Carte Blanche, Cafe Bizarre, Reefer Madness!
Nestled on 5th and Washington, on a surprisingly quiet strip in Walker’s Point, Carte Blanche Studios continues to imprint it’s butt on Milwaukee’s rogue theater scene. Carte Blanche’s current production Reefer Madness:The Musical enters it’s last weekend on Friday November 18th at 8pm, a stage adapted lampooning of the 1936 alarmist propaganda campaign against ganja Tell Your Children (Reefer Madness).
It’s a slapstick comedy with mega-doses of high jinks and quip humor that pits the active eyebrows of Michael Traynor (portraying the omnipresent shape-shifting conscious of America narrating the story, also serving as maestro of musical interludes) and his pitiful fictitious citizenry from Anywhere, USA, against overly concerned Carte Blanche audience members who play the role of Anywhere High School’s PTA. Okay Carte Blanche‘s audiences my not be overly concerned, even so our funny bones didn’t have a chance.
The Green Brick Road
The story centers around Jimmy (Chris Jones) and Mary Lane’s (Karrisa Lade) infantile teenage romance culminating with Jimmy asking Mary to the High School dance. Jimmy, after building up the guts to ask Mary Lane to the dance, realizes with horror he lacks rhythm.
Vulnerable, Jimmy comes across the path of Jack (Derek Woerpel) the local weed man, who offers him dance lessons as a thinly veiled ploy to lure a new customer into his web. Jimmy takes Jack up on his offer and Traynor dubbing as “America’s Conscious” gets many “I told you so” moments to taunt us with, as Jimmy’s experience on “Marihunana” swiftly turns him into a junkie, eventually dragging Mary into the smoke.
Mae (Samantha Paige), Jack’s pot jonesing girlfriend, melodramatically tries to urge the kids not to go down her path to burnout hussy-dom, but is foiled again and again by Jack, his best customer Ralph (Clayton Hamburg) and his resident floozy Sally (Emily Craig), and her own urges to keep toking. Jimmy and Mary Lane’s peers pop-up regularly as spunky teens of the town, by day, and dancing weed zombies by night… or day, played by Mara Mcghee, Mica Chenault, Andrew Parchman, Jessi Miller, and Caitlin Alba.
It’s plenty entertaining! Even before the lights went up, Michael Traynor’s entrance alone was so on spot to the period that I was already laughing out loud.
Cafe Bizzare
Carte Blanche now has a cafe called Cafe Bizzare that will eventually maintain regular business hours even when a show is not going on. There’s art on the walls, wood on the floors, great furniture, brews of caffeine and malted grains, what more could you want!
Carte Blanche Studios closes Reefer Madness!: The Musical, Sunday, November 20 and opens a one-nighter Lucky13 Open Mic Comedy the next day at 8p.
–Related Posts–
Reefer Madness: The Musical, Bunny Gumbo’s Blog, Bunny Gumbo
Carte Blanche gets bent: Reefer Madness! The Musical, The Examiner, Jeff Gryngy
Reefer Reviews!, Lisa Golda Blog, Lisa Golda
Who’s Sock? Broadminded: Blood is Thicker than Liquor
You can try to sit there with a straight face, but as Broadminded guarantees stolid faces may rip or tear. Another way to look at it, if you’re not laughing, their jabs at reality may land closer to you than you may care to admit. Darn ladies of Broadminded with their knack for wit and entertainment!
In Broadminded’s latest effort, Blood is Thicker than Liquor, Stacy Babl, Anne Graff DeLisa, Melissa Kingston, and Megan McGee breakout the industrial sized clothes hamper and pull out a dozen and a half sketches based on memories of their family and friends. A host of concocted characters humorously navigate everyday life situations like moving into a new apartment, court mandated counseling or getting revenge in innocuous ways.
The Broadminded troop exhibits extraordinary chemistry on stage, very adeptly weaving improv and sketch comedy into their current production. Babl and McGee both graduated from the Second City Conservatory and all four ladies are Comedy Sportz veterans. If nothing else, Blood is Thicker than Liquor gives a clinic on how to pace and structure a comedy performance.
