Alverno Presents re-illuminates Stephen Foster
Jon Langford, Juniper Tar, Field Report's Christopher Porterfield, Betty Strigens of Testa Rosa and more will perform Foster's works at "Beautiful Dreamer."
Jan 29th, 2013
Previewing the Found Footage Festival
The sixth volume of the Found Footage Festival, the brainchild of Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, will land in Milwaukee's Turner Hall on Wednesday, Dec. 19.
Dec 17th, 2012
“Holy Motors”
"Holy Motors," this month's Milwaukee Film member screening at the Oriental, is all about acting in both reel and real life.
Nov 29th, 2012
Embracing the here and now
Death Blues (No Time Like The Present) seeks to explore the certainty of death and the necessity of embracing the now in a multidisciplinary project at Alverno.
Nov 14th, 2012
“Mosquita y Mari” a beautiful coming-of-age tale
Aurora Guerrero's story of two young girls drawn together builds on emotional intimacy and self-discovery, amid cultural clashes.
Oct 18th, 2012
“A Girl Like Her,” at the Milwaukee Film Festival
Ann Fessler's documentary looks at the lives of women in the 1950s and '60s who became pregnant out of wedlock and were forced to give up their children.
Oct 2nd, 2012
Anonymous and the new era of activism
Several philosophic and moral conundrums are raised in the documentary "We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists," screening at the Milwaukee Film Festival.
Sep 29th, 2012
“Nobody Else But You,” Milwaukee Film Festival
Candice Lecoeur believes she is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe in "Nobody Else But You," a surreal murder mystery "too compelling to look away."
Sep 26th, 2012
Public House to hold Sept. 6 benefit
The Riverwest Public House is holding a concert on Thursday to benefit the artists who lost so much in the Center Street Fire on July 17.
Sep 5th, 2012
Creating avenues of hope at Repairers of the Breach
TCD talks with the people behind Rebuilding Dreams, a fundraising event happening tonight at Lakefront Brewery. Proceeds will benefit Repairers of the Breach.
Aug 9th, 2012
“We Are Wisconsin” brings Madison protests to the big screen
Documentary filmmaker Aimee Williams' "love letter to democracy," "We Are Wisconsin" chronicles the occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol building in Madison.
May 31st, 2012
Experiments and Alchemy
MUFF is back for its twelfth year, featuring screenings at the UWM Union Theatre, Kenilworth Studios and the Walker's Point Center for the Arts.
May 3rd, 2012
Timothy Westbrook, Pfister Artist-in-Residence
Fiber artist Timothy Westbrook sheds some light on plans for his year at the Pfister, from using eco-friendly techniques to a series of gowns for "Ms. Pfister."
Mar 15th, 2012
Niffer Clarke, the Ingenue on stage and off
Skylight Opera Theatre star featured in "Beyond the Ingenue," a new collaboration with Richard Carsey, at the Studio Theatre.
Dec 28th, 2011
Expanded Cinema
Bruce Charlesworth and Bruce Knackert's "Input/Output" show moves film from popcorn and date night to the realm of art.
Dec 15th, 2011
Hongtao Zhou at Sweetwater Organics
Artist Hongtao Zhou built a chair out of twigs and wax at Sweetwater Organics for "The Tool at Hand," an upcoming exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Nov 28th, 2011
Jealous? Of the dog?!
She wants that stray out of the empty-nester Manhattan apartment; he wants to take Sylvia to the park and watch her play. Who will prevail?
Nov 19th, 2011
Found Magazine vs. Found Footage at the Oriental Theatre
Presenters for "Found vs. Found" at the Oriental Theatre pick out both the hilariously absurd and the agonizingly tender moments found in print and film.
Nov 16th, 2011
Seven artists push the limits at the 2010 Nohl Fellowship Exhibition
The seven Nohl fellowship winners produced compelling yet challenging pieces, but thinking about this art is more important than "getting" it.
Oct 15th, 2011
Alchemist Theatre’s roam-through retelling of “Faust”
Make your own way through "Faust: An Evening at the Mephisto Theater." Plus, you get to wear a mask.
Sep 28th, 2011
Raw and close
Elizabeth Johnson's company dispenses with the accoutrements and gives us bodies in motion.
Sep 24th, 2011
“Make Believe”
J. Clay Tweel's documentary lets the story do the talking as six teenage magicians compete to become Teen World Champion at the World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas.
Sep 22nd, 2011
American Tabloid
James Ellroy’s style ensures that you don’t spend a lot of time working out the intricacies of grammatic structure. Instead, he prefers to smack you upside the head with his words.
Aug 7th, 2011
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen's classic is a masterpiece of dry humor, an elegant portrait of understated venom, and a genuinely happy ending, all at once.
Jul 10th, 2011
Theatre Gigante’s “The Good Thief,” a boozey tale worth hearing
Malcolm Tulip carries the day in Conor McPherson's one-man show about an Irish thug, present in Paddy's Irish Pub.
Jun 10th, 2011
Protesters descend on Madison
TCD's Ryan Findley with pictures and thoughts on Wednesday's protests and an overview of today's likely events.
Feb 17th, 2011
Simple Times with Amy Sedaris
Actor, comedienne and DIY goddess Amy Sedaris visits The Pabst with "Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People," a hilarious guide to crafting on a shoestring.
Nov 19th, 2010
Michael Pollan visits UWM
The author talks about navigating the treacherous landscape of modern food and offers up a few simple rules. Number one? Eat real food.
Nov 9th, 2010
Neil LaBute’s “Reasons to be Pretty” a comedy that stings
Renaissance Theaterworks stages the third in LaBute's comedy trilogy on how outward appearances shape who we are and how the world assesses us.
Sep 29th, 2010
Au Revoir Taipei
Au Revoir Taipei is not a crime caper, and it is not a romantic comedy, but something far more earnest than either of those two genres have produced.
