Back in 1980, Universal Pictures released a musical fantasy for cinema featuring songs performed by the Electric Light Orchestra and Australian pop diva Olivia Newton-John (who also starred in t the film.) In spite of the presence of Gene Kelly (in his final performance) and Newton-John’s post-Grease / pre Physical popularity, the movie was a critical and commercial failure. Retro fashion eventually gives everything a second chance, though. The bizarrely surreal Solid Gold-era, post-disco / pre-MTV 1980 musical has become popular enough to launch a contemporary live stage musical adaptation which makes its way to the Broadway Theatre Center this winter as The Skylight presents Xanadu. Kaitlin Feely stars as ancient Greek muse Kira who has come to Southern California in 1980 in the interest of helping a struggling artist named Sonny Malone. Mitchell Gray is fun as a lovable doofus spoof of the original character who falls hard for a woman on rollerskates who turns out to be a magical being. Sonny ultimately finds success while opening a roller disco named...Xanadu. In a fusion between the plot of the original movie and inspiration drawn from 1981’s Clash of the Titans, Kira’s life is thrown into chaos courtesy of her older sister Melpomene. Molly Rhode goes delightfully over the top in the role of the arch-villain. The music fuses Sonny’s boss (played by James Sloyan in the movie) with the classy, old Gene Kelly character into a single identity that is played with dapper style by Rick Richter. The design team on the show does a staggeringly good job of fusing together elements of early 1980s sparkly post-disco visuals that more or less perfectly nail the height of pop fashion in the year 1980. The retro 1940s that also make an appearance on the stage are particularly strong in a musical number that fuses swing music with early 1980s hard rock. Choreographer Stephanie Staszak did an exquisite job of bringing both dance styles together onstage in a musical number that works MUCH better onstage now than it did onscreen back in 1980. I realize that choreography for cinema is a completely different thing than putting it together onstage. And I know that a lot of it has to do with editing as well, but the 1980 film made the “Dancin’” dance number feel a bit odd and mechanical. Staszak does a staggeringly impressive job of juggling the 1940s with the 1980s in a strikingly memorable moment. Feely is a great deal of fun as Kira. The book leans pretty far into spoofing Olivia Newton-John. (And to be fair...a spritely, little Greek muse skating around with an Australian accent IS pretty silly.) Feely swimmingly carries cosmic comic cuteness across the stage with a delightfully exaggerated Aussie accent as she gracefully glides around on roller skates for much of the entire 90 minutes of the show. Feely’s irresistible energy carries the weirdness of a throughly enjoyable musical. The Skylight’s production of Xanadu runs through Feb. 11 at the main stage on 158 N. Broadway. For ticket reservations and more, visit the Skylight online.
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For the most part, it’s just two people talking. It’s not always the SAME two people, but for the most part, A Moon For the Misbegotten is just two people talking. It’s the smallest canvas imaginable, but what playwright Eugene O'Neill did with it is absolutely stunning on so many different levels. This winter, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre explores O’Neill’s romantic drama with fierce intensity that has been deftly delivered to the stage by director Mary MacDonald Kerr. Set around a small shack on the edge of everything, the drama resonates with powerful emotion on the intimate studio theatre stage of the Broadway Theatre Center.
