Peggy Sue Dunigan - Page 13

Lame, rhinestones and sequins shimmer like stars on stage this November when Milwaukee Rep reprises Liberace! at the Stackner Cabaret beginning this November. Every holiday season flashes glitter and gold, and The Rep's Associate Artistice Director Brent Hazelton wrote and directed this inspiring musical revue based on the life of Milwaukee's iconic entertainer Wladziu Valentino Liberace, who was once nicknamed the Guru of Glitter.

From Here to Eternity, Gone with the Wind, In Harm's Way, War and Peace…Classic literature and film where war in any century or country divides families, loved ones and nations. Renaissance Theaterworks opens their 2014-2015 season in the Studio Theatre continuing this compelling tradition with the Midwest premiere of Amelia-Playwright Alex Webb's soul-searching tribute to a woman trapped in America's struggle to end slavery. Beginning in 1861, the 'Great' Civil War tore homes, the land and lives figuratively and literally asunder for four years while the subtle aftereffects rage hidden in some human hearts 150 years later.

How will London be kept safe from crime?---When the illustrious Sherlock Holmes disappears from his daily routine of capturing public enemies in Victorian England, the city wonders if he really was murdered as the death rumor persists. In the First Stage World Premiere production SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS, the famous sleuth mysteriously shows his face during several sneak appearances to open the theater company's 28th season and prove Sherlock Holmes rises from the rumors alive and well.

Who remembers when Sherlock Holmes needed the assistance of five street urchins named after his famous residence on 221b Baker Street to assist him in solving mysteries, a gang called "The Baker Street Irregulars?" Die hard fans of Sherlock Holmes, and now, Milwaukee, when First Stage presents their World Premiere play opening this October titled: Sherlock Holmes: The Baker Street Irregulars. Written by Eric Coble based on the graphic novels of Tony Lee, the production explores the three years when Holmes disappeared, or his hiatus," a time when one of the stories ended as he and his arch enemy Moriarty careened over a waterfall, supposedly to their deaths.

Incredible, indescribable, infuriating, inflammatory, intense-These host of words attempt to define the Milwaukee Rep's World Premiere 'after all the terrible things I do' opening at the Stiemke Studio this fall in the Patty and Jay Baker Theatre Complex. Set in a Midwestern town beset with Midwestern sensibilities, A. Rey Pamatmat's play, his script, decimates an audience's perception of a culture, gender, race and sexual preferences that transcends discussions on merely being gay, a bully and young or simply a parent wanting to see their child survive.

Provocative and prophetic, a puzzle waiting to be unraveled before the audience's eyes similar to a Gordian knot, the Boulevard Theatre on stage at Walkers Point Center for the Arts presents a limited run of Gideon's Knot, a Wisconsin premiere. Artistic Director Mark Bucher stages the play under the direction of Patricia Durante in this daring and unsettling view on the state of education in one small classroom set in Lake Forest, Illinois. Does a person cut this production's tragedies out of their thoughts or pull the answers to these probing questions in an attempt to understand perhaps this evolving microcosm of American education presented in the production.

Live and then love a little more after an enchanting evening at Sturgeon Bay's Third Avenue Playhouse this fall. The world's longest running musical The Fantasticks arrived at the Stage Door Theatre Company on October 1st. After more than 17,000 performances played in approximately 90 countries worldwide since the first production in 1960, The Fantasticks garnered 1991 Tony Award Honors for Theatrical Excellence, and still entrances audiences 60 years later.

n a revival of Alice Walker's bold novel The Color Purple, the award winning musical opens The Milwaukee Rep's 2014-2015 theater season reprising the WOW in entertainment that began with Ragtime in their 60th season. Walker's Pulitzer Prize winning 1982 story arrives in a re-adaptation of the 1985 film and 2005 Broadway musical redesigned for the Quadracci Powerhouse stage featuring a superb cast, which after almost three hours, "fills the room like a sweet perfume… restoring a belief in trust and tenderness."

What constitutes being a 'good' father or parent-before or after a child's conception and birth? These unexpected questions deceptively have their answers woven through Milwaukee Chamber Theatre's Midwest second selection of their 40th anniversary season of THE GOOD FATHER opening at the Broadway Theatre Center this fall. Featuring actors Jonathan Wainwright and Laura Gray, Irish playwright Christian O'Reilly's complex conversational script keeps audiences smiling and thinking for two compelling acts.

The feminine touch explore multiple wounds from war and opens Next Act Theatre's Silver Anniversary season this past September weekend in the Midwest premiere of Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter. Written by award winning playwright Julie Marie Myatt to herald the directorial debut of Milwaukee actor Deborah Staples, the one-hour 40 minute, no intermission performance revisits a Marine returning to the States after serving in Iraq, which represents another woman on stage, an African American soldier, the vulnerable Jenny Sutter.

