The Heat and Light of Mike Wallace

Gary Tischler • April 12, 2012

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Mike Wallace of CBS News had not done an interview for four years—Roger Clemens, the famed Boston Red Sox pitcher accused of using steroids got the honors for that last one—but all those living whom he interviewed for “60 Minutes” probably feel not enough time has passed for them not to get goose bumps just thinking about the experience.

Sadly, it’s goose bump time, because everyone in the media and the objects of their attention is thinking about Wallace. Wallace, whom some said was the most feared, if not loved, television journalist who ever donned a trench coat, was back on the air, in the form of tributes, news stories and fond remembrances by the people he worked with and by some who didn’t.

Wallace passed away at the age 93, and now politicians who’ve escaped the Wallace treatment—more like an interrogation some said, while others used the word inquisition—can breathe a little easier.

Wallace was the mainstay and star of “60 Minutes,” probably the best and most popular news magazines show ever on CBS, a show still going strong but without many of its most stellar reporters (Ed Bradley, Howard K. Smith, Andy Rooney) not to mention producer Don Hewitt, all of whom have passed away. And now: Mike Wallace.

As late as 2006, Wallace received an Emmy for an interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinjad. Years earlier, he had interviewed the Ayathollah Rubollah Khomeini, to whom he quoted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat calling him an “idiot.”

Right off, you could say he feared nothing, and if you encountered Wallace accidentally in a parking lot, with a microphone in his hand it was not accident and you were in trouble. While conservatives see mainstream television media as being liberal, you couldn’t say that about Wallace, who described himself as moderate in his politics, if not his temperament. He was an equal-opportunity investigator, interviewer and pursuer, going after such luminaries as Barbra Streisand and Malcolm X. He could be respectful and polite, but his forte was “finding the truth.” Almost every obituary you can run across will state in some form or another that the most feared words in a potential interviewee’s world were “Mike Wallace is here.”

Wallace was a man of many wives (four) and many jobs—he was an actor on radio and television, a quiz show host and a reporter and finally he was: Mike Wallace.

Although he attracted and created controversy, including an exhausting, dragged-out and complicated law suit and trial in which General William C. Westmoreland, who was the chief of U.S. forces in Viet Nam sued him and CBS for $120 million involving enemy troop estimates. The suit was settled out of court but haunted Wallace. Wallace would later admit that he suffered from depression and had even tried to kill himself with sleeping pills after the trial.

The Viet Nam piece and its results in the end showed that Wallace was human and not invincible.

His career—especially at “60 Minutes” since its beginnings in 1968—showed a stature that is hard to diminish. He made trench-coat journalism—he was often seen wearing one—chic but also respectable and honored. Those early “60 Minutes” reporters were the journalistic offspring of Edward R. Murrow, and it’s not hard to imagine Wallace alongside Murrow during the London Blitz, unruffled and solid.

In the age of the instant video, of “if it bleeds it leads,” of slap-dash, beat-the-other-guy-by-60 seconds journalism, of bloggers and reality television, which blurs reality, Mike Wallace still looks uncommonly real. Indeed, in “Heat and Light: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists,” which he co-wrote with Beth Knobel, formerly with CBS News, he offers advice that young social media-imbued reporters should take to heart.

Upstairs, there’s a knock at a heavenly gate. “Mike Wallace is here,” the gatekeeper announces. “Should I be worried?” his boss asks. “Perhaps,” the gatekeeper says.

International Film Fest’s ‘Lighter Side,’ from France to Japan

Gary Tischler •

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Washington is a magnet for film festivals—we’ve got documentary film festivals, gay and lesbian film festivals, environmental film festivals, short film festivals. You name it, there’s a festival.

But before all that happened here, there was the grand-daddy of them all, the Washington International Film Festival. It’s back, now in its 26th year (going back to 1986).

This year’s festival—themed “The Lighter Side”—runs from April 12 to April 22 at a variety of venues all over town, with 80 films from more than 35 countries, making it a truly international film festival. The festival will feature comedies from France, Argentina, Italy and Japan.

Another focus of the festival will be “Caribbean Journeys,” which features new works from Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Reggae music, of course, will figure strongly in films from the Caribbean, not least among them “Marley,” a D.C. premiere of an emotional documentary on the late, great Bob Marley, who in pioneering Reggae in star-power fashion, also transformed how we view the region and his beloved Jamaica. Along with that is “Calypso Rose” about the famed calypso singer and “Ras Ta: A Soul’s Journey,” featuring Marley’s granddaughter. Both films are American premieres.

