Tag Archives: Milwaukee Rep

Laurie Bembenek, Superstar

photo by Michael Brosilow

by Jeff Grygny

The story is irresistible, really: Lawrencia Bembenek, Milwaukee cop, playboy bunny, convicted murderess, escaped felon—and maybe framed? Villain or victim? It has everything: crime, sex, betrayal, corruption . . . it was a big fat slice of Wisconsin sleaze, and it was irresistible to the local press back in the early 1980s too. It just begs for a big trashy musical, doesn’t it? And who better to write the score than Gordon Gano of Milwaukee’s cult band Violent Femmes, whose small-town dysphoric sound won their own fame in the 80s. So, after a decade-long gestation, a show is born: Run Bambi Run, a collaboration by Gano, Milwaukee Rep’s Artistic Director Mark Clements, and acclaimed playwright Eric Simonson of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. The musical is currently playing in it’s world premiere at the Rep.

And what a show it is: a raucous, rowdy panorama of Milwaukee’s seedy side, detailed and razor-satirical as any painting by Breughel or Hogarth, or a comic by R. Crumb. The Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce is not likely to love it; our city looks like a mean, corrupt, and tawdry place from its gutter perspective, which summons a cast of caricatures from the tabloids, sprung to life for our prurient pleasure. Headlines blaze from big screens; timelines flash as the story propels us along Bembeneck’s lurid career with the queasy inevitability of a Greek tragedy: the flawed hero hurtling toward her predestined doom.

But for all the show’s initial teasing of “is she guilty or is she not?,” the book, based on contemporary accounts and later research, unambiguously takes Bembeneck’s side. It tracks us through her entire hapless career: every poor choice in relationships, advice not taken, and imprudent decision, to make a pretty convincing case that, even if she was not set up by her scumbag husband, her faithless best friend, her crooked attorney, and the collective animus of the Milwaukee Police Department—who are definitely not Milwaukee’s finest—she was undoubtedly outplayed in a game that she was underpowered for from the start.

Under Clements’ direction, the show assaults us with bright lights, loud music, and the feverish energy of 12 pumped-up actor/singer/dancer/musicians who play their own instruments excellently while in character—a signature feature of Clements’ musicals—under the brilliant music direction of Dan Kazemi. The music is amped so high that earplugs are available in the lobby (I recommend them for Act 2 especially).

photo by Michael Brosilow

Gano’s score, which sometimes veers into the sung dialog of rock opera, recalls the Femmes’ jangly post-punk intensity: the opening number, set on New Year’s Eve in Tracks tavern, is truthfully entitled “The Seventies Sucked.” Gano dips into other styles: a comic “bad roommate” polka, a sentimental ballad to Kosciusko Park, a leering commercial for Lake Geneva, and a roaring Jerry Lee Lewis showstopper rocked out by Douglas Goodheart as the bouffant-headed attorney Don Eisenberg. Lyrically, Gano follows less Sondheim or Lloyd Webber than Iggy Pop, whose dictum was to stick to words of one syllable. The lyrics’ blunt simplicity complements the monumental stupidity of the show’s milieu, though they often tell us no more than we already know rather than offering any counterpointing perspective.

Does Run Bambi Run critique the grotesque Bembenek circus, or does it partake of it? Two moments cut through the clown show to the emotional truth; curiously, they both feature actress Sarah Gliko, who plays two minor but important characters. One is in the courtroom, when the murdered woman’s son, the only eyewitness to the crime, testifies: Gliko, as his mother, slowly crosses the stage like a Shakespearean ghost, singing “Remember me.” In the other, she plays a reporter interviewing the indefatigable Erika Olson’s 52-year old Bembenek: now free, but weary, sick, and maimed from a bizarre escape attempt. “On a scale from one to ten,” the reporter asks, a bit heartlessly, “how would you rate your life?” Bembenek replies stoically, “I’d give it a two.” A whole life of potential, wasted in bureaucracy and broken promises, divided, subtracted, and summed up into one dreary number. (Note to the producers: during the intermission I met a former Wisconsin attorney who had socialized with Bembenek; he said that she never used the contraction “ain’t.” Despite growing up on the South Side; fancy that.)

