Late this month, Untitled Productions and Theater RED present a staging of the one-woman biographical play I'll Eat You Last in an intimate space at hotel on the corner of Chicago and Broadway not far from MIAD. Actress Marcee Doherty-Elst and director Eric Welch took some time out to answer a few questions I had about the production. 

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This one-woman play has been around for a little over 5 years. If I’m not mistaken this is the Wisconsin premiere of the show. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) What specifically attracted you to the idea of doing this show? 

Eric: That is correct. I remember this show being first premiered on Broadway with Bette Midler. I was immediately interested. I read was it was about and found it fascinating. Sue Mengers is such an interesting character. I am also a big fan of Barbra Streisand, who was one of Sue’s biggest clients, so naturally I loved the show. After discussing this show with my friend Briana who started up Untitled Productions with me, I thought that this would be the perfect show to start us off. One, because of budget costs but also because it’s such a clever, witty show that will literally make you laugh, cry, and laugh again. 

Marcee: Correct! I’LL EAT YOU LAST (IEYL) premiered on April 24th, 2013 at the Booth Theatre in New York and this is the WI premiere! I know Eric will have more to say on this, but he is a huge Barbra Streisand fan, and Sue Mengers is perhaps most famous for being Ms. Streisand’s agent, so naturally there’s a fit there! Also, this is the inaugural production for Untitled Productions, and I think the idea of doing a one-woman-show was appealing to Eric both as a unique splash into the Milwaukee theater scene and for logistical reasons.


I’LL EAT YOU LAST was originally staged at the 783-seat Booth Theatre. You’re performing in an improvised hotel space on Broadway in Milwaukee, WI. It seats...far fewer than 783 people. Have you ever performed a room this intimate in a one-woman show before?

Marcee: That’s true! We will have seating for only 84 guests per night; 10 of those are VIP seats on couches and chairs right up front as a sort of extension of Sue’s living room (and they come with a signature cocktail from the bar!). Both as an actor and as a Producer (with my Theater RED cape on) I really like intimate theater and smaller spaces, so that’s really appealing to me. I have never performed a one-woman-show before, so that’s a first for me, but I do like the idea of performing it in an intimate space. In fact, the original idea was to perform it in one of the suites at the Kimpton Journeyman Hotel and only sell 20 tickets a night and have it be very intimate – just however many people we could fit in the suite using the furniture and adding a few chairs! When we presented this idea to the Journeyman, they loved the idea and offered to do one better – they said they could build a replica of one of the suites in one of their ballrooms so we could seat more people and that’s exactly what they are doing! They will be building a suite on their stage and after the row of VIP seating on couches and chairs there will be small and large small tables set up cabaret-style in the room. There will be a few tall boy tables in the back for additional seating and the bar will be in the back of the room, too! I love the idea of a non-traditional theater set up since this show is a very non-traditional 70 minute comedic romp! As an actor I’ve performed in many theaters that seat less than 100 and as a Producer, Theater RED has often rented venues that seat less than 100, so this is very comfortable for me. I think it will really work to set the feel that you could actually be sitting right in Sue’s living room listening to her dish!


You’re playing Sue Mengers--a Hollywood talent agent from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Though she’s far from an instantly-recognizable personality, she was known to many and there IS video footage of her (including a rather prominent feature on her for CBS’ 60 Minutes that aired a few decades ago.) It must be a challenge to play an actual 20th century figure. To what extent are you directly impersonating her for accuracy and to what extent are you playing a character that you feel is distinctly your own?   

Marcee: Yes, I’ve watched that interview with Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes many times! She was quite a celebrity in her own right as an Agent, which is pretty unusual and speaks volumes about her ambition, drive, and chutzpah! There’s a good deal of information out there about Sue, from books to interviews to magazine features, and the research has been really fun! This might be the first 20th century figure that I’ve portrayed, but I as an actor I have portrayed several 19th Century women and I always try to honor who they were as a person through my performance. While I definitely want to capture some of the signature Sue Mengers’ style of speaking, Eric has challenged me to take Sue’s idiolect, but make it my own (I did work with Jill Zager as dialect coach for the show to help me learn Sue’s idiolect). We aren’t trying to do an impersonation of her. Instead, we want to find a balance of Sue-isms with my own portrayal of her, so I guess it’s a mix of Sue and Marcee. I think she’d describe it more as a homage to her (and to quote her referring to Hollywood, “we play a $*%@ a lot of homage out here”).

Eric: Being the director, I did not want Marcee to replicate or impersonate her. To me, that isn’t acting. I definitely want there to be a Sue Mengers quality to her character but not to impersonate. It’s a fine line since she is a real person but I feel that for the stage, you can embellish. 


Hang out in a hotel with Sue Mengers for a couple of hours and she’s going to tell stories. The play starts and it’s 1981 and the audience is lounging around with a big-named Hollywood talent agent. She’s be dropping names. How heavily grounded in her era of Hollywood is the play? Do you feel it would it be easily accessible by those not terribly familiar with Hollywood of the second half of the 20th century? 

Eric: I think this play is very well written that even if you don’t know all the names she’s dropping, you still are laughing or enjoying the stories she’s telling. Most names should be recognizable to audiences. I mean, everyone knows who Barbra Streisand is. 

Marcee: It is very present in 1981. It takes place on a very specific, formative day in the life of Sue Mengers and everything she is talking about is very grounded in that present, but she also talks about her past and you learned how that shaped her into the person she is at this point in 1981. The tricky thing is that there’s an awful lot yet of Sue Mengers’ story that I know through my research, and I have to be careful not to let what I know about her and what will happen shape who she is on this particular day in 1981. You’re absolutely right, she does a lot of name dropping and “dishing”, as she likes to say. I think there may be some references to some actors, movies, and even other historical events that people may not be familiar with, but I do think that even if you don’t recognize the name, you still understand the point of her dropping that particular name through the context. I’ve had to look up several things and Christopher has done a lot of great dramaturgical work that has helped richen my understanding. Sue has a wicked smart sense of humor and some of the things she’s saying are so quick witted that my challenge as an actor is to balance her manner of speaking while still making sure the audience gets the more obscure or interesting references because they are so funny! I think it would be super cool to find out that someone went home and looked up a movie or actor or other figure referenced as a result of seeing the play!


“Forgive me for not getting up,” she says. So it’s just you playing Mengers onstage...and not a whole lot of movement because it’s just her telling stories. (And smoking. I understand there’s a lot of smoking.) Does that make you feel restless at all? You’re there to perform and she’s there to relax and tell stories while seated. You’re portraying HER so she’s in charge. But it's you up there. Is there any kind of a conflict there? 

Eric: Yes, she is seated the entire time, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t move. She certainly smokes a lot in the show, and not just cigarettes! There’s a few moments of audience participation and the whole play is focused on Sue waiting for a phone call from Barbra Streisand telling her she’s fired. 