Sep 24th, 2010
Dames at Sea can inspire us all
Skylight insists "Dames" isn't a spoof, just good entertainment and a testament to the power of pluck. Perhaps it's a perfect message for us all.
Sep 16th, 2010
Caste of Killers
Jason Hillman and Damon Millard are the minds behind this branded comedy show that seeks to promote the most talented voices of the Milwaukee comic scene.
Jul 22nd, 2010
Home is where the heart is
In a series of new paintings at the Tory Folliard Gallery, Marion Coffey has transformed Milwaukee into a brightly colored, almost tropical paradise.
Jun 24th, 2010
Animalistic at Anaba
Sometimes, we come across art in unexpected places. This is true both of the installation currently on view at the Anaba Tea Room and the subject matter of the show.
Jun 2nd, 2010
Dale Gutzman’s Hamlin at Off-the-Wall Theatre
A business dynasty dominates modern Hamlin. The family will find out the hard way that you just don't mess with The Piper.
Apr 22nd, 2010
Rebecca Schoenecker at Redline
Schoenecker’s concept of gender construction is complex. Her women are terrible and also beautiful, but these things are not diametrically opposed.
Apr 16th, 2010
8-bit Warrior at the Alchemist Theatre
Vince Figueroa's original play takes us back to a simpler time, when Donkey Kong ruled the world.
Mar 27th, 2010
Fish Tank
One morning, Mia is making tea in the kitchen when her mother’s new boyfriend appears. A complicated and bruising relationship develops, lubricated by a steady stream of alcohol.
Mar 14th, 2010
emerging artists at RedLine
RedLine is incubator for emerging artists, offering support and creative space. Tonight, RedLine features new and original works by twelve artists-in-residence.
Mar 12th, 2010
Street Seen photography show at MAM
Street Seen, at the Milwaukee Art Museum, shows photography turning from faithful documentation to interpretive art.
Feb 4th, 2010
Purgatorio at Next Act Theatre
There is no forgetting. And forgiving may or may not be possible in Ariel Dorfman's philosophical drama.
Jan 30th, 2010
Azur & Asmar
Cross-cultural animated tale is an unexpected gift of beauty, tolerance and mystique.
Sep 26th, 2009
Oriental Drugs
Root beer floats and french fries at the famous twisted lunch counter in our continuing series on long-gone, but not forgotten, places.
Aug 21st, 2009
RENT at Greendale Community Theatre
A local staging of RENT rises to the challenge
Jul 27th, 2009
Art and Performance April 2-8, 2009
Visual Art Art in Bloom, Milwaukee Art Museum. 4/2 through 4/5. Celebrating springtime, Art In Bloom showcases the talents of more than 40 renowned floral designers interpreting masterworks from the Museum’s Collection. This year’s expanded exhibition also includes lectures and workshops with celebrity floral designers and master gardeners, book signings, plein air painters, a multi-vendor indoor marketplace, a garden sculpture sale, and floral-inspired dining in the Café Calatrava Garden Room. Presenting lectures, demonstrations, and book signings will be Michael George—one of the most sought after floral designers in the United States; Milwaukee native Michael Weishan, former host of PBS television’s The Victory Garden; Portland-based vine expert Linda Beutler; landscape designer Craig Bergmann; Chicago Master Gardener and radio host Mike Nowak; local horticulture expert Melinda Myers; renowned children’s book author Lois Ehlert and many others. Awesome Art Sale, Racine Art Museum, 4/3 Due to overwhelming success, this awesome event is back with more artwork than ever! Many one-of-a-kind items priced as low as $20! Discover original, museum-quality artwork donated by collectors and nationally known artists from across the country. Purchase a great piece of art and know that you are contributing to the sustaining growth of RAM’s exhibition and education programs. This is a fabulous time to add to your art collection or start one now! For more info click here! Frankie Martin, Green Gallery West. 4/3 Get down with the (original) Green Gallery on their momentous fifth anniversary with an exhibition of new works by Frankie Martin, whose work was a part of the very first Green Gallery show. In Life or Death?, Martin will show new video work as well as paintings and video stills. Who Died? is a five part, non-linear narrative video that reinterprets popular representations of death and the transcendence of the human body. Some light paintings will accompany this piece. Frankie will also present part of her series Left Behind which features paintings and mobiles based on the idea of what normally gets discarded. To do this she stretches her drop cloths as finished paintings that expose the materials and process of the work done in her studio. Frankie also incorporates objects from her neighborhood or from her own garbage into the work. In Frankie’s words “the idea is that these things become non-things, then become re-contextualized as things again.” Frankie will also exhibit Born Again, a video in which Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is translated into the video format. Frankie Martin’s work has appeared in galleries all over the world, from Milwaukee to Oslo to Paris to San Francisco and New York, where she now lives. Bon anniversaire, Green Gallery! Marina Bychkova: Enchanted Doll, Villa Terrace, 4/8 Exploring the dark, dreamy side of folklore and fantasy, Bychokova transforms a children’s toy into an exploration and reinterpretation of femininity, tradition and fairy tales. Says the artist, ““Creating a visual narrative is the most intriguing way of articulating my ideas and a doll is a perfect medium because of its potential for such visual story. My […]
Apr 1st, 2009
Exciting Fun!