As the drama opens, Josie is aiding her brother Mike to leave the tiny farm ruled over by their alcoholic father. A.J. Magoon has a respectable presence as a man about to head out in the general direction of a coming-of-age drama that O’Neill had no interest in telling. He’s far more interested in those who get left behind as others leave. (That’s kind of the whole focus of the drama.) Kelly Doherty is deeply engaging as Josie--the daughter of an aging tenant farmer played by Milwaukee theatre veteran James Pickering. O’Neill settles much of the early part of the drama between Josie and her father Phil. Pickering’s grizzled charisma carries his end of the drama with a witty weariness that feels a few shades wiser than Phil would like anyone to know. Doherty and Pickering have an exquisite dynamic. It isn’t easy for a couple of actors to convincingly pretend like they’ve spent the bulk of every day together for the better part of a couple of decades. (The audience is so often doing a lot of work in completing the illusion.) Pickering and Doherty make the audience’s job of completing the illusion of familial familiarity deliciously easy. The two actors have a clever awareness of the rhythms and motions of daily life between a father and daughter who are too emotionally exhausted to do anything but love each other. It may not LOOK like they do, but there’s a real affection that shines through the edges of the frustration and animosity that tangles its way through the early going of the play. La Shawn Banks is an earthbound specter in the role of Phil’s landlord James Tyrone, Jr.--a well-educated guy who is too busy waiting around for the future to realize that he’s already dead. There’s a dreamy restlessness about Banks as he glides and floats through the ghostlike existence of a man who spends most of his waking hours drunk and most of his sleep in the vacant nightmare of his waking life. Doherty and Banks share an inescapable gravity as Phil bares his soul to Josie in a casually riveting emotional connection between two people on the edge of an ending as the play draws to its crushingly inevitable conclusion. Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production of A Moon For the Misbegotten runs through Feb. 4 at the Broadway Theatre Center. For more information, visit Milwaukee Chamber Theatre online. The Field The soccer field bend into the vertical. There’s an impenetrable wall of turf at the far end of the stage. Scenic Designer Doug Dion delivers a powerful visual image for Renaissance Theaterworeks’ production of The Wolves. Playwright Sarah SeLappe’s relentless, fast-paced comedic coming-of-age drama is brought to Renaissance’s cozy studio theatre stage on South Water Street with heart and passion courtesy of a cast of actors from the First Stage Young Company. It’s a highly concentrated ensemble drama that hits the stage with an irresistible fury of energy. I’d seen a production at Marquette not too long ago. I was quite happy to see it come to the stage again in an all-new production with Renaissance. The Format It’s contemporary suburban America. An indoor soccer field. A group of nine girls warm-up and prepare for a few games over the course of the quick pulse of 90 minutes without intermission. They are The Wolves. They’re genuinely good. Very competitive. Their lives unfold in a series of pre-game exercises that rush across the AstroTurf that’s been cleverly committed to the stage by Dion. There are...a lot of soccer balls. The ensemble is actually practicing. Nets lower into place to ensure no errant balls fly into the audience. The Pace “The play should take ninety minutes,” Sara DeLappe. (The page before the Author’s Notes.) It’s a cast of nine girls. There’s a hell of a lot going on in all of their lives. DeLappe does a remarkable job of weaving them through an impressively diverse amount of stress on and off field. Pacing is absolutely essential to the show otherwise the central insanity of life on the precipice of adulthood is completely lost. Director Elyse Edelman is remarkably precise with the timing and intensity of a drama that goes WELL beyond the standard cliches of a youth sports drama. Action rushes around the stage and through the aisles. Conversations overlap conversations overlapping other conversations. The cast does laps and their voices can be heard echoing into the theatre from the lobby. It’s an engagingly immersive experience. The Cast
