'RIP,' musical comedy set in a morgue, brings local composer's dream to life

In his life's journey, Robert Grede has traveled from Melody Top to the morgue, though not in the gloomy literal way some of you are imagining right now.

When he was a boy, his mother regaled him with stories about the stars she ferried around town, including Robert Merrill and Gordon and Sheila MacRae, as a hostess for Melody Top, the summer stock musical theater on Milwaukee's northwest side.

Now the musical Grede wrote and composed, "RIP — A Musical Comedy of Life & Death," is opening a summer production July 17-28 in the Next Act Theatre space at 255 S. Water St.

Set in a fictional Wisconsin mortuary, the production's simple tag line explains the content of the show: "A lonely attendant seeks purpose in his life while The Dead regret their failings and yearn for redemption." An intergenerational cast plays five living and five dead characters, including a John Doe who arrives at the morgue without anyone knowing who he is.

"RIP" has as spiffy a marketing effort, including a fully fleshed-out website, from a homegrown independent theater production as I've ever seen. That's no surprise, because Grede had a long career as a successful marketing consultant and wrote the popular book "Naked Marketing: The Bare Essentials."

But before he was a business guru, he was a music major at DePauw University, where he studied music theory and composition.

Grede got into the business world after college when he pitched jingles he wrote and composed to local ad agency Hoffman York. They liked his lyrics and drew him into copywriting. But his passion for music never disappeared.

Lunching at Kegel's Inn one day with his friend Greg Ryan, the former president of ExecPC, they got talking about what they might do with their retirement years, neither being gung ho about pickleball or golf.

"What I would really like to do is use some of my music," Grede remembers telling Ryan, an amateur actor himself. "Why don't you write a musical?" he remembers Ryan replying.

Every few weeks they met for lunch. Grede would give Ryan a scene, and Ryan would give him notes.

It progressed like that until he had a complete show, Grede said. Feedback, including a staged reading in 2022 at Sunstone Studios MKE, help develop and refine the work, particularly the plot, bringing the number of characters down to a manageable size.

Theater veteran Alan Piotrowicz is directing the production, with music direction by Jessi Kolberg and choreography by Ami Majeskie (there is a zombie dance in this show). Ryan is producing the show, writing the checks and contracts.

The cast includes Stephanie Beschta, who played an orphan in "Annie" at Melody Top back in the day, and Tom Marks, who has a long local history as an actor, director and producer.

Grede's characters include one with dementia, faced with sorting out what the loss of her memories means for her.

Perhaps influenced by those Melody Top shows he heard or heard about as a kid, composer Grede described his own musical theater language as classic American musicals. More than once he mentioned "1776."

"The pinnacle is 'West Side Story,'" he said.

He's not daunted about opening the same week that the Republican National Convention is in Milwaukee; the first two performances on July 17 and 18 overlap the last two nights of the convention. The theater is far from the restricted zone, he pointed out, and there's free parking in the neighborhood.

If you go

"RIP — A Musical Comedy of Life & Death" will be performed July 17 through 28 in Next Act Theatre's space, 255 S. Water St. For tickets, visit rip-themusical.com/tickets .

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Musical comedy 'RIP' brings local composer's dream to life