DANCE
Springdances 2018: joyUS Momentum
The UWM Peck School of the Arts Dance Department ends each school year with a concert of works by professional choreographers and student dancers. Up-to-the-minute thinking in form and subject are characteristic, as are variety and polish. This year’s program includes an excerpt from “joyUS justUS”—think “joyous justice”—by activist choreographer Ana Maria Alvarez of Contra-Tiempo Urban Latin Dance Theater in Los Angeles. It includes a spoken segment, the “Miranda Rights of Happiness,” composed by the dancers as an alternative to those read by one’s arresting officer. “It ends in a celebration in Latin dance, and African and Caribbean dance, of everybody’s right to live in this body and this world, rights that everybody should have but not everybody has,” according to rehearsal director Christal Wagner.
Milwaukee choreographer Dawn Springer’s premiere for seven women is “about momentum and on-going-ness; it’s kinetic and physically driving,” according to the concert’s artistic director Dani Kuepper. Kym McDaniel, best known for her film/dance collaborations, will premiere a minimalist work that Kuepper describes as “very emphatic and cathartic in the way it moves from activity to activity over time; you really see the details and how they shift.” Kuepper’s own premiere for 24 dancers riffs on strategic planning methods. Titled “SMART (and dumb) Goals,” she said, “it’s about all the thoughts that go through your head about whether you can achieve something or should even try. To me, that’s relevant to every human being but especially young adults in college.” (John Schneider)
Performances are on April 26-29, 7:30pm, on the fifth floor of Kenilworth Square East, 1925 E. Kenilworth Place. For tickets, call 414-229-4308 or visit uwm.edu/arts/box-office/tickets/.
THEATER
The Fantasticks
The Fantasticks is a musical with an allegorical story about two neighboring fathers who pretend to be at odds in an effort to get their respective children to fall in love with each other. This odd matchmaking effort provides for a charming and heart-warming story told through the buoyant music of composer Harvey Schmidt (1929-2018) and the whimsical words of lyricist and librettist Tom Jones (b. 1928). Schmidt and Jones created The Fantasticks in 1960; it would go on to become the world’s longest-running musical—opening Off-Broadway that year and in continuous production for more than four decades (17,162 total performances) thereafter. With its glorious ballad “Try to Remember,” relatable story and intimate scale, its success is both well deserved and easily understood.
In Tandem’s production of The Fantasticks has a cast of eight, featuring Andrew Varela as the story’s narrator, El Gallo; Keegan Siebken and Susan Wiedmeyer as the plotted-for children; and Matt Daniels and Chris Flieller as their scheming respective fathers. Their first evening’s preview performance is a pay-what-you-can affair; the following opening night performance features a special reception after the show; and the May 3 performance includes a post-show talkback with the director and actors. (John Jahn)
April 26-May 20 at The Tenth Street Theatre, 628 N. 10th St. For tickets, call 414-271-1371 or visit intandemtheatre.org/events/fantasticks.
Illustration by Melissa Lee Johnson
Wait Until Dark
In Frederick Knott’s deadly cat-and-mouse-game thriller Wait Until Dark, a sinister conman and his cohorts in crime search for a valuable doll. Having finally traced its location to a Greenwich Village apartment, they set about a way to con the woman of the house, Susy Hendrix, who’s blind and alone, into surrendering the mysterious toy.
Wait Until Dark was first performed (on Broadway) in 1966 with Lee Remick starring as Susy. It has been revived frequently and performed all over the world by hundreds of theater companies in the ensuing decades. It certainly caught Hollywood’s attention quickly enough: It was made into a feature film in 1967, the same year the play was published. As a film, it achieved even wider attention and acclaim. It was directed by Terence Young, produced by Mel Ferrer, and it starred Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Hepburn was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award and Zimbalist Jr. was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe. Kelly Goeller directs Waukesha Civic Theatre’s current production of this classic thriller. (John Jahn)
April 27-May 13 at the Margaret Brate Bryant Civic Theatre Building, 264 W. Main St., Waukesha. For tickets, call 262-547-0708 or visit waukeshacivictheatre.org.
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
The musical comedy A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (with book and lyrics by Robert L. Freedman and music and lyrics by Steven Lutvak) is not a decades-old play but a quite new one, having debuted in Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre but five years ago—where it ran through early 2016. This debut Broadway production proved highly successful not only in terms of audience reception but critical evaluation as well: It won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. New York-based touring companies have taken the popular show on the road since 2015, and one such company now makes its stop in Milwaukee’s Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.
It’s 1909 Great Britain, where we find Lord Montague (“Monty”) D’Ysquith Navarro, Ninth Earl of Highhurst, in a jail cell. Here, he commences to write his memoirs; high time, he thinks, because he may have a date with the gallows. His story—and that, therefore, of this musical—traces the previous few years of his life and his reaching, perhaps, the final chapter thereof. As the Marcus Center’s Molly Sommerhalder says, “A Gentleman’s Guide tells the uproarious story of Monty Navarro, a distant heir to a family fortune who sets out to jump the line of succession by eliminating the eight pesky relatives, all played by one fearless man, who stand in his way.” Blake Price portrays Monty, and James Taylor Odom is that aforementioned “fearless man” who plays the imperiled D’Ysquith family members. (John Jahn)
May 1-6 at Uihlein Hall, 929 N. Water St. For tickets, call 414-273-7206 or visit marcuscenter.org.