But the show can’t leave the audience on such a bummer ending. Rather like another true crime musical it much resembles, Jesus Christ Superstar, it resurrects the 23 year old Laurie for a final rousing number, celebrating her as a hero who never gave up the fight for truth and justice.

photo by Michael Brosilow

I think Run Bambi Run has a great show in it. Given an artful reckoning with its inner contradictions, and a bit of streamlining of its excess bulk, it could go far. Is it really good to have fun with such a fundamentally sad story? Does the show’s carnivalesque approach celebrate its protagonist as a feminist martyr, or does it feed off the gawker mentality that dogged her entire life? This is a more interesting question than whether she “did it” or not. In the end, the viewer must be the judge.

The Milwaukee Rep  presents

Run Bambi Run

A New Rock Musical

Book by Eric Simonson
Music and Lyrics by Gordon Gano
Directed by Mark Clements

playing through October 22

www.MilwaukeeRep.com

Big Mood: Reps “Much Ado” Brings the Fun Back To Theater

photo by Michael Brosilow

by Jeff Grygny

“I saw this amazing show! It was romantic, exciting, with great music and dancing, And it was SO funny! I even cried at the end! ” “Really? What was it?” “Shakespeare!” is something nobody says. Until recently that is, when we cracked the code for making Shakespeare work in the twenty-first century: substituting pop songs for the poetry that was the pop music of Shakespeare’s time. Turns out that switching out electric guitars and drum kits for lutes and tabors is the secret ingredient to bringing out all the rich umami goodness of Shakespeare’s plays for contemporary audiences. The Milwaukee Rep’s new production of Much Ado About Nothing reveals the play’s humanity and wit—and what’s more, makes it hip, smart, and tremendously fun to watch. It’s amazing what can happen with a fresh musical approach, some loving attention to the text, and an ensemble of brilliant actors, musicians, and comedians who clearly love what they’re doing. In the skilled hands of Director Laura Braza, the show simply rocks.

Setting the play in Seattle in the 1990s is an intriguing way to explore the play’s military culture: the men are just returning from a victorious war, as G.W. Bush’s Operation Desert Shield had successfully driven Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait (the time seems so innocent in this age of social media and MAGA, doesn’t it?). The historical juxtaposition generates both light and heat, highlighting the parallels between Elizabethan power and America’s boo-ya triumphalism. It’s impressive, too, how Music Director Dan Kazemi enlists the dirty chords of Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots to evoke a powerful mood, concocting a shiny, bombastic, happy-sad, fast-slow-fast theater bomb much befitting Much Ado’s high emotions and world-weary wisdom, that carries us along irresistibly for three hours (including a twenty-minute intermission). The presence of live musicians among the cast adds immeasurably, as always.

Best of all, the production shamelessly embraces the theatricality of Elizabethan theater, shifting from elevated realism to farce to musical theater without dropping a beat. The show opens with rebel girl Beatrice passing a joint with her friends and belting out a Nirvana-esque ballad to self-conscious anomie in a piercing voice that could shatter glass in the balcony. The lyrics were written by Louise Labé, an obscure cross-dressing French poet who died when Shakespeare was around two years old (Her story would have made an interesting note in the show’s play guide, but it’s oddly absent). Later, a delicious party scene, lit like a high-end nightclub, breaks into choreography that seems to burst from the sheer joy of victory, youth, and privilege, like the Platonic ideal of an impossibly cool frat party: many kudos to choreographer Jenn Rose. In an age when art is often supposed to be a vehicle for dispensing what’s good for us, this embrace of pure pleasure feels almost wicked.

