On Stage

Peninsula Music Festival presents its 59th season of the classics in Fish Creek’s Door Community Auditorium Aug. 2-20. Go to musicfestival.com. – Photo: Courtesy

In many ways, the village of Fish Creek is the artistic heart of the Door County peninsula. Among other things, this small community on the Green Bay side of the Door is home to the Peninsula Music Festival, which hosts its 59th season in August.

Scene from Door Shakespeare’s “Pride and Prejudice,” currently playing in repertory. – Photo: Door Shakespeare

If you’re looking for a home where Shakespeare doth roam, then make Sundays and Tuesdays at Björklunden vid Sjön in Door County your destination. That’s when Door Shakespeare’s outdoor production of “Twelfth Night,” which opened July 8, takes key scenes from the Bard of Avon’s comedy out of its garden theater and presents them amid the estate’s natural settings.

The Broadway cast of “The Addams Family”

From blue men to gay men, from Streisand impersonations and Sedaka tributes to “Billy Elliot” and “Beauty and the Beast,” Madison’s Overture Center for Arts has set its 2011-12 season at sizzle, with a wealth of both mainstream and out-of-the-box entertainment options. After several light seasons due to a soft economy, Overture Hall, The Capitol Theater and The Playhouse will once again sing, dance and just get silly again.

American Players Theatre’s season runs from June 11 to Oct. 16. For more information, visit americanplayers.org. – Photo: Courtesy

The Bard of Avon descends once again on Spring Green this summer, but William Shakespeare’s works no longer dominate the schedule for American Players Theatre.

Mrs. Fun performs 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Aug. 4 at Shorewood’s Hubbard Park, 3565 N. Morris Blvd. – Photo: Courtesy

Some musicians put a lot of thought into what they should name their bands. Members of Jethro Tull ran through a litany of identities before assuming the name of the father of modern English farming and fertilizer usage. The name stuck.

Angela Iannone as Katherine Hepburn in “Tea at Five.” – Photo: In Tandem Theatre

Angela Iannone wants to make it perfectly clear that screen legend Katherine Hepburn, whom she plays in the In Tandem Theatre Co.’s upcoming production of “Tea at Five,” is not a celebrity in the modern sense. And the Milwaukee actor is strident in her opinion.

Quinn VanAntwerp, Joseph Leo Bwarie, Matt Bailey, Steve Gouveia and the company of Jersey Boys. – Photo: Joan Marcus

Gay actor Jonathan Hadley, who plays music producer Bob Crewe in the touring production of “Jersey Boys” that opens July 20 at Milwaukee’s Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, knows the most popular gay love song of all time. And he’s chagrinned by the fact that very few people – gay or straight – know that it’s a gay love song.

Paula Hubman Daniel, David Daniel, Susan Sweeney, Colleen Madden and Jim DeVita appear in APT’s “Blithe Spirit.” – Photo: Zane Williams

When asked late in his career why he refused to acknowledge he was gay, Noel Coward is reported to have replied, “Because there are two old ladies in Worthing who don’t know, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

Jeremy Welter and Eric Nelson in Off the Wall Theatre’s production of “The Idiot.” – Photo: Courtesy

Even in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s time, bad things happened to good people. Based on the narrative in Off the Wall Theatre’s stage adaptation of the Russian author’s novel “The Idiot,” which opens May 19, perhaps the only place a saint can be safe is in a sanitarium.