Theater
Songs for a New World
“The characters presented throughout the show find themselves in extremely relatable circumstances, and we as viewers watch as they find themselves on the cusp of making important decisions that could affect the rest of their lives,” says All In Productions associate artistic director Tim Backes about his company’s next production. “This is a show that is renowned for its outstanding music, but its real power is in the genuine portrayals of truly human experiences and decisions that people around the world have to face on a daily basis.”
Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World is a collection of musical stories centered on the theme of entering a “new world,” or, as Brown says, “It’s about one moment; it’s about hitting the wall and having to make a choice, or take a stand, or turn around and go back.” The “songs” of the title, then, are individual stories of the ordinary human beings that populate the show. The “new world” is that of their current situation—the choices they have to face. Four actors each playing two different characters perform this entirely sung-through musical. No kings or queens, generals or artists, just “normal” people all—hence the relatability, the universality, of the lives and situations Songs explicates. (John Jahn)
April 19-28 at Redeemer Lutheran Church, 631 N. 19th St. For tickets, call 414-732-0347 or visit allin-mke.com/upcoming.
A Piece of My Heart
Cooperative Performance presents a new staging by director Abigail Stein of a celebrated 1991 play by Shirley Lauro about women who served overseas in the Vietnam War. “We watch six women enlist, experience trauma in the warzone and then try to re-acclimate themselves back to American life,” Stein said. “I fell in love with this play at age 16 when I realized there were women vets with traumatic stories. It’s important to tell them.” Stein’s collaborators for the production include the Milwaukee Women’s Post 448 where “women vets of modern wars can find a haven for an array of support,” Stein said.
Lauro’s play has been named by the Vietnam Vets of America “the most enduring play in the nation on Vietnam.” There have been more than 2,000 productions worldwide. With her seven actors and six-member production team, Stein has “taken the script down to its core, which is the stories,” she said.
Cooperative Performance is indeed a co-op. Projects are pitched and voted on by members with final selection by an elected board of directors. “We typically produce new and non-traditional work,” says founding member and current board chair Don Russell, “but our mission also speaks to providing artists a forum to experiment, to inspire deeper thought into issues concerning our communities. This script speaks to the human cost of war, so relevant to our community which has been in a constant state of war for 17 years and no end in sight.” (John Schneider)
Performances are April 20-29 at the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center, 750 N. Lincoln Memorial Drive. Visit cooperativeperformance.org for more information or to purchase tickets.
Music
“In Memoriam”
Wisconsin Lutheran College’s Schwan Concert Hall is the site for Philomusica String Quartet’s 10th season performing jewels of the classical string repertory. The spring concert of this well-honed, well-established quartet (Jeanyi Kim, Alexander Mandl, Nathan Hackett and Adrien Zitoun) is titled “In Memoriam,” but for a rather obscure reason. It stems from the program’s inclusion of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 3 in E-Flat Minor, Op. 30. Composed in 1876, it honors the then-recent death of Czech violinist and composer Ferdinand Laub. Laub was professor of violin at the Moscow Conservatory, and a man Tchaikovsky called “the best violinist of our time.” It took the highly self-critical Russian composer a while to fully warm up to his own work, but when it was played by some friends of his in a private get-together, he remarked: “At first I didn’t much like the finale, but now I see that it is quite good.”
Also on the program is Claude Debussy’s only work in this genre, his 1893 String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10. Finally, there’s the much less familiar Summa by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, a work that New York Times music critic Bernard Holland described as “gently rocked muted harmonic simplicities back and forth” upon its premiere (by the Kronos Quartet) in 1992. (John Jahn)
Monday, April 23, at Wisconsin Lutheran College’s Schwan Concert Hall, 8815 W. Wisconsin Ave. For tickets, visit wlc.edu/2018-04-philomusica.
More To Do
Don’t Dress for Dinner
This is something of a rarity in modern theater: a sequel to an existing modern play. It’s set five years after the character Bernard declared his love for Jacqueline in Boeing Boeing, and now he’s planning a romantic weekend with his Parisian mistress while Jacqueline (now his wife) is away. Bernard gets a friend to accompany him on his trip to provide himself with a convincing alibi. What could possibly go wrong? April 19-May 6 at Sunset Playhouse’s Furlan Auditorium, 700 Wall St., Elm Grove. For tickets, call 262-782-4430 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com/shows/dont-dress-dinner.
Tartuffe
Tartuffe was first performed in 1664 and is one of the most famous and enduring theatrical comedies by Molière; its characters (Tartuffe, Elmire and Orgon) are considered among the greatest roles in all classical theater. Trevor Rees directs a production of the Molière masterpiece promising all the opulent dress and stifling mannerisms of the era of France’s King Louis XIV in which it’s set. The rich poetry of its author and intricate fashion of 17th-century French bourgeoisie are spotlighted in this comedy of manners. April 20-29 in the Black Box Theater at Cardinal Stritch University’s Joan Steele Stein Center for Communication Studies/Fine Arts Building, 6801 N. Yates Road. For tickets, call 414-410-4171 or visit stritch.edu/events/theater-performance-tartuffe.
Treasures in Heaven
Christian-based Morning Star Productions presents a comedy that is (loosely) based on W. Somerset Maugham’s last play, Sheppy (given that Maugham was both gay and an atheist, it will be interesting, indeed, to see what Morning Star got out of his work). When a South Side Milwaukee barber wins $1 million in an Irish Sweepstakes and then plans to essentially give it all away, his family is mortified, and a psychiatrist tries to have him committed because, well, obviously he must suffer from some sort of serious mental defect! April 20-29 at Eastbrook Church, 5385 N. Green Bay Ave. For tickets, call 414-228-5220 ext. 119 or visit morningstarproductions.org/index.html.
‘Behind the Curtain: Risk’
Each year, Milwaukee Ballet’s dedicated, world-class dancers produce a benefit performance of their own for the Milwaukee Dancers’ Fund, a nonprofit that helps them with grants for education and training in new fields when they must retire, still young, from ballet dancing. This highly personal show of classical and contemporary works chosen by the performers will take place Saturday, April 21 at 7:30 p.m. in Milwaukee Ballet’s cozy rehearsal studio at 504 W. National Ave. A reception with the dancers follows. Tickets are $40 in advance, $45 at the door. It’s a great evening and a worthy cause. Visit mkedancerfund.org.
‘An Evening with Rodgers and Hammerstein’
For the last of their three musical revue concerts known as the “Signature Spotlight Concert Series,” the Racine Theatre Guild offers up highlights from the voluminous entries in the great American songbook that were penned by the multi-award-winning team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. I’m not being obsequious here in my praise; among Rodgers and Hammerstein’s numerous accolades were 34 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, two Grammys and a Pulitzer Prize! Sunday, April 22, at the Racine Theatre Guild, 2519 Northwestern Ave. For tickets, call 262-633-4218 or visit racinetheatre.org/production/evening-rodgers-hammerstein.
