Jay Baker News

In a beautiful, breathtaking evening at Milwaukee Rep, Artistic Director Mark Clements reprises his critically acclaimed production Of Mice and Men. On stage, Todd Edward Ivins' elegant, grand set design creates a wooden bunkhouse where shadows flow onto the stage and complements Jesse Klug's sensual lighting. These technical elements elevate John Steinbeck's bindlestiffs and ranch hands set in 1935 California that represent humanity's great struggles to connect to another human being and achieve lofty if sometimes, unattainable dreams.

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. The beguiling The Mousetrap production places several unusual characters in a guest house while snowbound in a small town near London. There's no where for anyone to escape after a seemingly unrelated murder occurs, and the audience applauds every moment as the nursery rhyme tune 'Three Blind Mice.' plays in the background several times during the performance while the guests figure out why they are all considered suspects.

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 composer James Kaplan mans the keyboards along with Bo Johnson. Played out on the intimate cabaret stage, up close and personal for Miwlaukee audiences, Lloyd, Marvin and Ernie the Moocher revive the age old Northern Wisconsin tradition--Ice Fishing-- with several humorous and poignant 'twists.

With only a few performances remaining of Northern Sky Theater's (NST) 2015 season, their fall selection Lumberjacks in Love draws to a close. Douglas Mancheski retires the Dirty Bob shanty lumberjack he has played on and off since meeting Fred Alley in 1997. An event when Alley first discovered the actor and asked Mancheski to collaborate on the 'Little Dress' song that was immediately added to the popular NST musical. The solo song and dance continually brings smiles to audiences when Mancheski twirls in a ruffled white skirt on stage. Although Mancheski's burly lumberjack days are numbered this year, until NST's next production, he will still be a shanty boy through the holidays in Milwaukee.

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 stage, Scheuer and his acoustic guitars, except for one electric string version, transform the theater with his impressive displays of musicianship over the 70 minute, no intermission production.

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.

What's a star catcher? Theatrical magic, music and serious 'Starstuff' conjure a stunning evening on the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater to answer that very important question. To end their season, Milwaukee Rep presents Peter and the Star Catcher, a prequel to James M. Barrie's 1904 story of the beloved character living in Neverland, Peter Pan. In the multiple Tony Award-winning production written by Rick Elice, Peter Pan's origins take the audience on a star-crossed journey, complete with super-sized crocodiles, sneering pirates, swaying mermaids and mollusks-who dance Busby Berkeley style to Wayne Barker's clever music. What an adventure to put a twinkle in the eyes of any audience over the age eight!

Reaching from a music tradition founded near the turn of the 20th century, the All-American Blues "brings out the boogie" at Milwaukee Rep's Stackner Cabaret. Their lusty revue Low Down Dirty Blues features "Big Mama" Felicia Fields, Chic Street Man, Sugaray Rayford with the trio accompanied by jazz pianist Robert Stephens.

Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is pleased to announce Curtain Up!, Bay Street's 4th Annual Spring Benefit honoring Patty and Jay Baker, and Barbara Slifka at Joe's Pub in New York City on May 4. The theater's fourth honors event will be hosted by Bay Street's Artistic Director, Scott Schwartz.

Number 1, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, and a currently in office 42--these numbers represent five presidents and two portraits placed in a holding pen, a room, before Richard Nixon's (37) funeral on April 18,1994 in Yorba Linda, California. The men often identify each other by numbers instead of their names in Milwaukee Rep's World Premiere of Five Presidents.

Gulfshore Playhouse hosted their 5th Annual Bubbles, Baubles, and Broadway Gala Fundraiser on Monday, March 9th at the Naples Beach Hotel. At the event, Gulfshore Playhouse raised nearly $300,000 to help fund the nonprofit organization's general operating budget.

September 13, 27, 29 and October 2, 2006. These forgotten dates inherit new meaning when Milwaukee Rep stages Jessica Dickey's The Amish Project in the Stiemke Studio. Each of these four dates represents a school shooting--and one occurred in a tiny Wisconsin town-- while debut playwright Dickey focuses on October 2. October 2, 2006 the local neighborhood milkman walked into Pennsylvania's Nickel Mines schoolhouse with a gun and shot ten girls, five who survived..

Surprises abound in Milwaukee Rep's Good People on stage at the Quadracci Powerhouse this winter. Pulitzer Prize-winning David Lindsay-Abaire's award-winning 2011 drama features one of the Midwest's favorite actresses Laura Gordon in the title role of Margie Walsh. A single mother living in South Boston trying to survive, to work and care take her adult, but severely mentally challenged, daughter Joyce.

Passion and intensity flow from historian, folklorist and musician Stephen Wade when he arrives at Milwaukee Rep's Stackner Cabaret this winter. On Sunday's opening night, Wade, as writer and performer, carries his work accomplished from more than two decades into this unique performance The Beautiful Music All Around Us. The stage production creates a collage of foot tapping banjo or guitar music, photographs and storytelling into one vibrant evening of 'Street Joy.'

Mysterious circumstances and the inexplicable spirit of a six feet tall white rabbit revisit the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's exquisite 70th anniversary production of Harvey. Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of Ellwood P. Dowd, a man who imagines the rabbit named Harvery is his best friend, unfolds on an elegant double turntable stage designed by Dan Conroy, a sight to delight any audience. The eloquent production humorously explores on a complex level what makes life worth living. Perhaps Ellwood's own words succinctly crystallize that premise: 'You must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. For years I was smart, and than I chose pleasant.'

Two-Time Tony Award Winner Norbert Leo Butz and a live auction featuring trips for theatre lovers and others will highlight the 2015 Gulfshore Playhouse Bubbles, Baubles, and Broadway Gala Fundraiser on March 9, 2015 at the Naples Beach Hotel.

Lame, rhinestones and sequins shimmer like stars on stage this November when Milwaukee Rep reprises Liberace! at the Stackner Cabaret beginning this November. Every holiday season flashes glitter and gold, and The Rep's Associate Artistice Director Brent Hazelton wrote and directed this inspiring musical revue based on the life of Milwaukee's iconic entertainer Wladziu Valentino Liberace, who was once nicknamed the Guru of Glitter.

Incredible, indescribable, infuriating, inflammatory, intense-These host of words attempt to define the Milwaukee Rep's World Premiere 'after all the terrible things I do' opening at the Stiemke Studio this fall in the Patty and Jay Baker Theatre Complex. Set in a Midwestern town beset with Midwestern sensibilities, A. Rey Pamatmat's play, his script, decimates an audience's perception of a culture, gender, race and sexual preferences that transcends discussions on merely being gay, a bully and young or simply a parent wanting to see their child survive.

n a revival of Alice Walker's bold novel The Color Purple, the award winning musical opens The Milwaukee Rep's 2014-2015 theater season reprising the WOW in entertainment that began with Ragtime in their 60th season. Walker's Pulitzer Prize winning 1982 story arrives in a re-adaptation of the 1985 film and 2005 Broadway musical redesigned for the Quadracci Powerhouse stage featuring a superb cast, which after almost three hours, "fills the room like a sweet perfume… restoring a belief in trust and tenderness."

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 effortless task when placed into the gifted hands Michael Accardo (Doyle) and Erin Parker (Debbie) accompanied by the indefatigable Bo Johnson (Buddy) on the guitar.