Marching to the Small Stage

March opens-up on Springtime in Milwaukee theatre with a mix of new shows, classics and classics adapted for the small stage in various places. The winter is serious about being winter for the last couple of weeks of the season, which offers local groups an opportunity to warm-up the stage in anticipation of warmer weather outside. Here’s a look at some of what’s coming on local stages in March.

The Sunset Playhouse opens the month with the classic Neil Simon comedy Barefoot in the Park. Angela Bolmes and Kieth R. Smith star in a romantic comedy set in New York in the late 1960s. Director Donna Daniels delivers the classic tale of a young married couple who move into a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village. It’s been 30 years since Sunset’s last production of this classic, which has been produced elsewhere in various places in and around Milwaukee over the course of the past decade or more. March 3rd - 20th at the Furlan Auditorium on 700 Wall St. in Elm Grove. For more information, visit Sunset Playhouse online.

​Right before the COVID outbreak, First Stage launched an impressively-staged production of the witty showdown children’s musical The Legend of Rock, Paper Scissors. This month, First Stage returns to a show that only had the opportunity to run for a few performances before COVID shut down it and so many other productions for a very long time. I’d had the opportunity to see it with my family right before it shut down. Seasoned local stage veterans Karen Estrada and Rick Pendzich return to a show directed by the talented Kelly Doherty. The show runs March 5th - April 3rd. For more information, visit First Stage online.

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Boozy Bard returns to a castle near The Fiserv Forum for another open dance with Shakespeare as it presents Shakespeare RAW: Romeo and Juliet. There’s a cast. There’s a script. There’s no real rehearsal as no one in the cast knows who is playing what. The casting director is a hat. There are names in that hat drawn at random. It’s weird. It’s fun. There is beer. It’s the first half of the week in the last gasp of winter and a bunch of people are having fun with a strange and tragic romance. The show runs March 7 - 9 at The Best Place Tavern on 917 W Juneau Ave. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook Events Page.

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Rachel Zientek and  Elyse Edelman star in Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s latest drama. Written by Paula Vogel Indecent tells the tale of the first play to be translated from Yiddish: a romance between two women. Debuting in 1906, the play was shut down on Broadway. Indecent tells that play’s story...and Milwaukee Chamber tells it with some of the most accomplished Milwaukee stage actors including James Pickering, James Ridge and a host of others. The show runs March 10 - 27 at the Broadway Theatre Center for ticket reservations and more, visit Milwaukee Chamber online.

An actor opens-up a script for the first time onstage and proceeds to read that script. The actor is completely unaware of what is about to happen. And I’ve already probably said too much about White Rabbit Red Rabbit...a strange, little stage concoction by playwright Nassim Soleimanpour. This monh, Sunstone Studios presents a staging of the script with a number of actors including Joel Kopischke and Jackey Boelkow. The show runs March 11th-13th. For more information, visit Sunstone online.

Jaimelyn Gray directs a sci-fi drama for The Constructivists that opens on the last day of winter. Jacqueline Goldfinger’s Babel--a dark comedy set in the near-future in  which babies must be pre-certified in utero to ensure they have the purest genetic traits.  Dystopia, infertility, eugenics and a talking stork come to the Broadway Theatre Center Studio Theatre March 19 - April 2. For more information, visit The Constructivists online.