A few odds and ends
MILWAUKEE SHAKESPEARE CLOSES DOWN MID-SEASON
There’s a different frazzled-looking Wall Street broker on the front page of nearly every daily paper these days. The distinctive visual of a jagged line plummeting to the right has become all too familiar. The local theatre scene seems to be adapting. The Milwaukee Rep, possibly one of the most financially solvent of the local theatre companies, is offering huge discounts on ticket packages. The first local theatre fatality of the erratic economy has hit. The Argosy Foundation has cut funding to Milwaukee Shakespeare. Without the funding, Milwaukee Shakes has ceased to be--effective immediately. Information for subscribers and ticket holders can be found at Milwaukee Shakes’ website.
Milwaukee Shakespeare joins relatively recent losses Theatre X and Bialystock and Bloom in the Milwaukee Theatre afterlife. They will be missed a great deal.
PIRANDELLO
It’s one of the most interesting scripts I’ve ever read--a play I’ve been waiting to cross off my list ever since I started covering theatrePirandello’s post-modernist masterpiece Six Characters In Search of An Author opens in a limited run of a bare-bones production with the UWM theatre department tonight. The show is playing at UWM’s Studio 508 in Kenilworth Place. The show opens tonight at 7:30 pm and runs through Sunday. It’s a part of their Lab/Works seriesa series focusing on the acting at the heart of all great drama. I’ll have a review of the show in next week’s print edition.
CATS! RETURNS
The press release just hit todayone of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s most successful musicals is returning to Milwaukee to arrive on the stage of the Marcus Center February 26th through March 1st. The Broadway show may have shut down eight years ago, but the touring version of the show refuses to die. Probably the biggest cliché in modern musical theatre, Weber’s Cats! might just be worth a look for those of us still unfamiliar with it . . . tickets go on sale December 7th.
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