Full Disclosure: Bill is a personal friend and I managed him for a while and handled his record distribution.
Lumberjacks In Love: Shakespeare Meets Vaudeville At The REP!
After the rollicking fun of last season’s presentation of Men On Ice, expectations for the Rep’s next import from Wisconsin’s ‘Great White North’ was highly anticipated. And this presentation of another work from James Kaplan and Fred Alley proves it’s mettle.
So most of you who are familiar with Shakespeare know that one of his favorite shticks is having characters masquerade as others…and often as members of the opposite sex…often with a fair amount of Elizabethan humor ensuing…and Kaplan and Alley present a bit of that here all in good fun!
Vaudeville? Well, we have four guys at lumber camp in the deep woods. So certainly we are exposed to a slew of slap stick and physical humor with silly jokes and puns. Oh, and there might actually be a Shakespearean reference that draws it’s own share of outright laughter!
Our four guys in the woods are Dirty Bob, Muskrat, Moonlight, and Minnesota Slim. With nicknames like that we already have a fun way to start out…but they open with a ensemble paean to life as a lumberjack…and the fun starts here immediately.
The lumberjack to watch is Dirty Bob played by Ryan Cappleman. Cappleman’s Dirty Bob is active, agile, and the over the top performer in nearly every scene and the butt of much of the humor…and from what I saw on Sunday night…the audience’s favorite character and actor! Camp leader is Minnesota Slim, who comes off as a very attractive and charismatic soul as played by Joe Picchetti. Doc Heide is Muskrat who celebrates his 60th birthday and is struggling a bit with the aging process…a bit concerning at first…but with a humorous result! And Moonlight is another character who is questioning what he is feeling and not sure where to go with it or how to address it…and Chase Stoeger is the sensitive Moonlight here.
And then there is a The Kid, Eva Nimmer. The Kid is an orphan who was originally brought to camp by her late father. At first a seemingly support character, The Kid later becomes the pivot point as our story shifts from the ‘joys’ as life as a lumberjack to Lumberjacks In Love. And her nemesis so to speak is Rosemary Rogers, the mail order bride who arrives to marry Minnesota Slim. And Rosemary Rogers is incredibly inhabited by Molly Rhode, who proves to be a very flexible opportunist, but not the exactly one you expect!
And then back to Shakespeare, the final scene is a reunion and personal discovery scene where all’s well that ends well.
Lumberjacks In Love is driven by exciting toe tapping music that vibrantly ties the back story together. And the cast that director Jeff Herbst has assembled here is obviously having a lot of fun and just as obviously is enjoying working together. That feeling is infectious and the audience clearly feels it too!
Extra Credit Reading: The Program is here.
Lumberjacks In Love runs for about two hours with an intermission and is playing at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stackner Cabaret. The show just opened and runs through January 12, 2025. Additional information and tickets can be found here.
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