One of the longest continuously running t heater traditions in Wisconsin, Whitefish Bay's Bay Players are a tribute to the irrepressible drive and determination of community theatre. This season the players feature three classic mid-century comedies.       The season starts September 21st - 29th with the 1965 French farce Boeing-Boeing. Listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the sin...

  Life is likely very complicated for a man with three fiancees. Such a thing would be very, very difficult to manage in the modern world, but midway through last century it could have theoretically worked. Such is the premise for the 1960s French farce Boeing Boeing.    One of the oldest theatre traditions in the state of Wisconsin, Whitefish Bay's Bay Players are looking for the right cast ...

Every venue poses its own challenges. The Marian Center for Non-Profits developed a reputation in certain circles for being kind of notorious for the challenges it posed by virtue of the fact that it wasn’t built as a performance space . . . and also housed all kinds of other worthy causes beyond theatre. The venerable Bay Players  operate out of Whitefish Bay High School’s auditorium. I...

    Somewhere in the mix of everything that opened last week, I ended up missing another opening from one of the longest-running community theatre traditions in the state of Wisconsin. The Bay Players continue to perform in their latest incarnation at the Whitefish Bay High School Auditorium. Their latest is a spoof of Hitchcock by the writing team of Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore. Wrong Wi...

In the new year, White Fish Bay’s Bay Players community theatre will be staging a production of Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore’s Wrong Window—it’s an Alfred Hitchcock tribute something on the order of the  recent comic stage adaptation of The 39 Steps. A couple thinks they see their neighbor kill his wife from across the courtyard. Who killed Lila Larswald? And… i...

Raymond Bradford has a great deal of stage experience. Bradford had been the Artistic Director of the RSVP Theatre who also heads the venerable Bay Players—arguably Milwaukee’s longest running theatre tradition of ANY kind. Those looking to learn a bit from the man have an opportunity to do so next week as he holds an acting class on November 9th at 7pm. The class will be held in the Whitefis...

A pleasant retro-farce, Ken Ludwig’s Leading Ladies is a fun trip to the theatre. It’s set in the ‘50’s. A pair of down-on-their-luck British actors pretend to be long-lost relatives of an old woman on her death bed. As you might imagine, the relatives in question turn out to be women, so there ends up being some cross dressing. Men in drag fall in love with women. Precisely the sort of z...

In and amidst all of the companies that form the local theatre scene, it can often be easy to forget about one of the greater Milwaukee area’s longest-running theatre traditions. Having staged its first production in March of 1951, The Bay Players have been around for over 60 years now. The company’s 2011-2012 season will be without a musical, which is a disappointment for director Ray Brad...