Backstage at APT

An excerpt from another group of glowing reviews from Wall Street Journal Theater critic Terry Teachout.

"Passionate Acting, Impeccable Setting"
By Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal

Skylight
Closes Oct. 20

Spring Green, Wis.

Theater isn't about theaters. You can see a great show in a living room—or a parking lot. The only thing that a good-looking performance space guarantees is a performance. But when a well-run company builds a well-designed new house, then uses it with taste and imagination, the plays that you see there will be all the more satisfying for being enacted in a space that sets them off in the way that a first-class frame enhances a first-rate painting.

Wisconsin's American Players Theatre did just that in 2009 when it opened the Touchstone Theatre, a low-slung, elegantly simple 201-seat indoor house located a stone's throw-and-a-half from the 1,148-seat rural amphitheater where the company has been headquartered since 1979. Having spent three decades presenting Shakespeare and Shaw in the Up-the-Hill Theatre, APT wisely opted to use the Touchstone to broaden its repertory with modern fare. This season's offerings include David Hare's "Skylight" and Tom Stoppard's "Heroes," two smartly written small-cast-single-set shows that don't get performed nearly often enough in this country.

Read the full article here