Astonished, challenged and delighted

Isthmus critics look back on a stellar year

Artists live and work in the realm of imagination, and 2015’s cultural landscape was rich in ideas and collaborations. We asked our critics to weigh in on what stood out on Madison’s stages, venues and museums this year.

Catherine Capellaro

I wasn’t the only one devastated by Tracy Michelle Arnold’s portrayal of a scientist battling dementia in Forward Theater Company’s The Other Place. Having watched this disease destroy my father’s mind, I found it almost unbearable at times — yet ultimately redemptive. I didn’t think I needed to see Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive again, but I’m so glad I went to Madison Theatre Guild’s production. As a woman coming to terms with her uncle’s abuse, Liz Angle was fragile yet fierce, and Edric Johnson played Uncle Peck with an awkward vulnerability.

It’s also been a great year for Mercury Players. Despite an overly didactic script, I really enjoyed the chemistry between real-life couple Whitney Derendinger and Deborah Hearst in Rapture, Blister, Burn. Encore Studio for the Arts also wowed me with Not Always a Parent, a brutally honest look at parenting and disabilities. My favorite Shakespeare of recent memory was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a revelatory collaboration between Children’s Theater of Madison and Theatre LILA. This gorgeous, energetic production captured the play’s visual and poetic magic and featured some extremely talented young performers in roles we usually see adults play. Broom Street Theater, under the direction of dynamo artistic director Heather Renken, has also produced some fine work this season, including the hauntingly gorgeous Held, by Meghan Rose and Kelly Maxwell.

Overture Center for the Arts stepped up its Broadway game this year, too. I enjoyed the witty irreverence of Book of Mormon and the sparkly, guilty pleasures of Mamma Mia! And I found the acrobatic ballet choreography of Newsies mesmerizing.

I was deeply affected by “20 Years of Freedom,” a concert with South African legends Hugh Masekela and Vusi Mahlasela at Wisconsin Union Theater. These “children of the townships” used powerful and danceable music to tell the story of how music and resistance have been intertwined in their home country.

Another peak cultural experience was Inuk throat singer and electronic wizard Tanya Tagaq at the Fredric March Play Circle. Collaborating with a live percussionist and violinist, she howled and groaned and gyrated her way through the 1922 silent film Nanook of the North. If it sounds crazy, it was. Do not miss her the next time she comes around.

I enjoyed seeing the UW’s First Wave scholars performing at the Wisconsin Book Festival’s “Passing the Mic” event, which celebrated 10 years of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives. At the conclusion, hip-hop artist Baba Israel presented an excerpt from a piece about his late father, a radical Jewish theater/jazz artist from New York City. Then he asked the audience to list some ways the world is fucked up. He created a freestyle rap, including every single topic mentioned: police brutality, sexism, Milwaukee Public Schools and even Donald Trump.

Speaking of the Wisconsin Book Festival...in November, a short-notice visit from actor/author Jesse Eisenberg packed Central Library. He delivered two pieces written for the Madison audience and read from his delightful new book of essays, Bream Gives Me Hiccups. His smart, self-deprecating humor had the audience in stitches.

Jon Kjarsgaard

Wisconsin is home to an emerging rap scene that includes talented emcees from Madison. Chief among them in 2015 was CRASHprez, aka Michael Penn II, a 21-year-old Maryland native and First Wave scholar who earned a journalism degree from UW in May. A few weeks prior to graduating, he headlined the local stage at the Revelry Music and Arts Festival, an event he’s played all three years of its existence. He also opened for touring acts like Kool Keith (at the Majestic Theatre) and PRhyme (at the High Noon Saloon). CRASHprez has built a loyal following thanks to his energetic stage presence and timely content that’s relatable to younger hip-hop fans — recurring themes include the search for identity and the value of black lives. A name to keep an eye out for in the new year is Trapo (aka Davon Prather), a 17-year-old rapper, singer and songwriter from the south side of Madison whose precocity is garnering attention right now from prominent national music blogs and even BBC Radio 1.

Two music venues made news in 2015, for opposite reasons. Inferno Nightclub closed in May after 19 years in Madison, leaving behind a legacy of alternative entertainment. The building that housed Inferno was demolished as part of a shopping center redevelopment on Sherman Avenue. Meanwhile, the historic Breese Stevens Field hosted a major music concert for the first time when the Avett Brothers played to a sold-out 7,500-person crowd in October. Among other renovations, the city invested in new artificial turf with the intent to open up the East Washington Avenue soccer field to more frequent and varied uses. We are expecting several concerts there in 2016.

