Between Stages

Sunday, November 19, 2006

East Coast East Side

Once again, I was seated right next to Damien Jaques for opening night of the show at Next Act. There he and I were in the Next Act critic’s ghetto: the rear row of the Off-Broadway Theatre. He was on the left. I was on the right. Yes, it was a bit awkward. The Journal-Sentinel theatre critic and I shared not a word or a single moment of eye contact. He is a very squat gentleman, making me feel pushed to the right for the entire length of the play. Alas, my wife elected not to join me, having already been to the Roger Bean musical with me the previous night. (She is not one to attend theatre more than once per weekend except under extreme duress.) Jaques take notes during performances. Given the amount of space he lends to actually addressing aspects of the producton, these brief notes comprise a sizeable fraction of what he says about them. (Much of a Jaques review in the Journal-Sentinel is spent on discussing the finer points of a play’s script. Much of a Jaques review is [or at least could be] written without ever seeing the performance.)

The after party for “Mercy of A Storm,” was respectable, with tasty bits of food and Miller products. The play’s director Mary Kerr gestured wildly early-on, spilling hors d’oeuvres all over the floor from the plate of a nearby Montgomery Davis. Mary was nice enough to clean up the mess, seeming respectably embarrassed with the whole affair. That’s the kind of town Milwaukee is: you can direct one of the best shows currently playing in this town and work with some of the best actors we have to offer, but if you spill hors d’oeuvres, you’re still expected to clean them up. Cute.

As Milwaukee as my week has been (saw and reviewed two plays and four films—a nearly respectable amount of work) I had a briefly pretentious moment on Saturday. My wife and I ran into a theatrical Artistic Director I know in the nutritional supplements section of the local Whole Foods. How pretentiously artsy and east coast of me. That night my wife and I had delicately prepared mussels with sweet red wine by candlelight while listening to Hillary Hahn on the classical music station. Somewhere beneath it all was a heavy bass-line from a neighboring apartment that reminded us both that we were still on the East Side.

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Sunday, November 12, 2006

For The Next Thirty Minutes, The Part of Your Id Will Be Played By Kendall Yorkey

With all the requisite charisma of a professional actor, Michael DiPadova tells me I’ve arrived, “in the nick of time.” The show hasn’t started yet. I am the last to arrive. I’m covering Nevermore Theatre’s staged reading of a one-act for a free weekly metro paper. The lights fade. Three women of three different distinct ages stand at three music stands on an otherwise blank stage. It’s Nevermore’s fundraiser for its upcoming production of Hamlet, so why does it look like the opening of Macbeth? In a moment it becomes clear: Ravenna is the Ego. Kate is the Super Ego. And for the next thirty minutes, the part of your Id will be played by 15 year-old Kendall Yorkey. There’s something very pure about the spoken word onstage. It’s like home. On the number 15 back to the East Side, I run into a vague acquaintance from the East Side Poetry scene of ten years ago. 10 years ago the scene was flourishing. The east side was crawling with poets. The old acquaintance engages me in failed attempts at conversation. Things are suitably awkward until a girl in a fauxhawk sits in front of me smelling of something very familiar that I can’t quite identify. It takes me a few minutes to realize that she smells like polycarbonate plastic with a faint hint of aluminum. This anonymous east-side girl smells like a fresh CD straight out of the shrink-wrap. The scent is overpowering. (Weird.)

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Saturday, November 11, 2006

Rain

We had walked many blocks in very cold rain. The seats weren't particularly comfortable. The mannequin was staring a us. My wife ended up having a pretty good time anyway. Being married to a theatre critic, my wife doesn't make it to nearly as much theatre as I do. She so rarely comes to the smaller productions. The walk out to the Astor Theatre in the freezing rain was her idea, but I'm not complaining. It added something interesting to the evening. The comedy might've felt like cleverly hip, post-modern art damage, but it could've simply been commercially-friendly low-budget local theatre. Two nights into a three review weekend and I'm on my own again for tonight's show . . .

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Monday, October 30, 2006

Between Stages

The sun had set and there were people everywhere. I had walked all the way from my east side apartment into the heart of the commotion: the Third Ward. It’s a good thing that I’d walked because there was a really good chance that there wasn’t any parking available. Renaissance Theaterworks and Milwaukee Chamber Theatre had shows opening that night in the Broadway Theater complex somewhere near the heart of Gallery Night. With the Symphony playing further north and the Milwaukee Film Festival in full swing, it’s probably safe to say that everything was going on. I could say something here about the explosion of art world creativity in eastern Milwaukee this past weekend, but I’d be lying. The creative fires are always burning this close to the lake. There was, however, a very palpable feeling of commerce at every turn. Clearly, money was being spent this weekend by large numbers of people. Oddly enough, it was difficult to tell whether or not any money was actually being made.

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