Welcome to 2009

New Year’s Eve was a bit odd. My wife and I ended up watching in some drunken improv at the Alchemist Theatre just hours before the first seconds of 2009. The scheduled super-hero-themed New Year's Eve didn't quite happened, as only one woman showed up in costume as Batgirl, I believe . . . there were a couple of guys in wigs as well, if I'm not mistaken. So it goes with the best laid plans of mice and super-men . . . As I’d promised I wouldn’t write about the drunken improv experience, (my wife assured Patrick Schmitz that I wasn’t “on the clock,”) I will instead spend a brief moment on the first day of the year mentioning a couple of things that are upcoming . . .

Happy?
Local stages seem to be easing into 2009 with relatively few openings in the early part of January. The Marcus Center welcomes a new Broadway musical based on a TV sitcom set in Milwaukee in the 1950’s that was actually taped in California in the 1970’s. Here we have out of town actors playing musical versions of these characters in a situation guaranteed to fall pretty squarely between bad and good art damage. The fact that Happy Days creator Gary Marshall wrote the script for the show is only really significant until you realize that Marshall was only paying homage to American Graffitti when he created the series . . . Opening January 6th, it’s the first real opening of 2009

Still Painting
Just a couple of days prior to the Marcus Center opening, Insurgent Theatre presents yet another performance of what just might be the longest-running local DIY show in history as Ben Turk and company present Paint The Town at Stonefly Brewery on January 4th. The show comes to Stonefly having made a long touring journey up from Florida over th course of the past few days. Below is a taste of the show, which is actually pretty interesting. Seeing it in the cramped confines of tiny videobox format doesn’t really do justice to the show, but it should give interested parties. Its definitely worth a look for people who haven’t seen it yet. You could do a lot worse things with $7 on the first Sunday night of 2009 . . .