“Starbuck,” the hit Canadian comedy about a beleaguered man who finds out he’s sired hundreds of children by way of his donated sperm, kicks off the festival at the Regal Cinemas, Thursday, April 12, at 7 p.m., hosted by long-time WJLA entertainment reporter Arch Campbell with a party at Bar Louie in Chinatown afterward.

Another special series will focus on justice, both the pursuit of and lack of, called “Justice Matters” with such films as “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator” from the United States, the Canadian film “Pink Ribbons, Inc.” and others.

The festival-closing film is the hugely popular French hit, “The Intouchables,” starring Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano is a class buddy film, about a handicapped, wheel-chair bound white millionaire and his Senegalese caretaker. The film broke all box-office records in France. There will be two screenings at the French Embassy with showings at 3 and 7 p.m. with a reception between showings

Venues for the festival films include the Avalon Theatre, the Embassy of France, the Goethe-Institut, Landmark’s E Street Cinema, the National Gallery of Art, the Naval Heritage Center and Regal Cinemas, Gallery Place.

For information on films, times and locations, visit filmfestdc@filmfestdc.org.

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‘Japan Spring’: Unique Trinity of Art Shows on the National Mall

Gary Tischler • April 5, 2012

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Mother Nature has messed a little, this year, with the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which is celebrating the centennial of Japan’s gift of cherry trees to Washington, D.C. The unusually mild, near-summer weather has caused the blossoms to hit their peak days much earlier than usual — as well as threatening storm weekend weather that might harm the blossoms.

Nothing, however, can dampen the presence of the festival itself which will run through April 27 with its myriad exhibitions, festivals, celebrations, films and performances.

Especially spectacular are the launching of three major and stellar exhibitions celebrating the finest expressions of Japanese art from the Edo period at two noteworthy venues, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. The exhibitions are accompanied by a host of special events and programs during the run of the festival and the exhibitions, including films, concerts, performances, lectures, tours, gallery talks and more.

Under the heading of “Japan Spring,” these shows mark the first time any city outside Japan has hosted three major exhibitions of masterworks by distinguished Edo-period Japanese artists.

The National Gallery of Art will host the “Colorful Realm of Living Beings,” a 30-scroll set of bird-and-flower paintings by the renowned Edo-period artist Ito Jakuchu who worked on the scrolls for nearly ten years in the middle of the 1700s.

This exhibition marks the first time that all 30 scrolls have been on view in the United States, but also the first time any of the individual scrolls have been seen here since their six-year long restoration. The scrolls are being lent to the National Gallery for one month by the Imperial House of Japan.

The scrolls—exquisitely detailed and stunning—seem to embrace the larger cosmos of the Buddha nature itself, as they embrace and pull together many strands of East Asian traditions of bird-and-flower painting.

“Colorful Realm” also manages to reunite his masterpiece with Jakuchu’s famous triptych of the Buddha Sakyamuni from the Zen monastery Shokokuji in Kyoto.

“Colorful Realm” will be on view at the National Gallery March 30 through April 29.

The Sackler Gallery will host both “Masters of Mercy: Buddha’s Amazing Disciples” and “Hokusai: 36 Views of Mount Fuji,” both examples of masterworks by two artists whose works reflect and exemplify the interests and identity of 19th-century Edo (now Tokyo).

In “Masters of Mercy,” artist Kano Kazunobo produced a series of phantasmagoric paintings on the theme of the lives and deeds of Buddha’s 500 disciples. The exhibitions includes many paintings from the 100-painting series Kazunobo created over nine years for the Pure Land Buddhist temple Zojozi in the heart of Edo.

These paintings have never been displayed outside of Japan. They imagine the lives of the disciples living in the great wide world performing both mundane tasks and miraculous feats of compassion and mercy. “Masters of Mercy” will be on display through July 8.

Opening March 24 is “Hokusai: 36 Views of Mount Fuji,” works by Japan’s most famous artist, Katushika Hokusai and his most famous works, a print series which include some of the best known works of art in the world, including “Beneath the Wave of Kanagawa,” or “The Great Wave,” and “South Wind at Clear Dawn” or “Red Fuji.” Ten prints were added to this series because of the popularity of the art when it was first viewed, leaving us with 46 images in total—all prints of exceptional quality. The exhibition will be on view through June 17.

Seeing All the People (and God, Too) in the Cherry Blossoms

Gary Tischler •

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This is what it’s like to be in Washington in the spring, punchy, yelled at, bowled ever, embraced, cajoled, and awed by history almost everywhere you go.

If you come here to see the sites and sights, history is purposefully and permanently here in all the monuments, past, present and soon to be erected.

If you come here to be in the nation’s capital and ingest the atmosphere of what’s on the nightly news you may get lucky and get more than you bargained for. If you came here to let your passions burn out loud, your feelings spill into parks and streets, your face on television as an army of many on the very same nightly news, well, here and there you are.

