Yesterday, Shakespeare In The Park made its way to Humboldt Park in my neighborhood. This year they are presenting two abbreviated versions of Shakespeare plays, Richard III with puppets and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
As of this writing, today’s scheduled event for Sherman Park has been canceled because of air quality issues.
This isn’t going to be a full review, just a few comments on an afternoon well spent in a beautiful Milwaukee County park. Link to other sites below.
The Optimist Theatre has been doing Shakespeare in the Park for a good number of years. They have created a very efficient means of presenting the plays in the park (not in a band shell or stage but out on the grass). So bring our own chair!! For 2026 they have four actors in the cast who play all of the characters in both plays. This year’s cast is Kaylene Howard, Rebekah Farr, Annalyse Lapajenko and Libby Amato.
SitP: Richard III. Photo stolen from their FaceBook page.
Richard III is a puppet production, except Richard is played by Libby Amato. The other actors wield and voice the various puppets who take on the other roles in the play. Think cuddly Muppet types who resemble any number of animals. And often as they enter or exit, they will bark, meow, hoot, or hiss. A bit of levity indeed. Richard III runs 60 minutes.
SitP: Richard III. Photo stolen from their FaceBook page.
The Merry Wives of Windsor: Falstaff’s Tale follows a bit later with all roles played by our intrepid four actors. This show runs about 50 minutes and has all the hallmarks of Shakespeare’s farcical side. It is a lot of fun as well.
A good opportunity to introduce yourself or someone you love to Shakespeare. Admission is FREE.
SitP: Richard III. Photo stolen from their FaceBook page.
There are some side events too to hold your attention and lighten your day. Here is the daily schedule:
1:00 PM … Games and activities open Available all afternoon, including….
Renaissance-era games… yes, even the giant Jenga
Bard-themed trivia and activities
Make your own garland… a free, all-ages activity
1:40 PM … All About Richard III The low-down, the gossip, the history, and oh, the drama.
2:00 PM … Richard III (Puppet Edition)
About 3:30 PM … Reset the stage reconfiguration and shift to follow the shade. Just relax and enjoy the day. We’ll let you know when it’s done so you can adjust your lawn chairs.
4:15 PM … All About The Merry Wives of Windsor Our version, (is it really all about Falstaff?) and what we’ve gotten ourselves into.
4:30 PM … Early Music Now (Approx. 25 minutes)
5:00 PM … The Merry Wives of Windsor: Falstaff’s Tale With live musical accompaniment by Early Music Now.
Let’s start in the middle, shall we? We are witnessing the Book Of Will at the Lake Country Playhouse and Academy. And I am going to paraphrase here since I wasn’t sitting with the groundlings transcribing the spoken text (YKIYK). After reading a purloined copy of the first folio of William Shakespeare’s collected works, a very drunken and depressed Ben Jonson barges into the Globe Tap Room and explains his three day drunken bender: “I have seen them acted and I have heard them acted but I have never been alone with them before.” And that is the key takeaway from this story. A well told and well imagined telling of what may have happened as the surviving original members of the Globe Theater Company assemble and publish the collected works of William Shakespeare. Without these efforts, the audiences of the 21st Century would never have had the opportunity to see Shakespeare acted or hear Shakespeare exclaimed or to just be alone with him.
left to right, Diane Kallas, Topher Lowmar, Evelyn Ewald, and Paul Weir. Photo courtesy of Lake County Playhouse and Academy.
And now, the beginning: Sophia Bernhardt commands the stage as Hamlet! Bernhardt is impish, over confident, and hams it up to the max and acting for a company in competition to the Globe is working from a tainted script. We can all cringe as she mauls the most famous bit from Shakespeare, To Be or Not To Be! And then Bernhardt dares to appear at the Globe Tap Room and plays the preening star and clearly knows her appearance her makes here a scoundrel. But never fear, Paul Weir’s Richard Burbage, the star in many Globe productions, drives the young Hamlet and the other members of the rogue company from the establishment with of all things, a baseball bat (conveniently hanging from the bar wall along with a number of epees and a badminton racket). Weir’s Burbage is regal, dynamic, eloquent, and maybe just a bit pompous. But clearly in control of his faculties and cleanly recites any number of soliloquies from memory to the amazement of his companions. A fact worth noting as we lose Burbage immediately after this act and the remaining company realizes that he was the only one who knew ALL of the plays and what should they do now?
left to right, Evelyn Ewald, Madison Nowak, and Diane Kallas.Photo courtesy of Lake County Playhouse and Academy.
So let’s discover the marvelous characters that playwright Lauren Gunderson has gifted to us and the remarkable actors who bring them to life.