Marcee: You really are just spending an hour (or so) in Sue Mengers’ living room listening to her “dish” while she awaits an important phone call. There’s that sort of nervous energy when you’re waiting for something you know is going to happen but aren’t sure when and what happens is that she just sort of starts talking and telling stories to fill the time. And she loves gossip and loves to “dish” so she’s really having a good time holding court with the audience while she passes the time. She never leaves the stage – in fact, she never leaves the couch. Which makes for some fun when there are some things she needs that aren’t within arms’ reach. All I can say is, for people who like a unique immersive experience, they should grab those VIP seats in the front row couches – there’s only 10 per night! Oh yes, she was known for being a chain smoker and she also enjoyed smoking illegal substances, too. She’s rarely seen without a cigarette, or something else, in her hand. This has been a really interesting challenge for me as an actor because I have never smoked. Now all of a sudden I have a prop in my hand (or hands) all the time! We’ve been working with the consumable props since Day 1 of rehearsal for that reason and I will be smoking live on stage (herbal cigarettes and legal herbs). I haven’t felt restless yet, but I think that’s because there’s a great deal of movement even without moving off the couch – strange but true! I’m honestly feeling more awkward learning to manage the smoking aspect than I am with the limits of not leaving the couch. While she’s telling stories, she’s definitely not relaxed the entire time – she’s waiting for a phone call that she is dreading and knows will change her life so there really is this nervous energy in places – she certainly has moments where she relaxes (and the smoking helps her do that) and moments where she is having a lot of fun with the audience, but there are also moments where she comes back to her present reality of waiting for the shoe to drop. I think the key, as with any character, is to settle into Sue and tell her story, in her way. The challenge is maintaining that with no other actors on the stage with you to help with that story.

Mengers’ personality is really strong. And she IS the center of the show. Do you feel her personality taking-over elements of production? Are there elements of her personality lingering in your life outside of rehearsals? 

Eric: Obviously, it’s hard to do a show about a real life person and NOT having her fully appear in sections. Sue Mengers is a very interesting and boastful character. She will demand your attention. 

Marcee: That’s an understatement for sure! And yes! We’ve only had 3 rehearsals (including the read through) as of this interview and I am already seeing aspects of Sue’s personality coming through in life outside of rehearsals. People that know me know that I don’t really curse all that much, I’m not really sure why. It doesn’t offend me when other people do it, I just think I’ve never been cool enough to pull it off – ha! But, Sue Mengers swears like a sailor and uses vulgar language. I’ve noticed that my language has definitely become more adult since rehearsals, that’s for sure! And the thing is, Sue uses curse words affectionately, so I’m finding that in moments of excitement I’m calling my friends things other than “little stinkers”, if you know what I mean! And it just comes out and I’m a little shocked hearing it, but it makes me giggle. On the production side, I think I’ve always been a little opinionated and vocal (just ask Christopher) so I think Sue’s influence on me there is again, the choice of words. 

Untitled Productions and Theater RED's staging of the I'll Eat You Last runs June 29th-July 1st at the Journeyman Hotel on 310 East Chicago St. For ticket reservations and more, visit Theater RED online.

Far too long ago, Milwaukee Opera Theatre and writer/performer Jason Powell developed a clever comic book spoof/tribute operetta Fortuna the Time Bender vs. the Schoolgirls of Doom. The sharp, little comedy makes its return to the stage in a quietly breathtaking production this month courtesy of Milwaukee Metro Voices. Samantha Sostarich radiantly returns as the time-bending operatic superhero in a production now being staged at In Tandem’s Tenth Street Theatre downtown. I’d seen the Milwaukee Opera Theatre production years ago at the Alchemist Theatre. It is a pleasure to see the show return from the shadows to valiantly fight evil once more this summer.


Pop-Adjacent: Just Beyond the Splash Page of Mega-Popularity

It’s interesting to note how close Fortuna is to those genres that have reached the apex of mega-popularity in the modern world.

Broadway-style musicals are some of the biggest money-makers in live theatre. They rake-in tons of cash both on Broadway and from unsuspecting audiences all over the  country in big, overstuffed touring productions. Fortuna isn’t a Broadway-style musical, though. It’s an operetta. Stylistically, Fortuna has a lot more in common with Gilbert & Sullivan than Sondheim, Menken or Andrew Lloyd Weber. Operettas like Fortuna may have been incredibly huge in an earlier time, but they have become something of a quaint throwback in the modern era.

Nowadays, superhero stories are some of the most popular reasons people go into large, darkened rooms all over the world. Just earlier this week Marvel’s latest Avengers movie recently broke over $2 billion at the box office and is well on its way to becoming the third highest-grossing film of all time worldwide (not adjusted for inflation.) Fortuna isn’t inspired by the contemporary superhero, though. Modern superheroes are equally focussed on themselves, their own problems AND saving the world.  With the dazzlingly confident and altruistic Fortuna, we don’t get a whole lot of doubt or moody introspection. The beautifully beaming Samantha Sostarich poses triumphantly nearly every time she’s onstage. Never any doubts. Never any uncertainties. She’s a swoon-worthy paragon of superhero grace from an earlier era. She’s a throwback to a Golden Age Superman or the original Captain Marvel by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck.

Fortuna is musical theatre, but not the kind modern audiences are so in love with. It’s also a superhero story, but it’s not the kind that modern audiences funnel billions of dollars into multiplexes to watch. It’s a classy retro hybrid show that fuses the mega-pop precursors that are just beyond the splash page of contemporary mega-popularity.


Contemporary Aesthetics Nonetheless

Seeing the show a second time around, it’s interesting to pick apart what Powell is doing with Fortuna. Early-on in the story, we have the flash of those classic 1940s comic book superhero adventures. Fortuna cleans-up and completely abolishes crime in the cozy metropolis of Anyville, U.S.A. She stops a mugging, rescues a cat from a tree, stops a terrorist in a tank (offstage, of course. Let’s not get carried away with the budget. This isn’t Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark or anything like that.)

After the first couple of songs, the Golden Age is kind of over, though...turn the page and there’s Joe. He’s a guy who has always wanted to be a superhero, but he’s plagued by doubts. (In other words...he IS the Silver Age.) Moved by overhearing Joe’s dream as sung to his girlfriend, Fortuna decides to take Joe under her wing and train him to be a superhero. Jonathan Stewart is sweetly chivalrous as Joe--a guy who we first meet wistfully reading the paper in a (somewhat symbolically) faded classic Justice League throwback t-shirt. Melissa Kelly Cardamone is irresistibly human as Joe’s girlfriend Elizabeth, who works in a museum. Cardamone is brilliant in this kind of role for this kind of intimate space. She’s got a beautiful voice for big, sweeping operatic emotion paired with a very deft touch at comparatively subtle characterization that smartly balance out her performance.   

Present throughout the show, the self-referential humor and casual breaking of the fourth wall reach a particularly charming crescendo in very modern comedic style as Joe and Elizabeth try to reach common ground in their relationship.

A more contemporary style illuminates the story as Elizabeth worries that Joe is getting too lost in his superhero studies with Fortuna. Powell allows Fortuna a Professor X-like ability to locate others with super-powers. (Look closely and you'll see that there’s a lot around the edges of the plot that feels Marvel mutant-inspired. That's no coincidence. A couple years back, Powell wrote a book about writer Chris Claremont’s historic run on the Uncanny X-Men.)

It’s not necessary to be a big fan of the genre to love the show, but there are quite a few little easter-egg style references in at least one song. Not long before intermission in, “Superhuman,” Fortuna is telling Joe what powers he might acquire through training. She glides through deft lyrics which, if I’m not mistaken, make reference to comic book characters as diversely obscure as Tony Stark, Carol Danvers and...was that Gorilla Grodd, too? (Weird.)


The Villain and His Henchwomen

Having established things between Fortuna, Joe and Elizabeth, Powell shifts focus to the antagonist: a toweringly villainous Nathan Wesselowski as The Headmaster. Wesselowski cuts a bombastic figure as a comically sinister academic. He promptly goes into his backstory in a very sharp and entertainingly-executed song, “Practitioner of Villainy.” It’s one of my favorites: a song that feels rather pleasantly like "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.”

