Odious August Is Over, Thank God
• September 17, 2015

People—and a few poets—have always said that April is the cruelest month.

Sorry to say that it isn’t so.

August is the cruelest month. By far.

August is supposed to be the month when we treasure our last few trips to the beach, when we finally finish “War and Peace” or every James Patterson novel ever written—the number is legion—or go to our gadgets and binge watch every episode of “Game of Thrones.”

August is the month when we ignore the news, because there isn’t supposed to be any. Our elected officials are supposed to be out of town, doing nothing, a continuation of what they did when they were here. In August, consistency like that is the soul of solace and rest.

Instead, the news, the world, just would not go away. It burst onto our daily lives like a nagging life trainer.   It unsettled us in ways that are not supposed to happen in August. August are the joys of baseball, the absence of politics, the sand in your toes, the sun and its relief, the shade. 

Instead, we got Wall Street gyrations, Donald Trump morning, noon and night and whatever else is left. We have people still holding up placards that read, “Black Lives Matter,” and a police chief in Texas insisting that police lives matter, too, after a black man killed a police officer at a gas station.  We have the shocking, tragic, horrible shooting deaths—live, on the air—of a television reporter and her camera man from a Roanoke, Virginia, TV station. 

Here in Washington, as of now, the number of homicides is 105, the same total for all homicides in 2014, a chunk of that number achieved in shootings in August. Out West, spectacular and hugely destructive forest fires raged over Washington state, Oregon, California, in the middle of a devastating drought, and Idaho, while it became obvious to many that climate change was doing serious damage to the northernmost edges of the world, where glaciers and animals were receding or disappearing.

The news came at us in daily doses. It was the kind of news that stayed with you and lingered, got under your skin.   

During this time of year, politics shouldn’t be such a circus: loud, noisy, full of chest-beating, trumpeting and out-and-out chaos.  And it wouldn’t be, if Donald Trump were not in the race for the Republican nomination for president.  It wouldn’t be, if Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination since the last time she ran for president, didn’t suddenly seem pale and weak, wobbling from wounds from a thousand cuts of e-mails.   It wouldn’t be if it weren’t fairly apparent that no matter what outrageous things he says, no matter how many women he insults, Trump remains on top of the polls. 

One thing remains clear and therefore unsettling: the political establishment, the one in Washington and everywhere else, is under siege. Two of the most familiar names in politics—Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, are shrinking right before our eyes. It is the summer of the amateur and an apparently deep resentment of all things political. Trump is—as he often says—no politician, but a billionaire, as he often says, too. He has turned the immigration into a personal pet peeve of his and a national resentment.  Ben Carson is also doing well—he’s an African American neurosurgeon, running second behind Trump in some polls.  His qualification: he will bend his knees to no one. Bernie Sanders, the principal threat to Clinton, not dismissing her own tepid performance, is a Vermont socialist, which is honorary amateur status.  

It’s beginning to look like almost anybody with a little money can run.  When it comes to running for president, anybody can. No qualifications necessary. Politicians need not apply. If this thing holds up, it should turn the whole electoral process upside down.  In spite of everything that’s rancid and wrong with politics and government, this is still an unsettling thought.

In August, of course, you didn’t have to think about politics. You could talk about the weather, which was horrible—not such much for those in D.C. Heat waves are a part of August, the destruction of record numbers of acres in the West are not, and neither are the death of four firefighters.  Those images of fires combusting spontaneously made every broadcast of the nightly news for a while, as scary as any horror or disaster movie.  

If you didn’t want to think about politics or the weather, well, there was crime, and plenty of it, especially in Washington.   Those 105 homicides are reflective of a national trend—our neighbor Baltimore’s homicide rate is through the roof—but it’s particularly upsetting in D.C., where the mysterious rash of killings have become a political fight between D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier and the police union over tactics, among other things.  Right alongside are continued expressions and demonstrations over the killing of black men by white police officers—and lately, the killing of police officers, which is on the rise.

For sheer shock and horrible drama, there wasn’t a bigger story than the Aug. 26 killings of television reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward by Vester Flanagan, a very disgruntled, former employee of the television station where the two worked.  Even as Ward’s life was commemorated recently, the story itself has become a political story on the right—Rush Limbaugh and his ilk—who’ve insisted that this was a hate crime.

Let’s try economics.  Okay, let’s not.  Wall Street experienced a wave of daily Dow Jones Industrial Average tsunamis, with a one-day, 1,000-point drop among other precipitous falls, the latest of which has the Dow teetering around the 15,000-point mark.

How about sports?   This is August after all. Are the Nationals leading the National League East and primed for a playoff run?  Sorry.  That was July. August was the month when the Washington Nationals (and the Baltimore Orioles along with them) experienced what can only be described as a near-total eclipse of their chances to make it to the playoffs, let alone win the World Series, which all the experts had them doing. The awe-inspiring pitching staff fell apart, the team failed to hit consistently, and injuries decimated the lineup throughout the year. As of this writing, the Nats are six games behind the hot New York Mets, and time, as they say, is running out.  

Even a champion wasn’t immune from the woes of August.  American Pharoah, the First Triple Crown winner in a long, long time, had his luster (and maybe stud fee) dimmed a little when he finished second in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga.

Even the arrival of a new baby panda at the zoo was tinged with the cruel reality of the natural world. Panda mom Mei Ziang gave birth in August not to just one but two baby pandas. Unfortunately, this being August, the younger of the two succumbed to pneumonia, although the older one is thriving and sporting black and white colors.