photo by Michael Brosilow

So it is with the play’s comedy. Time and again the actors hit the sweet spot between credibility and clowning. Forget the 500 year old puns: Shakespeare is hilarious. Mark Corkins’ Don Pedro is on fire with mirth and camaraderie. The reliable Jonathan Girard Daly brings humanity to what could easily be a generic patriarch. Nate Burger lends pitch perfect sitcom energy to his role of Benedick, all bluster and insecurity: when he and Alex Keiper’s Beatrice meet, their verbal duels glitter. Meanwhile, Keiper fans the coals under a simmering cauldron of rage, no hotter than in her “O that I were a man” speech. As the incompetent marshal Dogberry and his factotum, Michael Doherty and Will Mobley leave no shtick unturned in their folie a deux of utterly unwarranted machismo,  with inspired silliness reminiscent of the old SCTV show. And as a cleric officiating a marriage gone south, Daydra Smith speaks with firm authority while the men are all running around with their bruised honor.

Every era remakes Shakespeare after it’s own concerns: The Victorians took out all the depressing bits; in the 60’s the plays were anti-establishment and existential. Director Braza’s rendering becomes a thorough and very effective feminist treatise. Even more impressively, she doesn’t turn the men into villains, but rather shows how the patriarchal structure of society itself is to blame. Of course, with such strong choices. there are inevitably trade-offs. The character of Benedick loses some of his appealing self-awareness: his line, probably my favorite in all of the plays, “man is a giddy thing,” seems to not have made the cut, as if to underscore that it’s institutional sexism, not human folly, that caused the troubles. Also notably absent is any reference to the most significant development of grunge culture (which, honestly, pretty much was a guy thing): the famous 1999 “Battle of Seattle,” when youth anti-globalization protests spread across the world. Granted, there’s little to do with class struggle in Much Ado. But the world historical event is even missing from the play guide’s 1990s timeline (though we do read there about the second Congo war for some reason). Not terribly shocking perhaps, for a theater beholden to corporate funding.

But peace: I’d happily attend a dozen feminist treatises if they were as fun and pleasurable as this show. And since Braza is the Rep’s current Associate Artistic Director, we can hope for many more good things from her in the future. Hey nonny nonny, everyone! You owe it to yourself to see this play!

Milwaukee Rep presents

Much Ado About Nothing

by William Shakespeare

playing through February 12, 2023

https://www.milwaukeerep.com/shows/show/much-ado-about-nothing/

The True Meaning of Christmas

Photo by Michael Brosilow

by Jeff Grygny

The dress rehearsal for  the Saint Ignatius Episcopal Church Christmas pageant begins. Under lurid lighting, a bare room whose grimy walls, hung with scissors, suggests an abattoir. Mary screams over a stuffed lamb; Joseph murders God, shouting “God is dead!” Thus begins the first of The Nativity Variations, a farcical alternative to holiday fare currently playing in a world premiere at The Milwaukee Rep. Artistic Director Mark Clements commissioned prize-winning playwright Catherine Trieschmann to write a play that amazingly kluges together elements of A Christmas Carol, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and maybe a bit of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

At the fictional Saint Ignatius (yes, Episcopalians do honor Catholic saints, I checked. But it’s complicated), the open-minded Father Juan has invited Jules, the head of a local avant-garde theater, to direct the annual Christmas pageant. But the play becomes a battleground in the culture wars when Jules keeps injecting her radical feminism into the performance every time the good Father demands a rewrite. Each of the community players has his or her own challenge: the single mom; the actor who wants to salvage a romance after a breakup; the couple strained by financial difficulties, and the director in denial about her family problems. They all work day jobs and do theater for the love of it: amateurs in the best sense of the word. Mayhem ensues when a naive husband and wife are cast in this offbeat ensemble.

Trieschmann’s clever script is loaded with theater history: she lampoons pretentious experimental theater, gender-bending Shakespeare, and puppets for adults, while affectionately skewering the egos and intra-personal dynamics of community theater. Her broad takedown of artists who impose their ideologies on classic stories, in the process losing the qualities that make them great, had many people in the opening night audience guffawing and cheering.

