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Dog Sees God by OUT!Cast Theatre spoofs the Peanuts gang (don't bring the kids)
on 11/07/09 at 12:00 pm | It's a fairly good bet that when Charles Schulz created his beloved Peanuts cartoon strip, he never foresaw the futures that his characters live into in Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, a decidedly adult spoof that is the debut production of the OUT!Cast Theatre company. |
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Madison Theatre Guild's Forever Plaid is a musical delight
on 10/10/09 at 10:14 am | Madison Theatre Guild's production of Forever Plaid wraps audience and performers alike in its fuzzy comfort. |
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No Time to Wave Goodbye by Jacquelyn Mitchard is skillful, ludicrous
on 09/18/09 at 9:00 am | Jacquelyn Mitchard's latest book, No Time to Wave Goodbye, exhibits all the traits that have made her so successful and well loved: brisk, journalistic prose, a group of readily identifiable characters and a tale that tugs at the emotions with the insistence of a wayward child. |
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The Little Dog Laughed by Strollers Theatre disappoints
on 05/18/09 at 11:03 am | Douglas Carter Beane's caustic comedy The Little Dog Laughed lifts its leg on the fire hydrant that is Hollywood, dousing that narcissistic never-never land with a well-deserved dose of reality. Sadly, Strollers Theatre's production, currently playing at the Bartell, has turned a comical canine into a hapless hound that is barking up the wrong tree. |
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Youthful energy in University Theatre's successful Hair
on 04/20/09 at 10:44 am | In Vilas Hall's Mitchell Theatre Saturday night, the passion and energy of the beautiful young cast of Hair had a remarkable effect on a packed audience, fully half of whom could remember the events from the first time around. |
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Commendable effort in StageQ and Mercury Players' Cloud 9
on 03/09/09 at 3:00 pm | One of the characters in Caryl Churchill's blistering satire Cloud 9 says, "What we spent our adolescence thinking was an animal urge we had to suppress is, in fact, a fine art we have to acquire." He's talking about sex, but he could just as easily be describing the conflicts at the root of all human behavior. |
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Big Bird held hostage in Apartment 3A by Strollers Theatre
on 01/13/09 at 3:00 pm | An apartment is a good symbol of the transient nature of existence: People pass through, each leaving their mark, each experiencing their own sense of belonging or loneliness, each providing a single link in the much longer chain of life. In the Strollers Theatre production of Apartment 3A, we have an opportunity to examine one such link whose present appears to be inextricably forged with the past. |
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The Greeks: Madison Rep and UW theater department join forces
on 11/18/08 at 11:13 am | What is not in doubt is the impact that the myths that grew out of the Trojan legacy have had on succeeding generations. |
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Rich textures in The Love of the Nightingale by University Theatre
on 10/21/08 at 4:00 pm | Centuries after its creation, Greek legend still has a remarkable power to affect us. The dreams and desires, fears and follies of those long-ago people in faraway places have stood the test of time astonishingly well, not least because, while circumstances may change, human nature does not. |
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Musical au naturel
on 09/12/08 at 9:00 am | The first act of Mercury Players' production of The Full Monty is so limp it appears to be suffering from a bad case of erectile dysfunction. Fortunately there seems to be some Viagra backstage, and the second act springs to life before achieving a boisterous climax. |
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Church Basement Ladies: Sing for your lutefisk
on 08/15/08 at 9:00 am | If you know the seven different kinds of pickle to serve at a funeral, and the difference between Andersen and Anderson is of vital importance to you, then hurry along to Overture Center and get a big green Jell-O scoop of Church Basement Ladies before it's all gobbled up. You'll be glad you did. |
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For What It's Worth: Blow up
on 07/04/08 at 9:00 am | The title of Broom Street Theater's current offering, For What It's Worth, is taken from the old Buffalo Springfield song, which has, as its opening stanza: "There's something happening here, What it is ain't exactly clear." Unfortunately, those words turn out to be somewhat prescient of playwright Cassi Harris' attempt to explore the cultural mayhem that was the '60s. |
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Lovers leap in StageQ's Queer Shorts
on 06/20/08 at 9:00 am | The third edition of Queer Shorts, presented by StageQ, is subtitled All You Need Is Love, a fitting epithet for the 11 brief comedies and dramas that constitute a most enjoyable evening's entertainment. |
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Celeste and Starla Save Todd and Win Back the Day:That's crazy talk
on 06/13/08 at 9:00 am | Francesca Sanders, author of Celeste and Starla Save Todd and Win Back the Day, writes in her program notes for the production that "of one thing I am certain — a good time will be had by all." When you make a claim like that, you'd better have the goods to back it up. At the inaugural show for the new Mercury Players Theatre space on Fair Oaks Avenue, Sanders fell a long way short of her boast. |
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Multiple O: Swing your partners
on 05/30/08 at 9:00 am | The phrase "Sex is nice, and pleasure is good for you" is repeated so many times during n of Multiple O that it's hard to know if this is to reassure the performers or if it's to remind the audience how they're meant to feel. Either way, the mantra should be supplanted with the observation that "Sex is really kinda funny." |
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Sex isn't too sexy in Broom Street Theater's Multiple O
on 05/12/08 at 3:47 pm | The phrase "Sex is nice and pleasure is good for you" is repeated so many times during Broom Street Theater's production of Multiple O that it's hard to know if this is to reassure the performers or if it's to remind the audience how they're meant to feel. Either way, the mantra should be supplanted with the observation that "Sex is really kinda funny." |
