Milwaukee Chamber Theatre continues its season with Jonathan Gillard Daly's The Daly News, a musical inspired by a family newsletter that Daly's grandfather sent to his sons in the military during World War II. Artistic Director C. Michael Wright stages a pleasant, cozy version of Daly's work in the Broadway Theatre Center's Studio Theatre.
The most impressive aspect of The Daly News is not that the music, created with composers Gregg Coffin and Larry Delinger, nicely blends into a well-told story. What truly stands out is how The Daly News covers novel aspects of World War II that don't often make it to stage or screen. Two of the Daly brothers were far from the front lines, which would ordinarily make it difficult to infuse drama into a production about military service. But Jonathan Gillard Daly still manages to craft intense emotions from their unique struggles. Perhaps the most memorable song is a pleasantly lazy number about serving in Alamogordo, N.M., during the dawn of the nuclear age. The sophisticated song blends the unending restlessness of service life far from the main action with the perplexing feeling of seeing government scientists wandering through a tiny desert town in the Southwest. The moments and moods evoked in The Daly News add a fresh perspective to the familiar story of family life during World War II.
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre's production of The Daly News runs through Dec. 14.
