2007-05 Vital Source Mag – May 2007
The Baker’s Wife
By Tracy Doyle Opening night of Windfall Theatre’s staging of The Baker’s Wife, I was warmly ushered into the intimate and awkward venue and the best of the remaining seating was pointed out to me. The space, which must double as a meeting room of some sort for the Village Church Arts, was perfectly suited for this cluttered musical fable, music and lyrics by Steven Schwartz and book by Joseph Stein. The play is set in a very small town, where everybody knows everybody and no one can stand anyone but themselves. The everyday grind is thrown off when the town’s sole baker dies and a replacement shows up along with his beautiful and much younger wife. A typical Schwartz musical, the songs are long and boring, never striving for anything other than ordinary and the plot follows suit. The show opened with the sound of a man shooting himself in the foot. The first lines of “Chanson” are in French and I really wish a dialect doctor had been called because I was in pain. (Ba dum ching) But seriously, since this show started at such a low point the only way it had to go was up and it did. The lead roles of the baker and the baker’s wife, played by Larry Birkett and Linda Steiber, were beautifully constructed and developed. Both possess outstanding singing and acting abilities, which in local musical productions is a rare treat. The baker, Aimable, who struggles with the knowledge that his wife will eventually leave him, captures a real innocence and love of life that is all the more poignant she finally does leave him. Genevieve leaves Aimable for the young and charismatic Dominique, charmingly played by Thomas Rosenthal, whose lack of musical genius is made up in energy and comic timing. Highlights of the show include a hysterical Freudian orgy of bread and song, in which long loaves of fresh bread baked by Milwaukee’s own Wild Flour Bakery are acrobatically tossed and gnawed and shared between townspeople. Musically, Genevieve’s touching “Meadowlark” stood out as an honest rendition of a woman’s struggle to figure out just what to do with her life, and reminded me of many a night singing to myself in the privacy of my own home. My favorite part of the whole night coincided with the appearance of Albus Rosenthal as Pompom, who is (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!) the very first real live cat I’ve ever seen on stage, something I’ve been waiting for my entire life. I make an open suggestion for a new byline, Windfall Theatre: Making dreams come true. Props to Windfall for a show full of energy and performances worthy of a much better script. VS Windfall Theatre’s Production of The Baker’s Wife runs now through May 19th at Village Church Arts. For more info, call 414-332-3963 or visit Windfall online at www.windfalltheatre.com.
May 8th, 2007 by Vital Archives
Colin Hay, May 3 @ The Miramar Theatre
By Erin Landry Dropping in at Bay View’s local watering hole, the Palomino, you might have had the pleasure to be served a drink by Colin Hay’s opening act Thursday night: the talented Davey von Bohlen (of Cap’n Jazz, Promise Ring and Vermont fame), a regal name he says that was given to him at birth, which after the first few songs you realize is in direct contrast to his humble disposition. Starting off a set with “songs that preamble” by his own admission, he covered material from his “younger days” as well as songs recorded by his current band, Maritime. His voice warbles then cracks at one point, he misses notes, he stops then starts when he forgets lyrics, he laughs and chides himself, all of which just add to the spontaneous feel of his music. The imperfections and mistakes, instead of being distracting, conveyed the creative process and created an intimate performance. It was less of a concert, more of an impromptu experimental venture, music in its most raw form. And, though no explanation was necessary, after a youthful chirp from his two-year-old at the back of the crowd, he confesses that instead of practicing before the show, he “slacked off” and took his son to the children’s museum. How can you not forgive that? During intermission, the ladies room titters with rumors that Colin Hay’s live performances include his wife who does interpretive dance. Back inside the theatre, the lights dim and a rousing backstage introduction, which sets the tone for the rest of the night, describes Colin as a multi-platinum performer who “believes football is played with a round ball, enjoys sunsets, walks on the beach, and ladies, if you’re wondering, he’s a cancer.” Let’s get this right out of the way; Colin Hay is so much more than a blip on the ‘80s pop icon MTV screen (Men at Work). Since that time he has assembled an enviable body of work that has been touted through television via “Scrubs” and film via the indie hit “Garden State.” He is an artist that withstands the changing times, providing a new body of work of evocative and bittersweet songs and contemplations on life. In any case, the night’s performance is less pop concert more all-inclusive variety show (in the best possible sense) with song, poetry, comedy, storytelling and, true to rumor, an array of vocals, kazoo playing and interpretive dance by his gorgeous wife, Cecilia. The first hour was a sprinkling of newer songs overshadowed mostly by Mr. Hay talking about youth, life lessons and other musings including an admission that, while he recently wrote a song about the infamous Bob Dylan (his opening song: What Would Bob Do?), he’s never actually met the man in person. But instead of working on an album or song with Dylan, he says how he’d prefer to work on a car together, talk about alternators and transmissions…or maybe walk around a Costco in search for toilet paper, all the while […]
