Out to sea, on the lam, and just being everywhere, man
Owing to a recent bout of being hither and thither, I found it only appropriate that these three shows reviewed in capsulate should also have wandering as a theme.
Tamara Wilson and Tomasz Konieczny. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.
There’s scant few chances left to board Lyric Opera’s mounting of Christopher Alden’s production of The Flying Dutchman. It’s a voyage that even the tempest-tost would find bracing. Richard Wagner’s first real flex as a musical dramatist demands attention (and not just because he insisted on no intermission).
At least until Beetlejuice lands in Chicago next month, Tomasz Konieczny as the Dutchman is our resident ghost with the most, doomed to sail the seven seas for all eternity amassing treasures he has no hope of spending. Allen Moyer’s listing wooden box only further amplifies his sepulchral tones.
For the Dutchman, that box is an overladen ship. For Tamara Wilson’s Senta, hopelessly in love with the captain’s visage, it’s an unevenly lowering coffin, a fate she embraces with unsettling fervor and killer pipes.
But, perversely, they belong together, even if these two ships will only ever pass in that gloomy eternal night. Don’t let Wagner and Alden’s ship pass you by.
The Flying Dutchman runs through October 7 at the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Dr.. For tickets or more information, please call (312) 827-5600 or visit lyricopera.org.
Erika Olson and The Company. Photo by Michael Brosilow.
You’d think Milwaukeeans, many probably sick to death of Dahmermania, would be nonplussed by Run Bambi Run, a true-crime punk rock musical based on the case of Lawrencia “Bambi” Bembenek, another of their (ahem) citizens of note. But as the relationship between citizenry and law enforcement comes under new scrutiny—and as certain pockets of law enforcement, surely aware of that scrutiny, nevertheless wreak havoc to further their own ends—it would seem Bambi has arrived at a most opportune moment. The house at my performance was positively buzzing for some of that decades-old dirt.
Indeed, though Bambi opens with that old true-crime teaser—innocent or guilty?—it quickly unfurls its agitprop colors, very clearly in the camp that Bembenek was framed in institutional retaliation. If occasionally delving into the cartoonish—that is, into the giddy land of “We swear, we are not making this s—t up”—let’s be clear: agitprop is less concerned with the artful stroke of the brush than it is with the sheer thrust of the knife.
Besides, with book by Eric Simonson and songs by Gordon (Violent Femmes) Gano, native Wisconsinites both, it’s certainly a cartoon on Milwaukee’s terms. (My companion for the matinee, a native Milwaukeean, gave it his cultural seal of approval.)
(Did I not say yet the production kicks ass? Well, it kicks ass from Milwaukee all the way across Lake Michigan.)
Agitprop also helps to smooth over the obstacle I find in musicals based on miscarriages of justice: once the victimized protagonist is in the system’s clutches, there’s not much for them to do but await the end. They are rendered passive, and, as musicals tend to value active characters, that puts at risk our sympathies with them. If there’s anything for this musical to amplify in future productions, I’d say it would be to lean into this question further: if Bembenek was innocent, why does it matter whether or not we sympathize with her? Just the facts, ma’am, right?
But as Laurie (a heroic Erika Olson) warns in the opening number, “This is me, but could be you.” And she had everything going for her: whip-smart, photogenic, married to an officer of the Milwaukee Police Department. Look what that got her. What would you do if the facts weren’t enough for the Man? Running doesn’t seem so crazy now, does it?
Spoiler: things don’t get much better for Laurie over the course of the show. With agitprop, though, making things better becomes our job.
Run Bambi Run runs through October 22 at Milwaukee Repertory Theater, 108 E. Wells St., Milwaukee, WI. For tickets or more information, please call (414) 224-9490 or visit milwaukeerep.com.
Erik Hellman, Roy James Brown, Ron E. Rains, and Elleon Dobias. Photo by Brett Beiner.
I think I can see what Richard Maltby, Jr. wanted to do with Ring of Fire, the Johnny Cash revue-sical now playing at Drury Lane. Though it features many a Cash look and sound-alike—Michael Potter in the young man’s Opry-playing youth; Ron E. Rains as the older and wiser Man in Black—and though the interstitial text recounts a biography identical to Cash’s, it’s not really about the man but rather his vibe, his peripatetic ministry to the downtrodden. His Depression-era childhood laboring alongside his family on their modest farm was the lot of many. Perhaps, too, the amphetamines he infamously took to keep him awake on tours also kept an overtaxed working class to prop up their industries.
Maltby used this vibe-first approach with his own Ain’t Misbehavin’, which was less about “Fats” Waller himself and more about the 1920s Harlem cradle that rocked him. That one was a great big hit and it set a high standard for these songbook-driven shows.
Ring of Fire had a blink-and-it’s-gone Broadway bow in the mid-Aughts, but Maltby rejiggered it into what is by all accounts a tighter show. (Mercury Theater, for one, produced it in 2015 to warm reviews.)
A matinee with a band of virtuosic actor-musicians always makes for a pleasant afternoon, and Angela Weber Miller’s end-of-the-line train depot makes a beaten yet handsome stage for them. (Anthony Churchill’s projections make for a verdant Grant Wood-ish backdrop.) But there’s the creeping sense that a show trying to mirror Cash’s life (however obliquely) should just deck you when you least expect it, like a barroom brawl. Drury Lane, lovely venue that it is, ain’t a barroom and that punch never comes.
Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash runs through October 22 at Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, IL. For tickets or more information, please call (630) 530-0111 or visit drurylanetheatre.com.
For more reviews on this or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.