By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI – It may seem unusual for the state’s largest performing arts organization to open its doors after the pandemic with a comedy from the genteel South. Yet, a closer look at this production of Steel Magnolias offers something that the audience has been missing for almost two years. That’s the […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) There is an obvious conversation addressed early in Tootsie, the David Yazbek musical that won Santino Fontana a Leading Actor in a Musical Tony Award in 2019. In the book by Robert Horn that won him the other Tony Award for that show, the question about a […]
By ROY BERKO In 2010 a gay Mississippi high school student was banned from coming to her senior prom by the school’s Board of Education because she wanted to bring her girlfriend as her date. She challenged the ruling, which resulted in the cancellation of the prom. The student and the ACLU sued the district. The federal […]
By ANNE SIEGEL The opening of Zora Howard’s Stew marks a return to the stage for one of Milwaukee’s longstanding companies, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre. For the past 20 months, one of the loveliest theaters in the Midwest – the Cabot Theatre – has been dark. Actors, directors, technicians and others in the theater community wondered […]
By ROY BERKO For the last several years more and more attention has been placed on The Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, woke language, microaggressions, radical feminism, transgenderism, Critical Race Theory and aggression against Asians. They have become issues for laws, politics, education, media and the arts. After almost two-years of non-live production, the […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With the opening of The Addams Family musical last week, director Leslie Castay added a new company, the Jefferson Performing Arts Society (JPAS), and a new venue to her repertoire. Castay, a former Broadway performer and cabaret star, had been quite busy directing projects prior to the […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When Bryan Batt steps on the stage of Le Petit Theatre du Carré as the star of the one-man play Dear Mr. Williams, he is literally living two lifetimes, his own and that of revered playwright and poet Tennessee Williams. Developed and workshopped since its inclusion as […]
By ROY BERKO The death penalty carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1973, more than 186 people who had been sentenced to death have been exonerated. Research by the National Academy of Science indicates that about 4.1% of the people currently on death row are likely to be innocent. The Exonerated, now […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When it was announced that Ricky Graham would be in the director’s chair for Hello, Dolly! at Rivertown Theaters for the Performing Arts several months ago, there was anticipation this could have been one of the best versions of the Jerry Herman classic to ever grace a […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With its most recent production of God of Carnage, the Jefferson Performing Arts Society has taken the wraps off Yasmina Reza’s controversial work first seen here at Southern Rep in 2011, less than five years after its original premiere in French in December of 2006. This production […]