In ‘Dad’s Season Tickets’ at Milwaukee Rep, sisters battle for beloved Packers seats
No matter what happens at Lambeau Field this season, Green Bay Packers fans can celebrate a green-and-gold victory at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater over the next two months.
Milwaukee Rep is opening a new production of the musical comedy “Dad’s Season Tickets,” a monster hit in 2019 for Door County’s Northern Sky Theater. Written and composed by Matt Zembrowski, it is rife with Packers details for football nerds. But its engaging family comedy could appeal to anyone. Even a Bears fan.
And if you ever thought the drama and emotional turmoil that Packers fans go through was positively Shakespearean, Zembrowski is right there with you.
On a fandom scale of 1 to 10, Zembrowski rates himself an 8 or 9, someone who watches every game. He first imagined a show about the precious commodity of Packers season tickets as a riff on the Irish film “Waking Ned Divine,” in which a village conspires to keep a dead man’s lottery winnings. But he worried that might be too dark.
Then Zembrowski watched Ian Holm in the title role of a PBS production of Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” pondering which of three daughters should inherit his kingdom. The “Dad’s Season Tickets” concept hit him like a Reggie White “hump” move.
Packers and family
Unlike the vain and imperious Lear, Frank in “Dad’s Season Tickets” is a loving pater and a widower who wants to restore harmony among his strongwilled daughters: serious Rhonda, a kitchen whiz; boisterous Gabby, a diehard Packers fan; and youngest Cordy, an inquisitive peacemaker. When Rhonda and Gabby begin competing to prove
Jamie Mercado and Jonathan Gillard Daly rehearse a scene from “Dad’s Season Tickets.” Milwaukee Repertory Theater begins performing the musical comedy Oct. 29.
Dad should bequeath the tickets to them, mayhem and songs ensue.
Zembrowski said he wanted the show to appeal to typical theater fans as well as Packermaniacs: “What better way to open the world of the Packers than through a family, especially a family who’s going through some transitions and some struggles.”
While Milwaukee Rep’s previous Packers show, “Lombardi,” focused on the 1960s era, “Dad’s Season Tickets” is set during the unforgettable 1996 season, with the young Brett Favre leading a dynamic squad. “It was just distant enough that it felt like it was kind of historic in a way, but still present enough that all these guys are still around. And people can really relate to that,” Zembrowski said.
But “Dad’s Season Tickets” embraces the entire Packers epoch. Zembrowski’s clever script mentions 29 different players and coaches — maybe 30, if a certain
baby name foreshadows what I think it does.
During the show, a scoreboard not only accurately reflects games late in the 1996 season, it also tallies the sistervs.-sister battle.
Packer-crazed Gabby’s husband Edgar, an adjunct English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, provides comic relief by responding frequently with Shakespearean quotes. Zembrowski quipped that he couldn’t have written this show before the internet, since he counted on Google to find a pithy Shakespeare quote about going to the bathroom.
Yet Edgar also harbors a secret so dark I can’t print it in a family newspaper. Not in Packerland, anyway.
Shakespeare’s Lear could have used some parenting tips from the genial Frank. Zembrowski said he based the character on his late father-in-law, Don Nappe, who died last December.
If you go
Milwaukee Repertory Theater performs “Dad’s Season Tickets” Oct. 29-Jan. 2 at the Stackner Cabaret, 108 E. Wells St. Proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID-19 test required. Masks required. Visit milwaukeerep.com or call (414) 224-9490.
“He wanted nothing more than to make sure that his daughters were taken care of,” Zembrowski said. “He would have dropped anything for anybody that he cared about.” A math teacher for years at Cudahy High School, Nappe also coached freshman football and other sports.
“He was a 10 on the Packer (fandom) scale,” Zembrowski said.
Next: A Donald Driver musical?
Which real-life Packer would Zembrowski like to write a show about?
“If I didn’t say Donald Driver, my wife would kill me,” he said. “I would love to sit with him and chat with him and get to know him a little bit. … He’s already got such a theatrical story anyway, like his whole personality is so outgoing and inclusive, and then he’s got the ‘Dancing With the Stars’ thing … what an absolute cool life.”
Zembrowski’s favorite player on the 1996 team that co-stars in “Dad’s Season Tickets”?
“Don Beebe. Yeah. Because he is this scrawny little guy that … sort of embodied Green Bay … he had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder because he couldn’t get the championships in Buffalo. And all of a sudden he comes out and he’s making these plays with all the big boys.”
Contact Jim Higgins at jim.higgins@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jhiggy.