Madison sees many touring acts come through town every year, and 2015 featured a varied musical slate that included Grammy-winning art rocker St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) at the Orpheum Theater, experimental hip-hop group Death Grips at the Majestic (my ears are still ringing from that raucous show) and a High Noon stop for Eagles of Death Metal, just a couple of months before the Paris terrorist attacks. A personal highlight for me this year was getting to interview humorist John Hodgman, who performed standup at the Barrymore Theatre for the second consecutive year. He spent an hour after the show signing autographs for Madison fans, a group that the author and Daily Show veteran clearly trusts. At both Barrymore appearances, Hodgman tested out some new material on the audience; last year’s bits morphed into this year’s “Vacationland” tour. Here’s hoping Hodgman uses Madison as his incubator once again.

Gwendolyn Rice

As a devoted American Players Theatre fan I’ve watched James DeVita’s excellent performances for the last two decades. But his turn in An Illiad, an unusual monologue adaptation of the classic work by Homer, left me astonished. I was swept away by the range of emotion, the raw passion and the breadth of storytelling technique; DeVita filled the Touchstone stage with an enormous cast of characters by adjusting his mannerisms and accents. Tour de force is a term that’s used too liberally, but DeVita truly earned it here.

Sometimes you’re in the mood for a really good, over-the-top, frothy musical, and though I am usually suspicious of Broadway fare based on recent movies, the University Theatre production of Legally Blonde, directed by Pam Kriger, was a treat from beginning to end. Performing in the newly renovated Wisconsin Union Theater, the students filled the stage with energetic, challenging choreography, big voices and even bigger heart. It was polished, professional, full of pink — and delightful.

Another musical that wowed audiences with exuberant performances, big chorus numbers and strong voices was Bare: A Pop Musical. Continuing the tradition of successful collaborations between Mercury Players and OUT!Cast, the show celebrated teen angst, Catholic guilt, earnest searches for identity and struggles for love and acceptance, set to a modern score that echoes Rent.

An additional APT standout was The Island, Athol Fugard’s raw story of a pair of apartheid-era political prisoners, featuring Chiké Johnson and LaShawn Banks. It was a study of strength, endurance and eloquence in the face of barbarism. The drama of Antigone’s allegiance to her own morality rather than the laws of the state has never been so powerful as when recounted by inmates performing in a prison talent show.

The Music Lesson, Children’s Theater of Madison’s haunting, beautifully theatrical production was based on the true story of a pair of Bosnian music teachers who escaped the unrest in their homeland to begin again in America. Sorrow and music intertwined as Irina, stunningly portrayed by Colleen Madden, mourned the loss of her home and one of her most gifted piano students. Moving seamlessly from scenes of past horrors to present emptiness, Irina’s grief was accompanied by musicians who seemed to float above the action of the play, gorgeously illustrating the power of art to overcome hardship.

In 2015, APT introduced a new staged reading series designed to give actors and audiences a taste of plays the artistic team may consider for future seasons.

Packed into the Touchstone Theater on a snowy night in March, a large cast of company regulars (including many who had been in Chekhov’s The Seagull the previous summer) sat on folding chairs to read Aaron Posner’s clever adaptation of that tragic love story, Stupid F#ing Bird. I don’t know if it will ever make the main stage, but I was very glad to see this original and affecting version of The Seagull, complete with Mash, strumming her tales of woe on a ukulele.

Laura Jones

Composed of cool, crisp art that arranges the world into orderly plot points and right angles, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s visual art exhibit Coordinates just made my OCD feel good. Coordinates featured artists like Claes Oldenburg, Donald Lipski and Sol LeWitt, and offered perspectives on how artists use numbers to count, measure and code our sometimes chaotic existence. Stepping into the gallery in the hot summer months was the aesthetic equivalent of a dip in the pool. My favorite pieces were whimsical sculptures exploring the symmetry of African American hair as based on the Fibonacci Sequence by Sonya Y.S. Clark in her “Wig Series.”

StageQ blended fun and history by staging the controversial play The Boys in the Band. Boys has been criticized for showcasing the worst of gay male stereotypes — the self-hating, promiscuous queer stranded between psychoanalysis and whiskey, with no hope of redemption. But I felt redeemed by StageQ’s production. The show featured strong performances, excellent staging and gave me the opportunity to think about how far we’ve come as gay people. But it also showed the community’s fabulousness, humor and fierce resilience.