In Europe, we witnessed a growing world tragedy as refugees from the killing grounds of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq tried desperately to escape. The train station in Budapest was shut down.

So, it was at last a goodbye to August, the reigning and current champion of cruelest month of the year. Rejoice. The wicked month is dead. 

It is September, the end of summer, the beginning of fall. The pope is coming. The city is bursting with new arts seasons,  including 50 or so world premiere plays by female playwrights. Football is here. The Redskins are . . . (um, hold that thought), and baseball—even with the struggling Nationals—is still baseball.

 

The GOP Debate: Trump Thumps and Thumped; Rubio, Kasich Gain
• August 31, 2015

So little time, so much to do.

This was a momentous week in the world.  President Barack Obama gave a sharp, strong speech at American University scorning his critics and defending the treaty with Iran that would, he claimed, prevent Iran from ever getting a nuclear bomb. Jon Stewart retired from his own self-titled pioneering, one-of-a-kind political comedy show. 

Jennifer Aniston reportedly (via “Access Hollywood”) managed to get married to her very long-time fiancé, the actor Justin Theroux.

Oh, and the Republican Party held its first primary debate, featuring the top 10 candidates in the polls, on Fox News Channel in Cleveland, site of the 2016 GOP National Convention next summer.  You could call Thursday’s debate the Trump-a-thon, because so much of the world’s and the media’s attention was focused on mogul and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, before, during and after the debate.   

If you checked out the next-day coverage of the debate, you could get 50 different opinions about who had “won” the debate: Trump won by remaining Trump; Trump lost by remaining Trump. According to various views, Trump suffered self-inflicted wounds and imploded. Trump triumphed by never retreating, always repeating variations of his mantra of strength, building a wall, making America strong, bravado and bluster on a grand scale.  Many political strategists and commentators thought that among the big 10, the youthful Florida senator Marco Rubio had made the strongest impression—although he did it with making statements that sounded perilously closed to canned campaign speeches and slogans delivered in an emphatic style.

No grand (or detailed) policy  or ideological initiatives were offered, either by Trump or any of the other nine candidates, plus the junior debate held earlier featuring the seven candidates who did not make the cutoff.  By all accounts, businesswoman Carly Fiorina made a strong impression in that debate, which included the likes of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal , South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham and a host of formers: former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, former New York governor George Pataki, former Texas governor Rick Perry and former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore.

This was a GOP night—the party and Fox News, the network that prides itself on being your every-day American objective news organization without a hint of bias, showing off a strong and very, very large field of GOP candidates, all of whom were trying to keep their heads above the Trump tidal wave.

Even though this was a within-the-family debate, this was also still a Fox News debate, in the sense that the moderators—steady and disarming Chris Wallace, Bret Baier with his sharp inquisitor questioning, and Megyn Kelly, the network’s bright, blonde commentary supernova—had something of an agenda.

Trump’s astonishing rise in the polls without a noticeable lack of momentum in spite of outrageous gaffes that could have buried three campaigns have alarmed conservative establishment regulars, and Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is likely in that camp.  From the outset, the moderators seemed on a mission to put some holes in the Trump blimp, beginning with the loyalty oath opening question from Baier: “Is there anyone onstage—and can I see hands—who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican Party and pledge not to run an independent campaign against that person?”

Trump, after a due five-second consideration raised his hand. He was the only who did. Not only that but he refused to say that he would not engage in a third-party run, for which he was booed.

Things got worse when it was Kelly’s turn.  “You’ve called women you don’t like fat, pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” she said. “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump said.  As the question continued, he complained that he was not a political correct sort of guy and that it was all in fun.  But the question certainly stung. Witness to all the complaining tweets that emanated from Trump and his camp about Kelly afterward.  Kelly’s style is energetically wide-eyed, insistent, friendly and sharp—and straight for the jugular. The effect on her target often seems like someone being mauled in a dark alley by a very smart cheerleader.

When it came to Trump, the moderators often seemed like picadors jabbing at a bull.  Trump notoriously doesn’t take to attacks well. “You don’t like me,” he said of the audience. 

It wasn’t entirely clear whom the audience liked. There were lots of moments when that descended into reality-show politics, a zinger here, an impassioned plea there, and an almost unanimous response by all of the candidates that the United States should arm itself to the teeth, increase defense spending, enlarge the army, scrap the Iran nuclear deal, arm the Ukrainians and so on. That kind of spending clearly would bust the bank again as has the Iraq War.

The most funded candidate in the field, Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida whose father and brother have served as president of the United States, fared reasonably well, including once and for all agreeing that with current available information, his brother’s Iraq War was “a mistake.” 

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie once again showed himself to be something of a bully, when he and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul got into it on National Security spying on citizens and the Patriot Act. He probably scored points, but the visuals were something else—a vehement Rand, thin and frazzled and looking like an academic nerd being overpowered by Christie, who pushed on relentlessly like a high school football tackle.

Commentators seemed to like Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the up-from-nothing young politician mired in the middle of the pack so far.  He was pointed, passionate and just a shade too slick and rehearsed with his zingers and comments, all of which sounded like sound bites for the campaign trail.  

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas put in his claim on being the true-blue, serious conservative among the candidates, although you’d think shutting down the government would be enough to burnish those credentials.  Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker mentioned his triumphs over teacher’s unions in his state every chance he got, but he adopted a less strident tone than in the past, foregoing his previous claims that his battles with the teachers unions were credentials for waging war against ISIS.

African American neurosurgeon Ben Carson said, when you’re working as a surgeon, “You don’t look at a person’s skin color.”  Ohio Gov. John Kasich showed off his credentials, an optimistic personality and a passion for inclusion, rare among the crew on the stage, going so far as to say that the party “should include and bring in those that are in the shadows.” 

