Post Script

Scholars believe that six million Jews were killed as part of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution,” a perverse plan to eradicate the world of racial and ethnic undesirables as he worked to create a “master race.” Jews were targeted and murdered in greater numbers than any other group, but they were not the only ones Hitler’s forces killed, starting in the 1930s and continuing until the end of World War II. Thousands of Roma, ethnic Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Afro-Germans, and Russian prisoners of war also died in German forced labor camps. In addition, because homosexuality was illegal in Germany and seen by the Third Reich as a biological defect, 100,000 gay men were arrested and 50,000 were jailed between 1933 and 1945. Though exact numbers are hard to verify, an estimated 15,000 were sent to die in concentration camps.

This subset of horror is the subject of Martin Sherman’s 1979 play Bent, on the Drury Stage at the Bartell Theatre through October 29. The first play of Strollers Theatre’s 65th season, it is an examination of one man’s journey from the decadence of booze, drugs and sex in the clubs of Weimar Berlin to torture and isolation in the prison camp at Dachau.

When Peter Sinn Nachtrieb wrote the pitch-black comedy The Totalitarians back in 2015, he could not have imagined our current political landscape and its level of dysfunction. The current state of our fragile union – that our country has become even more polarized, our elections more fraught, and our collective decisions based even more on fear and anger than facts – makes the The Constructivists’ current production of this dystopian story even more topical. Even more terrifying. Even more essential, as the midterm elections creep closer. Running through October 29 at the Interchange Theater Co-op, it is a visceral, compelling reminder of the danger – and power – inherent in manipulating the masses by simply validating their rage.

If a group of moderately scary, adult trick-or-treaters comes to your door in the next week, do not let them in. They do not want candy. They want to be understood. They are the cast of Monstersongs, Music Theatre of Madison’s fall production, which opened at The Crucible on October 8, and has only one more performance, at 7 p.m. October 15. Entirely apt for the Halloween season, the one-hour, intermission-free, rockin’ musical revue is a good time that is not meant to frighten you, but might make you think about standard boogeymen in a new way.

Introduced by a young girl (Freyda Oler) who is reading a magical book about things that go bump in the night, the monsters appear on the otherwise bare stage after she recites their descriptions. Each creature is dressed in classic DIY Halloween costumes — either fashioned out of old clothes from Goodwill and painted cardboard, or purchased directly from a party store — a kitchy veneer for some real supernatural beings.

When Brian Quijada was in elementary school in the Chicago suburbs, his class learned about the Civil Rights era and the struggle for Black Americans to overcome segregation and staggering, overt discrimination. His teacher told the story of Rosa Parks, one of the heroes of the movement, famously refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. As the child of undocumented immigrants from El Salvador, this prompted Quijada to ask the titular question for the one person play/spoken word/rap/musical he later penned, “Where did we sit on the bus?”

The premise of a multi-media, autobiographical show exploring where Latinx Americans fit into the history of our country is a good one, and certainly apt in this period of multicultural reckoning. Helmed by Artistic Director Brent Hazelton, Where Did We Sit on the Bus? opens Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s 2022-23 season two years after it was originally slated, in a concerted effort to amplify voices of underrepresented cultures, diversify audiences, and reflect the diversity of the community. And thanks to an electric, heartfelt performance by Chicago-based actress Isa Arciniegas and playful onstage accompaniment by Milwaukee music icon Kellen “Klassik” Abston, the production is captivating. But these talented artists cannot overcome the weak, cliched script that fails to deliver any new insight on the Latinx experience and certainly does not live up to the play’s provocative title, investigating representation and bias against minorities in this country.

“They like to watch.”

Early in Next Act Theatre’s searing production of Kill Move Paradise, one of the Black men trapped in limbo onstage looks out at the audience and questions why the spectators are there — mute, motionless, and shamelessly staring. The response, “they like to watch,” could not be further from the truth. White America doesn’t like to be confronted with the epidemic of police brutality that has resulted in hundreds of violent deaths of people of color. Specifically, since the Washington Post started recording police shootings in 2015, 1,630 Black men have been killed – a staggering number and one that is hugely disproportionate to the population. But that is largely the purpose of Ijames’s play – to force the viewers to pay attention.