Milwaukee is a happenin’ town, and there’s always lots of stuff going on across our fair city. Here’s my (own, personal, and probably biased) round-up of what I’m really excited about in the next week. Berzerk!, Alchemist Theater, March 22. Always a good time of clean fun, Berzerk! returns to the Alchemist for another installment in the wacky theater adventures that arise when producing in one day a script that’s been written in 10 minutes. Does the thought make you tired? Imagine how the people that do it feel. Accidental Death of An Anarchist, Peck School, March 25-29. This modern piece by Nobel laureate Dario Fo asks how far we can go in protecting ourselves, as a nation, from those that mean us harm in a humorous (if satiric) fashion. This production is part of the Lab/Works series, which brings the focus on what theatre is all about: the acting. Minimalist sets and costumes, if any at all, make the performances stand out all the more. One-Act Festival: Tales from the Dugout, Pink Banana Theatre, March 27 through April 11. Pink Banana Theatre teams up with Renaissance Theaterworks to bring Milwaukee this collection of hilarious, heartfelt and just plain strange tales of relationships. Featuring the works of local up-and-coming writers from all walks of life, Tales from the Dugout will tell the story of the various games we all play in our relationships with lovers and friends. The Neverending Story, First Stage Children’s Theater, now through April 5. Being the geek that I am, I cannot help but be excited about First Stage’s production of this classic fantasy tale. Walking the line between the world of reality and the world of imagination, this production weaves the two together in an unforgettable and thoroughly enjoyable story of mindfulness, forgetfulness, courage and friendship. Read TCD’s review! Complete event listings for what’s happening on all Milwaukee’s stages are available at Footlights online.
Mar 19th, 2009
Milwaukee Ballet Announces 40th Anniversary Season
The Milwaukee Ballet announced its 40th anniversary season in style with a lovely early-evening soiree at the Iron Horse Hotel on March 12. It promises to be an exciting and innovative season, with something for every taste. The Nutcracker will (as usual) be the longest-running show of the season, taking over the Marcus Center for most of the month of December (the 11th through the 27th, to be precise). The Company will continue to present artistic director Michael Pink’s vision of this classic holiday favorite. In addition, Milwaukee Ballet will present two other family-friendly, traditional ballets: Cinderella in October of 2009 and Peter Pan in May of 2010. The production of Peter Pan will feature the Mr. Pink’s choreography set to an original score by Philip Feeney composed for the Milwaukee Ballet. Cinderella will enthrall young audience members with lavish period costumes and a pumpkin carriage. Both Peter Pan and Cinderella will feature not only Company members but also performers from the Milwaukee Ballet School, expanding the scope of the School beyond the traditional Nutcracker roles. However, as Mr. Pink noted in his remarks at the announcement party, the Milwaukee Ballet may be turning 40 this year, but it will not use that as an excuse to rest on its laurels or start to look exclusively to the past for its productions. The Company has developed a reputation, both in Milwaukee and across the country, for innovative and inventive productions, and that will not change. In addition to the three traditional ballets, the 2009-2010 season will offer two additional ballets as well as a collaboration with UWM’s Peck School. Innovative Motion (February 11-14, 2010) brings back the winner of the 2009 Genesis international choreography competition, in addition to a world premiere work by Luc Vanier and a piece entitled “Clowns and Others” by Salvatore Aiello. All three will be abstract works showcasing the movement and physicality of dance. In late March, Pure Dance will bring a slate of works that draw not only from classical ballet but from all forms of movement, from Hispanic and Arabic culture to gypsy sensibility to contemporary dance. Jerry Opdenaker and Val Caniparoli will contribute pieces, and Milwaukee’s own Petr Zahradnicek will create another world premiere for the Milwaukee Ballet. In collaboration with the Peck School, the Milwaukee Ballet School, and the Milwaukee Ballet II program, a one-night performance of Ma Maison will be offered on March 9 as part of the Trey McIntyre project. This performance is not included in any of the Ballet’s regular season packages, but tickets can be purchased through the Ballet. In addition to the season, Milwaukee Ballet also announced the launching of their new website. Found here, it features more in-depth information about every aspect of the Company and School. The Milwaukee Ballet also has a new friends group, Balletomane, which will provide support to both the Company and the School. The Milwaukee Ballet’s next performance is the choreographic competition Genesis, March 26-29, 2009 at the Pabst Theater. Tickets […]
Mar 18th, 2009
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen is beloved in the pantheon of English writers for her gift for social observation and her sly wit. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater brings Pride and Prejudice (perhaps her best-known novel) to the stage in this adaptation by Joe Hanreddy and J. R. Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan directs a cast of some of the city’s best-known actors in this delightful story of love and social standing during the Regency period of English history. The neighborhood in which the Bennett family resides is thrown into chaos when a young gentleman of good fortune rents a nearby estate. Since it is universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, Mrs. Bennett immediately begins scheming to get him to marry one of her five daughters; he falls in love with Jane, the oldest. But the story centers around Elizabeth, the next daughter in the Bennett family, and the young gentleman’s equally wealthy and far more haughty friend, Mr. Darcy. These two strong personalities enter into a courtship that has stood the test of time and entered the annals of all-time most-romantic stories. Along the way, there are various plots, misunderstandings, and tragedies. Austen’s writing is full of wit and innuendo, and Hanreddy and Sullivan’s adaptation respects that. The actors are all equally capable of bringing to life the nuance of Austen’s language, and the subtle supplementation of a raised brow or a wave of a hand. Every single one of them understands and communicates the full richness of their characters’ emotions while maintaining the reserve that is an essential component of Austen’s writing. Lee Stark as Elizabeth Bennett and Grant Goodman as Fitzwilliam Darcy are excellent. They fight, they tease, they fall in love, and they are absolutely believable throughout. Jonathan Gillard Daly and Laura Gordon are both a bundle of neuroses as Mr. and Mrs. Bennett; Gordon in particular is charming, funny, and just a little cringe-worthy during Mrs. Bennett’s fits of shrill histrionics. Brian Vaughn as the Bennett’s cousin, Mr. Collins, is a ridiculous blend of obsequiousness and pride that takes over every scene he appears in, just as one imagines Mr. Collins would take over any room he entered. Gerard Nugent and Sarah Rutan are quietly agreeable as Jane Bennett and Charles Bingley, and Emily Vitriano is loud, boisterous, and delightfully obnoxious as Lydia Bennett. Michael Ganio’s scenic design is minimalist, which seems at first an odd choice for a play about the upper-crust of English society. These people live on estates, in mansions. But, with little set decoration, a change of scene can be accomplished by simply moving a chair from here to there, adding or subtracting a vase of flowers, or raising and lowering a chandelier. This simplicity makes set changes easy, which keeps the production moving along at a good pace, without lagging. It also has the added benefit of making the dialog, most of which was taken directly from Jane Austen’s novel, the […]