For $10 you get an hour and a half comedy onslaught on weird mannerisms, social ignorance and taboos and great stories. Tonight, Friday June 24th, June 25th at 8:00pm and Sunday June 26 at 4:00pm are your last chances to join the Broadminded family at the Alchemist Theatre.
Uh, Sketchy… Pink Banana Theatre Co.
Pink Banana Theatre Co’s One Act Festival, Higher Education, drew its bow last night with a six act show aimed at funny bones, soft-spots, tear ducts (well maybe eye-balls), and family jewels. Although turning its cheek from more serious drama created by traditional theatre, some arises amidst the sketch comedy with which Higher Education bats your ears. Staying on theme, re-enacted school house shenanigans rotate in and out of view on the carousel stage, written, directed and performed by some of Milwaukee’s most promising young comedic talent.
Abound from start to finish, commentary, conflict, absurdity, slap-schticks, droll, and sarcastic burns, pack Pink Banana’s production. Class of 2011′s collective consciousnesses of pre-pubescent, college and early professional life dynamics added to well placed exaggeration, and flare for the ridiculous, make a pretty entertaining concoction irresistible for those with a taste for being entertained. In the process, Higher Learning provides a much needed outlet since laughing at kids in real life makes you jerk.
Sketch Hard
Writer’s Megan McGee (The Grade and Portuguese) and Sammi Ditloff (The Dilemma) delivered tightly worded, stand-out material directed by Kevin Wleklinski (The Grade) and Dana Gustafson (The Dilemma). The Grade (performed by Marion Araujo, Ashlea Woodley, Alix Lahren, and Ditloff) mocks two underachieving students’ very contrasting attempts to convince their frustrated Profs to increase their final grade at semester-end. Portuguese (performed by Lahren) sheds light on the changing landscape of college instruction, not withstanding regressing to use of “non-human substitutes”.
In The Dilemma, two college buddies, played by Rob Mass and Michael Black, take a social media decision so far over the top that Black enters a trance state where he utters Shakespeare while talking-out the problem, to the chagrin of Mass. By sketch end, it’s easy to forget why high school graduates go to college.
Charles Sommer’s Sound of One Loaf Baking, directed by Eleni Sauvageau, although a tad campy offers sitcom quality timing and genuine humor. The Baker family owns a bakery and papa Baker (Howie Magner) tries to convince teen daughter Juliana Baker (Megan Kaminsky) to keep the tradition going. Through her protests a revelation occurs when the Baking Buddha (Joaquin Rodriguez) delivers baking-inspired wisdom, while his son (Tim Braun) and Juliana’s angsty friend (Eilen Dunphy) meddle.
Enter the Players
Reader’s Pick for Express Milwaukee’s best actress in 2010, Beth Lewinski gives an attention-keeping performance in Allison Gruber’s nicely written but otherwise difficult script Guess Who Died? (dir. by Alan Piotrowitcz), supported by Mandy Marcucilli and Amie Lynn Losi. Georgia (Lewinski) and Rose (Marcucilli) graduated the same English program and now live together strained, lovers on the outs. Georgia’s intimate and professional life flashes before the audiences eye’s as her stories of work, play and romance provide a glimpse behind the scenes of Georgia’s public and internal personas.
Michael Black gives a repertory season’s worth of method as a supporting player in Guess Who Died?, The Dilemma and The Cookie (written by Rich Orloff, dir. Rebecca Segal), a little doohickey about two trailer-park-dwelling parents (Karina Lathrop and Kris Puddicombe) visiting their son James (Rob Mass) in jail for murder. A twisted power-seeking Lawyer (Kelly Coffey) tries to impress a likely-story on James to get him off.
A gentle warning, Pink Banana takes the liberty to incorporate a good deal of vulgarity both verbal and non-verbal in certain acts. So don’t bring your 3rd grader or refined high culture sensibilities. Overall, Higher Learning brings well done comic relief to an otherwise bi-polar Spring.
See a show tonight Saturday June 11 at 8:00p, tomorrow at 2:00p, next Thursday at 7:00p, Friday and Saturday at 8:00p, In Tandem’s 10th Street Theatre (10th and Wisconsin ) plays host.
