APT newcomer shines among stars

By Bill Wineke, Channel3000.com | August 20, 2018

SPRING GREEN, Wis. - Phoebe Gonzalez is spending her first summer with American Players Theatre and she may well have the makings of a future star.

Gonzalez is one of eight cast members in George Bernard Shaw's “Heartbreak House,” a 1919 play portraying the pretense and disillusion of Europe's ruling classes.

Her role is that of Ellie Dunn, daughter of Mazzini Dunn, an honest but poor business manager. Ellie and her family are invited to a dinner party at the home of an aristocrat, Hesione Hushaby.

This is a typical Shaw play, witty, cynical and ending in total wreckage of everyone involved.

Here is why we will hear more of Gonzalez: She stands her ground in a cast of some of the best actors in the world.

Sharing the stage with her are Sarah Day (33 years at APT), Jonathan Smoots (28 years), Jim DeVita (24 years), Tracy Michelle Arnold (19 years), Colleen Madden (18 years), Tim Gittings and John Taylor Phillips (nine years each).

Any one of those actors is capable of dominating any stage in the country and, together, they make a formidable team. Gonzalez isn't “better” than the others. The point is that she looks as if she belongs on the stage with them.

Read the full review here.