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Milwaukee Repertory Theater will present Marie and Rosetta from October 22 to December 15, 2024 at Stiemke Studio. Photo: Alexis J Roston, Bethany Thomas. Photo: Michael Brosilow
Alexis J. Roston and Bethany Thomas.
Even though it’s questionable why Marie and Rosetta were at Stimke and not Stuckner Cabaret in the first place, their very names alone are reason enough to rush onto the stage at Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stimke Studio.
Perhaps no one would have gone without such a powerful voice explaining how spirituals, gospel, folk songs, and blues merged into American and British electric rock.
But Marie and Rosetta actually has a dramatic cover story that will appeal to anyone interested in how our pop music is made. The story suggests delving into people’s inner lives as well as music.
Decades ago, the piece resided among the caskets and piano of a new-looking but eerie Mississippi funeral home, a place for touring black performers to refresh when no hotel would accept them. Or so we think.
This story is inspired by real events in the life of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, an important pioneer in American popular music and an influential touring fusion of secular and sacred soul-searching.
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Rosetta is trying to teach her protege, Marie, to shake her hips more, to play the piano more ragtime, to loosen her ecclesiastical inclinations, to get mean and dirty, as this music demands. As they talk, they learn something about each other and about music. It’s like a master class, going back and forth on how to stay with God while cutting freedom. It provides a dramatic excuse for the voice to take command on stage.
This same production, with many of the same technical elements, opened at Skokie’s Northlight Theater, near the Illinois birthplace of original author George Blunt, whose “Grounded” was previously performed at Stimke in 2017.
He has an ear for bits of humor in expository dialogue. He writes better scripts than the Hollywood musicals of the 1940s, where songwriters and singers invented songs on the spot, and he does that to some extent here. Perhaps it’s more convincing because it’s not Robert Young or Red Skelton writing the riff at that moment, but a skilled musician. Roston plays Marie, who is coming out of her shell, and Thomas plays the towering, irreverent and slightly seductive Rosetta.
Much of the actual piano and guitar playing is provided covertly by pianist Morgan E. Stevenson (who is also the music director) and guitarist Benjamin Oglesby-Davis, but the performers on stage are both have enough skill to pretend to be playing the piano (we can’t see their fingers) and the guitar fingerings (we can’t see it) (I can see it). Both fit the definition of an extraordinary singer who can embody character.
Roston, who has worked on stage expressions for Dionne Warwick and Billie Holiday, sings for a variety of situations, maintaining a powerful tone until her last breath. Thomas’s vocal range is difficult to categorize, as she has a high scale yet can produce very low, earthy sounds. There’s a speech technique known as the vocal fly, which is often annoying in politicians’ voices, but when used by top singers it creates a sassy, gutsy effect that’s just right for blues and rock’n’roll. It’s rare to find one so well used and controlled.
As a playwright, Brandt works hard to make music a focal point of the story. But that illusion disappears in the power of song. Roston initially plays a character younger than herself. Thomas tries to sing songs for the purpose of the story, but sometimes it’s just for gospel effect.
We get a little history lesson along the way, but all we really want is for the singers to explode again.
Marie and Rosetta continues to perform at Milwaukee Representative’s Stiemke Studios through December 15, and tickets and season information are available online.
Dominic Paul North was a film and drama critic for decades and later served as senior features editor at the Milwaukee Journal. His blogs can be found here and here.
