Post Script

“A Small Fire,” is aptly named. Running through February 23 at Next Act Theatre, it is a small story of one woman’s life that has been pared down to three things: her work — running a tight, no-nonsense construction site, while yucking it up with the guys in hardhats; her husband of several decades, John, (Jonathan Smoots) — a gentle soul whose softness doesn’t interest her much; and her 20-something daughter Jenny (Emily Vitrano) — a bright, successful young woman who is about to get married, even though mom has made her critical thoughts on the groom very clear.

Music Theatre of Madison is known for doing small, off-beat theater pieces — weird little musicals that usually fly under the radar of larger and more mainstream groups. But with their current offering, Paula Vogel’s Tony Award-winning play Indecent, director Meghan Randolph and MTM have bested every theater in the state by performing this shimmering gem first. And the production, running through Feb. 15 in the Play Circle Theatre in the Wisconsin Union, is simply magnificent.

When the audience first meets Winnie, a middle-aged, 1950s-era housewife in Samuel Beckett’s play “Happy Days,” she is buried up to her waist in a huge ball of dried earth and bits debris, as if the mound accumulated the trash after rolling down a mountain of refuse. (Pitch perfect scenic design by Lisa Schlenker.) Sun drenched, solid and lifeless, the mud boulder has captured and imprisoned Winnie. She has no way out, no shelter from the elements, and no choice but to make the best of it.

Explaining the plight of the play’s main character, playwright Beckett said, “Well I thought that (was) the most dreadful thing that could happen to anybody . . . And I thought who would cope with that and go down singing? Only a woman.”

It is virtually impossible not to begin making your own list of wonderful, joyful things, after seeing Every Brilliant Thing, by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe. The third play in Forward theater’s 2019-2020 season is a one-person show that is a meditation on suicide, mental illness, family, pain, and all of the things in the world that counteract that pain. In fact, it is about a list of one million things that make life extraordinary.

Antique typewriters
The way babies smell
Palomino Blackwing pencils
No Shame Theatre

Long before J.K. Rowling introduced the world to a trio of misfits — including the ridiculously smart Hermione Granger — who would sweep readers into a science fiction/fantasy adventure, where kids fight forces of evil with the guidance of a few eccentric adult teachers, there was Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” A female author entering into the world of outer space battles with a strong young woman protagonist was groundbreaking when the book was published, in 1962. For the first time large numbers of both boys and girls were engaged in interplanetary wars that pitted good against evil.

Two Crows Theatre Company’s production of The How and the Why, by Sarah Treem, begins with a long silence as two characters meet for the first time in 28 years. The prolonged pause at the top of the two-hander is a provocative choice for director Laura Rook, and a brilliant one. The longer the silence goes on, the more tension builds, both onstage and in the audience. It’s as if we can see the gears turning in each of the actor’s minds. Just below the surface, the women’s faces are filled with a plethora of competing questions, assumptions and analysis — as well as a cascade of emotions; love, hate, regret, longing, panic and fear. Ultimately this moment is key to who they are, how they are connected, and how they each navigate the world.

Surprising musical mash-ups are all the rage in theater right now. Performers rap about America’s founding fathers in “Hamilton.” The angry ex-wives of Henry VIII rock out like Beyonce and Ariana Grande in “Six.” And in “The Gospel at Colonus,” which opened at Skylight Music Theatre on January 17, the ancient Greek Oedipus story is told through traditional gospel music, set in a modern Pentecostal church service. The production, directed by Sheri Williams Pannell, makes a joyful noise indeed, highlighting several fantastic performers whose voices rise to the heavens — showing that they truly know their way around the gospel genre.

On opening night of Milwaukee Opera Theatre/Skylight Music Theatre’s production of “Ruddigore, Or the Witch’s Curse,” co-director Jill Anna Ponasik summed up her unorthodox take on the lesser-known Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, set in the world of melodrama and silent film: “We went way out on a limb. Again. Of course.” And once again it works in delightful, startling and comical ways.

‘Tis the season for making lists and taking stock of the past 12 months. As usual, this is the time when I look back wistfully at the live performances I’ve been lucky enough to attend in the Madison area in the past year. Here are the moments that had the most impact on me.

’Tis the season for making lists and taking stock of the past twelve months. As usual, this is the time when I look back with enormous gratitude at the live performances I’ve been lucky enough to attend in the Milwaukee area in the past year. Here are the moments that had the most impact on me, that I will treasure in my memory as we move into a new decade.