‘Country Sunshine’ Is Packed With Songs

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Country Sunshine: The Legendary Ladies of Nashville With Katie Deal in the Stackner Cabaret September 8 – October 29, 2023. Pictured: Katie Deal with band (L-R) Kristin Doty, Terry Smirl, Jeff Hamann, Bob Monagle. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

Seating at this theater means paying for one of the tables at the Milwaukee Rep’s Stacker Cabaret, but it’s your choice to buy drinks or food or tip the staff along with watching the show.

Sometimes, as the season opener Country Sunshine will demonstrate through October 29, the offering can be a straight-out concert with anecdotes aimed to attract fans of one genre, one artist or type of artist. In other outings coming up this Stackner season these are full-fledged theatrical productions.

But when the Rep hooks up with cultural landscape producer Artists Lounge Live, the purpose is a concert with a genre hook. It may not be theater in the common understanding of the term. But it is perfectly fine if you go in prepared for a full blown concert.

This time the genre is famous country music but with some historical hooks and some modernized additions to allow in works that straddle genres and a sound full of honky-tonk riffs, electric licks and rock ‘n’ roll drumming alongside forays into yodeling and old-fashioned gospel country. This one is subtitled “The Legendary Ladies of Nashville,” (including some not so legendary) and how they influenced and informed each other, from Dottie West (1931-1991) to Jeannie C. Riley (age 77) and many others in-between. If there’s a famous sassy country song you want to hear again, you will.

Some of the anecdotes are well known. Others are affectionately weaved by a commanding lead performer who stars in many lounge show tributes. Katie Deal actually knew many of those she is praising and is not new to Milwaukee praise either. I gave her some back in 2015 in another show at the Stackner. That one was about John Denver and required her big voice, huge smile and her Georgia-raised, down-home mannerisms As I said then, it’s about singing chops more than acting.

She doesn’t have to engage in outright impersonations though some may have expected that. She ranges through famous songs (“Crazy” “Jolene,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Stand by Your Man”) but we identify the singer through intonation, drawl and how Deal suggests authentic re-incarnation.

She can conjure up Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Patti Page and even Linda Ronstadt, straying across decades of country to modernize the appeal of the concert. It both reminds you of the history and limitations (many self-imposed) of country music and how it now carries on while other genres like hip-hop dominate the headlines. The show is particularly strong in reminding us of the value of Parton, Cline and Rondstadt.

Deal is powered through by a first-class band (pianist Johnny Rodgers, Jeff Hamann on bass, Terry Smirl on drums, Bob Monagle on both acoustic and electric guitar) plus backup vocalizer Kirstin Doty. All those skills almost make you forget the show is a bit too long and too sentimental.

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blogs here and here.