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American Players Theatre, set for its 40th year, cues the Bard, Tennessee and August Wilson
Preview: American Players Theatre, nestled in the woodland hills near Spring Green, Wis., about 30 miles west of Madison, rolls out its 40th summer June 15 with Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and Shaw’s “The Man of Destiny,” to be followed by seven more productions during a season that runs into early November. Says artistic director Brenda DeVita, now in her sixth year: “Our job is not to preserve, but to create. We are always changing.”
‘Exit the King’ at American Players Theatre: Why would an absolute ruler accede to death?
Review: Eugêne Ionesco’s play about dying, “Exit the King,” generally comes under the rubric of absurdist drama. But that tag doesn’t really fit the play. If a label is required, perhaps “figurative” – certainly, existential. An absorbing and quite affecting account at American Players Theatre rings with truth about that juncture in life where few arrive gladly: its end. ★★★★
‘As You Like It’ at American Players Theatre: Romp in the woods with the Bard, and a twist
Review: It’s a trifecta for women, two in traditional roles and another in a first for me: Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis. Melisa Pereyra and Andrea San Miguel portray BFF Rosalind and Celia – and, in a stunning gender shift, Tracy Michelle Arnold appears as the cynical philosopher Jaques. ★★★★
‘The Maids’ at American Players Theatre: Dressing up and getting down, sans laughter
Review: In Jean Genet’s bleak existential drama “The Maids,” two young women, sisters and live-in house maids to the same mistress, secretly turn the tables in an ominous fantasy life about power and subservience. A noir study in delusional role-playing and its dark consequences, “The Maids” is on fascinating display at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis.. ★★★
Summer 2016 at American Players Theatre: It’s high drama, comedy where ardor meets Arden
Preview: It’s like seeing Shakespeare in the Forest of Arden, this bucolic Wisconsin festival that bears the name of American Players Theatre. Set in the rolling hills of Spring Green, just west of Madison, American Players has been producing stellar – literally star-covered – theater every summer since 1980. This summer APT juxtaposes Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors” with Carlyle Brown’s “The African Company Presents Richard III.” Those timely spirits are already in flight, with many more plays to come. Here’s an overview.
American Players Theatre announces 37th Summer Festival June 3 – Oct. 16, 2016
This Just In: The following is from a news release written by an arts organization.
American Players Theatre announces 37th Summer Festival Season June 3 – October 16, 2016
Diverse lineup of eight classical and contemporary works
Return of …
‘An Iliad’ at American Players Theatre: Of rage, ruin and the cherished legacy of endless wars
Review: Rage, beyond expression or reason or appeasement, rips through the timeless modernity of “An Iliad,” the dramatic distillation of Homer’s epic by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare that now echoes against the near walls of an intimate space at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis. This fraught opus of glory and gore bristles in the one voice but many personas of Jim DeVita, playing the Poet who frames the perpetual folly of war in the single appalling, ever repeating travesty that was Troy. ★★★★★
Under new director, American Players Theatre shows changed outlook with Mamet opener
Preview: As if running up a banner announcing its annexation of the New World – where, of course, it is located – the classically oriented American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis., opens its 2014 summer with a new commitment to Americana, leading off with no less bracing a representative than David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.”
‘Hamlet’ at American Players Theatre: Agony and wit, and clear view of a timeless tragedy
Review: As summer turns into fall, it’s worth making time to catch Chicago actor Matthew Schwader as that restlessly inquisitive and acid wit, Hamlet, who comes magisterially unhinged in Shakespeare’s masterwork. “Hamlet” is enjoying a gloriously long reign at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI. ★★★★★
‘Molly Sweeney’ at American Players Theatre: From gentle darkness, a voyage to rough light
Review: She is a perfectly happy lady, Molly Sweeney. Though blind since early childhood, she’s content in her soul, and wondrously in touch with the world, which she views – through the tactile, auditory and aromatic senses – as very much hers. Then her husband and a once-celebrated eye surgeon convince her that an operation could open up unimagined vistas of bliss. That’s the harrowing thrust of Brian Friel’s intimate tragedy “Molly Sweeney,” delivered with equal parts of sensitivity and irony and shattering impact at American Players Theatre.. ★★★★
American Players Theatre offers Shakespeare, Friel, Stoppard in a festival mix in the woods
Preview: What’s in a name? American Players Theatre, which has been filling summers with drama since 1980 in the woods of Spring Green, Wis., doesn’t trade on the Shakespeare brand. But in every aspect of making theater, from staging to vocal delivery to its choice of plays, this ambitious enterprise hews to the Bard as its reference point. In the 2013 mix of eight plays, which opens June 15, APT includes a typical infusion of Shakespeare, a stylistic sweep from “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “Hamlet” to “Antony and Cleopatra.”
