As programming choices go, Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is either one of the easiest or most difficult to make. On the one hand, Hamlet has instant recognition. Everyone read it in high school

 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

Penny Marshall’s 1988 film Big was a huge success for everyone involved. Beginning next week, First Stage Children’s Theater looks to find similarly “big” success with the little ones... 

The tragedy Othello is the most urgently humanistic of Shakespeare's great plays—more tightly constructed than Hamlet, more carefully motivated than Macbeth, more urgent if less spaciously tragic than King Lear, but with a resistance...

There's heavy metal pumping into the Quadracci Powerhouse Theatre prior to the show. A single shaft of light illuminates a Harley amidst the gritty gleam of an industrially inspired set. Somewhere in the background we're hearing "Welcome to the Jungle." It's kind of a weird contrast against an audience that has come to the theatre dressed--like they're going to the theatre. There everyone is in ...

Bookstores. Remember them? Okay, so they aren'™t exactly extinct yet, but there certainly are one heck of a lot less of them now than there used to be . . . at least of the brick and mortar kind, anyway. And while like . . . 90% of my reading is in RTF format on an ancient, little Palm Tungsten, I do remember enjoying many, many hours at bookstores--”the smaller the better. One such bookstore ...

nnI narrowly managed to avoid NOT going to A Christmas Carol this year. The Milwaukee Rep’s long-running stage adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic continues another strong season with a strong cast and the Marjorie Bradley Kellogg/Martha Hally design work that has served it so well for so many years.nIn an era where things are changing for the Rep thanks to a new Artistic Director, The Mil...

The Appeal of Getting LOST In Complexity Even the most concise synopsis for the Rep’s latest drama is going to sound unappealingly bewildering. The Rep’s studio theatre production of the very character-driven story is told on a nearly bare stage with only a few pieces of furniture, simple lighting schemes and relatively plain costuming. This isn’t a show that dazzles with shiny glossiness....

This past Thursday, The Milwaukee Rep sent out a press release about its upcoming summer masters classes. The 2010 Summer Theatre Conservatory runs July 12th – 24th. The intensive two-week course ends up running like a regular full-time job with classes running from 9:30 am to 5pm Monday Through Friday for two straight weeks. Open only to drama teachers, high school and college students, the c...

While reasonably fun in places, the script of The Blonde, The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead is pretty far from being any towering work of genius. Australian playwright Robert Hewett tells an interesting story from a series of different perspectives which are delivered in a series of different monologues all from the same actress playing multiple roles. Fine. But only some of the language He...