Mar 14th, 2009
Service, art and self-expression
In these troubled economic times, the news reports are full of dire predictions about the fate of non-profits of all types, from the organizations supported by United Way to arts organizations of all descriptions. The Baltimore Opera recently declared bankruptcy and the New York Metropolitan Opera has been having a tough year. Here at home, our own Milwaukee Shakespeare has closed its doors after funding bottomed out, and the Greater Milwaukee Committee says that its grant levels this year will be below those of last year. And these are just the most transparent examples of the tightening atmosphere. So it’s remarkable that the Shorewood Players Theatre’s upcoming production of The Women, written by Clare Boothe Luce, is also a fundraiser for Gilda’s Club of Southeastern Wisconsin, a cancer support organization serving communities all over the United States. Gilda’s Club is named for comedian and actor Gilda Radner, who died of ovarian cancer in 1989. The club takes its name from a quip attributed to Radner: “Having cancer gave me a membership in an elite club I’d rather not be a part of.” The philosophy behind the club was developed by Radner, her husband Gene Wilder and Radner’s cancer psychotherapist, Joanna Bull. The support structure that the club is committed to providing is extremely important to surviving any type of cancer, for all involved. All of the club’s services and activities are free, so its survival absolutely depends on outside funding. Gilda’s Club of Southeastern Wisconsin is located in a storefront on Oakland Avenue in Shorewood and provides emotional support, educational programs and social activities for men, women and children facing cancer, as well as their families and loved ones. One of Gilda’s Club’s key philosophies is that this kind of support must take place in a warm, welcoming and non-institutional environment – somewhere away from the hospital. Appropriately, one of the central themes of The Women is the support that the main characters provide to each other. Through all the challenges that the women of Luce’s modern, cosmopolitan world face, they have each other as an antidote to the roles they must assume to the outside world. While many have criticized the play as depicting vain and shallow women with no sense of how privileged their lives are, the Shorewood Players under the direction of Carol Zippel, Windfall Theatre’s Artistic Director, find something very different in the story. Zippel’s vision is of our modern world and the challenges that it poses to all of us, seen from the viewpoint of women and told in spectacularly entertaining fashion. The entire ensemble is female, and no male characters appear on stage. Both film adaptations of the play (1939 and 2008) have gone so far as to only show pictures of women and to clear the street scenes of all men. Major productions of The Women attract A-list talent, from Norma Shear to Annette Bening and Jada Pinkett Smith. The show holds the record for longest-running non-musical show on Broadway and has […]
Jan 1st, 2009
The Producers
Broadway comes to Milwaukee, and not in the usual sense of a touring production. No, in this instance, the Skylight Opera Theater has acquired the rights to produce Mel Brooks’ The Producers, and they are the first regional theater in the country to do so. If you think that a full-on Broadway musical would be out of reach for a regional theater, you’d be dead wrong. The Skylight does a wonderful job bringing Brooks’ zany romp to the Milwaukee stage. Molly Rhode, Bill Theisen and Brian Vaughn. Photo by Rob Wagner. Max Bialystock, a washed up Broadway producer, and Leo Bloom, a neurotic, unhappy public accountant, hatch an ingenious plan: they collect $2 million dollars to finance a production, then pick the worst script they can find and hire the worst director in New York. The idea is to spend as little as possible on the show, then have it be so bad that it closes in one night and the producers can pocket the difference. The IRS won’t care about money spent on a flop, and no one will come investigating. But wouldn’t you know- the show turns out to be a hit, leaving Max and Leo scrambling to stay out of jail. In case you haven’t seen any of the various versions of the story out there in the world, the musical they pick to produce is called Springtime for Hitler and it includes some choice irreverence. The cast further incorporates a Swedish bombshell named Ulla, whose grasp of English is shaky at best; a former Nazi (the writer of Springtime for Hitler) named Franz; the flamboyantly gay director Roger DiBris and his “common-law assistant” Carmen Guia; and an ensemble that plays a variety of roles as well as the chorus. Jonathan West, Bill Theisen, and Brian Vaughn. Photo by Rob Wagner. All the performers are spectacular. Bill Theisen as Bialystock is deliciously slimy, and Brian Vaughn as Bloom is adorably nervous about everything. Molly Rhode as Ulla is hilarious as the knock-out exhibitionist (her solo song is titled “If You Got It, Flaunt It”). Ray Jivoff and Jonathan West deliver unbelievably amusing caricatures of a gay couple in the Broadway business. Perhaps the highest accolades should go to the terrific ensemble cast, who plays all the bit parts, the chorus, and serves as the stage crew throughout the show. One can’t imagine the number of quick costume changes and breathless entries that must have been rehearsed to allow fourteen ensemble members to accomplish all that. The sets were all constructed in the Skylight Scene Shop using materials almost exclusively recycled from previous productions. Because the ensemble serves as the stage crew, elaborate staging is absent, but scenic designer Brandon Ribardy does an excellent job creating spaces with minimal pieces. This also leaves the stage uncluttered for the many dance numbers that populate the show. The dancing may be the one weakness in the whole production; in the tap numbers, the dancers are often out of sync with […]
Dec 2nd, 2008
The Daly News
