The beginning of August may seem like an odd time to be doing a year in review, but August first marks the beginning of the first month of the new theatre season. As near as I can make out, there are two different seasons that make up a local theatre year:
The Theatre Season: Begins in early August with the first shows of the new season to open up at the Boulevard and Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and ends in late May as all companies open finish opening their final productions of the season. This gives way to …
The Summer Season: Begins in June with the first new shows of the American Players Theatre in Spring Green. There’s a lot of theatre going on in other ends of the state in laces like Madison and Door County. Closer to home, some suburban theatre groups (Sunset Playhouse and Acacia) extend their standard season though the Summer Season while DIY groups like Pink Banana and Insurgent are at their most active.
To this end, I’ve run down the shortlist of some of my favorite bits of the past year:
AUGUST
The year began with Milwaukee Chamber’s single most memorable production of the season as Dan Mooney, Michael Herold and Tom Klubertanz starred as filmmakers working on the script to Gone With The Wind in the memorable comedy Moonlight and Magnolias. This month also found one of the year’s two most tolerable touring Broadway musicals (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) passing through town. In out of the way stages, Insurgent Theatre’s Rex Winsome staged one night only reading of his Ulysses’ Crewmen epic at Darling Hall and Spiral Theatre invited audiences into the basement of the Brumder mansion for a production of Extremities that utilized an authentic fireplace. Elizabeth M. Keefe’s performance there was pretty powerful . . . the night I went she summoned forth enough anger to accidentally shatter the tip of an antique-looking fireplace poker . . .
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SEPTEMBER
The Milwaukee Rep opened the first of a few memorable productions in its studio theatre last September with a particularly engrossing production of Albee’s Seascape featuring Linda Stephens and James Pickering as an old married couple and Mark Corkins and Christina Panfillio as a charming pair of lizards. Windfall Theatre also opened its season with a captivating production of Mamet’s Cryptogram with vividly emotional performances by Larry Brikett, Carol Zippel and Avi Borouchoff. Next Act opened a powerful tribute to the late Paul Robeson starring Paul A. Mabon Sr. as the influential singer/athlete/political figure. It must’ve been a very successful run, as Mabon Sr. retrns to the role in a series of concerts with Next Act next February.
OCTOBER
In Tandem opened a sparkling series of one-acts by playwright Rich Orloff this past October. Orloff’s Ha! was the first production in their new space at the 10th Street Theatre, featuring Kevin Rich in a particularly sympathetic role of Godthe man who created Earth as part of a graduate degree. Clever stuff. Sunset Playhouse director Mark Salentine starred as a novelist in what may have been an ill-fated production of Misery, which nevertheless featured a solid performance by Salentine and a particularly ingenious partially rotating set by resident scenic designer J. Michael Desper. That weekend als saw the opening of the Rep’s Doubt which made for an interesting airing of openingsDoubt AND Misery . . .
NOVEMBER
As usual, November was a huge month for openings, but this month had a few more than usual. I hit a personal record for attendance, seeing some 15 shows over the course of the month. Off The Wall staged a modern version of Hamlet with a cleverly dark performance by Jeremy Welter in the title role and Liz Mistele as Ophelia in the first in a series of jaw-droppingky good performances from the actress this season. Bunny Gumbo opened what hopefully is its first of many non-Combat Theatre productions in a series of short pieces by James Fletcher entitled Losers. The Skylight Opera opened by far the classiest holidy show of the season with its extravagant staging of White Christmas.
DECEMBER
Normally, there isn’t much opening in December what with so many companies opening their holiday shows the previous month, but December of this past year held some pleasant surprises. The Rep lived-up to its name with rotating main stage productions of The Norman Conquests featuring Gerard Neugent in the male lead. Shortly after one of the heaviest snows of a record-breaking winter for snow, The Players Guild at UWM featured Daniel Koester and Michael Cotey as a pair of hit men in what proved to be a really impressive, little-know production of Pinter’s moody drama The Dumbwaiter. Local sketch comedy group The Show rounded out the year by opening one of the first performances at the newly-developed Alchemist Theatre.
JANUARY
Midway through the first month of the calendar year, both Bunny Gumbo and Alamo Basement/Insurgent hosted shorts shows on the same weekend. Gumbo’s 24 hour shorts Combat Theatre program proceeded as usual just north of downtown as Alamo/Insurgent staged Berserk!!an evening of plays by a group of playwrights that were all written in ten minutes. There was a wild free-form dynamic in the Alamo/Insurgent show that would not be unwelcome returning to a stage somewhere in Milwaukee again this year. The Boulevard Theatre opened one of its more memorable shows of the year in January with the 1978 Ralph Pape comedy Goodnight, Gracie. There wasn’t much of plot to the show, but that hardly seemed to matter with a cast including such emerging talent Ericka Wade, Rachel Lau and Tom Dillon. The mix of comic talent made for one of the best comedies of the year.
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