May 7th, 2007 by Vital Archives
Aqualung, May 3 @ The Pabst
Photo by CJ Foeckler/Pabst Theater It’s difficult to write a music review these days without drawing an inevitable comparison to a predecessor or contemporary. The case in evidence: Matt Hales’ Aqualung, which took the stage Thursday night as part of the Milwaukee Pabst Theater’s fairly priced series of talented but mostly underground and underrated national acts. What’s important about mentioning this last part has to due with some intimacy issues in the venue, which will come up again later. Matt Hales appears to be in his early 20s, which is probably important in light of the recent new flood of Britpop artists who have given us boatloads of sensitive rock in the past few years. If we follow a family tree, then Blur begat Verve and Suede, who begat Oasis and Radiohead, who begat Coldplay and Travis, which gave us (and drawing the wannabe label) Aqualung…and Keane, James Blunt, Snow Patrol, the Feeling, and…well, just insert your own VH1 You Oughta Know find – where Hales got his first American-side break. But the 35-year-old piano rock singer/songwriter is a bit older than most on the tree, and did not find success until landing a successful tune for the new Volkswagen Beetle in 2002. It’s hard to quantify a sound when in the middle of it. When synthpop was at its height, did music fans say, “Oh, that Erasure. They’re just a Depeche Mode wannabe.” At the time, there was room for everybody. Shouldn’t it be fair to just claim Aqualung as an overall part of a new movement deeply entrenched in mood and angst? Hales does not make it easy. To sit back in the demure and refined darkness of the Pabst and enjoy his obvious and highly-trained musical talent, there has to be a suspension of disbelief. This would mean in musical terms that the audience member would forgive the lapse in organic flow and just be entertained. But just close your eyes as the four-piece band plays, and suddenly you’re listening to the sound of Ben Folds. Then in another song, Chris Martin. Then another, Damon Albarn. Another, Thom Yorke. The music eloquently meanders like this as you try and guess the influence, like a gourmand attempting to guess the subtle flavors as they emerge in a complex dish. When Aqualung launches into “Pressure Suit,” off his newest studio album Memory Man, suddenly you are hearing Jeff Tweedy and Wilco circa A Ghost is Born. Hales goes so far as to admit a personal infatuation with the band during one of his cheeky bantering with the audience. From there, Hales (now seated at a baby grand instead of standing up front at a Yamaha keyboard) and company attempt to cover Wilco’s “Muzzle of Bees.” “Attempt” is used as the operative word here since it seems like something the guys rehearsed on the tour bus ride into town. Also, the lowdown desperation of Tweedy’s version is missing and replaced with something more harmonious. To his credit, Hales voice often […]
May 4th, 2007 by Brian Jacobson
A little bit indie, a little bit classical
Photo by Lenny Gilmore They may have a cute name, cute merch and cute alternating boy/girl vocals, but the nine-month-old Kid, You’ll Move Mountains aren’t aiming to charm, though frontman Jim Hanke does admit the five-piece has had “great luck fall in [their] lap.” This luxury has allowed a somewhat lax approach to promotion and recording – but don’t think the band lacks a smidge of motivation or enthusiasm. “Our ages and personal situations require us to be pretty focused,” says drummer Nate Lanthrum, with a subtle air of experience. From 2001 to 2005, Lanthrum and his brother, bassist Andrew, toured six months a year with Chicago’s Troubled Hubble, as Hanke sang for El Oso across the northerly state line. Ultimately, it was Hubble’s showcase for Latest Flame Records in Hanke’s hometown of Milwaukee that crossed the musicians’ paths. After being “blown away” by their performance and “overall humility,” Hanke and Lanthrum’s bands formed a “family-like union,” booking and networking together throughout the Midwest. As both projects wound down from current to former, Hanke and the Lanthrums, still eager to “bring something new and creative to [their] respective local scenes,” appended guitarist Corey Wills and classically trained pianist Nina Jones – whose background contributes a more traditional perspective – to complete the group. “Nina is a phenomenal musician,” says Lanthrum, in awe of Jones’s comprehension of “notes and keys” instead of his more-familiar “deep, guttural sounds and sweeping arm