​2022 opens with a very busy month in local theatre. Here’s a look at some of what’s opening the first month of the new year:

Milwaukee Entertainment Group opens the year with a production of The Diary of Anne Frank in the basement of the Brumder Mansion. The drama is directed by the talented Reva Fox. I'd seen a production of Anne Frank in the Brumder's basement ages ago. The cozy, intimate space is absolutely perfect for the drama. The current production features Zaela Schlissel in the title role. Also featured in the cast are Randall T. Anderson, Maggie Marks, Nate Press, Tom Marks and more. 

The Diary of Anne Frank runs Jan. 7 - 22 at the Brumder Mansion.
​

Bombshell Theatre opens the season with a production of the 1960s musical Funny Girl. Set in New York City prior to and following World War I, the show warms the Sunset Playhouse in Elm Grove with the story of Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice. Bryanna VanCaster  stars in a show featuring Bombshell’s Eric Welch, Tim Albrechtson and a really impressive cast including Marcee Doherty-Elst and Rae Pare among many, many others. It’s a huge cast in the intimate space of Sunset’s Marla Eichmann Studio Theater. Look for a big Ziegfeld Follies feel in a cozy studio theatre. It should be well worth the trip to Elm Grove.

Funny Girl runs Jan. 7 - 16 at the Sunset Playhouse.

On the surface, it feels like a silly, little adult mutation of a childhood classic. It’s been done before a million times: take an important character from a beloved children’s story from Seuss and make it adult for the sake of blowing-off a little steam on the small stage for the holidays. In recent memory, Milwaukee has played host to adult mutations of classics in the form of Who Killed Santa?, Rudolph the Pissed-Off Reindeer and more. This holiday season, Sunstone Studios presents another adult mutation of children’s fare with a piece by playwright Matthew Lombardo that debuted in a different market right around the same time those other two were becoming established here.

Cindy Lou Who from How the Grinch Stole Christmas is all grown-up and living in a trailer park. She is shunned. An. outcast. The audience hangs out with her before the party. There is end rhyme. It’s a pretty simple concept. It would be really, really easy to be lazy with the comedy on this. Thankfully, Who’s Holiday! offers a great deal more depth than a simple, naughty revision on an old children’s classic. Amber Regan directs Samantha Sostarich in a cozy, little production of the one-act comedy.

Sostarich deftly walks a line between abrasively crass and endlessly endearing as the little girl all grown-up. That she manages to do so while delivering an entire monologue in end rhyme is quite an accomplishment. End rhyme can get really annoying really quickly, but Sostarich handles it beautifully. She's having a lot of fun with the surface-level comedy. That fun is delivered to the audience in a festive mix of storytelling and audience interaction. Lombardo allows Cindy Lou to deliver tales from the Seuss-iverse. The beloved children’s author explored brief moments in the world he was creating, but his work only explores the surface of a much more complicated adult Seuss-iverse. In the process of exploring this, Lombardo takes a deeper look at what happens when a beloved child grows-up.  The community that loved her as a child might not look so kindly on her when she has adult desires and aspirations. Things start-off light and bawdy, but rather quickly dive into some very deep thematic territory.

Sostarich is positively heartbreaking as someone who has been dealt one misfortune after another. The audience is spending increasingly awkward time with her as she gets ready or a party. One by one, people contact her to cancel. There’s a deep sadness to it, but Sostarich manages to maintain Cindy Lou’s irrepressible resilience in a charming resilience. The big triumph here is that, even though the whole thing ends in a schmaltzy sort of holiday happy ending, Sostarich is able to deliver it in a way that still manages to feel genuine. Throughout the production, she’s does such a good job of maintaining a balance between serious adult drama and cynical humor that it all comes across with a remarkably satisfying finish. The one-act fades-out into the dark chill in the shadow of bigger theaters on the edge of another holiday theater season downtown Milwaukee.

Sunstone Studios’ production of Who’s Holiday! has two more performances: December 18 and 23. For more information, visit Sunstone Studios online.

2021 finds its end with a nice mix of shows...many of which are alternatives to more traditional holiday fare. A few of which have already opened. (Next Act’s current show is a great deal of fun.) Here’s a look at some of what’s coming-up.

Playwright Rick Bingen presents a staged reading of his new play Steal the Theatre
Dec. 2 and 5. Bingen directs a talented cast in the story of a London pub, Shakespeare-themed libations, and time travel – a recipe for an unprecedented adventure for a lost and forlorn Olivia.” The reading takes place at Sunstone Studios on 127 E. Wells St. For more information, visit Sunstone online.