The anchor or focus is John Heminges, one of the founding members of the Globe Theater. He had given up acting to become the theater’s manager. Naturally when the group decides to assemble Shakespeare’s plays and publish them, they all turn the Heminges as the man to get it done. Cory Klein portrays Heminges as an assured and confident manager of the theater and he agrees that a folio must be produced. But during the work toward publication he expresses regret over leaving acting and at times has doubts about his ability to lead the project. And that introduces a true love story from Gunderson that certainly is worthy of a play about Shakespeare. Diane Kallas is Rebecca Heminges and John’s rock. And she has as much knowledge of the theater and Shakespeare’s importance as anybody in the company and Kallas is a solid source of support and sees past the doubts Klein portrays and insists that he complete publishing the plays. And their final scene together as she takes sick and eventually passes is so full of drama and love that you can’t help be feel choked up as well.
left to right, Cory Klein and Oliver Kuhtz. Photo courtesy of Lake County Playhouse and Academy.
Another theater couple are the Condells. Henry is also a founding member of the Globe and Oliver Kuhtz’s character loves Shakespeare and the Globe and his fellows too. And he is a calming hand during the various events and wholly supports Heminges in the efforts to produce the folio. His wife, Elizabeth, also is involved in encouraging the folio and as played by Evelyn Ewald is also a supporting character for Henry and the others. Ewald is entirely a graceful spirit throughout the change in moods and scenes.
left to right, Cory Klein, Oliver Kuhtz, and Victoria Wozniak. Photo courtesy of Lake County Playhouse and Academy.
Victoria Wozniak plays a very key and central character to pulling together the disparate parts to complete the folio, Ralph Crane. The Globe’s copyist, hand writing out each part for the actors, Wozniak first gives a little bit of push back but once committed is essential to putting the plays in the correct internal order and historical order. Only Crane has handled and read every script in its entirety in the past and other than Burbage probably has the most complete understanding of the entire catalog. Wozniak certainly jumps into the work and provides a get it done no nonsense personality once the real work gets underway. And Alice Heminges is the daughter of John and Rebecca. She is also the barmaid at the Globe Tap Room. Madison Nowak is delightful as Alice. With a quick wit, an eye for who needs another round and who needs to be cut off, flirtatious at times, but always alert to the mood in the room. She would be an agile and competent barkeep in any watering hole hereabouts. She too gives her father the confidence to carry on.
And then there is Ben Jonson. Per David Wise, Jonson is something of a braggart and self-promoting loud mouth. And as a competitor of Shakespeare, willing to belittle and denigrate the bard’s work. And at the Tap Room, he easily imbibes too much and openly flirts with Alice who fittingly puts him in his place. And then the raw shift to depression and drunkenness after reading the portfolio and realizing what we may have all lost and how wrong he was about the plays.
left to right, Oliver Kuhtz, Sophia Bernhardt, Topher Lowmar, Victoria Wozniak, and Cory Klein. Photo courtesy of Lake County Playhouse and Academy.
The publishers: William Jaggard is the villain at first, having published Shakespeare works without license, to hero when he is the only publisher willing to take on the project. William Molitor plays the blind publisher who knows who he is and what he has and is willing to compromise to take on the job and cement his reputation. But as events unfold he softens a bit. His son Isaac Jaggard is the actual publisher of the folio and is eager to take on the task. Topher Lowmar is Isaac, earnest, dedicated, and in love with the idea of publishing Shakespeare’s complete works. He is so involved that his father suggests that he take full publishing credit in the end.
William Molitor, Photo courtesy of Lake County Playhouse and Academy.
And Sophia Bernhardt reappears…a number of times as a crier announcing the next shows at the Globe, to great comic affect, and later as the compositor/printer at Jaggard’s shop. Bernhardt turns from madcap to serious and persnickety artisan for this part of the play.
and just let’s leave Pericles out of it.
Sophia Bernhardt. Photo courtesy of Lake County Playhouse and Academy.
Director Morgan Gates assembled a remarkable cast and kept the action moving across a number of locales, changing emotional expressions, and 18 scene changes. The quick changes and the continuity is marvelous to experience. Although he has the cast working with British accents they never got too thick and in the way, every line was easy to understand. And let’s circle back to Victoria Wozniak who besides playing a number of roles, was the costume designer here. Simply perfect.
Book of Will runs through Feb 1. 2006 at Lake Country Playhouse and Academy in downtown Hartland WI. Tickets here! Run time is 2 hours including plus a 15 minute intermission.
In his Rep in Depth presentation on opening night, Matt Daniels explained the genesis of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Always the ready adapter of a good story, Shakespeare had plenty of potential sources and Daniels lists the myriad of poems, novellas, dramas, legends, etc that preceded the play that he wrote…the most famous and most popular play on stages to this day…and onto the contemporary version, West Side Story. And then a touch on the shift to Appalachia for this adaptation and the dialects there being the closest contemporary dialects to those of Elizabethan England. Intriguing. He even brings up the ‘parallel’ of the Hatfields and McCoys vs. Capulets and Montagues. More on the Appalachia thing later. And finally, since we all know the story, why do we all continue to seek out presentations of Romeo and Juliet. As Daniels said, spoiler alert, they all die. But we still find hope in the story?