gestures.” Nevertheless, he’s learning, and is convinced that with her dynamic, KYMM has “a whole new range of places to go.” In August of 2006, the band was in the downtown WMSE studio playing a set for the Local/Live program. “We weren’t sure that having a radio show as our documented first recording was the best idea, but the sound was perfect for what we were looking for,” Lanthrum says of the convenient, minimal production. Hanke adds, “It was a good opportunity to record our first six songs together for nothing.” Further boosting the grassroots appeal of the EP, a Polaroid photo taken the day of purchase satisfies both the need for album art and a “slightly different” execution. At live shows, the instant camera is omnipresent and fans can opt to be photographed for their own CD jacket. “The only downside,” says Hanke, is “when people refuse the picture because they think they look pudgy or they have red eye. We have a stack of those.” Clearly, photo discards should be incorporated into the packaging of KYMM’s upcoming glossy debut, which the band is currently in the process of home recording, somewhere between Milwaukee and Geneva, Illinois. “We definitely want to get an official record out there, but we are also anxious to take our time and tool around with different ideas and make the entire process a fun adventure,” says Hanke. In the meantime, Hanke intends to “play as many shows as possible” as Lanthrum scratches his itch to return to the road. KYMM has already opened for a […]
May 2nd, 2007 by Amber Herzog
You, Mii and D&D
Sunday, April 1, 2007 6:30 a.m. In the years following my retirement from professional bass fishing, I’ve accomplished a great deal: I’ve survived Catholic grade school, gotten laid, graduated from college and even managed to watch all seven Police Academy movies in one sitting. Until recently, however, I had never once gotten up at the butt-crack of dawn in order to wait in a Toys ‘R’ Us parking lot. Joined by my long-suffering girlfriend, I’m among a dozen other foolhardy souls braving the morning freeze in hopes of scoring the impossibly hard-to-find Nintendo Wii. Though this video game-fueled madness certainly represents a troubling descent into pasty-faced, fan-boy territory, it’s merely the topper to a weekend already filled with role-playing games, minor sci-fi celebrities and a puzzling lecture on ghost hunting. Get out your 20-sided dice, grandma, ‘cause this column’s rolling with a +8 Dexterity… 15 Hours Earlier… It’s a perfectly lovely Saturday afternoon and I’m spending it listening to a handful of 19-year-olds discuss their favorite Super Nintendo games: “Did you know that Breath of Fire III was the first SNES game to utilize an Active Time Battle system?” …I actually did know that. After following a sizzling hot tip, I’ve found myself – again, with my patient-to-a-fault girlfriend – at the 2007 Concinnity Sci-Fi and Gaming Convention held at the MSOE Campus Center. Like the once-Milwaukee-based Gen Con (the largest sci-fi/gaming/still-living-with-your-parents convention in the country), Concinnity offers up RPG demos, video game tournaments and bored-looking vendors hawking used fantasy books and black light dragon posters. Of course, everything here is on a much smaller scale, a fact that bears out in the lineup of special guests: instead of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax and a Billy Dee Williams meet-and-greet, Concinnity has, um…an anime voice actress and some guy who used to write Tomb Raider novels. It’s this micro-sized quality that gives the “con” it’s wonky charm, however, along with the small and endearingly awkward group of attendees that populate it. Fittingly, the place feels like a rec room sent from heaven (or hell, if you’re averse to these sorts of things): a few clutches of seasoned gamers roll dice in a faraway corner, a group of younger Evil Dead aficionados mull over arcane rule books in the back and, near the entrance, a pleasant-enough fellow recruits for a zombie LARP game (Live Action Role Playing). My girlfriend and I stroll through the room cautiously; though we’re enjoying ourselves, most of the attendees seem to steer clear of us (the requisite “guy-dressed-up-as-a-Jedi” seems especially aloof). It’s a strange feeling I can only equate to my experiences with gay bars: no matter how hard you try to blend in, no matter how kinda-sorta gay you may be, the pros will always sniff you out. Following the aforementioned Super Nintendo discussion (dubbed “AwesomSNES” on the schedule), as well as a look at an Alien-themed board game, we grab our seats for the highly anticipated lecture on ghost hunting. The star of […]
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
A Shot in the Dark
