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Robert Devaney • December 6, 2012

Georgetown University has invited its neighbors to two Planning 101 Sessions on Nov. 27 and Nov. 28, which will provide an overview of the university’s master planning efforts — that is, the master plan for 2017-2037. Residents will have the opportunity to meet the university’s team, including developers Forest City Washington, and to hear about the planning process.

The two sessions are Tuesday, Nov. 27, 6:30 p.m., McShain Lounge, McCarthy Hall (on the Main Campus, down toward the Jesuit Residence and McDonough Gym) and Wednesday, Nov. 28, 9:30 a.m., Leavey Program Room, Leavey Center (on the Main Campus past the Intercultural Center toward the medical center).

For more information, e-mail Neighborhood@Georgetown.edu.

Gary Tischler •

The trouble with the Arena Stage production of “My Fair Lady” is that it’s “My Fair Lady.”

That being said—and more will be said—I thought and more importantly felt that this production of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe stage (and movie) classic musical was fresh. It belongs to the audience of these our times as much as it did for previous generations without neglecting any of the great score and work of L&L. While long at nearly three hours, this production also had something that energized the evening. Being a musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” it had pungent, prickly Shavian smarts in the script on the subject of gender and class, emotionally and intellectually executed, sung and acted.

What did it not have? It did not have Rex Harrison inimitably speaking his songs. It did not have a dubbed Audrey Hepburn. It did not have Stanley Holloway’s English vaudevillian turn as Eliza Doolittle’s dad, getting to the church on time.

I mention these things because the film version of “My Fair Lady” is so much in the mind of theater audiences or new audiences, not to mention critics, that it’s hard to shake, especially when confronted with stage productions that cannot hope to or want to reproduce the effects and affectations of the film version.

“My Fair Lady” has its own, original charms, virtues and passions.

What I saw and felt was a successful and fully loaded attempt to offer up the rich musical, dramatic gifts that “My Fair Lady” has to offer through inventive staging, casting and costuming and sets. In this, casting Shaw Festival and Canadian veteran Benedict Campbell as Henry Higgins (he comes from Smith’s original SF production staged earlier this year), and relative newcomer Manna Nichols as Eliza Doolittle was critical, leading a standout cast up and down the line. Campbell is an excellent and experienced actor who can sing while Nichols is a wonderful singer who can act. In this production, something happens that I’ve rarely if ever seen in the show—film and two other productions—I was moved by where the relationship between Eliza and Henry was heading and ended up, an ending that’s often mystifying to lovers of romantic endings in musicals.

“My Fair Lady” remains the same story—Shavian in its intellectual content, so very L&L in its musical themes. The noted linguist Henry Higgins, bets his old friend Colonel Pickering that he can turn Eliza Doolittle, a dirty, near unintelligible Cockney flower girl (he calls her than once a “guttersnipe”) into a countess by teaching her—in a rigid, slave-driving regimen—how to speak the King’s English. In England, class was defined by how you spoke the language (and dressed, and went to school and so on). Bloody hell, you might say, and she probably did, but agrees to participate. Using repetition, sometimes Pavlovian starvation, and sleep deprivation, Higgins slowly turns the scruffy but moral (“I’m a good girl, I am) working-class girl into someone lady-like, mannered and well-mannered and powerfully and fashionably attractive, at that.

All the familiar strains are here—the test run at the races where Eliza relapses in high and low fashion—a meeting with Higgins’s mum, and the ball where she conquers all, especially poor Freddy, the handsome scion of an artistocratic family. That would be Nicholas Rodriguez, who gets to sing the achingly yearning “On the Street Where You Live” and turns it into a show stopper, just as he turned “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” into a roaring show starter in “Oklahoma.”

Nichols, elfin and shining, puts a swirling, dreamy, sweeping quality in her voice singing the songs that wish like “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.” Campbell actually sings and moves with power through the thoroughly misogynist “Hymn To Him.” “The Rain In Spain” number, sung by Eliza, Higgins and Pickering, is high-spirited and fun.