Forward Theater’s Silent Sky was so beautiful I’m inclined to say that you just had to be there. Starlight twinkling through all levels of the stage. A tender, intelligent script by a female playwright. A cast so engaging and funny you wanted to keep knowing them, even after the performance was through. On top of all that, Silent Sky provides a view into an often overlooked piece of history, a female astronomer whose contributions to the field enabled all future discoveries. What more can a reviewer ask for? I look forward to the other two shows by female playwrights the company promises to stage this season.

Katie Reiser

In the world of dance, I particularly enjoyed  Facing Home: Love & Redemption from UW Dance Department associate professor Chris Walker; it was the most personal and thoughtful work I’ve seen from him. This collaboration with Kevin Ormsby, a fellow Jamaican choreographer and director of Toronto’s KasheDance, explored the dichotomy between Bob Marley’s songs of love and redemption and the rampant, violent homophobia that exists in Jamaica and the West Indies. The concert was provocative and candid without being heavy-handed. Walker and Ormsby are both powerful performers who own the stage; UW freshman Kanyon Elton and Pierre Clark, a Chicago-based dancer, also gave noteworthy performances. I enjoyed seeing such diversity on the Lathrop Hall stage, something I don’t see that often in Madison theaters.

Madison Ballet’s Cinderella was a fanciful confection with elaborate sets and sumptuous costumes, including glowing fireflies and glittering spider webs. Artistic director W. Earle Smith tapped into the beauty of Prokofiev’s dark score and gave the audience some stunning sequences. Shannon Quirk was an ideal Cinderella; she just keeps getting better as a technician and performer. Another standout was Annika Reikersdorfer as the Winter Fairy. Just a high school senior at the time, she has become bolder and more confident. This was clearly a big-budget production, and I hope the community will continue to support full-length ballets beyond the Nutcracker.

Kanopy Dance continues to celebrate groundbreaking modern dance works from iconic choreographers alongside their own creations. They’ve presented Martha Graham’s Steps in the Streets and excerpts from Appalachian Spring. In their fall concert, Juxtaposed, the company performed “Lynchtown,” a 1936 work from Graham’s peer and former partner Charles Weidman. The piece still looks raw and revolutionary, underscoring the care that Kanopy takes in staging these masterworks. It also showed how well-trained Kanopy dancers are (Olivia Rivard was particularly good). Another solid offering was co-director Robert Cleary’s piece, “This Is Not America.”

Sometimes taking in a performance from a visiting troupe like Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is especially inspiring. As a bonus, excellent student dancers and musicians from UW-Madison joined the production of Play and Play: An Evening of Movement and Music. Some audience members were titillated and/or scandalized by the nudity in a signature work, “Continuous Replay,” but seeing all of these dancers’ bodies at work just added to my admiration (particularly for the sensational Jenna Riegel). The groundbreaking 1989 piece, “D-Man in the Waters,” a tribute to dancer Demian Acquavella, who was battling AIDS during the work’s creation, alternated between gentle compassion and high-flying feats of athleticism and daring — reminding me how exciting dance can be.

Brian Rieselman

A visual arts highlight in 2015 was “The Flowers Are Burning,” a watercolor exhibit by Helen Klebesadel and Mary Kay Neumann at the Playhouse Gallery of the Overture Center. The artists address the catastrophe of climate change with their luminous, color-saturated collaborations, challenging us to take positive action to save the threatened natural world we love. The artists report that this traveling exhibit, now expanded to include over a dozen additional works, will run March 18-May 14, 2016, at the Center for Visual Art in Wausau.

“David McLimans: Gone Wild” at the James Watrous Gallery was a stunning exhibit celebrating the work of a beloved Madison-based artist and illustrator who, before his death in 2014, regularly contributed work to The New York Times and other major publications. This show exulted in the breadth of his vision, including his sophisticated black-and-white editorial illustrations and the fiercely powerful animal imagery of his brilliant color collages. In February 2016, McLimans’ Caldecott Honor-winning children’s book, Gone Wild, will be republished by Bloomsbury.

“Natasha Nicholson: The Artist in her Museum” at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art painstakingly transplanted Nicholson’s massive body of work from the four workrooms/living spaces of her Madison home. Her cabinets of curiosities and stunning assemblages of found objects are collected and composed on a mighty scale, and viewers were invited to find their own meanings in a world both beautiful and strange.

