to treat a Steinway,' Words the illustrious and prolific composer Irving Berlin wrote in his song 'I Love a Piano.' Third Avenue Playhouse presents a musical revue concieved by James Valcq based on Berlin's early career using this as the title, and th...

A mellow eveing of memories opens The Rep's Stackner Cabaret for their 2016-2017 seaso. Back Home Again: On the Road with John Denver recalls the live and reminiscing of former band member and fellow musician Dan Wheetman. A man who travelled on tour with the acoustic country and folk music singer...

When writer Dan Goggin imagined and produced his line of greeting cards featruing sassy nuns, few people would have predicted their instant success or the award-winning, full-length musical after the fact titled Nunsense. When the show's premiered on Broadway in 1985, the Nunsense phenomena conti...

Nineteen years have passed since Fish Creek's Northern Sky Theater (NST and formerly AFT) premiered Lumberjacks in Love. As part of the company's 25 anniversary season, this box office hit returns for the fall season at the Door Community Auditorium. And after almost two decades, these burly Haywar...

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A tiny village named Killucan set in contemporary Ireland ignites family fueds and past ghosts in an irrepressible production titled Outside Mullingar at Peninsula Players Theatre. John Patrick Shanley's 2014 play flames the deep fires of hearth and heath burning in his four Irish characters: Tony R...

The connection between man/woman and beast, especially a domesticated beast, can be complicated. Ask a dog or cat owner to describe their relationship and the pets often acquire human qualities, they are usually loved beyond what anyone might expect, and profoundly impact the lives of their owners...