It was an intimate crowd last night for a performance of Dale Gutzman’s second part of Around the World in 80 Days: The Musical. Evidently selling far better on the weekends, the weeknight shows have been sparsely attended. Gutzman’s ambitious 4-hour long musical is filtered through the intimate space of the Off The Wall Theatre in 2 separate two-hour performances, each consisting of two one hour-long acts bisected by an intermission. The weekend performances, which run through November 7th, allow audiences to catch the entire show over the course of a day. The weekday performances separate the journey into two single-evening performances. (It’s all very precise on paper.)  The production itself is a fun, campy presentation of Jules Verne’s classic 1873 novel. Robert Hirschi plays a shy, humble Phileas Fogg. Though a competent singe and a very compassionate figure onstage, Hirschi largely lacks the unwavering sense of perfection and precision of the character’s counterpart in Verne’s novel. Jeremy Welter plays Fogg’s valet Passepartout. An exceedingly dynamic performer, Welter does a solidly respectable job of making the French valet seem charming and affable. The overall direction the character takes is one that is all too common in dramatic adaptations of the story—the fact is that Verne wrote the French valet to be a staggeringly interesting person who just happened to be following this Englishman round on his crazy plan to travel around the world in a very brief period of time with extreme precision. Like so many other presentations, Gutzman’s Around the World envisions the character as little more than a cute mascot for the central hero of Fogg. Other notable performances include Robert Zimmerman

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Off the Wall Theatre kicks off its season Sept. 2 with a production of Charles Busch’s campy comedy Psycho Beach Party. Jeremy Welter directs the talented Liz Mistele and Dear Ruthie. A week later, the Sunset Playhouse goes in a less campy though similarly silly direction with Steve Martin’s The...

Milwaukee is a great theater town. Below is a guide to a dozen theater companies that offer four or more productions a year. Some shows will be serious, others whimsical, but all are worth consideration...

I’m not a big fan of Stephen Sondheim. Though the man was responsible for Sweeny Todd (one of my favorites) delved into some refreshingly dark areas for commercial theatre, traditional musicals always feel a bit old and outdated to me. Thankfully, Off The Wall Theatre’s latest Sondheim production makes some attempt at giving Into The Woods a more contemporary style. The mid-1980’s trip to ...

The Off The Wall Theatre�rests in a tiny storefront space right on the edge of the biggest, most historic theatrical stages in town. Right across the street, there’s the historic Pabst Theatre, which is attached to the Patty and Jay Baker Theatre Complex with no less than three different stages for the Milwaukee Rep. On the other side of that complex is the Marcus Center for the Performing Art...

The rhythm of late Spring has been a bit strange with respect to theatre openings. This weekend, once again, an opening of a Dale Gutzman musical revue breaks-up a pair of really busy weekends with quite a few theatre shows. A couple of weeks ago, it was An Evening With Gilbert And Sullivan, which is still running with the Skylight. (For those not as familiar with the director, here�s a pleasant...

My wife’s two sisters came over yesterday. The three of them were in the kitchen making cookies as I worked on bits of writing that I was attempting to get done. The three sisters motif was particularly strong this weekend, as my wife and I had also attended a show about three sisters the previous night. It’s a motif that’ll be carried out on a number of stages in the next few weeks. Here�...

With the flurry of openings this past weekend, local stages are beginning to gear-up for the holidays. There are well over a dozen Christmas shows opening right after Thanksgiving . . . and almost nothing opening this coming weekend, so I have little to do but sit and wait for the avalanche of Holiday shows for the next couple of weeks. Luckily enough, there are a few bright spots in the next coup...

Local actor David Ferrie has a very smart stage presence. In Boulevard Theatre’s production of the two person drama Roses In December last year, his performance as an author who reluctantly exchanges letters with a young woman sparkled with intelligence. This week he takes the same stage in a ONE-person drama as he stars as the title character in David Rintels’ Clarence Darrow. I talked wit...

Stephen Sondheim’s Company is a quaint, little emotional drama drawn from an exploration of contemporary romance in the big city. Off The Wall Theatre opens its ’09-’10 season with a production of the musical that opened this past week. Ben George plays single guy Robert, who is slowly advancing into the life of long-term adult bachelor. The precision of George’s charisma really shine i...