Milwaukee Repertory Theater – Page 24 – an intuitive perspective

March 6, 2022March 7, 2022

My Way, A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra!

Frankly, is there anyone who can get enough of Frank Sinatra? From the audience response last night at the Milwaukee Repertory Theaters’ Stackner Cabaret, the answer is NO! And the crowd goes beyond the age demographic you might expect to see at a Sinatra Tribute. The contingent of audience members who were most likely born THIS century were there in force. And the ovation at the end of My Way was sincere and heartfelt!

No, there’s not much story here…just a bit of background on Frank Sinatra and the history of the songs…just more like two solid hours of all of Sinatra’s hits…so every cool song you’ve probably ever heard of plus a number that you might have missed!

screen capture from the Milwaukee Repertory website

So…we have Alex Bechtel, Kara Mikula, Nygel D Robinson, and Tiffany Topol tradings songs, verses, adding harmonies, and swapping instruments as they merrily traverse the Frank Sinatra songbook! Besides trying to guess which Frank nugget they are going to perform next, you have to add who’s going to sing it AND what instrument are they going to play. Of course piano is the anchor most of the time, but we see string bass, flute, banjo ukulele, tenor guitar, saxophone, violin, guitar, and drums at one point or another. oh, and cocktail shaker! Amazing musicianship and slick choreography as they pass off instruments between actors. And of course the vocals are spot on to the mood and theme of each song presented!

Created by David Grapes & Todd Olson | Book by Todd Olson
Original Production Directed by David Grapes
Directed & Choreographed by Kelley Faulkner

My Way, A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra runs at the Stackner Cabaret through May 1, 2022…ticket info and other pertinent data is here! And make sure you check their current COVID policy!

Extra credit reading: My Way program is here.

and a side note: this play brought this to the forefront in my mind. So I dedicate this response to the memory of Jack Covert, proprietor of Dirty Jack’s Record Rack back in the 1970 – 80s. He was a mentor and employer and my front door to the record business that I dabbled in for quite a few years. He was a bit older and was a huge Frank fan and amassed one of the largest collection of Sinatra recordings in the country. He was well known for it in collector circles and even the record company salesman that visited kept an eye open for older arcane recordings. He passed suddenly last year and I miss him.

February 19, 2022February 28, 2022

The Bard, The Fab Four, The Rep or As You Like It

Roll up roll up for the Mystery Tour
Roll up roll up for the Mystery Tour
The Magical Mystery Tour
Is waiting to take you away
Waiting to take you away
Take you today
Magical Mystery Tour (Lennon/McCartney)

No, Magical Mystery Tour isn’t one of the twenty or so songs that powers this 21st Century mash up of Beatles music and a 400 year old comedy from William Shakespeare, but it should be an ear worm as you go to your seat because a Magical Mystery Tour is what the Milwaukee Repertory Theater is going to provide when you attend this version of As You Like It!

Courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, photo by Michael Brosilow

And about that go to your seat. You will want to go to your seat ten or fifteen minutes early for a bit of pre-show music and a bit of foreshadowing of the action to come later. Trust me on this!

Starting with the solid bones of a Shakespeare comedy with the requisite villains and banished royalty and the resulting mayhem and then of course the woman going afield pretending to be a man is surprisingly enhanced by any number of appropriately selected and appropriately inserted Beatles songs. Who would have thought. But the whirlwind events plus the fluid cast movement from band member to featured soloist/character can sometimes add to the character confusion that Shakespeare revels in. But oh, never mind, what fun!

Daryl Cloran, who adapted and directed this production, had an over the top amount of fun tweaking the nose of the Beatles, William Shakespeare, and the Summer of Love. Yes this is over the top in a good way and you will need to stay alert to catch the varied references to the Fab Four, Shakespeare’s common strategies, and every cliche from various cultural era of the late 1960s…and of course the odd merging of WWE style wrestling…you can in part blame that one on the Bard!

Savannah L. Jackson as the heroine Rosalind and Justin Gregory Lopez as her lovelorn love interest are incredible in establishing and toying with their relationship(s) as their situations and interactions change. From that first meeting through the hidden identity to the grande finale, they are the magic in the As You Like It part of this event.

