This Month on Stage

The weather threatens to get colder with each night as this October brings a month marked by the work of new playwrights. The Madison Rep hosts its third annual New Play Festival and In Tandem Productions debuts a new work by a local playwright. Dracula vs The Nazis is a promising comedy featuring two actors playing multiple roles in quick-change costuming. Youth and age contrast as a college composition is written and a pie is made in Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of the recent Kathleen Tolan play, The Memory House. Time behaves a bit less traditionally in the opening of Einstein’s Dreams by the UWM Theatre Department this month.

October also sees Milwaukee’s formal recognition of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Both the Milwaukee and Waukesha Symphony Orchestras, as well as Frank Almond’s outfit, Frankly Music, are giving concerts celebrating the work of one of the greatest symphonic composers of all time. Beyond Mozart, the MSO schedule features the talented young guest conductor Vasily Petrenko and the talented young guest violinist Hilary Hahn. In dance, Milwaukee Ballet Company stages Michael Pink’s interpretation of Don Quixote. Danceworks’ Fuel launches an exploration into the grace of daily stress while Milwaukee Dance Theatre presents a journey into the horrors of war with its staging of a show based on Buchner’s Woyzeck. It’s a story of a German soldier’s madness. The production includes music written by Tom Waits and his wife Kathleen Brennan over half a decade ago for a Danish production. Expect the haunting and poetic side of Waits’ lyrics to accompany the visual beauty of a ballet while somehow managing to sound like musical theatre and opera at the same time, in what should be a captivating performance.