The process of writing a standard American musical is probably quite a bit more complicated than most people would like to know about. In any musical, just as there are songs that probably should�ve gotten cut that didn�t, there are those things that did get cut and didn�t deserve it. The Sunset Playhouse presents a program of songs that didn�t quite make it as it presents Prime Cuts�an evening o...

The Sunset Playhouse recently announced an opportunity for local stage talent to become a part of Ray Jivoffs Hair. The Elm Grove Theatre Company will be launching a production of the pseudo-counter-cultural musical Hair guest-directed by the local musical theatre legend. The Director Education for the Skylgiht Opera Theatre, Jivoff is a seasoned professional who has appeared onstage numer...

Sunset Playhouse continues its season with an entertaining production of Neil Simon’s Rumors. Written in the ’80s, Rumors is a comedy set at an anniversary party for a couple that never actually appears onstage. This detail can be revealed since it has nothing to do with the rest of the comedy, which playfully toys with details of upper-class life played out as a classic mid-century farce...

As easy as it is to wince at the quaint and hackneyed comedy of Neil Simon, in the right frame of mind it can actually be kind of relaxing to see a style and rhythm of comedy that is as familiar as Simon’s. This is the experience I had sitting in a crowded Sunday matinee of Rumors in Elm Grove. Simon’s style of comedy, which gets its lineage from sitcom-style humor that goes back to the gold...

In what optimistic eyes could see as evidence that the economy is turning around, a couple of job openings in local theatre have recently been posted. The Sunset Playhouse in Elm Grove� recently announced a couple of jobs in their office. And since such work usually goes generally unnoticed, I will take a little bit of time here to pay tribute to the people who will eventually go on to perform t...

A couple of years ago actor/playwright Jeff Daniels wrote a follow-up to his 1993 hit Escanaba in Da Moonlight, a comedy about hunting in the Upper Peninsula. That follow-up (which is actually a prequel to the original), Escanaba in Love, makes it to the Sunset Playhouse in a production directed by Artistic Director Mark Salentine...

Yes, it’s a bit simplistic and in places quite tacky. Once you get beyond the surface of it, the Jeff Daniels play Escanaba In Love is actually pretty funny. This was nothing I wasn’t expecting from the Sunset Playhouse production. I don’t know that I’d expected a stuffed deer to be looking at me the whole evening, though. That was a bit weird.   The deer head in question was on loan f...

The author that brought the world such classic contemporary farces as Lend Me A Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo put out a relatively new show in 2004. The show comes to Elm Grove this year with a Sunset Playhouse�production. Leading Ladies is the story of a pair of down-on-their luck actors who decide to impersonate a wealthy, dying widow’s two long-lost nephews. When the nieces turn out to be neph...

Seemingly endless military engagements overseas. Attempted terrorist attacks. The economy. The sorry state of health care. The final season of Lost. What with things being as uncertain as they are these days, any adult can relate to Lulu.  The title character of Paulette Bogan’s children’s book is unable to sleep. It’s the anxiety. Lulu the chicken is worried about the potential danger of ...

Ah, midlife: There’s the forgetting of the car keys, repeating one’s self, trips to the doctor, repeating one’s self, adult children back living at home, repeating one’s self… And then there’s Mid-Life! The Crisis Musical, which pokes fun at the onset of middle age and all its accompanying challenges. Within an hour and 50 minutes of musical vignettes, Sunset Playhouse covers all the recognizable signs...