World history and personal history collide in this charming musical about the lives of a Milwaukee family during World War II. During the war, Martin and “Schatzie” Daly had five children– four sons and a daughter. All four sons enlisted in the military, and the daughter married a military man. The family was scattered around the globe. To keep everyone in touch, Martin Daly wrote a weekly newsletter he called “The Daly News” that collated all the information from letters received from his children and then included news from the home front, as well. He did this for more than three years. Photo by Mark Frohna When Jonathan Gillard Daly, the youngest son of Martin’s oldest son, was presented with the complete Daly News as a Christmas present by his mother, he was immediately struck by the story. Several years later, we have the result: a delightful musical produced by the Milwaukee Chamber Theater, starring Jon Daly, Jack Forbes Wilson, and Jeff Schaetzke. The Daly News is a charming blend of personal anecdote and grand story. All parts in the show (including the women) are played by the three male actors. They move from one character with the addition or subtraction of a coat, a sweater, a hat. For the most part this works well, with the exception of the Daly wives. Because they make such brief appearances, it’s nearly impossible to keep them straight with no tip except a small hat. Wilson moves effortlessly between the youngest Daly son, who starts off the play as a pipsqueak teenager before enlisting in the Marines, and brother Gene, who is living in a foxhole in the South Pacific. Jon Daly anchors the show as both himself, recounting personal experiences with his uncles, and as patriarch Martin Daly. Jeff Schaetzke takes a hilarious turn as Schatzie, among many others. The underlying theme of The Daly News is not the war, despite the fact that the war is the catalyst for everything that happens, but rather is the relationship between fathers and sons. The Daly family is representative of many families in that the affection between men remains unspoken. Despite everything, the boys all strive to present witty banter to their father in their letters, not the reality of the what they are living. Martin writes his newsletters in the same tone. Despite everyone’s pain at separation and the uncertainty of war, no affection is explicitly expressed. Jon Daly makes a point of calling attention to this at the end of the show, reflecting on his own relationship with his father. The Daly News runs in the Broadway Theater Center Studio Theater until December 14. 414-291-7800 or www.chamber-theatre.com for tickets.
Nov 24th, 2008
Madama Butterfly
Opera is the grandest spectacle on the stage, and the Florentine takes this to heart as it opens its 75th season with Madama Butterfly. The production is a work of sumptuous indulgence, from the set to the costumes to the layers of music. Puccini’s story is set in an idyllic estate near Nagasaki in Japan. An American naval officer, Lt. B. F. Pinkerton, has contracted with a marriage broker to take the young, beautiful Cio-Cio-San (Butterfly) as his bride. Perfect for his mercurial and self-indulgent temperament, the lease on the house and the marriage can be cancelled with 30 days notice. But while he sees the union as a dalliance while he bides his time until he finds a “real” American wife, Butterfly takes it seriously. She falls madly in love with Pinkerton and renounces her ancestral religion in favor of Christianity, causing her family to disown her. When Pinkerton abandons her, she is left alone, save for her faithful maid Suzuki and the child that Pinkerton sired, whom she names Sorrow. When Pinkerton returns to claim the child with his wife Kate in tow, Butterfly is heartbroken. After kissing Sorrow goodbye and telling him that she does this for his future, she takes her own life, using the same dagger that her father used to take his. “It is better to die with honor than to live without honor,” she sings. It is advice Pinkerton should take. All the performers have exceptional vocal talents. Robin Follman as Butterfly soars, capturing innocence and lost innocence. Jennifer Hines as Suzuki is her loyal companion, sometimes slipping into zealousness — there is an amusing scene between her and Goro, the marriage broker, in which she chases him around the yard with a rake in hand. Joel Sorenson as Goro is appropriately terrified of the diminutive servant. Guido LeBron acts as Pinkerton’s whispered conscience, admonishing him from the start to be careful in the role of the Consul Sharpless. You rather wish that Sharpless was sharper and able to do more for the heartbroken Butterfly than shake his head sadly. The set designed by Paul Shortt is both grand and intimate. He creates the idyllic setting for Butterfly and Pinkerton’s love with infinite care, creating a place that is both home to them in the brief happiness of their love and later the scene of Butterfly’s heartbreak. The costumes are gorgeous, from Kate’s 19th-century jacket and bustle to the kimono robes of Prince Yamadori, a later suitor of Butterfly’s. In none of Puccini’s works is the male lead likable, but there is not greater cad in all of opera than Lt. B. F. Pinkerton. His callous treatment of Butterfly, even after joyous times and sweet words, reminds all of us to beware of the insincerity of shallow people. VS The Florentine Opera presents Madama Butterfly at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts until this Sunday. If you miss this production, they will be mounting Semele at the Pabst Theater from February 27 […]
Nov 22nd, 2008
Show People
What would you give to your art? Would you mortgage your house? Max out your credit cards? Make promises you couldn’t keep? Show People shows what one actor will do to produce his ultimate production, performed solely for his own benefit. Tom (Brian Richards) hires married acting duo Jerry and Marnie (played by Randall T. Anderson and Sharon Nieman-Koebert, respectively) to pretend to be his parents for the weekend. Jerry and Marnie are once-up-and-coming actors that have fallen on leaner times, and so when Tom approaches Jerry and offers $10,000 to spend a weekend at a house in Montauk, Long Island playing his parents for the benefit of his girlfriend, Jerry agrees. Jerry and Marnie turn up at the appointed time and meet Natalie (played by Gloria Loeding), and while there are a few awkward moments, everything appears to be going smoothly. That is, until Natalie decides that she can’t keep up the pretense any more and admits to Jerry and Marnie that she’s not actually Tom’s girlfriend and that he hired her to play his girlfriend for the weekend for the benefit of his parents, who don’t know that Tom is actually gay. What ensues is a hilarious weekend as Jerry, Marnie and Natalie try to figure out what exactly is going on while maintaining their roles and attempting to discern if Tom is dangerously psychotic or merely eccentric. Show People was written by Paul Weitz, who is best known for his work as a screenwriter, director and producer in Hollywood. He’s the comic hand behind such hits as About A Boy and Meet the Fockers, and his play is full of the same kind of absurd humor that is film work is known for. Show People has it’s tender moments, as well, though, including a touching scene between Marnie and Natalie in which Natalie asks for acting advice. Sharon Nieman-Koebert as Marnie steals every scene she’s involved in. Almost as good is Randall T. Anderson as her husband, and the two of them are eminently believable as a pair of good artists frustrated by their ability to capitalize on their talents, even after long years. Brian Richards and Gloria Loeding are both a bit stiff, but given time and exposure both of them can grow into wonderful actors. The Astor Theatre is small and intimate, but director Raymond Bradford uses the entire space quite effectively. VS RSVP Productions presents Show People at the Astor Theater until November 22. 414-272-2694 for tickets.