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Permanent Collection: When art attacks
on 03/14/08 at 10:00 am | Is there a subject that vexes the American social and political spirit more than race? Is there any aspect of American culture that has not been affected by that seemingly intractable issue? And is there any dialogue that does not exacerbate the situation, even as it attempts to mollify it? These are some of the contentious questions addressed in the Madison Repertory Theatre's Permanent Collection, by Philadelphia playwright Thomas Gibbons. |
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The Bluest Eye: Skin deep
on 03/07/08 at 10:00 am | Beauty, according to the maxim, is in the eye of the beholder. University Theatre pushes that casual aphorism to its limit in its moving production of The Bluest Eye, proving that beauty, as much as ugliness, is truly in the soul. |
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Tom Wopat: Home boy
on 02/22/08 at 10:00 am | Tom Wopat is racking up the frequent-flyer miles. The Tony-nominated Broadway star and television idol from The Dukes of Hazzard was rehearsing in Madison last week for Four Seasons Theatre's Follies at the Wisconsin Union Theater. He was in transit to New York when we spoke on the phone, and he relayed some of his busy schedule. |
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Looking for Normal: He or she
on 02/15/08 at 9:47 am | According to the ghostly grandmother in Jane Anderson's serio-comic Looking for Normal, "People would rather be shocked than enlightened." Anderson's script may not live up to either expectation, but StageQ's heartfelt production provides enough love to compensate. |
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Muskie Love: Bass desires
on 02/01/08 at 10:00 am | From the children's storybook set, to the full moon projected onto the star-glittered ceiling of the Barrymore Theatre, everything about Madison Repertory Theatre's Muskie Love is a little bit hokey. But given the warm-hearted nature of the musical and the charming performances of the cast, the result is as satisfying as a Friday night fish fry on a crisp Wisconsin winter's evening. |
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The Pillowman: Cruel and unusual
on 01/25/08 at 10:00 am | At a time when the very definition of torture is being debated at the highest levels of government and the political atmosphere is seething with paranoia, Mercury Players Theatre could not have chosen a more opportune moment to present Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's nightmarish The Pillowman. |
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Noises Off: What a farce
on 01/18/08 at 10:00 am | Frank Rich, erstwhile theater critic of The New York Times, wrote of Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off that it "is, was, and probably always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime." |
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The Duck Variations: Conversation piece
on 01/11/08 at 10:00 am | With David Mamet's plays one ordinarily associates four-letter words ending in "uck" with the sixth letter of the alphabet. Some might say it's a relief that he backed off a little and chose a d-word for The Duck Variations, currently being produced by the Madison Theatre Guild. But the occasional f-bomb might have livened up this very slight comedy. |
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My top Madison actors' performances of 2007
on 12/28/07 at 12:41 pm | In his autobiographical tome On Acting, Sir Laurence Olivier stressed the importance of learning solid technical discipline. "Every time an actor goes on stage," wrote the great man, "he hopes the gods will be with him. Technique is for the times the gods don't show up." As far as Madison theatre was concerned, the gods seem to have been quite active in 2007. |
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Lombardi: Winning a squeaker
on 11/16/07 at 10:00 am | In the final scene of Eric Simonson's Lombardi/The Only Thing, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers delivers a speech in which he says: "It takes a special person to love someone who is imperfect." That is also true of Madison Repertory Theatre's production. There is much to love, but it is anything but perfect. |
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Madison Rep immortalizes Packers coach with Lombardi/The Only Thing
on 11/10/07 at 9:38 pm | In the mid-1980s, I was living in Phoenix, and through a series of quirky circumstances, I found myself sharing a cocktail with several members of the Packers organization. Some of them had worked with Lombardi in that golden era, and what they said about the late coach reminded me of Lord Acton's dictum that "Great men are rarely good men." Their assessments of Lombardi came as a shock to me, and as the stories were poured out with the drinks I learned more than I might have wanted to about the all-too-fallible Pope of Green Bay. |
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The Complete History of America: Cram it
on 11/09/07 at 10:00 am | Henry Ford reportedly once said of history that it is "more or less bunk." He would have undoubtedly admired Madison Theatre Guild's production of The Complete History of America (abridged) for proving his point. |
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Bright lights, big city
on 10/26/07 at 10:00 am | According to Greek legend, Tantalus offended the gods by sharing their divine ambrosia with mere mortals. In retribution he was condemned to spend eternity tormented by luscious fruits dangling agonizingly out of the reach of his desperate fingertips. Watching the University Theatre's production of Tom Stoppard's knockabout comedy On the Razzle is reminiscent of that ancient unfortunate's fate: the mouthwatering juiciness of the script is, in spite of their best efforts, tantalizingly beyond the grasp of the players. |
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Ass backwards
on 09/27/07 at 10:20 am |
Broom Street Theater has long been an advocate for new works by emerging playwrights, and for this it deserves kudos. The downside, of course, is that emerging playwrights (especially when they also direct) are often poor judges of their own work. Such is the case with Ethan Mutz's crime drama Funnel.
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