Post Script

Madison’s Overture Center is only the second stop for the national tour of the Broadway hit A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, which racked up ten Tony nominations in 2014 and came home with four trophies, including the Tony for Best Musical. Part silly British farce, part throwback to old English music halls, it’s a story with a charming and unlikely serial killer as the protagonist. The production also features a very strong ensemble, a gorgeous, light operetta score, and a lot of clever stagecraft that lends great theatricality to the evening.

There is a theory that great writers lean heavily on their unhappy childhoods to create their art, and there are some notable examples that prove the rule. Stephen King’s early years make his novels look like a picnic in the park. Certainly Eugene O’Neill’s fraught family dynamics led to his greatest work; A Long Day’s Journey into Night. Tracy Letts has admitted that he based much of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play August: Osage County on his own childhood memories. And Edward Albee revealed that several of the characters in A Delicate Balance are based on members of his adopted family. They’ve each done us a great service in allowing us to be voyeurs in their miserable homes, instead of asking us to join them for dinner. To peek into the manipulations and machinations at work in the Albee household, see Strollers Theatre’s well constructed A Delicate Balance, on the Evjue Stage in the Bartell, through September 30th.

There are so many stories about 9/11. 

It's been 16 years since that fateful September 11th, and I still remember how blue the sky was. In fact it seems like each anniversary day has identicial weather -- a brilliant, clear blue sky, bright sun, a slight chill in the air hinting that fall is right around the corner. And of course I remember looking up at that sky reflexively as I drove to work in 2001, listening to a special report on NPR that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, and wondering how a pilot could possibly make such a navigational error on such a bright, clear day. 

Then everyone listened to the news for the rest of the day, as the horrifying events unfolded.

On my way to see the one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, I switched on NPR in my car. Just in time, I heard the official announcement that Apple will be unveiling some as-yet-unnamed new products later this month, and I imagined the simultaneous elation and anger that Mike Daisey must have felt at that moment. I’m sure the author of the often controversial monologue—about Steve Jobs, the cult of Apple, and consumers’ responsibility to buy ethically created products—is still obsessed with upgrades to his iPhone and the latest shiny gadgets from Silicon Valley’s biggest star. And I was hoping the local incarnation of Daisey’s diatribe would shed some light on our current conundrums— about Foxconn coming to Wisconsin. About the necessity for labor unions and worker protections. About technology taking over our lives and frankly, the world.

A New York lawyer who worked with longshoremen in the 1950s once told a tragic, true story of illegal immigrants, betrayed loyalties, and the corrupted love between a good-as-he-had-to-be, hardworking Italian-American man and his niece. Fortunately for us, the lawyer was talking to renowned American dramatist Arthur Miller, who then turned the story into the play A View from the Bridge. Onstage in American Players Theatre’s Touchstone through October 22, it is a haunting tragedy of Greek proportions, deftly directed by Tim Ocel and featuring some of the best performances of the season at APT.

Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre could be a director’s nightmare. More like an action-adventure movie than a play at times, it features dozens of characters, several perilous sea voyages, too many kingdoms to count, two competitions for a princess’s hand in marriage, raging storms, assassins, incest, love, loss, one goddess, and a brothel. Oh, and pirates.

The first moments of American Players Theatre’s production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters are picture perfect. It is early May, and one of the servants (an earthy Sarah Day) is laying out crystal and silver on ornate rugs for 20-year-old Irina’s name-day party. Far in the background, in the actual green hills behind the stage, Olga and another servant are picking flowers in the meadow to celebrate the occasion. As the two women bring their bouquets to the feast, several exuberant (and shirtless) young men tumble down the hill in a good-natured race, frolicking until a photographer urges them to gather for a picture. The group obediently assembles for the photo, but not before the vigor drains from their faces. Clothes are straightened and hair smoothed. Joy is replaced by steely eyes and stoic expressions. They hold the pose while the film is exposed. The image of this day, which will outlive all its participants, is one of dour resolve.

It’s Friday morning in the Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus. Sarah Marty, wearing a leaf-green dress and a faded jean jacket, searches frantically for the work laptop that’s supposed to be in her book bag. “I can’t believe it’s our last day already,” says Marty, a faculty associate from the Division of Continuing Studies and lead instructor for the summer class Hamilton: An American Musical. Then she makes a course-specific joke under her breath, “There’s a million things we haven’t done!”

From the first moment of the play, the audience senses that Cyrano de Bergerac is not like other men. He is spoken of in hushed tones, his entrance much anticipated by a growing crowd of 17th century French fops and socialites, festively adorned. They wonder aloud if Cyrano will appear tonight at the theater, where he has forbidden the overstuffed, hack actor Montfleury (a delightfully hammy Brian Mani) from taking the stage so that he will not once again butcher the poetry he is supposed to perform. When Cyrano, unseen, hurls warnings at the stage from the back of the house, his stature only grows. And when he finally enters, he does not disappoint; Cyrano (an extraordinary James Ridge) is larger than life—as is the delightful production of Rostand’s classic at American Players Theatre, on stage at the Hill Theatre through October 6th. Adapted and directed by APT Core Company member James DeVita, Cyrano de Bergerac is an epic adventure and romance, comedy and tragedy rolled into one.