Post Script

When I was pregnant with my second child, people asked if I was hoping for a boy or a girl. And I would say what you are supposed to say: “The gender doesn’t matter as long as the baby is healthy.” But at age 39, which medically classified mine as a “geriatric pregnancy,” I worried about the “healthy” part a lot. According to statistics, procreating after 35 carries a lot of risks. And make no mistake, I wanted the kid I’d seen in the diaper commercials. I wanted the smiley, cooing, cherubic bundle of joy with ten fingers and ten toes, whose every sound – even the burps – were adorable. I wanted my baby to be perfect, like every other expectant parent I knew.

But the goal of producing “perfect babies” looks a lot less attractive in Jacqueline Goldfinger’s funny, disturbing, dystopian nightmare play Babel, about government approved reproduction. Produced by the constructivists, the company that revels in unsettling and ominous stories, Babel is a fascinating and frightening look at a future world where resources are limited, so the most food, water, and privilege are given to the most perfect people – those who are genetically, physically, emotionally, and psychologically closest to ideal.

When playwright Anna Ziegler was interviewed in American Theatre Magazine about her new social issue drama Actually, she said, “I’m often drawn to stories that examine the nature of ‘the truth,’ in which multiple perspectives reveal the impossibility of a single definitive version of events.”

That is exactly what audiences will find fascinating – and frustrating – about Renaissance Theatreworks’ current production of Ziegler’s play, focusing on the conflicting, and equally credible, accounts of what happened one night between two college freshmen at Princeton after a drunken house party. Sensitively directed by Mary MacDonald Kerr and featuring two fantastic actors, the play delves headlong into the issue of consent, a university’s response to an allegation of rape, and the repercussions of the accusation for both students. In examining these weighty subjects, the play stubbornly refuses to answer the questions it raises. It simply creates more questions about how to define “yes” and how to communicate “no.”

The opening moments of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s luminous play, Indecent, may elicit gasps from the audience. Bursting onto the stage in a joyful, if somewhat disoriented reunion, the actors seem to come suddenly, abruptly, back to life, as if rising from their graves. Like the storyteller in An Iliad, and the gods in Hadestown, this group of Eastern European Jewish actors from the turn of the century is destined to act out their complicated story of love, language, identity, and persecution over and over again, always hoping for a new ending. Directed with creativity and compassion by MCT Artistic Director Brent Hazelton, Paula Vogel’s Tony Award-winning play runs through March 27 in the Cabot Theatre in the Broadway Theatre Center. And it is simply stunning.

Stephen Sondheim has been on the collective minds of musical theater lovers a lot this year. Though he passed away at the age of 91 last November, his work is thriving. One of his first Broadway successes as a lyricist, “West Side Story,” has just been gorgeously reimagined on screen by Stephen Spielberg. And he makes a cameo in Lin Manuel Miranda’s latest project, the film version of “Tick, Tick, Boom.” (Bradley Whitford plays the composer, but it’s Sondheim’s voice on the answering machine, with words of encouragement for a struggling Jonathan Larson.)

Of course, devoted fans of Sondheim will tell you that his popularity and his importance in the canon has never waned. And when they list their favorite of his remarkable catalog, the epic, grisly tale of Sweeney Todd – the deranged London barber who killed his clients so his landlord Mrs. Lovett could serve their bodies in pies – is whispered in reverence. University Opera’s production of the musical thriller, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, convincingly demonstrates why the piece is held in such high acclaim.

Experiencing Alvin Ailey dance company’s performances on March 1 at Overture Center evoked a whole range of emotions for me. The artistry of the individual pieces was stunning. The feats of athleticism by some of the best dancers in the country were breathtaking. The combinations of vivid lighting, flowing, colorful costumes and masterful movement – sometimes frantic, sometimes elegant, sometimes robotic and stiff – was mesmerizing. But for me, the performance also felt like (dare I say it?) closure. An end to the COVID-19 pandemic’s complete shutdown of live performances.

The last time I saw the Alvin Ailey troupe perform, was also the last time I was in a theater for any kind of performance, for all of lockdown.