It’s SO cool that Renaissance was able to work with. A cast entirely composed of kids from First Stage’s Young Company. So often college kids are found playing high school kids on stage and screen. There’s something powerfully visceral about a group of actual teens playing teenagers that feels that much more intense. There are some impressively fierce performances in the ensemble. Alice Rivera is cool and competent as the slightly awkward team captain #25. Ryan Bennett makes quite a dramatic and charismatic statement as the gruff #7...a rough and tumble striker who arguably gets knocked around more than anyone else in the ensemble. Lorelei Wesselowski grants Bennett a bit of gravity in the role of #7’s sidekick at midfield. Reiley Fitzsimmons is quirkily magnetic as the new girl #46. Madison Jones delivers compellingly awkward inner stress to the stage as the unlucky #2. Josie Van Slyke has a crazy energy about her as the witty #13. Maya Thomure lends a sharp sense of perspicacity to the production as the articulate #11. High school freshman Natalie Ottman plays to the energetic strengths of a very childlike #8. Elena Marking shows great strength in the role of the Goalie #0. DeLappe gives the goalie an explosive moment alone onstage...and it could be very, very difficult to make that work, but Marking does a jaw-droopingly impressive job of control dramatic combustion during that moment. The sole adult in the production--Marcella Kearns provides potent punctuation as a soccer mom at the end of the play. Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of The Wolves runs through February 11th. For ticket reservations and more, visit Renaissance Theaterworks online. January of 2024 opens and closes with as couple of big musicals from a couple of big decades. Lounging, kicking and brooding between the two big musicals are a series of very compelling ensemble dramas with some of the best talent to hit local stages in recent memory. 2024 looks like it's going to be fun on the Small Stage in Milwaukee. 2024 begins at Sunset as Bombshell Theatre presents an intimate staging of the classic 1960s musical Gentleman Prefer Blondes. Bombshell has an impressive cast for the show. Kenall Yorke and Rae Pare play Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw—a couple of single nightclub performers living in Paris as they navigate the complexities of love. Pare is great fun in any cast and it’s always so cool to see her near the center of the stage in a show like this. January 5th - 14th at the Sunset Playhouse on 700 Wall Street in Elm Grove. For more information, visit Bombshell online. Seasoned directory Mary MacDonald Kerr brings together an appealing group ion actors at mid-month for a production of Eugene O’Neill’s tragicomedy A Moon for the Misbegotten. James Pickering, Kelly Doherty, Zach Thomas Woods and A.J. Magoon join LaShawn Banks. Kerr does some really spectacularly textured work with ensembles. It should be fascinating to see her work with a group of talents as powerful as this for a restless sequel to O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. O’Neil’s plays can feel breathtakingly weighty, but emotionally draining. It’ll be interesting to see what Kerr and company can do with that dynamic. A Moon For the Misbegotten runs January 19th - February 3rd at the Broadway Theatre Center. For more information, visit Milwaukee Chamber online. Not to be outdone by all of the rest of the impressive casts taking the stage this coming month, Sunset Playhouse puts together quite a group for its one-weekend production of Other Desert Cities—a taut contemporary family drama set in Palm Springs in Christmas of 2004. A family gets together and does what families do in tense, little family stage dramas. The cast features Ruth Arnell, Donna Daniels, William Molitor, Ramsey Schliessel and Kyle Conner. Arnell plays the central character of Brooke. It would be really cool to see her dive into the inner turmoil of a very contemporary role. I’m hoping to find some way to make it out to Elm Grove to see this one. The show runs January 19th - 21st at the Sunset Playhouse. For more information, visit Sunset Playhouse online. It wasn’t too long ago that I had an opportunity to see a production of The Wolves at Marquette. It was honestly one of the most appealing dramas that I’ve ever seen: a group of high school girls roll through drama as they go through soccer practice. It’s a really fun show with an impressively nuanced cast of characters. This coming month, Renaissance Theaterworks teams-up with First Stage Young Company to put together an age-appropriate cast for the all-teen athletic drama. It should be particularly impressive on the intimate stage Renaissance shares with Next Act Theatre. The Wolves runs January 21st - February 11th. For more information, visit Renaissance Theaterworks online. It might have been the first 45 I ever owned: Olivia Newton John singing about magic. It was a song from a musical comedy about a group of ancient Greek muses who take a trip to Venice Beach at the dawn of the 1980s. It's an ever-so-slightly post-disco-era pop adventure that was originallly released as a movie at the dawn of the multiplex. Years later it has found some success as a live stage show. This month ends with a Skylight Music Theatre staging. Director Doug Clemons puts the show together at the Broadway. Theatre Center. For more information, visit Skylight online.
