Category: Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

This is a reprint of my remarks about “Two Trains Running” at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater presented in their Quadracci Powerhouse main stage theater during the 2018 – 2019 season. This originally appeared on my Facebook timeline sometime in April, 2019!

The first August Wilson play that I attended was the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s presentation of Jitney during the 2001/2002 season. It was an OMG theater experience for me and I have looked forward to every other Wilson play that the Rep has presented since then. I had never been enamored of 20^th Century playwrights…just some things here and there…but nothing like Mr. Wilson.

For me, Mr. Wilson’s strength is in his characters. They feel authentic. They stay true to themselves. The dialogue rings true…consistently. And what characters they are! People representing the full breadth and strata of the local neighborhood…philosophers…poseurs…the backbones of society…and the ne’er do wells…a delightful chorus!

So all season I was just waiting for Two Trains Running. And I was not disappointed. All of the action takes place in Memphis Lee’s diner in an inner-city Pittsburgh neighborhood currently under the pressure of urban renewal – gentrification that is slowing destroying the nature of their environment. The focus is Risa, the only woman in an apparently man’s world. She is all things to the diner: the chef, the wait and bus staff, dishwasher and clean-up crew. She is also the level head that keeps everyone on an even keel. Memphis owns the joint and thinks he ‘runs’ it, but he is stressed out by the city’s efforts to buy the diner and the earlier harms he’s suffered in Jim Crow Alabama. And then there’s the retiree, Holloway, who is the camp philosopher. Wolf, the numbers runner and self-proclaimed lady’s man who knows the whole neighborhood. Sterling who’s just returned after a short term in prison and who wants to do well, but while facing prejudices is surviving in the gray area between right and wrong. And Hambone who has been driven to insanity by the injustice of the white business man across the street from the diner. And West, the black undertaker who knows everyone. He owns a major portion of the neighborhood and is held up as the economic success story for his neighbors. But he’s got his own hustle.

So Two Trains Running is a week in the life for this crew and this diner and this neighborhood. It clearly presents issues around race and economic inequity and faith. Although set in 1969, there hasn’t been that much that has changed in the ensuing 50 years. We’ll see some of Milwaukee in the dialogue and the settings. Not all of it pleasant. But we do feel that sense of community that Wilson brings to all of his plays. And a story that needs to be told.

I saw the play twice. The first time I felt the running time of three hours seemed to be too long…that must have been on me. The second time, even though I already knew the story, it flew by and I was sad when it had ended. That makes for a good play and a good presentation.

My big shout out for this play is to Michael Anthony Williams…he makes an incredible Holloway and for me really set this play up! I know Risa is often considered the focal point since she is the rock that runs the diner…but Holloway shows us the community around him.

And the set designers…my goodness…if this set isn’t exactly the way I remember tired late 1960’s diners to look. Wow! Two Trains Running only runs through May 12^th at the Quadracci Power House Theater…so you best hurry!

This is a reprint of my remarks about “Thinks I Know To Be True” at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater presented in their main stage Quadracci Powerhouse during the 2018 – 2019 season. This originally appeared on my Facebook timeline on or about March 31, 2019!

I wasn’t paying attention and I apologize. As part of the Milwaukee Rep’s Social Media Club, I am supposed to write about my reactions to the plays as the season progresses. Now the SMC gets seats for the first weekend of a play’s run but I also have a subscription. So sometimes I had the Rep move my tickets earlier in the run but because of other events, I used my regular tickets for Things I Know To Be True. But there are now only TWO performances left: They are both TODAY March 31: 2:00 PM Matinee and the final performance at 7:00 PM. So if after reading this, you had better call for tickets!!

I was warned by friends that this play would make me laugh and make me cry. And it did…at times when I didn’t expect it and at times when I did…and too often (for my eyes not for the drama) it moved from one to the other without warning. So we have a family…30 years in development…solid middle class blue collar Midwestern family (rewritten for the Midwest by the way). Four kids…two of each…and the big themes of life and love and family and kids and home and death. The children are all ‘adults’ and all in various stages of launched but keep home as a touchstone in their own ways. We know these people…some of us are these people. And that’s why we can laugh and cry and love the characters so readily.

The events and timelines here are very very 21^st Century…and although this much action wouldn’t happen within a single family…it all would play out across all of our families. I am trying to avoid giving too much away. But we see the power dynamics between spouses…the changing rhythms in relationships…the struggle to be an individual without losing the sense of family…and we will recognize it all…and laugh and cry and understand.

The actors are all amazing and there is no way you don’t believe that they are their characters…even as those characters transform…and you love them all at different points in the play. The parents are early 60’s age…my peers…or at least my younger siblings’ peers and the children mostly millennial…so it is very contemporary. The only quibble I have is the parents’ viewpoint…it was a mix of my feeling as a parent but sometimes it seemed more in keeping with my parents’ generation. Maybe I am reading too much into that or maybe it got lost in the translation from the Australian.

When does your childhood end (and unspoken: does parenthood ever end?)

This is a reprint of my remarks about “Junk” at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater presented on their main stage Quadracci Powerhouse during the 2018 – 2019 season. This originally appeared on my Facebook timeline on January 28, 2019!

It’s been over a week since I saw Ayad Akhtar’s Junk at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater and I have procrastinated on getting this reaction written. Shame on me.  This play was one of the two that I expected to be highlights of the current season. The other being August Wilson’s Two Trains Running.

The past two seasons I had seen Mr. Akhtar’s The Who & The What and Disgraced. These are both intimate plays built around struggles inherent in family, culture and religion. Well drawn characters and plots that twist unexpectedly…and no matter who is the seemed protagonist, you develop an empathy for everyone on stage. Both are true gems.

For Junk, Mr. Akhtar takes on a bigger broader slice of society. Here we see the inner machinations around Wall Street in the era of junk bonds. Instead of a small ensemble, we have 20 characters who are perfectly limned by the playwright. We hear the joy in the spoken word and the precision in language that I expected after seeing Mr. Akhtar’s previous plays. Very challenging indeed. But rather than family or culture or religion, the driving force here is greed…for every single character on stage…so you won’t come away with any empathy for any of the characters.

This play runs two hours without intermission which seemed odd to me at first. But the action is presented in little vignettes primarily presented on the empty Rep thrust stage in front of an imposing gray wall. The settings are each defined with the actors pulling out and then placing the necessary furnishings on stage…so we know if we are moving from a board room…to law office…to bedroom…or shop floor. The wall includes a number of balconies that also allow the actors to communicate within the play or allow Judy Chen to address the audience directly. But there can’t be an intermission. Each vignette adds to the storyline…adds to the stress…the plot accelerates as we go…and the playwright can’t allow you to take a breather or your anxiety level won’t match that of the action on stage at play’s end.

Rep Artistic Director Mark Clements directed this presentation. He couldn’t have done a better job of matching the actors to their characters. I never once felt that an actor didn’t quite fit or didn’t understand their relationship to the others. And he nailed the relationships in the play…he drove the action at the breakneck speed that the play required. Not a simple task given the number of scene changes and number of characters in the play.

One other difference between Junk and the other two Akhtar plays. In the earlier plays you left with some sadness but an understanding of the struggles involved. There we hope for a better future of sorts. In Junk, I left feeling distraught…that we as a society have learned nothing…and the last bit is perfect 20/20 hindsight foresight setting up the financial collapse from the housing bubble. So when I left the theater, instead of a feeling rewarded…there was just this sense of despair.

But YOU NEED TO SEE THIS PLAY!