Milwaukee Shakespeare's Vivid Cymbeline

There may not be many memorable stanzas in Cymbeline, but Milwaukee Shakespeare’s production of the Bard's ornate romance takes place in the space of pure poetry. Josh Schmidt’s and Victoria Delorio’s sound design saturates every scene in atmosphere and punctuates almost every significant gesture (and offers a beautiful setting to the song, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”). Dominated by a huge sheet of shimmery gold fabric (even Christo would be envious), Misha Kachman’s set is as elemental as the story. A huge tree branch spreads across the ceiling of the space, suggestive of the plays convoluted plot and complicated family tree. The walls are a textured, saturated red, filled with shadowy figures that split the difference between Surrealism a la Joan Miro and cave paintings. A shock of arrows pincushions one wall, another opens onto a heavenly space of blazing light (for the entrance of the gods, of course). The playing space is lovely, dark and deep, and it has to be to make room the cast in the almost comically exhausting final resolution scene. It packs more coincidences and “surprises” than a year’s worth of General Hospital.

Without any conceptual heavy-handedness, director Jeffrey Sichel captures the essence of Shakespeare’s play in all its fairy-tale sprawl. The story includes familiar elements: lost siblings, damsels in hiding, manufactured deflowerings, poisons that aren’t really poisons, not to mention buffoonish royals and noble savages. Other than Posthumous, the play’s heart and soul, the characters are only So Deep. But Sichel’s cast finds lots of comic, fiendish and romantic possibilities. Todd Denning, acting in a wheelchair due to a broken ankle late in rehearsals, finds the oily heart in the Italian Iachimo, who incites Posthumous’s jealousy by pretending to seduce his wife, Imogen. And Sarah Sokolovic plays her with a pure, unaffected grace. One could wish for a little more sturm und drang from Wayne T. Carr, but his Posthumous is filled with that sweet nobility we expect in Shakespeare’s romantic heroes.

And besides, too much emoting (unless it is from the hilarious drama queen, Cloten, played deliciously by Joe Foust) would detract too much from the one-two- (three-four-five-) punch of the story. It’s no small feat that this Cymbeline spins its tale with clarity and a surfeit of rich images, inventing a magical world in which trust and truth can be fragile and ephemeral, but can be joyfully recovered through the keen vision of a generous heart.

Another Opening Another Wet, Slushy Snowstorm

With another bevy of theater openings on tap, the Mother of All Easter snowstorms bears down on us. It's bad enough that the Milwaukee Rep was forced to schedule their opening of Endgame on Easter Sunday (the production schedule there is merciless), now they have to deal with a weekend snowstorm as well. Milwaukee Shakespeare opens its Cymbeline on Saturday, right when the soggy wet stuff will be tapering off.

Including two shows which opened last weekend at the Rep and the Skylight, there's plenty to choose from. See excerpts from my reviews below.

The Rep's Night Is a Child

Some plays are vexing intellectual puzzles, posing questions that can be pondered long after the lights go down. Others are nearly pure expressions of heart. Charles Randolph-Wright’s The Night Is a Child is a play of the heart, but one that deals with such a toweringly ominous event that it lands deep in the soul.


Read the entire review at Culture Club.

Skylight's Charming Souvenir

As the 1940s anti-diva Florence Foster Jenkins, Linda Stephens is a little bit Margaret Dumont, a little bit James Lipton, and a whole lot of fun. Jenkins was a New York socialite who became notorious for her recitals—orgies of bad intonation and excess emotion. Stephen Temperley’s charming, often hilarious play, Souvenir, playing at the Skylight until March 30, wants us to see the spirit behind her determination to “live inside the music.”
When Stephens channels Jenkins, singing Rigoletto (Gilda’s aria “Cara Nome”), she’s a sight to behold. She sings with her shoulders, with her jaw, and her hips. and her forearms, flinging them forward as if the notes need a little extra push to get to the audience. Holding one long uneasy note, her body palpitates like a skein of limp fettuccini, eventually deflating as she moves down a long slow glissando that sounds a little like a Cessna coming in to land.

Read the entire review at Culture Club.

Film Watch

The doors are now shuttered on the Milwaukee County Historical Society, which will be a major location for Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Local actor John Kishline has snared a part in the movie. Others? Let us know.

Charles Randolph-Wright, whose The Night Is a Child opened Friday at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater (stay tuned for a review), was in town for the premiere with the producer for his next movie, which Randolph-Wright is thinking of setting and shooting in Milwaukee. Since the film concerns a man in a mid-life crisis, one of their stops this weekend was, of course, Harley-Davidson.

While I'm not sure how much footage we'll get, Fox Television has just picked up a drama series pitched by Paul Attanasio, producer of House, screenwriter of Quiz Show, and brother of Brewer owner Mark. According to Variety, Courtroom K will be set in Milwaukee, and center on a judge, prosecutor and public defender. Let's just hope that Milwaukee isn't going to become the new Baltimore, city of choice for brutal and hopeless police/crime dramas like Homicide and The Wire.

The Return of the Redressed

I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds good. I did take a little break, catching up from California time and finishing a large piece about UPAF which will appear in the May Milwaukee Magazine. Several reviews will follow. And look for some changes in Milwaukee Arts in the near future.

Steinbeck for the 21st Century

The joys of the UWM Theater Department’s production of Of Mice and Men are in the lobby as well as onstage. An extensive and thorough display of original documents and photographs from the 1930s spans the outside wall of the theater. Pamphlets from political and social organizations, rallying cries, posters and photos give a palpable sense of the world in which John Steinbeck’s story is set.
Director Rebecca Holderness’s interest in Of Mice and Men as a piece of social history goes beyond the lobby, though.

Read the complete review at Milwaukee Magazine's Culture Club.

Transcendent Storytelling at Next Act

It’s strange to imagine a play in which none of the characters talk to each other, but only to themselves, or perhaps directly to us—that anonymous collection of humanity we call The Audience. Brian Friel’s mesmerizing Faith Healer mines the tradition of Irish storytelling to seemingly do the impossible--create a piece of drama with rich characters, strong narrative and devastating conflict that is composed entirely of four monologues.
Next Act Theater’s production, directed by Edward Morgan, captures the myriad richness of Friel’s script: its lilting, glorious language, its resuscitative humor, and its slow, devastating journey into the dark realities of the human soul. And its music.

Read the complete review at Milwaukee Magazine's Culture Club.

Drive-By Truckers at Pabst Theater

I was feeling kind of ragged on Thursday night, and wasn't looking forward to a night of "southern rock" at the Pabst. But I was pleasantly surprised.


Like a wayward teen taking over his grandmama’s front parlor for a night of whiskeyed debauchery, the Drive-By Truckers rocked the Pabst Theatre Thursday night with a two-and-a-half-hour set that threatened to peel the paint right off the gilded, curlicued walls.

Read the rest of my review in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.