The month of December features a skewed look at the familiar. From a tale of WWI to a lovingly skewered approach to classic Dickens, fun, music, sin and more...this December feels like a really enjoyable mix of different elements to close out the year of 2023--a remarkably satisfying year in Milwaukee theatre. It was five months into WWI. Things were bleak on the Western front. Opposing forces decided to take a pause from killing each other to celebrate Christmas. It’s a beautiful story in its own way, but it’s also very, very haunting. This December Vanguard Productions presents a dramatic adaptation of the history with All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. Playwright Peter Rothstein’s adaptation of the story features musical arrangements by Wrick Lichte and Timothy C.Takach. Vanguard’s production runs Dec. 1 - 10 at Calvary Presbyterian Church on 628 N 10th St. For ticket reservations and more, visit the show’s page on Eventbrite. The Holidays are the PERFECT time to reflect on humanity’s shortcomings. (And really...when ISN’T it a good time to do that?) The Constructivists take a festive dive into the darker end of humanity this December with A Very Deadly Constructivists Holiday. The show celebrates the seven deadly sins with a series of shorts featuring true stories of people being bad brought to the stage in a variety of different ways. It’s a clever bit of counter-programming conceived and directed by Jamielyn Gray featuring Andrea Ewald, Ekene Ikegwuani, Nicole McCarty, Nate Press, Matt Specht, Kellie Wambold, and Ben Yela. The show runs December 6 - 9 at Zao MKE Church on 2319 East Kenwood Boulevard. For more information, visit the show’s page on MKE Tickets.Com The talented Marcella Kearns directs the First Stage Young Company in a staging of Shakespeare’s classic drama of war, passion and power as it presents Henry IV Part 1. The Young Company strips a very large and unwieldly drama down to its most immediate essence. Kearns works with a group of actors who are only just beginning their exploration of the stage...launching themselves into one of Shakespeare’s coming-of-age story of Prince Hal growing into the man who would become King Henry V. The show runs December 8 - 17 at the Milwaukee Youth Art Center on 929 N. Water Street. For more information, visit First Stage online. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol might be the single most universally-known story...in existence. It’s been adapted so many different ways in so many different forms over many, many years. It’s a cozy story for the holidays that touches on quite a few different sentiments. And since it IS so familiar to so many people, it’s a perfect match for Boozy Bard’s format. Once again this holiday season the wildly informal comedy group stages an unrehearsed series of performances of the classic with A Christmas Carol: RAW! Actors choose roles at random and perform the beloved tale from scripts in a sketch/improv comedy sort of environment. The show makes it to a couple of different venues this year. December 10 - 12 the show will be staged at The Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery on 917 W Juneau Ave and December 15 and 16 the show is staged at Hawthorne Coffee Roasters at 4177 S Howell Ave. For more information, visit Boozy Bard’s Facebook page.
Dewey Finn really wants to play a solid concert. Paying rent would be cool, too, but he really just wants to play a kickass concert. Of course...winning the battle of the bands and climbing to the top fo Mount Rock to become a towering legend in the recording industry would be cool as well. But it’s the music, right? THAT’s what it’s all about And all he needs is one shot at it with Skylight Music Theatre’s The School of Rock. Cleverly comic musical theatre talent Joey Sanzaro plays Finn in a big, energetic production featuring an impressive cast. Dewey just got kicked out of the band that he started. He’s also been fired from theo nly job he’s had. And now he’s facing the very real possibility of getting kickedo ut on the street if he can’t come-up with something like rent. Then he takes a call that isn’t exactly intended for him...and winds-up falling into a substitute teaching position at a prestigious private school. There’s real money in the position if he can fake his way through the job for long enough to make a paycheck, but when he finds out that the kids in his class are all talented musicians, Dewey falls into the kind of ambition that just might get him into some serious trouble with EVERYBODY. The cast of kids is played by...kids. TALENTED kids too. There’s a fully stocked rock orchestra in the pit, but there’s som genuine talent onstage that mixes an entertaining musical energy with some cleverly deft comic dynamics. In addition to a very sharp student cast, there are some notable performances in the adult cast as well. Stephanie Staszak has a crisp precision in the role of the school’s young principal Rosalie Mullins. Staszak manages a sharp balance between strict authority and endearing vulnerability as a professional who is placed in an extremely awkward position that threatens the financial wellbeing and reputation