Trouble in Mind
American Airlines Theater

Revivals and adaptations are proving startlingly relevant on and Off-Broadway. Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind premiered Off-Broadway in 1955. The play centering on an African-American actress’s confrontation with racial stereotypes in the theater was all set to transfer to Broadway, but the playwright refused to tone down the controversial subject matter and the production was cancelled. Now, 66 years later, Trouble has finally made it to the Main Stem, and Childress’s fiery words are just as pertinent as the day they were written.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
November 2021
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story is as much a biography of rock-and-roll music as of its titular hero. At Florida Studio Theater the spectacular rise of both comes to vivid new life via an impressive cast of actors-musicians. Director Jason Cannon has wisely guided them not to imitate the characters they play but to interpret their artistic and emotional effects.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2021
Autumn Royal
Irish Repertory Theater

If your idea of Irish people is leprechauns and “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya,” Autumn Royal may come as a bit of a culture shock. This Irish Repertory Theatre production flips the coin, and shows us the depression and squalor that can result from alcoholism, isolation, poverty, and despair. Tim (John Keating), and his sister, May (Maeve Higgins), live a dreary life in one hideous room, with a single thought predominant on their minds. Whatever shall we do with father?

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
November 2021
Everybody
Florida State University - Asolo Conservatory - Cook Theater

A contemporary take-off on Everyman, the most famous English medieval morality play, Everybody  still requires the title character to face death. But instead of emphasizing having to account for a life’s good and bad acts to God for placement in the afterlife.  Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’s Everybody lead must reflect mainly on life’s meaning both to self and the society left behind.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2021
Wink
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

In the final months (we hope) of the long Covid pandemic, one of Milwaukee’s scrappiest theater troupes, The Constructivists, is back on stage after a 20-month pause. Their fourth season opens with Wink, an edgy, absurdist comedy by Jen Silverman. Although this dark comedy should be taken very tongue-in-cheek, it does raise important questions about the nature of relationships (both human/human and human/animal) and what we do to survive in this crazy world. The play also demonstrates that there is indeed more than one way to skin a cat.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Caroline, or Change
Studio 54

When it opened on Broadway at the tail end of the 2003-4 season after an Off-Broadway run at the Public Theater, Caroline, or Change was overshadowed by the rivalry between Wicked and Avenue Q. This difficult, strange, and complex musical by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Violet) about the relationship between an African-American maid and the little Jewish boy of the family for whom she works, was too rare a dish for audiences accustomed to a diet of witches and puppets.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Sanctuary City
Lucille Lortel Theater

Martyna Majok’s intense, well-meaning Sanctuary City has a split personality. The first hour of this tale of two young people struggling to deal with our inequitable immigration laws is told in short, fragmentary shards. Sometimes they are repeated to demonstrate the endless cycle of hope and betrayal encountered on the endless path to becoming legal. Most of these vignettes are less than a minute and their cumulative impact is like standing in the middle of a dramatic sand storm.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Serpent, The
Odyssey Theater

Ron Sossi, the Odyssey’s artistic director, directed the West Coast premiere of The Serpent 51 years ago, in the spring of 1970, as the second production of the brand-new Odyssey Theater. He revisited the play in March 2020 as part of the Odyssey’s 50th anniversary “Circa 69” season, only to see the play shuttered five days later by the onslaught of Covid-19.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Diana: The Musical
Longacre Theater

The disappointing Diana—The Musical occupies an awkward position—not entertaining enough to be a guilty pleasure and not bad enough to be a campy hoot. Puerile, tasteless, and simplistic, this tabloid tuner is the first show to be streamed on TV before it opens on Broadway and will probably suffer big-time at the box office as a result. The live version of the musical portrait of the late Princess of Wales was forced to close up shop while in previews because of the COVID pandemic.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Hamilton
Marcus Performing Arts Center

When the Hamilton national tour first played in Milwaukee three years ago, ticket buyers lined up around the block of the show’s venue. Now, so much has happened in terms of American history – and the performing arts – that it seems like eons ago when Hamilton came to town.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
Metropolitan Opera (as simulcast to cinemas)

