Best of Brink Briefs

See listing under Best of Br!nk Br!efs (exclamation points for the letter i)

Best of Br!nk Br!efs
Renaissance Theaterworks

Renaissance Theaterworks, Milwaukee’s only women-founded and women-run company, ends what must have been an exceptionally difficult season (as it was for all theater companies nationwide) with its annual 10-minute play festival, called “Br!nk Br!efs.” The current production incorporates some of the “best” short plays from past seasons, interspersed with some new ones. All of the plays presented here were written by women playwrights living in the Midwest.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Sophie Tucker: Last of the Red-Hot Mamas
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

To celebrate the opening of a season long delayed by pandemic restrictions,  Sophie Tucker: Last of the Red Hot Mamas returns to Florida Studio Theatre where the show originated in 2000. The latest in subsequent reprises, this year’s has more scenic opulence. That matches goings-on as an older, wiser-cracking Kathy Halenda interprets Sophie Tucker’s big fat life.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2021
Tiny Beautiful Things
online

Tiny Beautiful Things, George Street Playhouse’s filmed play, based on Cheryl Strayed’s book, “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar” (2012), a collection of Strayed’s columns, is beautifully brought to life by actress Laiona Michelle, who as Sugar, plays a down-to-earth, expletive-spouting advice-giving columnist. While the play’s three accompanying actors, John Bolger, Kally Duling.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
May 2021
Natural Shocks
online

Fans of popular contemporary playwright Lauren Gunderson won’t want to miss one of her newest plays, Natural Shocks, now available for virtual viewing from Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater.

The play, which opened in New York Off-Broadway in 2018, already has been produced at Colorado and California theaters. This filmed version for Next Act originally was produced for another Wisconsin theater troupe in tiny Sturgeon Bay, Wis. It is presented as Next Act’s final show in its all-virtual 2020-21 season.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2021
Bintel Brief, A
online

Pacific Resident Theater delves deep into Jewish immigrant history with its digital production of A Bintel Brief (“A Bundle of Letters’). The letters were addressed, over a 60-year period, to the editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, the paper of choice of the Yiddish-speaking, first-generation Jews in New York City. Confronted with a strange new world—not to speak of a brand-new language—the immigrants often turned to the Forward’s advice column for help and guidance.>

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2021
46 Plays for America's First Ladies

See listing under FORTY-SIX PLAYS FOR AMERICA'S FIRST LADIES

Forty-Six Plays for America’s First Ladies
online

It’s clear that as much as we know (or seem to know) about America’s past presidents, we tend to know a great deal less about their First Ladies. Madison, Wisconsin’s Forward Theater Company launches an ambitious project that gives us a brief glimpse of all of these women throughout history. The plays begin with Martha Washington and proceed chronologically.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2021
Sistas in the Name of Soul
WBTT

A tribute to singing gals’ groups and their founders of the late ‘60s through ‘70s, Sistas in the Name of Soul is currently WBTT’s lively “mainstage” musical.  Although the amount and range of songs are limited, the talents of their current interpreters are not. While each is vocally distinct, they’re all great at harmonizing as well. Their “We Are Sisters” number is totally believable.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2021
Pipeline
West Coast Black Theater mainstage

There’s apt literary start (Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool”) and end (Richard Wright’s “Native Son”) to the “Pipeline” that affects young Black men in a racist society. But their families aren’t usually uninvolved, as Dominique Morisseau emphasizes in her prescient play of that title. It particularly binds Nya, a teacher in a community school, and her son Omari, whom she’s placed in an upper class boarding school to give him much greater than local opportunities.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
Blindness
Daryl Roth Theater

If a live event has no live actors, stage, sets or costumes, is it really theater? That’s the conundrum posed by Blindness, the unique gathering at the Daryl Roth Theater and the first indoor New York performance presented on or Off-Broadway since all NYC stages were shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic over a year ago. The piece was conceived in response to the pandemic and opened at London’s Donmar Warehouse last year.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
Measure for Measure
online

If the Goodman Theater's shocker of a Measure for Measure in 2013, or the touring Pushkin Theater's Brechtian explication in 2016, weren't enough to convince audiences that autocratic munificence and compulsory matrimony do not a happy life-affirming ending make, Henry Godinez's adaptation for Chicago Shakespeare Theater makes a compelling case for further examination of Shakespeare's most unromantic and uncomic romantic comedy.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
John Cullum: An Accidental Star
online streaming

 Still spry and charismatic at 91, John Cullum offers an enchanting and charming solo turn in John Cullum: An Accidental Star, a 80-minute career retrospective with songs. This virtual cabaret piece, available online until April 22, 2021, was produced by the Irish Repertory Theater, the Vineyard Theater, and Goodspeed Opera House, three theaters Cullum has worked with, and is simplicity itself. Cullum relates stories about his seven-decade career with subtle musical accompaniment by pianist and musical director Julie McBride.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
Lewiston/Clarkston
Overture Center

