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'…
By EDWARD RUBIN Despite countless closings, postponements, cancellations, empty seats, COVID interventions, and the annoying requirements of having to wear a mask, present proof of a vaccina…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") One of the most unanticipated closures on Broadway due to the COVID pandemic was the announcement from the Disney Theatrical Group tha…
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…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Times have been very busy both together and separately for the composing team of composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Michael Kori…
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI " Life hasn't been all unicorns and rainbows for the national tour of Mean Girls, which is playing in Milwaukee January 25-30. Some of its performances in other …
By JACK LYONS, Desert Local News Agatha Christie was the queen of the murder mystery genre hands down. The transfer of her novels to the stage and for viewers of the film medium only incr…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") With its current production of Cabaret finally on the boards, the Rivertown Theaters for the Performing Arts has achieved some major f…
By JACK LYONS It is said that with age comes wisdom. It is also said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The eyes of today's beholders are currently in love with "West Side Story", ma…
By EDWARD RUBIN Kimberly Akimbo, the newly penned musical with book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole, Shrek the Musical) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Caroline, or Ch…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") If ever there was a city with which a spiritual kinship could be forged with the national tour of Hadestown, there is little doubt it …
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Crittic ("Steppin' Out") Tovah Feldshuh had described herself as a "transformational" actor. Among her previous outings in one-woman shows were Israeli Prime …
By JACK LYONS, Desert Local News The Desert Ensemble Theatre Company (DETC) of Palm Springs launched its 2021-2022 season in its new home at Theatre # 3, inside the Palm Springs Cultural Cen…
By JACK LYONS, Desert Local News Live theaters all over the country are mounting their various holiday versions of Christmas-themed plays and musicals. The Palm Canyon Theatre, the city'…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Coming just a year after the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and last summer's massive Black Lives Mat…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Any child of the Sixties or worthy Deadhead would probably bet their monthly Social Security check that Harvard professor Timothy Lear…
By JACK LYONS, The world of theatre can become a transformative experience for many in the audience as each person views the production through different lenses at the same time.   …
By EDWARD RUBIN Manhattan Theatre Club's production of British playwright Simon Stephen's three-generation memory play Morning Sun runs through Sunday, December 19th at New York City Center.…
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 clos…
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 Mu…
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…
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 love…
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, transgender…
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 Soc…
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 li…