As the literary debates of past generations morph into preferential battles between Nooks and iPads, a play about the anxiety of influence may seem as old and crumbly as a Quality Paperback Book Club novel. But Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories still has plenty of contemporary cache and dramatic juice to boot. In charting the relationship between a successful novelist and her student, Margulies enacts a sort of generational battle royale over questions of privacy, artistic freedom and the thin line between fact and fiction, which should be all the more potent in these glorious days of reality TV. In the director’s chair is C. Michael Wright, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s producing artistic director who excels in intimate and incisive plays like this.
Collected Stories (Nov. 21-Dec. 16). Broadway Theatre Center. Studio Theatre. 158 N. Broadway, 414-291-7800, chamber-theatre.com.
