American Players Theatre expands its troupe

Michael Brosilow Photo Deborah Staples (center) will be back in Spring Green after a decade-long absence. Jonathan Smoots at far right. A preview story from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel written by Michael Fischer. Here's a pleasant problem for any theater company, in an age of shrinking budgets and declining attendance: For the first time ever, American Players Theatre doesn't have enough dressing rooms for all of its actors. That's what happens when another year in the black allows you to increase the number of actors for the 2011 season by more than 15%, to 36 - and that's not counting two canine stars appearing in one production. Artistic Director David Frank isn't complaining, as was clear during a recent interview addressing the upcoming season and APT's future. First out of the gate will be "The Taming of the Shrew," starring APT regulars Tracy Michelle Arnold as Katherina and James Ridge as Petruchio. Tim Ocel, who had a smashing APT debut last year as director of "As You Like It," will be at the helm. While Frank acknowledged that both actors are older than those usually playing these lead roles, he was excited about the potential payoff. "Tim doesn't see Katherina as a hellcat but as a strong, determined and intelligent woman who won't sell herself for just anything. Her final scene with Petruchio isn't a capitulation. It's a contract." "Besides," Frank added, "how can you go wrong with Tracy?" One might pose the same question with regard to Milwaukee favorite Deborah Staples, who will be back in Spring Green after a decade-long absence and whose roles this summer include playing Ariel to Kenneth Albers' Prospero in "The Tempest." It has only been eight years since APT last staged "The Tempest," but listening to the enthusiastic Frank discuss the play makes one wonder how APT ever waited this long to bring it back. "It's moving," Frank said, reflecting on Prospero's final renunciation of his magic and his island kingdom. "And it's funny, with sophisticated and wonderful clowns." The plum role of Prospero is also made for Albers, who was tremendous when playing a thematically similar part last summer, as the aging playwright in Athol Fugard's "Exits and Entrances." Not just Shakespeare This is the first time since the 1997-'98 seasons that APT will only perform two Shakespeare plays for a second straight year - even though the 2009 addition of the indoor Touchstone Theatre has meant longer seasons and more productions. Frank admits there has been a shift, even as he cautions against making too much of it and adds that he would be "amazed if we didn't do three Shakespeare plays in 2012, with one of them being a history or a tragedy." "Shakespeare will still be our most important playwright, and our total number of truly classical pieces will be as large as ever," Frank promised. "We've always said that what we do is great plays written through the centuries, and our big commitment to such language-based theater will remain." "But will we consistently do three Shakespeare plays? Probably not. Our sense of identity has broadened, and our theater is beginning to evolve, even as the foundation stays true." Producing more American plays has been integral to that evolution, and 2011 is no exception. Steinbeck offering Up the hill on its outdoor stage, APT is producing John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," which Steinbeck himself adapted from his novella about the friendship between two Depression-era migrant workers. "Steinbeck was one of the truly great American writers of the last century," Frank said. "And 'Of Mice and Men' was the first play I produced professionally. It has been in my consciousness since I was a schoolboy." Frank isn't exaggerating in referring to the APT actors appearing in this show as a "dream cast." Jim DeVita and Brian Mani will enact the unforgettable friendship of George and the ill-fated Lennie, the man-child George ultimately cannot protect from the boss' son, Curley (Matt Schwader) or Curley's lonely wife (Colleen Madden). Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The Critic" and Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" round out APT's schedule of five plays in its theater up the hill. "The Critic," a satire about theater that includes a playwright named Puff and a critic named Sneer, has been an early and welcome surprise at the box office. "I shouldn't be surprised that 'The Critic' is doing so well," Frank said. "It is a wonderfully preposterous piece, in which Sheridan sends up everything he knew about theater." Coward's "Blithe Spirit" is a farce with a bite that revolves around the ghost of wife #1 (Staples) haunting beleaguered wife #2 (Madden) and her powerless hubby (DeVita). Although 2011 is only APT's third season in the Touchstone, it's hard to disagree with Frank's assessment that it has already become "central and essential to APT's artistic mission" - particularly when one considers this summer's Touchstone selections, which are collectively more ambitious and encompass a broader range than the work performed in 2009 or 2010. Aaron Posner will direct "The Glass Menagerie," Tennessee Williams' intimate memory play about his embittered and overbearing mother and awkward, shy sister. Sarah Day and Darragh Kennan will play a variation on their powerfully rendered mother-son relationship in APT's production of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night," the crown jewel of the Touchstone's inaugural season in 2009. One week after "Menagerie" opens, APT travels to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Russia to open its second Touchstone production, a three-actor adaptation of "Crime and Punishment" that was also produced at the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre in 2008. "I was skeptical about condensing a great novel into 120 minutes with three people," Frank admitted. "But it's very theatrical, and I think it works." Schwader will play Raskolnikov, the impoverished student believing himself above the law and committing murder to try to prove it. Madden and Ridge round out the cast, playing characters trying to prove Raskolnikov wrong. An Irish take on Sophocles Last up in the Touchstone is Irish poet Seamus Heaney's "The Cure at Troy," a stunning interpretation of Sophocles' "Philoctetes" and APT's first Greek play since Frank directed "Antigone" in 1997. Frank, who makes no secret of how much "I have always loved the Greeks," will direct "The Cure at Troy," with a cast featuring David Daniel in the lead role. "The Cure at Troy" revolves around an outcast Greek hero who, dwelling on old wrongs and wounds, has hardened his heart against his compatriots. Particularly in the chorus, Heaney has adapted his source material in an impassioned plea to move past a stubborn and narrow focus on the sins of the past so that we might make "hope and history rhyme" before it is too late. Given that message and Heaney's nationality, it's no accident that "The Cure at Troy" became intimately associated with the Northern Ireland peace process and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. "It's a wonderful play," Frank said, "and the Touchstone makes doing it possible." "Heaney is the greatest living English language poet," Frank said, "and his play suddenly seems very relevant to finding a place where we can entertain doubt and complexity." A place, that is, like APT itself, where doubt and complexity themselves become entertaining. Milwaukee Journal Sentinal