Post Script

It really is “a beautiful morning” for Curly, the aw-shucks, good as gold, crooning cowboy hero in Skylight Music Theatre’s season-opening production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic “Oklahoma!,” which runs through October 13 in the Cabot Theatre. With a smaller cast and a less opulent look at frontier life, it’s a gorgeously sung, faithful production of a 76-year old musical chestnut that fans of the classic will enjoy. But others may not celebrate the dated material with as many “yippee yay ayes.”

“There’s a lot of pressure to write something profound these days.”

The uber-popular playwright Lauren Gunderson may be expressing her own angst here, but gives this line to her protagonist, 18th century French writer and political activist Olympe de Gouges. It’s part of the first scene of “The Revolutionists,” which opened Next Act Theatre’s 2019-2020 season over the weekend. Directed capably by Laura Gordon, it’s a pretty good production of a not very good play.

It seems Olympe (a fast talking, no-nonsense Cassandra Bissell) is having trouble starting her next play and struggles with her desire to write something that is both crowd-pleasing and important. It’s a task that she assures us is very difficult, as she casts around for catchy titles and subplots. (Maybe it’s called “The Revolutionists!” Maybe it’s a musical! Maybe it’s tantalizing but really vague and annoyingly prescient!) 

The Marcus Center kicked off its 2019-2020 Broadway series last night hosting the national tour of Dear Evan Hansen — one of the blockbusters that makes this an incredible season for subscribers, along with the long-awaited Hamilton and the much lauded The Band’s Visit. With six Tony Awards, a Grammy for best musical theater album, and an online fan base that grows exponentially with each new YouTube video that the cast posts, Dear Evan Hansen is a coup for the venue. Running through Sunday, September 29, this production is every bit as impressive as the original Broadway version, with a universally strong cast, gorgeous voices and a dizzying, innovative set.

In 1991, when a car driven by a Hasidic man swerved onto a sidewalk in Crown Heights, the crash killed 7 year-old Gavin Cato, a black child who had been playing with friends. This incident ignited a firestorm of rioting and violence that pitted the Jewish community against the black community and led to the stabbing death of a visiting Jewish scholar just a few hours after the accident.

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production of “Fires in the Mirror,” by Anna Deavere Smith, examines the aftermath of that tragedy, through interviews with people who were there, and statements from leaders from both cultures who were interviewed by Smith. The resulting play, directed by MCT Artistic Director C. Michael Wright and MCT Associate Artistic Director Marcella Kearns, is a complex and compelling evening of theater that uses individual testimony to identify both common ground and deep, painful divides among cultures.

Fans of Irish writer James Joyce celebrate “Bloomsday” every June 16. In his modernist epic Ulysses, Joyce chronicled every moment of that day in 1904, following his protagonist Leopold Bloom around the city of Dublin on a host of errands and encounters while he distracts himself from the knowledge that his wife, Molly, is meeting her lover for a tryst in their bed. Audiences who want to follow in the footsteps of Joyce’s characters should check out Steven Dietz’s play Bloomsday — the first show of Strollers Theatre’s season — at the Bartell Theatre through Sept. 28. 

It’s not often that the men’s magazine Maxim makes its way into arts and culture criticism, but that noted periodical told its discerning readers that Evil Dead: The Musical is “one musical you’ll actually want to see.” 

After seeing University Theatre/UW-Madison’s Department of Theatre and Drama’s send-up of low-budget, campy, trope-filled and blood-soaked horror films, I admit, I agree with Maxim. You do want to see it, whether you are a fan of horror movies, corny dialogue, Candarian demons, musical parodies, “splatter zones,” SNL sketches or Scooby-Doo episodes where the gang in the mystery machine has to fight off woodsy zombies with power tools.

In a 2017 interview, prior to the opening of her new play Mary Jane at the Yale Repertory Theatre, playwright Amy Herzog compared her story of a mother struggling to care for a critically ill child to the biblical story of Job. But instead of a parable about enduring extreme suffering through faith that is eventually rewarded, Herzog’s main character faces “calamities that seem to pile on without purpose or cumulative meaning.” 

This is precisely the drama that unfolds in Forward Theater Company’s production, which runs in The Playhouse at Overture through September 29. An exceptional cast of four women, led by FTC Advisory Company member Clare Arena Haden, chronicles the slow descent of an ordinary mom from cautious optimism and resilience in the face of her young son’s overwhelming medical issues, to an utterly exhausted caregiver whose own body is no longer able to function. 

How would you compose a valentine to William Shakespeare? 

Would you write a sonnet? Sing a love song? Perhaps carve a bust that presented the bard in a slightly more flattering light? If you were currently the most produced living playwright in the U.S., you would write a play of course, so that’s what Lauren Gunderson did. Fulfilling a commission for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, she wrote The Book of Will, an unabashed love-fest honoring Shakespeare’s plays, the company that first brought them to life and the actors from The King’s Men who gathered and published the scripts after the playwright’s death. Seizing on a historical footnote, the play illustrates how close the world came to losing the complete works altogether and gives props to both the tenacity and the foresight of Shakespeare’s original superfans, whose efforts made the first folio a cornerstone of Western literature.

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, professional and personal options available to women at the time. He also introduces viewers to a completely new kind of heroine — one who (spoiler alert) declares her independence and defies societal expectations by leaving her husband and family to pursue her own goals. 

Similar to the epic journey of the titular Greek god — from Mount Olympus to the mortal world and back — Music Theater of Madison has traveled a long ways with Hephaestus. Nathan Fosbinder’s original musical was work-shopped by the company last summer, revised and retooled with audience input over the winter, previewed at area public libraries at the end of July, and received its official world premiere this weekend at the Memorial Union Play Circle. Directed by MTM Executive Director Meghan Randolph, the fully produced show continues to feel like a work in progress — one that will benefit from further editing, strengthening the book and refining the journeys of many of the characters so the narrative is more focused and compelling.