What Didn't Make It In (to the print review): [title of show]

​It’s A Casual Line, But It’s really Cool
Somewhere in [title of show], an actress is told that she’s ben a bit quiet. In the role of the actress, Amber Smith casually mentions that she hadn’t had a line until that moment. Amber Smith is the actress who said that she hadn’t had a line until that moment, but she was saying the line about not having a line in character as an actress named Susan. Smith is an actress playing an actress who is playing an actress who is herself in the process of rehearsing a musical that’s being staged about a musical that’s being produced. All of this is implicit in a casual moment where she happens to mention that the line she’s speaking is the first line she’s scripted to have in the scene. It’s a sweetly clever moment in the show. It's indicative of the weird existential funhouse that is [title of show].


It’s Really Fun to Write Some of the Sentences in This Blog Entry
[title of show] is contemporary musical theatre in the mold of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. It’s a brief musical about a couple of guys  (Doug Clemons and Matt Zeman) writing a brief musical. The musical they’re writing is the musical that they’re in...and rehearsing. You don't have to think about any of the deeper stuff, though. Watch it casually and you’re hanging out with 4 actors. Watch it a bit more deeply and it’s a really dizzying metaphysical musical. I'll say it again: Zeman and Clemons play a couple of actors in New York who are playing themselves in a musical about themselves writing a musical that they are in. It’s a show abut a show that is the show that the show is about. Right now I’m trying to figure out whether or it's hopelessly silly or it’s conceptually the best musical I’ve ever seen. Or maybe it’s just really good. I dunno. 


Did I Mention We’re All Onstage?
Director Brian Bzdawka has the cast on a set onstage that is also occupied by the audience. This is the Greendale Community Theatre and they have a HUGE stage (relative to so many small stages in and around Milwaukee.) On one level, it’s only practical to have a show like this in a studio theatre space, but on another level it’s actually really, really clever to have the audience onstage with the actors playing the actors who are playing themselves onstage. We're all onstage and the lines get blurred, but never so much as to make anyone uncomfortable because this IS a musical with some rather catchy tunes. You just want to sit back and enjoy the music. 


Deceptively Contemporary References
Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell wrote [title of show] back in 2006. Some of the references might feel a bit dated. The pop cultural references will NOT date well as the years go by, but that doesn’t stop this show from feeling remarkably fresh right NOW. That being said, they’re all contemporary enough to feel like this might’ve been something that was written last week. So it feels like there shouldn’t be any problem staging a show like this every week somewhere in Milwaukee...and cities of comparable size all over the country. I know it doesn’t work that way though: a show like this needs to be developed and thought-out and...everything else that the show itself is illustrating. When you watch a show about a show being produced, though, and when it comes across this fluidly...it just feels like there’s GOT to be an audience for this sort of thing on a rolling basis. There's no reason we can't constantly have the theatre gazing at itself longingly in the mirror from at least ONE stage in a city this size. This is way too much fun to happen just one place for a couple of weekends. 


The Music is Good, Too
My wife and a went out to the car after the show with “Nine People’s Favorite Thing” rolling through our heads. Looking back over the list of musical numbers, there are so many good songs here. What I love about it is the fact that...yes, there are songs making reference to musical theatre...”Monkeys and Playbills” weaves weird lyrics out of titles of forgotten shows. There are songs directly about the creative process like “Die, Vampire, Die!” and “Change It, Don’t Change It,” and “An Original Musical.” My favorite songs, though were reflections on the piece as it was happening. Rachel Zientek has a really classy moment singing a song in character as Heidi Blickenstaff in character as herself singing “I Am Playing Me.” My favorite song has her and Amber Smith settling into a moment without the guys singing about being “Secondary Characters.” They're not central to the plot, but for one moment they get to hang out there in the center of everything and they have a song about it. (So cool.) I wish there could be more moments like that in musical theatre. 


Greendale Community Theatre’s production of [title of show] runs through Jan. 20 at the Henry Ross Auditorium in Greendale High School on 6801 Southway in Greendale. For ticket reservations and more, visit greendaletheatre.org. A comprehensive review of the show runs in the next print edition of The Shepherd-Express.