And if you want to be a part of something enduring and fragile, all at once and steeped in history, well, there’s that, too.

All sorts of history was going on over a Washington weekend and is still going on. On a Saturday, you could catch a large group of demonstrators at Freedom Plaza, many of them young black men dressed in hoodies to protest the death of as 17-year-old unarmed Florida teenager shot to death nearly a month ago by a self-appointed member of a neighborhood watch in a gated community. The voices were loud, impassioned and as clear as an open wound, even if the larger issues were not so easy to decipher.

You could go over to Capitol Hill (and to the Department of Health and Services) and see the preparations as the country’s highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, prepared to take on the landmark Health Care legislation, called ObamaCare, passed more than two years ago and now under question on constitutional grounds. Tea party demonstrators were already here, demonstrating at HEW, while other folks prepared to get in line for the limited seats available to spectators.

Down at the Tidal Basin, on Friday, history was being honored again — in that unique way that is both immediately, beautifully, sweetly, mysteriously, in the here and now and firmly rooted in the commemorative past.

The cherry blossoms, first presented as a gift to the United States from Japan 100 years ago were in full bloom. And they were early. And there was a storm coming, a “monster storm,” a “huge storm” as told by hyper-ventilating, vibrating weather people and television news in apocalyptic tones who expressed an uninvited opinion that the cherry blossoms were in serious danger.

As if anybody needed that kind of panic-inducing encouragement, everybody showed up. It’s fair to say they showed up in the thousands, on a sunny, brilliant, warm day as far removed from sturm und drang as you can possibly be.

I went to see the cherry blossom with my colleague Robert Devaney. I, too, felt some panic at the dire predictions. So, I feared that my usual penchant for procrastination might have dire results. The cherry blossoms might be gone, for all I knew, something that could not be said about demonstrators for justice or lines at the Supreme Court.

And so, for the first time since I moved in Washington, D.C., in the late 1970s, I went to the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms in full, fabulous, fantastic bloom. Regrets? Boy, do I have a few. Ashamed? I certainly am.

Because the cherry blossoms themselves, and the festival that has evolved out of the gift and the flowering of white and pink blossoms, and that ballet-like swirling dance they do, making you blissfully blinded by the white, as they twirl like bashful multiple twins to earth, is one spectacularly good reason to be alive.

I’ve always seen the pictures, items on the web, accounts by word of mouth, local TV segments, and I have gone to National Cherry Blossom Festival events, such as parades, exhibits, shows, kites, and all things Japanese in America. The festival that has sprung up gets bigger every year until it runs the hopeful course of the coming of the buds, the blossoms and the dying of the light blossoms, a process that will perhaps be a bit shorter this too-sunny and warm year, although the festival will not.

But, as the song goes, “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.”

I feel, after all, blessed by blossoms, and the spirit that they so lightly carry. We walked past the Washingtonia of the still slightly wounded-by-earthquake Washington Monument and the future site of the Museum of African-American History. And, as the poet Walt Whitman so sung of ourselves: the world’s humanity arrived pretty much all at once. They jostled for walking space, laid out blankets, kissed and made up, let their hot dogs drink, maneuvered their baby carriages, managed their canes and fragile bones.

All of us walked in splendor.

Across the paths to were the site of where the first trees were planted, you could see the thousands, and the packed blossoms straining successfully to be a vista edging up to either side of the Jefferson Memorial. Choppers in the sky — black ops? — paddle boats on the river, a dangerously flirtatious female duck making her final choice among four or five male admirers who appeared to be trying to drown her. Tough love indeed.

Everybody posed. Everybody clicked the age of the digital camera click — up for the blossom closeup, back for the larger world view, snap, snap. Get the girls lacrosse team, the park cop on her horse, the children running or sleeping.

And there was the group that had laid out a picnic cloth, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and an artist painting. One was a couple who live in Paris: he, American, a retired TWA pilot who once saw a biplane land in a field near his town and never forgot it; she, his instant French love-of-his-life.

Perhaps influenced by his surroundings, he said, “I got to say it. I’ve had a wonderful life.” He hushed my expressions of worry about getting older. “You’re an amateur,” he said. He was 91.

This is the way it was on a Friday in Washington, in the sudden peak time of the cherry blossoms and many other things. There are, I’m sure, very good and always mysterious reasons for believing in God, a deity, a creator, a higher being. The atheists or non-believers among us who were also gathering in Washington this weekend had found none. [gallery ids="100655,100656,100657,100658,100659,100660" nav="thumbs"]

Amidst the Obamacare Debate: Inside and Outside the Supreme Court

Gary Tischler •

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Inside, in that majestic, bone-white building, men and women in robes and the best lawyers in the United States were in the midst of a historic debate on the merits, demerits and future of President Barack Obama’s historic health care proposal, passed by Congress two years ago.