But my goodness, Lizzy Brooks as Celia just exhibits an incredible voice and her renditions of Beatles songs, for me, stole the show! Another favorite vocal standout is Kurt Schwietz, who plays a number of roles throughout the evening.

And, I almost forgot…don’t miss our resident despondent beat poet Andy Warhol look a like, Jacque, most ably played by Trish Lindstrom!

And in a contemporary turn of events, with Savannah L. Jackson as Rosalind disguised as Ganymede, we have a woman playing woman playing a man…a bit of a twist on what Shakespeare would have written for his theater…a young man playing a young woman playing a young man. The Ganymede disguise would have been more believable in 1600 than in 2022 but now it is impossible not to see the woman beneath the male garb. But all the more fun because it twists and turns the jokes that Shakespeare built in making fun of the gender confusion…and it takes on some humorous new aspects in this presentation!

One small quibble…as a former cover band musician and long time Beatles fan, the drums were under mixed and the guitar could use a little more sass…particularly on Helter Skelter.

P.S. This is a British Columbia Invasion coming from the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver.

As You Like It just opened so there is plenty of time to see it between now and March 20, 2022 in the Rep’s Quadracci Powerhouse Theater! Here are the details and links for tickets. And please pay attention to the COVID safety protocols.

Extra credit reading?

The As You Like It program.

And the As You Like It Playguide.

Now, the only thing missing is Ed Sullivan’s “Ladies and Gentleman, THE BEATLES!”

January 29, 2022

Antonio’s Song, I Was Dreaming Of A Son, at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater

The Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents their edgiest or more experimental plays in their Stiemke Theater…a very pliable and flexible black box theater. And as they re-open the Stiemke for the first time since the start of the pandemic with Antonio’s Song, they have stayed true to form.

Courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater

Antonio’s Song, I Was Dreaming Of A Son, directed by Mark Clements (the Reps’ Artistic Director) describes one man’s journey from there to here. There being a Brooklyn of ethic enclaves to a life in arts with the family that he dreamed of and struggled to achieve. And the one man is Antonio Edwards Suarez who co-wrote the play with Dael Orlandersmith (playwright and performer in Before The Flood, presented at the Rep in the spring of 2018), and is the solo actor presenting his memoir on stage.

So Antonio’s struggles lead us through too many of the unsolved ills of American society…racism, comprehensive health care, sexism, mental health issues, family dysfunction, child abuse, and the lack of a positive supportive community. That is the path connecting the there and here.

So where is the there really? It is Brooklyn and the young Antonio plays a very delicate balancing game between his peers from his two ethnic backgrounds…some days are spent with his Black friends and the alternate days with his Hispanic friends. And of course he is vilified at time or another by the one group, then the other, for hanging out with the opposite group…and he sometimes craters to peer pressure to participate in the activities of a street tough. And built over all of that is the base of his own dysfunctional family…although he has a physically present father and mother…they aren’t necessarily the supportive family unit we’ve been told is normal.

And what are the flash points or turning points the get him from there to here? Well his best friend who never abandons him and finally convinces him that he is best served by listening to himself and being himself. A chance television program that features a ballet performance featuring master dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov…which initially opens his soul to an awareness of arts that speaks directly to Antonio. And finally when he is accepted into Harvard, seeing for the first time in the story, his father stand up to his mother in favor of his going off to school. A startling revelation after years of everyone avoiding any confrontations.

But this isn’t a recitation of a story, but is presented via a fluid movement of body and soul across the stage as the story unfolds. And the answers slowly evolve but they often seem to be written in the palm of Antonio’s hand. And as Antonio dances across the stage or mimics the motions described in his stories, the backdrop sets the place. As we move through time and across space, projected images give us the streets of Brooklyn, the Atlantic Ocean, the industrial space that is Antonio’s studio, and the dark smoke filled rooms of his childhood home. Quite effective and a bit mesmerizing…at times distracting from Antonio’s ‘dance’.

Antonio’s Song, I Was Dreaming Of A Son continues through March 6, 2022. It does contain some adult language and situations with the Rep recommending it for ages 16 and over. COVID safety protocols are in place including presenting proof of vaccination or a negative test and wearing a mask while in the building. Latest COVID information is here.

Extra credit reading!

Antonio’s Song Program!

Antonio’s Song Play Guide!