Intro Being a theatre critic who attends 100+ shows per year, my year is defined a bit differently than a standard calendar will allow for. My year starts in August with the first shows of the new theatre season,  continues through May as regular season switches gears for the summer shows and finally ends in July as the new theatre season gets underway the following month . . . and so each ye...

Sandra Strawn decorates the set in birch trees larger than loneliness. This is where UWM is staging Director Rebecca Holderness' Three Sisters. Strawn's set draws on the depth of UWM's main stage to bring a feel of immensity to the production.    This is not Chekhov's Three Sisters as originally scripted. It's an adaptation of the script by UWM student Fly Steffens. Steffens abandons some of th...

John Walch's drama sounds fiercely clever and topical on a number of levels. A financially strapped university is offered a grant from a private foundation with the stipulation that it...

The design sensibilities present on the stage of UWM’s Mainstage Theatre can often end up being some of the best in town. Designers working with UWM end up taking some chances that have made for some really impressive work in the recent past . . . their productions of shows like From These Green Heights and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot have been really impressive visually. Their latest is a...

    I absolutely LOVED Stop Kiss. The latest in UWM’s Labworks series, the relatively new play by Diana Son is staged in a very cozy studio theatre atmosphere wit just enough set and costuming to render background for a really good ensemble drama. Actually, there are bits of the play that feel kind of like a period piece set in 1998, which feels a little strange. No one seems to be carrying ar...

There’s an earthy gravitas about the eyes looking out into the lobby of the UWM Theatre Building from the North wall. Brittany McDonald’s headshot has a casual intensity about it that captures a bit of what makes her stage presence so appealing. It’s not at all spooky—it is a casual intensity, but it makes for a really fun performance in the lead of UWM Theatre's latest—The Sins of So...

UWM Theatre stages a couple of shows this coming month written by female playwrights about women. The UWM Theatre season begins with a studio theatre production as UWM Labworks stages A Piece of My Heart. Shirley Lauro'™s portrait of six women who served in Viet Nam. The women in question aren'™t exclusively soldiers . . . actually only one of them appears to be in anything resembling act...

With Soulstice Theatre opening the first show of the new season last week, Milwaukee Theatre rolls into New Year's . . . the Milwaukee Theatre year starting in August with the first new shows of the new theatre season and closes at the end of the following July with the last openings of the summer theatre season. Here then is part two of a look back at it all . . . February 2011 The second month...

Experts say that, what with advances in medical science occurring at the rate that they are, the average life spans of future generations are likely to double in the next century. Some fifteen years ago, the head of Alcor Cryonics said that practical immortality isn’t that far away. If we can get out from beneath the weight of all the current problems facing the world, society’s perception o...

Amanda J. Hull walks into the courtroom as Satan. It’s the beginning of rehearsal. Before a complete run through of the show, UWM’s Rebecca Holderness is working on giving further definition to one of the more creative interpretations she’s making from the script. Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot�calls for Satan to be present at a court in Purgatory during an appeal tr...