Sweet ballet, a tough musical, a uke, more

Winter’s been lingering and so has the 2010-11 performing arts season. We’re not done yet. To wit:

Theater

Uprooted Theatre Company and the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center are bringing Pink Champagne, Neil Haven’s new comedy, into the world this week. The twisty plot: Grandpa’s gay,

straight son’s estranged, grandson’s coming out as gay. That should make for an interesting family reunion. The cast includes Marti Gobel, T. Stacy Hicks, John Kishline, John Maclay and Ari Shapiro, directed by Dennis F. Johnson. The premiere run will take place at the Tenth Street Theatre, on the lower level of Calvary Church, at 10th and Wisconsin. Curtain time is 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, May 19-22, May 26-29 and June 2-5. Tickets are $15; order at the MGAC website. $3 off for students and seniors rush, one hour before curtain.

Dance

Arthur St. Leon’s Coppélia, a sentimental comic ballet, was an evergreen hit for the Milwaukee Ballet from 1970 to 1991. Current AD Michael Pink is pulling it out of mothballs to see if its appeal holds up. St. Leon based his scenario on a sanitized version of Der Sandmann, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s macabre tale of a Frankensteinian toymaker who believes he can bring a doll to life. Pink does not intend to bring out the macabre, but he does want to put a little French farce zing into a ballet that can be cloying. Surprise casting: Well known actor Dan Mooney will play Dr. Coppélius.

7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, May 19-22, at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall. Tickets are $25-$89 at the Milwaukee Ballet website; at the company’s ticket line, 414 902-2103; and at the Marcus Center box office, 414 273-7206.

Music

Composer Joshua Schmidt started working at the Skylight Opera Theatre in his student days. Today, Schmidt, 34, is among the hottest talents in musical theater. His The Minister’s Wife is presently running Off-Broadway to rave reviews, and his The Adding Machine, from 2008, had similar success. (Skylight marketing director Jennifer Samuelson has put together an excellent backgrounder about the show, which you can download here.) The Skylight will give the local premiere of Adding Machine at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The musical, after Elmer Rice’s 1923 Expressionist play about the dehumanizing effects of modern corporate life, will run in the Cabot Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center through June 12. Tickets are $24-$63.50.

I haven’t gotten out to Elm Grove to check out Lil Rev, but all my show-biz Facebook friends are raving about the ukulele whiz. He’s amid a run at the Sunset Playhouse, 800 Elm Grove Rd. Lil Rev will do his thing at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, May 19-21 and 26-28. Tickets are $15; click here or call 262 782-4430.

For the first time in many years, the Bel Canto Chorus and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra will make music together. The MSO will join the chorus, the Waukesha Choral Union, The Baptist College of Ministry Concert Chorale and BCC music director Richard Hynson in Give Us Peace, a program aimed at contemplation of the Civil War. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 21, at the Oconomowoc Arts Center, 641 E. Forest St., Oconomowoc. At 6 p.m., representatives of Kenosha’s Civil War Museum will give a presentation. The repertoire includes Kirk Mechem’s Song of the Slave and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem. Tickets are $12 to $28. Call 414 481-8801 or order online at the Bel Canto website.

Saxophonist Maceo Parker earned his degrees in funk as a star in James Brown’s and George Clinton’s bands. He’s led his own band for 16 years, and that band will touch down at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 21. Tickets are $25-$52; click on the link or call 262 781-9520.

The MacDowell Club, an alliance of professionally trained musicians who put on concerts for the love of it, will give another of their free programs at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 22, at Cardinal Stritch College’s Nancy Kendall Theater in the Joan Steele Stein Building for Communications. Bay View resident Ana de la Cuesta produced this program of Latin American music by Leo Brouwer (1939- ) (Cuba); Ignacio Cervantes (1847-1905) (Cuba); Antonio Lauro (1917-1986) (Venezuela); Alfredo Portela López (1944- ) ( Cuba); Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992 ) (Argentina) ; and Heitor Villalobos (1887-1959) (Brazil).  De la Cuesta and Linda Hartig, both flutists, will perform, as will pianists Suzanne Pajunen and Patricia Witt, and guest pianist Karen Peters. Special guest guitarists will be Jason Behr, a faculty member of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music; Elina Chekan and René Izquierdo, the respective head of the Suzuki and Pre-College Program and the Classical Guitar Department at UWM.

Special Event

Leonardo da Vinci designed the world’s first army tank. So arts and technology have been bumping into each other for some time. Three floors of UWM’s Kenilworth Building, at Prospect and Kenilworth, will be buzzing with arts + tech of all sorts from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, May 18. It’s free.

Ongoing

Fireside Dinner Theatre: A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline, through June 26.
Sunset Playhouse: Love, Sex and the IRS, through May 28.
Boulevard Theatre: Two to Go, Shaw/Wilder double bill, through May 29.
First Stage: Miss Nelson Is Missing!, through June 5.

Last Chance

Florentine Opera: Baroque double bill, Blow and Purcell, closes May 22.
Windfall Theatre: Green Sneakers, closes May 22.
Acacia Theatre: A Woman Called Truth, closes May 22.

Note: On Stage is not comprehensive. For more listing, please check TCD’s events calendar.