Outside near the steps, the masses—many of them highly vocal members of the Tea Party—had gathered to conduct their own debates, large and small, a quartet here, two people finger pointing there, some being interviewed by the gathered media come to this place like bees to flowers.

From the written and televised reports of the three-day review and legal discussions—an unprecedented effort for a piece of major legislation being considered by the Supreme Court—Obama’s health care plan was not faring well, especially the controversial mandate which purports that everyone must buy health insurance or be penalized. And so, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dug in, listened and asked questions and made comments which were studied like runes by the media and opponents and proponents of the health care plan.

Outside were people like Lenny and Dave, who argued vehemently on a first-name basis, and other loud or muted voices weighing in. But by the steps, and certainly at a nearby rally of conservative opponents, which included speeches by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, who talked about budget cuts, debt and freedom, it was clear that the anti’s outnumbered the bill’s supporters.

Tuesday, and no doubt Wednesday, and for sure Monday, was an ongoing replay of the nation’s great divide over the issue, a divide which had all but given birth to the tea party and resulted in the Democratic Party’s loss of the House of Representatives.

Nothing had changed: Tea Party demonstrators pretty much talked and behaved as you might have expected. They argued with some remnants of the occupiers which were still in Washington, they boiled down the health care bill to its mandate provision and, like the GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, rolled up into a one-word cause: freedom.

No such simplicities were evidenced at the Supreme Court case where judges at worst tried to critique the mandate as being the same as being forced to buy food that’s good for you. But everyone inside acknowledged that the bill was much too complicated, big and long, to fully be understood in all of its details.

That did not deter the debates outside, where everything squeezed itself into slogans (OMG-Obamacare-Must-Go) or the classic liberal/conservatives divides and a growing sense of utter frustration and unreasonableness. Two men were arguing about the debt, about the bill, about the growth of government. “I don’t care, Dave,” a man holding up a “don’t touch my health care” sign said, gesturing with his hands. “I don’t know what Reagan did, I don’t care if he did, or what the deficit was then, you’re still wrong. Understand that you’re completely wrong.”

You could see another woman arguing with a young black man, re-interpreting the Civil War and its causes by suggesting that slavery had little if anything to do with it. “The North wanted the South’s money, that’s what it was,” she said. “They had a contract, and they chose to leave it.”

If you’re of a conciliatory, negotiating mind and have your own opinions about health care and the mandate, the tea party folks are a tough sell. To them, it’s all about freedo and big government and how it infringes on said freedoms. And if that argument fails by itself, well, you know, they have a direct pipeline to the hearts and minds of the founding fathers and what they intended. Obviously, they have not seen “1776.”

At the rally, the crowd seemed to sense a wavering of support for what has now been embraced by both sides as Obamacare. The green “Don’t Tread On Me” signs and the “Don’t touch my health care” signs stuck out, as did a sign portraying Obama as the last in a long line of prominent Socialists like Mao Tse Tung, Stalin and Lenin and Marx. Meanwhile, one of the surviving Socialists was at that time having a chat with the Pope in Cuba.

It’s hard to stay out of the talk and just listen to it. The Tea Party is not made up of strangers—they look exactly like many of the out of work teachers and civil servants who came here for the first big rally of the Occupy DC movement. They look like the ruddy salt of the earth, with bills to pay and children to raise (one man was holding a sleeping baby, and pushing a double-baby carriage). The difference is that these people exercising their rights to freely argue and say any preposterous things that come to mind are difficult to talk with on any issue at hand—not because they’re right, but because they’re angry and afraid. They’re angry—like the rest of us—about just about everything, and afraid of the government. Often, their ideas about the government of the United States resembles something that was dropped on us from outer space, intent on controlling every aspect of our lives, and that the president—especially this president—is an alien stranger, and certainly not a real American.

It’s likely that inside the court, the conversation was more muted, and the hope exists among reasonable folks that the three-day talks and the subsequent deliberations will produce a reasonable outcome that’s not purely political. The hope now appears slim: it should be remembered that this court by a 5-4 margin produced a ruling that has resulted in the proliferation of Super Pacs in the 2012 election, a result that’s had a huge effect on the political landscape.

Click Here to View Jeff Malet’s photo Coverage the Supreme Court hearings

Primarily Yours, Tomorrow: Vote or . . .

Gary Tischler •

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Can you believe it?

