BEING EARNEST
Book by Paul Gordon, Music and Lyrics by Paul Gordon and Jay Gruska
Skylight Music Theatre: Artistic Director: Michael Unger, Executive Director: Jack Lemmon, Music Direction by Conor Keelan, Choreography by Amanda Marquardt, Orchestrations by Jay Gruska, Costume Consultant: Shima Orans, Media Consultant: Tyler Milliron, Production, Stage Manager: Samantha Peckelnicki
Winner Best Virtual Musical – Broadway World Awards Milwaukee
AVAILABLE ON STREAMING MUSICALS.COM
(Reviews below photos and videos.)
PROMO VIDEO
REVIEWS
Urban Milwaukee
The Importance of Skylight’s ‘Being Earnest’
By Dominique Paul Noth
It’s a fun smart performance and also a model for how to go virtual yet stay theatrical. Few such [virtual] efforts have been so attention snapping and consistent as to merit formal review. But now one has come along that patrons should leap to see. Being Earnest… sets something of a roadmap for other theater entrepreneurs and converts the familiar tools of Zoom and checkerboard home screen combinations into a concept that frequently turns limitations into invention.
I cannot begin to fathom how many tracks the Skylight’s new artistic director, Michael Unger, had to hang together to do this – dialogue, music, slate-boarding, editing, seven actors in different locations who can’t see each other and yet must hear each other for perfectly synchronized harmony, characters who must look consistently as if they can see the objects of their affection, choreography and costuming… Yet fathom it all Unger did… insisting on a sense of intimate ensemble from actors locked in wildly separate spaces and home equipment.
Without diminishing the actors, the songs or the plot – in fact, increasing the humor and the ambience – the screen explodes into pastel ovals, boxes and frame flips full of photos and videos of disco, magazine, celebrity and go-go motifs.
Skylight will… take pleasure in breaking ground and doing as well as they did. The result is not quite theater and not quite movie, but it is a multi-media representation that said an awful lot to me about why I love theater.
Ryan Jay Reviews
Skylight Music Theatre has cracked the pandemic’s theatre-less code with their current production: Being Earnest. Directed by Michael Unger, who basically transitions to film director here, made the most of the online platform, cleverly keeping backgrounds and set design minimal, letting the talent shine and interact with simple prop-passing in editing. This format gives all viewers the “best seat in the house,” allowing for closer looks at the actors. Ultimately, this musical is a home run for Skylight – a delightfully entertaining and marvelous watch to enjoy safely at home. It’s a fantastic way to return to our local theater, just when we want to the most.
Mike’s Picks
By Mike Fischer
Unger has created a spectacular (in every sense) backdrop that would have made Wilde proud: it’s Mondrian on LSD. Or perhaps I should say Zoom on steroids: simultaneously flat and wildly expressive (Unger’s liberal use of montage helps).
Shepherd Express
Skylight’s Virtual Musical, ‘Being Earnest,’ Makes the Most of Circumstances
by Jean-Gabriel Fernandez
It doesn’t fall into the trap of being just filmed theater. Each actor is alone at home, trapped in a square… The whole performance breathes to the rhythm of its energetic montage.
The actors, despite not being in the presence of their co-stars, act as if they were interacting with each other. Squares move and actors adapt to maintain the illusion of eye contact and talking at each other. And when addressing the audience, the actors look straight at the camera, breaking a convention of cinema in a way that markedly improves the impact of the scenes.
The many touches of humor make the experience very entertaining. Overall, the production is just fun and endearing.
On Milwaukee
Gwen Rice
This production of “Being Earnest” doesn’t just look good for a filmed theater production; it’s a fresh take on recorded performances during the COVID era. Director/artistic director Michael Unger states in his program notes that he wants to “lift the experience above the average Zoom call.” He definitely succeeds. With the help of video consultant Tyler Milliron, the entire show flows like a ’60s era music video, taking the floating heads in little black boxes that dominate a lot of virtual theater and turning those frames into a clever and colorful aesthetic. Skylight’s production offers more than meets the eye for a virtual show.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
In a program note, director Michael Unger describes the painstaking process of recording this production’s seven actors individually: “Each had their cell phones on a tripod, a laptop behind that cell phone so I could see them, direct them, and frame the camera shots through Zoom calls, and a third device to play music tracks into earphones so we could isolate their vocals.
Unger and Gordon’s video editing and assemblage [are] spectacular.