Action Comedy Variety at the Best Place

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Josh Bryan

Once again, for one weekend only Cabaret Milwaukee presents a unique, little vintage variety show. Actors play actors in the style of an old live radio program complete with music, jingles and retro news. Variety shuffles about in and amidst the classy action horror drama serial The Clockwork Man’s Body.

Marcus Beyer and Audwin Short return as a toweringly charismatic man of action and the witty occult expert on the trail of a couple of dangerous artifacts. Short’s clever mastery of the horror fantasy wit written into the script is allowed brief moments to shine in a story with pulpy action appeal. Michelle Paura is emotionally engaging as the wife of a police officer who is mixed-up in the artifacts. Stephen M. Wolterstorff plays the officer with a bit of menace and a bit of humor.

The third and final part of the serial is accompanied to the stage by stylishly classy bits of variety including torch songs beautifully vocalized by Dora Diamond and some clever bits of hosting humor by Evan Maruszewski as emcee Richard Howling. He’s aided in the laughter by comedian Michael Paisano II and Howling singers Michelle White and Christee M. Reince who sing old-timey-sounding ad jingles for the show’s actual sponsors. Humor topples-over into particularly topical territory as Christopher Weis plays a fictional professor expounding on very real theories about eugenics from the beginning of the last century that echo perilously into the present. It’s just the right bit of comedically dramatic fare to balance-out a satisfyingly varied evening’s entertainment at The Best Place Tavern.

Cabaret Milwaukee’s The Clockwork Man’s Body runs through Feb. 18 at the Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery on 901 W. Juneau Ave. For ticket reservations and more, visit facebook.com/cabmke/