Tomorrow, April 3, Tuesday, is the official voting day for the 2012 District of Columbia Primary Election. Tomorrow, Vincent Orange will know if he’ll be running in the general election to keep his at-large Council seat for another four years. Tomorrow, we’ll find out if several other council incumbents will live to fight another day — almost surely.

One thing we know for sure. Jack will be back.

That would be Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, the formidable, perennial and most enduring member of the City Council, who is running unopposed, at least by any Democrat. The story will more than likely be different in November. There are, after all, with a changing electorate and population, a few more Republicans in Washington.

Although it’s hard to tell — no polls, not that much chatter, reported spotty attendance at candidate forums — Orange appears to be in a bit of a battle to keep his seat out of the hands of at least three worthy opponents on the Democratic side.

[Editor’s Note: The Georgetowner endorsed Vincent Orange for the 2011 special election, and it endorses him this time around, too. Orange e-mailed detailed information about mail-order contributions to the newspaper and has answered questions about any perceived improprieties. Along with his hard-working, long days, Orange’s citywide concerns and interests remain constant. He supports Georgetown, and the Georgetowner supports Orange.]

There are ongoing investigations of Mayor Vincent Gray’s campaign that now include the activities of major developer Jeffrey Thompson, his contributions not only to the Gray campaign but to District Council campaigns, as well as other federal investigations and the departure of Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. The passage of an ethics legislation bill (which includes a board that has yet to be filled) has not noticeably dampened a growing popular notion that the council is permeated with old-style politics marked by a membership that has been around too long. People are talking — seriously? — about term limits. Orange has had to answer questions about money-order contributions to his last campaign.

A kind of inertia seems to have settled on city politics and government, although financially the city appears to be in pretty good shape considering that tough times still prevail across the country and that jobs — especially East of the River — are still hard to come by.

The other shoe — Thomas was the first — has not dropped on anybody yet, but there seems to be a feeling that city politics is tap-dancing in place awaiting the results of ongoing investigations.

Orange, who has been in his political career part of many campaigns, including wins for the Ward 5 seat, losses in runs for mayor and council chairman and a win for the at-large seat making him an incumbent — may become a victim of that growing indifference or aversion to politics as usual. Or just aversion to politics. The advantages of incumbency for Orange — everybody knows his name and voice — may be liabilities this time.

We’ll find out tomorrow if Sekou Biddle, the educator and brief incumbent of the at-large seat who lost it in a special election, can return to the council on his merits. Biddle, appointed by Democrats to the seat after Kwame Brown became chairman, lost it to Orange, finishing a close third. The runner-up just to jog your memory was Republican Patrick Mara, who won big in Northwest. In a recent forum in Kalorama, Biddle appeared sharp, thoughtful and engaged answering questions about the fate of the D.C. Public Library and its branches, as if he’d been up all night studying on the subject. Orange — who like Biddle appeared late to the forum — was less detailed if just as positive.

Also impressive at the forum were Peter Shapiro, a former member of the Prince George’s County Board of Supervisors who is described as a leadership and organizational development consultant who has recently moved back to Washington and lives in Chevy Chase, D.C., and E. Gail Anderson Holness, a pastor at Christ Our Redeemer Baptist Church, who said she was the only candidate who had not accepted corporate contributions.

Of the other council members running for re-election, the safest bet would appear to be Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser, who seems to have grown in her time on the council ever since she won the seat vacated by former Mayor Adrian Fenty when he ran for mayor the first time. She helped spearhead the ethics bill and is being opposed by five candidates, including Calvin Gurley.

The number of opponents — with chances to split the opposition as it were — are large for Yvette Alexander in Ward 7, which helps her mightily. She has William “Rev. Bill” Bennett, among others, to contend with. Bennett is senior pastor at Good Success Christian Church and Ministries. There’s also a familiar name in Kevin B. Chavous, running for the seat once occupied by his father. Two Republicans are also fighting for Alexander’s seat: Don Feldon, Sr., and the always outspoken Ron Moten, the founder of Peace-a-holics and fiery supporter of Fenty.

In Ward 8, it appears that we will always have Marion Barry to contend with on the council, although he also faces opposition in a big way from, among others, perennial candidates S.S. Sandra Seegars, Darrell Danny Gaston and Jacques D. Patterson.

Among the shadow-senate crowd, Democrat Michael D. Brown is running again. As you might — or not — remember, Brown made a brief splash in the last at-large race held by Phil Mendelson, in which he got a surge in the polls after many voters thought he was the Michael Brown who held an at-large seat on the council.

In the past, the district held its primaries in September. Because of a change in the voting law, the switch was made to spring. The new and earlier voting day will likely affect turnout. Voter turnout is off — and really off-elections like this are critical and notoriously low. It’s like the lottery: You’ve got to play to win. If you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain.