Head west to the small town of Lewiston, Idaho, and you’ll discover how the town got its name. One of the town’s main attractions is the Lewis and Clark Discovery Center. Located along the banks of the Snake River, the center chronicles the journey of 19th century explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Right across the Snake River is Clarkston, Washington, which also owes its name to the famous pair.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
The Summer of Daisy Fay
online

When you hear that Ed Howard's play is based on a novel by the author of "Fried Green Tomatoes," it's only natural to expect a nostalgic warm-hearted comedy featuring familiar regional archetypes and a heroine whose spunky resourcefulness leads to happy-ever-afters. If you can park your between-the-lines red-flag radar behind the sofa—along with any first-hand memories you might harbor of experiences similar to those recounted by our suspiciously unreliable narrator—you won't be disappointed.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
Julius Caesar
online

What we have from the Asolo Conservatory in these days of pandemic danger is an equally dangerous rendering of Shakespeare’s play into a modern play. The guiding principle of multiple changes in characterization is to eliminate typical gender roles.  That meant casting women in men’s parts and dividing some into two people of opposite gender identity.  It is perplexing to me how these changes bring out the meaning of Shakespeare’s play as a profoundly political one.  Hasn’t it always been?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse Lautrec
Duplex (outside)

COVID vaccinations are ramping up and restrictions are beginning to loosen, but variant strains threaten another pandemic surge. Thus the reopening of Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters is still months away, probably the fall of 2021 at the earliest.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
Three Pianos
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

Celebrating musicians whose pianist abilities girded other facets of their musicianship, Three Pianos reopens Florida Studio Theater’s largest theater, the Gompertz, for the first time since March 2020. What might have been an original cabaret revue expands in a venue that provides plenty of space for social distancing on and offstage. Personal interaction among the pianists, therefore, suffers not a whit. And the audience seems to enjoy having space to stand and applaud throughout.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2021
Authentic Tribute to a King, An
Crighton Theater

Last weekend, after a year of repeated pandemic-related concert rescheduling, the Crighton Theater’s much anticipated, and long-delayed opening night of An Authentic Tribute to the King, had finally arrived to the delight of Friday night’s sold-out crowd. The many eager Elvis fans in attendance included plenty of devoted groupies of the show’s brilliant star, Donny Edwards, the only Elvis Tribute Artist who has ever been honored to perform his show at the Graceland home of the late Mr. Presley.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Vintage POP!
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Carole J. Bufford has been a Florida Studio Theater Summer Cabaret favorite, so no surprise that FST had to extend the run of Vintage POP!  three times before it opened. I am usually suspicious when a show’s title ends in an exclamation point, but in this case it’s warranted. Bufford has built a cabaret into a full musical revue, with a well-researched and written script beautifully delivered.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
I, Banquo
online

Shakespeare's account of Scottish regicide may be rooted in myth, but 400 years later, every Anglophone schoolchild is familiar with the tale of the decorated military general whose post-war career left a trail of murders as his sole legacy. Both the perpetrator and his spouse have undergone scholarly scrutiny bent on determining motive and responsibility for the flagrant miscarriage of justice, as have the counselors whose advice is alleged to have launched our gullible G.I. on his road to destruction.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Moby Dick in the Dark
online

Even if you only got as far as the Cliff's Notes or the 1956 Moby Dick film, you know that Herman Melville's place in western art rests on his tale of a sea captain crippled by a whale, who vows vengeance thereon, aided by his culturally-diverse crew whose loyalty will seal their own doom as well. Playgoers embarking upon the yarn in its entirety, however, are aware that it is a lengthy narrative—not simply for the long passages of factual whaling lore deemed necessary by its author, but by the array of motifs drawn from classical myth embedded within its odyssey.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Camelot
Asolo Rep Terrace Theater

Despite being named a concert version of a larger musical, Asolo Rep’s outdoor Camelot has—in glorious color—all the songs, acting, technical qualities of a traditional indoor hit.  Further, though the titled Kingdom goes down in flames, both they and what led to them score a triumph for a glorious mingling of story, sight, and sound.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Footloose
Owen Theater

The pre-pandemic world we once knew is creeping its way back toward the hoped-for goal of “normal.” Last weekend’s opening of the 1998 musical, Footloose (based on the 1984 film of the same name), really brightened a rainy Sunday afternoon and is now rocking the room for The Players Theater Company at Conroe’s Owen Theater. The fan base was out in force for the matinee, and every member of the well-attended audience respectfully wore a mask throughout the performance.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Miss Holmes
online

Remember early in the shutdown, when theaters making experimental forays into online production felt obligated to apologize for their product's resemblance to (shudder) TELEVISION? A year later, however, even A-listers like Goodman and Steppenwolf see nothing unseemly in filming group scenes one solitary actor at a time and splicing the separate parts together afterward—just like in a (gasp) MOVIE.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!
online

All you closeted Royalists lurking in the United States—you know who you are—are hereby warned that if you want to envision the British Empire's headline-making Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex in this latest installment of Steppenwolf's NOW series of new plays, it's strictly on you. Vivian J. O. Barnes wrote her play in 2018, the two women who swap dialogue therein are identified only as "Duchess" and "Soon-to-be Duchess"—oh, and both are unambiguously Black.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Bad Dates

For great fun, and a breathless romp through one woman’s topsy-turvy life, Bad Dates, George Street Playhouse’s filmed version of Theresa Rebeck’s 2003 zany one-woman play starring Broadway actress Andréa Burns (In The Heights, On Your Feet, The Nance), is the hip place to be.