What does 2016 hold for the acclaimed artist? “At this moment I am sitting in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in search of inspiration for my next body of work after the success and joy of ‘The Artist in Her Museum,’” Nicholson writes in an email. “I traveled to Boston and Cambridge in search of a muse, and the courtyard in Mrs. Gardner’s splendid palazzo has served me well. I have ideas that may lead to something, and if not, I have found that false steps are as important as successes.”

John W. Barker

In 19th-century Vienna, wealthy friends of Franz Schubert hosted soirees that became known as the “Schubertiade.” I’m thankful that the UW’s School of Music has taken up the tradition, and very much enjoyed the Jan. 30 celebration of the beauty and humanity of Schubert’s music at Mills Concert Hall, beautifully reimagined by pianists Bill Lutes, Martha Fischer and eight talented colleagues.

It’s been a terrific year for the Madison Symphony Orchestra.Two concerts stand out in particular. In April, pianist Christopher Taylor offered two concertos — an anachronistic Bach and a flamboyant Liszt — while Maestro DeMain at last got around to one of the magnificent Bruckner symphonies, the glowing No. 7, powerfully played. And in October, MSO delivered a ripe Haydn symphony; the vivacious Scottish Fantasy of Max Bruch, handsomely played by violinist James Ehnes; and an absolutely smashing rendition of Rachmaninoff’s final orchestral masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances.

In April at the First Unitarian Society, Madison Bach Musicians produced a vivaciously sung and semi-staged production of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s charming opera-ballet, Pygmalion, prefaced by excerpts from his larger opera Les Indes galantes. The cast included a period orchestra and talented local singers, effectively directed by David Ronis and stylishly conducted by Marc Vallon.

Madison Chamber Choir welcomed spring with a new work by Cecil Effinger and the novel but sadly underappreciated and underperformed madrigal-comedy by Gian Carlo Menotti, The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore, sung with wit and elegance and conducted by Albert Pinsonneault.

And let’s hear it for the new kids on the block. Developed by some brilliant young string players, Willy Street Chamber Players performed four innovative concerts on summer Fridays at the east side’s Immanuel Lutheran Church. At the last event, they played Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and a dazzling Mendelssohn octet.

Another campus stunner was the University Opera’s production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at Music Hall. This was a beautifully apt production, with idiomatic singing and acting by young cast members, artfully directed by David Ronis and conducted by James Smith.

Not to be outdone by the students, the Madison Opera assembled gorgeous costumes and sets for a memorable production of Puccini’s La Bohème, the beloved warhorse about romance among impoverished Parisian artists. Stage director David Lefkowich led a stellar cast, and John DeMain conducted the pit orchestra with fervor.

Tom Whitcomb

It’s no secret that Patton Oswalt is a funny guy — his hyperactive Twitter account and constant TV and movie appearances have let pretty much everyone and their mother know that. So going into his Jan. 15 standup show at the Orpheum, I knew I was going to laugh — I just didn’t know how much. Oswalt tore through a set of anecdotal, observational jokes, each crafted with exquisite detail.

My musical tastes have always trended toward the loud — punk, hardcore and metal. But as much as I love them, I’ll admit these three genres can get a little repetitive. Not so with Deafheaven, who offered a skull-cracking combination of black metal, post-rock and (as of late) ’90s guitar rock at the High Noon Saloon in October. The Bay Area crew tore through a set that featured their excellent 2015 album, New Bermuda, though the night’s highlight was a particularly spirited version of “From the Kettle Onto the Coil,” a non-album track that bridged New Bermuda and its 2013 predecessor, the equally excellent Sunbather.

For punk fans, seeing a sparsely attended show in some cramped basement is better than seeing a show at, say, Madison Square Garden. Definitely fitting that bill was Restorations’ headlining set at the Dragonfly Lounge on Feb. 26, maxing out at maybe 30 people in the room. The Philadelphia rockers’ soaring, Americana-tinged punk more than filled the small space — opener “Misprint,” all loud guitars and drums, was my introduction to the band (I was there to see the openers, Milwaukee punk hellions Direct Hit!), but I was sold within maybe half a song.

In I Love You, Honeybear, Josh Tillman — the theatrical ironist better known as Father John Misty — crafted one of the year’s best albums, so it only makes sense that he brought a live show to match it when he played the Orpheum in September. Tillman has a command of the stage that few contemporary musicians can match — imagine a folk-rock David Bowie dancing around the stage with detached swagger. And his band can really bring it live — from the laid-back twang of “Strange Encounter” to the driving alt-rock of “The Ideal Husband,” they’re always at top of their game.