Stiefel and Wilson “Sing Me a Story” at the Skylight

Kay Stiefel and pianist Jack Forbes Wilson landed in Milwaukee — she from UW-Stevens Point and he from Spring Green — in 1986. They happened to audition for a show at the now-vanished Melanec’s Wheelhouse restaurant and ended up singing a duet in a little revue there.

“It was ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside,'” Wilson recalled, at an interview about their new show, which opens at the Skylight Music Theatre Friday (May 3).

“We sounded so good together,” Stiefel added.

They’ve been performing together on and off ever since.

“We still do ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside,'” Wilson said. “We still get the words wrong from time to time.”

Their first official gig as a duo was a concert of popular songs at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Unitarian church in Madison, where Wilson had worked with the Madison Rep. That prompted them to put together their own revue of songs by Richard Rodgers and his various lyricists. They workshopped it at the Little Sandwich Theater in Tisch Mills, Wis., near Manitowoc.

John Dillon, then artistic director of the Milwaukee Rep, thought so much of it that he booked it into the Rep’s Stackner Cabaret in 1992. That was the first of four Stackner shows for Stiefel and Wilson, and it established them as a du0 even as they pursued extensive independent acting and musical careers. They have since struck up a relationship with the Skylight, where they have performed post-show at the Skylight Bar. Artistic director Bill Theisen thought they’d be a good fit in the 100-seat Studio Theatre in the company’s Broadway Theatre.

Theisen knew their 1996 Stackner show, also called Sing Me a Story, and invited them to either revive it or build on it.

“Bill left it open,” Wilson said. “This is really a new show, though you might have heard some of the same songs in the Skylight Bar. You might have heard some of the same songs at the Skylight Bar.

Wilson referred to their run in December after performances of the Skylight’s Sound of Music in December.  They worked up lots of new material for those shows; Wilson realized at the time that their at-the-ready repertoire stretched to about 100 songs.

That gave them plenty of ammunition for the current show, which as the name implies focuses on narrative songs.

“It’s like musical storybook,” Wilson said. “You turn the page, and there’s a new short story.”

Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Kander and Ebb and other Broadway figures, Stiefel and Wilson’s bread and butter over the years, are on the list. But so are some unlikely names and some unlikely choices from familiar names. (Have you ever heard Frank Loesser’s “Hamlet”? You will. And if you can’t wait, here’s Betty Hutton doing it.)

“We’re even doing a Sting song,” Stiefel said. “And some Willy Nelson. And three Allan Sherman songs — once you get started with those, it’s hard to stop.”

Some of us remember Sherman for his comedy parodies from the 1960s, and two of those are on the bill for the Skylight. But they dug more deeply into the Sherman oeuvre, to “Did I Ever Really Live?” That song came from a Broadway flop, The Fig Leaves Are Falling; Sherman wrote the lyrics for that show.

Even some of their Broadway staples get new twists in this edition of Sing Me a Story — take “Trouble,” for example,  the number Harold Hill uses to whip the citizens of River City into a frenzy in The Music Man.

“Harold and Marion the Librarian are now married,” Wilson said. “We assume she’s let her hair and goes on the road with him to sell band instruments.”

Stiefel and Wilson will sing their stories amid a stage that might be the attic of the Skylight Music Theatre. Lisa Schlenker’s set includes Five pianos — three of them functional, among countless props and set pieces, not to mention the ashes of Clair Richardson, the Skylight’s founder (as always, a stiff drink stands beside the reliquary). Each item has a story to tell and comes attached to a little piece of the Skylight’s history — as do many of the songs.

“Most of the songs are old,” Wilson said. “Some of them are funny. Some of them start with ‘Once upon a time…”

Sing Me a Story opens at the Skylight Music Theatre on Friday, May 3, and runs through May 19. Tickets are available online or by calling (414) 291-7800. Further credits: Ray Jivoff, director; Ryan Bertelson, lighting designer; Lisa Schlenker, set designer; Gary Ellis, sound designer; Kelly Turner, stage manager; Lauren Pekel, assistant stage manager.