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Kahn Tackles O’Neill’s Daunting ‘Strange Interlude’

Gary Tischler •

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In theater, as in other endeavors, there are plays and roles that sit like slumbering challenges, just daring for artist to tackle them.

For actors, it’s Lear—but not yet—and the layer-upon-layer Hamlet, or Willie Lohman, or Maggie the cat or Blanche. And what opera director doesn’t some nights of the Ring Cycle, tossing and turning in a sweat.

For directors, especially American directors worth their salt, all they have to do is go to the collected works of Eugene O’Neill. O’Neill wrote all sorts of plays, one-acts, surrealist fare, auto-biographical epics and four-hour sojourns waiting for the iceman to cometh. The O’Neill canon is an ocean full of white whales.

And none may be more elusive than “Strange Interlude,” a major hit in its day when it finally opened in 1928 after years of labor by O’Neill, controversial for its content and its style. It was hugely ambitious in trying to tell a story spanning decades of American life — forward and backward, past, present and future.

For Michael Kahn, in the midst of a 25th anniversary season as the artistic director of the Washington Shakespeare Theatre, “Strange Interlude” is a play, he said, “I’ve always wanted to do, and for a time I thought I would never get the opportunity.”

He had come close once, but the project collapsed for various reasons. “But when this anniversary came up, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to tackle the play,” he said.

When you start thinking about this, you have to admire Kahn for thinking about it at all. His legacy in Washington and his whole career is secure; he would be forgiven for resting on his laurels.

“Strange Interlude” is something of a risk today, maybe even more than when it opened. It’s a legend of size and scope—various stories have the original production running as long as between six and four hours with an intermission break for dinner. Plus, O’Neill told wrote some of the dialogue in stream of consciousness style, in which the characters express their inner thoughts.

“Well, this production is more like three and a half or so.” Kahn said. “I don’t think today’s audiences will have trouble relating to it or the characters. It’s about something everybody has a stake in: the pursuit of happiness and the great difficulty and tragedy that surrounds that pursuit.”

While Kahn is also considered one of the consummate interpreters of the plays of Tennessee Williams, he’s no stranger to O’Neill. “He is the major figure in American theater,” Kahn said, “the father of American theater, with a huge and diverse body of work, a pioneer, a great writer whose work contained some of the finest work not only in theater but in American literature. I learned about him by reading. We had a lot of books in our house when I was young, and I ran across his first play, “Dynamo.”

“Ah, Wilderness!” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” both at Arena, and “Strange Interlude are part of a unique and ongoing O’Neill festival in Washington right now.

Kahn remembers seeing Frederic March playing the father in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” a production he calls remarkable. “Jason Robards (considered the O’Neill actor by many) was playing one of the sons, and he would later play the father.”

Kahn—in a stellar career that included a vivid production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway—directed O’Neill’s “Mourning Becomes Electra” twice. He got permission to edit “Electra” (as well as “Interlude”).

Still, the idea of “Interlude” is daunting. In the 1920s, the play was shocking for its Freudian content, for a plot that included abortion, sex and an intelligent, strong woman dealing with the lasting wounds suffered after her fiancée is killed in World War I without the opportunity for consummation of their love.

“The pursuit of happiness,” Kahn said, “that’s the American dream, that’s what we’re about as a country. There’s no society that places such a stress on the theme of happiness.”

Francesca Faridany will perform the role of Nina in this production. “Strange Interlude” is rarely performed, but that may be part of its appeal to audiences and certainly for Kahn, who presented the rarely performed “Camino Royal,” by Tennessee Williams and the equally rarely staged “Timor of Athens.”

Kahn is excited about “Strange Interlude” and thinks audiences will be, too. “It is one of the great works by our greatest playwright. It has a compelling story that resonates for today’s audiences. It’s about America and us, and we can see ourselves in those creations. It’s a great achievement on the part of O’Neill—the play spans 30 years and was written in the 1920s. So, he had to imagine what this country would be like in the ’30s and ’40s, and I think he did a good job of it.”

Listening to Kahn talk about the play, you feel he relished the work, like opening up a lost, true book and bringing it to life.

(“Strange Interlude” will be at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Sidney Harman Hall through April 29). [gallery ids="100718,120641" nav="thumbs"]

‘1776,’ the Musical, Still Tugs at America’s Heart

Gary Tischler • March 22, 2012

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1776. How 236 years ago.

“1776,” the musical. How 42 years ago.

The latest production of “1776,” now at Ford’s Theatre, is playing right during the longest-running reality show in the nation, the Republican Party race for the presidential nomination. How 36 seconds ago.

