Category: Milwaukee Chamber Theatre

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PSA: Milwaukee Chamber Theatre Celebrates Their 50th Birthday and Announces Their 2025 – 2026 Season!

On June 15th, 2025, we’ll celebrate Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s 50th Birthday!   

As we approach this milestone on the heels of our acclaimed 50th Anniversary Season, we’re taking stock, looking toward our next five decades, and laying the foundation for that future firmly on MCT’s vibrant past. We’re digging deep—and so are the characters in this season’s lineup of award-winning plays from unique voices, as they all take a hard look beneath the chaos on the surface to anchor more strongly in themselves, their families, and their worlds.

Without further ado, we are proud to announce our 25/26 subscription season:

Burnt-out American prodigy Stephen Hoffman arrives in 1986 Vienna desperate to reignite his concert pianist’s passion—and instead finds himself assigned to the irascible Josef Mashkan for beginner’s lessons in basic accompaniment and singing. As political ghosts escalate the tension of emerging personal secrets, the bond between student and teacher becomes a powerful reckoning with identity, memory, and the possibility of hope. Built around Robert Schumann’s masterpiece song cycle Dichterliebe played live by two of Milwaukee’s finest actor-pianists, Brett Ryback and Jack Forbes Wilson, OLD WICKED SONGS shows that even the most broken chords can resolve into something beautiful.

At Marty’s Supper Club, everybody knows two things: just how you like your Old Fashioned and all your secrets. Twins LeeAnn and Eric are trying to keep their family business alive after their mother’s sudden death, but when a waitress drops a chilling revelation on the local news their cozy Northwoods holiday plans tilt off their axis. A hilarious and heartfelt new mystery from Wisconsin favorite Heidi Armbruster, MURDER GIRL blends classic suspense with small-town soul, proving that sometimes the family you’d kill for are the same people you’d love to kill.

Based on a true story, this Pulitzer Prize-winning tour de force explores one of the most singular lives of the 20th Century: antiquities collector Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who not only survived two of the world’s most repressive regimes in the Nazis and East German Communists, but preserved countless rare Weimar and Jewish cultural artifacts in her East Berlin home all the while. But as the story goes deeper, what begins as a celebration of queer resilience shifts into a far more complicated portrait of survival, truth, and the cost of living authentically.

Air Force veteran and NSA translator Reality Leigh Winner thought she was doing the right thing; the government didn’t see it that way. Chronicling one of the most controversial acts of whistleblowing in American history, this acclaimed Broadway thriller (drawn entirely from an FBI transcript) stages an interrogation with every pause, cough, and contradiction intact—and leaves us to read between the lines. More than docudrama, IS THIS A ROOM is a razor-sharp examination of language, power, and the uneasy tension between truth and duty.

Lorraine Hansberry’s trailblazing classic—the first play produced on Broadway written by a Black woman and still one of the American theater’s most impactful—follows the Younger family as they wrestle with big dreams in the face of economic hardship and the harsh injustices of discrimination on Chicago’s South Side. With language as lyrical as it is unflinching, A RAISIN IN THE SUN remains a triumphant, deeply human portrait of the determination to build a better life than the one the world is willing to give you, and a powerful reminder that the right to dream belongs to everyone.

For more information about the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, click here, for more information about their 2025 2026 season, click here, and subscription info is here.

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MKE Chamber Theatre: Topdog/Underdog: Watch The Cards For The Winner

In this Pulitzer prize winner, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks has woven a tight two character play that talks about poverty, race, self-awareness, grief, family, mental health, alcoholism, and the humanity of life or the life of humanity. We have two black adult brothers sharing a single room tenement without running water and just one bed and a recliner. Lincoln, the eldest, is crashing at his brother’s place after being kicked out by his wife. Booth holds it over Lincoln that he has the apartment despite Lincoln being the only one of the pair with an income.

About midway through Topdog/Underdog, Lincoln relates to Booth that their father had told him at one time that he named them Lincoln and Booth as a joke. I think that Suzan-Lori Parks named them as such as an omen.

Dimonte Henning foreground and Anthony Fleming III. Photographer: Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

Director Gavid Dillon Lawrence has done a marvelous job with a tough play to stage. Despite a single room set, the two characters roil through a number of moods and back. So finding the right actors, detecting the right attitudes for each act, and keeping the relationships feeling real is a major accomplishment. Lawrence’s choice in Anthony Fleming III as Lincoln and Dimonte Henning as Booth, I mean Three Card (later), is absolutely perfect. And there is never a doubt that these two are brothers with all of their feelings of family, brotherhood, competition, and legacy.

