Milwaukee’s LGBTs certainly can’t complain about a dearth of relevant performing arts programming this season. Many take place in our venerable mainstream venues with the generous of support Cream City Foundation’s Will Radler, Valentine and Sutton Place funds. How we are depicted is another story entirely. But, suffice it to say, the only thing worse than being portrayed on stage is not being portrayed on stage.
Speaking of Oscar Wilde, the Milwaukee Ballet just performed Michael Pink’s interpretation of our gay bard’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Even today, the tale of double lives, of hedonism and Aestheticism, remains a mirror of some gay lives. Another study of conflict, Starlings by Milwaukee playwright Ben Parman, delivered a comedic view of a gay man (played by the author himself) negotiating his Christian faith.
Currently running at the Stackner Cabaret is Angelo Parra’s The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith. Lesbian or bi depending on whom you ask, singer Bessie Smith performed largely for black audiences when contemporaries like Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway made their names at whites-only venues like New York’s famous Cotton Club. One reviewer mentioned Smith’s “dalliances with women” as if they were exceptions to her otherwise straight life. Perhaps it was the other way around.
Anyway, The Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Out-N-About LGBT Night, Thursday, March 10, features a performance of this show. In an unfortunate coincidence, it takes place the very same night as the Skylight Music Theatre’s Be OUT LGBT event for Regina Taylor’s Crowns: A Gospel Musical, another piece focusing on powerful women in music. But, while it’s charming to be fought over with both houses vying for the LGBT audience, a little communication would avoid a future double booking. The Skylight might have held its event during the run of Powder Her Face. The music may have been unfamiliar but the story certainly was, recalling A Streetcar Named Desire in its portrayal of a loveless woman and her unnatural acts of desperation. And, speaking of mirrors, for some of us, the familiarity may go beyond that.
Censored on Final Approach, by the locally renowned Phylis Ravel, opens Friday, April 1 at Renaissance Theaterworks. It’s set in the ranks of the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots (WASP), WW2’s daring young females in their flying machines. The twist is the male discomfort with can-do gals trespassing into their macho military world. Of course, drama ensues.
Theatrical Tendencies, Milwaukee’s LGBTQ-focused theater, just held auditions for Terrence McNally’s Some Men. Scheduled to open Friday, April 29, the play presents gay history set in various eras from the 1920s to the present. It interconnects Stonewall, the AIDS crisis and marriage equality, tracing generations of gay men, their survival and their relationships.
Meanwhile, the Florentine Opera Company’s upcoming production, Three Decembers by Jake Heggie, tells the story of an aging Broadway diva. A subplot involves her son whose lover is dying of AIDS.
Also, the UW-Milwaukee Annual Drag Show takes place on Saturday, Feb. 27 at the Milwaukee Theatre in the heart of our throbbing Downtown. It has become the city’s annual celebration of drag “utter slayage” and should not be missed.