of the school as a whole. Director Michael Unger has done an excellent job of bringing all of the elements of the production together. It’s extremely difficult to get everything to come across with an even balance in a rock musical. The sound, pacing and overall energy of a show with so much power and amplification is difficult enough. Add to that the fact that a really important part of the production is...a bunch of kids without a whole lot of experience onstage and things could easily go wrong in a very, very big way. Unger and company do a staggeringly good job with the aid of Scenic Designer Lindsay Fuori, who has done an admirable job of bringing a show to the stage that has quite a few different locations that range from a rock stage to a dive bar to a tasteful middle-class living room to a prestigious private school and more. Skylight Music Theatre’s production of School of Rock continues through Dec. 30 at the Broadway Theatre Center on 158 N Broadway. For ticket reservations and more, visit Skylight Music Theatre online. The weather starts to get serious about being cold and local Milwaukee stages begin to resonate with a bit more music than usual. Nearly everything that I'm going to this month has some sort of a musical things going on. There's rock by way of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Liberace, "Superboy and the Invisible Girl," and more. Here's a look: The Moors UWM Theatre presents a staging of a dark comedy by playwright Jen Silverman who also wrote Witch (a really good dark comedy in its own right which continues through the 12th with Renaisssance Theaterworks) Inspired by a Brontëan mood, the play is set in the desolate English moors. A. young woman arrives at a remote manor of a man with whome she’s been exchanging romantic correspondence. When she arrives at the manor, there are only two sisters, a maid...and mastiff living there...Nov. 1 - 5 at Kenilworth Square East, Kenilworth Five-0-Eight on 508 Kenilworth Ave. Next To Normal Kimberly Laberge directs a small-stage production of this haunting contemporary American musical for Kith and Kin Theatre. A contemporary suburban family deals with mental illness. It’s an unflinching look at the flaws and strengths buried deep within the heart of life on the edge of the 21st century. A mother suffers from bi-polar disorder as a family tries its best to cope with so many issues. November 10 - 19 at The Interchange Theater Co-Op on 628 N 10th St. It’s not often that a full musical makes it to a space as small as The Interchange. Laberge will feature the full cast and a five-part orchestra in a cozy, little studio theatre environment. Liberace Acrot/Composer/Lyricist Brett Ryback celebrates one of the most prominent musical celebrities of the 20th century has he pays tribute to Wisconsin’s own Władziu Valentino Liberace with Milwaukee Chamber Theatre. Writer Brent Hazelton constructs a show with original music by Jack Forbes Wilson. The powerful personality of a musical mega-star has served as a glittering foundation for intimate, little musical theatre shows on more than one occasion in the past. (Milwaukee Chamber posted a video short featuring the costuming and...wow...look at all those sequins...) The charismatic Ryback has a suitably charming presence that should serve the production well. Nov. 15 - Dec. 10 at the Studio Theatre in the Broadway Theatre Center on 158 N Broadway. School of Rock Based on the 2003 film. this is one of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s most recent musicals. Skylight Music Theatre stages a production of the musical comedy. Skylight Music Theatre’s Artistic Director Michael Unger directs the show featuring New York-based Joey Sanzaro as a substitute teacher at a private school who sees potential rock music talent in the kids that he teaches. Talented, young local actress Stephanie Staszak plays the school principal who unwittingly hires a man who isn’t quite what he has presented himself to be. Nov. 17 – Dec. 30 at the Broadway Theatre Center on 158 N. Broadway. The Mousetrap
One of Agatha Christie’s most beloved mysteries makes it to the stage in a production directed by the talented Mary MacDonald Kerr. Next Act Theatre presents a production with an impressive cast including Libby Amato, Jonathan Gillard Daly and Doug Jarecki. Nov. 22 - Dec. 17 at the space on 255 S. Water St. Neil Brookshire is the devil. (Kind of.) He’s actually a demon. Or rather...Neil Brookshire is an actor playing a devil playing a young salesman. Call him Scratch. He inhabits the stage with warmth and charisma in Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of playwright Jen Silverman’s dark comedy Witch. Silverman describes the era of the comedy as “Then-ish.” It’s a European era of antiquity somewhere in the vicinity of half a millennia ago. (Give or take a century.) A kingdom is in decline. There’s a devil who comes to do a little bit of business. The dialogue is quick, witty and quite contemporary. Silverman’s deliberately anachronistic dialogue nails the overall feel of the comedy to be strikingly familiar. It feels much like a Jacobian version of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens. Scratch