It is a familiar musical — about how a group of divided, discordant and discomfited bunch of men representing the 13 colonies would eventually come up with the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia and thus declare themselves a nation of free peoples. It always resonates mightily when performed in the Washington area, even as a high school or dinner theatre production. (We were mindful that it is being staged in the theater where President Abraham Lincoln was shot and performed on the night we attended that the Prime Minister of Britain was being cheered at the White House.)

What’s amazing about “1776,” with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and a book by Peter Stone, is that it works at all. The music and songs are to be sure witty, but they’re not in the exalted Broadway musical stratosphere that includes Rodgers and Hammerstein and Stephen Sondheim. It does not strive for anything resembling contemporary pop music styles. The score, songs and lyrics are what they are: they fit perfectly to the needs of the book, a soaring ballad here, a sarcastic, rousing number there, a funny one around the corner, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And maybe that’s what makes things work, because this has always been a show about the characters in it — by the people, for the people and about the people.

The main purpose of “1776” has always been to give audiences a human look at the men who ended up producing and signing the Declaration of Independence, the visionary heart and soul of American democracy as created then and living through the years and today. Here are the defiant, grimly determined John Adams (“They find me annoying, nobody likes me”), the stolid John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson missing his wife to the point of total distraction (“It’s been six months”), the icily charismatic John Dickinson, defender of property and loyal to the British Crown, the scathing and charming Edward Rutledge, cynical defender of slavery, elderly rock star of the American Revolution Benjamin Franklin and the rum-addled Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, to name a few.

In 1776, the Continental Army was short on almost everything — morale, men, organization, weapons and salt peter, awaiting a British assault in New York. The Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia where it was a choice between flies and oppressive heat and separation from or reconciliation with Great Britain. That something as historically astounding and resounding as the Declaration emerged from the band of hardly brothers seems in the very least remarkable and in the end inspiring.

Edwards and Stone won Tonys for “1776” but never again matched anything remotely in the way of success of this oddly old-fashioned but also revolutionary show. It’s not a debunking of the legendary names on the declaration, but it surely humanizes the process. We always knew that Adams was an indispensable man here, that Jefferson was young then, in love with his wife, and an all-around genius and that Benjamin Franklin was a genial lech, disliked his royalist son and embraced fame with fervor.

Songs range from show opener “For God’s Sake, John, Sit Down!” to the rousing and funny “The Lees of Old Virginia,” sung with flood-like gusto by Stephen S. Schmidt as Richard Henry Lee, and “He Plays the Violin,” a hymn of praise and prowess in which Erin Kruse, as Martha Jefferson, suggests something more than musical gifts for her husband. “Cool, Cool Considerate Men,” John Dickinson’s praise of pragmatism (“always to the right, never to the left”) presages our battling political parties of 2012, and “Molasses to Rum,” in which Gregory Maheu as Edward Rutledge blasts out an angry, chilling defense of slavery by way of hypocrisy, bring us to the present in one way or another. Everyone gets a say, or a song as it were.

Top acting kudos: Brooks Ashmankis as John Adams, singing with confidence, a man who acts with no limitations but knows his own very well; D.C.’s Shakespearean comic great Floyd King as the semi-sober Stephen Hopkins; Kruse and Kates Fisher as Abigail Adams on the ladies’ side. In particular, one should single out Robert Cuccioli as Dickerson — dressed in dandified black, grey and white, an actor who commands the stages and the audience in every scene. With charisma to spare as well is Maheu, the even more dandified but also shark-like representative from South Carolina, whose embrace of slavery sound like the whispers of the snake in the garden. “They are property,” he sneers, as if that were that.

This great debate in Philadelphia echoes loudly among us, all across the land, by ways of communication these founding signers had never anticipated. When the group agonizes over its deadlock and inability to do anything (“Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve”), they sound like nothing less than today’s Republican and Democratic members of Congress. And with so many presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices and politicians of today claiming intimate personal knowledge of our Founding Fathers, they might be well off checking out this show.

“1776” runs a solid three hours with intermission, but the time and the show passes swiftly. It’s an engrossing production, hugely entertaining and engaging. It plays like a big echo from 236 years ago and from 36 seconds ago.

(“1776” plays through May 19 at Ford’s Theatre.)
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Irish Ayes for Old Friends and the Auld Sod

Gary Tischler • March 19, 2012

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“I am of Ireland

And the Holy Land of Ireland

And time runs on, cried she,

‘Come out of charity

Come Dance With Me in Ireland.’ ”

— W.B. Yeats

I am not Irish and not of Ireland.