Veteran Milwaukee theatre talent Karl Miller is working on a production of the 1963 Broadway musical She Loves Me. Set in a Hungarian perfume shop in the 1930s, a couple of shop clerks try to track down the identity of those who have been sending them love letters. The show runs Dec. 2 - 19 at the Sunset’s Furlan Auditorium on 700 Wall St in Elm Grove. For more information, visit Sunset online.

Sadly, the 1998 death of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard continues to be painfully topical over a quarter century after the brutal murder occurred. This month First Stage presents a staging of the dramatic exploration of the murder and the small town in which it took place. The Laramie Project is directed by Elyse Edelman. It runs Dec. 3 - 12 at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center on 325 West Walnut St.

The Ring Theatre Company presents a retelling of O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi just in time for the holidays. The production is set in 1945 in a small radio station in Milwaukee as WWII ends amidst Christmas carols and vintage jingles for local businesses. The show runs Dec. 16 - 23 at Sunstone Studios on 127 E. Wells St. For more information, visit Sunstone online.

The third show to open-up at Sunstone this month might be the one show I'm looking forward to more than any of the rest of them. It's an R-rated late-night holiday comedy called. Who's Holiday!  The 2017 comedy stars Samantha Sostarich as Cindy Lou Who all grown-up and living in a trailer park. It's a one-woman show. Sostarich has fun comic energy that should fill the intimate stage quite well for a late night show. The show runs Dec. 17th, 18th and 23rd. All shows are at 10 pm. For more information, visit Sunstone online.

​Next Act Theatre enters the holidays with appealingly non-holiday counter programming as it presents playwright Michael Hollinger’s Cold War spy spoof Red Herring. A very engaging Mary MacDonald Kerr plays longtime detective Maggie Pelletier, who is investigating a Russian spy ring. Dylan Bolin makes a charismatic appearance as Maggie’s love interest and fellow detective Frank Keller. Frank is looking to get Maggie to commit to him, but she’s not going to feel comfortable with the arrangement until after she is able to bring-in the Russian spies. Maggie’s status as the central character in the detective story makes an appealing alternative to the traditional male-dominated hard boiled detective drama.


The uneasy romance between Frank and Maggie is paralleled in the script by a mirror romance between young lovers played by Eva Nimmer and Zach Thomas Woods. Nimmer is charmingly conflicted as Lynn McCarthy--daughter of the infamous senator from Wisconsin who led the search of phantom communists in the 1950s. The good news? Her boyfriend just proposed to her.  The bad news? He’s a Russian spy. Woods’ relatable idealism as a Russian spy helps balance-out the politics of the ensemble. Villains and heroes alike are shown in a sympathetic light that glides gracefully into the light comedy of the story.


Bo Johnson and Kelly Doherty round out the cast as a beleaguered Russian spy named Andrei Borchevsky and his love interest--a woman looking to guide him into further espionage activity. Johnson is as clever with his meekly reluctant Russian wisdom as Doherty is with her earthly, jaded cynicism. Doherty is brilliant with the fast-paced deadpan  Dashiell Hammett wit. She also makes an endearingly comic appearance as Lynn’s mother--the housewife of Joe McCarthy. The exaggerated placidity of her deep Wisconsin accent adds to the local flavor of the show considerably.


Kerr is firmly ensconced in the role of Maggie. Every other actor in the ensemble plays a variety of other characters that all manage to make a fun impression on the production. Bolin is fun as a harried priest taking two different confessions at once. Nimmer makes an appealing counterpoint to the sweetness of Lynn McCarthy as a bitter clerk who is forced to deal with marriage licenses. Woods is fun as a droll Republican coroner eagerly awaiting the election of Eisenhower. Johnson plays a few different roles...none more subtly impressive than that of a covered corpse in the morgue. It’s a hell of a challenge to lie there doing nothing and look convincingly dead...even beneath a sheet like that. Johnson has a great stage presence.  The fact that he was able to suppress it and just lie there is actually really, really cool.


Set Designer Rick Rasmussen has ingeniously put together a set that would feel perfectly at home in the cover of an old pulp detective novel. He maximizes the space in a way that allows for stylish bits of set to work in a variety of different settings. In places it feels like on old movie poster come to life amidst the iconic gumshoe detective costuming of Amy Horst. Once again, David Cecsarini smartly brings together an impressive array of talent to vividly realize the potential of a script that could have easily drifted into cheesy cliche. Beyond light comedy and spot-on hard boiled detective cloak and dagger elements, Cecsarini and company develop a deeply enjoyable pair of romances onstage that are deeply satisfying in their own right.


