Soulstice’s Pop Opera

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Photo by Sue Northey

Left to Right: Doug Clemons, Abby Armstrong, Mara McGhee, Cyndi Przybylski

Soulstice Theatre stages the Wisconsin premiere of Bare: A Pop Opera. Doug Clemons and Shane Skinner star as Peter and Jason, students in a romantic relationship at a contemporary Catholic school. Naturally, they are a little reluctant to openly express their feelings for each other for a variety of different reasons. Peter is a bit more open about it than Jason, who is quite popular and afraid of potential consequences. Things get complicated when Jason ends up in a romantic embrace with a woman named Ivy who is played with striking grace by Kathryn Hausman. The tragedy of the complexity of the love triangle is made all the more powerful by a very vivid and palpable chemistry between Clemons and Skinner.

Director Matthew Northey has cleverly cultivated a detailed social landscape for the school in which the story takes place. It’s a psychologically diverse group that includes a goth girl outsider, a couple of chronically awkward kids and various other personas that build a rich background for the intimate studio theater show. There’s a lot going on in and around the action on an emotionally immersive stage.

A few adult characters also make an impression. Mara McGhee shines with comic radiance as a nun who is directing the school’s production of Romeo and Juliet. She’s razor sharp in the role, but she’s even more dazzling as an R&B diva version of the Virgin Mary in a particularly funny dream sequence. Laura Monagle has a few tender moments onstage in the role of Peter’s mother, Claire, who must come to accept everything that her son is.

Soulstice Theatre’s production of Bare: A Pop Opera runs through March 1 on 3770 S. Pennsylvania Ave., Suite 2. For tickets, call 414-481-2800 or visit soulsticetheatre.org.