Labor Day to Memorial Day. That has essentially been the Milwaukee theater season since the summer stock company Melody Top went out of business in the late 1980s.
The conventional wisdom was that sun starved Milwaukeeans could not be coaxed indoors, no matter how great their love of theater, during the summer months. All those street fairs and festivals, plus the Weber grill in the back yard, provided daunting competition.
Broadway touring shows always stop at the Marcus Center when school's out. "Wicked" is here for three and a half weeks in July and August this year.
But our local professional stage companies have a history of going on vacation with the rest of us in the summer. Or I should say they did.
The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre started chipping away at the tradition when Montgomery Davis was still its artistic director. The troupe experimented with moving one of its production slots at the Broadway Theatre Center from January to mid-August, and the permanence of that shift is evidence that you can lure audiences indoors with good work.
The now defunct Bialystock & Bloom also mounted summer shows, with mixed box office success.
Summer of 2010 offers an attractive sampler of stage options for theater-goers who don't want to leave Milwaukee County. Let's take a look.
Dale Gutzman's Off the Wall Theatre prevents this from being a summer without Sondheim. It is staging "Into the Woods" July 22 to Aug. 8 in the tiny Off the Wall space across Wells Street from the Pabst Theater. Gutzman regulars Marilyn White, Sharon Rise, Liz Mistele and Karl Miller are in the cast.
If "Into the Woods" is a little too angsty for you, Off the Wall comes back with a production of Charles Busch's "Psycho Beach Party" Sept. 2-12. No one will mistake it for being a Sondheim musical.
Youngblood Theatre Company, which celebrates its first birthday this summer, has quickly gained the attention and respect of the Milwaukee stage community. The world premiere of company member Benjamin James Wilson's original play "Drive Me to Arson" is next on the schedule, with performance dates of July 22 to 31 in the Studio Theatre on the UWM campus.
Bay View's Boulevard Ensemble will launch its 25th season July 28 to Aug. 29 with a bundle of four single-act romantic comedies, collectively called "Fourplay." Three of the pieces were written by major dramatists -- Harold Pinter, David Ives and John Patrick Shanley. The plays are, respectively, "The Lover," "Sure Thing" and "The Red Coat."
The fourth piece will be "Dead Right," written by Elaine Jarvik, a newspaper reporter from Salt Lake City.
Before the term "juke box musical" was coined on Broadway, (think "Mamma Mia," "Rock of Ages," "All Shook Up") Larry Deckel, John Leicht and John Tanner put together a revue of 1950s and ‘60s pop-rock tunes for the Milwaukee Rep's Stackner Cabaret. They called it "Hula Hoop Sha-Boop" and included songs made popular by such Baby Boomer faves as Buddy Holly, Chubby Checker and Lesley Gore.
"Hula Hoop Sha-Boop" made its debut at the Stackner in 1991, and the Rep brought it back four times to satisfy the appetite of adoring audiences. Other productions have been staged in cities as far flung as Provo, Utah and Sarasota, Fla. "Hula Hoop" is coming back to the Stackner again this summer, but under difference auspices.
This time around, it is being mounted by commercial producers with Broadway shows on their resumes. The group includes Judy Hansen, a former Rep board president who chaired last year's international search for a new artistic director for the company. Hansen is the proud owner of a Tony, an award she received for being one of the producers of the current Broadway revival of "Hair."
Tony Clements is directing the updated version of "Hula Hoop." Songs have been added and dropped as the rights to some tunes have changed availability.
The revue opens Aug. 6 and will run for four weeks. Tickets go on sale Monday through the Rep's box office, (414) 224-9490. milwaukeerep.com.
Finally, the Chamber Theatre's summer production this year returns to the company's Anglophile roots with the comedy "Jeeves Intervenes." Reginald Jeeves was the clever valet who consistently pulled his rich but dumb employer out of jams in the British writer P. G. Wodehouse's novels and short stories. The play was adapted by Margaret Raether from the Wodehouse book "Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg."
The Chamber production, which runs Aug. 12-29, includes Milwaukee Rep veterans Peter Silbert and Laura Gordon in its cast.
"The Tempest" is sold out, but ...
Milwaukee's first experience with free outdoor Shakespeare is an impressive success. Optimist Theatre's strong production of "The Tempest" in a courtyard on the Alverno College campus is fully booked for its final performances this weekend.
However, Optimist managing director Susan Scot Fry says persons without reservations still have a chance to see the production by taking the seats of no-shows. "I'd say that doing walk-in seating for unclaimed reserved seats while armed with an emergency back-up lawn chair is the way to go," she says.
Walk-ups can start registering for unclaimed seats on sign-in sheets two hours before evening performances and one hour before matinees.
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
