Jeff Schaetzke

First Stage’s Annual ImpACT Event Highlights Community Impact and Commitment

First Stage Offers Holiday Gift to the Milwaukee Community CHRISTMASTOWN COMES TO FIRST STAGE

A free virtual holiday special featuring music, humor and a healthy dose of magic

Single Tickets for First Stage’s 2019/20 SEASON Go on Sale Monday, August 5th!

Celebrate Girl Power at First Stage this season

First Stage announces complete casting for Roald Dahl’s MATILDA The Musical

Tickets start at $25

THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY OF EDWARD TULANE comes to First Stage this January

Directed by John Maclay

First Stage Announces its 2017-2018 Season!

With two world premieres and celebrated family favorites, First Stage continues its commitment to spectacular theater experiences for young people and families.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Musical returns to First Stage this holiday season!

November 25 – December 31, 2016 at the The Marcus Center’s Todd Wehr Theater

Thoroughly Modern Musical

Skylight’s ‘Violet’ is energetic version of Broadway show with all the modern music idioms.

The Daly News

World history and personal history collide in this charming musical about the lives of a Milwaukee family during World War II. During the war, Martin and “Schatzie” Daly had five children– four sons and a daughter.  All four sons enlisted in the military, and the daughter married a military man. The family was scattered around the globe. To keep everyone in touch, Martin Daly wrote a weekly newsletter he called “The Daly News” that collated all the information from letters received from his children and then included news from the home front, as well. He did this for more than three years. Photo by Mark Frohna When Jonathan Gillard Daly, the youngest son of Martin’s oldest son, was presented with the complete Daly News as a Christmas present by his mother, he was immediately struck by the story. Several years later, we have the result: a delightful musical produced by the Milwaukee Chamber Theater, starring Jon Daly, Jack Forbes Wilson, and Jeff Schaetzke. The Daly News is a charming blend of personal anecdote and grand story. All parts in the show (including the women) are played by the three male actors. They move from one character with the addition or subtraction of a coat, a sweater, a hat. For the most part this works well, with the exception of the Daly wives. Because they make such brief appearances, it’s nearly impossible to keep them straight with no tip except a small hat. Wilson moves effortlessly between the youngest Daly son, who starts off the play as a pipsqueak teenager before enlisting in the Marines, and brother Gene, who is living in a foxhole in the South Pacific. Jon Daly anchors the show as both himself, recounting personal experiences with his uncles, and as patriarch Martin Daly. Jeff Schaetzke takes a hilarious turn as Schatzie, among many others. The underlying theme of The Daly News is not the war, despite the fact that the war is the catalyst for everything that happens, but rather is the relationship between fathers and sons. The Daly family is representative of many families in that the affection between men remains unspoken. Despite everything, the boys all strive to present witty banter to their father in their letters, not the reality of the what they are living.  Martin writes his newsletters in the same tone.  Despite everyone’s pain at separation and the uncertainty of war, no affection is explicitly expressed. Jon Daly makes a point of calling attention to this at the end of the show, reflecting on his own relationship with his father. The Daly News runs in the Broadway Theater Center Studio Theater until December 14.  414-291-7800 or www.chamber-theatre.com for tickets.