The Boulevard Ensemble closes its 21st anniversary season with a murder-mystery comedy by Harry Kurnitz, adapted from an original French work by Marecl Archard. It’s a fun, well-balanced comedy adeptly directed by the Boulevard’s Mark Bucher. Bucher has assembled a surprisingly good cast for the final show of a memorable 21st season of theatre in Bay View. I believe it was Alistair Cooke who said that a shot in the dark doesn’t take much time. Well, the Boulevard has certainly taken its time in getting to this one, ending its latest season with a production that feels deftly aimed. The talented Joe Fransee holds together the center of the play as Magistrate Paul Sevigne, who is investigating the death of a Spaniard (Cesar Gamino). The action of the play takes place in Sevigne’s office as he interviews people who might’ve been involved in the murder and is aided in this work by Morestan – his chief clerk played by the ample Al Dobyns. Fransee’s charisma goes a long way here, but it’s the timing between Fransee and Dobyns that really pulls together the center of the play. All of the usual mucking about with exposition that goes on in a mystery is made all the more palatable by the interaction of Fransee and Dobyns. In places, they almost seem to be fencing with the dialogue, which isn’t done enough in local theatre. Fransee has a tight, crisp precision to the delivery of his lines that woks well with Dobyns overall affability. The chief suspect in the murder of the Spaniard is his lover: parlor maid Yvette Lantenay, played by Anne Miller. Lantenay was found at the scene of the crime holding the gun that killed the victim just moments after his death. The Spaniard’s last words even implicated her as the murderer. In spite of all the evidence against her, it is clear that Lantenay did not commit the crime and a good portion of the play rests on the audience’s acceptance of this. We must not think for a second that Lantenay is the murderer; otherwise all of Sevigne’s work to find the true murderer would seem remarkably tedious. Here, the casting of Anne Miller is crucial. To her credit, Miller has a sweet, innocent stage presence; it would be very difficult to imagine Miller as a killer. This is staggeringly important, as the same could not be said of every actress in town. Bucher’s choice in casting Miller does wonders for the production. Other notable performances here include Liz Mistelle as Sevigne’s beautiful wife and Jennifer LaPorte as a wealthy lady of high society. The decision to split the play’s three acts with two intermissions would seem a bit indulgent, but so much of the play relies on plot points revealed solely in the dialogue that two intermissions are welcome. Each intermission allows the audience some distance from the plot to turn it around and possibly figure out who the actual killer is. Bucher and company keep the […]
May 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Tartuffe
The con is on once more. Moliere’s classic tale of deception through feigned piety climbs the stage again in a glossy, big-budget Milwaukee Rep production. Just months after the Skylight Opera closed its production of the musical adaptation of Moliere’s comedy, The Rep opens a more traditional interpretation of the story. Director Joseph Hanreddy has opted for a highly kinetic slapstick approach that engages the audience without any real attempt to find any deeper insight into Moliere’s masterpiece. Longtime Rep Resident Acting Company member Lee Ernst plays the title role of a religious hypocrite who schemes his way into the household of a wealthy man in the interest of taking him for as much as he can get. Ernst is explosively over the top. He’s taken the role to the edge of physical comedy and beyond. Rarely has he been so animate on stage. It’s the type of performance that bigger audiences adore, but it leaves something to be desired from jaded theatre critics. Moliere’s script leaves an impressive amount of room for plumbing the subtle depths of human manipulation with the title character. Ernst’s performance here possesses a manic disregard for subtlety. It may be fun to watch, but it’s a guilty pleasure. The decision to do Tartuffe as somewhat highbrow slapstick doesn’t drown ALL the subtleties of the play. Marianne, daughter of Tartuffe’s victim, is played here with an insightful flourish by Emily Trask. When Orgon (played here by Peter Silbert) offers Tartufe her hand in marriage, it complicates things considerably for Marianne, whose heart belongs to another man. In so many productions this role gets played simply as the comedy of over-emotional youth being hopelessly dramatic about young love. Trask’s performance goes way beyond this. Her rendering of the character has a playful kind of sympathy for it. Trask seems to have brilliant instincts for subtle physical comedy. At one point, she’s face down on the floor center stage in emotional grief. All is silent. She raises her head ever so slightly and lets it fall. The audience laughs. The production lingers on this moment for just a bit longer. Dorine (a sharp Elizabeth Ledo) cautiously says a few more things to her. Marianne ever-so-delicately pounds her head into the floor a couple more times. It’s never overdone. Trask’s timing is perfect. We feel just a bit more for Marianne than less accomplished productions have managed in the past. Most of the rest of the people in the cast follow their usual strengths in roles that they fall into quite nicely. Rose Pickering carries her considerable stage presence to this production in the role of Orgon’s respected mother who has nothing but respect for Tartuffe. Deborah Staples is charming as Orgon’s wife Elmire, who is forced into the unenviable position of having to attempt to snare Tartuffe to reveal his hypocrisy. Jonathan Gillard Daly is shrewd as the honest, respectable Cleante. This is a thoroughly professional cast putting in a thoroughly professional production, but it’s moments like […]
May 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Wrong is wrong
Dear Readers, Freedom to say what you want, smoke where you want and carry a gun in your jacket pocket are all under loud discussion at the moment. The question of how much restraint is appropriate in our local schools should also be near the top of the list, though public outcry on this matter is grossly under-reported for reasons that should be obvious to all but the most insulated or ignorant of us. Also not in the headlines is proposed state legislation that would prohibit municipalities from requiring revenue-sharing with cable companies to fund public access television programming. Passage of the bill, co-proposed by our own Jeff Plale, a Progressive in name only, would radically reduce public access programming, the last bastion of equal time broadcasting. With so many axes to grind and fortuitous access to the the Fourth Estate, I’m weighing in this month on several issues in list form. I apologize in advance for the inelegance of the format, but I am limited in word count exactly as anyone else who writes for VITAL. 1. The statewide smoking ban. Guess what? It’s happening. It’s time to stop whining and meet up with modern thinking. To say that a person has the right to fill another person’s space with life-threatening toxins is like saying, to paraphrase smoker Angie Miller, quoted in Ted Bobrow’s cover story this month, that because you choose to hit yourself in the head with a hammer, you should be allowed to hit other people in the head with a hammer. Wrong is wrong. Smoke outside. 2. Handcuffs in Milwaukee Public Schools. Teachers are being assaulted in their classrooms at alarming rates. School safety officers sometimes have to physically restrain students for up to an hour while they wait for police to arrive. I don’t necessarily disagree that these adults need more effective tools to deal with their daily reality. My problem is with the discourse. To pretend this solves any problem is foolhardy, if not downright disingenuous. It’s a band-aid on a massive head wound. We wouldn’t be in this position if the mental and physical well-being of so many of our MPS students wasn’t in such jeopardy. School Board Director Charlene Hardin suggested recently on WNOV AM 860 that what students, teachers and staff need in the schools is parental presence, a whole other can of worms with causes rooted far outside MPS. It needs to be possible. Wrong is wrong. Peel the onion, don’t pretend to patch the missing roof. 3. The right to bear arms. At the time of the framing of the Constitution, the right to bear arms was tantamount to the right to survive. With no organized police force and high consumption of wild game as a food source, a gun in every home was necessary. And I bet they were rarely concealed. But in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy, some pundits have suggested that if concealed weapons had been allowed on campus, Cho Seung-Hui might […]
May 1st, 2007 by Jon Anne Willow
The Nerd
An unwanted houseguest can make for good comedy so long as it isn’t your house. Put such a houseguest onstage and, ideally, no one has to suffer. It’s comedy for everybody because no one actually has to live with the person. Such is the case with the late Larry Shue’s smash hit The Nerd. The Milwaukee Rep returns once more to the play it debuted over two decades ago in a production directed by original Nerd star James Pickering. Looking into Geoffrey M. Curley’s set, one sees the ‘70s slowly bleeding out into the ‘80s – a distinctly awkward time for popular aesthetics. It’s the house of Willum Cubbert, a successful architect who is nevertheless living in Terre Haute, Indiana. Cibbuert is a single guy with friends who include Tansy McGinnis, a soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend leaving for the east coast, played by Melinda Pfundstein and a theatre critic named Axel Hammond played by Torrey Hanson. (The Hammond thing throws me a little. Precisely how big is the theatre scene in Terra Haute, Indiana in 1979? Do they really need a full-time professional theatre critic?) Shue’s dialogue, always predictably witty, gradually sketches out the casual conflicts of the play until the subject of the title character finally surfaces. As it turns out, the man who saved Cubbert’s life in Viet Nam is in town and just might be stopping by for a visit. He’s a guy from Wisconsin who works in quality control at a chalk factory. Hs name is Rick Steadman and he’s played here by accomplished local comic actor Gerard Neugent. Rick is abrasively difficult to be around, which makes things difficult for Cubbert as he is in negotiations with a client named Warnock Waldgrove (Chris Tarjan). Waldgrove and his wife Clelia (Laura Gordon) are visiting Cubbert