A Very Musical April

​Spring opens-up on Milwaukee stages this year with a great deal of music. This coming month: a composer, a couple of bards, a bubble boy and quite a lot more greet local audiences attending small stages in and around Milwaukee.

Bubble Boy The Musical
Bombshell Theatre Company opens the month with the warmly comic musical Bubble Boy. Sweetly lovable Joey Chelius plays Jimmy Livingston--a young man born without much in the way of an immune system. His sterile world is turned upside down when he falls in love with the girl next door (played by the stunning Rae Pare.) It’s a weird musical love story featuring a couple of really impressive romantic leads. The show runs April 1st - 10th at Inspiration Studios on 1500 S. 73rd St. in West Allis. For ticket reservations and more, visit Bombshell Theatre online.

Preludes
​Jill Anna Ponasik and Ruben Piirainen have put together an evening with legendary composer Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff courtesy of composer/lyricist Dave Malloy. A young Rach’s first piano concerto has debuted to disastrous response. Now he’s got to pull himself together and develop what future generations will consider his greatest achievement: his second piano concerto. The cast features Joe Picchetti, Jenny Wanasek, Joel Kopischke and more. The show runs Apr. 1 - 9 at the Woman’s Club of Wisconsin on  813 E. Kilbourn Ave. For more information, visit Milwaukee Opera Theatre online.

Raisin
​One of the best stage dramas to come out of the 20th century powerfully overshadows a few projects that rest in its shadow. It’s interesting to not that there was an early 1970s musical adaptation of the powerful story. Raisin was originally staged back in the early 1970s. A mixture of jazz, gospel and 70’s pop that fuses into Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun this month in a production brought to the Broadway Theatre Center by Skylight Music Theatre. The show (which runs Apr. 8 - 24) is directed and choreographed by Kenneth L. Roberson. For more information, visit Skylight online.

Shakespeare RAW: Antony and Cleopatra
Boozy Bard follows-up its sword and sandals staging of Julius Caesar with what it’s referring as its “even sword-ier sequel” Antony and Cleopatra. The fast-paced, informal and vastly underprepared roll with Shakespeare makes it to The Best Place Tavern and the Historic Pabst Brewery Apr. 11 -13. The 7-10 pm show is a fun opening to the week to those who can make it. Actors pick roles at random. There will be beer. And togas. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook page.

Something Rotten!
​It’s actually a pretty clever idea for a story. A couple of Shakespeare’s contemporaries learn a little bit about the future. Discovering that the biggest shows of tomorrow will feature singing, dancing and acting all at the same time, they decide to do something a little bit ahead of its time. The show debuted on Broadway back in 2015. This coming April, Sunset Playhouse stages a production from its home in Elm Grove April 21st - May 8th. For more information, visit Sunset Playhouse online.

The Amazing Lemonade Girl
First Stage closes-out the month with a playwright James DeVita’s adaptation of a true story. Molly Rhode directs the story of Alexandra “Alex” Scott--a little girl suffering from cancer who raised money for childhood cancer research with a simple lemonade stand. The inspiring story runs April 22 - May 15 at the Marcus Center’s Todd Wehr Theater. For more information, visit First Stage online.