(It’s weird what you see a second time. This time around, the Headmaster’s origin reminded me of William Moulton Marston’s Golden Age Dr. Psycho...which casts the rest of the show in an interesting light. With its Golden Age female hero cast against a world of more contemporary and distinctly feminist concerns, Powell’s story here has much in common with William Moulton Marston’s early 1940s work for the company that was destined to become DC Comics.)

Part of the feminism in Powell’s story features three very liberated...uh...schoolgirl henchwomen: Mandy, Candy and Sandy.  At first, three girls in plaid pleated skirts working for a villain known as The Headmaster might seem a trifle...misogynistic (at best.) Powell neutralizes this, though. The three of them (who are three distinctly different personalities) do a song near the end of the show that really casts a spotlight on the fact that the squad has had a relatively equal partnership with their “leader” the whole time. Lisa Morris strikes a balance between cuteness and villainy as Candy “the cute one.” Anna Van Nuland manages to seem commanding even while appearing occasionally submissive as Mandy “the mature one.” Dana Vetter wields the kind of confident poise that can casually spout a mouthful of highly technical sci-fi jargon as Sandy, “the smart one.”

The three Schoolgirls of Doom round-out a largely female ensemble that’s led by a very commanding Diane Lane as Narrator. It’s a really tightly-woven package. A retro neo-operetta and a Golden Age hero are cast in a contemporary spoof comedy that still manages to have enough heart to reach out to people not particularly enthusiastic about the genres in question. Director James Zager does an excellent job of juggling it all, which is pretty heroic in its own way. There's a lot going on here. Honestly there's no reason why this show should work as any kind of a cohesive experience. That it does (and does so quite well) says a lot about what Powell and Zager have managed here.

Fortuna the Time Bender vs. the Schoolgirls of Doom is such a bizarrely idiosyncratic hybrid of a show. It almost seems too weird to possibly exist...let alone in a little studio space across the street and down the block from the central public library downtown. Do yourself a favor. Go convince yourself this thing really exists by seeing this one-of-a-kind show before it bounds off the stage one more time.

Milwaukee Metro Voices’ production of Fortuna The Time Bender Vs. The School Girls Of Doom runs through June 24 at the Tenth Street Theatre at 628 N. 10th St. For ticket reservations and more, visit Milwaukee Metro Voices online.

This month Cooperative Performance runs a deliciously eclectic, little shorts program right downtown at the Underground Collaborative. The two-hour/one intermission program starts heavy, gets heavier and finishes light with some warm, endearing comedy that lingers pleasantly into the evening.

Here’s a look at what to expect if you go (and you should):

TURTLE
by Mary Buchel
directed by Eric Scherrer
performed by Brittany Meister and Raja “AayZee” Zafar

The program opens with a simple domestic drama. Husband and wife sit at a table near the close of a rummage sale. Raja Zafar is compellingly vacant as the husband until challenged by fate. A small artifact from his past becomes a rather large matter in the present, brining him into conflict with his wife.

Sharply reserved, Brittany Meister treads carefully as a woman forced to contend with the fact the one never knows the true significance of objects or moments. You never know the true meaning of something until it becomes life-changing for better or worse. It’s a complicated script that Meister and Zafar handle quite well under the direction of Eric Scherrer.


ENIGMA VARIATIONS
by Clayton Mortl
directed by Danielle Levings
performed by Jake Russell
original music composed and performed by Allen Russell​

Jake Russell is a compassionate, extremely sensitive intellectual in a short but epic journey of a monologue. Russell  is amazing storyteller. Jake Russell renders a depth of characterization and cerebral complexity that is deeply engaging on many different levels at once. The Clayton Mortl monologue he has so many moving pieces that are so very, very razor sharp in thematic concision. It would be easy for any actor to get lost in it all. Russell manages to modulate really well through a piece that might otherwise get lost in its own complexities in numerous places were it to be breathed in anything other than just the right way. Jake Russell nails it beautifully in one of the better pieces on the program. 


THE CHAIR
devised and performed by Kelly Coffey and Don Russell​


There’s the persistent sound of what might be heavy, hollow ceramic dragged against rough concrete. It is persistent and present throughout this entire third short. Kelly Coffey enters the stage and begins with captivating abstraction in monologue mixed with subtle restless movements. Kelly Coffey opens with a very earthbound verbal exposition of human behavior describing physical compulsions which echo all of those things that we as human beings seems so psychotically focused on. It’s all very precise and very, very aesthetically itchy.

Having rendered her behavioral obsession, Coffey is joined by Don Russell who walks on stage with a chair. The three of them--the two actors in the one piece of humble wooden furniture fall into a state of conflict. Russell is very much focused in on a very narrow kind of precision in placement with the chair. The chair seems almost apologetically inert in contrast to the two other performers with whom it shares the stage. It seems to be trying to bridge the gap between the two non-furniture organisms by simply being there as we are all trying to understand it by watching the stage conflict.

The progression of style in the program from one short to the next works to Coffey and Russell’s favor. Cooperative Performance has done a really good job of composing the program. One things lead to another and there's a kind of uneasy balance in a haunting abstraction of movement. Once Russell and Coffey have completed their conflict, lights rise on an intermission.


THE GHOST OF YOU
devised and performed by Emily Elliot
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Emily Elliot works in arcs and respiration in a movement piece with spoken word pumped in around the edges of its entry. It’s spoken word about vulnerability and accountability. Very casually poetic movements and motions phrases and words. Hers is a very organic grace which bridges the abstract with something far more accessible. Hers is a brief journey that draws the program out of intermission and into far lighter fare than that which is onstage prior to intermission. Looking forward to more from Emily Elliot.


MONKEY/CAT
by Joel Kopischke and Don Russell
directed by Ro Spice-Kopischke
performed by Abigail Stein and Madeline Wakley​

With a light, cheerfully frothy surface gently coating an engrossing inner complexity, this might have been my favorite piece on the program. This is surprisingly clever comedy. It’s an inter-species romance between a monkey and a cat--both of whom are entertainingly anthropomorphized. It’s so much more than that, though.

Kopischke and Russell create an impressively sophisticated relationship between two creatures that are human embodiments of all those things that we culturally associate with cats and primates. A cat and a monkey in a romantic relationship may sound like the set-up to cheap sketch comedy but there’s a considerable amount of depth here that really gets into the heart of why people are together in the first place and how we come to feel connected to each other.

Abigail Stein and Madeline Wakley exhibit warmth and complexity as a couple of people who are simply trying to connect-up but don’t know how. The fact that they’re animals fades into the background and we see two people and two archetypes trying to relate to each other. It's a comedy of frustration. Wakley enters first and firmly establish is a behavioral language to the piece that is fun and highly accessible. She's got a really solid balance between cat and human stage presence. It's endlessly fun to watch. Stein is fun as a monkey too. As I was sitting in the front row, she approached me and offered me a banana that she'd already taken a bite out of. (Given a second longer I probably would have gone for it.) It was a nicely ingratiating moment between man and monkey and woman playing monkey that mirrored the soul of the rest of the short. Very sweet stuff with great heart.


ROOMMATES
by Maria Pretzl
directed by Megan Orcholski
performed by Markaz Q Davis, Miranda Flores Farley, Brandon C Haut, and Ashley Retzlaff​

Maria Pretzl crafts a fun, little sexy sitcom bite about a young guy (a crisply funny Brandon C. Haut) and a young woman (vivacious Miranda Flores) who are living together. They’re both quite sexually active, but  they have absolutely no interest in each other at all. Things get weird when a guy she has hooked-up with (Markaz Q. Davis) and a girl he has come home with (Ashley Retzlaff) all end up in the same apartment.

