The Milwaukee Post

14 • Milwaukee County Post • April 28, 2017 By JULIE MCHALE Post Theater Critic WEST ALLIS — One usu- ally associates Stephen Sondheim with popular musicals with atonal har- monies and clever lyrics, but together with George Furth, he attempted a completely different genre and ended up with "Getting Away With Murder," an amusing and rather unusual mystery play. Seven patients of the psy- chiatrist Dr. Bering have gathered together for a group session. One of the attendants is new to the group — Martin Chisholm. As they are awaiting Dr. Bering's arrival, we see a rather contentious gather- ing of characters, each with an "issue" to deal with. Dossie is a bit oversexed; June, paranoid; Pamela, vain; Vassili, obsessed with food and his collection of majolica fish, some with clocks in their belly; Dan, angry and bossy; Gregory, smooth but sly and ambi- tious; and Martin, a bit of a mystery at this point. Before this group meeting occurs, an accidental murder has occurred in a park, where a drug addict and a young woman (JR and Charmaine) get into an altercation. This subplot makes sense later in the play. Soon after the group has gathered, one of the mem- bers discovers that Dr. Bering has been brutally beaten to death and is lying on a couch in his office, cov- ered by a blanket. Of course, this leads to suspicions among them because Bering only gives keys to the eleva- tor to his patients. Instead of calling the police, they decide to solve the mystery themselves in order to avoid publicity and being grilled by the police. As the whodunit proceeds, we begin to weigh each of the character's alibis against each other's. When Act I ends, we already know who the guilty party is as the last scene ends with a stunning finish. Now we're wondering what they're going to do in Act II. Not to worry, Act II gets even more intriguing. We get to know each character bet- ter as they try to cope with their predicament. By the end of the play, much has been revealed through their conversations, their actions and the discoveries they make as they search Dr. Bering's office. The stage is divided into two parts — the group ses- sion room and a separate office; thus, characters can flow back and forth in differ- ent configurations, not all of them being aware of all the others at any given time. There is also an inclusion of an elevator and a window ledge, both of which figure into the plot. (Good set design by Scott Fudali.) The lighting design also added to the atmosphere (Pat Breed Kaiser). The sound effects of the storm contributed to the aura, but the voices from the answering machine were not always clear. There were also some problems at times hearing Liz Whitford (Dossie) and Brenda Poppy (June). We were intrigued and entertained along the way as we played detective with all the psych patients. This play probably won't win any liter- ary prizes for Sondheim and Furth, but writing it was doubtless a lark for them and it will prove to be a delight for future audiences. It also was well-directed by Katherine Beeson. Kimberly Fudali In a scene from the West Allis Players' "Getting Away With Murder" are, from left, Scott Fudali as Gregory Reed, Avi Hurst as Pamela Prideaux, Rick Loos as Martin Chisholm, Kieran Kane as Vassili Laimorgos, Art Carter as Dan Gerard and Liz Whitford as Dossie Lusti. ENTERTAINMENT Vin Diesel stars in "The Fate of the Furious," the eighth film in the franchise that began with "The Fast and the Furious" in 2001. Universal Pictures 'Getting Away With Murder' not your usual Sondheim work By Tom Jozwik TimeOut Film Critic A teacher friend used to veto certain student-pro- posed term paper topics, rea- soning that in his long career he'd already encoun- tered every possible argu- ment both for and against, say, capital punishment. After watching "The Fate of the Furious," I think I know exactly how my friend felt. In actuality, I was seeing the F. Gary Gray ("Straight Outta Compton") flick for the first time, but its car chases, races and wrecks seemed old hat, its explo- sions and other acts of bru- tality nothing new. Add the fact "Fate" represents the eighth installment in the "Fast and Furious" fran- chise, plus the fact its char- acters are impervious to death and serious injury no matter how foolhardy their undertakings, and the net result is, as Yogi Berra sup- posedly put it, "déjà vu all over again." "Fate" begins with a drag race during which partici- pants Vin Diesel (quite good, but isn't Vin — fast and furi- ously approaching 50 — get- ting a little old for this sort of thing?) and Celestin Cornielle (a bit player) nego- tiate Havana streets at speeds eclipsing 200 mph. Diesel's character Dom does so in a clunker he's taken all of 75 seconds to expertly soup up. The clunker catches fire, but not before Dom has managed to back it — yes, drive it backwards — across the finish line. "Fate's" nonstop action continues, with franchise veterans Michelle Rodri- guez, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson and others joining Dom on the good guys' side — or, better stated, with Dom rejoining the rest on the good guys' side after tem- porarily defecting. The action includes many remote-controlled cars exit- ing parking garages from upper floors, causing traffic jams and turning big-city thoroughfares into veritable junkyards. As so many of these action thrillers seems to do, this one pits good against evil forces, the latter team head- ed by franchise newbie Charlize Theron as a mega- lomaniac called Cipher. Are you guessing Cipher might be out to destroy the world while the aforementioned actors might be out to stop her? Is the plotline "Fate" follows as familiar to you as it is to me? There is considerable humor in this lengthy film — a welcome feature, although there could've been even more. The importance of family is a strong and gener- ally agreeable motif, under- scored by the presence of a cute, wide-eyed infant often photographed in his car seat. The family-friendly ending, however, rings sappy in a movie like this one, a denouement more appropri- ate for episodes of TV series like "Blue Bloods" and the now departed "Parenthood." That said, I'll take a maudlin movie ending over a doesn't-let-up cinematic mass of gore any day. Now if only there hadn't been that doggone sense of déjà vu ... . 'Fate' is, with apologies to Yogi, 'déjà vu all over again' "The Fate of the Furious" ★★ Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodgriguez, Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Tyrese Gibson Director: F. Gary Gray MPAA rating: PG-13 Running time: 136 minutes At a glance "Getting Away With Murder" The murder mystery by the West Allis Players lift its curtain at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at West Allis Central High School, 8516 W. Lincoln Ave., West Allis. At a glance

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