Photo by Michael Brosilow

As Jules, Sami Ma gives a grounded, sympathetic performance, rather than playing a stereotypical crazy director. Ryan Alvarado neatly contrasts his dual roles as the upbeat, patient Father Juan and a neurotic gym teacher/leading man. Chiké Johnson embodies the guy every community theater depends on: an actor/costumer/puppeteer whose psychological savvy precipitates the company’s turning point. As the straight couple out of their depth, Ann Arvia and Adam LeFevre instantly win the allegiance of most of the audience, and earn the heartiest laughs, while Sadieh Rifai brings attitude and intensity as the put-upon female lead.

Of course, as a never-before performed play, there are a few things that could benefit from a bit of refining. For one, the portrayals of community theater, church, and avant-garde art strain our suspension of disbelief: they present no actual church, community theater, or avant-garde production we know of, but only improbable caricatures. What priest would entrust his parish to such a radical director? How would the elderly couple have been cast, and how would any normal person so passively follow Jules’ bizarre directions without protest? Not to mention that it would be literally impossible for a community theater to come up with three complete sets and costumes for rehearsals, much less have all their lines memorized. Does the action all take place in Jules’ mind? Is it a dream, like Scrooge’s nocturnal visions? And why does Jules announce her interviews with Father Juan as scenes that she herself has scripted? It’s an enigma.

Puzzling over these discrepancies, we can easily lose the comic breeze. As if recognizing this, director Shelley Butler compounds the problem by having the players perform Jules’ scenes in a broad, clownish way—even the people who are supposed to be experienced seem to suddenly forget everything they know about good acting. There is nothing that sears the fragile wings of comedy more than “trying to be funny.” To be fair, there was goodly laughter in the audience on opening night—but there were stony, un-amused faces as well.  Luckily, the encounters between Jules and Father Juan, the working out of the characters’ issues, and the plays’ restorative conclusion, achieve that unforced quality.

On a personal note: one of the saddest losses of the pandemic was the closing of so many local companies who worked on the edges of theater: The Alchemist, Off the Wall, Cooperative Performance, and Quasimondo, to name the most recent—now mostly vanished, and much missed. They labored mightily to create original work with extraordinary intelligence and passion, all while holding down day jobs. When the city’s 500 pound gorilla of a theater pokes fun at small experimental companies, it  feels like punching down—though this was no doubt never the intention. Wouldn’t it be grand if the city’s richest company had offered uplift to its poorest and bravest? Just a thought.

Photo by Michael Brosilow

The Nativity Variations‘ noble aim is to carve out a meeting space between liberal and conservative, if not with faith in the Bible, at least with the timeless hope of peace on Earth and good will towards everyone. By the end of the play, emotions are released, hearts warmed, and the “community” in community theater is affirmed. Has Jules capitulated to censorship? Has she realized that she’s been censoring the Bible all along? Did her heart suddenly grow three sizes? Ah, who cares? It’s Christmas time. Bless us, every one.

The Milwaukee Rep presents

The World Premiere of

The Nativity Variations

by Catherine Treischmann

playing through December 11, 2022

https://milwaukeerep.com/shows/show/the-nativity-variations/

Love, Love, Love

photo by Michael Brosilow

by Jeff Grygny

It could have begun as a challenge towards the end of a long night of drinking. How many Beatles songs can you make fit into a Shakespeare play? That’s the premise of the delightful new production of As You Like It at the Milwaukee Rep. Brimming with invention and good cheer, and overflowing with affection for its sources, the show seems designed to get us through the gloomy Wisconsin winter and boost our spirits in difficult times.