But, aye, often I have wished to be. Now, on St. Patrick’s Day, thousands, maybe millions embrace the same wish as if they had kissed the Blarney Stone on a damp day some time ago. They wear green, drink green beer, quaff the quaffables, sing and dance, wear green hats, try to speak Gaelic, listen to the grand Irish music and perhaps stand on a floor in two inches of Guinness and tears. Perhaps not. Most parades have already gone by. The music will linger if you’ve heard it.

Yes, the Irish in America have left their imprint. They brought their famine tales, destitution and memories. They came in droves in the wake of the Great Famine of the early mid-19th Century. They came to where stores were littered with signs that read, “Irish need not apply.” They were drawn in political cartoons as pipe-smoking monkeys.

They brought their music, their smitten-with-words poetry, their poets and playwrights, their fiddle players and their red-headed sages and lasses. They left their troubles behind in Ireland where they still persist here and there, as mysterious a tragedy as ever existed. They became cops, firemen, nannies — and, soon enough, politicians — and bartenders, priests and nuns, except for the Ulster folks.

They gave us Shaw, Yeats, Wilde, Behan, Synge and the great Irish place names. Eugene O’Neill who is enjoying a festival of his works at Arena Stage and throughout was as wildly Irish as you can be. Just check out that crazy family saga, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” or “A Touch of The Poet.” O’Neill knew that the Irish also quadrupled the number of bars in America, and he wrote the ultimate bar play, “The Iceman Cometh,” which I trust alcoholics living day to day would avoid. The second best bar play was written by an Armenian, and it was called “The Time of Your Life.” If Eastern Europeans were Irish, they would be called Armenians.

Myself, I emigrated from Germany knee high to nothing at ten years old from the most Irish place in Germany, which would be Bavaria. Bavaria is as Catholic as Ireland, as beer-soaked as Ireland and as Bohemian as Ireland, and it has its grand stock of peasant tales and superstitions and music And the food is better. Maybe that explains the affinity.

John Ford was Irish —the great director of westerns and Americana movies — and also directed “The Quiet Man,” which is Ireland as a dream of Ireland, a technicolor film where the greens and reds were so green and so red that they looked like paint. It had a matchmaker played by Barry Fitzgerald, who drank too much, a village where the local Catholic protected its Anglican priest by pretending to be Protestant. It had John Wayne as a retired pugilist. It had Maureen O’Hara, whose hair defined the term “redhead.”

O’Hara came from the Abbey Theatre still alive and strong in Dublin. Irish writers will always be among us. Witness Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet, and the new breed of Irish playwrights, whose work is both surreal, crazy and modern. There’s a lad named McDonough who is particularly good. Look out for a production of his “The Seafarer” soon, produced by Robert McNamara, the artistic director of Scena Theatre who is as solemnly Irish as they come. The play is about three men who play poker with the devil, and you know what the stakes are. The devil does all right until he starts taking tastes of the homegrown brew in the house. Plays are about words, and, boy, do the Irish love to talk and sing.

I believe in my heart that the Irish invented poetry and the job title of bartender. How else would so many who found work found it as a bartender? I knew a few in Washington in my time in places like the Dubliner, Nanny O’Briens, Kelly’s Irish Times, the Four Provinces, Matt Kane’s, Ellen’s and from what I hear tell, there’s a whole new generation of publicans and pubs. In those places and among those gentlemen — along with the ladies — I found such surely old-fashioned qualities as trust and loyalty, fierce kindness and grand thoughts and talk. There is something to be said for the drink, were it not for the fact that you can’t remember what it was that was said. A toast to the Kelly’s Michael and Hugh, Mr. Coleman at the Dubliner and Obie O’Brien. Some have gone, none forgotten.

And always, the sound of the fiddle, the Celtic drums, the rebel songs, and sad songs about the troubles and old Irish moms mourning their sons. There is dancing and, of course, as luck would have it “Danny Boy,” a song impossible to sing properly and which almost everyone thinks they can sing. I remember a member of the Irish embassy, an older gentleman in a bow tie and sports jacket, singing it loud and clear in the kitchen at 3 a.m. at Kelly’s Irish Times a long time ago.

They held “Reel Around the Shamrock” with Eileen Evers and Immigrant Soul at the Music Center at Strathmore this Thursday along with the Culkin School of Traditional Irish Dance with Brendan Mulvihill and Billy McComiskey. Mulvihill, a national fiddle champion in Ireland, and McComiskey were part of the Irish Tradition, one of the most popular Irish bands on the East Coast. Brendan could break your heart when he played the fiddle. And I can recall that he had an Afro load of Irish hair and how the Tradition’s music rousted the Wild Rover in all of us.

More than that, Paddy Maloney and the Chieftains are celebrating a 50th anniversary at the Kennedy Center this Friday night, March 16. Things don’t get more Irish than that.
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