Next Act Theatre’s production of Red Herring runs through December 19th at the Next Act space on 255 S. Water St. For more information, visit Next Act online.

Theatre Gigante makes a quick, little appearance the weekend before Thanksgiving with a captivating spoken word performance by Artistic co-Director Mark Anderson. Mark’s words are punctuated with thoughtful audio interludes by composer/collaborator Frank Pahl. The intimate East Side studio space on the fifth floor of Kenilworth warms to a deeply engaging show by a very experienced storyteller. The towering, soft-spoken Anderson reaches deeply and casually into an intellectual mood that carries the imagination fluidly through an appealing series of thoughts.

As it opens, he’s waking up into a narrative of a Sunday that could be any some day in the long and winding March of COVID lockdown. Somewhere between the lights and the shadows and the audience, Mark moves through an honest, casual, conversational spoken word performance discussing matters of life, death, writing, thought and so much more.

There is real insight in inspiration and Mark Anderson’s work. Mark’s words search for meaning in everything without pretense. His words gracefully tumble through a pre-deconstructed series of stories. Metaphors and assumptions and amplifications all tumble around playfully onstage. It’s all very carefully composed. Every moment in the winding flow of consciousness has a very specific reason for being there. Mark Anderson is brilliant at delicately scoping our and sculpting silences, shadow and empty spaces in popular consciousness into something memorable. 

What could have come across as a restless meandering through thoughts during the COVID pause become something much more than that. Anderson has been thinking about death. As have we all. And while he is working with the same basic understanding and framework the rest of us are, he manages to find those specific spaces and places that make it on perspective vital and insightful from his perspective.

There’s a profoundly social soul to Mark's performance. At times the sheer casualness of the whole experience can seem almost breathtakingly nonchalant. As the show wraps itself up into a kind of beginning, one has the impression of having had a remarkably deep conversation with a deeply feeling and thinking human being. Which is odd considering that he was the only one who had actually been speaking the whole time. ​

Anderson isn't the only one speaking the whole time. Well...he IS the only one speaking. But there's another guy up there singing. And playing guitar. And percussion. Anderson and Frank Pahl link-up beautifully in places. At one point Anderson is mentioning something about the US and the nature of imperfection (I think) and Paul punctuates it with a wittily flawed performance of the melody from a patriotic tune that jangles and mutates around the edges of the melody. Much like Anderson’s own work, Pahl is capable of breathing through the soulful beauty of his own imperfection. Pahl is playing guitar, percussion and his own voice all at the same time. People do it all the time, but it's still really amazing watching it happen with Pahl's distinct personality behind it. 

Anderson and Pahl clearly have it together. The repetition on thoughts of death and ending might seem like kind of a sad place to be looking down the barrel of another holiday season, but Anderson delivers a sense of peace about it that's very reassuring. After all...this IS an expression of thanks. That's the recurring message, which feeds into the end of it all. One goes through so much in the course of one lifetime. Mark Anderson takes a moment onstage to consider it all.

It's a nice moment.

Anderson has performed onstage so much in various roles as various other characters. It's nice to have an opportunity to hang out with Mark Anderson playing "Mark Anderson" for a few fleeting moments on the way in to the holiday season. 

Theatre Gigante’s Thanks a Lot! has one more performance today at 2:00 pm at Kenilworth 508 Theatre on the fifth floor of 1925 East Kenilworth Place. For more information, visit Theatre Gigante online.

​It's a really fun premise for a comedy: three politically diverse women (who are all attracted to each other in various ways) navigate through a minefield of intellectual and carnal distractions in order to get work done that could actually save the nation from itself. 

Voices Found Repertory joins-up with Sunstone Studios this month to present a limited-run of playwright Lauren Gunderson’s The Taming. The farce imagines women of two political extremes brought together by a beautiful force looking to do some good. The three of them are forced together in an attempt to solve all of the problems of the nation in time for a Miss America pageant event that will be taking place in just a few hours.

Samantha Sostarich plays a beauty pageant contestant who aspires to go beyond superficial politics the her social platform segment of the Miss America contest. She figures that the only way to straighten everything out is to totally re-write the constitution. Sure it’s ambitious, but the nation isn’t going to save itself and much has been accomplished under the comedy of extreme pressure in the course of the nation’s history.

