For 50 years, the Sunset Playhouse has been synonymous with community theater, and community theater is synonymous with unpaid performers. But the Sunset has been remaking itself, and it no longer is exclusively amateur.
Exhibit A is the Musical Mainstage revue series the Elm Grove company mounts on Mondays and Tuesdays in its Furlan Auditorium. Those are days and nights Milwaukee's professional theaters are dark, and series producer Susan Dwyer Loveridge can lure the pros into the 'burbs to put on a show. Many of the performers have Skylight Opera Theatre credentials.
The first production of the 2011-12 season will be presented next week. Titled "Dynamic Duos," it features pop songs made famous by twosomes -- in this case, Sonny and Cher, the Everly Brothers and the Righteous Brothers, among others.
Later in the season the series will salute music from the 1950s (Oct. 24-25), spotlight the holidays (Dec. 12-13), feature road songs (March 5-6, 2012), focus on folk song hits (April 30-May 1, 2012) and concentrate on Broadway show tunes (June 4-5, 2012).
Musical Mainstage shows follow a format. Loveridge, who has been involved at the Sunset since being cast in "West Side Story" in 1972, chooses a theme and writes a thread of a script. She casts the revue with two male and two female professionals and a lone high school "rising star." The performers pick the songs they sing.
Loveridge and rotating guest partners co-narrate the revue. Alison Mary Forbes, Peggy Peterson Ryan, Neil Haven and Bob Hirschi are in the "Dynamic Duos" cast with Wauwatosa East High School student Wenie Lado. Jack Shaw is narrating with Loveridge.
The Musical Mainstage series began as single night performances on Mondays. Its success has led to adding the Tuesday matinee and evening shows.
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.
