Milwaukee's Best

Don't worry, Boston theatergoers. While it's never polite to chatter in the audience, there's at least one faux pas that playwright/director Wesley Savick is sure to overlook: the famous Boston accent.

"Oh, I think it's precious!" says Savick. Born and bred in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Savick has his own regional drawl. Lampooned in movies like Fargo, it's that sweet, wholesome speech that exists within the narrow geography where the American Midwest meets Canadian borderland. While it might be rife for pop culture parody, Savick says he wears the tonality as a badge of pride, and an emblem of where he came from. He suggests that Bostonians do the same.

"When I hear Boston accents at their thickest, they're a kind of comfort to me," says Savick. "I like being in another place that has its own distinct sound."

The uniqueness of America's regional cultures finds center stage in
"It's about walking around with broken hearts," said Savick. "It's about people who are plodding on stoically."

Foremost among those brokenhearted characters is the titular Miss Margaret LaRue, a washed-up starlet still living on a diet of fond memories from former times. The leading lady is joined by an ensemble of equally curious cast members, including a ventriloquist, a disc jockey, and a host of other endearing representations of local color. Each personality comes loaded with a matching set of psychological baggage.

"The show is about what happens to these people when they're after their limelight," explains Savick. He adds that Milwaukee stands in as its own character, the city itself a beating, broken heart yearning for better days. "What happens to a whole community after that brilliant, shooting star phenomenon? What's the trace of memory and identity left behind?"

That said, Savick has no pretensions that Milwaukee was ever truly "The Entertainment Capitol of the World," as it is lovingly and self-deprecatingly deemed in the show.

"It's a goofy place to hail from!" laughs Savick. "There's a sensibility that you can't take yourself too seriously. I miss that."

Savick first moved to the east coast for his undergraduate education at Dartmouth College. The first in his family to attend university, he admits to slight fish-out-of-water syndrome when first acclimating to the Ivy League mentality. But after returning to Milwaukee to work in the city's underground, art house and independent theatre scene, he did find himself missing some of the wider opportunities for culture that a larger city like Boston could afford.

"In Boston, people do walk around with a sense of, 'We're not the center of everything ... we're not New York!'" he says. But comparatively speaking, he says, Bostonians have much to be grateful for. "In terms of culture, Boston isn't along the lines of Milwaukee ... or Cleveland ... places that are aware of themselves being on the periphery."

Make no mistake about it, though. Savick doesn't intend "Miss Margaret LaRue in 'Milkwaukee'" to be a condescending potshot at his former hometown. Savick says the humor is in the humanity of the show, and the truthfulness inherent in its suggestion that in today's homogenized entertainment industry, there is less and less space for divergent artistic voices.

"There's a whole other element to the show," he explains. "It goes beyond any one city, and toward the larger lamentation ... that real eccentric, weirdo stuff is relegated to the dusty corners of the entertainment landscape."

Aside from the entertainment landscape, the show contains various allusions as to how America, in defining its own unique worldwide identity, teeters on the edge of losing it altogether.

"There's a lot of talk in the show about Stop & Buy, the big store that has wiped out all the other little stores," says Savick, not-so-subtly referencing the actual corporate, retail behemoth that inspired him.

"In general, the play laments the passing of a less varied time. A time when there was room for eccentricity, and eccentricity became an identity."

Finding individual identity in a universe of mass media is a daunting task. But even if it's as simple as a cadence of speech, it means a world of importance.

"It's a special thing, when the sound of words is passed on from generation to generation," says Savick. "With mass media, there's constant exposure to other ways of speaking, so you can't claim geographic isolation as a cause anymore. That means it [an accent] is in some ways a choice."

And sometimes, it's a way of paying tribute to place a time left behind, and quirky place that you're proud to call home.

"When I lived in Milwaukee, I would try to refine my accent," says Savick. "But living here, I miss it. So now it comes out, full faucet."

"Miss Margaret LaRue in 'Milwaukee'" plays Thursday through Sundays, Oct. 9 through Oct. 26 at Boston Playwrights' Theatre (Walcott Theatre; 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston; 617-353-5443; www.bu.edu/bpt). Tickets are $25 General Admission, Seniors $20 and Students $10.