The same week I took in Broadway’s Caroline, or Change revival, I attended a cinema simulcast of the last performance of the historical production of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the Metropolitan Opera’s first presentation by a black composer. Like Caroline, Fire addresses hot-button issues of race and community and features a fascinating score (by Terrence Blanchard) brimming with multiple influences.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Chicken and Biscuits
Circle in the Square

While Broadway theaters were shuttered and demonstrations erupted across the country protesting the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white police officer, the industry underwent a reckoning to be more inclusive and diverse. As stages are slowly reopening, the number of productions written by African-Americans like Keenan Scott II’s  Thoughts of a Colored Man and Douglas Lyons’s  Chicken and Biscuits has increased above the usual token two or three per season. The latter play premiered at the Queens Theater in Feb.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Thoughts of a Colored Man
John Golden Theater

While Broadway theaters were shuttered and demonstrations erupted across the country protesting the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white police officer, the industry underwent a reckoning to be more inclusive and diverse. As stages are slowly reopening, the number of productions written by African-Americans like Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of a Colored Man and Douglas Lyons’s Chicken and Biscuits has increased above the usual token two or three per season.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Letters of Suresh
Terry Kiser Theater

Second Stage has started its Off-Broadway season with Letter of Suresh, Rajiv Joseph’s companion play to his Animals Out of Paper. This is one of those plays where the characters speak directly to the audience throughout without any direct interaction and the plot revolves around the convention of a series of total strangers pouring their hearts out to each other in letters.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Lehman Trilogy, The
Nederlander Theater

While some current smaller-scale shows, like Is this a Room?, lose a degree of intimacy in their transfers from Off-Broadway to on, The Lehman Trilogy undergoes a metamorphosis in the opposite direction. This Italian play about the American financial empire played a limited run in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory after a smash London engagement at the National Theater. Now, set designer Es Devlin’s huge cube of a revolving set fits neatly into the Nederlander Theater and provides a memorable experience which is both vast and up-close. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Lackawanna Blues
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s off-Broadway solo show, Lackawanna Blues, has found its way to Broadway without losing its snap. Originally presented at the Public Theater in 2001, Blues is the author-star-director’s autobiographical tribute to his beloved foster mother Nanny Crosby, who maintained a boarding house of eccentric characters in the titular upstate New York town while raising him.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Dana H.
Lyceum Theater

After a long absence due to COVID, Broadway is slowly starting to come back. But the majority of new productions are not the typical Main Stem fare of jukebox musicals, revivals, or tuners based on popular movies. Most recent openings have been transfers or returns of unconventional Off-Broadway offerings. Two of them, Is this a Room and  Dana H., playing in repertory after award-winning runs at the Vineyard Theater, are derived from transcripts of recordings of real people living frightening events.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Is this a Room?
Lyceum Theater

After a long absence due to COVID, Broadway is slowly starting to come back. But the majority of new productions are not the typical Main Stem fare of jukebox musicals, revivals, or tuners based on popular movies. Most recent openings have been transfers or returns of unconventional Off-Broadway offerings. Two of them, Is this a Room and  Dana H., playing in repertory after award-winning runs at the Vineyard Theater, are derived from transcripts of recordings of real people living frightening events.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Step Kids
First Stage

Milwaukee’s nationally acclaimed children’s theater, First Stage, embarks on a new project this fall. The company is staging the second year of its “Amplify – BIPOC Short Play Series.” The project combines live and streaming versions of new work that has been created especially for this series. Due to the pandemic, last year’s version offered streaming-only productions. The plays and musicals in this series have been created by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and each one centers on the current viewpoints of young people.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Lehman Trilogy, The
Nederlander Theater