The playwright does not make it easy. There are many silences contained in the 90-minute production. Performed confidently, they nonetheless unnerve an audience the longer they go on. Non-linear conversations bounce across the stage. There are songs and dances, games of pretend, and literal attempts to escape. There are crying jags, and even trips out into the audience so the actors can inspect their viewers. There is no named setting, although it becomes apparent that the men we meet are in an in-between space after their deaths, before they ascend to the afterlife. Except for the backstory filled in by Tiny, the youngest of the group, we find out relatively little about the circumstances of their lives or their ends. And it’s unclear for most of the play what steps they need to take to leave this blank holding pattern. Like the absurdist classic Waiting for Godot, we are all waiting and watching, wondering what will happen next. It is an uncomfortable 90 minutes. It is supposed to be.

A recent American Theatre magazine article analyzing the plays and musicals onstage across the country this season concluded that audiences are buying tickets for either “candy or protein” – silly, feel-good fluff or deadly serious diatribes commenting on our chaotic present.

If this is true, then Skylight Music Theatre’s season-opening production of Mamma Mia! is an enormous piece of Greek baklava; crispy pastry, gooey, packed with nuts and dripping with honey, slightly exotic, and seasoned with just enough spice. Powerfully sweet and subtle as a shot of ouzo, Mamma Mia! is a sugar high made of glorious, exuberant fun — a modern fairy tale full of nostalgia set to the soundtrack of two dozen frothy singles from the Swedish super-group ABBA. Performed in the Cabot Theatre in the Broadway Theatre Center, it runs through October 16.

Forward Theater starts its season with The Wanderers, a moving portrait of two generations of Jewish Brooklyners searching for happiness. With a universally strong cast and straightforward direction by Mikael Burke, the play examines how cracks in relationships can turn into chasms and how escaping from one unsatisfying circumstance does not guarantee a better one. Performed in the Playhouse at Overture Center, The Wanderers continues through September 25.

Rather than being a plot-driven drama, Anna Ziegler’s play is more a meditation on the idea of FOMO, or the “fear of missing out.” When we meet the two married couples in The Wanderers they are definitely looking over their shoulders, worrying that a better, alternate life might be passing them by. Each works through their traditionally prescribed days, wondering if their careers, their spouses, their families and their spirituality are enough to make them happy. And from the safety of their settled worlds, they question whether the rules that govern their every action protect them from harm or hinder them from having a more meaningful life.

This morning I had the privilege of being interviewed by Kate Archer Kent on Wisconsin Public Radio about Broadway shows coming to Wisconsin in the coming year, following a half hour discussion about the “state-of-the-art” from American Players Theatre’s Artistic Director Brenda DeVita and Forward Theater’s Artistic Director Jen Uphoff Gray. (To listen, check out the interviews here.)

After a bit of research, I was delighted to see that there are a lot of great examples coming up, both on national tours and in locally produced professional shows. So, of course I prepared for about three hours worth of conversations and ended up cramming just a few points into a 26 minute segment. . .which is the way radio goes. The time goes so quickly! There’s always more to talk about!

Fans of the Brontë sisters and desolate English country manors will feel a familiar chill when the lights come up on American Players Theatre’s current production of The Moors. The slightly absurd, comically dark, sort-of period piece by Jen Silverman is a disorienting mix of gothic tropes turned sideways, the patriarchy turned upside-down, talking animals turned to romance, and a chiming clock that marks time in the 1840s, the present, and no time at all. Directed with icy precision by Keria Fromm, this startling play runs in the Hillside Theatre through October 9.

Love’s Labour’s Lost is a silly play. There are a lot of good reasons that it’s done infrequently. In fact, American Players Theatre has produced it only a handful of times, most recently in 2002.

One of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, it is jam-packed with relentless wordplay that can be more work to decipher than the jokes are worth. And it doesn’t help that modern audiences have no hope of understanding some of the jibes that the Elizabethan court probably howled at — scholars believe Shakespeare was using the play to satirize contemporary figures from the late 16th century. A meditation on the fickleness of youth, the overwhelming power of infatuation to destroy higher aims, and the idea that words can be so tortured that they lose meaning altogether, it is light on plot and dense in language.

And that is why you should run, not walk, to the American Players Theatre box office to get your tickets to the company’s incredibly smart, lush, effervescent production of the play, running in the outdoor Hill Theatre through October 2. It will make you laugh until your stomach hurts. It is joy in its purest form. It is also a reminder of how much talent APT regularly assembles for its classical productions — which can be absolutely transformed in the hands of a cast and production team who unabashedly unleash their entire creative selves.