‘Richard III’ looses a venomous schemer on summer stage of American Players Theatre
A snake in the palace. 4 stars!
Romp in the woods at American Players: A lusty, stylish go at ‘She Stoops To Conquer’
Review: Oliver Goldsmith’s broad comedy “She Stoops to Conquer” has been around for nearly 250 years, one of the few 18th-century British plays to hold the stage in this country despite the great displacement of time and place. Charming, LOL funny and warm-hearted, “She Stoops to Conquer” is a smashing success at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis. It’s an ensemble coup but also a particular triumph for Laura Rook as an aristocratic girl who sheds her fine mantle to win the heart of a hopelessly shy peer. ★★★★
Tennessee Williams’ rare gem ‘Creve Coeur’ gets a lyrical polishing at American Players
Review: “A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur,” an obscure play by Tennessee Williams from late in his life, serves up a touching, trenchant, typically insightful and empathic look at aging womanhood – four women in this instance – in a production at American Players Theatre that reveals a hidden gem by the incomparable singer of America’s Southern song. ★★★★★
Shakespeare at American Players: Some have greatness thrust on them; others, not so much
Review: American Players Theatre, now in its 40th summer of primarily outdoor productions in a charming little arena in the hills of Spring Green, Wis., some 30 miles west of Madison, has always regarded Shakespeare as its badge of honor, reference point and indeed its reason for being. That tradition is manifest in a spirited and sure production of “Twelfth Night,” but a dubiously conceived and oddly cast “Macbeth” betrays this excellent company’s allegiance to the Bard. “Twelfth Night” ★★★★ “Macbeth” ★★
American Players settles in for second season on new stage: This summer, it feels like home
Preview: If the novelty has worn off the new stage at American Players Theatre, which with its trap-laden floor opened last summer amid general euphoria, the charm can now begin to work its magic. Or, as APT artistic director Brenda DeVita put it: “Last year, everybody wanted to use the traps, and this year nobody’s using them. Everyone is now settling into the new place as home.” American Players’ 2018 season opens June 16 in Spring Green, Wis., with Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”
‘Pericles’ at American Players: Through crazy accents, keeping the Bard’s rhyme and reason
Review: To use Shakespeare and farce in the same sentence is almost certainly to think of “The Comedy of Errors,” and maybe patches of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Probably not, however, the late romantic adventure tale “Pericles, Prince of Tyre.” But it is precisely a generous infusion of over-the-top silliness that makes such endearing stuff of “Pericles” at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis. ★★★★
‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ at American Players: Rostand’s sad hero, captured in lyric depth
Review: In a transcendent night under the stars in APT’s newly refurbished al fresco venue, the three-and-a-half-hour drive from Chicago to the theater, nestled in rolling hills about 30 miles west of Madison, was repaid amply by James Ridge’s complex embodiment of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Here is Cyrano in his full flesh and spirit: lyric poet, matchless swordsman and, above all else, unrequited lover, a man whose many gifts stitched together cannot veil the defeating protuberance that is his formidable nose. ★★★★★
American Players set to dedicate a new stage after $8 million renovation of outdoor venue
Preview: At the outset of its 38th season, American Players Theatre has the look of a company starting afresh. Its 2017 summer at Spring Green, Wis., about 30 miles west of Madison, opens on a brand-new stage, the centerpiece of an $8 million renovation of both production and public facilities. “Our theater was literally falling down,” says APT artistic director Brenda DeVita. “This renewal has given us, and our audience, a theater that is better is so many ways.”
