McGivern playing the Pabst
John McGivern talks about the Pabst Theater’s first shows in 13 months and his new TV show.
Opened in 1895, Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater is one of the oldest operating theaters in the United States. But like nearly every venue across the country, it’s been closed for the past 13 months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Pabst Theater Group has opened its doors for some intimate weddings, trying to make any money it can in an event-free world. In January, CNN staged a town hall at the Pabst with President Joe Biden, moderator Anderson Cooper and a limited audience.
This Friday, the Pabst will again fulfill its primary purpose for the past 125 years: It will host a show.
Local actor and TV personality John McGivern will perform a new one-man show, “Up Close (But Not Too Close),” for a masked, socially distant audience of 250 in the 1,300-seat theater. The residency includes 12 shows and runs through May 16. Tickets, at $25.50 to $45.50, are available at pabsttheater. org.
“I am so excited to iron this shirt,” McGivern says with a laugh. “I have been watching way too much television.”
For those unable to make it to the theater, they can see McGivern on their own TVs in January, for his new Midwest travel show “Main Streets with John McGivern.” Production starts next month.
A home for a holiday show
But first up is “Up Close,” which, like everything during this pandemic, has been on its own unpredictable journey.
McGivern, 65, started doing oneman holiday shows about 15 years ago, which like his other one-man shows over the years, featured stories from his life. Pabst Theater Group CEO Gary Witt approached McGivern in September about staging another holiday show in 2020 at the Pabst, for a limited audience.
It was supposed to run in November and December. Because of ongoing restrictions for mass gatherings in the city, it was postponed to February. Then it was postponed a second time.
“It goes from holiday stories to Valentine’s Day stories to now I’m doing (expletive) summer stories,” McGivern jokes. “It’s like, wow.”
“Up Close” will include some stories from past one-man shows, but it also has two new ones.
One story at the top of the first act looks at life in isolation since the COVID-19 crisis began “and staying at home with my partner that I’ve been with for 19 years, and how it’s reaffirmed all of my choices,” McGivern said.
The second is a tribute to his mother, a frequent character in his past stories, who died last spring at 92.
“That woman was wildly funny, she was really smart, she was so well read,” McGivern said. “The fact that she was 92 years old and that she did so well until the day before she died … there’s a gift around that.”
After those Pabst shows were pushed back, McGivern did end up doing four holiday shows at the Schauer Arts Center in Hartford in December, which was capped at 25% capacity, with the closest person to the stage 25 feet away.
“I thought it would be very strange, but it felt very normal,” McGivern said. “I still shared an energy that was palpable, and people were so incredibly thrilled to sit in a dark theater and share a laugh.”
“There’s a richness in looking back with these stories,” McGivern said. “The streets are different, the names are different, but our experiences are so similar, and (these stories) speak to our human experience.”
McGivern’s ‘Main Streets’ TV show
After “Up Close” closes May 16, McGivern will shift his full focus to “Main Streets,” a follow-up to the Milwaukee PBS program “Around the Corner With John McGivern.” McGivern won five regional Emmys for “Around the Corner,” which spotlighted 117 communities in Wisconsin across nine seasons.
In December, Milwaukee PBS said it was not renewing “Around the Corner” due to “economic realities stemming from the pandemic and the substantial costs of the series,” according to a statement issued to the Washington County Insider.
“All I could say is the writing was on the wall for a long time, since new management came in,” McGivern said. “It was not a matter of not liking what we did … but I don’t think they thought our fare was PBS. Over the past four or five years, there were all these hurdles we had to jump over.”
But once word got out that the show wouldn’t be renewed, McGivern “got calls from all over asking what I was interested in doing,” including from Plum Media, the Milwaukee-based production company behind “Main Streets.”
If he was going to do a show, McGivern wanted to continue working with “Around the Corner” co-creator, director and producer Lois Maurer. Plum Media agreed, “and about a month later, we were signing contracts,” McGivern said.
“The fact that the two of us can continue like we have the last 11 years, it’s a blessing,” McGivern said.
Hitting the road
Filming will span from May through the second week of September, with McGivern, Maurer and three other crew members visiting 13 communities, one per episode, for Season 1. But unlike “Around the Corner,” “Main Streets” isn’t sticking to Wisconsin.
“I am still the host of a travel show, so I think it will feel a lot like ‘Around the Corner’ did,” McGivern said. “But if we are going to start something new, let’s do something new. Let’s go broader and let’s not have any sort of restrictions that were based on what we did before.”
Season 1 will visit six states, and devote episodes to towns like Rochester, Minnesota; Dubuque, Iowa; Evanston, Illinois; South Bend, Indiana; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and Sister Bay in Wisconsin.
Local country band Tangled Lines has already been commissioned to record the theme song, and McGivern said the show will air in at least 20 markets in the Midwest, including Milwaukee, but he’s not ready to say what channels it’ll be just yet.
“It’s either do this or retire,” McGivern said. “And if the last year can be any indication, I don’t think I would be really good at retiring.”