By ROY BERKO In the fall of 1957, I had a mind-blowing experience. I saw the newly opened Broadway production of West Side Story. At the time, all I knew about the show was that it was based on Romeo and Juliet and it had opened to positive reviews two days before. I left the show with […]
By ROY BERKO Theater history books refer to The Black Crook, which opened in 1866 in New York, as the first musical. However, according to Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick, the conceivers of Something Rotten!, now on stage at Beck Center for the Arts, that honor should go to Omelette. Never heard of Omelette? Unless you’ve seen the hysterically funny […]
By ROY BERKO Mathew Lopez, the author of The Legend of Georgia McBride – now on stage in the Studio Theatre at Beck Center – also wrote The Inheritance, which, in 2018 was the most honored American play in a generation, sweeping the “Best Play” Olivier Award in London and the Drama Desk and Tony Awards in […]
By ANNE SIEGEL (MILWAUKEE, WI.) – The most surprising thing about Get Happy: Angela Ingersoll Sings Judy Garland is that the Milwaukee Repertory Theater has taken so long to bring this show to town. The Rep has the perfect venue for this show: the intimate Stackner Cabaret, with its nightclub-style atmosphere that has audiences sitting […]
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI – Although it’s not “official,” playwright Bill Cain and Milwaukee’s Next Act Theatre seem to be having a love affair or, at least, a mutual admiration society. Next Act already has presented three of Cain’s plays in recent years: Equivocation (2018), How to Write a New Book for the Bible […]
By ROY BERKO Shakespeare, in his comedies, writes of trickery, false accusations, restoration of harmony and romance. He uses lots of double entendre and encourages fun and farce as well as broad performances. Charles Fee, the Producing Artistic Director of Great Lakes Theatre (GLT), loves nothing more than staging expansive melodrama, farce and slapstick. As […]
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI – The Tony-nominated play Indecent, written by noted playwright Paula Vogel, comes vividly to life in this part of the Midwest. Thankfully, Milwaukee has a perfect space for it: the Cabot Theatre, a recreation of Europe’s old-style “jewel box” theaters. Both grand and gloriously decorated, the theater was created by a […]
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI. – Next Act, one of the city’s longest-running theaters, opens the new year with an exhilarating, funny and disturbing Wisconsin premiere of Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline. The play, which runs one hour and 40 minutes without an intermission, moves at breathtaking speed as it describes the world of a Black family […]
By ROY BERKO Vickie Bussert, the director of Lizzie: The Musical, an exploration of the Lizzie Borden story, now on stage as a joint production between Baldwin Wallace’s nationally respected Musical Theater Program and Beck Center of the Arts, is no stranger to the show. Bussert staged the show at the 14th Street Theatre, in Playhouse […]
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 […]