Culture Club

                          It starts with swells of mottled bright blue and ends with the stillness of stars. Creation to infinity –  what else would you expect from a theater piece called All About Life? But since this new work is from Wild Space Dance Company, the title is a little more complicated than the pop-philosophy best-seller it suggests. After all, All About Life, is informed by the ideas of Alan Lightman, a theoretical physicist (appropriately named) who relishes the mystery of the universe, the idea that we can never know “all” about anything. This is a 75-minute extended riff on that…

#5 The Milwaukee Underground Film Festival at UWM Union Theatre (and other locations). Why? Because The Amazing Spiderman is back, and another X-Men, and those are just the beginning of the summer onslaught. So it might be a good time to cleanse your palate (so to speak) with a sampling from the international avant-garde of film. This UWM-student-run festival features film and video work from around the world, including pieces that experiment with celluloid (like Karissa Hahn’s In Effluence accord; Emulsion), experimental animation (like Elsewhere, the Survivers by Ali Aschman), and even a documentary that looks at the spawning of horseshoe…

Roy, the character at the heart of James McLure’s 1959 Pink Thunderbird, is a Viet Nam veteran with more than a touch of rebellion in his heart. He loves his Lone Star beer, his home state of Texas, and his wife, even though he sometimes disappears for days for a no-questions-asked assignation. As played by Matt Koester in In Tandem’s Theatre’s new production, he’s a devilishly handsome, hootin’ and hollerin’ good old boy who literally shakes the theater’s foundations when he stomps around the stage. As his wife Elizabeth says–played by Libby Amato staring toward the horizon with palpable longing–“Roy…

We tend to develop a shorthand when talking about artists–as if their styles were set in stone. “That’s a Rembrandt.” “Sounds like Handel to me.” “Good old loquacious Tennessee Williams.” But artists grow and change over even short lifetimes. And when a creative mind’s work spans many decades—as is the case with Sergei Rachmaninoff—the changes can be remarkable. If you don’t believe me, listen to the three pieces played by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra this weekend at the Marcus Center. They represent 45 years of Rachmaninoff’s creative life, and hearing them in the same program offered interesting insights into the…

Somewhere, Martha Quinn and Mark Goodman are smiling. The original MTV “VJ’s”—who lead the network and its music videos into world consciousness in the 1980s—weren’t mentioned during Danceworks Performance Company’s Plugged In, which opened Thursday. But they were there in spirit. 1980s Spirit to be exact, which happened along sometime after the Spirit of ’76, and before that “Teen Spirit” Kurt Cobain could smell. The spirit nurtured by MTV’s music videos, VJs, and newsman Kurt Loder, heir to Cronkite and progenitor or Colbert. To capture—and gently mock—that “plugged-in” spirit, Danceworks turned to the talented songwriter Jason Powell, who parodized the…

#5: Prometheus Trio at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Why? Because WCM’s resident piano trio—Stephanie Jacob, Scott Tisdel and Timothy Klabunde—are terrific at finding music you don’t hear every day. To wit: a trio arrangement of Arnold Schoenberg’s landmark tone poem, “Verklärte Nacht,” arranged by Schoenberg’s former student, Eduard Steuermann, which should highlight the atmospheric transparency of the composer’s inventive harmonies. Also on the program, a Haydn Trio and Brahms early Trio in B major, which he completed as a 20-year-old, and then rewrote it 35 years later. #4: 1959 Pink Thunderbird at In Tandem Theatre. Why? Because playwright James…

Open Studio at UW-Milwaukee’s Kenilworth Building Why? Because the future is here, and you have just three hours to see it. UWM’s Peck School opens the doors of its innovative facility to let you meander through hundreds of works in progress. Faculty studios are often crammed with new designs—past, present and future—and hallways are filled with exhibits, performances and artists eager to talk about their work. Opera on Tap at Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum Why? Because someone, somewhere had the grand idea of blending the world of opera with the world of beer. And you can bet it wasn’t…

     Since so much depends on it, let’s start with the red wheel barrow. It lands in the middle of Jeanine Durning’s remarkable inging – presented Wednesday night at the Lynden Sculpture Garden as part of Alverno Presents’ “Solo Flight” – with all the dense “thingness” that the words carry in William Carlos Williams’ famous poem. And by “land,” I don’t mean it drops Phantom-chandelier-like in the middle of an f/x-laden spectacle. It arrives through sound alone – four syllables uttered with a deliberate emphasis and slight change of pace – and it’s only one of accents that Durning vividly…

The contemporary met the traditional Friday night at Present Music’s concert at Turner Hall. It’s portentous title–“Life, Love, and Death”–wasn’t as ominous when you realized that the two major works on the program were Louis Andriessen’s “Life” and Donnacha Dennehy’s “Love and Death.” Call it truth in advertising. The featured artists figured in both the Now and the Then. Iarla Ó Lionáird is an Irish singer Sean-nós singer, a tradition that is said to be at the root of all Gaelic song styles. And you could certainly hear that in O’Lionaird solos. They’re a beautiful combination of rich sustained tones…

There’s a reason why Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor has been staged umpteen times around the world–from the West End to Broadway to high schools–since it premiered in 1986. It’s a classic, “well-made” farce that offers juicy comic parts—from the opera star to the starry-eyed ingénue to even the hotel bellhop—that actors love to play. And there’s an obvious glow of pleasure radiating from the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production, which opened at the Broadway Theatre Center this weekend. It isn’t frantically paced—there’s more door-closing than door-slamming. It isn’t neck-breakingly acrobatic. And it certainly doesn’t aspire to literary greatness. But…