All-City Arts Festival
The Shepherd Express’ Performing Arts Week highlights live theater, dance and music performances in and around the city of Milwaukee. This week, we look at productions of Judy Moody & Stink, Celebration and Haydn’s oratorio, The Creation, as well as a dance concert from Lake Arts Project.
THEATER
Judy Moody & Stink
Subtitled The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure Hunt, First Stage presents this world premiere by playwright Allison Gregory of an adventure play based on the very popular Judy Moody children’s book series. The plot finds the third-grader title character struggling with a class project; it doesn’t get any easier when her brother (Stink) interferes. Meanwhile, the Moody family sets off on a weekend getaway, and it is there, on Artichoke Island, where the real adventure begins.
“Judy Moody is a compelling character and a great fit for the stage,” Gregory says. “She activates the world around her. From her dogged determination to her scrappy resourcefulness, she engages other characters, and us, to root for her.” Director Jeff Frank is happy to present the world premiere of Gregory’s play: “Millions of children around the world find Judy a funny, spunky girl they can easily relate to.” Meanwhile, Judy Moody author Megan McDonald is truly looking forward to seeing her creation in a theatrical venue: “Judy Moody has been to Antarctica, the Freedom Trail, college … she’s gone around the world in eight-and-a-half days; but never before has she been on stage!” Until now. (John Jahn)
May 4-June 3 at the Todd Wehr Theater, 929 N. Water St. For tickets, call 414-273-7206 or visit firststage.org.
Celebration
“At [Celebration’s] core is the struggle between youth and old age, innocence and corruption, love and ambition and poverty and wealth—as Angel tries to decide if she would be better served by her feelings for Orphan or Rich’s willingness to fulfill her every dream,” wrote Adam Hetrick in Playbill regarding composer Harvey Schmidt and lyricist-author Tom Jones’ Celebration, an avant-garde musical tale first presented on Broadway in 1969. At its core is an adult exploration of the often stark contrasts between age groups and motivations. It’s a fairly intimate show, employing a smallish instrumental ensemble instead of a full orchestra and fairly bare staging elements—with masks and costumes doing the visual heavy lifting in most productions.
It wasn’t a huge hit for the Schmidt and Jones team, but Celebration has seen many revivals across the country in the decades since its release, and its subject matter is surely relevant. Windfall Theatre’s production includes several Milwaukee-area theater regulars, including David Flores, Josh Perkins and Shayne Steliga; Carol Zippel directs, and Paula Foley Tillen provides musical direction. The company’s Saturday, May 12, show is billed “A Happening,” with hours of additional entertainment, beverages, appetizers and an exhibit by Erick Ledesma prior to the show. (John Jahn)
May 3-19 at Village Church Arts, 130 E. Juneau Ave. For tickets, call 414-332-3963 or visit windfalltheatre.com.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
The Creation
Austrian composer Joseph Haydn’s 1798 oratorio, Die Schöpfung (The Creation) is widely regarded as his masterpiece—which is saying a great deal for a composer who wrote dozens of operas, highly regarded piano sonatas and string quartets and 104 symphonies. With a libretto supplied by Gottfried van Swieten based heavily upon the creation story in the Bible’s Genesis chapter, Haydn’s three-part Creation evokes archangels, Adam and Eve via vocal soloists, full orchestra and chorus. Other sources Van Swieten used were Psalms and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Creation was, for Haydn, an enormous hit, reminding many listeners of his era of the earlier Baroque era master, George Frideric Handel, and the latter’s epic oratorio, The Messiah (though it was Handel’s Israel in Egypt that was Haydn’s immediate inspiration).
The Kettle Moraine Symphony, Moraine Chorus, soprano Erica Breitbarth, tenor Cameron Smith and bass-baritone Aidan Smerud have chosen scenic and so very apropos Holy Hill for the concert venue. KMS Music Director Richard Hynson leads the collected musical forces. (John Jahn)
Sunday, May 6, at the Holy Hill National Shrine of Mary, 1525 Carmel Road,
Hubertus. For tickets, call 262-334-3469 or visit kmsymphony.org/concerts-tickets.htm.
MORE TO DO
Gold Test: Eyes
Butoh dancer Sara Zalek describes the darkly fascinating post-World War II Japanese dance theater form as “a practice which seeks to embrace the shadow self … to discover our relationship to nature, the cosmos, other sentient beings and our shamanistic selves.” On Saturday, May 5, Zalek will conduct a workshop in Butoh dancing at 4 p.m. and this concert at 8 p.m. at the Jazz Gallery, 926 E. Center St. “It’s a series of improvisations on reflection, repair and cyborgs,” Zalek said in an email, “I explore relationships between metal and body, iteration and instance, presence and absence. There will be sound and movement created which aim to question our very existence and the meaning of our lives together in the moment of creation.” Milwaukee’s Cooperative Performance will also present a performance art piece, all courtesy of impresario Peter Woods’ FTAM Productions Experimental Education Series. (John Schneider)
The Four Loves
“Our theme, The Four Loves, is based on C.S. Lewis’ book of the same name,” Chant Claire states about their next choral concert, “in which he investigates the nature of love from both a Christian and philosophical perspective.” The “four” of the title is a reference to that number of different Greek words for the concept; that is, Storge (empathy), Philia (friendship), Agape (self-sacrifice) and Eros (erotic, passionate love). Saturday, May 5 at Divine Mercy Parish, 800 Marquette Ave., South Milwaukee. For general admission tickets (which are available at the door), a $10 donation is suggested.
Animal Tales: Aesop’s Fables
Sunset Playhouse’s Children’s Theater Series, billed by the company as “casual and fun introductions to the performing arts” aimed at children of all ages, presents Animal Tales: Aesop’s Fables (geared toward the youngest side of the youth spectrum), which brings to the stage some of the most-beloved fables from the great Greek storyteller. The audience follows various animals as they go through their youthful lives learning about life, friendship and self-confidence along the way. May 9-12 at Sunset Playhouse, 800 Elm Grove Road, Elm Grove. For tickets, call 262-782-4430 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com.
Columbo: Prescription Murder
Alchemist Theatre doesn’t often produce “nostalgic” shows, but William Link and Richard L. Levinson’s Columbo: Prescription Murder (1968) couldn’t be passed up. This is a stage adaptation of the late Peter Falk’s legendary detective undertaking one of the long-running TV show’s best episodes. It involves a psychiatrist who enlists a patient he is having an affair with to help him kill his wife, but whose perfect alibi may come apart under the investigative prowess of one seemingly befuddled LAPD lieutenant. May 3-19 at The Alchemist Theatre, 2569 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. For tickets, visit brownpapertickets.com and search event “3196910.”
All-City Arts Festival
Somewhat more than 8,000 Milwaukee Public Schools children will be participating in a free three-day event in collaboration with Milwaukee World Festival, Inc., and the Summerfest Foundation. The kids’ artistic talents will be on full display along the Milwaukee lakefront (near the south end of Henry Maier Festival Park, 200 N. Harbor Drive). The festival showcases more than 180 performances from many artistic genres (vocal, instrumental, dance, theater, culinary and more) from 125 MPS schools, alumni and partner groups. This event is free and open to the public, and free parking will also be available for attendees in designated Summerfest parking lots. May 9-11. For more information, visit mkeallcityarts.org.
