Photo by Paul Ruffolo
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Love Stories takes a decidedly meta approach to presenting three one-acts by three celebrated playwrights. Real-life married couple Tami Workentin and James Pickering play the female and male leads in each two-person script, but Love Stories ’ audience is also privy to the rehearsal process. Between runs of each piece, we listen to Pickering chat with the acting interns about meeting Workentin through a Next Act Theatre production in 2011 and their first date at Maxie’s.
Constructed in this manner under Paula Suozzi’s direction, the production has an immediate and intimate ethos. The dynamics between veteran performers and young artists create an informative window into theatrical craft development, and the leads’ chemistry on and off stage is charming.
The plays themselves all deal with partnership in its various stages. George Bernard Shaw’s Village Wooing casts the performers as a prematurely stodgy travel guidebook writer and a lower-class telephone operator striving to get him to marry her. Workentin’s vocal work here is particularly impressive; she has honed the upper-crust affectations of a telephone operator whose true background comes through in slips of the tongue and lack of “reserve.”
In Bertolt Brecht’s The Jewish Wife , Workentin shines as a woman preparing to leave her hometown because her Judaism endangers her husband’s career. Set on the eve of World War II, this stirring piece deals with the human cost of rampant anti-Semitism as well as the cowardice and capitulation it bred among otherwise decent folk. The script is about half monologue—a challenging format for any performer—but Workentin does an excellent job making it personal and dynamic. When Pickering enters, full of paternalistic platitudes and denial, the dynamic shifts abruptly from Judith’s unfettered outpouring of pain to the tragedy that “We cannot look each other in the eye in our last moments together.”
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Love Stories ends on a humorous, slightly surreal note. In the frame story, Pickering and Workentin have been dismissed for the night; the other artists go home, but the actors decide to “run lines” for Dorothy Parker’s Here We Are . This piece follows a bride and groom on the way to their honeymoon. The dialogue is repetitive and almost singsong until Pickering slows down on his last statement, bringing the sincerity back to the “line through.” This segment might have benefited from such treatment throughout, although the choice to race through yields some humorous results—a flood of words coming out of the terrifying enormity of commitment.
Structurally, Love Stories is quite a unique offering and well worth seeing. The meta message of this meta production is the simple, timeless “Love conquers all.”
Through Dec. 20 at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. For tickets, call 414-291-7800 or visit milwaukeechambertheatre.com.
