Our own John McGivern stars in Pat Hazell's "The Wonder Bread Years" at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts through Sept. 21. The East Side boy is so comfortable in the role that it's hard to imagine it's not his own story.
And that's sorta the catch. Although Hazell -- one of the original "Seinfeld" writers -- penned this one-man show, McGivern weaves in a lot of Milwaukee-specific references (as I'm sure the three other performers -- including Hazell himself -- are also doing). And, the whole basis of this nostalgic romp through relatively recent pop culture history is that those of us of certain ages are united by our memories.
And in the case those are memories of Pop Rocks, Wonder Bread lunches, Tony the Tiger cereal commercials, trick or treating at night, Twinkies ... you get the idea.
What surprised me the most was the age of the crowd. I expected a Vogel Hall full of late 30-somethings and 40-somethings and what I got was an audience that appeared to skew much older than that. While some of these people might have had banana seats on their bikes, I bet more than a few of them only remember buying bikes with banana seats for their kids.
What we all had in common, though, is that we all laughed and laughed hard, because Hazell's material is ripe for McGivern-izing. McGivern made it all his own with the full complement of facial expressions and effusive on-stage personality.
The key to McGivern's success? Everyone in the audience feels like they know him and those that don't, sure wish they did.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