The cast holds it all together quite well. It's sort of a modern bedroom farce for a short attention span that never lingers on stage for long enough to become anything other than fluffy, enjoyable silliness. It’s the perfect end to a program which had been to some particularly deep, dark places both intellectually and emotionally.

As a whole, the program is quite an odyssey. Remarkable how many different places the small, living stage can go in just two hours time given the right kind of momentum. Not all of it’s brilliant, but this type of show is exactly why I love smaller theater. So much going on in such a small space. So much to think about and so much time to think about it after the show.

Cooperative Performance’s One-Act Festival runs through June 23 at the Underground Collaborative on 161 W. Wisconsin Ave. For ticket reservations and more, visit Cooperative Performance online.

June begins in greater Milwaukee with a couple of shorts programs. Next week Cooperative Performance opens a shorts show downtown. This past weekend, the Village Playhouse opened its 33rd Annual One Act Play Festival. Produced by Milwaukee theatre veteran Tom Zuehlke, the show consists of six original shorts and one 15-minute intermission which run about 2 hours in length.

And if it was just me reading this (and not actually...writing it) I’d probably stop reading here. I like the mystery of an original shorts program. You know there are going to be six stories. You know there are going to be 2 hours in the theatre. The rest is a big question mark. It’s an intrepid exploration of art from a  theatre seat. And since this is the Village Playhouse, none of the shorts are going to be weird and abstract. This isn’t experimental stuff that you’re going to have to be in the right mood for. Nothing too challenging. It’s all very accessible stuff. But there’s no telling how complete any of it might feel because nothing's going to be onstage for all that long. In the first half you don’t even necessarily know when any given short is going to be over. Sometimes the end of one short isn’t entirely clear until the show is well into its next one. I love that sense of earthbound disorientation--that sense of the approachable unknown.

But I'm not everyone and there are going to be people who want to have some idea what to expect. So from here on-in there are mild spoilers. Here’s a little bit of what to expect from each of the six shorts:


Vulpes Vulpes
The first short is a piece by Deanna Strasse which weaves together with two other Strasse shorts. Rob Schreiner plays a writer having difficulty crafting a simple children’s theatre script. Schreiner has a very distinctive look about him...tattoos on his arms and spacers in his ears. Not exactly the picture one might conjure when thinking of someone writing children's fare. Schreiner's playing a guy who seems to be overthinking a show he's trying to write for a children’s audience. Though it’s never addressed in the script, the character clearly isn't familiar enough with contemporary children’s theatre or he would know the last thing you want to do is write down to your audience. The writer's difficulties develop and we run into a very promising, young Kellie Wambold in the role of his cleverly complicated muse. In her we see the origin of his distraction. Things ultimately get resolved, but not before Schreiner’s playwright is interrupted by a couple of other distracting Strasse-written shorts.

The Dolly Agenda
Donna McMaster and Kellie Wambold play a couple of precocious toddler girls playing with dolls when the echoes of politics begin to reverberate into their imaginative playtime. It’s a clever short in places, but the dialogue doesn’t seem quite authentic.  As a father of two girls roughly the age of the characters, I know how truly complicated their language is. Every day is an immense discovery. There’s a tremendous amount being learned by anyone who is just beginning to understand the world and its mind-numbing complexities. It may not sound like much on the surface, but the language spoken by toddlers and young post-toddlers has its own kind of beautifully bewildering complexity. It’s almost impossible to write dialogue from that kind of an expanding intellect and get it right. Strasse does a pretty good job of capturing the essence of it nonetheless. And once again Wambold makes a really sharp and pleasantly clever appearance. This is quite an accomplishment on her part. All too often, adults playing kids miss the mark and seem...vaguely disturbing. With the right blend of confidence, curiosity and uncertainty, Wambold has just the right approach.


The Ambitious One
Strasse seems to be stumbling a bit with this one which involves a thoughtful, caring woman returning home to her live-in neurotic writer girlfriend. Karolyn Wolkos has some remarkably genuine moments dealing with the awkwardness of her girlfriend. As a romantic short, it almost sort of works, but there isn’t quite enough connection between Wolkos and her writer girlfriend (played by Donna McMaster.) The script isn’t of much help as it seems to be reaching for insight that is ever-so-narrowly out of reach. The script is edging over writer/artist cliches that are precariously dangled over the potential of real insight that the dialogue never quite stumbles into. 


Coffee Shop
I love the way this one begins. There’s the ambient sound of a coffee shop being pumped-in through the sound system of a uniformly-lit stage. Nearly every actor in the show is sitting down in a coffeehouse atmosphere. As the short opens, the dialogue is only implied and we’re not exactly being directed to look at any one person. The first five minutes or so (possibly less) feel like a formless coffeehouse drama that could fuse into something truly interesting. It would have been cool to see the scene slowly congeal into something specific...possibly with implied dialogue the entire way--possibly without anyone ever saying anything perfectly audible. Playwright Mark Borchardt doesn't allow us this. Instead, the play rather rapidly descends into an awkward moment shared between two strangers. Rita Bates plays a woman on a laptop desperately trying to get work done. Michael Fisher-Zaragoza plays a very clingy and manipulative guy who seems obsessed with making a connection with the woman. Awkwardness ensues. There's a moral to the story at the end which feels almost oddly satisfying.


Then there’s intermission.
(It’s 15 minutes long.)


The Gardner
Carl Liden and Sandra Wiss play upper-middle-class husband and wife in this short by Nick Schweitzer. He’s a lawyer. She’s a therapist. (I think. Maybe a social worker.) As the play opens, she hasn’t arrived home yet. He’s having a beer while hanging out with a man he’s hired as a gardner for a couple of days. Scott Stenstrup plays the gardner...a guy who turns out to have been an ex-boyfriend of hers from college. He’s an intellectual drifter. She’s settled-down and perhaps tempted to rekindle things with him.

It's subtle but...Liden nails the casual feel of a white collar guy on a day off at home...which is probably a lot more difficult than it would seem. He’s relating to the stage like it actually IS the living room. It's difficult to describe how difficult that is. A stage (particularly a small one) is NOT a natural place. Liden makes it feel like home. Normally you don't notice this quite as much in a live show, but on a stage this intimate, it's actually quite an accomplishment to simply appear to be at home. 

Wiss is given the rather difficult task of trying to make the drifter she's attracted to seem appealing enough to the audience to believably establish the conflict she’s feeling.

The drifter is written in a way that could theoretically show some charm, but there’s a strong undercurrent in his dialogue which suggests that he’s almost pathologically  manipulative. Stenstrup’s slimy, sensually reptilian slowness tilts the character really, really heavily in the direction of creepiness. This makes the whole thing seem really uncomfortable.

(And now that I’m thinking about it, there are socially awkward moments written into nearly every short in the program. If there’s a theme here, it’s definitely social awkwardness in multiple different shades from many different angles. This has got to be the most deeply cringe-inducing awkwardness in the whole program.)


The Last Love Story
Mike Willis writes the story of a Hollywood producer meeting with a screenwriter (Scott Sorenson,) and a couple of actors (Sandra Hollander and Jacob Ortiz) As the story opens, the producer (capably played by Greg Ryan) is agonizing over a script written by the screenwriter. Judy Parelli-Wambach is appealing as his shrewd and capable assistant.