When you walk into the Playhouse at Overture Center for the Arts to see Forward Theater Company’s new production, The Mytilenean Debate, the debris from 9/11 is everywhere. Mundane items like coffee cups, jewelry, messenger bags, and papers lie in piles of rubble around the edges of the stage. One concrete wall stubbornly remains standing at the back of the playing space, while others have seemingly crumbled to dust. Candles flicker in makeshift memorials for lives lost. A chandelier of two long, narrow, rectangle lights hangs above the action, artfully suggesting the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center that are no more.

This complex, affecting set, designed by Keith Pitts, immediately brings audience members back to the morning of September 11, 2001. In addition to providing context for the setting of the play – just a few months after the deadly attack – it encapsulates a central theme of the play; there are some moments when the decisions we make can be revisited. There are times when we get second chances, and opportunities to change our minds. And then there are some decisions that alter our lives – and the lives of those around us – irrevocably.

Nya can’t breathe. It is as if the world she has carefully created, the one she worked towards and fought for, is closing in on her. Her marriage, her career as a teacher, her son’s safety, his academic and professional success, everything is folding in on Nya. And with each dramatic setback, the panic attacks begin. In Dominique Morisseau’s poetic, heart-wrenching portrait of one Black mother trying to keep her teenage son out of the “pipeline” from school to prison, the chances of Nya breathing easily again are small. And for the other characters, the chance of escaping the inertia of failure also seems very small indeed.

Directed by Jamil A. C. Mangan, Next Act Theatre’s production of Pipeline does a good job of shining a light on the problems at the heart of the play; racism, broken school systems, fraught family and work dynamics, and the rage that wells up when one is denied a voice. And the cast is universally strong, populating Morisseau’s gorgeous, complex play with equally complex characters. Unfortunately Mangan orchestrates a feel-good ending that doesn’t do justice to the script, or the important subject matter it addresses.

I am very glad that I was not there when my grandmother passed away, in her mid-nineties after losing her identity to a decade of Alzheimer’s disease. I never had to reconcile the quietly determined, incredibly kind and resilient, lived-through-the-Depression, joyfully practical woman with the tiny, abusive, and petulant patient she was at the end, as my aunt cared for her. Separated by several states, I had the luxury of keeping my memories intact and letting my relatives deal with her very long – disorienting and disoriented – decline. In other words, I was much luckier than Mala, the main character in Melinda Lopez’s one-person play of the same name, playing at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre through February 13. Portrayed with a surprising amount of humor, consistent pleas for grace, and disarming honesty by Milwaukee favorite Rána Roman, Mala is a jumble of extremes: hot and cold; child and parent, good and bad, certainty and doubt, sick and well, right and wrong, old and young, and alive and dead. It is also a beautiful collection of experiences, prayers, and unflinching revelations about what it to take care of your parents at the end of their lives.

If you would like to see an entire audience of five year-olds (and older) lean forward in their theater seats, open their mouths in silent wonder, and flap their wings on cue, simply go see Children’s Theatre of Madison’s current production of Stellaluna. This colorful, exuberant musical, starring the most adorable bat you’ve ever met, is playing at Overture Center in the Playhouse through February 13. At 45 minutes, it is perfectly crafted for its young audience and for the size of the story.

Kat is having a very bad day. And night. A struggling composer, she has been up for 36 hours straight with a crying baby and she just lost her corporate gig creating the soundtrack for a new space explorer video game. ConEd has also turned off the heat in her Brooklyn apartment. Her baby daddy/deadbeat ex-boyfriend has ghosted her to go on the road with a Journey tribute band. And in her delirium, she has signed up with a last-chance, somewhat judgmental dating app that won’t allow her to fudge her age.

But things start looking up when a thunderstorm hits, and through a hole in the space-time continuum, English explorer Ernest Shackleton falls madly in love with Kat, after he listens to the song she composed for her dating profile. Like the sailors who have been enchanted by sirens for centuries, he is immediately smitten with Kat’s voice, her compositions, her beauty, and her creativity. Thus, the unlikeliest of bonds develops – between a desperate single mom and a seemingly doomed adventurer stranded in the Antarctic near the South Pole. In this dark, cold hopeless night, they reach out to each other, hoping for the strength to survive. And when Shackleton tumbles into Kat’s apartment via the refrigerator, things really start to heat up. Supporting each other, they accomplish the impossible.