In the end, this was still a Republican event, as it should be, and perhaps, so that both candidates and moderators behaved in ways that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Was Trump triumphant or blooded, even mortally wounded?  Probably neither.  He was in the end, entirely himself.   He remains a candidate who has neither filter or shame, which bodes trouble for the GOP and for himself.   On this performance, it could strike some observers that Trump did not implode, but that at some time, that’s exactly what will happen. The more interesting question is what he will do when that happens. 

As for the rest,  Rubio will probably go up a notch or two, and Kasich gained valuable visibility and performed well, as, apparently did Fiorina. Will the field be trimmed?  Probably although it is a long way to Tipperary before some of the candidates (17 and still counting) will realize that that voice they heard urging them to run was actually a cold caller.

Was  this—as the promos shouted—”the moment of truth”?  Truth at a political debate?  What could we be thinking?

It was more like a peek at the field, without any real revelation or revealing moments.  As a reality show, it was certainly better than “Big Brother”—or, dare we say it, “The Apprentice,” but not as good as “Dancing with the Stars” or “Shark Tank.” 

‘Dear Evan Hansen’: a Top-Notch Musical at Arena Stage
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There’s only a couple of weeks left to see “Dear Evan Hansen,” a highly original, up-to-the-moment world premiere musical now in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage through August 23. My suggestion: go see it while you can, unless, as may be possible, this production achieves its Broadway aspirations.

“Hansen”—about a tongue-tied, lonely teen who pretends to be the best friend of a friendless teenager who’s committed suicide—is an amazingly audience-affecting show. The material seems to blitz emotionally across the generations during the course of a packed-house performance at which the audience often whistled and cheered or remained tellingly silent at emotional moments. This was an audience made up of millennials, teens, parental-type adults, and people older than that.

This meant that the show’s creative team of Steven Levenson (book), Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (music and lyrics) and director Michael Greif have managed to put on a show that is suited to the times where the subject of teen bullying, teen angst and teen suicide is high profile. But it never hectors or presses the point. It’s too busy creating a lived-in world set against a highly evocative and energetic stage framework of the digital world of e-mails, social networks, Facebook and texting, in which the characters live.

Evan Hansen is a teen so shy that when he encounters the girl of his dreams, his every other phrase is a version of “I’m sorry.” His mother works as a nurse and is taking night classes and while she’s loving, she barely notices Evan’s pain. By chance, Evan has an encounter with another loner, Connor Murphy, who steals Evan’s shrink-assigned note to himself. Later, Evan learns that Connor has committed suicide, and was found with the note.

Swiftly, Evan is welcomed into Connor’s grief-stricken family circle because they think he was Connor’s best (and only) friend. That circle includes Connor’s sister Zoe, the object of Evan’s unabashed love. Matters, as they say, get out of hand, as events and information—made-up e-mails, the note, a whole and false biography of a friendship and alternative Connor—make their way through the busy-body world of social media.

This could be sappy, overly sentimental material, but the music, the writing and especially the performers never descend to a level beyond honest sentiment. There’s a surprising amount of humor in the show, and songs that touch the emotions. What’s impressive is just how accurately Evan’s world and his friends, his mother, and Connors’ family is portrayed—it feels lived in, honest and authentic, a world that’s right out there in a neighborhood near you.

Ben Platt, a budding bona-fide movie star (“Pitch Perfect,” “Ricky and the Flash”) portrays Evan with just the right amount of bumbling, painful awkwardness, awed by finally finding his dreams of love and family coming true, stricken by the lie he is living. He has a strong partner in the appealing Laura Dreyfuss as Zoe. There are also quite sharp and funny bits by Alexis Molnar and Will Roland as Evans’ co-conspirators.

But the adults in this show—Jennifer Laura Thompson in the emotionally stirring part of Connors’ mother, Michael Park as an almost classically stoic, gruff and in-pain dad, and the remarkable Rachel Bay Jones as Evans’ mom—are a revelation.

Musically, “Dear Evan Hansen” is kin to “Rent” and “Next to Normal,” and the contemporary American musical’s attempt to move forward and find own voice and songs, side-stepping out-and-out rock and roll, creating new pop music that’s narrative-friendly and in service of the story. Songs like “For Forever,”“Words Fail” and others move character and narrative, but the presentation is still more in the mode of front-and-center top of the stage offering than a fluid event that flows out of the story at times.

It’s a small quibble. A larger one is the quiet resolution for Evan’s dilemma, which is a huge one where conscience has collided with need.

Still, “Dear Evan Hansen” is top-notch—in terms of originality and emotional power, not to mention an authentic affinity for the world it portrays. Let’s hope

Campaign 2016 Is Reshaping Both Political Parties
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What in the world is going on out there?

We’re still months away from the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, the true harbingers of the 2016 presidential election campaign, but already the American electoral process is showing signs of:

Collapse and an essential, restless weirdness that can only be found in politics and maybe a 1960s rock festival.

Can you imagine, for instance an eventual final campaign lineup that pits Republican dark prince Ted Cruz against a severely politically wounded, vulnerable Hilary Clinton (or even Joe Biden), with the clown crown prince Donald Trump running an independent campaign, and Bernie Sanders from Vermont running another as a socialist?

Not likely, you say. Maybe not even legal.   But then again, maybe not.   In fact, after what’s happened so far, anything could happen. The two-party system which the American people have come to love and loathe, all at the same time, is suffering a major migraine.  Don McLean should do a reboot of “American Pie,” and make it a song about politics.  Most of the lyrics would still fit.

