Fall Theater Preview

Off the Wall Theatre kicks off its season Sept. 2 with aproduction of Charles Busch’s campy comedy PsychoBeach Party. Jeremy Welter directs the talented Liz Mistele and DearRuthie. A week later, the Sunset Playhousegoes in a less campy though similarly silly direction with Steve Martin’s The Underpants. Carte Blanche Studios stages a comedy of a different kind with The Taming of the Shrew. The MilwaukeeRep collaborates with Milwaukee Ballet’s Michael Pink for themusical drama Cabaret, beginningSept. 14. That same week, David Cecsarini directs a Next ActTheatreproduction of Joel Drake Johnson’s FourPlaces.Mark Ulrich and MaryMacDonald Kerr headline a promising cast.

Renaissance Theaterworks opens October with Reasons to Be Pretty, Neil LaBute’scontemporary comedy exploring our obsession with physical beauty. Alchemist Theatre has established ahorror tradition for the month of Halloween, and this year’s entry explores alittle-known serial killer in Aaron Kopec’s MurderCastle: The Chronicle of H.H. Holmes. InTandem Theatre opens its season Oct. 22 with the mystery-thriller Art of Murder. First Stage Children’s Theater begins October with itsseason-opener, Aesop’s Fables. Themonth closes with Soulstice Theatre’sintimate staging of the classic Larry Shue comedy The Foreigner.

Mid-November findslaughs with Lions and Tigers and Zombies,a new show by the all-female sketch comedy group Broadminded. MarquetteUniversity Theatre keeps the humor going with George Farquhar’s18th-century role-reversal comedy TheBeaux' Stratagem. Beginning Nov. 18, MilwaukeeChamber Theatre presents a production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1964drama The Subject Was Roses.Also in November, English-Australiansinger/dancer/actress Caroline O’Connor joins the Milwaukee Rep on the mainstage for Bombshells, a one-womanshow written specifically for O’Connor by Joanna Murray-Smith. On Nov. 19, the Skylight Opera Theatre returns to aclassic with a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore.Talented,beloved Skylight fixture Bill Theisen directs the show in a nod to thecompany’s old tradition of performing a Gilbert and Sullivan show every holidayseason.

The holidays jump intohigh gear in December with a host of familiar shows, including the MilwaukeeRep’s A Christmas Carol, PatrickSchmitz’s Rudolph the Pissed-Off Reindeerand In Tandem’s parody Scrooge in Rouge.Off the Wall Theatre offers some welcome counterprogramming when it opens thepopular musical Guys and Dolls.