Ed Rubin
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Baskerville
online

Baker Street purists are hereby warned that a) our sleuth's stimulant of choice is now, not cocaine, but tobacco, b) he is played by Breon Arzell (who is Black), while Dr. Watson is played by Meg Elliott (who is female), and c) the other 43 characters in Baskerville are played by a trio of actors (Rachel Livingston, Jason Richards and Gabriel Fries—one female and two male). This is because it's 2021, we're still in the middle of a pandemic and the adapter of our play is Ken Ludwig, author of the hit comedy Lend Me a Tenor.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2021
Where Did We Sit on the Bus?
online

Brian Quijada's third-grade teacher might have been merely concerned with adhering to the lesson plan for illustrating the significance of Rosa Parks in the history of American racial desegregation, but when a pupil of Salvadorean immigrant parentage inquired, "Where did we sit on the bus?" her reply—"You weren't there"—raised cosmological questions sufficient to inspire a ninety-minute account of the young inquirer's search for an answer.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
Principal, Principle
online

Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater continues its all-virtual season with an excellent examination of public school dysfunction in Principal, Principle. Playwright Joe Zarrow, himself a former educator in Chicago’s public school system, must have been taking good notes while working in the classroom.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
Crucible, The
online

Family-friendly First Stage, one of the country’s leading theaters for young audiences, continues its all-virtual season with an audio production of the Arthur Miller classic, The Crucible. For children old enough to embrace a modern-day “radio show” format, this is a wonderful way to exercise their imaginations.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Asolo Repertory - Terrace Stage

For two years, the pandemic has delayed full presentation of Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, mainly by Goodman Theater, Chicago.  Preliminary versions were spatially limited, even  to a truck through the city and to Seattle Theater working on a West Coast showing. Finally, at Sarasota’s Asolo Rep, one of few major regional theaters presently offering big shows live, its administrative and production teams joined with those in Illinois and Washington to premiere, in a traditional way, all of Fannie’s important life and music to audiences.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
Odd Couple, The
Crighton Theater

Perhaps William Shakespeare was not predicting our approaching Texas pandemic winter storm when he wrote the line, “…Now is the winter of our discontent…” for Richard III in 1594. But who among us has not heard the phrase, “We’ll get through this!” during the harrowing past twelve months? Well maybe it’s true.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
Out, Darn Spot!

Op-night viewers might have thought they had logged onto the wrong vimeo, since the first fourteen minutes of Hell In A Handbag's latest online production is wholly devoted to a compilation of mid-20th-century vintage television commercials taking us from the wholesome family-oriented Fifties to the sensual youth-market Sixties. (Any of you Boomers remember Noxzema's "Take it all off" campaign?) The purpose of this chronology is to acquaint us with the dramatic universe occupied by our heroine, whose tragic demise is formatted in the mass media entertainment of the period.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
Tchaikovsky

The first name that comes to mind whenever the name Hershey Felder comes into play is that of actor Sacha Baron Cohen. Not only do both men physically resemble each other and are somewhat similar in age, but both are wizards, albeit at different ends of the spectrum, at being somebody other than themselves.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
In Love with Shakespeare
The Bazaar

Using those of Shakespeare’s works in which love’s course does not in some way “run smooth,” In Love With Shakespeare consists of fully staged scenes from Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard III. In three of these plays, the romantic pairs aren’t as compatible—at least until the denouements—as the titled lovers in Romeo and Juliet.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
School Girls, or the African Mean Girls Play
online

Whether you're the privileged daughter of a rich father or a slum-bred bantling attending on a scholarship, it's not easy being one of the rare Nigerian girls lucky enough to receive an education. Not only must you excel at academic pursuits, but do so while modeling exemplary social skills and a veneer of cosmopolitan savvy to arouse the envy of your peers.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2021
Escape from Peligro Island
online

Family-friendly First Stage offers its online viewers a new, interactive realm in Escape from Peligro Island . Depending on which way the audience “votes” throughout each live performance, the script will shift accordingly. This means that no two performances will ever be exactly the same.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2021
Red Folder, The
online

We meet our narrator in the first grade, where the teacher hands out folders to each student for the purpose of collecting their work assignments—correctly finished ones in one pocket, and those containing errors in the other. As our hero struggles to overcome a persistent spelling glitch impeding successful completion of the tasks, however, the inanimate agents of his humiliation begin to verbally chastise him for his imperfections.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2021
Fabulous Fanny
online

Have you heard the story of the famous comedian whose antics delight millions of devoted fans but whose personal life is a mess? Of course you have! No playwright ever lost money assuring audiences that behind every clown's smile lurks a tragic past. This moralistic myth becomes even more ubiquitous when our hap-hap-happy hero is a woman, doomed by our cultural biases to wallow in Marianistic melancholy in order to earn our pity and affection. 

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2021

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