Consider to begin with what’s happened to the Republicans, that Grand Old Party which sprung out of the Whig party, spearheaded by the Pathfinder John Fremont and led to victory by Abraham Lincoln.  They began the campaign with a roster that was big enough to be an amateur football team—17 all told, which caused something you’ve never seen in the history of American politics.  The GOP held a debate on GOP-friendly Fox and fielded  a varsity and a junior varsity, although it was difficult to tell which was which. One had Trump, and the other didn’t.  One “debate” included a woman, and the other didn’t.  One had a black candidate; the other didn’t.  Both of them wanted to repeal Obamacare.

If any other candidate had dissed John McCain for being captured, questioned his heroic qualities,  talked about Mexican rapists on the border, boasted constantly about how rich he was (“really rich,” it turns out),  and insulted one woman reporter and women in general he or she would long ago have dropped out of the race in sheer embarrassment  and shame.  But Donald Trump is incapable of showing embarrassment, and for sure he has less than zero shame.

The unwieldy formats and large number of would-be-presidents have made it  impossible for anyone else to be heard above the din.  Carly Fiorina stood out among the B team, not a difficult thing to do since it included a lineup made up almost entirely of former something-or-others.

On the other side, Hillary Clinton is  now officially in hot water over her emails, because Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wants to hold a hearing.  Tell Issa that it’s raining in Japan, and he’ll want to hold a hearing on  it. Clinton, once the dead-certain front-runner—an experience which she’s had experience with—is now seen negatively by a majority of voters, as is Trump.  Bernie Sanders is getting big crowds, and people are buzzing about a possible Joe Biden run.

Is this crazy or what?

A few things are certain.  People are so unhappy about the status quo: nothing get done, and politicians—many of whom are lawyers—are more distrusted than lawyers.   Many people—the economically distressed members of the white, struggling class—are so angry that they’ll swallow Trump’s attempt to present himself as a populist, a man of the people who earned his wealth the “hard” way—he inherited it.

As has been suggested by media and politicians alike, people are really ticked off.  They’re not listening to anybody. They want change. They want a wall, walling off Mexico. They wanted ISIS conquered. They want good jobs which they see going overseas. They want . . .

. . . Change, even if it means changing the whole electoral system and letting chaos reign in the 2016 elections.  It wouldn’t be the first time that the outsider spirit from a dispirited electorate has had a huge impact on elections.  Look at Ross Perot’s two independent runs back in the 1990s which guaranteed two Clinton (Bill) victories. Look at Theodore Roosevelt and his Bull Moose party, derailing Taft’s re-election campaign.  Look at the 1860 campaign, derailed by two Democratic candidates, one of whom was from an about-to-secede South, that guaranteed Lincoln’s election.

So, it’s bye-bye, Miss American party, good old boys drinking whiskey and wry. Don’t bother driving your Chevy to the levee, because American parties have run dry of ideas and political appeal.   

D.C.’s Spike in Homicides: Police Union Criticizes MPD Tactics
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When I left the office of the Georgetowner Newspaper on Tuesday, deadline day, Aug. 18, after writing an editorial on the rising homicide rate in the District of Columbia, the number of homicides for the year in the city stood at 93, an alarming 30 percent or so increase over last year at this time.

By the time I got home two hours later, the number had gone up to 95.

Today, at this writing, around 3 p.m., the count stands at 98. The latest victim was a man who had been found dead Wednesday, Aug. 19, behind a building by a woman walking her dog in the 3000 block of Stanton Road SE just before 8 a.m., according the D.C. Police Union daily crime updates.

No homicides at this point in time have been reported since.  But the beat surely goes on as relentless as a summer heat wave.

After several community and news briefings, Mayor Muriel Bowser and Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier have had to recalibrate their response to the almost daily carnages and barrage of killings, as well as robberies and other crimes.

In a community meeting in the homicide-plagued Shaw neighborhood, which has also experienced a population shift over the last few years, Lanier insisted that the District’s and the police department’s response has largely and in the long run been working. The chief blamed the most recent shootings and killings on an influx of guns (along with offenders released recently).  Lanier and Bowser have announced an increase in the bounty for reported illegal firearms.  A tip leading to an illegal weapon is now worth $2,500.

But if you read the union crime reports and news reports, there is also a nascent feud and argument, ongoing but more heated, in recent days between between police union officers and Lanier over policing strategies. The union is criticizing its chief for disbanding drug and vice units. It is one of the causes, the union argues, for the increase in violent crimes. Others — such as Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans in his Georgetowner column and elsewhere — have called for a hike in the number of police in the force.

The pace of the homicides have been astonishing. In the waning days of summer, the D.C. is nearing, and may actually eclipse, last year’s total number of homicides, which was 105.

On Tuesday, there were three killings in the course of the afternoon, a startling figure for a weekday.

No further shootings or homicides had been reported as of 3:15 p.m. on Aug. 20, although there was a report of a robbery at 1100 5th Street NW.  The suspect was described as a black male, seen wearing dark clothing and armed with a gun.

And the beat goes on.

Chefs Go Fresh
• August 17, 2015

Yesterday, a long row of motorcycles sat in the hot morning sun on the sidewalk framing the doors of Brasserie Beck on K Street. The Washingtonians hurrying past in skirts and suits spared little more than a glance for the tough-looking bunch in black T-shirts and leather vests who smoked cigars and shot the breeze while two photographers circled, snapping their pictures.