Anthony Fleming III. Photographer: Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

Anthony Fleming III is an imposing Lincoln as Lincoln the character and as Lincoln the historical figure. So to catch you up, Lincoln the character was a street hustler famous for his three card monte game. But he gave it up to go straight. But the straight job he found was as an Abe Lincoln impersonator at a boardwalk arcade…where customers pay a small fee to use a cap gun to assassinate him. Depending on the moment, Fleming gives us a resigned man who is determined to stay off the street so accepts the irony and boredom in the job. But Fleming also can bring out the humor that the situation provides as well in a very easy entertaining motion. After all, chuckle, it is a sit down job. But then again, Fleming as easily displays some anger or disgust at where he finds himself today.

Dimonte Henning (left) and Anthony Fleming III. Photographer: Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

Booth is the younger brother and a ne’er do well who looks up to his brother’s success at three card monte. He is forever practicing the moves and even renames himself, Three Card, to adopt his new role. Dimonte Henning brings a rabid energy to the role, with a sense of entitlement(?) but a lack of self-awareness. Henning also gives us a real sense of anger and disappointment when Lincoln refuses (initially) to help him master the game. Later Henning brings out Booth’s obsession with his ‘girlfriend’ Grace and his lack of sense around the relationship. Henning can easily swing the Grace mood from doubt to braggadocio in a moment…and he can’t help himself when he can dig under Lincoln’s skin about how his wife came to find solace in Booth’s bed.

Dimonte Henning (left) and Anthony Fleming III. Photographer: Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

This is not a healthy relationship and both Fleming and Henning exhibit tendencies of love and family and then flip instantly to bullying but they make it all work until: Lincoln loses his job to a wax dummy. And Fleming changes to a Lincoln giddy with success as he’s returned to three card monte cons and then adds on an incredibly persistent mean streak with Booth as the economic dynamic has shifted.

Fleming and Henning are the key here. They both have fully embodied their characters and have found a way to display all of the dynamics inherent in sibling relationships while also trying to deal with the pressures of living in the real world outside their door. And they bond over medicine (alcohol) but get separated by family history.

The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre presents Topdog/Underdog until May 11, 2025 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway, Milwaukee.

For more information! For Tickets! Run time: approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission.

Anthony Fleming III (left) and Dimonte Henning. Photographer: Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.
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Every Brilliant Thing Enthralls With Insights, Hope, And Sharing

This is a very intimate play…featuring one actor as storyteller who engages the audience in the telling. And the Goodman Mainstage at the Milwaukee Youth Art Center is the ideal intimate venue for the telling of this tale. We all become family here.

Yes, we only have one actor/character on stage. The character does not have a name and begins their story with a monologue that explains what the term Every Brilliant Thing means and where it originated. And at this point it is important to mention that this is a play about mental illness and suicide. And our actor is a youngster when we first meet and we get to share their growth and awareness and thoughts through a decade or better. And at first Every Brilliant Thing is a list to help their mother heal…a simple list of Brilliant Things! But eventually it becomes a coping mechanism as our actor struggles through their life as well…and obviously suffers from a reluctantly acknowledged mental health issue of their own.

Elyse Edelman. Photographer: Ross Zentner. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

Director Molly Rhode as taken a risk here…and instead of casting a single actor for entire run…Rhode has cast Milwaukee favorites James Carrington and Elyse Edelman on alternating evenings. Which opens up a new question that I hadn’t considered before…what effect on the story will gender have? Will a female character seem more sympathetic? Will a male character be perceived as weak? ??? Edelman held the floor when I attended on Sunday March 2 and just mesmerized the audience. She is a grand story teller!

James Carrington. Photographer Ross Zentner. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

But even without the dual casting this story will evolve differently at each performance. There are roles for the audience to play, as the actor selects audience members to play a vet, school counselor, and father. So bring your best actor voice and face when you attend. Depending on the actor and the audience member selected, the story will deviate from performance to performance and there will be a fair amount of ad lib activity on everyone’s part.

Elyse Edelman. Photographer: Ross Zentner.. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

But there’s more: There’s the actual Every Brilliant Thing List! When a new audience member found her seat next to me, I exclaimed, what great seats! And she replied, yes they are as long as I don’t have to be in the play…at which point Edelman came over and recruited my neighbor to participate…simply reading a line when her number was called: “Really Good Oranges!” There is some fun when a volunteer has forgotten their number and fails to respond on the first cue.

James Carrington and audience member. Photographer: Ross Zentner.. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

Yes, the topic is mental health and some sad life events. So there are moments of feeling choked up with tight throats and teary eyes. But there is an incredible amount of hope and happiness here and laughter that make this play feel full circle and complete…despite the unusual format.

I’d appreciate hearing from any of you who experienced James Carrington in this role. I have seen him in a number of other plays and I am sure he nails this!

Every Brilliant Thing continues at the Goodman Mainstage Hall at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center (just north of the Deer District in the old Schlitz Brewery area) through March 16, 2025. Run time: approximately 75 minutes, no intermission​

Additional information and tickets available here. If you have druthers on whether you see Elyse Edelman or James Carrington, the dates of their performances are listed.