Basically this short is a meeting to discuss with a screenwriter the possibility of producing a romantic drama. The writer isn't doing a terribly good job of selling it. A six-hour romantic drama is NOT going to be produced. Any successful screenwriter is going to know that. With some tweaking and editing, the producer is interested in having a big named action star (Jacob Ortiz) and a Hollywood sex symbol (Sandra Hollander) into being in a serious romantic drama that features no gratuitous sex or violence. It's a short comedy. With heart. The cast is fun in places. It’s the last short on the program.

There are numerous problems with Willis’ story. It’s difficult to tell what era the story is set in. There’s language in the script that suggests that it could be anywhere from the ’60s to the ’70s to...now. The business of Hollywood is distinctly different every decade and the changes are never subtle. So it's difficult to tell exactly where the action of the short is grounded. Naturally this feels...uncomfortable.

The comedy of trying to get a wholesome drama green-lit in Hollywood has potential, but it would need to be framed differently in order to make it really work. The central premise here seems to be that sex and violence sell in Hollywood where as simple romance is never given a chance. Hollywood doesn't seem to understand the potential in real romantic human drama anymore.

The problem is that Hollywood DOES love a romance. Granted...romance DOESN’T generally make a whole lot of money in Hollywood. James Cameron’s historical romance Titanic is the second highest-grossing film of all-time worldwide (not accounting for inflation) but it IS the exception. That being said, producers are well-aware that romantic dramas CAN be highly profitable. They cost relatively little to make and given the right mojo, they can bring in more than enough money to make a huge profit on a relatively small investment even if they're NOT topping the box office on any given week.

Put a big name action star and a hot sex symbol in a serious drama and theoretically you could make a huge profit on a small-budget film. THAT'S where Willis' short has potential. I think it’d be fun to re-frame this short as the story of a producer and a screenwriter trying to get two big-name actors who have NEVER done serious drama to wrap their minds around the idea that there isn’t going to be any sex or violence in the movie they're being asked to appear in. Willis' script has an element of that, but that’s not quite what’s going on here. The short seems to be trying to lean to far into the idea that Hollywood just doesn't understand that real-life makes the best drama. This might be true (if a bit oversimplified) but it's a statement that doesn't necessarily make for a great comedy. The cast manages to juggle the energy enough to make it a fun ending for the program, though.

The Village Playhouse’s 33rd Annual Original One Act Festival runs through June 17th at the Village Playhouse on 1500 S. 73rd St. in West Allis. For ticket reservations and more, visit the Village Playhouse online.

This Is B&B
Shakespeare is done on a small stage with minimal costuming and effects. Actors not involved in a given scene sit in chairs around the perimeter of the action. We’re all in on the action backstage and onstage. Actors pop in and out of roles without breaking pace. Every performance a different actor is designated to get drunk over the course of the show with a series of shots of liquor. This is a Bard & Bourbon show.  If it sounds like great fun, it is. As evidenced by their current production of Richard III, it’s even fun when it’s not terribly brilliant.


Richard III on the cover of GQ
It’s the story of a twisted and scheming villain who twists and schemes his way onto the throne of England before everything collapses beneath him. The text refers to a brutal, ugly man who personified a brutal, ugly reign. B&B has Ian Tully playing Richard. Ian Tully is great with Shakespeare. A very strong presence. Not exactly one that would be associated with traditional depictions of Richard, though. Tully is...attractive. And it's like... a near-GQ-level attractive. Feed the guy through Photoshop with the right lighting from the right angles and he'd be there on a coffee table all glossy and smelling like scent strip ads. Here it's a little different, though. Aside from a slight limp and a little bit of padding for a hunchback, this is a traditional Shakespearian hero stage presence in the service of someone more commonly portrayed as a twisted monster, which is a bit unpleasantly disorienting. And not necessarily in a good way.


But It Kind of Works
It might have just been opening night, but Tully seemed a bit inert until Richard took the throne. The fact that he’s not being overly dramatic with comically exaggerated villainy is respectable, but Tully plays Richard almost...bored with his own scheme. Large portions of the first half of the show sort of...sag into his performance. I like the passionless disinterest as a premise, though, and it would have been fun to see Tully really lean-into it.

Here’s the idea: Richard is so totally confident that he’ll gain the throne that he’s utterly bored with it and THAT is what everyone finds so repellent about him. He confronts Anne to try to woo her with a dull disinterest for everything including his own life when he lifelessly shrugs and puts a dagger to his  throat because, y’know, why bother? She relents out of pity and disgust. This continues to happen scene after scene with every step of his plan. Everyone’s so totally put off by him that he just sort of...becomes king. I think it could work. (Sadly: it kind of feels like we’re headed that way with the U.S. presidency, but I digress.)

As it is, Tully’s performance is pretty solid regardless. Then Richard takes the crown and he’s got a powerfully pretty sort of a dark anti-hero about him that serves the production well. After Richard gets the crown, Tully occasionally dazzles as a dark anti-hero. It’s quite a transformation. I don’t know if I really think of it as being a Richard III, though...


Gender is Really Weird When You Think About It
Oh...and about that wooing of Anne: Anne is played by a guy. Dylan Sladky plays Anne as a...person. There’s no attempt made to go along with conventional stage man-playing-woman affectations. This is actually really, really refreshing because it gets to the heart of who Anne and Richard are. Richard is a disgusting person who is trying to woo Anne for political gain and Anne is understandably disgusted having been interrupted while mourning the loss of family. There doesn’t HAVE to be anything sexual going on here because there isn’t and yet...I really like the strength of some of Shakespeare’s women and I love it when the right Anne puts Richard in his place...and still falls for his machinations. We all know he’s doomed anyway, but it’s a fascinating scene and it just feels a bit weird with two aesthetically powerful presences that are aesthetically powerful in the same way.      

Speaking of which, Samantha Martinson is formidable as Brackenbury--the lieutenant of the Tower of London when Richard sends his killers for Clarence. I say again: Samantha Martinson is formidable. She’s short and petite...4 foot tall or something like that, but she’s got gravity about her in the role of a physically imposing guy even as one of the killers is a towering Sean Duncan who is at least like . . . 8 foot tall in comparison. Martinsek is given possibly the widest range to work with in the cast, playing Brackenbury, a very ingratiating toady of a politician as the Lord Mayor of London and at least one precocious boys (along with a similarly mercurial Maura Atwood who...if I’m not mistaken plays a prince in one scene and the assassin who kills him in another...both of these and Queen Margaret in one show for one actress, who carries it off wonderfully.)


And About That Murder
Sean Duncan plays a few different roles here, but he’s most memorable as one of the two murderers sent off to kill Clarence in the tower. He’s a tall, slimy low-level thug with a very textured approach to the text that gives it a lot of life. Amber Regan provides back-up quite nicely as a skittish sociopath sent to aid in the murder. The show is peppered with cleverly composed moments like the death of Clarence, but his murder is one of the more memorable scenes. Bryant Mason plays the victim in that scene--a man who doesn’t live long after being awakened by his killers. That always struck me as a difficult place to be as an actor, but Mason gives the drama of that scene the right kind of balance.


It All Comes Together in the End
The final battle at Bosworth Field has a nice pacing and lead-in. Tully delivers the pre-battle speech as Richard to one side of the audience while Maggie Arndt delivers a speech to the other side as the opposing Earl of Richmond who is destined to dispatch Richard. Director Katie Merriman does a really good job of delivering the intensity of that decisive battle to the stage and those pre-battle speeches feel particularly amped-up. It doesn’t hurt that Arndt is really good as the hero here. Richmond shows-up only briefly and isn’t given a whole lot of time to develop a suitably commanding heroic presence onstage. Arndt makes the commanding presence of heroism look really, really easy. She’s radiant...casually beaming with benevolent authority without giving it any comical tinge of egotism. This is a nice welcome back for Arndt. Her bio says she’s been off the stage for nearly ten years. You wouldn’t know it.


Bard & Bourbon’s staging of Richard III runs through June 2 at the Tenth Street Theatre on 628 N. 10th St. For ticket reservations and more, visit Bard & Bourbon online.

It’s Just Great That They’re Even Doing It
This month Skylight Music Theatre opens that delightfully bizarre chimera of a contemporary theatrical product as it presents Urinetown: The Musical. It’s a feel-good dystopian socio-political musical that manages to also cast a comic glance at issues of ecological collapse due to global drought. Oh: And it spoofs other musicals too. Really it’s pretty remarkable that a show this weird would ever have gotten produced in the first place. The Skylight has accomplished something in simply having chosen to produce something this cool.


The Officer Is Your Friend Narrator
Rick Pendzich opens the show as charming jackbooted police thug Officer Lockstock. He can be found walking the house nodding to attendees as he regards the attended through mirrored shades prior to the show. Pendzich nails the precise comedy of the cheerfully corrupt totalitarian thuggery that serves as an endlessly self-referential narrator who lives in a fourth wall that he’s constantly breaking. Pendzich has a clever sense of humor that a role like this is absolutely perfect for.


Only Love Pads the Show
Yes: It’s the story of a popular revolution against a totalitarian regime that makes people pay every time they use a toilet.
But: There’s a really cute and sweetly doomed love story at the center of it all.

Rachael Zientek is brilliantly articulate on a comic level in the role of Hope Cladwell--the daughter of Trumpian autocratic corporate despot Caldwell B. Cladwell (the satirically villainous Steven M. Koehler) who runs the sinisterly ubiquitous Urine Good Company. On her way in to work for the first time since graduating the most expensive university in the world, she runs into a handsome guy who works for a small pay restroom. The suitably lead-worthy Lucas Pastrana ultimately leads the revolution against UGC. He and his burgeoning love for Hope complicate matters in a cleverly funny romance. Zientek is sweet and optimistic with such intensity that it becomes positively sinister by the end of the show when the revolution actually takes hold.


And There Are Other People Here Too
I’m about 350 words into the review when I finally get a chance to mention that Doug Jarecki is in the show. He’s Senator Fipp--a comically awkward Ted Cruz of a guy who serves the UGC. Jarecki is great with what little he’s given here. That someone of Jarecki’s talent would wind up around the edges of the show is testament to just how much talent there IS here. Amber Smith is good in just about anything, but here she’s fantastic. With cold, passionate...angular intensity she plays Penelope Pennywise--the woman who runs the restroom that employs the male romantic lead. Smith leans-in to the comedy she’s given with a scalpel’s precision. He’s not given nearly as many moments, but James Carrington manages a very similarly comic precision in more than a few moments as UGC corporate underling Mr. McQueen. And then there’s Michael Stebbins as a crazy, old one-eyed revolutionary and Steven M Koehler and on and on...the Skylight is working with a really, really great cast here and they’re doing good things with it. Director Ray Jivoff has done a really good job of bringing it all together. I'd been kind of underwhelmed when I'd seen the show years ago on its national tour. The huge space of the Milwaukee Theatre just drowns everything...and people still pay ridiculous prices for those touring shows...ugh...don't see whatever's casually rolling through town right now. See THIS. It's important. Jivoff and company manage to give the relatively small stage main stage at the Broadway Theatre Center a feeling of immensity that doesn't compromise the intimacy of a huge show in a cozy space. Jivoff has been doing this for years...he really knows what fits onstage here and he does a very clever job of getting it all balanced in just the right way.  


That Set, Though...Wow...The Earth In The Toilet and Everything
Scenic Director Brandon Kirkham is given an opportunity to get really weird here and he makes quite an impression with it. That skyline off in the distance feels very iconic with its ever-present UGC logo beaming out from atop it all. Kirkham manages to maintain this bombastic spoof-y immensity about everything onstage. Nowhere is this more present than at the desk of Caldwell B. Cladwell. Nearly every time the opulent desk glides out onstage, a massive wall descends that feels like it’s at least 200 stories tall.

And that cleverly streamlined UGC logo at the top of it all: totally looks like a floor plan view of a toilet with the globe of the earth in the bowl ready to be flushed. I love that. I love how brilliant that is given that this IS ultimately a story about people who are all far too distracted to notice that the world is falling apart ecologically. The meta-art of the fact that we’re all attending a big, flashy Broadway-style musical that only casually glances in the direction of things that we all really, really need to be addressing is all the more brilliant. It’ll give some of us something to chuckle about as the world dies from the coming global drought. Smile: it’s only the end of the world.


Skylight Music Theatre’s production of Urinetown: The Musical runs through June 10th at The Cabot Theatre in The Broadway Theatre Complex on 158 N. Broadway. For ticket reservations, call 414-291-7800 or visit the Skylight Online.
​

"The situation is quite critical. The water table is dropping all over the world. There’s not an infinite supply of water.”
                                  --Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It’s a Two-Person Romance

It’s an intimate, little space at the Irish Cultural Heritage Center. In a rear entrance far from a torn-up stretch of Wisconsin Avenue rests a cozy, little studio space. There’s a bar with a few beers on top at the back of the improvised studio. Folding chairs rest in front of a small stage for two: Becky Cofta and Nate Press. The play is The Good Father. The company is Milwaukee Irish Arts. Cofta and Press are playing Jane and Tim: an Irish couple who meet at a New Year’s Eve party somewhere in the early 2000s. Over the course of a couple of hours, they flutteringly fall in and out of love in a very earthbound romance that’s occasionally emotionally exhilarating.


It’s Tightly-Written

Two actors. Two characters. Two hours. (There's an intermission.) The drama plays out over the course of a year in their lives. We never see the two characters with others. Just two people. (There’s also an implied dog. There’s also a pregnancy.) To say too much more would be giving away too much. Playwright Christian O’Reilly renders a drama that feels remarkably vivid complexity that gradually sneaks its way into the script. On the surface, it’s just two people in a series of isolated moments over the course of a single year, but things quickly get complicated beneath the surface the way things often do between two people when serious emotions are at work.


It’s About Romance Out of Youth’s Reach

All too often romance is something that we see onstage or onscreen as breathed through youth. Here we have a couple of characters in their 30s falling for each other between two New Year’s Eves. As the play opens, Becky Cofta plays a woman just out of range of a group of friends who are all becoming parents. She’s never had a kid. Events in life have set her adrift and she’s feeling lost. On the surface, though, she’s very much in control, even while intoxicated she has a sense of mastery over the situation which masks the chaos within. There’s a strong cultural component here. Modern women are expected to be completely together on every possible level. They need to be independent and resilient while emotionally connected and vulnerable. Cofta is heartbreakingly compelling as a woman desperately trying to hold every last dichotomy together with the increasingly ominous complexity of motherhood on the horizon. Cofta is as good in silence as she is in dialogue, rendering a captivatingly complex character. Wordless responses play across her face in a brilliantly natural little micro-choreography. It's quite difficult not to get drawn-in even when she's silent. As an audience we see in Jane what Tim sees in her. Cofta does an excellent job of delivering her end of the attraction to the romance. 


