Milwaukee at Last!!! is Rufus Wainwright's second live album, but it might as well be his first. In 2007, Rufus Does Judy Live at Carnegie Hall documented his song-for-song and nearly banter-for-banter restaging of Judy Garland's infamous 1961 performance, and Wainwright's slavish devotion to her performance made it an act of impersonation rather than interpretation. He was living his own dream of pop stardom; it was an odd affair, since his primary audience ultimately was himself.
Wainwright hints at that same stagey role-playing early on in Milwaukee at Last!!! As the audience at the Pabst Theater applauds his grandiloquent version of opener "Release the Stars", he declares, with mock humility, "Thank you. I wasn't expecting that." Of course he was expecting that. Who doesn't expect applause? But soon the show loosens up and Wainwright plays the role he was born to play: himself. He runs through "Going to a Town" and "Sanssouci" with all the debonair insouciance that he made his name on, and his agile seven-man backing band smoothly inflates the bombast of "Release the Stars" and "Rules and Regulations". It loses a bit of steam in the second set, when he gives too much time over to big, plodding numbers like the medley "Not Ready to Love/Slideshow" and a cover of the early 19th century Irish ballad "Macushla" But he recovers with closer "Gay Messiah", a Want Two stand-out whose porn-religious imagery makes it a fitting closer. Where do you go from there?
At times Milwaukee at Last!!! sounds like a retrospective of Wainwright's 2000s, beginning-- sadly-- not with 2000's career-high Poses but with the Want albums, which introduced a more operatic, more staged approach. That headier style, which at its best seemed like the logical extension of his lyrics about gay desire, confusion, and contentment, actually increased his audience rather than drive away listeners, which I guess makes him something of a straight icon. Of course Milwaukee at Last!!! only seems broader than it is: Almost every track, it turns out, is from Release the Stars, and the audience doesn't seem to mind.
A second version of the album includes a DVD of the entire performance-- all 23 songs and stage banter excised from the CD, along with performances from the Montreux Jazz Festival-- and that's the better way to experience Wainwright live. Visuals are crucial: His outfit looks like a Nudie suit for Max Headroom and shows off his well-tanned torso; his band treat the large collection of broaches like religious icons; the enormous black-and-white American flag backdrop gives "Going to a Town" extra impact; and, perhaps most importantly, crowd shots show the audience hanging on his every note. Between songs, Wainwright boasts about having "incredible sex" with Brandon Flowers, and backstage between sets he jokes with his boyfriend Jörn while stripping down for a costume change. He seems much more psyched to be in front of a camera than in front of a mic.
More crucially, the DVD contains some of the best songs, which throws the album proper into sharp relief. Where the shorter tracklist favors ponderous numbers, the full show intersperses those songs with the rollicking "Between My Legs" (featuring Wainwright perched atop Jörn's shoulders), the booming "Do I Disappoint You", the wittily apocryphal "The Art Teacher". It's not just that it's a longer setlist, but a broader one, more well-rounded and revealing, although both the CD and the DVD end with Wainwright, now clad in lederhosen, blowing the same sweetly sincere smooch to the audience, which may be the only way to top "Gay Messiah".