Nov 14th, 2008
Eurydice
By Ryan Findley How much of the grief we suffer in life is because we can remember what came before? After all, a loss isn’t a loss unless you remember that you’ve lost something. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater stages a contemporary re-telling of the Orpheus myth by Pulitzer prize nominee and MacArthur Foundation grant-winner Sarah Ruhl that explores the connection between memory, loss and grief. The classic story centers around Orpheus, the musician who’s grief upon losing his new bride, Eurydice, is so great that he travels to the gates of the underworld and convinces the Lord of the Underworld to allow him to take her back with him to the land of the living. The Lord of the Underworld agrees on the condition that Orpheus is not to look at Eurydice until they are home. Orpheus cannot resist turning around to see if she is following him, though, and Eurydice is sent back, leaving Orpheus alone once more. Ruhl turns this formula on its head. The main character of Eurydice is not Orpheus; rather, it is Eurydice that takes center stage. Ruhl adds Eurydice’s father to the cast of characters, waiting for her in the Underworld. The father received a less-than-thorough dunking in the River of Forgetfulness upon his arrival in the Underworld years ago, and has retained most of his memories from his time among the living. When Eurydice appears inside the gates of the Underworld, he works to help her recover her own memories. This act sets up the dramatic tension of the play. Because Eurydice has recovered her memories of life before her death, when Orpheus comes to get her, she has a choice to make: remain with her father in the land of the dead, or return with Orpheus to resume their interrupted life. Lanise Antoine Shelley is excellent in the title role. She’s delightfully care-free, both when alive and in love with Orpheus and when dead and slowly reconnecting with her father. Davis Duffield plays the distracted artist Orpheus very well; anyone who has ever been involved with anyone who had artistic aspirations will appreciate his hasty scrambling to soothe Eurydice after having failed to say that he was thinking about her three times in a row when asked. Eurydice’s father, played by William Dick, is eminently believable in his love for his daughter, letting her go even though it nearly kills him a second time to do so. The Chorus of Stones is hilarious, providing comic relief. Wayne T. Carter turns in scene-stealing performances as the childish, lecherous Lord of the Underworld, although his turn as a nasty interesting man is much less interesting to watch. Tony-award winner Todd Rosenthal designed a wonderfully grungy, modern underworld that is part subway station and part neglected public pool. Eurydice is less emotionally affecting than you might expect a re-telling of the Orpheus myth to be, but it is also more intellectually stimulating than you’d expect a re-telling of the Orpheus myth to be. Ruhl trades […]
Nov 5th, 2008
Rabbit Hole
The Milwaukee Chamber Theater has made a commitment to producing a Pulitzer-prize winning play every season for the next five years. Rabbit Hole, written by David Lindsay-Abaire, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for Drama and is the second production in this endeavor. It is the achingly sweet, heart-rendingly bitter story of a family, the Corbetts, dealing with the loss of a child, and the ways in which they come together and pull apart as they grieve and begin to heal. Rabbit Hole is an intimate production: the entire play takes place in the Corbett house, and there are only five characters in the cast. Howie and Becca Corbett (played by Steven Koehler and Jacque Troy) are dealing with the death of their four-year-old son, Danny. Becca’s sister Izzy (Katheryn Bilbo) and mother Nat (Jan Rogge) offer a head-on approach to dealing with Becca’s loss. The cast is rounded out by David Bohn in the role of Jason, the teenage driver responsible for Danny’s death. Becca is the star of the show. Troy brings a completely believable level of restrained neurosis to the role as she navigates her younger sister’s pregnancy, her mother’s clumsy attempts to provide comfort and a house full of memories. Howie finds solace in a support group of other parents that have lost children and absents himself from the house for long periods. He cannot understand why Becca isn’t as comforted by the group as he is, and their different grieving processes create rising tension between them. Koehler is perfect as the frustrated Howie, trying to be supportive to a wife in a very different emotional space than he, but becoming increasingly frustrated by their growing distance. Bohn is note-perfect as the self-centered but emotionally connected teenager responsible for Danny’s death. His attempts to set things right with the Corbetts is a study in doing the right thing for the right reasons and still managing not to do it all correctly. Bilbo and Rogge are welcome relief from the seriousness of Howie and Becca’s relationship, giving the whole play a lighter touch than most dealing with death. Since the entire production takes place in one space, the stage at the Cabot Theater is divided into distinct areas, accomplished quite well by using a bent backdrop and multiple levels of action. The entire production has an intimate feel despite the grandiose surroundings. Rabbit Hole will make you laugh and cry. It is a touching story that is performed and delivered with remarkable sensitivity and realism. We should all hope that we could deal with a tragedy as well as Lindsay-Abaire portrays, despite the dark times that Becca and Howie go through. VS The production runs through November 2 at the Cabot Theater. 414-291-7800 or milwaukeechambertheatre.com.