The Lehman Trilogy is a saga of the vitality brought to this country by immigrants, good-old American know-how, and overweening ambition. Three brothers, Henry (Simon Russell Beale), Emanuel (Adrian Lester), and Mayer (Adam Godley) make their way to America. While we never understand how they came to make Mobile, Alabama their home base, it’s from here that the Lehman Brothers begin to make their fortune. First, they deal in garments.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Chicken and Biscuits
Circle in the Square

Is there a family that doesn’t have a few skeletons in the closet? Surely not the new preacher, Reginald Mabry (Norm Lewis) and his nearly perfect wife, Baneatta (Cleo King). But pretty soon, things begin to unravel. Son Kenny (Devere Rogers) comes to his grandpas’ funeral with a friend, Logan (Michael Urie), who’s not only white but also Jewish, and much more than just a friend.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Eubie
Westcoast Black Theater Troupe - Donnelly Theater

What was it like to enjoy performances of Eubie Blake’s music back in the days it was created and presented by Black people? Today’s Westcoast Black Theater Troupe’s audiences can experience that intimacy yet grandeur, under Jim Weaver’s direction, in Eubie. Adam Spencer’s simple set with background for screening and descending steps on both sides of the wide-area, black-floored stage nicely allows for both impressive scene-setting and commentary projections.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Six
Brooks Atkinson Theater

What a joy it is to be able to be part of the audience seeing a Broadway show again! Before the lights go up, before the music starts, before the cast appears, people are already filled with excitement. The enthusiasm doesn’t ebb until well after the show is overa— especially since the performers invite us to stand up, clap, and join in the fun.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Makin' Cake
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

Dasha Kelly Hamilton is not Betty Crocker. She makes that clear in the first moments of Makin’ Cake, her 50-minute performance art piece that had a one night only performance at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stiemke Studio on October 8. Hamilton is currently Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate, and she created this performance piece as a commission from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (yes, the same Kohler as in the company that manufactures faucets and toilets).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Sex with Strangers
Beverly Hills Playhouse

In the revival of Sex with Strangers, which was first performed by Steppenwolf in 2011, Cameron Meyer plays Olivia, a serious but unsuccessful novelist who meets Ethan (Casey King), a hack writer who has become rich cranking out erotic tales on the internet.  The meeting takes place on a snowy March night at a Writer’s Retreat in rural Michigan. Olivia is 40, Ethan 28—and a stud.  The collision of opposites is intense, visceral and fiery.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
Wanderers, The
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

Planned to start Florida Studio Theater’s Winter Cabaret Series last year, The Wanderers got stopped by pandemic-caused closing of FST’s venues. But the four guys who “wander around the world of hit ‘50s and ‘60s harmony groups” have finally lodged melodiously at FST, starting Fall 2021.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2021
What Happened? The Michaels Abroad
Hunter College - Frederick Loewe Theater

 “I don’t know” is the answer the characters in Richard Nelson’s What Happened? The Michaels Abroad give when asked what they will do next after a year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gathered in an apartment in Angers, France for a dance festival, the Michaels and their friends ponder their future in an uncertain world.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Wolfe & the Bird, The
Matrix Theater

There’s a lot of courage and talent in evidence at the Matrix, where Rachel Parker is performing her one-woman show, The Wolfe & the Bird, directed by Alina Phelan.

Any actor taking on a solo show is doing a brave thing -- you’re out there poised on a tightrope -- but to try and do it on a limited budget, in the face of a pandemic, is additionally gutsy.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Three Viewings
Next Act Theater

In its first post-pandemic performance, Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater returns to familiar territory. The company is reviving Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings, which it first offered to audiences in 1997. Director Edward Morgan guides the current production; in doing so, he creates a moving portrait of small-town midwestern life.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Last of the Love Letters, The
Atlantic Theater - Linda Gross Theater

 At first, Ngozi Anyanwu’s The Last of the Love Letters seems like a conventional breakup story. The audience enters the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater to find Anyanwu herself on stage as a character listed in the digital program as “You.” (The others are enigmatically called You No. 2 and Person.) This You is scribbling in a notebook, evidently she is writing the missive alluded to in the title.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Enigmatist, The
Geffen Playhouse - Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

