Noshing on "The Wonder Bread Years"

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.