‘Pride and Prejudice’ at American Players: Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, with charm and brevity
Review: You can’t blame an audience for lapping it up: Skilled and familiar actors playing beloved characters in a story so cherished that everyone can pretty much recite along. But that doesn’t necessarily make for memorable theater. Witness the American Players Theatre stage version of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice” at Spring Green, Wis. ★★★
‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ at American Players: Shakespeare’s fat Falstaff and some lusty LOL
Review: If the delight of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” lies in the sparring between that fat, delusional romantic Sir John Falstaff and a raft of characters determined to rub his nose in reality, this broad comedy ultimately hangs on two hooks, and the rollicking production at American Players Theatre delivers them both at Spring Green, Wis. ★★★★
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ at American Players: Estwhile beauty meets beast, and he’s not kind
Review: She is a fascinating character, indeed one of the iconic personas in all of theater, Blanche DuBois, the fallen Southern belle of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The undying question is, Why? What’s so intriguing about this dame with the checkered past? Perhaps it’s her vulnerability, or her delusion, or her sheer refusal to go quietly into middle-aged oblivion. I think that’s the thing, her feisty pluck, that makes Tracy Michelle Arnold’s Blanche so compelling at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis. ★★★★★
From al fresco staging of Williams’ ‘Streetcar,’ American Players promise summer of surprises
Preview: In her second summer as artistic director of American Players Theatre, Brenda Devita can claim her fingerprints alone on the scheme of eight widely ranging plays that will run in repertory well into the autumn. And DeVita embraces that authorship with pride, starting with the company’s first go at Tennessee Williams’ monumental tragedy “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “We’re taking it outdoors,” she says, referring to the starry-domed 1,148-seat Up-the-Hill Theatre.
Oscar Wilde’s ‘Earnest’ at American Players: Much ado about manners, wit and attire
Review: Perhaps it’s because theater companies and audiences have always taken to heart Oscar Wilde’s subtitle for “The Importance of Being Earnest” that this silly, precious comedy of manners has remained a repertory fixture since its premiere in the Victorian world of 1895. Wilde slyly dubbed his play “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” and its triviality is indeed embraced seriously in this summer’s amusing romp at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis. ★★★★
Juliet shines sun-bright in American Players’ earthy view of Shakespeare tragedy
Review: Care as we may for the oft love-struck young swain in Shakespeare’s great tragedy “Romeo and Juliet,” it is Juliet whose desperate predicament holds our hearts in thrall. A successful staging requires, above all else, an irresistible Juliet, radiant indeed as the eastern sun, and American Players Theatre’s affecting summer run boasts just such a blazing star in Melisa Pereyra. ★★★★
Taking 35th-season turn to American classics, American Players hit core of Mamet
Review: As if to signal rebirth at the outset of its 35th season, American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis., under new artistic director Brenda DeVita, has widened its scope beyond classic European fare to include the masterpieces of American theater. It could scarcely have dived more boldly into that pool, or more artfully, than with its sharp-edged and idiomatic production of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.” ★★★★★
‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ lights the open sky with crisp mirth at American Players
Review: Traditional criticism hasn’t been altogether kind to Shakespeare’s early comedy “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” which is often portrayed as a workshop effort that set the stage for the Bard’s later, more sophisticated riffs on the madness of love. But this summer’s sharply drawn, energetic and sly production at American Players Theatre makes a savvy, satisfying case for a comedy worth catching. ★★★★
Da capo al fine, sharply accented ‘Bernstein’ sketches life of a great American conductor
Maestro at the Royal George. 3 stars
Role Playing: Cristina Panfilio spreads wings she didn’t know she had as midsummer Puck
Interview: Cristina Panfilio, the disarmingly sly and funny – and athletic! – Puck in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at American Players Theatre, didn’t see it coming. The role of the mischievous fairy sprite with magical powers is normally played by a male actor. When director John Langs phoned her and cold-pitched her the part, she was flattered, of course. The Chicago-based actress was also overwhelmed by the thought.
In magical return to its birth, APT embraces human heart of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Review: Is there a better way to fall under the spell of Shakespeare than through “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”? Not if it’s the current production under the stars by American Players Theatre, which will get the job done for ages 7 to 97 at the least. The company is but an afternoon’s drive from Chicago into the Wisconsin woods near Madison, and the actors – more than a few of them based in Chicago – are uniformly proficient at finding the human warmth in Shakespeare’s comedy and making it clear in minute detail. ★★★★★