It’s not such a crazy idea to mix the Beatles and the Bard. The famed director Peter Brook taught that Shakespeare’s language consists of narrative that moves the story, and poetry which should be considered as music. But the poetry that moved Elizabethan audiences often doesn’t speak to us—so why not substitute music that does?  A recent local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Voices Found Repertory brought in pop songs to fine effect. And since As You Like It is all about love, why not wed it with the other most successful artists ever to spring from England’s green and pleasant land, whose favorite word is “love”? We can thank the Canadian director Daryl Cloran for this brilliant yet somehow inevitable idea. The show opened to roaring success in Vancouver, and recently played in Chicago, whence the Rep’s Artistic Director Mark Clemens was able to snag some of the performers, along with Cloran to direct the current production. And lucky us: we get to enjoy it!

Cloran skims off the play’s antiquities to reveals a wise and witty screwball comedy as quirky as anything by Wes Anderson or the Coen Brothers. He directs with a genius for details, filling every moment with little gestures and comic flourishes in the tale of fair Rosalind and her sturdy swain Orlando on their bumpy road to happiness—so many wonderful grace notes, it would be a crime to reveal any of them. Meantime, the evergreen songs of Lennon and McCartney bring the character’s heightened feelings in rock n’ roll beats. People who know the play well will be amazed by the aptness and cleverness of Cloran’s translations; everyone else will just laugh, cheer, and perhaps let their heartstrings tug a little tear of joy now and then.

Set in the exotic land of British Columbia, in the distant long ago of the 1960s, the play opens with an elaborate preamble set in the woolly world of pro wresting (which makes sense, as it is indeed a wrestling match that sets Rosalind and Orlando on their paths). Members of the extremely game band play costumed contestants in a series of pratfalls and clownish clinches. The entertainment value of this will vary with how much you find pro wrestling amusing—but it gives the excuse to drop lots of Beatles references, and sets up the greedy, exploitative world that our characters will soon be propelled out of and into the romantic Forest of Arden.

photo by Michael Brosilow

Each player in the warm, multitalented cast creates a very relatable human being; they move like modern people and when they talk, they sound like people talking, so the comedy flows naturally from a real place. As the girl-buddy duo of Rosalind and Celia, Savannah L. Jackson and Lizzy Brooks share effortless rapport and sister power. Brooks’ facial expressions speak comic volumes; Jackson shows the joys and torments of infatuation, while bringing brio to her musical solos. The incredibly light-footed Justin Gregory Lopez is a powerful yet tender Orlando, while Don Noble as the Duke-in exile channels The Dude in sandals and long gray hair; his hippie inflections seem a bit spot-on, until you realize that he’s actually making some very wise observations.

photo by Michael Brosilow

The show’s two philosopher-clowns, Adam Wesley Brown and Trish Lindstrom, are brilliant contrasts: Brown as the urbanite Touchstone, so out of place in the rustic setting, makes free with adlibs and flawless physical schtick, while Lindstrom, as the melancholy Jaques, tricked out in Andy Warhol drag and Joan Didion’s world-weary clarity, is a miracle of subtle anticomedy. Her renditions of Fool on the Hill and I am the Walrus simply must be seen to be believed.

photo by Michael Brosilow

The onstage musicians all play incidental roles, and while they don’t try to impersonate the Fab Four (except when George Harrison makes a cameo as Hymen, the god of marriage), their general good humored, come-what-may attitude is reminiscent of A Hard Day’s Night. Pam Johnson’s illuminated set wonderfully recalls the sixties, creating a wide palette of colorful energies, and Ben Elliott’s music direction wisely doesn’t imitate the Beatles’ stylings, but hits the iconic touches, as when a trombone suddenly appears in “All You Need Is Love.”

This As You Like It is the most entertaining, richest, most heartfelt  musical I’ve seen at the Rep. And why not keep this fertile mash-up going?  The Rolling Stones’ Macbeth, anyone? How about King Lear with the music of The Doors?  In the words of Jaques: “More, more, I prithee, more.”

Milwaukee Repertory Theatre presents

As You Like It

by William Shakespeare

Adapted and Directed by Daryl Cloran

Conceived by Daryl Cloran and the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival

playing through March 20

https://www.milwaukeerep.com/shows/show/as-you-like-it/