Intense Moments in Skylight’s ‘From Here to Eternity’

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Photo Courtesy of Skylight Music Theatre

'From Here to Eternity'

'From Here to Eternity'

There’s a clean brutality to military life onstage in From Here to Eternity. Projections onstage across the cast suggests a tarnished, old newsreel from the early 1940s, but the proceedings are clean and orderly as US servicemen in Hawaii go about their lives in the lead-up to the devastating bombing of Pearl Harbor.  The drama offers an unflinching look at the nature of life as a solider on the brink of wartime.  

As the story opens, Jonathan Wainwright casts a calmly authoritative presence over the stage as an officer investigating a troubling incident in G Company in Hawaii. Ian Ward is respectably heroic as a soldier who refuses to give-in to the demands of his superior officers. Director Brett Smock does an admirable job of launching the stage right into the center of the drama circulating around a U.S. military installation in the Pacific at the dawn of the 1940s.  Tim Rice and Stuart Brayson cleverly texture the story with engaging music that articulates well with the drama. 

The hard rock sound backing-up much of the plot feels at odds with the World War II era of the story. A darkened, shadowy take on the rich pop music tapestry of the 1940s would have been a lot more stylistically interesting than Brayson and Rice’s work, which still manages some truly powerful moments. The bombing of Pearl Harbor onstage with the Skylight is one of the more intense experiences available on the Milwaukee stage this season. The constant video project of thematic scenic elements in the background makes for a very stylish and immersive theatrical amplification of history.  

Skylight Music Theatre’s production of From Here to Eternity runs through May 5 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. For ticket reservations and more, visit the Skylight online.