What I Mean by “Dichotomous Energy”

Last night, I finally made it to the penultimate holiday show of my 2008 Milwaukee Theatre SeasonOff The Wall Theatre’s Holiday Punch.

The review will run next week. Having been challenged with a maximum word count for a print review, I ended up cutting a rather large and misshapen tangent about Liz Mistele’s performance. Here’s a little of what didn’t make it in:

“. . . Every actor brings something unique to the stage, but there are those whose stage presence ends up being a bit more iconoclastic than others. That’s what I mean to say about Liz Mistele’s performance here. Given the opportunity to appear in a variety of different segments (many of them quite absurd) Mistele is given the opportunity explore a variety of different stage personalities. We see her at the end of the Bus sketch and she’s got the classy, distant heat of a silent film star. In musical numbers like Obama Mia! she’s got the rubbery comic energy of a Warner Brothers cartoon character. The remarkable thing about this is that she’s hugely enjoyable as both and she’s seen here switching back and forth between them quite quickly. Here we see Mistele going from Brigitte Helm to Bugs Bunny and back in 4.5 seconds. The fact that she can pull this off without being intesnely annoying is a towering accomplishment. It’s pretty amazing and well worth the trip to Off The Wall to see . . . “

And that’s why it’s a good thing that there’s a word limit on reviews . . .unlimited space invites strange ramblings . . .

Off The Wall’s Holiday Punch runs through the 31st.