Oct 22nd, 2008
Triple Espresso
Failure is funny. That’s the basic premise of Triple Espresso: A Highly Caffeinated Comedy, playing in the Marcus Center’s Vogel Hall. Three friends get together and tell the story of how they got their big break — and how they messed it up in spectacularly embarrassing fashion. The show is chock-full of mishaps, misadventures and belly-laughs as Buzz Maxwell, Bobby Bean and Hugh Butternut recreate the story of their slow rise and rapid fall in the wild and woolly world of show business. Hugh Butternut (Paul Somers) anchors the show as a sensitive artist who actually manages to carve out a niche for himself in the performance world — he and his piano are the entertainment at a local coffee house called Triple Espresso. Buzz (Patrick Albanese) and Bobby (played by Marquette University graduate Brian Kelly) turn up at the shop one night, and the three embark upon the tale of their lives in show business as the trio Maxwell, Butternut and Bean. Their various exploits include an appearance on “The Dating Game,” a short-lived television show on Cable Zaire, a dream sequence recreating classic Three Stooges moments, and a shadow puppet show at a teacher’s convention. Somers is delightfully sappy as the saccharine Hugh Butternut. He nails the “sensitive artist” stereotype perfectly as he attempts to hold the trio together during their rise and fall, and looks back on their time together with rose-colored glasses. Brian Kelly is equally wonderful as the boorish, bumbling Bobby Bean. He’s self-centered, a braggart, and deliciously sleazy. Both Somers and Kelly have an innate sense of physical comedy; their slapstick maneuvers are as funny as any well-told joke. Patrick Albanese seems less comfortable with the physical humor of the show, but the dead-pan expression and gruff demeanor of Buzz Maxwell fit him to a tee. He knows just how long to stare blankly at the antics of his two cohorts before turning back to the audience, and the palpable distaste Buzz has for magic emanates from him in comedic waves as he performs magic tricks in his rise to not-quite-fame. Particularly side-splitting are the trio’s short-lived success on a cable network in Zaire, where only 1 in 87,000 people have a television and half of them don’t have electricity. Also the story of how Buzz meets Bobby when Bobby, then an aspiring folk singer, is hired to be the entertainment at a college freshman orientation session. And if you like magic, Buzz’s sleight-of-hand scenes will be particularly appealing as he combines magic, comedy and ill-humor in a seamless performance. Triple Espresso incorporates a modicum of audience participation into the show, and if you get a good audience (like the one on Thursday night) it is a real treat. Additionally, while there are a few references to Milwaukee dropped into the script, at least one of them succeeds in being far funnier than most other such attempts to connect to a local audience. The entire show is high-energy, seriously over-caffeinated fun. Triple Espresso: A […]
Oct 17th, 2008
A portrait is an image of a person
J. Shimon & J. Lindemann, Elise at Work, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 2007. Inkjet pigment print from 8 x 10 transparency, 20 x 16 in. Ed. 2/10 What is wrapped up in a portrait? We see so many each day that we never really stop to think about what the creation of a person’s image encompasses and implies. When you make a portrait, whether it’s a marble bust, a painting, a professional photograph, or a snapshot of a friend, you are capturing the essence of a real, live person: someone that lives and breathes, that works and feels and exists in the world. A portrait is an image of a person. Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon and Lindemann Consider Portraiture brings this most basic and oft-forgotten aspect of portraiture to the forefront of our consciousness. A portrait is an image of a person. Through works of their own and carefully culled works from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s collection of photographs and daguerreotypes, John Shimon and Julie Lindemann (with help from hotshot MAM curator Lisa Hostettler) bring us face to face with all of the ambiguities and inherent contradictions of taking a portrait, an image of a person. While there are many threads of meaning to pluck at, perhaps the central theme is in the exhibition’s title. A portrait is an image, and an image is also the conscious projection of a person. An image is a mask we put on to make ourselves anonymous, to prevent others from knowing us. When faced with a camera, either consciously or unconsciously, we put on a face, a mask, that we think hides us. We smile big, or we glower threateningly, or we smirk, or purse our lips. We stand up straighter, or perhaps slump deeper into a hunch. Regardless of the image we are attempting to project, we are projecting an image, and it is this image the camera captures. James Van Der Zee, Distraction, 1930. Hand-colored gelatin silver print, 9 9/16 x 7 9/16 in. Milwaukee Art Museum Purchase, African American Art Acquisition Fund, Photography by John R. Glembin And yet this mask often reveals as much as it conceals. In “The Hanson Brothers,” for instance, one sibling is slightly in front of the other, and both stare directly into the camera, serious expressions that show how seriously they take this business of sitting for a portrait. This seriousness, their gravitas, is affected, though. It is belied by the playful Hawaiian shirt and Captain Hook mustache of one brother, and by the ironic tilt of an eyebrow and the hint of a smirk at the corner of the other’s mouth. Some of the posturing we do in portraiture is unconscious. We become accustomed to having our likeness taken at young ages, inured to the process by the ritual of school pictures. We learn head up, chin down, eyes on the camera but face tilted slightly away from it. We learn sitting up straight and the acceptable ways to cross our arms and hands and […]
Aug 18th, 2008
Facing modern truths
* The art form of the modern age is photography. In the same way various schools of painting defined ages previous, the modern age is defined by the camera, and using the camera as an art form came of age during the period between the two World Wars. Foto, now at the Milwaukee Art Museum (February 9 – May 4), explores this time period in photography and photojournalism in Central Europe. It’s a sweeping show that covers almost 30 years of photography as it became a popular and accessible form of expression. All manner of subjects are represented: from photo collage to portraiture, landscape to action photography. There are abstract pieces and images that look like they could have been torn from the pages National Geographic. The work is arranged thematically, and roughly chronologically, which gives the impression that the movements which took decades to take hold in the world of paint and canvas swept through photography like a wildfire. What is most striking about the photographs included in Foto is how contemporary they feel when you stand in front of them. This