to discuss the hotel he is designing for them. As a whole, the production is solid. Pacing and delivery are every bit as impeccable as one would expect from the Rep. The script my be a classic, but it’s not particularly provocative comedy. The play’s comedy relies pretty heavily on the weird. At one particular high point, Steadman leads the cast in a nearly indecipherable game of “Shoes and Socks.” Nugent is great in the role, carrying it off with a nasally whine that is both annoying and endearing. Shue hands some of the best lines in the play to the critic Axel Hammond. If you’re going to be handing most of the best comic lines in a play to a single actor at The Rep, you’d better be handing them to Torrey Hanson. Hanson is brilliant here, throwing wry lines out from the corners of the script. This is a comedy that doesn’t take itself seriously and Hammond is the vice it uses to mock itself. Laura Gordon also puts in a notable performance here as Waldgrove’s librarian wife. A meek woman with some strange habits, Clelia would be all too easy to play as a comic prop. Gordon’s performance feels natural enough […]
May 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Bridging the gap
Photo by Kat Jacobs Pieter Godfrey and Ken Leinbach have more in common than first glance betrays. Pieter, in corduroy slacks and vintage frames, looks like someone who would refurbish warehouses and watch silent horror movies on the weekends. Ken is more of a jeans and hiking boots kind of guy; he looks like he’d be most comfortable helping kids identify unusual plant species out on the trails. Pieter does like silent films, and Ken does teach little kids about nature’s awesome rarities. But Pieter and Ken – a restorations and reclamations professional and the executive director of the Urban Ecology Center, respectively – have forged an unlikely marriage of offbeat equals in the service of a common goal. Together, Pieter and Ken are building a parking lot. And it may just be the noblest parking lot ever built. A brief history of the Milwaukee River Corridor The 5.5 mile stretch of the Milwaukee River that flows through the city proper was the most vibrant corridor of the city at the turn of the century. Dense with boathouses, swim clubs and biergartens, it was a year-round recreational Shangri-La: pleasure cruises in the summer, ice-skating and curling in the winter. But heavy traffic and rapid development in an industrial city led to pollution and, without a comprehensive sewage system, the river gradually became contaminated. Several large dams built to staunch floods collected runoff and waste and choked off surrounding ecosystems. The beaches and swim clubs were closed, the arch tunnels and stone bridges abandoned and the river corridor fell into ruin. Starting in the 1970s, the city began to consolidate its sewer strategies, a multi-million dollar undertaking several decades in span. In 1986, Pieter Godfrey bought and refurbished his first warehouse when the river was still smelly and the surrounding park was still littered with the detritus of crime and drugs. Then in 1989, the Department of Natural Resources discovered a rare species of fish that spurred widespread discussion of the river’s devastated ecological condition. In 1990, the North Avenue dam – the largest on the river – was removed. In 1991, the Urban Ecology Center was founded. Today, where there were once NO fish, there are at least 33 different species. The Urban Ecology Center features a green roof garden, the largest solar panel array in the state of Wisconsin and furnishings crafted from Pieter Godfrey’s salvaged wood. The UEC sees 30,000 students from 30 area schools a year and a total of more than 50,000 people. In the city of Milwaukee alone, there are 794 acres of green space along this recovering river “that hardly anybody knows is there,” according to Ken. Pieter and Ken may be looking at this verdant stretch from different angles, but what they see is essentially the same. “This is a tremendous asset for the city,” says Pieter, “and the reason it’s there is because nobody wanted it – because it was abused for so long.” Parking: the great equalizer The Park Place project […]
May 1st, 2007 by Amy Elliott
Who I Was Yesterday
Moct Bar sits in an area just south of downtown that is rapidly being carved into an upscale, trendy haunt for the young, wealthy and reasonably hip. Amidst shiny new condos and expensive restaurants, nestled in a space that apparently is a converted machine shop, Kurt Hartwig’s theatre outfit Bad Soviet Habits is staging a trippy little show involving stilts, puppets, the number 93 and quite a few other things. Who I Was Yesterday is a dreamlike neo-mythic fairy tale that touches on quite a few things without much regard for depth or coherence. To be fair to Writer/Director Kurt Hartwig, Who I Was Yesterday is a very ambitious project. The story goes a little something like this – twin humanoid sons of a Manticore (face of a woman, body of a lion, tail of a scorpion) are being raised by their towering humanoid grandparents. Their fate as offspring of an evil monster is to be hunted by it until they reach the age of 