Racine-based comedy troupe 1000 Channels comes to Milwaukee for a series of shows beginning this month. The group consists of roughly seven people from just outside Milwaukee who exhibit varying degrees of talent and potential while performing the standard sort of fare one would expect of a local sketch comedy group. Some of it’s quite bad.

The Boulevard Theatre closes its season with the premiere of local playwright Chad M. Rossi’s Eureka!, a coming-of-age love story/buddy-comedy set in Milwaukee. Cesar Gamino and Jason Krukowski play Wayne and Clyde: a couple of guys in their late-20s sharing an apartment. Clyde’s a dreamer who wants to reform society. Wayne has a stable job and dates a dominant, conservative woman named Nancy (Rachael Lau). Clyde feels threatened by this until he finds his own love interest in the free-spirited Teri (Rachel Lewandowski).

The Off The Wall Theatre continues its season with a stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Karl Miller stars as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot on a cruise down the Nile River. As such things usually go for Poirot, someone is killed on the cruise and he must discover who the murderer is before the boat can return to shore. Miller brings an entertainingly dichotomous energy to the role of Agatha Christie’s beloved character. He’s both earnestly humble and slyly arrogant, with a dramatic edge driven by comic timing. In Miller’s hands Poirot is every bit as interesting as he should be, but there are a number of other characters who aren’t nearly as interesting

Perched on an elevated platform, the “mad gothic organist” Jack Forbes Wilson could barely be seen playing the comically florid opening music for Next Act’s The Mystery of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful. Next Act closes its season with the absurdist comedy featuring two actors playing eight different characters. The two in question are John McGivern and Christopher Tarjan—talented comic actors playing multiple roles in full costume with the aid of backstage talents Marsha Kuligowski (who designed the costumes), Properties Master Meghan Savagian

A good kids’ play or musical often meets greater approval from parents than from children—perhaps because their appreciation is mingled with a sense of relieved gratitude. First Stage’s production of A Year with Frog and Toad goes further than most in wooing adults as well as their offspring. The musical, like the stories on which it’s based, evokes a nostalgia that’s free of cloying sentiment or honeyed charm. The characters, basking in their sylvan idyll, are homely creatures whose lives are dictated by the reassuring cycle of seasons . . .

Over the course of the current theater season, actors on local stages have played such diverse roles as the devil, a fish, a ghost, an angel in the body of a human, a Hollywood producer, con men, hit men, royalty, lizards, prisoners, twins, a faith healer, a priest and a seminarian. This week, four Milwaukee actors in their late-20s and early-30s will tackle the challenge of … playing four people living in Milwaukee in their late-20s and early-30s, as the Boulevard Theatre launches the world premiere of local playwright Chad M. Rossi’s Eureka!, a contemporary coming-of-age romantic comedy set on the East Side.

In Tandem Theatre opens the penultimate play of its season with Bill C. Davis’ early ’80s drama Mass Appeal. The story focuses on an idealistic young seminarian who finds himself under the tutelage of an older, established priest. The two face the usual sorts of intergenerational problems as one tries everything in his power to help the other become a fully ordained priest. In the role of Father Tim Farley, longtime Milwaukee actor Michael Duncan adds quite a bit of nuance into a character that could’ve read as a stereotype of an Irish Catholic priest. The character’s weakness comes across with a subtle strength.

Charles Ludlam’s The Mystery of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful has been a huge success since its debut in 1984. It’s a lightningquick comedy featuring intellectual absurdity, cross-dressing, quick changes and an entire cast played by two characters. Simultaneously highbrow and lowbrow, the play is a campy, postmodern collage that has proven to be remarkably durable over the past two decades. Beginning April 3, Next Act Theatre launches a production of Ludlam’s idiosyncratic masterpiece starring John McGivern and Christopher Tarjan, and directed by Next Act Producing Artistic Director David Cecsarini.

Milwaukee Shakespeare can sometimes be faulted for staging productions that display more polish than punch. Its production of Cymbeline demonstrates how effectively it can achieve both, creating an entertaining spectacle from one of Shakespeare’s silliest plays. Written after he’d penned his greatest tragedies, comedies and histories, Cymbeline appears to be an exercise by the playwright to see just how dexterously he could coax threads of each genre into the effusive bow signifying the end of the play.

Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives: Americans may hold different positions, but they still seem to be playing for the same team. Unfortunately, an increasing number of indicators in the environment and the global economy would lead some to believe that they’re on the losing team. This thought can be difficult to accept—unless you happen to be looking at things from the outside.