You’re on Earth, there’s no cure for that,” bellows Michael Corkins, playing Hamm in Milwaukee Rep’s production of Endgame. His outburst marks one of many instances when his rich stentorian voice erupts into violent disdain for the futility and wretchedness of human existence. Despite the comic patter consistent throughout the play, this expression of despair for the irremediable suffering of mankind clings to the characters like the fog one imagines inhabits the world outside their decaying cocoon. Prolonged disease and decrepitude remain within; “Outside of here it’s death.”

Making its world premiere this month at the Milwaukee Rep’s Quadracci Powerhouse Theater, Charles Randolph-Wright’s The Night Is a Child is a compelling drama marred by few flaws. Elizabeth Norment stars as Harriet—a mother of three whose husband has passed away. The play is set one year after Harriet’s son Michael walked into a nursery, killing nine people before committing suicide. Unable to endure the ongoing questions about the event, Harriet escapes to Brazil, where she hopes to relax. Her surviving adult children, Brian (Tyler Pierce) and Jane (Monette Magrath), follow Harriet to Brazil in an effort to bring her back home. Harriet is drawn into the mystery of Brazil by a series of fascinating characters, her central tour guide being an enchanting woman named Bia (Lanise Antoine Shelley).

Comedy has a reputation for being light and insubstantial. It is the stuff that provides levity from negativity and eases stress. However, just as a laugh is not the opposite of a tear, comedy is not the opposite of drama. Both can cover the same ground in ways that are equally compelling. Even the most cerebral concepts can be explored in just as much detail with just as much insight in comedy as they can in drama. Stephen Temperley’s Souvenir is a shining example of how comedy can cast a light into even the most abstract notions of the nature and value of art. The Skylight presents its production of Temperley’s comedy now through March 30 at the Broadway Theatre Center.

As Milwaukee Shakespeare makes its way off the stage at the end of the 2007-’08 season, the company is taking on one of the Bard’s more challenging plays, Cymbeline. The play, which opens March 22, can be difficult to define in terms of Shakespeare’s other work. Some historians have looked at the convoluted nature of the plot and come to the conclusion that Shakespeare merely wrote it to amuse himself.

Sometimes the title says it all. Hula Hoop Sha-Boop is a cavalcade of hit tunes from the 1950s, brought to life by a quartet of talented young singers. The fastpaced, 90-minute show zips through more than 70 songs before the final curtain in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stackner Cabaret.

Sketch comedy is never consistent but the format is universally familiar: A series of brief, light comic interactions hit the stage. Some moments are good; some are bad. The mind is gradually pummeled into a generally pleasant state. Of course, if it’s bad sketch comedy, the experience is altogether unpleasant. Running through March 16 at the Alchemist Theatre on South Kinnickinnic Avenue, local comedy group Broadminded’s sketch comedy program Cookie! rests somewhere comfortably between extremes. It’s successful enough at dodging the mindnumbing tedium of painfully obvious jokes to make it well worth the price of admission.

Four people, two ash bins and a toy dog may not seem like much come the end of time, but these components have propelled Samuel Beckett’s Endgame to more than 50 years of critical praise. Starting next weekend, the Stiemke Theater brings Endgame back to Milwaukee. When the sheet is pulled off Mark Corkins on March 21, it will be his second time in the role of the blind, sickly Hamm. Years ago, Corkins played Hamm in the tiny confines of the UW-Milwaukee Studio Theatre. With its larger stage, the Milwaukee Rep has a much bigger canvas to work with. On the flip side, however, the Rep will face difficulty in bringing the immediacy of the characters’ emotional realities to one of the largest studio theaters in the county. As seen before at UWM, the perpetually restless decay of Hamm’s sickness breathes a fascinating counterpoint through Corkins’ powerful, deeply resonant voice. Lee Ernst will fill the role of Clov, the reluctant servant who comes ever closer to leaving the dying Hamm. Without Clov’s aid, Hamm would be left helpless, thus unraveling the tension that holds the play together. .

In a sweet and simply told production of Sleeping Beauty, First Stage Children’s Theater offers a treat for the younger set. The script by Charles Way differs substantially from the Disney animated version, but it still tells the basic story of a sleeping princess who must be awakened by love’s first kiss. Consideration for younger children’s sensibilities takes center stage. The evil witch is not too scary; likewise, a large, hairy spider stays sufficiently upstage not to frighten the youngest audience members. Adults will appreciate the many themes that run through the play, including the benefits of a lifetime friendship and the prince’s growing faith in his own abilities.

As if to celebrate Black History Month and this November’s electoral process at once, Acacia Theatre premiered Laddy Sartin’s Blessed Assurance last Friday at Concordia University’s Todd Wehr Auditorium. The play casts the struggle to secure voting rights for African-Americans during the Freedom Summer of 1964 in fictionalized, localized and intensely personal terms. A black waitress at a white-owned diner in a small Mississippi town makes a one-woman revolution out of her demand to cast a ballot.

The Milwaukee Rep closes its season at the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater with a pair of world premieres. Next week, The Rep stages the world premiere of Charles Randolph-Wright’s The Night is a Child. And next month, The Rep opens its production of Armadale, Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of the 19th-century Wilkie Collins novel of the same name. Randolph-Wright, a man of many talents, enjoyed one of his biggest successes as a playwright with Blue, which opened Off-Broadway in 2001. The Night is a Child is a story of personal transformation through vacation, perhaps inadvertently paralleling the theme touched on in the Rep’s production of Enchanted April last month. Elizabeth Norment stars as Harriet, a mother who lost her son to a senseless act of violence.