BWW Reviews: Slip into the Stackner's Spectacular LIBERACE! for the Holidays

Lamé, rhinestones and sequins shimmer like stars on stage this November when Milwaukee Rep reprises Liberace! at the Stackner Cabaret beginning this November. Every holiday season flashes glitter and gold, and The Rep's Associate Artistic Director Brent Hazelton wrote and directed this inspiring musical revue based on the life of Milwaukee's iconic entertainer Wladziu Valentino Liberace, who was once nicknamed the Guru of Glitter.

When the absolutely fabulous actor, singer and pianist Jack Forbes Wilson embodies this supposed ghost of Liberace appearing in the performance and says, "Let me slip into something a little more spectacular," his phrase means comically, dramatically and musically. From admiring Liberace's glamorous over-the-top costumes designed by Alexander B. Tacoma, and listening to Wilson's own original arrangements and compositions used in the production, Liberace! recreates a spellbinding evening where Wilson's fingers dance across the ivories like shooting stars in the sky, each note clear and sparkling.

These notes mesmerize the audience whether Wilson plays Chopin's "Minute Waltz" or Ernesto Lecuona's "Malaguena," and numerous equally fine versions of the childhood favorite "Three Little Fishies," fishes who eventually swam under Strauss's "Blue Danube" dam. Then when Wilson proposes an audience member assist him in a duet of Cole Porter's "Night and Day," he warmly adds comical quips to comfort his piano partner while the familiar music remains sensational.

The audience also realizes from Hazleton's production and Wilson's exceptional portrayal that Liberace was born a musical genius, playing complex compositions by ear from an early preschool age, and the longest student on scholarship at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, almost 18 years. A young musician who finally "melded his warring personal and musical personalities" when he became an entertainer, who the world called Mr. Showmanship. Liberace could finally blend the classical and his contemporary (blues, pop and ragtime) music while his flamboyant personality allowed for his lavish lifestyle and persona to exist on stage. Although underneath all the glitz, the Midwestern hometown boy merely "needed to give and receive love, spreading joy to others, while filling the world with love."

Liberace! delivers true heart in a tribute to this man who reinvented himself over and over throughout five decades. Often working as one of the highest paid entertainers in the world, he sold out New York's Radio City Hall for several concerts, 70,000 seats, so even the controversy over his sexuality and death barely dimmed his contributions to future performers including David Bowie, Kiss and Elton John.

A production equally stunning the second time around, Liberace! shines with the message be true to your own heart, and "the magic of believing,' revered when Liberace's brother George said, "the difficult can be done immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer." Liberace often accomplished the impossible, and when Wilson dons a cape covered completely in sequins trimmed with while fox in the final scenes, these messages resonate with shimmering clarity because Liberace spoke from his heart, with his fingers playing a piano, giving unabashed devotion to his audiences.

When Forbes plays Liberace's last number undressed in white T-shirt and black pants, the scene recalls how the Liberace legend lives on, his memory. The little Milwaukee boy whose friends called him Lee desired only love and to make a living playing his piano. The Rep's Liberace! and Wilson reprise this poignant musical with a message worth remembering when Lee says, "Discover the true meaning of love, Cared for like a precious treasure that can never be replaced." Yes, Lee, the audience will remeber and return to hear LIberace's music and words again.

Milwaukee Rep presents Liberace! at the Stackner Cabaret in the Patty and Jay Baker Theater Complex through January 11. For information or tickets, please call 414.224.9490 or visit www.milwaukeerep.com

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