show celebrates the onset of modernity, yes, but that was 60, 70, even 80 years ago from today’s perspective. You’d never know to look at the offerings on display. Photo collages assembled by cutting and pasting, tricks of exposure and development, look as if they could have been created in Photoshop. They evoke the same notion of the absurd and the surreal and create the same sorts of statements that we make digitally today – and they are just as easy to decode, if you know the language. Sometimes the code is so personal to the artist that you can only guess, or create your own language to read the message imprinted on the paper with light and chemicals. Photographers in this period played with the same social statements that photographers today attempt to make. They created the idea of the “modern woman,” strong and capable and pretty to boot, at a time when women’s liberation was still a whisper of a dream. They photographed the downtrodden and made a political call; they photographed the detritus of urban life and turned it into art. They romanticized the past in scenes of pastoral life, strangely interrupted by the onset of modernity: barefoot peasants building a railway, set against sweeping landscapes. Perhaps it is hubris that makes us think we are reaching new horizons in the art of photography with all of our fancy gadgets; perhaps it is only ignorance. Either way, standing in the Milwaukee Art Museum and looking at these faces and places and dreamscapes from the past, one comes face to face with the fact we are not, in truth, the great innovators of the photographic age. We are merely doing what’s been done by those that came first. VS Foto runs at the Milwaukee Art Museum through May 4, 2008. For gallery hours, admission prices and a complete list of supplemental programs in connection with […]
Feb 15th, 2008
An American Portrait
Art and social commentary have always been kissing cousins. In a sense, all art is social commentary, as it reflects artists’ views of the world they inhabit. Whether that reflection is viewed in a straight mirror or distorted like a fun-house mirror is the choice of the artist. In Running the Numbers: An American Portrait, Chris Jordan set out to “look at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics.” Each large image represents a specific statistic in visual format: one depicts fifteen million sheets of office paper, representing five minutes of paper usage in America. The stacks of paper tower and wobble like something out of Dr. Seuss’ nightmares. The artist’s hope is that the visual impact of “seeing” these statistics will make the way we live and the vast, ever-increasing complexity of American society accessible to individuals. His thought is that the enormous numbers in most statistics are incomprehensible. What, exactly, does 3.6 million SUV sales a year look like? Our brains can’t fathom it; the numbers are too large. But a picture created out of all the Denali nameplates sold in a year, arranged in pointillist fashion to recreate the peaceful mountain scene used in Denali commercials, has an impact. Looking at each individual name plate, you are struck by the enormity of that number in a way that simply reading it can’t accomplish. The piece is titled “Denali Denial,” in an extension of that social commentary. If everyone drove such a vehicle, there would be no more peaceful mountain scenes of crisp air and fresh water. My favorite piece of the exhibition is called “Painkillers.” In it, 213,000 Vicodin pills swirl around a center point, a maelstrom of small, white ovoid shapes. It’s like they’re circling the drain, about to go the through the tubes and hit rock bottom. And at the same time, it’s like being high, unable to control what’s going on and letting it all just swirl around you, content to be passive. The number of pills in the composition is equal to the number of emergency room visits every year related to the abuse or misuse of prescription painkillers. Running the Numbers: An American Portrait opened at the UWM Union Art Gallery on November 15, 2007 and will run through December 14, 2007. The gallery’s hours and upcoming events can be found on its website, http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/gallery/.
Nov 28th, 2007
Martin Ramirez at MAM
Martin Ramirez is an enigma. For decades, he was classified as one of the three greatest “outsider” artists of contemporary American art, but next to nothing was known about him. In the last ten years, two dedicated biographers have beaten back the darkness surrounding the facts of Ramirez’s life, but this endeavor has lead to other questions. Ramirez was born in the Jalisco region of Mexico in 1895. In 1925, like many others — then and now — he immigrated to the United States to find work. He worked on the railroad in Northern California for five years, sending money home to his wife and four children in Mexico. In 1930, Ramirez was arrested for erratic public behavior, and ultimately institutionalized, first in Stockton and then Dewitt State Hospital. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and lived the rest of his life in the institution, where he died in 1963. Most of these facts were not known when Ramirez was categorized as an outsider artist in the 1970s. It was thought he might have been born in Mexico, it was thought he might have died in the 1960s. It was widely thought that he was a deaf-mute, which is not accurate. The term “outsider artist” was coined to denote an artist that did not take part in the “art world” — one that did not exhibit, did not invite or assimilate criticism, did not discuss their art. An outsider artist might be thought of as someone who refused or was unable to think of themselves as an artist. However, along with basic biographical details of Martin Ramirez’s life, we have learned in recent years that he did exhibit during his lifetime. A professor at Sacramento State College visited Ramirez often and arranged for his art to be shown, both in solo exhibitions and as part of group shows, on both coasts. Ramirez was critiqued. He had visitors in Dewitt that came to see him to discuss his art. One must wonder if Ramirez did think of himself as an artist, especially towards the end of his life. All he had was the hospital, and his drawings. All historical considerations and controversies aside, though, it cannot be denied that Ramirez had a vision of some sort. He was driven to create, whether or not he was an “artist” in classical terms. His drawings, on bits of paper pieced together with a glue made of potato and his own saliva, in crayon and colored pencils and whatever else the staff of the hospital had lying around, have a decidedly dreamlike quality. Viewing them, one enters a surreal realm of horses and trains and women wearing crowns. Everything is stylized, and it’s unclear how much of that is due to the fact that Ramirez was drawing from memory after being in an institution for 30 years, and how much of that is due to his schizophrenia. My favorite of his general themes are the trains and tunnels. He does variations; there are a few […]
Oct 5th, 2007
