Carte Blanche Theatre’s Play Fest opened last night. A weekend of short plays, Play Fest plays out more like a series of smaller works than an actual shorts program. The seven shorts on the program rotate through six different larger program sets over the course of this weekend. Here are some impressions from opening night:   Kicking a Dead Baby by Jordan Gwiazdowski     Paul Matthew Madde...

A Carte Blanche Studios show always ends up being something of a surprise in some manner. Quite often the surprise is a pleasant one. With its latest offering, there are far more unknowns than knowns as Carte Blanche presents its “First Annual” New Plays Festival. The festival, which had previously been scheduled the same weekend as the Milwaukee Comedy Festival, has been moved to the follo...

A local theatre critic once suggested that Shakespeare should only really be done by trained professionals. Right. The thing is . . . there'™s a kind of universal vitality to Shakespeare that almost begs for contemporary mutation. I want to see Shakesepare done by trained professionals, yes. I also want to see Shakespeare done by trained monkeys. I want to see Shakespeare done by mannequins on ...

Conor McPherson’s Shining City is cloaked in a deafening silence. It’s not just the script, which seems peppered with more pauses than a Pinter play . . . it’s the solitude that the drama achieves in a series of dialogues that makes the whole thing feel so breathtakingly still. Soulstice Theatre does a good job of bringing that lonely, static silence to the stage in a production that opens...

It’s nice to see a play come-up on the month’s schedule that has a compelling script that I’ve never seen produced before. It’s even nicer when the cast listed for the production turns out to feature a really talented group of actors. When the actors in question are a mix of different people more commonly found on a number of different stages in town, it kind of feels like the theatre co...

On the right there was a picture of Jordan Gwiazdowski looking particularly hirsute. On the left there he was completely hairless with fangs and no pigmentation in either eye. It was a poster for Greendale Community Theatre’s production of Batboy: The Musical.  It was snowing opening night. The light dusting wasn’t enough to keep a decent-sized crowd away from the show. Based on the recurri...

The long-lived popularity of the Weekly World News’ millennial Bat Boy character was something of a throwback to an earlier print industry. The character, who appeared in well over 50 stories in the Weekly World News over the course of its last 15 years, was alternately a hero, a monster and an every man. He’s something of a kitschier, lower-brow, tongue-in-cheek version of the heroes of ol...

There was a crispness to the early autumn air south of downtown. It was opening night of Carte Blanche’s�Studios’�somewhat stylish staging of The Taming of the Shrew. As things began to get rolling, it became apparent that Mike Keiley was having an off night. The distinct style of his stage presence was visible through a somewhat low-energy performance. There were extended moments where Keil...