This week’s theatrical offerings in Milwaukee are highlighted by the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre’s eighth annual Rep Lab Short Play Festival—featuring eight diverse plays acted and directed by The Rep’s own Emerging Professional Residents.
Rep Lab Short Play Festival
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s eighth annual Rep Lab Short Play Festival is like nothing else in live theater in our area. This acclaimed series features several diverse plays acted and directed by The Rep’s own Emerging Professional Residents. In a mere two-hour time span, attendees will see all eight one-act plays from these young artists; there is no “theme”—the plays will vary greatly—essentially everything can be had from the most serious drama to the lightest farce.
In addition to a “Devised Piece” that has been created by the Emerging Artists collaboratively, this year’s offerings are Don Nigro’s Letters from Quebec to Providence; Leah Nanako Walker’s Linus and Murray; Sophiyaa Nayar’s (via Leda Hoffmann) Missed Connections; One for the Chipper by Adam Seidel; Something Like Loneliness by Ryan Dowler; The Lachrymatory Factor by Clare Barron; and Nick Jones’ Welcome, Parents. Nine actors take on numerous roles in these world-premiere productions.
Feb. 15-19 at the Stiemke Studio, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, call 414-224-9490 or visit milwaukeerep.com.
The Brothers Size
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Matthew Reddin describes Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size as “a tough, tender drama based on West African myths about two brothers who seek to be truly free.” The “brothers” of the play’s title refers to the main characters—Ogun and Oshoosi Size—the former a hardworking mechanic and the latter an aimless ex-con. Ogun tries to get his brother back on the “straight-and-narrow,” but his efforts are seriously challenged when a former prison mate of Oshoosi, Elegba, shows up.
There will be four actors in this production: Travis A. Knight, Andrew Muwonge, Marques Causey and Jahmés Tony Finlayson. Intriguingly, the set design by Madelyn Yee—evocative both of Milwaukee’s inner city as well as the story’s Louisiana setting—“will stretch far beyond the ‘fourth wall,’” Reddin says, “spilling into the whole of the Studio Theatre.”
Feb. 21-March 18 at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. For tickets, call 414-291-7800 or visit milwaukeechambertheatre.com.
Finding Neverland
Finding Neverland has nothing to do with a quest to visit the California property once owned by Michael Jackson. It does have something to do with the 2004 British-American historical fantasy film about playwright J.M. Barrie (1860-1937) and his creation of the beloved character Peter Pan. This film eventually spawned a 2012 stage musical with music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy and book by James Graham. After an initial opening in Great Britain, the musical was reworked somewhat and received its world premiere in its present form in the U.S. in 2014. Two years thereafter, it embarked upon a national tour.
Finding Neverland has now found its way to Milwaukee. It’s not a story with Peter Pan but a story about Peter Pan; a wonderfully inspirational story of how J.M. Barrie invented the character based on a family he came to know comprising a widowed mother and her four young sons. This Marcus Center production will be directed by Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus.
Feb. 20-25 at Uihlein Hall, 929 N. Water St. For tickets, call 414-273-7206 or visit marcuscenter.org/show/finding-neverland.
THEATER MORE-TO-DO
Student Body
Coming amid the #MeToo Movement is a compelling drama about sexual relationships on college campuses that quite literally could have been taken from newspaper headlines. Student Body by Frank Winters involves a group of college students brought together by a winter storm; they don’t all know one another, but they soon will. They happen upon a video that seems suspicious—and elicits a very topical debate. Feb. 15-18 and Feb. 21-25 at Marquette University’s Helfaer Theatre, 1304 W. Clybourn St. For tickets, call 414-288-7504 or visit showclix.com/event/student-body.
The First Church of Texaco
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Christian-based Morning Star Productions produces a comic farce that trace the paths of a man and woman, Stanton and Alice, brought together under the most unusual circumstances, meeting at a burned-out Texaco gas station in tiny Blessing, Texas. As Morning Star’s Mary Atwood puts it, “Our hero may seem lost, but he’s about to meet someone who gets him right where he needs to be.” Feb. 16-25 at Eastbrook Church, 5385 N. Green Bay Ave. For tickets, call 414-228-5220 ext. 119 or visit morningstarproductions.org.
