Despite a rather lengthy agenda, the meeting fell just short of its scheduled three-hour run time. The majority of the meeting was taken up by two issues: approval of Chi Asian Fusion (following in the wake of T. Sushi’s closing) and a discussion on the noise issues at Plan B nightclub. There were a few other issues pulled off the consent agenda, however.

Members Present: Ald. Mike Verveer, Sam Stevenson, Ald. Shiva Bidar-Sielaff, Ald. Lisa Subeck, Tom Landgraf, Ann Zambie, David Hart. Michael Donnelly was excused.

Cafe Costa Rica: 1133 Williamson St.

A nearby resident brought up concerns with approving the restaurant’s Change of Licensed Premise to allow a sidewalk cafe, saying that because the restaurant exists in a residential area after recent zoning, he would have appreciated if the business had talked to the neighborhood association beforehand. He asked the committee to possibly tell the restaurant to come back after talking with the neighborhood association. Failing that, he wanted to make sure that the outdoor patio didn’t allow smoking. Alder Marsha Rummel did admit that they didn’t hold a neighborhood meeting on the restaurant and apologized for that. However, she did support their application.

This post originally ran on Willy Street Blog.

A promise of the departed was fulfilled by his friends Saturday (May 11) as students of Erik Anderson were given airplane rides at the Dane Country Regional Airport. Anderson taught Aviation classes at Madison East High School and music at Sherman Middle School for 11 years before he died suddenly in his classroom last September.

Known by students and colleagues alike as having the unique ability to connect and motivate the most troubled students, Anderson reveled in teaching Aviation at East and promised to take any student that was interested for a ride his airplane, which he kept at his home on the Waunakee Airport.

Strollers Theatre is concluding its strong 2012-2013 season by getting “back to the canon” with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s also a return to Shakespeare for director Greg Harris, who directed Pericles at Broom Street Theatre in 2012. Despite recent productions by University Theatre (2009) and American Players Theatre (2008), the Strollers production was my first experience of this play onstage. In his notes for the production Harris observes that “theaters are places of the imagination,” and the staging is one that consciously avoids spectacle.

The set, which Harris designed, employs white sheets as as a palette to which the audience must apply the imagined trees of the forest. The costume design by Matthew Schroeder takes a “conventional,” modern-day approach. It’s one that works fine for the Athenians and the comical “rude mechanicals” who stage the-play-within-the-play at the end, but at first I was a little thrown when I saw the denizens of fairyland dressed (for the most part) in similar clothes as the mortals. The costume Erin Baal wears as Titania evokes a lithe elegance befitting a fairy queen, but people expecting more in the whimsy department may have seething brains when they see Oberon as a dude in a denim jacket — even if he does have the Orlando Bloom kind of dashing mien that Kathy Lynn Sliter exhibits in the role. On the other hand, in appearance and manner Sean Langenecker’s Puck is an agent of comic chaos, literalizing his line at the end “I am sent with broom before/To sweep the dust behind the door” by brandishing different sweeping implements over the course of the play.