Think fairytales can be out of fashion? Please think again. Fairytales represent stories beloved and valued by every culture for untold centuries. So when a contemporary, in high fashion fairytale opens the 2014-2015 Skylight Music Theatre's 56th season bringing Milwaukee 'Fairytales and Fantasy' under Artistic Director Viswa Subbaraman, please applaud this opportunity to renew faith to the 21st century. On a Friday in September, numerous opening night dreams came true in an adult 'Absolutely Fabulous' performance of Gioachino Rossini's Cinderella, or La Cenerentola (The Triumph of Goodness).

Country music, or incredible parodies of the legendary genre, twanged and twittered into the Stackner Cabaret when the Milwaukee Rep opened The Doyle & Debbie Show this September. A rollicking honky tonk evening, this pastiche tribute to county music also lampoons the battle between the sexes, an effortless task when placed into the gifted hands Michael Accardo (Doyle) and Erin Parker (Debbie) accompanied by the indefatigable Bo Johnson (Buddy) on the guitar.

While a storm raged in Fish Creek outside Peninsula Players Theatre (PPT) on a Thursday evening, inside actor Christine Mild generated her own songstress fury starring in the musical memoir "Always..Patsy Cline." PPT's memorable production directed by Brian Russell retells Cline's short yet stellar country music career, through the stories related by Louise Seeger, a friend she met in Houston when on tour. Louise relates her chance meeting with Cline at the Esquire ballroom, where afterwards Cline spends the night at Louise's house, and the friendship lasts until Cline's untimely death in a plane crash at the young age of 30 (b.1932-d.1963).

In the "intimate" comedy at Sturgeon Bay's "intimate" Third Avenue Playhouse, Stage Door Theatre Company presents Noel Coward's cheeky comedy from the 1930's Private Lives. In one of Coward's most successful plays, two previously married spouses meet on their respective honeymoons with their now younger partners at a French resort after remarrying.

American Folklore Theatre (AFT) moves indoors to Fish Creek's Door Community Auditorium when producing the 2014's fall season, The Bachelors. Another inspired musical romp by the writing team of the late AFT co-founder Fred Alley (book and lyrics) and James Kaplan (composer), the plot expounds on how "true love" rarely dies, merely becomes reincarnated over 100 years.

“I can't afford to save my life,” Dr. Blenkinsop tells a cadre of more successful physicians in George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma. Spring Green's American Players Theatre presents Shaw's riveting drama at the Up the Hill Theatre this fall, a diverting play that discusses contemporary medical issues even though written over 100 years ago. In Shaw's play, Blenkinsop represents a physician who serves the less fortunate in London society, and when he himself becomes sick, has few means or time to cure his patients, much less himself.

Astonished. Demanded. Surprised. These few simple words ignite the provocative action in Peninsula Players Theatre Midwest premiere of Richard Strand's equally enthralling BUTLER. Staged in Fish Creek at the company's theatrical home along the Green Bay shores, the captivating civil war drama focuses on these words in the opening moments of the two act production, an intriguing catalyst that reveals itself by the final scenes of this entertaining and exceptional play.

How does someone begin to describe Tom Stoppard's triple award winning play Travesties staged at American Players Theatre this August? Spring Green's indoor Touchstone Theatre hosts the devilish, deliriously funny production directed by the renowned William Brown that rotates the ambiance of a carnival, an ordinary home or library, a political convention, an Oscar Wilde play and war zones. Where scenes quickly shift between poignant drama and an evening at Chippendale's completely at Stoppard's discretion to tantalize the audience.

In opening Milwaukee Chamber Theatre's 40th Anniversary season, Milwaukee actor Angela Iannone reprises the role of Maria Callas in Terrence McNally's Tony Award winning play Master Class this August. While Callas has ultimately been lauded as the top operatic singer in the last century, Iannone has garnered a 2014 Ten Chimneys Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship under David Hyde Pierce's directorship. Then Iannone was recently awarded Milwaukee's second Ruth Schudson Leading Lady Honoree that adds to her multiple theater achievements. These two women appearing in different eras present a master force on the power of art to transform a cultural landscape and christens Milwaukee's 2014-2015 theater season.

Cross, hook, jab and uppercut-know anything about boxing? Sturgeon Bay's Third Avenue Playhouse imports Sossy Merchanics in a Stage Door Theatre Company performance billed Tricky Boxing August. While no audience member needs to know anything about boxing to throughly enjoy the high energy production, the team of Brian Sostek and Megan McClellan pairs in the nostalgic 1940's fictional tale of boxer Dancing Danny David and how he acquired the 'knockout of his life.'