The cast of Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater
Director Laura Braza adapted this version of Romeo and Juliet and sets us in Appalachia and brings into the staging, some bluegrass or early country music. This is the third Shakespeare play in recent memory where the Rep has included contemporary music as a supporting motif….Braza’s Much Ado About Nothing and Daryl Cloran’s As You Like It. Braza has such a clear sense of the story and is such a solid story teller, I don’t think she needed this bit of stage play. And she hews so near the original text and working with the spare stage, this is clearly what Shakespeare would be doing in 2025. But being able to dress the characters in modern dress and working with contemporary accents eliminates distractions and the audience is bound to the story through the text and the action.
The cast of Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater
Romeo and Juliet requires a rather large ensemble and Braza was fortunate to bring together a cast of very skilled and very popular local actors. Nate Burger who is most often seen on the stages of American Players Theatre plays both Benvolio and Friar Laurence. His Friar Laurence is a bit mischievous in his support of young love and then devious in his plan to thwart authority and finally clearly powerless when actually facing that same authority. Matt Daniels is Lord Capulet and comes across as very much in control and controlling until the ‘death’ of his daughter Juliet…when he loses it and the acting here may be just a little over the top for me. You may have noticed Daniels as Ebenezer Scrooge in Mark Clements’ A Christmas Carol the past few seasons. Laura Rook, also a mainstay at American Players, is Lady Capulet, a clearly loving wife and mother and maybe just a bit of doting mother…but she can be just as stern and demanding as required by the text here.
Dimonte Henning is a graduate of UWM and the Rep’s Emerging Professional Residency and most recently directed Clyde’s for the Milwaukee Chamber Theater. Henning too plays a number of roles but he gives us a very gentlemanly Lord Montague. And Alex Keiper who was June Carter in the Rep’s Ring of Fire and also appeared in Titanic, is an incredible nurse to Juliet. She clearly loves the girl and abets her in her flirtation and marriage to Romeo but too folds in the face of the Capulet’s plans for the girl.
But the high drama at the pivot point in the play is the street fight between the Capulet crew and the Montague family. And here Davis Wood, a current Rep EPR, is Tybalt while Mathew C. Yee, a writer and actor from Chicago, is Mercutio. They give us all of the animus and hatred necessary to bring the fight to its deadly fruition.
Pictured: Kenneth Hamilton, Alex Keiper, Piper Jean Bailey and Nate Burger. Photo by Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
But the make or break roles in Romeo and Juliet is casting the right Romeo and the right Juliet…actors who can work off of each other and build a stage chemistry that lets us believe in the story. Braza has done that here.
Kenneth Hamilton is our Romeo, another returning actor from Braza’s Much Ado. Hamilton is the complete Romeo here: full of swagger, a hormonal young male, easily swayed in love, and little thought beyond himself. Hamilton easily portrays a teenager in love, well for the moment. All in to the point of ignoring his own safety, both in the garden under Juliet’s window and later as Friar Laurence tries to whisk him away in the face of his exile. But he also swiftly portrays the hot blooded street fighter who slays Tybalt which brings his world crashing down and the brash lover who returns home to face death on the news that Juliet has died. Hamilton’s interactions with our Juliet play true.
Pictured: Piper Jean Bailey. Photo by Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
What light through yonder window breaks? Well it is Juliet and Braza has found a jewel for her Juliet in Piper Jean Bailey. A recent graduate of Northwestern University, this is Bailey’s Milwaukee Rep debut and first professional role. Bailey easily moves from the naive 14 year old that we first meet with her parents and quickly develops into a crush-worthy and crushing on Romeo teen during the Capulet’s party scene. But Bailey really brings the drama in the balcony scene and attendant soliloquies, she has a solid command of the Shakespearean text and story. And she is just the right amount of playful with Romeo and her nurse particularly through the planning of their wedding. She certainly knows how to play an excitable 14 year old and then cleanly morph into a young adult as the tragedy comes to a head. She was clearly the fan favorite as she received the loudest and warmest round of applause during the standing ovation. I will be shocked if we don’t see her again and again on the Rep stages in the future.
Pictured: Piper Jean Bailey and Kenneth Hamilton. Photo by Michael Brosilow. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
Romeo and Juliet runs through March 30, 2025. And while the Rep’s home is being remodeled, it is being presented in Vogel Hall of the Marcus Performing Arts Center. The entrance to Vogel Hall is on the riverwalk side of the MPAC just off of State Street. Additional information and tickets can be found here.