It’s About Fatherhood, Too

A lot has been made of toxic masculinity of late. A culture of men aggressing other men into being aggressive has been handed down from generation to generation. There’s a certain isolation that plays a role in that. Here we have a story about a man who truly wants to be a father. No isolation here--he’s looking for connection. He's looking to break the cycle. His father was distant. There's some suggestion that he might have been physically abusive, too. He’s looking to be the father he never had. This becomes heartbreakingly touching when the all-too-rare subject of male factor infertility sneaks into the narrative. Press delivers a truly complicated character to the stage in flips and convolutions as his resolve is tested in the course of one hour that is one year. There character navigates some very tight emotional turns in the course of the play...sometimes in the span of a single dialogue. There’s one moment near the end of the play that requires Press to dive from wisdom to wounded to angry to apology...all within the span of a single brief monologue. Far from the extremes of flat affectlessness or exaggerated, over-rendered emotion, Press manages to bring every shade of emotion into that moment with just the right emphasis to make it all strikingly vivid.


It’s Sad, but It’s Not Sad

After the show, my wife actually felt as though she wanted it to have a sadder ending. O’Reilly’s drama is cleverly crafted and perfectly balanced, though. In conversation after the show, it occurred to me that a sadder ending would have come across as being unearned. This drama gets precisely the ending it deserves. There’s nothing that happens here that isn’t fully earned in the course of the script. Nothing comes out of nowhere...not even thee love at the center of it all and THAT is really difficult to pull of in a two-person drama. The success here has every bit as much to do with the script as it does with Press and Cofta, who do an admirable job of giving themselves to a thoroughly engrossing couple of hours in an intimate space.


It’s Free

(Did I mention it’s free?) Donations are accepted, but this is a free show. Milwaukee Irish Arts performs it a few more times from the intimacy of the Irish Cultural Heritage Center before taking the show to the Acting Irish International Theatre Festival later-on this month in Calgary, Canada. With a drama this good on a free show, there’s no reason not to be a part of the intimacy this weekend. There’s no reason for there NOT to be a packed house every night. Go have a pint and a few tears with a couple of great actors falling in love. It’s a grand time.

Milwaukee Irish Arts’ staging of The Good Father runs through May 14 at the Irish Cultural Heritage Center on 2133 W. Wisconsin Ave. Admission is “pay what you can.” For more information, visit Milwaukee Irish Arts onlinemilirisharts.wordpress.com/.

Classy Whimsy
A live performance can be classy. A live performance can be whimsical. It takes a special kind of show to be both at the same time for a full hour without feeling strained. Svadba-Wedding nails it perfectly. There’s dance. There’s singing. It’s classy. It’s fun. Seeing a show this perfectly split between two worlds feels pretty rare. Going to The Best Place for a show like this isn’t exactly like spotting a unicorn. (That would be too precious. This is much cooler than that.) It’s more like...catching your garden gnome wearing a tuxedo and humming Beethoven's Ninth: Classy. But whimsical.

Words, melodic tones and the occasional bit of emotional syncopation deliver a funky kind of play ethic to the performance energy that feels totally fantastic, earthbound, delightfully abstract and utterly relatable all at once. Jubilant energy cascades through The Best Place tavern as Wild Space Dance Company and Milwaukee Opera Theatre present Svabda-Wedding—a little champaign toast of operatic dance in a snug space. Stage Director Jill Anna Ponasik shuffles the energy throughout a stage-less space in a cleverly deft fusion of dance and vocals. Ponasik and Choreographer Debra Loewen use the space at The Best Place with as much attention to silence and empty space as they do to action, motion and melody.


Before a Wedding
Yeah, it’s opera and modern dance, but don’t worry: the story is simple. An all-woman cast of dancers and singers prepare for a wedding. There is excitement, casual socialization, hair and make-up and gossip and even a bachelorette moment shared by everyone at the bar. (The casual grace of a dancer clenching a PBR tumbler in her teeth was a nice touch given the venue, as is the experience of seeing the entire ensemble head over to the bar.) The vocals are Serbian (with music and libretto by contemporary Serbian-born Canadian composer Ana Sokolović), but the cast delivers uninhibited emotion to the stage with such electric expression that the vocals mean more in sound than they ever could in word. The exact meaning of what's being said would likely feel kind of clumsy next to this much grace. (Music,motion and emotion always find ways of being more graceful than words.) 


Now I Want To See Them Doing Other Things
There’s a tremendous amount of rehearsal and planning that goes into a show like this. With a show like this, though...you don’t want to see all that. Ponasik and Loewen have done a remarkable job of delivering a totally compelling reality to the stage in song and movement. The fact that it’s also quite contemporary and relatable means that it’s also going to invite insight into casual human moments beyond the performance.

I know it’s not the case, but there’s some part of me that really wants this to be the way things always are when operatic singers and dancers hang out together. Here they’re getting ready for a wedding, but I could see the same grace, poise, playful melody with this same group of characters while they’re...doing laundry. (Or even their taxes.) I want to believe that this same group casually gets together to buy groceries or hang out at the beach or whatever and it’s every bit as graceful and melodic as it is here in performance. They're coloring their hair and they're getting dressed and engaging in small talk and so on. It all feels so gracefully organic. It’s such a nice reality that they’ve brought to The Best Place. You may not want to live there, but it would be difficult to walk out of Svadba-Wedding and not want to return to hang out with the ensemble after the wedding.


Dancers Sharing Moments with Singers and Each Other
The emotion flowing through the ensemble feels subtly authentic. It’s not often that an audience has an opportunity to get this close to dance. The intimacy is a huge challenge for any performer as any inauthenticity in emotion can crush the energy...and every face in the ensemble is almost conversationally close to some of the audience throughout the performance, so there isn’t much room for a performer to hide. The ensemble is incredibly vivid with the emotion. Look closely and you can see dancers sharing moments of emotional connection that goes well beyond the performance to reach right into the heart of human connection. It’s so amazing to see the subtle interplay of dancers making eye contact and really connecting. You don’t generally see that in a formally staged dance performance. It’s hard not to feel the energy of that, particularly as each character is so totally distinct. Everyone in the ensemble is bringing something distinctly different to the show. 

Two More Performances
Svadba-Wedding has two more performances: tonight, May 9th and tomorrow night the 10th. Both performances are at the Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery. Both performances start at 7:30 p.m. The show runs for an hour. (I did mention that it was an hour long, didn't I? Anyway...it's an hour long.)

​You have two nights. Then the garden gnome stops wearing the tux and goes back to his usual attire. Spot this one while you can. It’s amazing.  For ticket reservations, visit Brown Paper Tickets online.


And Right Next Door...
Also at the Best Place this week in a neighboring performance space: Shakespeare Raw’s AS YOU LIKE IT. Boozy Bard hosts another sketchy Shakespeare show right next door to the wedding at the Best Place. So cool to see a couple of shows like this on the edges of downtown. There's one more performance...tonight only. 

​It’s Peter Falk
Ask people about Peter Falk and they’ll mention...The Princess Bride. (Okay, maybe that’s just my generation.) But ask people about Peter Falk and they’ll mention Wings of Desire. (Okay, that’s probably just me. Good movie, though.) Ask MOST people about Peter Falk and they’ll mention Columbo.  Peter Falk: there was an actor who truly became synonymous with a role. You think Columbo and you think Peter Falk. And you think Peter Falk and you think Columbo. You see him in Wings of Desire and you think Columbo. Hell...you see him in The Princess Bride and you think Columbo. So...say you’re staging a production of an old stage play on the south side of Milwaukee and that stage play happens to have Columbo in it. You know what everyone’s going to be thinking? That’s right: Peter Falk.


