Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s cozy online musical for the age of COVID, composer Matt Zembrowski’s In The Cloud, is presented as a Zoom-based “zoirèe.” MOT limits attendance to each show to no more than 18 people. A pre-recorded performance features introduction and post-show talkback that snugly emulates a small-stage experience over the internet that’s hosted with generous warmth and genuine enthusiasm by MOT’s Producing Artistic Director Jill Anna Ponasik.
Zembrowski’s musical plays gracefully through five songs that swiftly roll through Zoom in less than an hour. Rae Paré is crushingly relatable as one of countless others working from home while suffering through a single day in COVID lockdown. In the course of her day, she connects-up with the wisdom of her father (played with paternal charm by Norman Moses) and the disconcerting restlessness of her mother (an endearingly stubborn Marilyn White).
Director/Editor Catie O’Donnell cleverly maximizes the impact of a concept that Zebmrowski has rather deftly tailored for Zoom. The brief musical theater encounter online fits perfectly into the low-res world of internet video. Paré seems to know exactly how much to amplify emotion to bring across her character’s emotional state on Zoom without diving-off into any kind of exaggeration. The format smartly bends the video conference format around an engrossingly human story. Paré might be playing any woman one might expect to see on a Zoom call for work, but Zembrowski and O’Donnell give her a platform that fuses the drama of her life with pleasantly wistful and witty musical storytelling that bring the stage just a little bit closer to home.
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Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s “Zoirèe” production of In the Cloud: Virtual Musical continues through Janurary 31 on Zoom. For more information, visit www.milwaukeeoperatheatre.org.