This motley crew was a gathering of some of D.C.’s best chefs, all of them there for the “Chefs Go Fresh” event presented by Georgetown Media Group, publishers of The Georgetowner and The Downtowner, and Loudoun County, Virginia Department of Economic Development. The event was a resurrection of the popular “Chefs on Bikes” event which was last held four years ago, and was brought back with the intention of bringing D.C. chefs closer to local farmers and produce.

The day kicked off with a breakfast at Brasserie Beck hosted by Chef Robert Wiedmaier, co-founder of the original “Chefs on Bikes” event. Before the chefs took off on their ride touring Virginia farms such as Endless Summer Harvest, Notaviva Vineyard and Stoneybrook Farm, The Georgetowner took the chance to ask these restaurant personalities a few questions.

We asked the chefs what is their favorite fresh ingredient to work with, and got a varied list of produce that is in season now and ingredients that are staples year-round. Chef Peter Russo of Chef Geoff said that his favorite ingredient is foie while Chef Clifford Wharton of Matchbox went with ginger and Weidmaier said he prefers white asparagus from Belgium. Tomatoes and potatoes were also given mention while two votes were put in for garlic.

“[There are] way too many things have to have garlic in them not to give it first billing,” said Chef Thomas Elder of Harth Restaurant.

When asked whose kitchen they were in when they weren’t in the kitchens of their respective restaurants, the chefs responded with an almost unanimous answer of their kitchens at home. Chef Vinod of Indique Restaurant said that he could be found in “my mom’s kitchen.” Elder and Chef RJ Cooper of Rogue 24 both said that Weidmaier’s kitchen was a favorite of theirs, while Weidmaier himself said that you’re most likely to find him “at home with my family in my kitchen.”

Finally, we asked each chef who their personal “Top Chef” is. Wiedmair gave a list of four: Chef Paul Stearman of Marcel’s; Chris Watson, the chef de cuisine at Brabo; Matt Hagen, the chef de cuisine at Weidmair’s Mussel Bar, and John Engle, the chef de cuisine at Weidmair’s Brasserie Beck. Vinod named Chef Mike Isabella of Graffiato, Chef Roberto Donna of Galileo III replied with Pellegrino Artusi, author of the famous Italian cookbook “La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiare bene,” and Cooper said that his “Top Chef” is the famous Ferran Adria. Weidmair, whose kitchen’s hot Belgian waffles and fresh scrambled eggs the chefs ate while answering these questions, was nominated at “Top Chef” several times, and Russo answered diplomatically, saying “my wife.”
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Kennedy Center to Honor George Lucas, the Eagles and More
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Here is your lineup for this 38th annual Kennedy Center Honors, announced this week:

Three women—a quadruple threat actress who won two Emmys, an Oscar, a Tony and a Grammy; perhaps the best pop-rock singer-songwriter of the 1960s and 1970s, and an iconic, authoritative African American star of stage and screen­­. Also to be honored, the emblematic pop-rock band of the 1970s, a gifted film director who created more than one fantasy world for millions of movie goers, and a stellar conductor who set new standards at world-class orchestras.

That would be Rita Moreno, Carole King, Cicely Tyson, the Eagles, George Lucas and Seiji Ozawa.

They make up six honorees—one more than usual—for the annual salute to outstanding performance arts stars, honoring a lifetime of excellence. The Honors Gala will be held at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House on Sunday, December 6, preceded by the presentation of the Kennedy Center Honors medallions at a State Department dinner hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry.

The December 5 celebration at the Opera House will be recorded for broadcast on CBS on December 29.

This year’s production will be produced by Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss of White Cherry Productions, marking the first time in Kennedy Center history that the Honors have not been produced by George Stevens, Jr.

White Cherry Productions has produced the Tony Awards for 13 years along with the Emmy Awards, Super Bowl halftime shows, and the Democratic National Convention, among others.

“When I look at this year’s outstanding slate of Honorees, I am struck by a powerful common theme—artists as history-makers, artists who defy both convention and category,” Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter said. “Each Honoree and their career-spanning achievements exemplify a rare quality of artistic bravery. Their individual paths to excellence are inspirational and their contributions to the fabric of American culture are equally permanent and timeless.”

Rita Moreno was a five-year-old immigrant from Puerto Rico who came with her 23-old mother to the United States and carved out a distinguished, eclectic and often electric performance arts career as a singer and actress on stage, screen, television and in the music industry. She is one of four artists who has won the top awards in show business: a best supporting actress Oscar for “West Side Story, the Tony, two Emmys and a Grammy and is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Beautiful, graceful and witty, she paid her dues in Hollywood being cast often in ethnic roles, including Native Americans in westerns. She was seen in Washington in a female version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” playing the slob to Sally Struther’s nervous neatnik.

Carole King’s album “Tapestry” is one of those rare achievements, a work of popular art without a single song that was anything less than memorable—we’re still singing those songs, as did many performers for whom she wrote—with Gerry Goffin, such hits as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow, “One Fine Day” “Natural Woman” and “You’ve Got a Friend.”

The Eagles—Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmit and Joe Walsh—were the pre-eminent pop rock group bringing a touch of country to a distinctly Southern California sound, selling over 120 million albums that included songs like “Hotel California,” “Desperado,” “Already Gone” and “Take It Easy.”

George Lucas—What can you say: Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Luke, Princess Leia, Hans Solo, Harrison Ford, American Graffiti, creatures from the farthest corners of the universe that exists in the noted director’s imagination. More “Star Wars” tales are coming. A new movie will premiere Dec. 18.

Seiji Ozawa—The native of Shenyang, China, he was a force among the top orchestras of the world and the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony, Tanglewood, the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony.

Cicely Tyson—Strength is something that seems to come out of Tyson’s every breath as an actress, now and pretty much forever. Tyson, after a 30-year absence from the stage, returned in 2013, starring as Mother Carrie Watts in Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.” She will be back on Broadway this year with James Earl Jones in “The Gin Game.” She won an Emmy for her performance in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. An iconic African American actress who made the stories of race in America come fervently to life. [gallery ids="102146,133089,133069,133078,133082" nav="thumbs"]

A One-of-a-Kind Show in ‘Once’
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If you see “Once,” the award-laden, almost fabled musical show now in town at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater through August 16, once might not be enough given the amount of pure and unalloyed original pleasure it gives an audience.

I call it a musical show because both strictly and loosely speaking, this musical, based on a slight but critically acclaimed indie film about a lovelorn, struggling Irish busker musician who finds inspiration when he meets a young Czech emigrant in a Dublin bar, doesn’t behave like any sort of musical Broadway musical anyone might be used to from R&H, to Cole Porter, to Sondheim and “Cats” and the green witches of “Wicked”.

It’s a true one-of-a-kind, which made it from the original film directed by John Carney by starring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova as characters named simply “Boy” and “Girl,” to an Off-Broadway incarnation and a Broadway smash that won a load of Tony Awards and now appears as very successful road company version.

It’s probably not everyone’s cup of Guinness—we heard one older couple walk away with the man grumbling that “well, at least we can’t say we didn’t try something new.”

Even though its been around a while now, new it is nevertheless, a musical theater piece as an experience, which may be an indicator of one of the future road stops of producers and artists seeking to entice new and younger audience.

For sure it’s a great opp if not app for being part of the show for anyone who’s missed out on wandering into an Irish pub—a la the local Kelly’s Irish Times, the Dubliner of Nanny O’Briens—here’s your chance to step up to the bar on stage, and meet a crew of gifted musicians who have gathered on stage to jump around, play fiddles and squeeze boxes and accordions, guitars and violins. New it is, with all sorts of opportunities. It’s an experience that allows the audience to warm up to the show and its people, as well for the musicians themselves to warm up.

Here’s a play—and it is a play, given that the gifted Irish playwright Enda Walsh has written the book—in which music is the heart and soul of things, integral to the characters and the situation, the singing and the songs and the playing flow naturally from the story and the setting. What else would you expect to find in a Dublin pub except musicians ready to stand up and sing and play without much need for prodding?

The set up—it may have been slight and endearing in the film, but is a little more expansive on stage—is that “boy”—the charismatic Stuart Ward—is at song’s end after being dumped by his yearned-for girlfriend who’s fled to America. He’s lost his ability to find his heart—which appears broken—with his music. Instead, he’s living upstairs with his “da,” making a bare living as a Hoover repairman. The pub—how odd—seems full of all sorts of characters, including boy’s beefy bearded pal looking for love, and a group of Czech expats who seem both out of place and right at home, not to mention sundry others, including a banker who plays pop-rock cello.

There is also the “girl,” an endearing, hope-filled single mother who encourages him and inspires him, and perhaps and probably, even loves him, and who saves his soul, music and all.

It’s a thin, flimsy setup, but on stage, it contains a world. Every one of the characters play an instrument—“boy” goes guitar, “girl” is light and self-contained on the piano. The songs and the music—by the original film stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova—are never far away, and they seduce, inveigle, invite and finally kidnap the audience.

The play is fully alive, and fully aware, and if the presence of Czechs and the Irish seems both whimsical and a little odd, to resist this mix and mingling is like insisting on a purebred dog at a shelter. It’s both heartless and beside the point.

The songs showcase not only the central characters, they invite every one on stage in a little at a time, especially in the just famous “Falling Slowly” (it won an Oscar) and which is reprised in the second act, and in “Gold”. Here you see, one by one, the fiddler, the accordionist, the violinist rise and rise, for a song that “boy” has written, a moment of solidarity that speaks mightily to the world of street musicians or buskers, as well as the tribe that contains the music world.

“Once” has a generous spirit, made heartwarming and welcomingly soggy by the predicament of the couple, who have unfinished business with others. The two principals embody that spirit—Ward is manly and appealing, and a little slow when confronted with such an obvious find as the “girl,” but when he finally dives into his music, he is a growling, impassioned singer and player. Dani der Wall, blonde slight, blonde, fearless, pushy in an attractive way, is an absolutely delight, no matter what she does—move across the stage, trade quips with everyone, playing the piano (“you have to say hello to it,” she insists).

This may sound sentimental and a little hokey and if that’s the way you feel, the bartender should cut you off. You haven’t had enough.

“Once” and the sweet, too-smart and cool “South Park”-made “The Book of Mormon” next door at the Opera House are packing them in at the Kennedy Center. They may be portents of the future for future audiences—but then again, they may not. They seem one-of-a-kind, impossible to imitate. But “Once” has seemed to have found a kind of music—folkish, gaelic, rock-and-poppish and dance and movement inducing—that may provide the core for future musicals on Broadway.

Cooperstown Memories: Baseball, Opera, Small Towns
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Before we travel to a new place, we stuff our luggage full. We pack the things we know and remember. We pack expectations, a kind of act of the imagination about how things might be, what we’ll see and feel. We pack our own memories.

We went to Cooperstown in upstate New York. We came initially because of opera—the Glimmerglass Festival and its artistic director Francesca Zambello, who also runs the Washington National Opera. We came also because of the church of baseball, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, where baseball’s inventor or grand developer Abner Doubleday lived. It is not the house that Babe Ruth built, but it is where he and hundreds of baseball’s finest are honored pretty much forever.

We discovered, too, that Cooperstown was founded by the father of James Fenimore Cooper, the town’s most famous author and America’s first novelist of any note, best known for “The Last of the Mohicans.”
Armed with this, we noted the presence of the Fenimore Art Museum, alongside the expansive and beautiful Leatherstocking Golf Course, which is part of the more than 100-year-old Otesaga Resort Hotel, and also runs across Lake Street, next to the modestly titled Farmers’ Museum. If you stay on that road and drive all the way around the lake, you will end up where you started: on Main Street in Cooperstown.

So, I came to Cooperstown already armed with some notions and memories. I—as well as my boon companion and partner—grew up in small towns, with similar populations and tropes, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, respectively. I came to Cooperstown as an erstwhile German immigrant who spent the 1950s following the Cleveland Indians in their annual baseball wars with the New York Yankees, part of a youthful love affair with baseball that has never much abated. I thought it cannot get much better than this: baseball, opera, small town and James Fenimore Cooper, whose works I had only experienced in their Classic Illustrated comic book versions or as movies.

We stayed on the outside of the town at a Best Western Plus, where in the morning you could see mist and fog on the hills outside. We made our way into town—you hit Main Street at the town’s only stoplight—and I soon found out that everything I thought I knew was incomplete.

Cooperstown is a real place, not just the Hall of Fame.

If you’re an outdoor person, there are plenty of parks and recreational offerings—boating, biking, hiking, fishing. There are plenty of restaurants, farmers’ markets, distilleries and regional breweries. The influence of Whole Foods is not much in evidence.

Drive into town for the first time, and you’ll see the sign Redneck Barbecue brashly displayed on a roof in big colors.

This co-mingling of informality works its way through the town and the places you’ll see, oh my—even to some degree at elegant, impressive Otesaga Resort Hotel, the flagship of accommodations for the area. Buffet and lunch breakfast are a welcome offerings for travelers as well as guests, where eating by the window seats or outside retains an elegant, peaceful feeling. It makes you want to read a book by Henry James.

This probably comes as no surprise, nor is the excellent quality of the art works in the Fenimore Museum, including special exhibition currently of the works of Maxwell Parrish, as well as an impressive array of Native American art, among others.

You will be surprised by the Farmers’ Museum across the way from Fenimore. It contains a facsimile working village and farm, covering bygone days in American life—from a church, to a barn, a newspaper office, sheds and a blacksmith, barnyard animals shyly watching tourists, women sewing, the kitchens, bedrooms, dining rooms and libraries of both gentry and small town folks. There’s a Brigadoon quality to this. Imagine what would happen if you dropped a mobile electronic device into this serene scene. It might have the effect of a cultural, social nuclear device.

Around the lake a ways, you’ll encounter Hyde Hall, where executive director Jonathan Maney holds forth on one of the oldest residences around —it was built by an Englishman named George Clarke on a 60,000-acre estate with the help of renowned architect Philip Hooker. Ever since 1964, Hyde Hall has been under some sort of renovation to return it to its original grandeur, which in full glory was considerable. As Clarke was British, and after having the original cottage built, he strove for a touch of English landed aristocracy in the grand manner for a grand manor. Today, Maney, who is a historian, a former professor and a great storyteller, tells us that it is used for weddings, concerts, galas, picnics, lectures and exhibitions. Inside the vast home, which started out as a cottage, there are its paintings, prints, copies (of the inventor-artist Samuel Morse’s painting, “Gallery of the Louvre”), sculptures and rooms upon rooms, dark stairways, expansive window views of a courtyard, children’s rooms as well as a wine cellar fully stocked.

On Main Street, Cooperstown, however, it is baseball everywhere, memorabilia shops (like Mickey’s Place) everywhere. A statue of a youthful Shoeless Joe Jackson stands near Doubleday Field. After all that, at the end of Main Street sits the Baseball Hall of Fame itself, which this weekend (July 24 to 27) will induct four new members—Craig Biggio, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz—during four days of nothing but baseball, including the presence and a parade of hundreds of the game’s living legends and hall members.

From the outside, the hall doesn’t look like much. It seems small, until you walk inside and enter what is not so much a hall of fame but a hall of dreams. The three floors are filled with exhibits on teams, on the history of the games, on individuals like Hank Aaron, the Babe and Joe DiMaggio, on ball parks, the Negro Leagues, and most holy of holies, the true hall that contains plaques of every player inducted into the hall. Prominently located are sculptures of Ted Williams and Babe Ruth, where a small player is trying to imitate Ruth’s batting stance.

It’s an impressive place, a kind of church that’s full of reverence, references and irreverence. It’s a place where the playing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” can suddenly bring you close to tears. It’s what happens here that matters, the buzz in every hall, young boys and some girls in baseball uniforms all over the place, the chit chat of the game whizzing through the wandering crowds like a giant murmur. On another floor, a dozen people are gathered around a screening of the Abbott and Costello comedy routine “Who’s on First,” laughing hard. Among the plaques, I find Ernie “Play Two,” the Chicago Cub and greatest player never to play in a World Series. His face shows a smile, and so does a woman looking at him. She’s an unrequited Cubs fan. We look at a plaque for Cubs manager Leo “The Lip” Durocher. She grimaces. “That S.O.B. cost us the pennant,” she says with some rancor.

After a trip to a new place, you return with more than you brought—more stuff, more maps, more books and souvenirs. More memories.

