A Christmas Carol is in rehearsals at The Milwaukee Rep and performances start on November 26, 2024. Tickets are available at a savings of 20% if ordered through November 15, 2024. See details below:
November is here and it’s time to kick off the holiday season as rehearsals for A Christmas Carol begin today!
Starting in a few short weeks, you can experience the dazzling costumes, breathtaking scenery, festive carols and pure magic that have made this show a pillar of holiday spirit in Milwaukee for generations.
Prime seating locations have been selling fast since they went on sale earlier this summer. Have you secured yours already? If not, now is the best time to do so! We are giving you the gift of early bird savings. Save 20%* off when you purchase now through Friday, November 15 only!
Don’t be saying “Bah Humbug” because you missed out on getting tickets to Milwaukee’s favorite holiday tradition. Use code HOLIDAY now to get 20% off!
Click Here to order tickets and for more information! Approximate Running Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes including one intermission. Recommended Age: 6 and up.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a force of nature in the music business throughout the middle of the 20th Century. She is often called the Godmother of Rock And Roll and her influence on jazz and blues and rock musicians in the United States and the United Kingdom is well documented. And you will recognize the source of many rock sounds and tones during Marie And Rosetta, but that is not the focus of the play.
Instead, we will experience the developing relationship between Sister Rosetta Tharpe at the pinnacle of her career as she plucks a young singer/pianist from under the nose of Mahalia Jackson and makes Marie Knight her understudy and accompanist. They will both grow as musicians and will begin a life long friendship.
Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Bethany Thomas, Alexis J Roston. Photo by Michael Brosilow.
And there is an intriguing subtext here as well. Both women are devout Christians who are coming from a background of singing in church choirs and being soloists as well. So there is a struggle between being true to their spirituals and choral singing and the world of secular music. Sister Rosetta being older and more in tune with herself and her world has made it work but Marie isn’t yet comfortable where she now finds herself and presents a bit of push back. The resulting discussions provides opportunities for both women to reconsider their ideas and moral guidelines and find new ways to express themselves musically!
Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Alexis J Roston, Bethany Thomas. Photo by Michael Brosilow
So what does that get us? Besides the conversations and exchanges of life being lived, we get an amazing panorama of songs and music from the Sister Rosetta Tharpe songbook. This isn’t quite a musical and not quite a cabaret piece either, but somewhere in between. But Director E. Faye Butler has made sure the music and the personalities are all front and center, every moment.
Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Bethany Thomas. Photo by Michael Brosilow
And as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, we have Bethany Thomas! This is a marvelous bit of casting because Thomas certainly has a voice that dominates just the way Tharpe’s did and an incredible stage presence that certainly illustrates that Tharpe diva persona as well. And it’s a joyous homecoming as Thomas also appeared in the Rep’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch and for me, most notably, Songs For Nobodies. I can’t think of any recent Rep performer who is more suited to play Sister Rosetta Tharpe than Bethany Thomas!
Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Alexis J Roston,. Photo by Michael Brosilow
And Alexis J Roston is Marie Knight. Roston plays the younger Knight as a prodigious talent who is self-deprecating in the face of the famous and intimidating Tharpe. But she eventually starts to feel comfortable and slowly accepts her role in secular as well as Gospel music as Tharpe eases her along. There is a sort of big sister little sister relationship developed and at one point Tharpe starts calling her Little Sister. And Roston has every vocal chop needed to play Knight. She fills the stage with song and humor, although not always intentionally, and grows Knight’s stage presence and self confidence neatly and organically as the play progresses.
There are only the two actors and a single dramatic set of a funeral parlor that allows for the drama and the music to seamlessly be performed. Kudos to scenic designer John Culbert for that. And you may not be aware of the stage lighting…it is bright and dramatic for most of the spoken dialogue but will subtlety shift color and intensity to help express the moods for each of the songs performed. Lighting director Jared Gooding knows when to dim the lights. And although Rosetta and Marie are working with a piano and Rosetta a number of guitars, we are actually hearing Morgan E. Stevenson on piano and Benjamin Oglesby-Davis on guitar.
Marie and Rosetta is being performed in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stiemke Theater. Opening night was October 22, 2024 and it runs through December 15, 2024. Additional information and tickets are available here.
Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Alexis J Roston, Bethany Thomas. Photo by Michael Brosilow
And by modern, I certainly mean 21st Century America. Playwright Keith Bunin has fleshed out very distinctive and unique, yet very American, characters here and gives them text and subtext galore, but he doesn’t give us a lot of action…so Director Mark Clements and choreographer Jenn Rose give us transitions from one idea to the next, one scene to another, through the elegant choreography of moving train seats from one position to another. You will understand this if you experience it.
Jack Ball and Emily S. Chang. Photos courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Michael Brosilow photographer.
It seems a bit ironic to me that Keith Bunin has set this modern drama on a train…once an ubiquitous mode of American transportation…but now a luxury and something of an outlier. But he needs time to tell his story (stories). And we have six characters and six stories to tell. Yet few of the stories are actually told via conversation between the passengers. Most of them are thoughts spoken out loud so that the audience may hear but go unheard by the other passengers. And these aren’t necessarily inner dialogues nor asides…they are suppositions that the playwright is making about the ideas and thought processes of his characters…and the effects and repercussions that they have on each person’s life. And how those decisions could effect the others or their society, if they were actually shared with the others. With this form, Bunin is easily able to discuss a number of problems in modern society, modern politics, and the damage we may do to ourselves and others by not openly engaging with each other. That alone is a major focus on a very modern and I guess, recent failing in American society.
Justin Huen, Jack Ball, and Emily S. Chang . Photos courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Michael Brosilow photographer.
Jack Ball is T.J., who is running away from something (we know what it is in the play but I don’t want to provide TMI) and is clearly going through a lot of inner turmoil as a result. The other characters can see the physical effects. Yet he comes to the fore and helps others where he can. Ball does a marvelous job of the presenting the stressed out T.J. whenever he is allowed to disengage and be alone. He cleanly moves to caregiver mode when his thoughts can be put aside. The shift is so subtle at first but so significant, I can’t imagine how Ball moves from one to the other on stage.
Emily S. Change, Jonathan Wainwright, Justin Huen, Jack Ball, and Yadira Correa. Photos courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Michael Brosilow photographer.
All of the passengers have secrets, all are here with personal stressors, and all of them have stories to tell…and in most cases they come out in those out loud thought processes than Bunin so readily employs. Emily S. Chang gives us a very cool and seemingly collected Jane, an artist who works in animation and seems to have the world at her feet…not quite. Yadira Correa is a very angrily animated Anna who doesn’t quite care anymore about who knows what about her personal tragedy…some of her speaker phone rants provide some of the bigger laughs of the night! Noah is an Army veteran who has seen the ravages of war and is trying to keep his life together. Justin Huen channels the perfect level of anger, wisdom, and self-acceptance here…Heun seems to understand PTSD and how to portray it on stage. He also provides some of the most sincere although not always practical advice to T.J.. Liz is heading home after making funeral arrangements for her late brother and is at her own wit’s end…yet Kelley Faulkner, outwardly, keeps her in a cool, calm, collected zone. And she quickly adopts her mother mode when confronted with the very troubled T.J.. A bit of comic relief and a bit of generational conflict is introduced by the arrival of Ed, a drunken traveling salesman who too is at a nadir in his life, and Jonathan Wainwright gives us, at first, a out of f***’s to give character to a more mellow observer of modern life.
Jack Ball, Emily S. Chang, and Yadira Correa. Photos courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Michael Brosilow photographer.
A big theme here is how we miss opportunities…and how we don’t recognize that others are often suffering too…because they seemingly aren’t looking the part. And things aren’t always what they seem and that a lot of comfort can be provided to others just by recognizing them.
BUT: there is a great deal of humor here as well…some of it a bit dark…but a great deal of fun nonetheless.
The set is simple, modern, and elegant as well. Six simple train seats on wheels, lighting in the floor to highlight the actors at the center of the action, and simple overhead lighting as well to emphasize mood and feeling! Props? Knapsacks and luggage…just like on the train.
Because of some interruptions in my own personal life, I attended The Coast Starlight late in the run and it ends on Sunday October 2024. It runs 1 hour and 30 minutes without intermission. Ticket and other information here:
