Casey Hoekstra, Jim DeVita and Joshua M. Castille in A Midsummer Night's Dream Photo by Michael Brosilow

The company has two venues, The Hill Theatre, an open-air amphitheater (1,088 seats), and the Touchstone Theatre, an indoor black-box venue (200 seats). Both are reached by walking along winding gravel paths through densely forested land. (Shuttles from the parking lot are also available.) Both stages are surrounded by pines and hardwoods, tons of greenery and fresh, forest scents. (Insect repellent is conveniently offered from stations along the way, although I went unbitten for my entire stay without chemical assistance.)

Their productions are performed by a 40-member professional acting company. The full season of eight productions runs from April until early November. Most of the actors perform in multiple shows, presented in rotating repertory. I attended five and was repeatedly impressed by the versatility and talent of the troupe. On one day I saw actors from a matinee appear in entirely different roles in an evening performance. Here are my reports on the shows I saw:

Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner, is about workers in a family-owned cigar factory in 1929 Florida. The show opens with back-and-forth vignettes. Several men are vociferously bidding on a cockfight. Hot-tempered Santiago (Triney Sandoval), the impassioned majority owner of the factory, and his opinionated, selfish half-brother Cheché (Sam Luis Massaro) argue about borrowing money. Meanwhile, three women anxiously await the arrival of a ship. They are Santiago's sensible wife Ofelia (Elizabeth Ledo) and their daughters, young innocent Marela (Phoebe Gonzalez) and her sister Conchita (Melisa Pereyra), older and bored with Palomo (Yona Moises Olivares), her sturdy but unromantic husband. The ship delivers Juan Julian (Ronald Román-Meléndez), a well-educated "lector," who reads novels aloud to the women rolling cigars. His delivery of Tolstoy's passionate, romantic tragedy, Anna Karenina inflames Gonzalez's naïve Marela and Pereyra's stifled Conchita, eager for more for more intensity. The events of the novel begin to be paralleled by the show's characters. It's a lovely, poetic piece of theater, visually punctuated as everyone–men and women–engages in delicious, languorous cigar smoking.

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was the very first show that APT staged in 1980. It's been reprised frequently, and it's a perfect choice for the Hill Theatre, since it's set in the enchanted Athenian forest. Director David Daniel has cast Puck, the mischievous sprite who causes much of the delightful confusion, with a pair of rambunctious, high-energy actors. Joshua M. Castille uses highly animated American Sign Language, while identically attired Casey Hoekstra plays his mirror image. Sometimes they speak in tandem, sometimes separately, making the manic character all the more exciting and humorous. The "Rude Mechanicals" and their amateurish staging of "Pyramus and Thisbe" is a comic highlight, especially Sam Luis Massaro as the bombastic Nick Bottom who's turned into a braying ass.

Gavin Dillon Lawrence's The Barber and the Unnamed Prince is a world premiere, commissioned APT and staged indoors in the intimate Touchstone Theatre. Kofi (David Alan Anderson) is a Black barber in Washington D.C. in 2012. His shop is struggling in a gentrifying neighborhood that's losing touch with its African American roots. Kofi stubbornly resists any change, but it seems inevitable, especially with the death of Chuck Brown, an iconic funk musician in D.C. The show is full of witty banter between Kofi, his brother Sweep (Nathan Barlow), neighborhood sage Smitty (Cedric G. Young), and Ricky (Josh Krause), a new white resident. But there's a pervasive air of sadness and a tragic ending involving Kofi's son Prince (Jonathan Gardner). Fans of the plays of August Wilson will surely recognize this show as a similar piece of insightful playwriting.

Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale is the season's other classic play. One of the Bard's last works, it opens with the foolishly but furiously jealous Leontes, King of Sicily (intense Nate Burger) unjustly accusing his lovely, virtuous Queen Hermione (Laura Rook) of having an affair with Polixenes (Le Shawn Banks), King of Bohemia. Leontes's vile, humiliating treatment, unstintingly delivered by Burger, leads to Hermione's death after the birth of a daughter, which Leontes insists on abandoning in remote Bohemia. After intermission, the story moves 16 years into the future and the mood lightens significantly. Abandoned Perdita (sweetly innocent Molly Martinez-Collins) has been raised by a loving but silly old shepherd (David Daniel), who discovered the foundling baby–in the shrubbery beside the Hill Theatre's stage–and his irrepressibly goofy son (Josh Krause). She is in love with Polixenes's son Florizel (Xavier Edward King). With the kind of coincidence that often typifies some of Shakespeare's plays, Burger's repentant, guilt-ridden Leontes locates Perdita in love with Florizel, and their joyous union amid a community of merry shepherds melts the ancient enmity. The story ends happily with an unexpected, magical twist. It's an odd roller-coaster of a tale, but it has some marvelous moments, including the enactment of Shakespeare's famous stage direction: "Exit, pursued by a bear."

A hilarious production of Sir Noël Coward's 1929 comedy, Fallen Angels was the hilarious culmination of my visit. For this amusing farce, the Hill Theatre was transformed into a swanky 1920s art deco London flat where two bored married women, Julia Sterroll (Phoebe Gonzalez) and Jane Banbury (Laura Rook), exchange witty, high-speed dialogue and well-executed physical slapstick. Things shift into high gear when they learn that the suave Frenchman they both had premarital affairs with has come to in London. After fretting over their tedious husbands and their tedious marriages, they shift into high anxiety waiting to hear from Maurice Duclos (Ronald Román-Meléndez). They become more and more unhinged, competing with one another, despite Jane's protest that she's "perfectly hinged." By the time he arrives, the feckless husbands (Nate Burger, Sam Luis Massaro) have shown up, too, leading to a quick laugh-out-loud ending.

Three other shows are part of the 2025 season: William Inge's 1953 drama Picnic, Yasmina Reza's three-actor comedy Art and Nina Raines's Tribes, about a young deaf man falling in love, despite his quirky family.

American Players Theatre does a superb job of hosting and entertaining theatergoers. The pleasant staff are everywhere, quick to answer questions or lend a helping hand for transportation or seating. It should be at the top of any serious theatre lover's list for a summertime stay in Wisconsin.

These productions run into October: The Barber and the Unnamed Prince (through September 25); Anna in the Tropics (through September 26); Fallen Angels (through October 3); The Winter's Tale (through October 4); and Midsummer Night's Dream (through October 7). At American Players Theatre, 5950 Golf Course Rd., Spring Green WI. For tickets and information, please visit www.AmericanPlayers.org.