MILWAUKEE, WI THEATER REVIEWS

Think fairytales can be out of fashion? Please think again. Fairytales represent stories beloved and valued by every culture for untold centuries. So when a contemporary, in high fashion fairytale opens the 2014-2015 Skylight Music Theatre's 56th season bringing Milwaukee 'Fairytales and Fantasy' u...

Country music, or incredible parodies of the legendary genre, twanged and twittered into the Stackner Cabaret when the Milwaukee Rep opened The Doyle & Debbie Show this September. A rollicking honky tonk evening, this pastiche tribute to county music also lampoons the battle between the sexes, an ef...

While a storm raged in Fish Creek outside Peninsula Players Theatre (PPT) on a Thursday evening, inside actor Christine Mild generated her own songstress fury starring in the musical memoir "Always..Patsy Cline." PPT's memorable production directed by Brian Russell retells Cline's short yet stell...

In the "intimate" comedy at Sturgeon Bay's "intimate" Third Avenue Playhouse, Stage Door Theatre Company presents Noel Coward's cheeky comedy from the 1930's Private Lives. In one of Coward's most successful plays, two previously married spouses meet on their respective honeymoons with their now you...

Astonished. Demanded. Surprised. These few simple words ignite the provocative action in Peninsula Players Theatre Midwest premiere of Richard Strand's equally enthralling BUTLER. Staged in Fish Creek at the company's theatrical home along the Green Bay shores, the captivating civil war drama focus...

In opening Milwaukee Chamber Theatre's 40th Anniversary season, Milwaukee actor Angela Iannone reprises the role of Maria Callas in Terrence McNally's Tony Award winning play Master Class this August. While Callas has ultimately been lauded as the top operatic singer in the last century, Iannone has...

Cross, hook, jab and uppercut-know anything about boxing? Sturgeon Bay's Third Avenue Playhouse imports Sossy Merchanics in a Stage Door Theatre Company performance billed Tricky Boxing August. While no audience member needs to know anything about boxing to throughly enjoy the high energy productio...

Sit down for a sophisticated cocktail on the Green Bay shores at Door County's Peninsula Players Theatre (PPT) this weekend. Then enter through the theater doors at eight in the evening to enjoy the stage adaptation of Agatha Christie's best selling novel which has sold over 100 million copies to da...

After attending American Folklore Theater's Packer Fans From Outer Space twice in one week, the smiles and laughter can still be remembered, a Door County memory to revisit regularly, even when the company's name changes next year to Northern Sky Theater. Lee Becker, Frederick Heide and James Kaplan...

There's magic in the summer air at Third Avenue Playhouse. Sturgeon Bay's Stage Door Theater Company opened their new season with Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly. In this 1980 Pulitzer Prize winning play set in Lebanon, Missouri, with some resemblance to a Door County July, an age worn folly, a Vict...

Perhaps the power of American Players Theatre can be determined by an audience's silence when exiting the Touchstone Theater after a Sunday evening performance, the haunting quiet almost reverent appreciation for what had transpired minutes before. In Spring Green, Sarah Day illuminates the stage in...

Outdoor theater experienced under Spring Green's star studded Wisconisn sky at American Players Theatre easily engages the audiences. When the renowned company alights on the Up the Hill Theatre with one of William Shakespeare's finest comedies Much Ado About Nothing for their summer 2014 season. th...

The distinguished experience of Director Kenneth Albers returns to American Players Theatre (APT) in rural Spring Green for David Mamet's multiple award winning play, American Buffalo. First produced in 1975, the three person drama fills the indoor Touchstone Theater with the talents of Brian Mani, ...

In a tribute to the quintessential wit of Oscar Wilde, Spring Green's American Players Theatre (APT) opens their 2014 season at the Up the Hill Theatre by staging The Importance of Being Earnest. A play often considered one of Wilde's great literary achievements, APT under the direction of William B...

Michael Pink's World Premiere Mirror, Mirror conjures a spell that leaves the audience speechless except for the applause of a standing ovation in Uhlien Hall at Milwaukee's Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. In collaboration with the Milwaukee Ballet Company, Andrews Sill and the Milwaukee Ball...

As one of the first fully produced Young Company productions, Fist Stage and their First Stage Theater Academy presents this premiere organization of high school talent in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at Milwaukee's Golda Meir School. The production marks a collaboration with the National ...

Friday night for the inagural performance, Milwaukee's Skylight Music Theatre presented Daron Hagen's world premiere I Hear America Singing in the Studio Theatre at the Historic Third Ward's Broadway Theatre Center. The Milwaukee born and bred Hagen, a graduate from Brookfield Central High School an...

To celebrate women and the love/hate relationship they contemplate with their closets, Wisconsin's Sturgeon Bay', which opens the way to beautiful Door County, and Co Artistic Directors' Robert Boles and James Valcq of Third Avenue Playhouse present the late Nora Ephron's and her sister Delia's thea...

Daring, dramatic and dynamic. Words to describe the conclusion of First Stage's 27th season when the company presents a 50th World Premiere co-written by Artistic Director Jeff Frank and Associate Artistic Director John Maclay adapted from the classic series of mystery stories ghost writtne by Marga...

America loves cars, big or beautiful cars, and the late playwright James McLure uses a classical 1959 Thunderbird as a metaphor for his two one act plays In Tandem Theater blends into their season ending selection: 1959 Pink Thunderbird. These two one act plays directed by both Jane and Chris Fliell...

Small, professional theater companies produce theater on sparse budgets. There great contribution to city's culture includes producing plays at affordable prices and granting a variety of acting talent invaluable experience. Milwaukee's Unchained Theatre operates on a tiny budget in the heart of the...

This April, Milwaukee Rep staged an interesting performance written by David Bar Katz for the finale of their 60th Anniversary season. Superman, a fictional comic book hero still idolized by young and old, arrived in the production The History of Invulnerability, a play dependent on an overwhelming ...

In a classic comedy to end the 2013-2014 season, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre presents the popular farce 'Lend Me a Tenor.' C. Michael Wright directs the internationally produced Ken Ludwig play featuring actors hiding behind or running through closed doors while mistaken identities almost ruin a Cleve...

For the incurable or reluctant romantic, man or woman, Renaissance Theaterworks reprises Gary Anderson's sensuous play Skin Tight. First produced by the women's theater company in 2004, the theatrical hour reminisces one version of a marriage over a lifetime. With the sparse scenery recreating a vis...

What happens when someone "lives long enough to see everything you liked and loved crumble before you?" Playwright Henry Murray confronts the question of aging within the context of marriage, conceived completely in an intriguing contemporary format....