MORE TO DO
Good Landers’ Spring Show
“Our spring show is unique in that this is the first time that we have done an all-female show,” remarks Amy Westrup, a member of the Good Lander’s long-form improv troupe about their upcoming comedy show. All the regulars will be there—Westrup, Michelle Gilliam, Kari Houghtaling, Crysta Jarczynski, Kelsey Moses and Selena Milewski. They’ll be joined by special guests stand-up comedian Marisa Lange and improv artists Kristin Altoff and Christine Capriolo.
As with all Good Landers’ shows, a local charity will benefit from their antics on stage; in this case, it’s The Benedict Center, which provides community-based substance abuse and mental health treatment, education and other support to women who find themselves involved with the criminal justice system. “We try very hard to apply the principle of having each other’s backs to our daily lives, and this extends to our community,” Westrup explains. ‘When the needs of the Benedict Center were brought to our attention, we didn’t hesitate; we just said yes and moved forward with the idea.”
Saturday, April 28, from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at ComedySportz, 420 E. First St. Tickets will be available at the door ($10, or $5 with a donation of an appropriate item to the Benedict Center: feminine hygiene items, hair care products, baby care supplies, first aid items, etc.).
Gruesome Playground Injuries
If the title sounds familiar, it’s with good reason: The Constructivists have brought back Rajiv Joseph’s funny and heartbreaking play due to popular demand. In fact, its original actors (Solana Ramírez-García and Rob Schreiner) and production team members are returning for this new two-weekend run. April 26-May 5 at The Underground Collaborative, 161 W. Wisconsin Ave., in the lower level of the Shops of Grand Avenue. For tickets, call 414-858-6874 or visit theconstructivists.org.
Anything Goes
Cole Porter’s 1934 madcap musical (we’d call it a “rom-com” these days) Anything Goes boasts not just the hit title song but also legendary gems such as “You’re the Top” and “I Get a Kick Out of You.” Unusual for a musical play, it all takes place aboard an ocean liner (a dominant form of international travel back then), the fictional S.S. American. The Falls Patio Players promise “music, dance and laughs” in this “hilarious shipboard romp.” April 27-May 6 at the Falls Patio Players Theatre, N88 W16750 Garfield Drive, Menomonee Falls. For tickets, call 262-255-8372 or visit fallspatioplayers.com.
No Wake
“We’re delighted to offer [Wisconsin playwright] Erica Berman the opportunity to continue to develop [her] excellent play with a second reading,” says Milwaukee Chamber Theatre associate artistic director Marcella Kearns about this event—a staged reading of Berman’s No Wake. This reading will be directed by Kayleigh Kitzman and read and acted (to a certain degree) by Rachael Zientek and James Pickering. No Wake has been developed as part of the Wisconsin Wrights Festival; Ms. Berman serves as the director of education and community engagement at the Children’s Theater of Madison. Monday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. in the Skylight Bar & Bistro of the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. Tickets are pay-what-you-can at the door; seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
9 to 5: The Musical
9 to 5 is known to most as a hit crossover blue-collar anthem for country western singer-songwriter Dolly Parton and as a comical 1980 feature film in which she starred. But, along with Parton’s music and lyrics add book (spoken lines) by Patricia Resnick and you have a stage musical version of 9 to 5 that premiered in Los Angeles in 2008. It moved to Broadway the following year and went on to claim 15 Drama Desk Award and four Tony Award nominations. The UW-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts presents this light-hearted but also meaningful tale of female office workers at odds with their despicable boss. May 2-6 at the Mainstage Theatre, UWM Theatre Building, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd. For tickets, call 414-229-4308 or visit uwm.edu/arts/box-office.
Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan
No, this isn’t a Bob Dylan show or a tribute concert of his greatest hits. Rather more fascinatingly, however, it’s an appearance by vocalist Lindsay Kesselman in a performance of a Grammy Award-winning reexamination of Dylan’s words by composer John Corigliano. It abjures the music and instead treats Dylan’s song lyrics as standalone poems—thereby creating a way for listeners to hear famous texts like that to “Blowin’ in the Wind” with new ears. Friday, April 27, at 7:30 p.m. at the Helene Zelazo Center for the Performing Arts, 2419 E. Kenwood Blvd. For tickets, call 414-229-4308 or visit uwm.edu/arts/box-office.
Hollywoodland: Songs from the Silver Screen
Vocalists Christina Bianco, Jim Caruso and Billy Stritch join forces to present classy renditions of classic songs from Hollywood’s golden age of movie musicals (1930s-’50s). Their collaboration to do honor to such songs as “Pennies from Heaven,” “Let’s Misbehave” and “Over the Rainbow” has appeared in New York City, causing a New York Times critic to praise their Hollywoodland show as “all-singing, all-dancing show business heaven.” May 2-3 at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Performing Arts, 19805 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield. For tickets, call 262-781-9520 or visit ticketing.wilson-center.com.
The Princess and the Pea
This Milwaukee Youth Theatre production of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 literary fairytale love story The Princess and the Pea has been transported to the modern world. The story of a young prince travelling the world in search of his princess soul mate, but who finds her through the most serendipitous of circumstances right back where he started from remains the same. It’s a time-honored tale of looking for love in all the wrong places, only to find it right where we are. Brittany Curran will direct this MYT production. May 9-11 at the Milwaukee Youth Theatre in the Lincoln Center of the Arts, 820 E. Knapp St. For tickets, call 414-390-3900 or visit brownpapertickets.com/event/3045445.
