Though Shakespeare often suffers at the hands of modernized productions, Love's Labour's Lost is usually an exception. Many directors have successfully set the play in the not-too-distant past, bringing the action closer to the audience's experience to offer a more accessible reading, but not so close they can't survey the characters and themes with some level of temporal detachment.

The first eight or nine pages of Pat Cook's script are written as casual conversation held by three elderly women in a domestic environment. All three women are talking at the same time- no one's listening. It's a comically surreal way to begin the season in Elm Grove as the Sunset Playhouse opens its production of Those Crazy Ladies in the House on the Corner . . .

Ah, love. It has it ups and downs, twists and turns. And in the arc of romance, the despair of heartbreak can unexpectedly bring about the promise of new love. Isn't It Romantic follows the journey of a modern relationship centered on the timeless music of composers George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Jerome Kern. Playwright/Director David Hunter Koch has created the songbook as a musical revue, which opened last weekend at the Rep's Stackner Cabaret. Singer/performer . . .

"Even Shakespeare gave the guy playing King Lear a 20-minute break," says actor Michael Gotch, who is embracing a challenging lead role with the Milwaukee Rep. When the Rep's Stiemke Theater opens the season with I Am My Own Wife on Sept. 10, Gotch won't be given the luxury of any time offstage.

The Belle's Stratagem, British playwright Hannah Cowley's 18th-century comedy of manners, marks the final opening of the summer for the American Players Theatre (APT). In a lighthearted end to APT's season, Marcus Truschinski plays Doricourt, a man betrothed to a woman he hasn't seen since childhood, Letitia Hardy (Colleen Madden).

George Bernard Shaw's first play ever produced, Widowers' Houses, is a sharp, socially conscious analysis of morality that still resonates today. American Players Theatre (APT) in Spring Green brings Shaw's 115-year-old comedy to the stage as one of its final summer productions. Though the plot involves the tiring drama of finance and morality, APT brightens even the dreariest moments, having assembled a brilliant ensemble cast, authentic period costuming and a classy set free from excessive ornamentation . . .

Past scholars have often decried Love's Labour's Lost as wholly insignificant, a self-indulgent piece by William Shakespeare before he moved on to more serious work. More recently, Cambridge University's Anne Barton described the play as "relentlessly Elizabethan," with dialogue that is mostly inaccessible to modern audiences because it's filled with in-jokes and references that are specific to the 1590s. Despite these beliefs to the contrary, director Jennifer Uphoff Gray hopes to prove that the comedy can appeal to today's theatergoers when Milwaukee Shakespeare opens its production in the Studio Theatre of the Broadway Theatre Center on Sept. 6.

What could be more perfect than staging Moliere's comedy The Misanthrope during an election year? The Boulevard Theatre hits the target with a production that scores on almost every level. The play, written in 1666, tells the story of Alceste, who may be the most famous misanthrope of all time. From his opening lines until his final speech, Alceste shows his general dislike for humanity. He's unafraid to tell people exactly what he thinks of them. He only equivocates on the subject of love, "where reason doesn't rule." Alceste is a prime example of this, as he pines for a young coquette. More than a half-dozen other characters populate the play . . .

Soulstice Theatre takes the gritty, sexy musical Chicago into a strange dimension of Victoria's Secret lingerie-lots of it. Ambitious director/choreographer Michael Endter floods the old school gymnasium with black lace, long legs, bare chests and plumped cleavages. He's done an amazing job keeping the action moving, drilling intricate Fosse-like moves into his cast of variably-skilled but uniformly game performers. Lighting designer David Carter has miraculously transformed the gym into a glitzy nightclub.

In the fall of 1888, a series of five murders took place in London's Whitechapel district. Newspapers referred to the murderer, whose victims were all prostitutes, as "Jack the Ripper." The killer was never caught. The drama of this serial killer has been adapted to stage and screen numerous times over the years. He returns to the Milwaukee stage next month as Alchemist Theatre launches the premiere of Ripper!-a new play written and directed by Jackie Benka. Benka's Roaring Gemini Productions is co-producing the show.