#5: Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s An Evening with Carl Sandburg at the Broadway Theatre Center
Why? Because he’s played everyone from King Lear to Falstaff to Elwood P. Dowd. And now Jonathan Gillard Daly is playing one of the icons of the American Midwest–Carl Sandburg. Daly’s original play recreates one of Sandburg’s “concert” performances, in which he was part poet laureate and part folk musician, reading his own work and regaling the crowd with his own renditions of guitar-strummed folk songs. This one-night-only staged reading is part of the MCT’s Montgomery Davis Play Development Series. It’s directed by Gale Childs Daly.
#4: James and the Giant Peach at First Stage
Why? Because the CGI magicians at Pixar and Disney can “generate” a world of bugs and peach pits, but we’re always partial to those who abandon their terabyte hard drives for a time and create something magical from the ground (and greasepaint) up. Director Matt Daniels should be up to that task here, staging the musical version of Roald Dahl’s classic fantasy of fruit, fauna, and a boy named James. Jenny Wanasek, Beth Mulkerron, Lamar Jefferson and Rick Pendzich head the cast.
#3: Early Music Now presents Rumbarocco at UWM’s Zelazo Center
Why? Because Rumbarocca isn’t the latest craft cocktail devised by that hipster bartender who styles his beard to resemble the Chrysler Building. It’s a group specializing in the confluence of European and Latin American music traditions from the 16th, 17th & 18th centuries. And this concert is probably the only time you’ll see a viola da gamba and a conga drum on the same stage. But please, no rhumba-ing.
#2: Prince Uncovered at Alverno’s Pitman Theatre
Why? Because Alverno’s “Uncovered” series is always inventive and innovative. But this concert should offer something—as the saying goes—completely different: the original funk-soul-pop mélange of Prince Roger Nelson interpreted by the somewhat twangy postmodern folk style of Milwaukee’s Hello Death. We’re really itching to hear Shawn Stephany’s pedal steel behind the slow lyric burn of Little Red Corvette.
#1: Florentine Opera’s Madame Butterfly at the Marcus Center
Why? Because the Florentine seems to be making a tour of the grandest of the grand operas these days (in addition to their contemporary work). Verdi and Puccini, Wagner and Rossini. And it doesn’t get much grander than Puccini’s tale of Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton, the tragic romance at the heart of Butterfly. Alyson Cambridge played a captivating Mimi in the Florentine’s 2014 production of La Boheme. Here, there are even bigger challenges, and she has a talented cast to help her rise to the occasion: Eric Barry, Julia Mintzer and Mark Walters.
