Magic in the air in three Milwaukee shows
Aaron Kopec’s Halloween shows win the popularity contest every year at Kopec’s Alchemist Theatre; the large crowd watching Kopec’s “Pepper’s Ghost” alongside me on Friday the 13th suggests this year is no exception.
But even as we watch him peruse the actual script for this latest Halloween treat, Kopec surrogate Donald (David Sapiro) is complaining that his patrons only want chills and thrills, while he wants to write nuanced dialogue and tell compelling stories.
Stealing an idea dreamed up by his techie (Nate Press), what Donald does instead is con rich people into letting him give their houses a Halloween makeover: He’ll provide the eerie special effects, mixing in some of that ancestral family history that makes the rich feel important. Like this show, the resulting high jinks can be funny (a goofy Press is especially so).
But as Alchemist has repeatedly made clear during its past decade of shows, a theatrical house has a life of its own; try to play it and it often winds up playing you instead. As Halloween reminds us each year, we think we’re playing a game of make-believe for which we know all the rules, until we get spooked for real.
What begins as a series of deliberately cheesy sight and sound gags morphs into a psychologically intense meditation on the ghosts haunting every closet. Give those specters an inch and they’re likely to take everything, including one’s soul. Kopec himself makes a creepy cameo to remind us that the past we’d thought we’d repressed continues to haunt the present.
“Pepper’s Ghost” occasionally grows dense and loses its way after intermission. But it’s often entertaining and consistently intriguing, with Sapiro and April Paul leading the way. Big on the theme that time is relative, it successfully makes time fly, in more ways than I can fairly disclose.
'Bell, Book and Candle'
Halloween is also in the air at the Brumder Mansion, home to Milwaukee Entertainment Group and its justopened production of John Van Druten’s “Bell, Book and Candle,” a 1950 Broadway hit that Hollywood adapted into a forgotten gem of a movie starring James Stewart and Kim Novak.
Shep Henderson (Randall Anderson) is an aging bachelor entranced by Gillian Holroyd (Libby Amato), a witch who must decide whether she’s willing to give up her special powers and become human, allowing her to fall in love for real. Think Liz Shipe’s wonderful “Upon a Midnight Clear,” a onetime MEG production offering a variation on this theme.
A prolific but now sadly forgotten playwright, Van Druten acknowledged that dramatic structure wasn’t his strong suit; the MEG production bears this out. But Van Druten wrote a number of strong female characters, and Gillian is emphatically among them.
Amato most fully captures Gillian’s intelligence and appeal in witty exchanges with fellow witches — Gillian’s aunt (a quirky, lovable Beth Perry) and brother (an impish Jason Nykiel) — and with a disheveled, perpetually drunk author writing about witchcraft (Michael Keiley).
But there’s little chemistry between Amato and Anderson, whose labored scenes make one wonder why Gillian would ever give up her captivating life and special power for what looks to be a boring marriage.
Truth be told, Van Druten may have wondered as much himself. A closeted gay man, his play poses the Hobson’s choice — confronting 1950s heterosexual women as well as 1950s gays and lesbians — between a safe if loveless marriage and an often lonely existence as an outcast in a marginalized subculture.
No wonder Amato’s Gillian can suggest Blanche DuBois while seeming restless, forlorn and lost. As she asks Shep at one point, “what can a nice girl do?”
Into the woods
The magic in Cooperative Performance’s season-opening show takes place outside, in the nature preserve abutting the Urban Ecology Center. Brainchild of Jeff Grygny and directed by Brian Rott, “The Performance Ecology Project” features six performers — Sarah Best, JJ Gatesman, Kavon Jones, Hesper Juhnke, Jessi Miller and Ben Yela — sharing their version of “Walden.”
During five consecutive Saturdays, this sextet engaged in somatic exercises involving yoga, tai chi, mindfulness, dance and theater games before heading into the woods to commune with nature. While there, they’d create vignettes and write songs, going home afterward to journal on what they’d experienced.
Grygny and Rott then shaped this material into a one-hour piece, which the audience enjoys after being led through a mini-version of the somatic exercises the troupe had done.
Having held yoga poses during which I buzzed like a mosquito, crouched like a squirrel and snarled like a bear, I took my place around a campfire and watched this cast impersonate these and other creatures, while channeling Italo Calvino to chronicle the history of the universe and ecologist Stephan Harding to urge that we learn to better love the earth.
Some of it played like overly precious and obscure theater exercises, but the best of it was a moving reminder of all we’ve lost and fail to notice as we stare at our phones rather than the world around us. Musician Jahmes Finlayson added numerous twangling instruments, underscoring the enchantment of this magical island in the heart of urban Milwaukee.
“Pepper’s Ghost” continues through Oct. 28 at the Alchemist Theatre, 2569 S. Kinnickinnic in Bay View. Visit www.the alchemisttheatre.com.
“Bell, Book and Candle” continues through Oct. 31 at the Brumder Mansion, 3046 W. Wisconsin Ave. Visit www. milwaukeeentertainmentgroup.com.
“The Performance Ecology Project” continues through Oct. 29 at 1500 E. Park Place. Visit www.cooperativeperformance.org. Read more about all three productions at TapMilwaukee.com.