Month: March 2022

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PSA: First Stage Presents: That Scottish Play, aka MacBeth!

From our inbox!

Milwaukee, WI – March 10, 2021 – Next up for First Stage’s Young Company, the Theater Academy’s award-winning training program for advanced high school actors, will be MACBETH, Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy, infamously known as the cursed Scottish play. The play will be performed in the newly renovated, theater-in-the round Goodman Mainstage Hall at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. Directed by First Stage Young Company faculty member Marcella Kearns, with fight and intimacy direction by Christopher Elst, MACBETH is filled with ferocious battles, supernatural horrors, famously gorgeous poetry and some of the Bard’s most vivid characters. Tempted by an evil prophecy from a trio of witches and encouraged by his Lady ever deeper into his own dark ambition, Macbeth rages a bloody path to the throne of Scotland and the forces of destruction are unleashed. Sponsored by United Performing Arts Fund. 

MACBETH runs March 25 – April 3, 2022 at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, located at 325 W. Walnut Street in downtown Milwaukee. Tickets are $15. Tickets are available online at firststage.org or through the First Stage Box Office at (414) 267-2961. Performance runtime is approximately 2 hours plus an intermission. Suggested for families and young people ages 13+.   

Director Marcella Kearns had this to say about the production: “When I was a kid, my military father told me tales of the downfall of a Scottish warrior who had saved his people. I didn’t realize until I was much older that Macbeth was how I learned to love Shakespeare – even before I knew who the playwright was.    

MACBETH demands of its actors prowess with language. Strength for radical physical transformation and combat. Courage and resilience for gazing into the brightest and the murkiest aspects of the human spirit. As Young Company, the cast has brought this arsenal of tools from day one.” 

Added Young Company Director Matt Daniels: “More than 400 years after it was written, Macbeth remains scarily of the moment. This exploration of ambition and its pitfalls is one of Shakespeare’s tightest plays and will be expertly led by longtime Young Company faculty member Marcella Kearns with fight choreography by Christopher Elst. This play is fast, furious and terrifying, and a great way to welcome Young Company’s award-winning Shakespeare chops to the remodeled Goodman Mainstage Hall, where battles for the vast Scottish landscape will be right in the audience’s lap.” 

Young Company Performance Projects are actor-driven presentations using elemental production values. By stripping down to a nearly bare stage, the connection of actor to audience is enhanced, and the words of the play come alive in exciting ways. These fully rehearsed studio projects allow First Stage’s award-winning students to showcase their graduate level skills with full-length material, from Shakespeare to American classics to pieces commissioned specially for them. 

For tickets or more information about MacBeth or First Stage, visit them here!!

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My Way, A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra!

Frankly, is there anyone who can get enough of Frank Sinatra? From the audience response last night at the Milwaukee Repertory Theaters’ Stackner Cabaret, the answer is NO! And the crowd goes beyond the age demographic you might expect to see at a Sinatra Tribute. The contingent of audience members who were most likely born THIS century were there in force. And the ovation at the end of My Way was sincere and heartfelt!

No, there’s not much story here…just a bit of background on Frank Sinatra and the history of the songs…just more like two solid hours of all of Sinatra’s hits…so every cool song you’ve probably ever heard of plus a number that you might have missed!

screen capture from the Milwaukee Repertory website

So…we have Alex Bechtel, Kara Mikula, Nygel D Robinson, and Tiffany Topol tradings songs, verses, adding harmonies, and swapping instruments as they merrily traverse the Frank Sinatra songbook! Besides trying to guess which Frank nugget they are going to perform next, you have to add who’s going to sing it AND what instrument are they going to play. Of course piano is the anchor most of the time, but we see string bass, flute, banjo ukulele, tenor guitar, saxophone, violin, guitar, and drums at one point or another. oh, and cocktail shaker! Amazing musicianship and slick choreography as they pass off instruments between actors. And of course the vocals are spot on to the mood and theme of each song presented!

Created by David Grapes & Todd Olson | Book by Todd Olson

Original Production Directed by David Grapes

Directed & Choreographed by Kelley Faulkner

My Way, A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra runs at the Stackner Cabaret through May 1, 2022…ticket info and other pertinent data is here! And make sure you check their current COVID policy!

Extra credit reading: My Way program is here.

and a side note: this play brought this to the forefront in my mind. So I dedicate this response to the memory of Jack Covert, proprietor of Dirty Jack’s Record Rack back in the 1970 – 80s. He was a mentor and employer and my front door to the record business that I dabbled in for quite a few years. He was a bit older and was a huge Frank fan and amassed one of the largest collection of Sinatra recordings in the country. He was well known for it in collector circles and even the record company salesman that visited kept an eye open for older arcane recordings. He passed suddenly last year and I miss him.