March 5-9, 2025 – Fine Arts Theatre Building – Mainstage Theatre
Book & Lyrics by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller Music by Jim Wise Directed by Sheri Williams Pannell Musical Direction by Donna Kummer Choreography by Abigail McBee and Sophia Roth
The show that launched Bernadette Peters as a Broadway star, this delightful, funny, tongue-in-cheek love letter to Hollywood musicals of the 1930s tells the story of sweet Ruby’s journey from her small hometown to New York City to become a Broadway star. There, she meets Dick, a sailor with ambitions as a songwriter. In grand Hollywood fashion, they tap dance their way from the chorus to stardom on the deck of a passing battleship. Dames at Sea is a non-stop ride of romance, laughs, dance and musical delights.
editor’s note: my mid-winter vacation prevented me from covering a couple of things that I normally would have written about. And it also meant that I didn’t see two important plays until their closing weekend, The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s A Doll’s House and The Lake Country Players’ The Dining Room. So my apologies as you read my responses, these shows have already closed.
Playwright A. R. Gurney’s concept for The Dining Room is simply brilliant. The focus is on a formal dining room set in its formal home setting and tells a multitude of stories around American family, class, mores, culture, and history. From breakfasts to dinners to birthday parties to galas to the center of important conversations…we watch families interact, age, and move on. And characters abound…children to parents to grandparents to siblings to the hired help…we are privy to a cross section of activities enjoyed by upper middle class America in the early to mid 20th Century.
Now these activities sometime overlap as one end of the table will be deep in a post dinner discussion while the maid is setting a breakfast lay out at the other end…and characters overlap on entry and exit and activity in any number of ways through out. This of course creates a major headache for the director…but LCP Director Nancy Hurd made short work of it and presented a flowing ensemble moving freely and earnestly around the dining room(s) in question.
Hannah Craig, Noah Maguire, Mikael Hager, & Amy Wickland. Photo courtesy of the Lake Country Players. James Baker Jr photographer.
But no, it really wasn’t easy as there are only six in the cast list…three actors and three actresses…who each play nine characters each. And not just once and done, but many re-appear as time goes by or as the events being depicted change. So it is impossible here to pick out one particular actor for kudos or one particular character as a focal point of the action. But the ensemble here made it seem so casual and so easy, it was truly amazing!
And of course this also made headaches for the prop managers, costume staff, and stage manager as each character has to be unique in dress and style, each event had its own china or glassware or silver, and of course the choreography of rearranging the cast and the table/chairs has to be on time and smooth. The LCP made it work so incredibly well that every moment was a precious moment and the play flew by without any apparent effort.
Lindsay Strean Hagood, Amy Wickland, Paula Nordwig, & Hannah Craig. Photo courtesy of the Lake Country Players. James Baker Jr photographer.
CAST LIST:
ACTOR #1 – Mikael Hager ACTOR #2 – Noah Maguire ACTOR #3 – Amy Wickland ACTRESS #1 – Lindsay Strean Hagood ACTRESS #2 – Paula Nordwig ACTRESS #3 – Hannah Craig
Once again, I was impressed and amazed by the quality of the work being done by the Lake Country Playhouse. Don’t miss their future events.
editor’s note: my mid-winter vacation prevented me from covering a couple of things that I normally would have written about. And it also meant that I didn’t see two important plays until their closing weekend, The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s A Doll’s House and The Lake Country Players’, The Dining Room. So my apologies as you read my responses, these shows have already closed.
After Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen is the classic playwright that I most look forward to seeing on local stages. But given his place as a father of modern theater, is Ibsen’s work actually classic? Well, absolutely. So here we have the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre presenting a new adaptation by Amy Herzog of A Doll’s House!
Herzog’s interpretation leaves nothing behind from Ibsen’s exposure of misogyny and the cultural and societal subjugation of woman in a male dominated society. But she does bring the language to a cleaner and more enjoyable contemporary feel that makes this version flow smooth and more easily understood for the modern audience. Unfortunately we can relate to the story of Nora Helmer as she tries to move from her position as a ‘doll’ to one of a complete and independent human being…as we see start to sense regressions in our current society.
Director Leda Hoffmann has taken full advantage of the new text and has put together a fluid and engaging presentation completely putting front and center the conflict that Nora experiences. Her blocking and timing of the play work perfectly and she pulls out the full implications of the story.
Front and center is Nora Helmer of course…and she is wholly embodied by Jennifer Vosters…who amazingly moves from being the ‘doll’ to realizing how much more life has to offer. Vosters’ Nora is lucid and aware and brings us into her corner immediately and holds us there until that very last door slam. But even in the early scenes where she plays to the ‘doll’ to her domineering husband, you can feel that she is aware that she deserves more in life than this. And given she is on stage for all but a few moments for some simple costume changes, I have to admire Vosters’ stamina and stage presence. Without Vosters as Nora, this play wouldn’t have worked nearly as well.
Josh Krause plays it hard and cold as Torvald Helmer. And despite his continual declarations of love for Nora and the cute nicknames, it never seems to go beyond his own identification of self and his own sense that he deserves ‘her’ and her devotion to him and his family. Krause certainly is able to bring that sense of entitlement to the role…and completely locks Torvald into that entitlement as Nora initiates her new sense of self…again, right down to that fatal door slam.
Matthew Bowden is Nils Krogstad…a loan shark who lends money to Nora and a bank manager with a past who is fired by Torvald. Bowden gives us a Krogstad who wants to find redemption from his past but isn’t quite sure how to do it. He eventually does in a very round about way and through the intervention of Kristine Linde, boldly played by Kat Wodtke. But when he is threatening Nora, I didn’t feel that he was quite sinister enough. And Anand Nagraj is Dr. Peter Rank, a best friend of both Nora and Torvald…and a daily visitor to the Helmer residence. And he has a secret too which is somewhat apparent but I don’t think it quite worked. But I put that to the words that Amy Herzog provided for Rank and not on Nagraj.
Normally I would close with information about tickets and additional information, but instead let me share this YouTube video about A Doll’s House from the actors and director:
