Gary Tischler •

So, how do you like the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver so far?

If you’re an American, quite a bit, thank you very much.

If you’re one of the NBC sportcasters here, you like it even more, because now you’ve got an almost legitimate excuse to talk about practically nothing but Americans.

If you’re Canada, the host nation, probably not so much, for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. If you’re from Russia, even less. You and your president are mad as hell about it all.

This has been an unexpectedly dizzying and surprising winter Olympics, at turns exposing everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with these every-four-years efforts. If nothing else, we’ve seen a couple different sides to the host nation, for better and worse.

That image of the Canadians as bland, modest, mild-mannered folks who are patient and have things in perspective and proportion, well, that one took a small hit. They are as crazed about gold as anybody else, and carry as much bellowing national pride as the next country, which happens to be their too-good neighbor, the United States.

The Canadians, in their efforts to create a really fast luge and bobsled competition, created a course that athletes and experts complained was way too fast. It certainly proved to be too fast for a young luge competitor from Georgia who was killed when he lost control at somewhere around 90 miles an hour.

That tragedy, right before the start of the games, was a huge controversy with charges, tortured explanations, and countercharges in the midst of competition. It’s not being talked about too much any more, except perhaps in the Georgian village where they’re still mourning the loss of their hometown athlete.

The Canadians, who should be good in these events because there’s lots of ice, mountains, and snow there — as opposed to Washington — haven’t fared well. Last two times they hosted the winter Olympics they got no gold. They finally broke the spell this time, but then the United States — with most of their NHL stars playing for Russia, Sweden and Canada — managed to knock off the Sidney Crosby-led Canadian team, a huge upset.

The Russian hockey team, with Alex Ovechkin at the helm, lost to Slovakia. Russia was shut out in the medals for pairs skating, where China finished first and second, and when defending gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko, a boyish Putin look-alike in sequins, lost the gold to American Evan Lysacek in men‘s figure skating, he got peevish. He waltzed up to the gold podium at the medals ceremony then, after some comments about skaters who don’t do a quadruple jump not being manly, he walked out. Russian President Putin and his wife also complained about the loss.

And then there was our country ’tis of thee. Even if the Americans don’t win another medal, they’ve kicked butt. This would be really wonderful to behold if we didn’t have to listen to the various broadcasters point out the obvious to us, instead of letting us enjoy it.

This, in spite of the fact that this has not turned out to be the Vonncouver Olympics.

We’ve seen too much of the golden girl, in both senses of the word: her hurt shin, her pained grimaces, her bikini poses, her personal life, her long hair, all of that. She won a gold in the downhill and flashed her gutsy brilliance, fell in another race, and raced conservatively in the super-G for a bronze. Not bad at all, but just modest enough to let others shine.

Others won big also, with Shani Davis taking gold and silver in speed skating, Julia Mancuso winning two silvers and Apolo Ohno setting a record for Olympic medals with short track skating.

Then there’s Bode Miller. Remember him? Like Vonn, Miller was the hyped American athlete in Torino and crumbled like a cookie, with no medals. Here, he’s been about as good as he can get, getting a bronze, silver and gold so far, and a lot less attention, while looking like the scruffy skier Robert Redford might have played once.

Finally, there’s Shaun White, the red-headed snowboarder in a class by himself. I think I saw him working his way to the moon after one of his runs. Confident without being arrogant, articulate, shrewd and funny, he’s the coolest guy in Vancouver.

Canada has enjoyed a few victories, though. The gold medal win by dark-horse moguls skier Alex Bilodeau, the country’s first in a Winter Olympics, prompted a fire of excitement nationwide. More touching was seeing Bilodeau’s older brother Frederic, who has cerebral palsy, weep with joy when the results were announced.

One of the great things about watching ski runs is to see how the Vancouver’s mountain setting revealed itself every time. It was breath-taking. And there’s the city itself, gleamingly hip and cosmopolitan against a backdrop of fierce nature. Even if Canadian athletes aren’t sweeping the podiums, the country has the shown the world a remarkable culture full of natural beauty and modern elan. Now there’s something to be proud about.

Plus, we got to see fiddle players who could tap dance. What more could you want?

Gary Tischler •

It’s official. Let the weddings begin.

As of today, March 9, gay men and women could get married in the District of Columbia, and many of them probably did.

Officially, same sex marriage was legalized in the district on March 3, when same-sex couples could get a marriage license in district court and many, many of them did, from the District of Columbia and elsewhere, states where same sex marriage is not legal, the number of which still constitute a large majority in the United States.

Still, the issue of gay marriage passed a gauntlet in the District of Columbia that seemed insurmountable at one time in a jurisdiction where Congress, which had veto rights over the District budget, routinely insisted that anti-sodomy laws remain in place.

That might seem a thing of the past, but the climate for legalization of gay marriage and gay rights and discrimination is still a stormy one. For all the celebration and sighs of relief and it’s-about-time commentary that erupts whenever a jurisdiction legalizes same-sex marriage or equivalent rights, there’s always an event, a fight, a comment, a slur, a legal battle or maneuvering that reveals just how far gays have yet to go to achieve rights that to them and to most reasonable people seem just.

To many religious organizations and institutions, same-sex marriage threatens their beliefs and threatens the family, an ill-defined word in these contemporary times where divorce among straight people is alarmingly high. And there is always the religious fringe whose hatred of gay Americans, or gay people in general, appears to know no bounds.
That’s why, for instance, the Supreme Court is set to deliver a free speech verdict, no less, on the fate of rabid (there’s no other word for their cruel use of speech) anti-gay protesters who routinely show up at military funerals with hate-filled signs like “God Hates Your Tears” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” (among milder examples). The groups, members of Kansas’ Westboro Baptist Church, believe that 9/11 and U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are God’s punishment on America for tolerating gays in America. Needless to say, they are not fond of same-sex marriage, either.

A family of one dead soldier who sued the protesters and initially won a $5 million verdict is appealing a U.S. district appeals court decision that overturned the verdict on First Amendment grounds, saying that the signs had “imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric” which was protected.

Meanwhile, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli II, who had toned down his ultra-right rhetoric during the recent election campaign, has written letters to Virginia higher education officials asking them to back off policies against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, causing a furor among students on public university campuses.

And the unworkable and painful “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about gays in the military remains in place, even though some of the highest ranking officers in the military have spoken out against it.

All of these landmark efforts on same-sex marriage, legal rights and recognition are essentially about making gays and lesbians a part of mainstream America, a notion that absolutely terrifies anti-gay forces. If gay people have the same visible rights and place as other members of the community, it becomes impossible to marginalize them with slurs, rhetoric, oppression, discrimination and open hateful acts. If gay men and women come into the community light in terms of equal rights and responsibilities, it forces bigots to slink into the dark, where they belong.

Gary Tischler •

If you love the theater and its deeply felt surprises, then Samuel Beckett and Peter Brook are names that resonate. It’s not every day that two geniuses come so close together, the one resurrecting the work of the other, making emotionally visible.

Impressions and memories surface: Samuel Beckett, the first, best and last great avant garde playwright, the penman of Godot, created lingering fragments in the memory of our theater consciousness, dead since 1989.

Then there’s Brook, the iconic stage and film director. He shook the old tree that was the Royal Shakespeare Theater with “Marat/Sade,” a crazed, energetic “Midsummer,” and then went to Paris to stage a huge theatrical version of the great Indian epic poem the “Mahabharata.” He is past 80 and as keenly coherent, stimulating, daring, brave and hopeful as he ever was. His life and career amount to a roaring sea of achievement in books, films, plays. He has produced epics that no one else would have dared to event think about, let alone execute.

And now, we have Beckett and Brook together at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater with a production called “Fragments,” based on the text of five short works by Beckett, co-directed by Brook with Marie-Helen Estienne, with whom he worked on “Tierno Bokar,” a play about the life of the great Malian Sufi leader. “Fragments” originated with the Bouffes du Nort Theatre in Paris, which Brook had made the base for the International Centre for Theatre Research, which he founded in the 1970s. And of course, Brook knew Beckett.

“I knew Beckett, certainly,” Brook said in a telephone interview this week. “He was a friend, and he is very much with us now. He’s very important now in this time, but perhaps not in the way many people are used to thinking of him.” There’s something jaunty about his voice. It’s inviting, conversational, friendly, accessible.It’s as if you were chatting him up at a bar in Paris or Dublin, and you just naturally jumped in on Sartre, Genet, the avant garde, Sufism and Laurel and Hardy, among other things.

“I think to this day people think of him as this bleak, terrifying writer, this tragic Rasputin, full of pessimism and hopelessness and despair, a realist who showed us what was really going on in an age of optimism,” Brook said. “I think of it as Beckett 1 and Beckett 2. It’s the same Beckett, the plays and words, but they sound different. I knew him as a warm man, funny, witty. He was wonderful company, a good friend, he loved music, and he had a big sense of humor. He loved all these old Hollywood clowns, the mimes, the pratfall comics…Oliver and Hardy, he loved them.”

Listening to Brook, you think naturally enough of Vladimir and Estragon, lost protagonist tramps of “Waiting for Godot,” forever waiting for a Godlike character to appear to somehow change their live, save them from their misery and terror and keep them from killing themselves. Among many character traits, their plight may be bleak, but their talk is often funny. They move like hapless, helpless clowns, a ragged married couple caught in a horrible, repetitive vaudeville act. More often than not, they are like Laurel and Hardy faced with another fine mess.

“When ‘Godot’ and his plays and writings first had an impact, it was [around] the Post-World War II optimism spurred mainly by the United States,” Brook said. “There was all this prosperity and wealth, there was a noticeable and naïve optimism. There was also Jean Genet and Sartre and existentialism, which showed the stark mirror to the naïve optimism. And there was Beckett. His plays, his writings showed the other side, the despair, the sheer terror of modern life; it was a drastic, bleak contrast. But it was not the whole of Beckett.”

“Look around today,” Brook said. “Everything you see, everywhere you look, there is nothing but horrible news, terrifying news, and that optimism is plainly absent. So now we have Beckett II, if you will. Look at his characters: the woman in “Rockaby” (One of the plays in “Fragments,” and an unforgettable work that invades your subconscious like a squatter that never leaves), Winnie in “Happy Days,” up to her neck and immobile.

“Listen to her,” Brook says. “She can’t move, but she says ‘I want to be like a bird.’”

“They have persistence, in spite of everything. But more than that, there’s this enormous affirmation, and that affirmation is what’s important about Beckett now.”

Brook is 86 now, still going strong, having worked on a new version of “The Magic Flute” and the journeying “Fragments” production. He is known as a big thinker, a master of the grand idea put on stage, and absolutely fearless.

He is loaded down with honors, with the work, with this huge reputation—so much so that I hesitated before picking up the phone and dialing the number. In theater, Brook has some aspects that are sage-prophet-deity, which the Brook voice belies. The things he says to you he has said many times to many people, but because they remain radical, new, modern, it is not a familiar kiss.

He has written books on the theater—most famously “The Empty Space” and his autobiography. He has heated opinions, which are always sure to ruffle establishment feathers, and he has a history of battling with actors, critics, institutions and organizations. He is known for his work ethic, his pursuit of perfectionism. But in the midst of world revolution he seems to seek the route where toleration can thrive. The Sufis, for instance, are a branch of Islam that preaches toleration of other faiths.

“Fragments” seems such a wispy word for Beckett’s plays. Even the full-length plays—“Krapp’s Last Tape,” “Waiting for Godot,” “Happy Days”—seem to lack the complicated physical requirements of theater. You could stage them in utter darkness and still be devastated.

Every repetition, every word in Beckett’s plays seem to have the potential to explode, to expose feelings we’ve always kept covered. The “Fragments,” including one that’s a poem, are big things, dense with echoes. His shadow is big in odd ways, even in daily life and pop culture: I know a lawyer who named his pug-like dog after Beckett, and I remember graffiti in a DC Space bathroom that read: “I’ll be back.” It was signed “Godot.”

“Rockaby” is perhaps the best known works among the “Fragments,” which also include “Act Without Words II,” featuring two men in sacks and their adventures with a long pole. In “Rough For Theater I,” a blind man and a disabled man team up to form a functioning person. “Come and Go” features three women seated side by side on a narrow bench, and “Neither” is an 87-word poem that deals with the word “neither.”

“I can tell you that we’ve done interesting things with it,” he said of this staging of “Rockaby.” “But you’re going to see it, so I can’t tell you the specifics. You’ll have to wait and see.”

It struck me that this emphasis on what he sees as the complete Beckett, the affirmative prophet, may also be part of his own journey from head-on, even revolutionary and often shocking theater, to this notion of affirmation. He is known—like Beckett—to be a perfectionist and, as he wrote: “one can live by a passionate and absolute identification with a point of view.”

However, he writes, “There is an inner voice that murmurs, Don’t take it too seriously. Hold on tightly, let go lightly.”

“Fragments” is being performed at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre through April 17. Performances are April 14, 15 and 16 at 7:30 p.m. and April 16 and 17 at 1:30 p.m. For more information, visit [The Kennedy Center online.](http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/?fuseaction=showEvent&event=TLTSG)

Gary Tischler •

Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith has accomplished quite a bold and remarkable thing here, picking and staging the great, groundbreaking and revolutionary American musical “Oklahoma!” to inaugurate its first season at the Mead Center for American Theater in the Fichandler Stage.

The choice of “Oklahoma!” in the Fichandler is loaded with historical implications, and she’s managed to make something out of everyone of them. Here is “Oklahoma,” the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which, when it made its wartime America 1940s debut, not only signaled a spectacular career for its creators, but changed American musicals forever.

Here is Smith’s production, which preserves every word, lyric, song and piece of music, probably two-step from the original, and with intelligent use of non-traditional casting and an intimacy of space and place, makes it seem brand new, fresh, authentic and of our time. This is a production that honors this musical’s historic place in theater history while at the same time offering memories of the future.

Here is the rarely revived “Oklahoma!” staged in the Fichandler, the theater-in-the-round. Resurrected almost exactly in its original form, but surrounded by a space that makes it part of a spectacular, glass/wood/pillar encased three-theater, education and community center enterprise, as opposed to being its centerpiece. It is the historic Arena Stage intact, but also transformed in the here-and-now and the future, a more intimate theater space which seems both smaller and more vivid. But, as the fella said, the play’s the thing.

So what about this “Oklahoma!?”

Well, as the fella sings, you’re doing fine, Oklahoma, and more than okay. Likely, there are few people around today who actually saw the original production, although it’s a fair bet that there any number of people who may think they know a thing or two because of the Gordon MacRae/Shirley Jones movie, because of the sheer ingratiating quality of the music and songs which are out there in the muzak ozone.

It’s nice to come to something with no junk in your head about it. I’d never seen it and now I have, and I still feel buzzed about it. This production is such a smart operation, such an emotional bottom-well, such a high-energy all-get-out kind of thing that you’d think the whole building would levitate and turn into an active version of the spaceship it resembles.

What you’ve got, peering at close range, is Oklahoma, the territory about to become a state circa the turn of the previous century. There are cowboys, cattlemen, squatters, and a bunch of people that could resemble Adams Morgan if it were relocated into the flat, hard-won dirt and land of windy Oklahoma. There’s Curly, the cowboy smitten with the high-spirited, hard-to-get Laurey, who scrapes a living on the land she and Aunt Eller (the earthy F. Faye Butler) work along with the sinister hired hand Judd. There’s the kissable Addo Annie, torn between a cowboy and a peddler, and going back and forth between them like a ping-pong ball. And there’s Oklahoma itself, perched to become a state, awash in dry land and oil. Change is coming like a runaway train or the next election.

Here’s what else happens: the moment Curly, in the person of Nicholas Rodriguez, announces himself and the show with a burst of musical optimism in the song “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” you’re pretty much a goner. This is theater in its most transporting, transforming guise. “Oklahoma!” swept away decades of song-strong, chorus-girl rich whimsy and pratfalls caused by gin musicals which had nothing to do with life as it was lived—not to diss Cole Porter, Gershwin and a host of other great composers and lyricists.

“Oklahoma!” is dark, especially when the sweaty, dangerous Judd is on stage, casting a murky spell of unrequited, strong desires that resembles those of modern-day stalkers and violent predators. Smith further deepens the musical and dishes on outsider themes by casting: Rodriguez as Curly is Hispanic, Butler and Eleasha Gamble (Laurey) are African American and Ali Hakim is clearly a peddler of Middle Easter origin as played here with long-suffering humor by Nehal Joshi. You might add in that the women in this story are strong enough and stronger and of a mind to do what they want, emotionally or sexually.

The dancing—those cowboys in high-booted and high-stepping array, the dream ballet—is of a part with the story and the tale they’re telling, which is nothing less than an epic of change and growth, writ both large and intimately. Those songs don’t just lay there waiting to be a YouTube offering or a the next big billboard hit. They weave into our imaginations and stories, and tell the story on stage, from the spritely “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” to the woeful “Poor Judd is Dead,” to “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No,” the anthem-like tale of Addo Annie, played with remarkable vivaciousness by the hugely gifted and appealing June Schreiner (a junior at Madeira School, no less).

This production, so reflecting of our lives and its surroundings, is dead solid perfect entertainment, where you leave the theater like a gourmet leaving a meal that proved to be just so. I guarantee you that days later you will hum a melody, sing a fragment, remember Judd’s fierce face, Curley’s rangy voice, the bullet-sound of boots on the ground in the service of music and be glad, really glad for having been there.
[gallery ids="99546,99547" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

At the outset, it needs to be said that I am not an expert or aficionado. I can’t even read music. But I think I can listen to it.

We’re talking about classical music here, of course—sonatas and symphonies Brahms, Beethoven and Bell. In particular, we’re talking about classical violinist Joshua Bell. Barring older legends like Itzhak Perlman, he may be the finest violinist of his generation. More than one critic or fan has called him a rock star of classical music, because they can’t think of anything else to say.

When it comes to the violin, this is a little bit of a journey for me. In Germany, where I was a boy, the violin is a revered instrument, and the people who make them and play them are revered. But it was the opening concert of the Music Center at Strathmore, with master Perlman himself, which got me on the path to the music of violinists.

Strathmore, with its marvelous acoustics, is a wonderful place to experience music, and it was the perfect place to hear Perlman. Being there felt like being in a cathedral.

I don’t remember what he played, but I do remember wanting to hear much more. And not just Perlman, but those who followed—the younger violinists you hear about, whose pictures you find in the season programs of our cultural institutions: Sophie-Mutter, Hahn, Joshua Bell.

So here we are again: anticipating Bell’s performance at the Music Center at Strathmore (January 26) with Sam Haywood on piano, playing Brahms, Schubert and Grieg—works Bell describes as: “A challenge, a test.”

On the phone in a conference call interview with Bell, reporter and writers from all over the country, some obviously more knowledgeable than others, are taking turns asking questions.

Bell gives a friendly and comfortable vibe as he patiently addresses each question, many of which he’s no doubt heard numerous times before. He is 43 now, and in pictures and videos looks unforgivably boyish and handsome, unlike the masters of old. His looks are an attraction, but they would be of no help if he were all thumbs. He’s thoughtful, with a quiet sense of humor. He’s been a super nova of a violinist and performer for a few decades now, and he obviously appreciates the rewards of the hard work, the touring, the recordings, the appearances and the fame. He’s not an Access Hollywood kind of guy, but like some of his contemporaries in the field—Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Hillary Hahn— he occupies the territory of musical prodigy and ambassador, crossing the line where classical music creates full concert halls and major commercial success.

And yet, he’s a small-town guy from Indiana, a self-described “cultural Jew,” a Midwestern kid fulfilling a musical destiny once dominated by Europeans, and now being pushed by young and talented Asian prodigies. He seems to have given considerable thought to what and who he is, where the music is going and his future in it.

“I’m at an age where you have to think about things like that,” he said. “You know the arena of teaching, of writing and composing, of spreading out and doing other things, of pushing the envelope. Classical music is a world where you leave a mark, not just in recording and performing. And I like to explore other kinds of music—bluegrass and jazz—and mix things and explore the boundaries, and where you can break that down.”

In his last few recordings—The Romantic Violin, Voice of the Violin, and his last CD, the deceptively titled At Home With Friends—you can see that process working.

The first of the trio is music that sweeps you away, that requires strength and delicacy. When you listen to it, it’s like listening to strands of beautiful hair transformed into strings and bow, notably in works by the violin legend Fritz Kreisler.

Voice of the Violin, which I listen to on mornings when I’ve slept fitfully, is a work that’s already taking a step ahead; they are musical arrangements of works meant to be sung. In his notes, Bell says, “it was a wonderful opportunity to immerse myself in the rich treasury of music written for the voice.” The most recognizable work is Ave Maria, a work so soothing that it feels like cool water on a feverish brow.

At Home With Friends is an entirely different matter.

Some home. Some friends. In the questioning interviews, Bell talks a lot about what he calls his home, a nice little pad in Manhattan, a penthouse which occupies the top two floors of what was once a manufacturing plant in the Flatiron District. Home includes a performance hall where, on a video for the album, young men and women can be seen applauding as their host plays.

“I’ve always wanted something like that, a place where you can get together with your friends, play with them and for them—and a kind of salon for music.” This turned into getting together with people like rock-pop star Sting singing Come Again; trumpeter Chris Botti, who has known Bell since high school days, doing “I Loves You Porgy” with Bell; Kristen Chenoweth singing My Funny Valentine, which may rank as one of the best versions ever; Josh Groban singing Cinema Paradiso.

“It’s also a way of stretching the boundaries, working with people that are somewhat removed from traditional classical music,” he added.

With classical musicians, long, long hours of practice makes perfect. “But it’s not just about playing perfectly,” Bell said. “You need—I need—to understand a piece of music before I’ll play it. I need to be sure I know it to do it justice.”

Obviously, Bell is hugely popular. And he’s not easily daunted. Several years ago, he played for about an hour at the L’Enfant Plaza metro station during rush hour, to see if anybody would actually listen to the music of a world class musician. It was all grist for a prize-winning Washington Post article, but it was also something of an education.

“Mostly, people just walked by,” he said. “They were going to work, in a hurry, and didn’t pay attention. Some people did. They stopped and listened. I think I made around thirty dollars. It could humble you, but it was in the nature of an experiment. Yes, it was a very expensive violin I was playing [he uses a 1731 Stradivarius—meaning that it was made in 1731]. I didn’t pretend to be anybody but myself. I wasn’t a homeless man. I think it shows how busy our lives are.”

Even Bell playing Brahms proved not to be a distraction for most of the people.

Watching Bell on video in close-up is telling. No question, there is an other worldly talent on display when you listen to him. But he’s also an engaging, fully engaged, charismatic, physical player; the body contorts, he becomes a force in black—his usual dress code on stage—often working up a sweat, the hair flying, the eyes intense.

Listen to him talk to us reporter folks though, and you think you hear a little bit of that boy prodigy who’s been to all the places that are like concert castles, traveled the world, reads and sees himself named one of the most beautiful people by People Magazines, lives high up in Manhattan, etc. I don’t mean to suggest he’s somehow still starry-eyed. Rather, he respects where he is, wonders about where he’s going and always plays with beauty and passion.

Joshua Bell will be performing at the Strathmore on Wednesday, February 2nd, at 8pm. For information, [Click here](http://www.strathmore.org/offline.asp)

Gary Tischler •

Almost every year, someone complains about the Helen Hayes Award’s complicated and layered judging system, and someone expresses shock that such-and-such actor won, or that such-and-such show should not have won. This year, at the 27th annual Helen Hayes Awards, the most prestigious award ceremony for DC theater, there was additional grousing about the many ties, most of them occurring in the musical categories in which “Oklahoma” (Arena Stage) and “Candide” (Shakespeare Theater Company) were competing.

If you ask me, this sort of thing is beside the point. For this writer, the awards ceremonies have always been about celebrating the unique spirit of the Washington area theater community. It’s about the recording and building of a theater history and legacy. Things change and grow over a period of a little over a quarter of a century, but they also remain the same.

Being called outstanding in any category is a validation of the work as a whole—the time and effort, the imagination spent. It solidifies your proper presence and worth among your peers, without once negating the fact that the production and creation of a play is a truly collaborative effort.

What makes the Helen Hayes Awards unique is its celebration of this city’s theater community. It has blossomed into a kind of tribe and built a national reputation that is no longer a secret. For my money, we are right up there with Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

There’s always something boisterous about these proceedings. Each theater seems to have brought its entire employee roster to the show, resulting in gleeful and Glee-like atmospherics that you probably won’t hear at the Oscars or the Tonys. Each year, they show up—the new, young actors, dressing up theatrically, wanting to razzle and dazzle. It’s an infectious spirit the newcomers bring, jazzed about being part of a really cool thing. Its part rock and roll, part “we happy few, we band of brothers.”

“Oklahoma” and “Candide” cleaned up, coming twice to a tie, for the awards for lead actor and resident musical. Indeed, it is almost too tough to choose between the two shows in a season of outstanding musicals that included “Sunset Boulevard,” “Sophisticated Ladies” and “The Light in the Piazza,” to name just a few.

Mary Zimmerman took the gold for outstanding director of a resident musical for “Candide,” so when “Candide” and “Oklahoma” tied for resident musical, it gave director Molly Smith her share of the credit. And its credit she deserves. Imagine if “Oklahoma,” opening a new $100 million theater center, had been a flop.

Geoff Packard, who starred in the title role of “Candide,” and Nicholas Rodriguez for “Oklahoma,” tied for the top actor awards. Packard, the highlight of the new musical “Liberty Smith” at Ford’s Theater, remained true to his character. Referencing his love interest in the musical, he accepted his award saying, “I want to thank my very own Cunegonde, my fiancée Chelsea Crombach.” Packard told us they will be marrying in August.

Some other winning highlights: Adventure Theater’s artistic director Michael Bobbitt accepted the award for outstanding production in the Theater for Young Audiences category for “If You Give a Pig a Pancake.”

There is almost a tradition at the Helen Hayes awards that companies and individual artists have to wait their turn—unless of course you’re Signature Theater and Synetic Theater, which made big splashes right from the start and never looked back. Take the case of Howard Shalwitz, the founder and longtime artistic director of the still-cutting-edge Woolly Mammoth Theater.

Shalwitz just won the outstanding director award for a resident play for “Clybourne Park,” the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Bruce Norris (returning this summer). This was Shalwitz’s first win, long since overdue. He founded the Woolly in 1980, and along with directing a slew of outstanding productions throughout the decades, helped change the face of Washington theater. In another example, Joy Zinoman, who retired in 2009 as Studio Theater’s artistic director after 35 years (and who also co-founded the theater, which helped revitalized the 14th St. corridor), did exceptional work for years before eventually winning for “Indian Ink” in 2000.

History, patrons, inspirations are honored at these affairs. It is, after all, named after Helen Hayes, America’s granddame of theater, who performed here often. Every year, they tell stories about Hayes. They celebrated this year’s introduction of a commemorative Helen Hayes postage stamp by singing “That’s Why the Lady Is a Stamp.”

But this year was also a melancholy occasion. Hayes’ son, actor James MacArthur, who for years was a guiding force and a presence at these awards, passed away this year.

Helen Hayes Awards night is a crowded affair. Not only are the nominees and others who make up the Washington theater community in attendance, but all of them bring the memories of past performances, plays and moments. They bring the promise of future such times as yet unimagined. We remember those not here and their achievements. They are the much beloved and vividly remembered ghosts in attendance. [gallery ids="99661,105651,105644,105648" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

You know the drill. It’s time to celebrate the holidays. Not Thanksgiving. That’s practically yesterday. We’re talking about THE HOLIDAYS, when families reunite, and the grandparents will inevitably come bearing sweaters for everybody.

THE HOLIDAYS are a period of non-stop entertainments, and nothing is a better example of the schizophrenic nature of THE HOLIDAYS than the world of performance entertainment. It is a time of ongoing recitals in concert halls, cathedrals, small and large churches, and theaters — the music being pop and popular, secular and spiritual.

We promise nothing as expansive as a complete listing. For those left out, we apologize, and instead offer the most Christmas of blessings: “God bless you, everyone!” courtesy of Tiny Tim. And a happy HOLIDAYS to you.

The Kennedy Center and Strathmore

The Kennedy Center is practically a Christmas Mecca. Not only is the Nutcracker Ballet coming to town Nov. 24 and 26-28, but a version of Handel’s “Messiah.” The National Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Rinaldo Alessandrini, will perform Handel’s classic with soloists Klara Ek, Alisa Kolosva, Michele Angelin, Joan Martin Royo, and the University of Maryland Concert Choir on December 16. In addition, on December 23 the Concert Hall will host the free “Messiah” Sing-Along, a Kennedy Center tradition featuring guest conductor Barry Hemphill leading the KC Opera House Orchestra, a 200-voice choir, and audience members all performing Handel’s masterpiece.

Check out National Public Radio’s “A Jazz Piano Christmas”, on December 11 at the Terrace Theater, the NSO Pops “Happy Holidays” with Marvin Hamlisch and special guests, on December 9 at the Concert Hall, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band performing a Creole Christmas, at the Terrace Theater on December 17.

What’s more, you can always come to the Millennium Stage where everything is free daily. Samples include “An Irish Christmas” December 14, a Merry Tuba Christmas December 8, the DC Youth Orchestra December 12, Holiday Vaudeville December 26, and the All-Star Christmas Day Jazz Jam.

At Strathmore in Bethesda, there’s “O Come Let Us Adore Him” with the Mormon Orchestra and Choir of Washington, DC November 27, a major concert event. On December 1, the King’s Singers present their holiday event “Joy to the World.” The group will perform traditional and popular Christmas carols and songs and readings in a genuine seasonal performance.

On December 2 comes the 2010 Kenny G Holiday show, a popular pop-flavored performance. On December 7, the National Philharmonic and DC Concert Ministries will present “It’s a Wonderful Christmas”, with Michael W. Smith, a bestselling singer/songwriter of contemporary Christian music.

Not to be missed is the December 10 concert “Bowfire: Holiday Heart Strings.” “Bowfire” is an increasingly popular group specializing in string instrumentals and led by Lenny Solomon. Prepare to be happily strung out by a virtuoso group.

On December 11 and 12, there’s the National Philharmonic performing “Handel’s Messiah”, under the direction of founder and creator Piotr Gajewski.

Musicals this Season

In the 1940s, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein changed the American musical landscape altogether by injecting a dose of theatrical seriousness into a string of drama-infused musicals, beginning with “Oklahoma!”

You won’t find such a hit streak as enjoyed by this partnership: “Oklahoma!”, “Carousel”, “South Pacific”, and “The King and I.” Washingtonians can see what all the fuss was about with two dead-perfect revivals.

“Oklahoma!” re-imagined and recreated for our times by Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith, was the perfect launching pad for the new and stunning Mead Center for American Theater. Smartly cast, hugely entertaining, and fresh as a land-rush morning, this production is even rumored to be a possible candidate for a Broadway bid. The production repeats the rush of excitement and satisfaction generated by the original. See it if you can. It runs at the Fichandler through December 26.

Meanwhile, the Kennedy Center’s Opera House has the road company of the Lincoln Center’s award-winning revival of “South Pacific,” which held the longest-running title for a long time. Great songs like “Some Enchanted Evening” ripple through the World War II Pacific settings, where mismatched lovers try to find their way to each other’s hearts.

Speaking of a different kind of musical, “Candide” is landing at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in a new co-production with the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Music by Leonard Bernstein and additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, based on the novel by 18th century French philosopher Voltaire.

“Candide” is about an aristocratic, cockeyed optimist, who is disabused of some of his naiveté by bouts of life experience. Based on past productions, the musical is a creation that manages to be challenging, sumptuous, engaging, cerebral, and witty. “Candide” starts November 26.

The Christmas offering at the Olney Theater Center in Olney, Maryland is something for the whole family. You can’t get more optimistic than “Annie”, a huge hit musical when it first surfaced on Broadway in the 1970s and perfect feel-good stuff for the season. Directed by Mark Waldrop, “Annie” runs now through January 7.

Nuts & Scrooges

When it comes to holiday performance offerings, there are two things you can count on: Nutcrackers and Scrooges.

There is no escaping “The Nutcracker,” Tchaikovsky’s omnipresent vision of a kind of Victorian Christmas with a sinister figure bearing gifts and a dream landscape where toy soldiers are deployed to battle the king of the rats. On top of which, “The Nutcracker” contains some of the most beautiful music in the world.

Here in Washington, there are no doubt dozens of “Nutcrackers” in the area. Closer to home, there’s the yearly presentation by the splendid Washington Ballet and Artistic Director Septime Webre’s version, which features George Washington as the heroic nutcracker and George III as the rat king. It’s also a thickly-populated production, using more than 300 dancers over the course of its four-week run at the Warner Theater.

There will be special guests taking part in the production on December 10: the Washington Nationals’ Racing Presidents. This “Nutcracker” will run at the Warner Theater from December 2 to the 26, as well as THEARC Theater on November 27 and 28.

Meanwhile, the world-renowned Joffrey Ballet returns to the Kennedy Center’s Opera House for its version of “The Nutcracker,” designed by company founder Robert Joffrey, November 24 through the 28.

On a smaller scale, but trailing just as much magic, is the annual “Nutcracker” put on by the Puppet Company at Glenn Echo Park, November 26-December 31. The show has been an enduringly popular production from the Puppet Company founded in 1983, using hand puppets, rod puppets, marionettes, and shadow puppets to stage full productions of popular and landmark tales for children. The company is the work of Allan Stevens, Christopher and Mayfield Piper, and Eric Brooks.

Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” which Dickens performed in music halls and theaters throughout England and America, is said to have been the spark that became Christmas as we know it today. The story works like a well-oiled machine and is on the holiday calendar of hundreds of American theater companies.

The long-standing yearly production at the Ford’s Theater is always one of the best offerings, especially now that Ed Gero, one of Washington’s very best actors, has taken up the part of Scrooge again for this year’s run, November 20-January 2.

At Olney on December 16, actor Paul Morella takes up Scrooge in a one-man show, using only the words of Dickens’ novel to tell and make the audience feel the story.

In a less reverent version, but one that promises to be great fun, there’s “A Broadway Christmas Carol,” November 18-December 19, at Metro Stage in Alexandria. This comedic version, mixed with parodies of Broadway show tunes, is a creation of Cathy Feiniger, directed by Larry Kaye, and featuring Peter Boyer as Scrooge.

Let’s give a shout-out to the Adventure Theater staging of “The Happy Elf” by Harry Connick Jr., a fully-produced workshop production at Montgomery College’s Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center in Rockville, through November 28.

Foldger Consort Teams Up With the Tallis Scholars for a Renaissance Christmas at Georgetown University

Robert Eisenstein is a musical scholar and teacher of considerable renown, so you listen when he tells you that music composed in the 18th and 19th centuries is modern. “I don’t like the term ‘classical music’,” Eisenstein says. “It’s not entirely accurate, and it’s limiting, too.”

Eisenstein is a founding member of the Folger Consort, considered to be a model national chamber music ensemble with a worldwide reputation. When he talks about classical music as a fairly recent development, you have to take it in the context of what kind of music the Consort performs. “We play what’s called early music,” he said. “That means it ranges from music composed from around the 12th century through the 18th Century.”

It’s music like that which will be played by the Folger Consort and guest singers, The Tallis Scholars, in “A Renaissance Christmas” at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall, December 10-12. “When we’re talking Renaissance here, we don’t mean Italian Renaissance,” Eisenstein said. “We’re talking essentially English Renaissance and English compositions.”

The Consort, which does about four concerts a year from various periods and on various themes, is usually in the company of guest artists, and in The Tallis Scholars they have what critics call “rock stars of early music.” They have performed in China, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, and celebrated their 25th anniversary at London’s National Gallery.

Said Eisenstein, “The music…is on the surface exquisitely beautiful but also conveys the meaning of the season with great depth.”

Expect a moving performance.

Other Holiday Musical Highlights

THE EMBASSY SERIES will host a concert called “Songs from Call Me Madam”, referencing the legendary Irving Berlin musical based on the life of another legend, the late and great Washington hostess Pearl Mesta (dubbed the “Hostess with the Mostest“). The concert will be held at the Embassy of Luxembourg on December 4. Performers include Klea Blackhurst, a singer and actress best known for her award-winning tribute show to Ethel Merman, singer Angela Marchese, singer David Blalock, performer and actor Lawrence Redmond, who dazzled audiences in “Jerry Springer: The Opera” at the Studio Theater, and pianist George Peachey

THE NATIONAL CATHEDRAL will be the site of a presentation of “Handel’s Messiah” December 3 and 4, with Michael McCarthy conducting the National Cathedral’s men and youth choirs, backed by a Baroque orchestra.

On December 11-12, it’s “The Joy of Christmas” at the Cathedral, a generous concert of Christmas music that has become a Washington favorite. Performers include the Heritage Signature Chorale. There will be a special family matinee at noon on the 12.
The Children’s Christmas Pageant will be held at the cathedral December 19 at 2 p.m.

THE UNITED STATES ARMY BAND, PERSHING’S OWN, will celebrate the holidays with its annual “A Holiday Festival” at the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall, December 10-12.

THE WASHINGTON REVELS’ annual celebration of the Christmas solstice will be held, once again, at Liner Auditorium at George Washington University, December 4-5 and December 10-12.

THE CHORAL ARTS SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON will perform its “Christmas Music – A Treasured Holiday Tradition” concert at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall December 13, 21, and 24 and its family Christmas Concert at the Terrace Theater December 18.

A CELTIC CHRISTMAS, an annual Georgetown and Washington Christmas treasure will be performed at the historic Dumbarton Methodist Church, as part of the Dumbarton Concerts series, with the Barnes & Hampton Celtic Consort. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Celtic Christmas concert, which will run December 4, 5, 11, and 12.
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Gary Tischler •

Mary Zimmerman will tell you rather emphatically that she does not write children’s plays.

I wouldn’t argue with her about it. Technically, she’s right. Her plays are plays for adults, who think like adults. The emotions they engender are adult emotions: feelings akin to intellectual sadness, near heartbreak, confronting the new by way of the old.

Zimmerman has managed, over a couple of decades of directing and writing, to create a whole new kind of play, as yet difficult to fit into a descriptive category. And yet you come back to it: children, fairytales, storytelling, tales told around a campfire, the first writings of man. It’s that kind of thing, but made complicated, and made deep. She nonetheless uses the tools and imagination associated with children’s theater, both in terms of theater created FOR children, and sometimes the kind that children create themselves in their backyard under a tent: toys, clotheslines, dolls and sticks and pebbles, maybe with some singing and barking dogs thrown in.

I think she said it elsewhere herself, quoting Willa Cather: “I will never be the artist I was as a child.”
Zimmerman may just be that kind of artist—not childish or childlike, but basic, using the stuff that surrounds her, the every day things. And coating everything with magic.

Lately, we’ve gotten a burst of Zimmerman’s gifts on display, in two very different sorts of plays that nevertheless bear her directorial and authorial mark; we have seen an electric re-staging of Leonard Bernstein’s and Voltaire’s “Candide” at the Shakespeare Theater Company, which just completed a successful run. And now we can go see a re-do of Zimmerman’s “Arabian Nights,” enjoying a buzz-filled run at Arena Stage.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen Zimmerman around here. She directed a memorable, haunting version of “Pericles” at the Shakespeare Theater Company along with her own creation, a take on the story of Jason and the Argonauts, called simply “The Argonautica.”

There is obviously some common thread running through these and other productions that Zimmerman has done with her company, the Looking Glass Theater, and the Goodman Theater in Chicago.

“I’ve always liked fairytales,” she said in a telephone interview. “I try hard not to lose that sense of wonder, that kind of imagination, as a way of looking at material. I like big, basic, iconic stories and themes. All of that. That’s one reason I like directing opera, working in that world. It’s so over the top, so emotional.”
Zimmerman has done several stints at the Metropolitan Opera, with mixed results from the critical world. “I loved doing it and still do,” she says nonetheless. “I don’t worry too much about what’s written about me or my work.”

“Candide” and “Arabian Nights” are two very different kettles of tea when it comes to theater, and she’s made both her own. “Candide” was first produced in the 1950s on Broadway, unsuccessfully, with a mixed bag of authors stirring the book, including renowned poet Lillian Hellman and Stephen Sondheim. But the wonderful music kept things alive for later revivals, and it remains the soulful heart of the show.

With Zimmerman directing, the project also returned to its original source: the great Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire’s original thin fable of a novel, in which an innocent and sheltered naïf of a young lad (Candide) is thrown out into the cruel world of competing kingdoms, religions and general tumult of the 18th-century world, with his soul-mate Cunegonde.

So much happens to them—all the representative evils of the day, like pillage, war, rape, prison, the loss and gain and loss of fortune—it would turn most normal people into cynics. But Candide perseveres in the search for his love, whom he finds and loses again all over the world, from wars in France to El Dorado and back again.

“It’s a big story,” she said. “We went back to the roots, so to speak. And I have to say, I was so fortunate in casting the leads, Geoff Packard and Lauren Molina. Geoff was…heck, he is a little like a Candide. So I think they made the production very affecting for audiences.”

So did Zimmerman’s storytelling, as she used little wooden boats, stuffed red sheep, and toys and dolls and puppets as a way of rolling around the world. It’s the kind of thing that sometimes threatens to look silly, especially to jaded eyes used to movie reality. But with Zimmerman at the helm, it never does.

“Arabian Nights” is something else again, a series of stories writ large. “We, did this the first time on the eve of the Gulf War,” she said. “Even then, it echoed what was going on in the world, and nothing that’s happened since has changed that. It’s almost like coming full circle.”

The Arabian Nights are the tales told by a young woman named Scheherazade, who’s trying to save herself from the attentions of a king, so embittered by a previously unfaithful wife that he’s wed, bedded and killed a virgin every night for a year already. Scheherazade tells the king stories, hundreds of them, to keep his knife at bay.

“That’s the first thing you do with this, is choose the stories,” she said. “They are stories of love, betrayal, disguises, revenge, and they’re tall tales, funny stories, and stories of redemption.”

While the enterprise is astonishingly beautiful, and creates a buzz of argument as well as appreciation, it manages to achieve something else, the very thing that fairy tales do. It creates a quality of universal recognition.

In that sense, it connects to the present in how we move through the world. “It’s a precondition of war that we view other people as fundamentally different from ourselves,” Zimmerman says. “It’s a pre-condition of literature that we view other people as fundamentally the same as ourselves.”

The thousand tales are part of the lore of the golden age of Baghdad, which is of course the city nearly destroyed in the aftermath of the US invasion of 2003. The wind carries the news in this play; we are not apart from the present. Or the past. All the stories here, about lovers who lose each other, about people who save and forgive each other, about the roar of jokes and situations, all recreate the glorious past of the legendary ruler Harun al Rashid. But they are also stories about ourselves.

“I hope that’s what happens,” Zimmerman says. “I hope those acts of recognition occur.”

Not to dwell on it, but there is a tale about a prominent citizen who at last decides to marry and is standing with his bride at the altar, when he is struck by a paroxysm of gas convulsions. What ensues is an extended, agonizing fart joke, every bit as rude as “Blazing Saddles”, but also touching, finished off by a classic vaudevillian punch line. It’s pretty simple, old men and young men, women and children all laugh at fart jokes. It’s our universal kismet, so to speak.

There are sweeter and equally universal moments in this play. With Zimmerman, we’re always on a wooden toy boat, going back and forth in time, on perilous journeys, on an adventure that makes us richer for the trip.

“Arabian Nights” runs at Arena Stage’s Fichandler in the Mead Center for American Theater through February 20. [gallery ids="99597,105022" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

In theater, as elsewhere, everybody’s always looking for the next big thing. New plays and new playwrights, especially. They are looking for the next Miller, the next Mamet. Not that the theater world is lacking for fresh new talent: Sarah Rule, Craig Wright, the Pulitzer Prize winning Bruce Norris are all worthy of acclaim.

So is Sam Forman. A quintessential New York type in some ways, Forman is young, hip, very smart and a knowing young playwright and actor who has brought something to the theater that goes back to Chekhov, Neil Simon, even Woody Allen. Mostly, though, he’s brought himself.

This very site and psyche specific writer seems to have found a congenial home for his work at Theater J, where, for the second time, he has garnered a world-premiere production of one his plays.

You might remember Forman for his “The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall,” which received a world-premiere production at Theater J two seasons ago. “Hall,” flavored and textured with Woody Allen references and touches, got critical praise, terrific and mixed audiences, and a Helen Hayes award nomination. It featured a not-so-nice guy character—a young playwright no less—who would do just about anything to get his idea of a musical version of Woody Allen’s most famous film on the Broadway boards.

Now he’s back with “The Moscows of Nantucket,” getting a healthy May 11-June 12 run at Theater J.

“I really love coming here… It’s like a home for me,” Forman said in a phone interview here. “Ari Roth, the artistic director, has had great faith in my work. He’s created a legacy here, of very specific work for a specific community that’s universal.”

You could say that Forman is doing something of the same thing, and it’s not an easy thing to do. It’s a kind of dervish dance, making culturally-specific work—Jewish background, Jewish characters—become something that catches the hearts and minds of a universal audience.

“Well, Neil Simon did it, and he did that very well,” Forman says. “Everybody has ambition like the lead in Annie Hall. Everyone has families, like the people in ‘Nantucket,’ and I think people, when they let themselves, recognize that.”

New plays, new playwrights aren’t always everyone’s cup of tea, and the scenario at Theater J is especially tricky because many of the season subscribers tend to be older and have been known to walk out on material that offends them.

But Forman’s plays—if my memories of “Hall” are on the money” and if his resume is any indication—are thought provoking, funny, entertaining and built on authentic characters. They may not always be likeable—how boring would that be—but they are recognizable. “That was the thing about Henry, the lead character in ‘Annie Hall.’ He’s got this show, this musical version of the movie, he’s in proximity to this successful producer, and he’s even willing to set up his girl friend. I played him in some productions… He’s based on my experience, but he’s not me. But I understand him, you know.”

“Nantucket” (which echoes some of Chekhov’s gatherings, albeit a little more frantically and loudly) concerns Benjamin Moscow, a 30-something, would-be novelist who is having trouble making a mark, having just moved back in with his parents partly because his girlfriend left him for another girl. The Moscows are gathering in Nantucket, a Wasp enclave not always hospitable to Jewish residents. Brother Michael has arrived with his new wife, a prominent television star, along with the nanny. Sibling rivalry, already a lifetime past time, heats with the matriarch and patriarchs caught in the middle.

“It’s a family play, a dysfunctional family play,” Forman said. “Sure, there’s some very Jewish family dynamics going on—the blonde Southern wife comes as a culture shock to the parents. There’s modern life struggling with tradition.”

Forman grew up in New York seeing plays like John Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation” and Albee and others, the new generations that found prominence in the 1960s. Ari Roth sees a lot of Neil Simon in him: “Sam’s got a lot in common with great playwrights like Neil Simon. He understands character, he understands human psychology, he understands story, and he understands audiences. That being said, he’s a writer from a whole new generation, and he’s not shy about his youth.”

Like a lot of new artists, Forman is a multitasker in the sense that he doesn’t stay with one gift, one genre or one thing. He recently co-created “Hickory Hill,” a television pilot for American Movie Classics, a station that has suddenly become a home for cutting edge series television. He’s the lyricist and co-author of the book for “I Sing!” And numerous other plays, and he remains an actor. “But I’m a writer first,” he says. “I think.”

“The Moscows of Nantucket” will be at Theater J from May 11 – June 12. For more information visit WashingtonDCJCC.org.