A&E Feature

Bar Leagues in Milwaukee

More than just sports

Milwaukee plays host to an enormous bar league culture that offers its participants an opportunity to play games, make friends and unwind in the clubhouse, which, in this case, is a bar. Leagues operate year-round, and offer a range of activities to suit your personal taste, from old-school bar games such as darts and billiards to sports like volleyball and Irish hurling, from drinking games such...


Film

Festival of Films in French Returns to UW-Milwaukee

Worldly conversations in cinema

By many standards, the artist (Daniel Auteuil) is successful, an acclaimed painter in Paris and man of many mistresses; by those same lights, the gardener (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) leads a narrowly circumscribed small-town life...

Film

The Messenger

Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster knock on death’s door

Imagine the dryness in your mouth, the knot rising from your stomach and the stiffness of your tongue when knocking on a stranger’s door to tell them their son or daughter, husband or wife, is dead. Your starched green Army dress sends a signal. If the stranger is next of kin to someone in the service, they might already know the content of your message before you can say, “The secretary of the Army has asked me to inform...

Milwaukee Color

St. Stanislaus Parish

Cornerstone of Polish Milwaukee

While Historic Mitchell Street is now the main artery running through a densely populated, largely Hispanic area of Milwaukee's near-South Side, St. Stanislaus Catholic Church...


Theater

Waukesha Civic Opens ‘Crimes of the Heart’

Also: ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ at Boulevard Theatre

The last full month of winter opens with a pair of local productions that explore the strange convolutions of human passion and the lengths to which people will go to pursue happiness. On Feb. 5, Waukesha Civic Theatre opens its production of Beth Henley’s 1980 dramatic comedy, Crimes of the Heart. It’s the story of...

Theater

Brilliant Acting in Next Act’s ‘Purgatorio’

A play featuring little more than two characters in a single room could easily lose an audience’s attention, even if the two characters are based on Jason and Medea and the room is in Purgatory. Despite the inherent challenge, Next Act captivates theatergoers with its latest production, featuring David Cecsarini and Angela Iannone in Ariel Dorfman’s Purgatorio...

Art

Haggerty Museum of Art’s Subjective Truth

Art Review

Through April 18 at the Haggerty Museum of Art, the main gallery hosts three distinct photography exhibitions. Presented separately, the three photographers’ series reveal that truth is subjective. While the camera, an extension of the artist’s eye, faithfully records what is immediately in front of it, each photographer mediates the reality...

Art

Milwaukee’s Eclectic Array of Artists

Inspiring mix at Cedar, Elaine Erickson, Marian galleries

Galleries throughout the city offer an eclectic array of artists this week. This surprising mixture of creativity begs to be seen at least once and will provide interesting topics of conversation to help warm a February night. Above the Historic Third Ward Starbucks on Water Street, Cedar Gallery provides an exhibition curated by former gallery owners Jessica Steeber and Cassandra Smith...

Books

Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William Faulkner (Oxford University Press), by Philip Weinstein

Book Review

For William Faulkner, destiny was a grim piper, forcing humanity to dance like puppets to the tune of a broken instrument. Swarthmore English professor Philip Weinstein sets out to find the melody linking the dour tone of the great writer’s fiction with the dour facts of his life. Becoming Faulkner is a compact biographical analysis that benefits...

Books

‘Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong’

Terry Teachout looks at the musician and the man

Terry Teachout’s previous biographical subjects are George Balanchine and H. L. Mencken, so it’s a boon to Louis Armstrong fans that Teachout chose the great man for this new life story. Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) brims with insightful quotes...

Classical Music/Dance

Quartets Through the Ages With Fine Arts Quartet

Also: Frankly Music presents Brooklyn Rider

Out of necessity and limited resources true creation can emerge. Witness the case of a young Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) who had but two violinists, a violist and cellist at hand to fulfill the desire of a royal patron for new music. Haydn essentially became the founder of the string quartet—one of the fundamental genres of Classical Music...

Classical Music/Dance

Plenty to Like in Skylight Opera’s ‘Marriage of Figaro’

Classical Review

Distinguished opera composer Dominick Argento once said to me, “The characters in The Marriage of Figaro are so rich, in both text and music, that I know them better than I know my own family.” There are plenty of reasons to see the new production of Mozart’s opera (sung in English) at Skylight Opera Theatre. Bill Theisen’s direction keeps the characters clear and the complex story moving forward...

 
Today in Milwaukee
2009-11-11
2010-02-02

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