It’s nerd heaven at the Geffen Playhouse, with magician and New York Times “cruciverbalist” (crossword puzzle creator) David Kwong at the center of it.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Full Monty, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

After many quiet months of pandemic life, Milwaukee’s fall theater season opens with a “bang” as Skylight Music Theatre launches the Broadway musical, The Full Monty. The Tony Award-winning musical is especially relevant today, as it deals with people coping with hard times. Long-term unemployment? Difficulty paying the bills? Struggling with weight gain? Feeling isolated and lonely? The Full Monty contains all of that, and more. The show emphasizes the importance of friends and family in making it through tough times together.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Jukebox Saturday Night
Florida Studio Theater - Bowen Lab

In their fourth FST Cabaret End-of-Summer into Fall musical, The Swingaroos glory in presenting five decades of pop favorites in their signature swing style.  They show off the top 1920’s to 1960’s music that people ordered on juke boxes across the nation. No surprise, then, that Act I claims “Happy Days Are Here Again” and Act II starts with  “Put Another Nickel In” for “Music! Music! Music!”

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Birds in the Moon 
Santa Monica Parking Lot #27

Some call it a chamber opera. Others insist it’s simply musical theater—even a glorified carny show. Birds in the Moon incorporates all of those elements in a dazzling, far-out production which was just seen in L.A. As conceived by Mark Grey, who wrote the libretto and score, the show marked Broad Stages’ return to live theater after 18 months of Covid isolation.  Performed on a container stage in a Santa Monica parking lot, Birds in the Moon is a mobile show conceived for two performers, a string quartet, electronic music, and a video operator.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2021
Iliad, An
Touchstone Thetaer

This summer, while audiences were flocking to the large, outdoor theater in Spring Green, Wis., to view Shakespeare under the stars, another small miracle was taking place inside the intimate (200-seat) Touchstone Theatre. American Players Theatre, which operates these two venues, welcomed far smaller crowds to see An Iliad.

The APT production dazzles with its power. Words such as “mesmerizing” and “gripping” don’t begin to describe the experience waiting here.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Pass Over
August Wilson Theater

The first Broadway show to open since the pandemic shutdown of March 2020 is appropriately a blast of fresh air for the naughty, bawdy Great Bright Way. After productions in Chicago in 2017 and at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway Clara Tow Theatre in 2018, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over arrives freighted with history and portend, heralding a new moment in commercial New York theater.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Things I Could Never Tell Steven, The
PrideArts Broadway

Steven is missing, to begin with—not dead, like Marley; or imprisoned, like Edmond Dante—but merely in retreat from his intimate acquaintances. Since these include his parents (male and female), spouse (female), and paramour (male), Steven's absence is the focus of much concern—not to mention disruption of carefully-planned social schedules and lately, furtive misgivings regarding the reasons for his flight.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Pretty Fire
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

The first Milwaukee Black Theater Festival grew out of a response to the George Floyd killings of 2020. A few members of Milwaukee’s theater community gathered after the tragedy to discuss how to heal the community, and how to attract more black audiences to mainstream theaters that were considered primarily-white enterprises. Thus, according to co-founder Malkia Stampley (see below), the Milwaukee Black Theater Festival became the first of its kind, not only in Milwaukee, but throughout the Midwest.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
Merry Wives
Delacorte Theater

Merry Wives, Jocelyn Bioh’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s bawdy comedy of laundry baskets and bedroom antics, is a significant event not because of its slight whimsy but because it marks a return to live theater after nearly a year and a half of COVID restrictions. This first production at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater since the shuttering of stages due to the pandemic in March 2020 is a celebration of the power of theater to unify a community and needs to be cheered for that. The show itself is fun and silly, perfect for a light summer frolic.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2021
For Love or Money
Broadwater Black Box

”Ye cannot serve God and Mammon” said the bible.  Mitch Feinstein tried to do both, as he confesses in his one-man show, For Love or Money, now running at the 2021 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2021

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