These are frugal times, so thank you Milwaukee Ballet for allowing us to get double duty out of our daughters’ fairy princess costumes. We have a hunch there will be plenty of tiara-ed tweens at this weekend’s production of Cinderella, which was confirmed the other day with the announcement that Sunday’s matinee is sold out. But there are plenty of pleasures for adults here. Michael Pink’s original choreography for one. And the dancing of Luz San Miquel or Tatiana Jouravel in the title roles. And don’t forget the wacky burlesque of the stepsisters in drag, played by some of the company’s male stars. 
For something completely different, find your way to Alverno for the first dance concert of Alverno Presents’ 50th season. There won’t be a lot of tulle and satin at Molly Shanahan’s performance, but there certainly will be no shortage of intelligence and beauty. After experimenting and developing work on her own, the Chicago-based Shanahan is back with a company, with which she explores her ideas on body-mind connection rooted in Eastern religions and Western psychology. It’s called “The Stamina of Curiousity.”
Speaking of stamina, the never-say-die idea of classical theatre in Milwaukee is getting a new lease on life. Paula Suozzi, Matt Daniels and Kristen Godfrey, former stalwarts of the late great Milwaukee Shakespeare company, are starting a new company. Goats & monkeys is an artist collective that is designed to explore great plays in different contexts—outside of the normal theater conventions. For now, this means staged readings in small spaces, and an atmosphere that encourages conversation and interaction between actors and audience. This weekend, the troupe mounts a reading of Hamlet, featuring a roster of top Milwaukee acting talent, including Brian Gill (now based in Chicago), Laura Gordon, Jonathan Smoots, Norman Moses, Peter Silbert, Wayne Carr, Laura Gray and Nicholas Harazin. Stephen Fried, who helmed Milwaukee Shakespeare’s terrific production of Henry IV, Pt 1, is the director.
At the Milwaukee Rep’s Powerhouse Theater, there’s something unusual on stage–an actor wearing fashionable jeans. It seems like it’s been a while since the Rep featured a contemporary drama set in the everyday world of work, families and child-rearing, but it has found a pungent winner i
n Lucinda Coxon’s Happy Now?. Like the ambiguous title, Coxon’s play, which won several awards last year in London, is a roller coaster of trials and tribulations of the modern family, focusing on a woman caught in the cros
sfire. Deborah Staples and several members of the Rep’s acting company star.
And music fans will be on Cloud 9 with the arrival of Dame Emma Kirkby, one of the great sopranos of our time. Early Music Now brings Kirkby to town along with lutenist Jakob Lindberg to perform music of John Dowland and Henry Purcell.