I unpacked memories of printer’s ink, an embarrassed turkey avoiding children at the farm, the two warm women who ran the carousel, the taste of cherry in a draught beer, the smoke on the hills, Papageno meeting Papagana in “The Magic Flute,” Solomon Howard’s eloquent basso voice in the two operas and bass baritone Eric Owens who saw ghosts, jumped on a table and owned Macbeth, a drive along Lake Street at midnight with a mother deer in the headlights, the sight and names of all the baseball players bringing back summer nights in Ohio, Maney describing in detail the process for lighting a Hyde chandelier and talking about his grandmother who had survived the fatal voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic, the rustle of white curtains at the resort moved by a breeze from Lake Otsego.
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40th Season for Glimmerglass Opera
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In this town, people are talking about Francesca Zambello.

This town being not Washington, D.C., where Zambello is artistic director of Washington National Opera, but Cooperstown, New York. As you may have heard, this bucolic upstate village is home to the Baseball Hall of Fame, where four new members will
inducted July 24-27.

Soon thousands of visitors, many times the resident population, will be streaming in for the baseball festivities. But the weekend before, quite a few people will be heading out to State Highway 80, also known as Lake Street. Just outside of town on scenic Otsego Lake is the Glimmerglass Festival, which will be in its second week. Glimmerglass, where Zambello has been artistic and general director since 2011, is celebrating its 40th summer season of presenting top-drawer operas.

This year’s festival, which runs through Aug. 23, kicked off with back-to-back Friday and Saturday openings of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” and Guiseppi Verdi’s “Macbeth.” It continues during Hall of Fame weekend with “Macbeth” on Friday, the rarely seen Vivaldi opera “Cato in Utica” on Saturday and the Zambello-directed production of Leonard Bernstein’s musically wondrous take on Voltaire’s “Candide” on Sunday.

“Up here,” one local said, “it’s baseball and Butterfly” (as in “Madama Butterfly”) or, more currently, Mantle and Mozart. The baseball you would expect. But opera, Zambello-style, that’s another matter.

And it’s had an impact. Taking in the highly original and stirring “Magic Flute” opener, a patron — who had travelled from New York City for the occasion — told us that Zambello had made “a huge difference. She’s turned it around.”

The next day, while waiting at a Main Street ATM, we talked with a local man who had moved to what he called “baseball heaven” from the New York City borough of Queens. The self-described baseball fanatic noted Zambello’s effect on the town. “Glimmerglass has a great reputation,” he said. “We’re glad to have her here.”

“She works closely and partners with other local cultural institutions like Hyde Hall,” a Cooperstown tourism professional said. Jonathan Maney, executive director of haunting and historic Hyde Hall, on the other side of the lake, praised Zambello’s spirit of cooperation and partnership.

At both openings last week, Zambello seemed to be everywhere — thanking patrons and contributors, board members, audience members and the town itself, being the evangelist for opera. This is not dissimilar from what she does on Washington Opera opening nights, turning greeter and up-close opera champion.

We spoke with Zambello at the Glimmerglass administrative offices last week, as the company prepared for its big anniversary opening. She was in her full opera-pied-piper persona.

“We want to create work and productions that resonate with audiences,” she said. “I see my job here as expanding the audience, growing it, but also making this a true festival. This is a very specific place, a beautiful place, with a lot to offer, and we want to connect to this community. As a for-instance, Madeline Sayet, our director for “The Magic Flute,” staged it in a way that the forest setting resonates to the history of the area, and the Native American inhabitants. And she herself is a descendant of the Mohicans.

“I want the festival to be an integral part of the town and the surrounding area. We draw mostly from the surrounding New York state area, and 50 percent come from within a two-hour radius of Cooperstown. We also get a lot of people coming up from Washington,” Zambello said.

The company has a 40-year history. It presented its first, abbreviated season in 1975, with four performances of “La bohème” in the Cooperstown High School auditorium. Twelve years later, the company opened the 850-seat Alice Busch Opera Theater at the Lake Otswego site. Ever since then, especially in the last few years, the company has grown in size, repertoire, variety of offerings and reputation.

There’s something heady about finding a company like this in a small town, the historic shrine to America’s Pastime. The Glimmerglass site is at once accessible and elegant with its scenic lake backdrop, stylish theater and sense of youthful energy. Here, it’s not your urban opera night out. You can ritz it up if you want, but informality is encouraged. “Blue jeans, khakis, informal — not that you can’t dress up if you want,” says Zambello.

This year’s season is characteristic of her touch. Since she took the reins as artistic director, she’s planned seasons with very specific goals. “Each year, we present a season that includes an American musical, a baroque opera, a contemporary work and an opera that’s somewhat obscure and rarely done.” In her first year, she brought in celebrated soprano Deborah Voigt to star in “Annie Get Your Gun.”

But wait … there’s more. The gifted rising-star bass-baritone Eric Owens (“The Flying Dutchman” at WNO this year), who gave a powerful, layered performance as “Macbeth,” will sing with tenor Lawrence Brownlee in a concert on Aug. 23. Voigt and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade will give master classes Aug. 7 and 21, respectively. There’s also “Odyssey,” a world-premiere youth opera featuring the Glimmerglass Youth Chorus and members of its Young Artist Program, presented at the Cooperstown Arts Festival Aug. 11, 13, 18 and 20.

“We are thinking of Glimmerglass in terms of a destination experience,” Zambello said. “It speaks to being part of this place, in connecting and resonating with audiences and offering a number of different experiences. We are telling stories here, that’s the key to opera.”

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