Maybe it’s been a few years since you’ve been out to American Players Theatre (APT), the classical repertory company in the woods near Spring Green.
Maybe you’ve been meaning to go but haven’t made it, or you’re simply resolved to see more shows this summer — to join the “Packers fans of theater,” as a New York Times feature wrote in 2024.
The key to comfort is “layers. Dress in layers,” said Sara Young, APT’s managing director, now in her 23rd year with the company. “Depending on the time of year it is, you might start with nothing and layer up, or you may have to go the other direction.”
APT, now under the artistic leadership of Brenda DeVita, added a 200-seat indoor theater with a rounded thrust stage in 2009. The Touchstone typically stages more intimate plays, family dramas, small-cast comedies and new work.
Most plays, five each year, run under the stars in the Hill Theatre, a 1,075-seat amphitheater the company gave a major overhaul in 2017. Among other upgrades: The parking lot is now paved, as of 2023. The picnic area has expanded to include more permanent covered shelter for 50 under John’s Place (named for John Frautschi), and there’s a wheelchair-accessible picnic area.
APT, now under the artistic leadership of Brenda DeVita, stages most plays (including this production of “Much Ado About Nothing”) in the Hill Theatre in Spring Green.
LIZ LAUREN
Hill performances are not canceled ahead of time for predicted weather because, as Young noted last year, “We would cancel all the time, and a lot of times we would cancel needlessly. There is often rain in the forecast and it’s a fine night.”
That said, tickets for an earlier performance offer more opportunities to book the same show later in the season. Any tickets can be freely exchanged 24 hours ahead for any other performance.
Finally, “the drive really isn’t that far,” said Patty Heaston, APT’s communications coordinator. For people who aren’t comfortable driving at night, she noted that show times for Fridays and Saturdays in September have all moved an hour earlier (to 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.).
“If you’re driving home, you’re still in that community of people,” Heaston said. “That’s still part of the experience … everybody you’re driving with is talking about the same thing you are.”
Visit americanplayers.org for more information about tickets, which range in price from $66 to $109 (with many discount options and promotions during the summer). Reach the box office at (608) 588-2361.
Isabelle Bushue and Josh Castille played Juliet and Romeo in 2023 at American Players Theatre.
LIZ LAUREN
On the Hill
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by William Shakespeare
June 7-Oct. 5
There may be no more quintessentially American Players Theatre show than this fantastical fairy story set in the Athenian forest. Director David Daniel has been bursting with ideas for this production of the play, which last ran on the Hill in 2017. One fun twist of note: Joshua M. Castille, 2023’s Romeo, shares the role of the mischievous sprite Puck with Casey Hoekstra. They’ll combine American Sign Language and spoken text as they playfully drug some wandering young lovers and transform a tradesman into a donkey.
Phoebe González and Laura Rook, who tussled over a man in last season’s “Ring Round the Moon,” play best friends in “Fallen Angels” this summer.
LIZ LAUREN
‘Fallen Angels’ by Noël Coward
June 13-Oct. 3
It’s been a decade since APT has staged a Coward comedy (that would be “Private Lives,” 2015, silly and cynical). In this farce, too, the playwright pokes fun at marital foibles. Phoebe González and Laura Rook, who tussled over a man in last season’s “Ring Round the Moon,” play best friends, both married, who realize their “one who got away” is the same Parisian Don Juan — and he’s back in town.
‘Picnic’ by William Inge
June 20-Sept. 13
When this 1950s drama went up on Broadway about a decade ago, Sebastian Stan’s six pack had a starring role (“everyone in ‘Picnic’ wants to be attractive,” New York Times critic Ben Brantley observed). APT has cast Rasell Holt as the smoldering “vagabond” Hal, who tempts and torments the women of a Kansas town in this Pulitzer Prize winner. APT artistic director Brenda DeVita leads this one.
‘Anna in the Tropics’ by Nilo Cruz
Aug. 1-Sept. 26
A south Florida cigar factory simmers with forbidden romance when a handsome lector (Ronald Román-Meléndez) arrives to read “Anna Karenina” to the Cuban American workers while they hand-roll tobacco. Full of internal family tension and external pressure to modernize, “Anna in the Tropics” won Cruz a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003. It’s perfect for late summer nights.
A merry band led by Triney Sandoval, Ted Deasy and Phoebe González made a joyful “Twelfth Night” at American Players Theatre.
LIZ LAUREN
‘The Winter’s Tale’ by William Shakespeare
Aug. 8-Oct. 4
The first half of this “problem” play, one of Shakespeare’s final works, has an utterly different tone than the second half. A tragic opening full of jealousy and abandoned babies turns into a pastoral comedy with royal people courting each other in disguise and frolicking shepherdesses. The infamous stage direction “Exit, pursued by a bear” is from this play. (And the ending is happy-ish, so!) APT last staged this in 2009; now, company members Nate Burger and Laura Rook play the divided king and queen.
In the Touchstone
‘ART’ by Yasmina Reza
June 13-Sept. 28
APT’s timing is spot-on with this production of Reza’s dark comedy about friendship, which was heavily produced in the late 1990s-early 2000s and is getting a revival on Broadway this August. Serge (Marcus Truschinski) has dropped the equivalent of about $60,000 in today’s money on a white painting with (invisible?) white lines. One friend (Triney Sandoval) can’t contain his disdain; another (La Shawn Banks) tries to play peacemaker. This is a comedic triple threat.
Gavin Lawrence played the title character in “Nat Turner in Jerusalem” by Nathan Alan Davis, at American Players Theatre last fall.
LIZ LAUREN
‘The Death of Chuck Brown’ by Gavin Dillon Lawrence
June 24-Sept. 25
Guitarist Chuck Brown was known in the 1970s as the “godfather of go-go,” mixing jazz, funk and African music into a new musical genre. Lawrence gave this play a reading at Winter Words in 2023, setting it in a barber shop in Washington, D.C., on the day of Brown’s death. “Death of Chuck Brown” explores the effects of gentrification on a neighborhood through a specific, affectionate lens — Lawrence grew up, in part, in D.C.
‘Tribes’ by Nina Raine
Aug. 2-Sept. 27
Several performers and the director of Nina Raine’s forceful 2010 family drama/comedy are reprising their roles in the Touchstone this summer. John Langs directed Joshua Castille and Lindsay Welliver (billed as Lindsay Evans) in 2017 at ACT Theatre in Seattle, when Langs was also the artistic director. A glowing review by the late Misha Berson described a “provocative yet sympathetic play” that “uses sign and verbal language to delve into a deeper, more complex exploration of relationships and communication.”