This Weekend: Fables And Social Commentary

The first official month of the season over and done with, the Milwaukee Theatre opens three shows in two days. Here's a look:

On October 1st

At 8pm,

Renaissance Theaterworks

opens Reasons To Be Prettya look at the cultural obsession with a very narrow perspective on human beauty. The dark, comic drama is written by Neil LaBute, who also wrote the attractive/unattractive contemporary romance Fat Pig and The Shape of Things a casually brilliant look at love, art, passion and human emotion. Reasons To Be Pretty is an aggressive stage confrontation between two couplespossibly very fitting to open a month in local theatre that will also see stage renderings of a freak show (with Youngblood Theatre) and America’s first serial killer (with Alchemist.)

Reasons To Be Pretty runs through October 24^th at the Broadway Theater Center’s Studio Theatre.

And Also At 8pm,

The Milwaukee Rep Opens one of two shows scheduled to run at the Stiemke Studio Theater with the drama My Name Is Asher Lev. Religion, culture and art come into conflict as a Hasidic Jewish boy’s art causes friction between him, his family and other members of his community.

The Milwaukee Rep’s production of My Name Is Asher Lev runs through November 14^th.

On October 2^nd

At The Milwaukee Youth Arts Center First Stage Children’s Theatre presents  a program for the very, very youngAesop’s Fables is a celebration of classic fables designed to appeal to kids aged 3 and up.  Though they were all written by the same guy around 600 or 550 BCE, the fables, which include The Tortoise And The Hare, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Fox And The Grapes would be kind of difficult to fit into a single narrative that kids and parents could latch onto. The Mike Kenny script that First Stage is using gathers a group of four Vaudevillian performers as they use an old set and costume pieces to tell the story. This being a “First Steps” show aiming at the very young, Aesop’s Fables opens at 11 am on the second and will be performed at 11 am and 1pm Saturdays and Sundays for the full length of its run.

Aesop's Fables closes on October 17^th.