Duo shines amid Rep Lab experiments
In the first of the eight short plays presented during this year’s Rep Lab – annually showcasing the emerging theater artists who’ve spent a season with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater — a summer camp drama teacher gives a curtain speech to the expectant parents who’ve shown up for the culminating play.
Embodied by a deadpanning Brade Bradshaw, the teacher warns us not to expect much from the night’s show, while simultaneously making clear that the kids are cretins and monsters.
The Rep’s interns aren’t kids, and reliable sources tell me they’re among the nicest class of emerging Rep actors in recent memory. But judged in terms of both play selection and talent level, the teacher’s warning to an expectant audience is otherwise apt: this is far and away the worst of the seven Rep Labs I’ve seen (there’ve been eight; I missed the first).
Bradshaw’s monologue also anticipates what’s to come in another sense: The night is dominated by men’s voices, needs or both, in yet another year during which the majority of the selected plays are by men — true of all seven Rep Labs I’ve attended (and also true of the overall Rep season in each of those seven years).
The second play, an overly precious devised piece, also features a male monologue, delivered by a man (Daniel Stock) who spends 60 years pining for a woman (Annelyse Ahmad); while she seemingly feels the same way toward him, she never gets to speak or take the initiative.
Two more plays feature self-involved men experiencing relationship trouble with the women in their lives. The first is comforted by a neighboring woman — after he tells her he likes the sound of her overheard orgasms. The second is consoled by a third-grade Little League team. In yet another play, women who transgress are punished by being strangled.
The majority of this year’s plays also just aren’t that good.
Most of them are cloyingly cute, precious or both. Nearly all of them try way too hard to be funny — without ever risking emotional depth, of the sort characterizing the best Rep Lab work from seasons past. The one piece that tries hardest to go there delivers dumbed-down agitprop.
There is one sparkling diamond in all this dirt, delivered by the night’s two best actors.
Directed by Nabra Nelson, Leah Nanako Winkler’s “Linus and Murray” features a cat (Bradshaw) and a dog (Kelsey Elyse Rodriguez), overcoming their baked-in prejudices to forge a friendship.
Initially, both creatures behave about as you’d expect: Bradshaw’s feline sports a leather jacket and affects cool nonchalance, while Rodriguez’s dog dons a Christmas sweater and is unbearably eager to please. Winkler brings them to common ground through a delightful combination of humor, sharp insight and genuine emotion. Would that the night had delivered more of all three.
The Rep Lab continues through Monday at the Stiemke Studio, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, go to milwau keerep.com. For a ranking and capsule reviews of all eight plays, go to TapMil waukee.com.