Cabaret MKE Brings ‘Howling Radio’ Back to the Astor Hotel

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Cabaret MKE - Pick Your Poison

Maybe it was spurred by Garrison Keillor, but “old-time radio” shows gained new audiences in recent decades among people whose great-grandparents were among the original listeners to those 1930s broadcasts. The concept works well as live theater. Cabaret MKE has been exploring this format since 2015, staging an ongoing series of Great Depression-era shows through the format of “The Howling Radio Hour.”

This month, Cabaret MKE brings “Howling Radio’ back to its old setting in the bar of the Astor Hotel, a historic place that probably witnessed its share of rum-running and other shenanigans during 1932—the year when the Cabaret’s light-hearted dramas are usually set. The new episode, called “Pick Your Poison,” will be performed October 22, 23, 29, 30 and November 4, 5. Cabaret MKE can be contacted at cabaretMKE@gmail.com 

Click here to purchase tickets at Brown Paper Tickets.

I asked Cabaret MKE’s producer-director Josh Bryan about the project.

Tell me about the inception of Cabaret MKE and how the concept has evolved. Were you determined to make the Milwaukee history the center of the story from the get-go? Do you still have original cast members from the first season?

The origin story of Cabaret MKE?  Oddly enough Cabaret MKE was inspired by vaudeville. We liked how vaudeville shows would bring together a group of performers from such wildly different genres. A typical vaudeville show is little more than a glorified talent show. We imagined that it could be really cool if such a mixed bag of entertainers could be coerced into a linear story. 

At the time, the first writer of Cabaret MKE, Jackie Benka, and I had a little radio show we called “Onion Breath Radio Theatre” on Riverwest Radio. We felt the radio show format for a theatre provided a platform to include more performers than just actors. Cabaret MKE is certainly more a theater company, than a vaudeville show to be sure, however, we have cultivated an attitude that encourages casting performers in our plays that don't necessarily come from a theater background.

The magic that happens because of that is a unique sort of respect and curiosity between cast members from disparate genres.  We do our best to mix new people into our ranks every show. If you’ve been coming to Cabaret MKE for more than a season, you know  lot of our performers keep coming back. As a director, it’s wildly reassuring when the people you love working with come back to do it again. This upcoming show particularly special—Jackie Benka has returned to act in the show!

Working local history into our stories is definitely a mainstay of our productions. Some shows more than others, we've even dipped into Lovecraftian sci-fi in past shows.  

Have all of your shows been set in 1932? Why that year?

Honestly, the prohibition era has been a bit of a crutch. Can you blame us? Between the speakeasys, bootleggers, socialism and worker strikes, it’s a pretty plush era to work in. To be fair, the radio show half of our program tends to hover around World War II. 

Sneak preview: for our next season we’ll be moving the radio play into the 1800s to tell the tale of some actual pirates that used to operate out of the Great Lakes and we’ll bump the radio show into the ‘60s because some really important social change was happening then that we would like to explore for our audience.

Is there an improv element to your shows or are they tightly composed?

Very much scripted and rehearsed, fully costumed and choreographed.  

Describe what the audience will see when they come to Pick Your Poison.

From the comfy seats at the cabaret tables in the bar of the historic Astor Hotel, the audience’s attention will be directed around the room by pools of theater light fading up and down wherever the action is taking place. Behind the vintage microphones is where host Richard Howling MC’s the evening, Mrs. Millie advises the ladies of the audience with her helpful hints for the happy housewife, the Howling Jinglers sing their little ditties, Cameron Webb serenades the show in and out, and live fiddle and piano by Allen Russel and Maggie Dahlberg lay down the evenings score.

If they can keep it together and not let their personal lives hijack the show, we might just have a civilized evening but that would be a first. The floor in the middle of the room, around which the cabaret tables are arranged, is the stage where the “radio play” is performed. The story this time follows [Milwaukee Mayor] Daniel Hoan’s personal detective, Jack Walker, as he tries to figure out why imbibers of illicit booze seem to be having violent hallucinations.  

Raising the ticket price from $30 to $40 was difficult but the truth is with COVD limiting the number of people we can seat, we really had no choice given the size of our cast (21 actors, musicians, singers and comedians) that we have to provide for.  Our discount option is what’s cool. We have gotten rid of our student and artist discounts and replaced them with a 50% off discount for individual ticket buyers who show their WI state Foodshare, Quest or WIC card at the door. Theater is food for the mind and everyone deserves to eat.