is a low-level sales rep looking to sign a few contracts. He’s got something of a junior life insurance salesman’s demeanor about him. (Seriously. Take it from someone who has been in the foreboding presence of Northwestern Mutual. There’s something casually demonic about life insurance agents. Brookshire has the essence of that sinister sales quality about him. It’s perfect.) Marti Gobel is stunningly engaging as a woman named Elizabeth who has been offered a deal in exchange for her soul. She’s not terribly interested in whatever it is that Scratch is selling. Naturally he’s going to be intrigued by her. Gobel and Brookshire have a clever chemistry together. He’s a devil. You don’t want to trust him. She’s a woman being offered anything she wants, but you know it’s wrong. You know something awful is going to happen but you don’t want it to happen to her...and you don’t exactly want it to happen to him either. Prior to approaching Gobel, Scratch delivers his pitch to a couple of guys who turn out to be more receptive. James Carrington endearingly plays Cuddy--a lovable noble who would prefer to be focus on his Morris Dancing than concerning himself with the affairs of the state. He’s competing for the affections of his father with a dashingly handsome peasant guy who has been unofficially adopted by his father. Joe Picchetti is sharp and precise with an arrogantly youthful poise in the role of Frank--the rising peasant who just might inherit a kingdom if he plays his cards right. Reese Madigan is a comically tragic as Cuddy’s father--the wealthy and powerful Sir Arthur Banks. Sir Arthur is in decline at the loss of his wife. Her portrait is ever at his side as he sheepishly haunts the stage like a fading image. Eva Nimmer brings a deep emotional gravitas to the role of Winnifred: a maid in the estate with a special and especially tragic connection to the action. Director Suzan Fete does a brilliant job of fostering a deeply complex connection between everyone in the ensemble. There’s some particularly brilliant work being done in the realm of the physical onstage between the work of Intimacy Director Jen Dobby and Fight Choreographer Jamie Cheatham. It’s a fun ensemble comedy that wraps itself in impressive darkness without ever going into the kind of weirdly fantastic existential depths that would be open to the story of a devil hanging around a doomed kingdom. It focuses quite wisely on interpersonal drama between the ensemble, but misses a chance at something deeper and more comically profound. The procurement of souls as big ticket sales makes for a fun interaction between Gobel and Brookshire. It might have been a bit more interesting to see the whole thing framed from the perspective of the office that Scratch operates out of. Something like Glengarry Glen Ross with souls would have been one Hell of a lot of fun... Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of Jen Silverman’s Witch continues through Nov. 12th at the space on 255 S. Water St. For more information, visit Renaissance Theaterworks online. The Skylight playfully twists the atmosphere of the Broadway Theatre Center into a deliciously surreal and irreverently absurdist adventure as it opens its season with Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. Based on Voltaire’s classic work of literature, the show features a charmingly charismatic Sam Simahk as the haplessly optimistic title character--a privileged, young man who is cast out of an idyllic life and into a strange adventure which finds him questioning his overall optimism at every turn. Susie Robinson plays to great nuance and complexity in the role of Candide’s love Cunegonde. The cast includes some amazing performances around the edges of the ensemble including Andrew Varela as the irrepressibly optimistic Doctor Pangloss, Ben George as the altruistic James the Anabaptist and a pleasantly earthbound Samantha Sostarich as the chambermaid Paquette. Director/scenic designer James Ortiz transports the audience through an astonishingly vivid fantasy world as massive, colorful backgrounds are projected onto immense white screens behind the action. Ortiz draws imagery from a number of different familiar places including the works of M.C. Escher and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Ortiz also designed some graphically impressive puppet for the show including a toweringly ominous inquisitor and a voluminous banker. They both tower over Susie Robinson as they terrorize Cunegonde. Ortiz barrels the Bernstein musical through an impressive range of moods in the course of the adventure. There’s a kind of fearlessness in the mixture of horror, drama, dark and light comedy. Some of it occasionally runs the risk of teetering over the edge of bad taste, but every emotional beat seems to land more or less perfectly in a dazzling stage adventure that fuses fantasy with something that feels far more real than so much of what happens on the world outside the stage. Skylight Music Theatre’s production of Candide runs through Oct. 29 at the Broadway Theatre Center on 158 N. Broadway. For more information, visit Skylight online. October's always a fun month for local theatre. There's a little uptick in weird, offbeat shows that mix horror with more traditionally popular local stage fare. This month puppets and music and a healthy sense of exploration going on in and around local stages for a very promising month ahead. There’s murder. There’s hallucination, There’s paranormal activity and a few witches who just might be fate itself. Macbeth rests quite comfortably somewhere between cliche and tradition in October theatre schedules all over the place. Boozy Bard presents a twisted improv-fueled mutation of Shakespeare’s classic as actors draw roles from a hat before each performance. Oct. 9 - 11 at The Best Place Tavern on 917 W Juneau Ave. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook Events Page. Back in the middle of the 1700s, French author philosopher Voltaire wrote an absurdist episodic adventure. (Those are the best kind.) It’s the tale of a strange adventure of a man who had been living in a kind of paradise who is suddenly forced into the chaos of the world beyond his bubble. Back in the middle of last century, Leonard Bernstein wrote an operetta based on the classic. Over half a century later, Skylight Music Theatre stages a production of Bernstein’s classic. James Ortiz designed the set, the puppets (yes, there are puppets) and directed what should prove to be a whimsically erratic tale smoothed over by Bernstein, Ortiz and the Skylight. Skylight's Candide runs Oct. 13 – 29 at the Broadway Theatre Center on 158 N. Broadway, For more information, visit Skylight online. Local playwright Deanna Strasse is hosting a virtual pitch for three of her plays this month. Everyone’s invited. It’s free. It’s acutally a very casually clever idea: she’s written plays. She wants to see them produced. She’s getting together a group of actors to do readings of excerpts online. It’s a cool opportunity to hang out with a bit of drama and comedy online. The pitch starts at 7pm on Oct. 14. For more information, visit the pitch’s Facebook page. It’s been way too long since Theatrical Tendencies did a show. The group had produced some of the more memorable productions to be placed on the Milwaukee small stage over the course of the past. Stop/Kiss, The Temperamentals, The Laramie Project and [Title of Show]. This month they return to the stage with a production of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song. The show includes some great talent including Kevin J. Gadzalinski as Arnold (the Harvey Feirstein role) and Mark R. Neufang as Ed (Arnold’s lover.) The show runs Oct. 20 - 29 at Inspiration Studios on 1500 S. 73rd St. in West Allis. For more information, visit Inspiration Studios online. Suzan Fete directs a decidedly supernatural show for the coming Halloween season as Renaissance Theaterworks presents Witch: a comedy by Jen Silverman. A devil shows-up in a small town to bargain for the souls of its residents. The ensemble assembled for the show features som exquisite local talent including Marti Gobel, Reese Madigan. James Carrington, Joe Picchetti and Eva Nimmer. It’s just...a phenomenal cast. Also...Maria Pretzl’s Facebook marketing campaign for the show has been great fun so far. She’s got some clever ideas for engaging an audience before the show. Very cool stuff. Looking forward to more before the show on Renaissance’s feed. The show runs Oct. 22 - Nov. 12 at the space on 255 S Water Street. For more information, visit Renaissance Online. Not too long ago, Milwaukee Opera Theatre teamed-up with the puppet people of Angry Young Men Ltd. to produce Night of the Living Opera--a live operatic stage adaptation of George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead. Zombie puppets have been kicking around Milwaukee for a number of years now. They largely only come out around Halloween. (I would imagin it’s kind of difficult for them to get work the rest of the year. I can’t help but wonder how they might perform at an audition.) Anyway...the show (as done in concert with MOT last year) is...staggeringly good. It sticks perfectly to Romero’s plot and embellishes it with opera. (So cool.) The show runs Oct. 27 - Nov. 5 at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre on 158 N Broadway. For more information, visit MOT online. So there was this guy named Robb White. He was the son of Episcopal missionaries. He was kind of a prankster as a kid, but he went on to write A LOT of stuff for various magazines back in the mid-20th century. Somewhere along the line he started writing screenplays. One of them got produced as a cheap horror film directed by William Castle starring Vincent Price. The House on Haunted Hill is a cute idea: a diverse group of people are offered a large sum of money ($10,000, which would be like...$100,000 in today's money) for surviving overnight at a haunted mansion. The script may have been clever, but the movie?...it was bad. Boozy Bard presents an irreverent staging of the screenplay just in time for Halloween Oct. 31 - Nov. 1 at The Best Place Tavern on 917 W Juneau Ave. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook Events Page.
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