18. Apparently Manticores are quite insistent about eating their children. It’s a mythic coming of age story fitting somewhere between the age of fairy tales and the contemporary world. A story such as this could be produced for the stage in a variety of different ways. Hartwig’s vision as realized here is incredibly complex. The twins are whimsically presented as Andy North wearing one mask and holding another, occasionally switching them for effect, which is simple enough but there’s a lot more going on here. The twins’ grandparents are played by Amie Segal and Kurt Hartwig himself. On stilts. In makeup. Susan Currie plays Mother Manticore by wearing a huge, bulky metal mask complete with glowing eyes. While this probably takes a great deal of focus and concentration, it may be the single greatest waste of acting talent to make it to the local stage this season. Currie is a remarkable actress; she can do a lot more than serve as support for a metal mask onstage. Aside from the main characters, there are a lot of puppets. Some of them are effective. Some of them aren’t. And some of them meet with mixed results. The bedbugs that haunt the twins, for instance, make a clever rattling, scratching sound as their thin metal bodies scrape across the bar’s stage, but they don’t offer much of a visual impact. For the most part, all we’re seeing of them is the puppeteer pushing them across the floor. It looks a bit silly unless you make a conscious effort to focus on the puppets. One of the more effective puppets in the show is The Marionette, a character which acts as sort of a narrator who sometimes interacts with the twins. A puppet sits high above a curtain that covers the puppeteer. The apparatus holding the curtain and the puppet are harnessed to the puppeteer (Tom Thoreson) who is free to walk around the stage. It’s a lot more effective than it sounds, even if the puppet itself […]
May 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Up in smoke
When Michael Bloomberg became mayor of New York following 9/11, there was concern that the terrorist attack would harm the city’s economy. Bloomberg and the New York City Council, with help from the state and federal governments, enacted a wide variety of tax incentives and other programs designed to support businesses and save jobs. But Mayor Bloomberg also pursued another policy that some regarded as anti-business. Bloomberg was relentless in his support of a ban on smoking in all public areas and workplaces including restaurants and bars. This was just plain common sense, Bloomberg, a Republican, said. The evidence was overwhelming that secondhand smoke is a public health hazard and one of government’s key functions was protecting the health of its citizens. Despite the objections of some business owners who feared customers would stop frequenting restaurants and bars if they could no longer smoke, the policy passed and the impact on the hospitality industry has been negligible. Few businesses closed, net revenue grew and the policy has been replicated in many other places. The entire state of New York soon followed the city’s lead and other states including California, Connecticut and Georgia and cities ranging from Chicago, Madison and Appleton have gone smoke-free. Ireland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Spain and New Zealand are among the countries that have enacted smoke-free workplace legislation nationwide. The war at home If we shift our lens to Milwaukee we see a different picture. Early in the administration of Mayor Tom Barrett, his newly appointed health commissioner, Bevan Baker, was quoted in an article on the proliferation of smoking bans in support of them. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of saying what he believed before checking with his boss. Barrett distanced himself from Baker’s position and dropped the hot potato into the lap of the Common Council. The Mayor stated that he would sign a bill banning smoking in workplaces if the council passed it, but he felt a ban probably should include an exemption for bars and taverns, where people expect to be able to smoke. When Alderman Joe Davis introduced a comprehensive workplace smoking ban for Milwaukee, he urged his colleagues to support it as a public health imperative. The proposal was assigned to the council’s Public Safety Committee, chaired by Ald. Bob Donovan, a smoker and outspoken opponent of restrictions on tobacco use. The hearing attracted hundreds of people who spoke passionately on both sides. It got off to a contentious start when Donovan restricted Davis to the same three-minute limit placed on all members of the public who wished to speak. Davis objected that the customary practice was to permit a bill’s sponsor to speak at greater length, but Donovan stuck to his guns and Davis left angrily. Health advocates, students, people with asthma and other chronic conditions were among the bill’s supporters while bar and tavern owners and their customers argued passage would drive customers to establishments in West Allis, Cudahy, South Milwaukee and other communities. Donovan’s committee eventually tabled the […]
May 1st, 2007 by Ted Bobrow