Only it’s not Peter Falk
It takes a hell of a lot of guts to stage a play where everyone walking into the show is going to be thinking very, very specifically of an actor who, barring any hauntings, seances or ouija boards is definitely NOT going to be showing-up. Alchemist Theatre Guy and Director Aaron Kopec has precisely that many guts. This month, he’s staging a production of Prescription Murder. It’s the stage play that got turned into a 1968 TV movie that introduced Columbo to television by way of...Peter Falk.

Here we have the exceedingly talented Randall T. Anderson in the role of the rumpled police detective on the trail of the murderer of the wife of a psychiatrist. Again: not an easy thing to step into the Falk for this one, but thankfully, Anderson’s only got one foot in the Falk. The other foot is firmly in Columbo. (Okay so this is starting to sound a little weird.)

The tradition of the rumpled gumshoe detective wasn’t originated by Falk or even Columbo. The archetype goes back to Mickey Spillane and Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler. Theoretically, Anderson could have spent a bit more energy finding the rumpled gumshoe detective that uniquely resides within him and come away with something much more fascinating than what he ended up with here. It would have been really cool to see what he would have come up with, but he would have disappointed a lot of people who had come to see...Peter Falk. So like I say: Anderson plays it half-Falked. This is a Columbo somewhere between Peter Falk and Randall T. Anderson. This is actually as much fun to watch because it’s a balancing act as it is to watch because it’s just a really good performance.


Men of a certain aspect ratio
The costuming by Amanda J. Hull is very specifically 1960s. Something feels a bit off about that on account of the fact that this is Columbo.

At some point mention is made of Idlewild Airport. And suddenly I’m thinking: “Okay, so this is the ‘60s with the music and the costumes, but exactly when in the ‘60s is this?” They hadn’t called it Idlewild Airport since...1963. But most people aren’t going to think Columbo and think of the early 1960s. I think Columbo and I think of men of a certain aspect ratio and resolution. That sort of washed-out fuzziness of the 1970s when the character appeared in over 40 feature-length TV dramas that echoed into infinity on syndication for UHF back when THAT was a thing. Kopec and company firmly plant this thing outside that bleary 4:3 cathode ray era and bring it into something considerably more classy.


Columbo by Way of Hitchcock
So it wasn’t originally Falk as Columbo. An early TV appearance featured some guy named Thomas Mitchell in the role and before that there was a guy named Bert Freed. Go far enough back and you end up with a stage play called Prescription Murder which was originally staged back in 1962. More than simply using fashions, furniture and props that feel like the ‘60s, Kopec  nails a very early ‘60s Alfred Hitchcock feel about it complete with overly dramatic lighting and music cues and just the right kind of chemistry between the actors.

Columbo himself doesn’t actually show-up for much of the early going of the play. For the early part of the play, we have Chris Goode as cunning psychiatrist Dr. Roy Flemming and Amanda J. Hull as his wife. Goode is ever-so-slightly over-the-top as a Hitchcockian murder villain who Columbo must find a way to outsmart. Goode’s got the feel of an early '60s murder-mystery drama nailed quite precisely here. For her part, Hull does a really good job as the murder victim. It’s got to be really, really difficult to make an authentic appearance in a role so obviously marked for death from the beginning of the play, but Hull gives the character enough depth to make her feel like someone who just might have gone on living had it not been for this whole, "becoming a homicide victim," thing that she ran into on her way out of town.

Rounding out the edges of the ensemble are Sharon Nieman-Koebert with an endearing New York accent as Flemming’s receptionist and Patrick Schmitz (yes, really) as Flemming’s friend Dave Gordon. There’s also a dog. His name is Rufus #1. He’s a Basset Hound. This is not his first time on a stage. Go figure.

Brenda Poppy is suitably restless as Dr. Flemming’s lover and accomplice. She’s got a very powerful physical presence which is cleverly muted by the character’s reluctance to go along with her lover’s plans to murder his wife. In the early going, Goode, Hull and Poppy rest within a very Hitchcockian Kopec set, lighting and sound design in what feels like a very stylishly cozy  early ‘60s film murder for stage. Then Anderson shows-up as Columbo and there’s an engrossing battle of wits that draws the drama to a very satisfying close.

Alchemist Productions’ staging of Columbo: Prescription Murder runs through May 19th at the Alchemist Theatre on 2569 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. For ticket requests and more, visit Alchemist Theatre online.

​Off the Wall Theatre’s tiny space plays host to a moody drama as it presents Night Must Fall. The play is set in a remote home in Essex in the early 20th century. Donna Lobacz is admirably stern as Mrs. Bramson--a bitter, old wheelchair-bound woman of wealth around which the shadowy action of the thriller orbits. Jenny Kosek is subtly fascinating as Mrs. Bramson’s niece Olivia. As the drama opens, Kosek cleverly delivers Olivia’s disgust of Mrs. Bramson in shiftings and emotionality that serves to set the stage for the rest of the drama.

The Ensemble
Mrs. Bramson is surrounded by people who have been pulled into her proximity. Gladys Chmiel is charming as Bramson’s longtime cook. Caitlin Kujawski Compton plays delicate and fragile in spite of a potentially imposing stage presence in the role of the maid Dora. Mark Neufang smartly finds great complexity in the character of her former lover Dan, who ingratiates himself with Mrs. Bramson. There’s a lot of emotion in and around the ensemble that finds counterpoint in a powerfully subdued Jeremy Welter as a painfully mild-mannered man looking to wed Olivia. Those familiar with Welter’s dynamic strengths onstage may find it odd. He’s just so...boldly flaccid and inert, which makes the role work beautifully and lends a really important sort of...lower register to the drama to keep it all grounded properly.

The Conflict
Once things have settled-down in establishing relations between an ensemble at Mrs. Bramson’s estate, a heroically sinister James Strange shows-up in the role of a police inspector who has come to investigate the disappearance of a woman in the area. Playwright Emilyn Williams spends much of the rest of the thriller allowing characters to interact with and suspect each other of kidnapping or murder. It’s a script that makes for a rather tight two hours in a small theatre.

At the center of the drama is a mysterious chemistry between Kosek and Neufang as Olivia and Dan.  There’s a lot between the two of them that is totally unspoken and largely ineffable. Silences and glances come across almost...symphonically between the two of them as their conflict pushes the story through much of the time between the beginning and end of the drama.  At times the drama seems ridiculously amplified...but with Kosek and Neufang there’s a balance which allows the overblown intensity to work in such a small space.

Light, Sound and Mood
Aiding matters considerably are lighting and sound design. Director Dale Gutzman and Technical Director David Roper splash lights in strange spaces across the weirdly cluttered landscape of the home. Jake Russell has provided just enough of a musical soundscape to slightly amplify the mood and allow the emotional reality of the drama a somewhat stylishly cozy place in which to reside.

The...Physical Heat
I was given the option of a couple of different places to sit...and might have made the mistake of sitting in the front row. Typically I love getting as close as possible to a studio drama, but...once again I seemed to have forgotten just how hot it gets at the Off the Wall...particularly in months when it’s also warmer outside. The heat from the theatre AND the heat of the lights brings things over to the toasty side of uncomfortable, but that lack of physical comfort can ratchet-up the emotional discomfort of a compellingly moody drama for late April and early May.

Enter the theatre and Kosek is huddled in character amidst shadows waiting for everything to start again. It’s quite a journey.


Off the Wall Theatre’s production of Night Must Fall runs through May 6 at Off the Wall’s space on 127 East Wells St. For ticket reservations, call 414-484-8874 or visit Off the Wall online.