Mueller is a banjo man and while Carlson is known to play 8 instruments, most of her playing is on an unusual violin/fiddle. There are around 16 musical numbers and these two performers are amazing to watch.

It appears that some responses show up (Andrew Mueller plays all the male characters) and then, the game changer, Ernest Shackleton, who is stranded on an iceberg in the Antarctic hears her music and feels he must connect with her in order to make it out of the position he is in and save his men.įrom this point on, both of their worlds change as they share an epic journey and together they overcome the obstacles that nature has placed before them. The show opens with her going online to create a personal page on a dating app. Her work, besides being a new mother, is to create music for video games. “Kat” is a new mother and her boyfriend is on the road working with a band. In this play, which could easily be called a “chamber musical” we begin our journey in the kitchen/studio of our heroine, home.” Kat” (a truly wonderful and quite memorable performance by Elisa Carlson). If one listens closely to the words in the story and song, one can learn a great deal about this explorer, but thanks to “Google” you can learn more than you want to even know.

As we learn from this play, he was indeed a real person, a 20th-century polar explorer. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ I never heard of Ernest Shackleton! At least not until it was announced that Porchlight Music Theatre would have the honor and distinction of hosting the Chicago “premiere” of Joe DiPietro’s “Ernest Shackleton Loves Me”, a new musical (music by Brendan Milburn and lyrics by Val Vigoda with orchestrations and additional music by Ryan O’Connell ) on its stage at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts.

Dory fantasmagory outside the box