Forced into aiding the beauty queen in her quest are a conservative political expert named Pat (Kaylene Howard) and an ultra-progressive blogger named Bianca (Caroline Norton.) Pat and Bianca wake-up in a hotel room together quite uncertain of how they might have ended up there. Pat isn’t wearing pants. Bianca isn’t able to post anything to her blog. Neither of them have their phones. After a quick series of revelations about how they might have come to be where they are, Pat and Bianca are joined by the woman who drugged them in the interest of securing their support.

Gunderson’s script is light, fast-paced political satire. The comedy rolls and ricochets around with transitions between scenes and revelations that can feel pretty drastic. The overall energy of a script like this is very difficult to keep grounded between transitions. The play moves like a dream fugue, so the action can feel pretty disjointed. Director Maggie Marks keeps everything rolling swiftly from moment to moment. Each of the energies onstage is firmly grounded.

Sostarich is beautifully dazzling as the charismatic, super-heroic leader. Howard wields an idealistic gravity about her as the politico looking to make a difference. Norton has deftly subtle comic instincts as the revolutionary disruptor. Marks has fostered a comedic celerity in the cast that allows for a sharpness of wit in subtle shifts of tone and inflection that make for an entertainingly textured comedy.

Political comedy requires rapid-fire embrace of an ever-expanding complexity that Gunderson’s script clearly embraces. The current political climate isn’t perfectly reflected. (The play was originally published in 2015 kind of a lot has happened since then.) It's impossible for any political comedy to be totally up-to-date more than a year after it was written, but the root causes of A LOT of problems are addressed. Issues with US political life echo surprisingly well with striking (and comically depressing) detail for something over half a decade old. Sostarich, Howard and Norton are hip and sophisticated in a farce that is pleasantly enchanted by that strangely persistent phantom of the ever-elusive American dream. ​

Sunstone Studios and Voices Found Repertory’s production of The Taming runs through November 13th at Sunstone Studios’ space on 127 East Wells St. For ticket reservations and more, visit Sunstone Studios online.





(On a personal note, I've always wondered how much of the political comedy I love comes from simply agreeing with the perspective of the comedy. Honestly...I probably was laughing at this one a bit more than I might...I mean...it feels so good to hear some of these things out loud. A few minor disagreements aside, I'm solidly on Gunderson's side with most of what she's expressing here. Term limits for the US Supreme Court? Yes! Abolish the Electoral College? Yes! She even refers to the Second Amendment as "the militia amendment." Yes! ("How could anyone misinterpret that?") For me Gunderson's script feels a lot like coming home. It's fun.)

The first show to open this coming month looks fun. It’s another trip to Sunstone Studios. Given how many shows have opened in the tiny studio space, it’s easily one of the busiest theatrical stages in Milwaukee. The space just opened a little while ago and it has REALLY hit the ground running. The Taming is playwright Lauren Gunderson’s all-woman take on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. The show finds an intimate staging in the busy, little confines of the coziest space in town. Set in the U.S., the show is billed as, “a semi-historically-accurate ether trip.” Sounds like fun. The cast includes Samantha Sostarich, Kaylene Howard and Caroline Norton. The show runs November 4 - 13. Maggie Marks directs. For more information, visit Sunstone online.

Skylight Music Theatre presents another staging of The Little Shop of Horrors this coming month. Michael Unger directs a diverse cast including David Flores as Mushnik, Seth K. Hale, Raven Dockery, Aaron Reese Boseman, Kevin J. Seivert as Seymour and Ashley Oviedo as Audrey. People sometimes ask me which shows get produced more than any other locally and honestly...this is one of the most-produced shows in the past dozen years or so, which is a bit odd considering how weird it is. The strangely upbeat sci-fi horror musical makes its way to the main stage at the Skylight November 19th - January 2nd. For more information, visit the Skylight online.

Michael Hollinger’s Cold war detective spoof Red Herring opens this month in a Next Act Theatre production that features a very appealing cast including Mary MacDonald Kerr as a tough Boston cop , Dylan Bolin as an FBI agent. Also appearing: Zach Thomas Woods and Bo Johnson in an array of roles. David Cecsarini directs. Cecsarini always does as really good job of putting together the right cast for a show and this...wow...this is a LOT of fun. A really nice mix of talent from a couple of different generations. The comedy runs November 24th through December 19th. For more information, visit Next Act online.

