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Theater
Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013

Theatre Gigante’s Moving Target of Perfection

Plus: Theater Happenings

By Russ Bickerstaff
 Dreaming about something and living it are two completely different things. The fact that this premise has become a cliché is very telling about contemporary culture. Perfection is a moving target and we never seem satisfied. It's a deep-rooted cultural understanding that seems to be hammered into the very fabric
Theater
Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013

The Clockmaker’s Dream

Next Act finds the heart of human connection

By Russ Bickerstaff
Stephen Massicotte's The Clockmaker is a delicate drama of narrative poetry. Events don't unfold in a linear fashion. They conform to a dreamlike logic of emotion that resonates through the heart of human connection. It's very, very difficult stuff to
Theater
Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013

Time and Drama with Next Act

By Russ Bickerstaff
The plot has been compared to Kafka, but there are elements that also echo the work of Philip K. Dick and quite a few others. The fact of the matter is that it is about time. "It," in this case, happens to be Stephen Massicotte's The Clockmaker. A mild mannered maker of
Theater
Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013

To The Promised Land With First Stage

By Russ Bickerstaff
First Stage creates an interesting historical contrast in Jonathan Gillard Daly's To The Promised Land. The story of life in Milwaukee for an African-American girl named Ruth during the civil rights movement fluidly alternates with the story of young Golda Meir as she grows up in Milwaukee earlier
Theater
Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013

Beautiful Class at Skylight

By Russ Bickerstaff
 Leslie Fitzwater stands onstage as legendary French diva Edith Piaf. There's a beautifully tragic tone to her voice. Notes cascade out into the theater. Rick Rasmussen's set strikes the same simple elegance as the singer herself and the singer she is playing. Clean, simple lines flow into the empty
Theater
Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013

How It All Began

The Rep’s drama of communication

By Russ Bickerstaff
 In Catherine Trieschmann's How the World Began, Milwaukee Rep's Deborah Staples stars as a teacher who moves from New York to teach in the rural Midwest in the wake of a major natural disaster. She finds further difficulties
Theater
Friday, Jan. 18, 2013

Musical Domestic Madness in Greendale

By Russ Bickerstaff
 Greendale Community Theatre delves into modern suburban middle-class drama as it presents the contemporary musical Next To Normal. Under the direction of Brian Bzdawka, the cast renders a very believable family dynamic
Theater
Friday, Jan. 18, 2013

Education on a Small Stage

By Russ Bickerstaff
 Willy Russell's 1980 drama Educating Rita is a sharply clever look at two ends of the same culture in England. It reflects across the Atlantic with a perspective that is every bit as sharp here as over there. Renaissance
Theater
Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013

Charming Guy, Tedious Magic

By Russ Bickerstaff
 Mentalist Marc Salem is performing a one-man show at the Stackner Cabaret called Mind Over Milwaukee. In this hour-and-a-half long program, Salem performs mentalist tricks involving prediction, thought, numbers, sleight of

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