Post Script

There are many emotionally wrenching moments in American Players Theatre’s excellent production of August Wilson’s Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning Fences, the story of a black family in 1950s Pittsburgh struggling toward, and failing to achieve their version of the American Dream. The uniformly impressive cast, led by David Alan Anderson and Karen Aldridge, brings passion, love and misery to this American classic in equal measure.

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre kicked off its 2019-2020 season last weekend with a light and silly comedy designed to fit the mood of audiences in the last balmy weeks of summer. Directed by Ryan Schabach and filled with small town Wisco kitsch and familiar Milwaukee faces, this production of “Unnecessary Farce” is the Wisconsin State Fair cream puff of drama. 

Every theater company dreams of extending performance runs due to overwhelming demand, or remounting a show for a command performance. Renaissance Theaterworks is actually taking its second show on the road later this month, producing a “short” at the Samuel French’s Off- Off-Broadway Short Play Festival (OOB). After a positive OOB experience in 2015, the company returns to a NYC stage with the recent Br!NK Briefs offering, “All of the Everything,” by Minneapolis-based playwright Alayna Jacqueline.

Most of us know how to see Shakespeare in Spring Green, but another way to experience the Bard outdoors —  right here in the city — is Madison Shakespeare Company’s production of the classic Merry Wives of Windsor, which the troupe presents July 26 – Aug. 3 at Edgewood College’s The Stream Amphitheater.

Adapted by director Francisco C. Torres and Madison Shakespeare veteran Sam D. White, the story revolves around the rotund knave Falstaff and his schemes to seduce two wealthy married women, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, so he can gain access to their husbands’ money. Meanwhile, three suitors seek the hand of Anne Page, Mistress Page’s daughter. The comedy is full of jealousy and revenge, with themes of class disparity. It ends with a definite comeuppance for the rascal Falstaff.

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen shocked European audiences at the end of the 19th century with his play, A Doll’s House. In this classic domestic drama, Ibsen vividly portrays the limited legal and personal options available to women at the time. He also introduces viewers to a completely new kind of heroine — one who defies societal expectations by leaving her family to pursue her own goals. 

Since that time, many other writers have speculated about what happened to Nora after she slammed the door at the end of the play. But none captured the audience’s imagination like Lucas Hnath’s 2017 A Doll’s House, Part 2. Set 15 years after Nora declared her independence from the men in her life, it’s a reckoning that allows each of the characters in the original to explore the consequences and results of her actions. After a successful run on Broadway and eight Tony nominations, the play has swept through regional theaters. This summer, it finally arrives on a Wisconsin stage.

According to historians, members of Russia’s last royal family, the Romanovs, were executed by their Bolshevik captors in 1918 as revolution gripped the country. But beginning in 1920, more than 20 different women came forward, claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, who had miraculously escaped the fate of the rest of her family. Although the theories of a surviving Romanov were officially debunked with DNA testing in the 1990s, the Anastasia fantasy lives on. It was the subject of a musical animated film by Don Bluth (“An American Tail,” “The Land Before Time”), with a score by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens (“Ragtime,” “Once on this Island”). And, like many popular cartoons, “Anastasia” was retooled for the stage with 16 new musical numbers, added by the original composition team. It ran for two years on Broadway. Now Milwaukee audiences can see the “what if” story of a missing princess, a heartbroken grandmother, an amnesiac orphan, two charming con men, and a ruthless Soviet officer, set against the backdrop of the last days of the Russian Empire and the roaring 1920s in Paris.

There are three distinct productions of “The Comedy of Errors” appearing through July 13 as part of Optimist Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park performances, in the outdoor Peck Pavilion adjacent to the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. Individually they are incomplete and together they are incomprehensible. 

The opening scene of Shakespeare’s Macbeth will, quite simply, take your breath away. 

Onstage at American Players Theatre through Oct. 4, the play begins with a rugged and fierce, but primitive band of soldiers emerging from the woods behind the outdoor stage. They briefly pause to discuss their battle plan, then run at top speed toward the audience and up the aisles, weapons drawn and battle cries filling the air. 

Normally Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night begins with a shipwreck, but American Players Theatre’s production, directed by John Langs, starts with a variety show. In front of an impromptu curtain, a set of fraternal twins sings, dances and merrily exchanges costumes onboard a ship, showing that only a skirt or breeches betray their true sex. But as the siblings kick up their heels and encourage the audience of sailors to join in their song, thunder crashes. The ship pitches wildly in a storm, and in a beautiful, poignant moment choreographed by Jessica Bess Lanius, the twins grasp hands, only to be separated by the waves.

Irish playwright Oliver Goldsmith wrote She Stoops to Conquer during a topsy-turvy era, around the time England was getting its comeuppance from the rebellious American colonies. This 18th century comedy of mistaken identity, practical jokes and unlikely pairs receives a boisterous, playful production outdoors at American Players Theatre, directed with a delightful eye for the absurd by Laura Gordon.  

The first character we meet, the drunken youth Tony Lumpkin (a pitch-perfect Josh Krause), comes barreling down the stairs from the back of the house even before the pre-show announcements have finished advising everyone to keep the aisles clear for just such an occasion. On his way home from another raucous night at the Three Pigeons Pub, Lumpkin is dedicated to pursuing his own entertainment — drinking, subverting the will of his controlling mother (a fantastic Sarah Day), fronting a band that appears each time he sets out on an adventure, and playing practical jokes on unsuspecting gentlemen. Krause, now in his third season at APT, truly shines in this irreverent role — a bad boy rockstar in his imagination and a fairly harmless prankster who isn’t bothered by his lack of ambition or direction in real life.