Actress/Adaptor Maya Danks has reduced Shakespeare’s classic Macbeth into a streamlined one hour without intermission. Developed in part by Rebirth Ink, the production of increased brevity makes its way to the small stage of Sunstone Studios for a single weekend’s performance at the end of October. Directed by Linetta Alexander Islam, the show graces the intimacy of the venue with a cast of four: Macbeth (Ken Miller), Lady Macbeth (Guinevere Casper), Banquo (King Hang)  and Macduff (Brielle Richmond.)

​Prophecy. Ambition. Death. It all plays out in a single hour without intermission. Everything glides across the stage quite gracefully. Danks has really cut the script to the quick. The production follows Danks' minimalism in a reasonably deft swiftness. There’s a powerful economy of visuals on a stage that isn’t much deeper or wider than the length of a broadsword. Four seats sit at four corners as the three witches settle-in for the play’s opening. The stage is bathed in black and gold with the occasional flashes of red light when blood is spilled.​

​With so much speeding by so quickly, there isn’t a whole lot of time for the mystical darkness to settle-in around the edges of the story. Between the lack of mysticism and a few other decisions that have been made in framing the script and staging the drama, this is a Macbeth that feels much more like psychological horror. The three weird sisters are as abstract as the dagger of the mind that haunts Macbeth. The plot elements tumble across the stage in a strange maelstrom the Danks and Islam have carefully concentrated. The characters are all clearly going through a dark madness, but how much of it all is in their minds? Couldn't they all stop it if they just discussed things like rational people? Without the mystic darkness, all of the darkness lies within. What is real? What lies in the mind? It's a darker edge when it's all within. ​

Sunstone Studios’ and Rebirth Ink’s production of Macbeth has three more performances: October 29th and 30th at 7pm and October 31st at 5 pm. For ticket reservations and more, visit Sunstone Studios online.

Theatre Gigante is opening its season with a two-performance show that, as of this writing, is quite nearly sold-out. In the intimate space of the Kenilworth 508 studio, Gigante presents a screening of Nosferatu complete with live original scoring by Michigan-based composer Frank Pahl. Pahl’s work is deliciously eerie.  Bizarrely engaging dissonance does an unhinged dance with old celluloid played through digital projection on a modest screen. The show mixes the traditional, silent black and white horror of the original 1922 film with pleasantly eerie orchestration brought to the studio by The Little Bang Theory. That’s right: Nosferatu is about to turn 100 years of age and Theatre Giagante is having a really good time with its delicious creepiness.

The very first live performance I’d ever seen in Milwaukee was Pandemonium III with Present. Music back in 1995. Present Music performed a live, new score for Nosferatu as a part of a program that also including Todd Browining’s Freaks and a costume party with The Little Blue Crunchy Things. The enduring appeal of “the first ever vampire movie” isn’t difficult to understand. Nosferatu is a cult classic German horror film that skulks along the edges of sanity in a way that absolutely defines silent-era horror. It’s a towering legend of the genre. Thanks to Th  we Little Bang Theory, enduring shadows from another century being resurrected once more. 

Opening night was sold-outThe delightfully moody percussion  that calls itself The Little Bang Theory rested onstage at the beginning of the performance with a weird collection of things including a kick drum, toy bells, a mini xylophone, metallophones, automata, homemade instruments and a whole bunch of other things. This is strange, strange darkness. Side seats are covered with fake webbing. Then there’s that opening title card...”Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror.” Okay...yeah...but it’s a really WEIRD symphony of horror played with a respectfully playful madness. There are three grown adults...serious musicians who are ready to play tasty, little nightmares with a few toys while classic horror plays on a relatively small screens . And yet...there’s something strange about the shadows in that tiny, little studio that DO feel a bit chilling and disturbing a round the edges. There’s something about it that definitely feels like it’s resonating deeply into that strange meeting place between beauty and grace and time and space. There’s a mix of childhood fear and adult disorientation as shadows from another era play out on a comfortably large screen. The strange tone and percussion playing through the space reaches beyond expectation into something new and chilling amidst the advancing autumn on Milwaukee’s east side. 

The final scene before “The End,” continues to echo through my head as I write this. Todd Browning’s end to Bella Lugosi’s Dracula feels like weak surveillance camera footage next to the final death in Nosferatu. For all its jerky motions and awkward motions, this cinematic vampire still holds some power.

Theatre Gigante’s Nosferatu with  Little Bang Theorey has one more performance on Sunday, Oct. 24th at the Kenilworth 508 Theatre on 1925 E. Kenilworth Place. For ticket reservations and more, visit Theatre Gigante online.