The folks on the poor side of town—the bartenders, the chimney sweeps, the flowers girls, the cabbies, including Eliza’s father Alfred Doolittle are a different sort, and so is Doolittle himself. Their clothing in brash steampunk style—it sometimes harks back to the 1960s hippie style as well—and their diversity speak to a multi-ethnic (The Doolittles are part Asian here) world that existed in London then and does so now as well as here. Daddy Doolittle’s “Get Me to the Church” is no longer specifically London cockney or vaudeville, it’s a paean to the group, into which James Saito often disappears in the role.

What’s clear in this show is how through their battling, Henry and Eliza find not only each other but themselves. While Eliza hardly lacks passion, in the end she’s not interested in a future with the smitten Freddie. She wants something more substantive, and that would be Henry Higgins. The more she knows about herself and her own gifts, the more she’s a match for Henry. And the more Higgins—the confirmed old bachelor type who prefers solitude and subsists on arrogant intellectual superiority—is around Eliza, the more he realizes she completes him—that missing human part that includes longing.

This “My Fair Lady” is what it is: something pretty special. It delivers the old goods and the new.

Robert Devaney • December 3, 2012

Here is your chance to play Kris Kringle for Duke Ellington students and help them get a huge Christmas present of computers — just be using your mobile phone or computer.

Students at Duke Ellington School of the Arts on 35th Street have recently been nominated for a $50,000 grant from the Clorox Company. Clorox’s Grants for Schools Program is called “Power A Bright Future” and is now in its fourth year. If the students are awarded the grant, they will gain much needed access to a mobile laptop cart with 50 new Apple computers.

To get the grant, Duke Ellington School must win the contest, which is determined by those voting (at no cost) via text message and online.

“We are the only D.C. public school that’s been nominated for this national grant contest,” says Seth Brecher of D.C. Public Schools. “The good news is that we are currently ranked 30 out of nearly 1,700 schools in our category. There will be multiple grants distributed, and we’re right in the hunt to win. It’s very exciting, and it’s a very important opportunity for Ellington’s scholar-artists.”

Here is how you, the reader, can help Ellington students win right now:

Those in Georgetown, Burleith and all of D.C. can support Ellington’s grant efforts by voting:

Via text: Text text 2258pbf to 95248 every 24-hours until Dec. 19.

Online: Visitpowerabrightfuture.clorox.com every 24 hours until Dec. 19 (keyword search: “Duke Ellington School of the Arts”).

Georgetowner •

Downtown Holiday Market

November 30th, 2012 at 12:00 PM | Event Website

Downtown Holiday Market will create a cozy, winter wonderland in front of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Wear your walking shoes. There will be lots of art work, crafts, and goodies to satisfy everyone on your shopping list. Catch the celebratory, outdoor spirit when the Market returns for 24 glorious days, Friday, November 30th to Sunday, December 23rd, noon to 8:00 pm.

Address

American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery

Glen Echo Potters 25th Annual Show and Sale

December 1st, 2012 at 09:00 AM | Free | glenechopottery@verizon.net | Tel: 301-229-5585 | Event Website

Show and sale by more than 50 local potters, including several featured in local and national juried shows. Saturday, December 1, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, December 2, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Free parking

Address

The Lab School of Washington; 4759 Reservoir Road, N. W.

Duke Ellington School of the Arts Holiday Bazaar & Art Show

December 1st, 2012 at 10:00 AM | FREE | shade4desa@gmail.com | Event Website

Holiday Shopping doesn’t have to be hard. Find something for everyone at Duke Ellington’s Annual Holiday Gift Bazaar & Art Show at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC!

This year’s Bazaar hosts fine art and artists ? silver & gold jewelry ? unique home decor ? natural bath and body products ? local food vendors ? books and authors – and so much more!

Vending Opportunities are still available at EllingtonHolidayBazaar.wordpress.com or email shade4desa@gmail.com.

Address

Duke Ellington School of the Arts; 3500 R Street, NW

Jewelry Holiday Shopping Event to Benefit Smith Center for Healing and the Arts

December 1st, 2012 at 12:00 PM | info@sheilacahilldesign.com | Tel: 202-656-2415 | Event Website

Sheila Cahill Design will generously donate 25% of the profits to Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, the only stand alone cancer support organization in DC. Shop Sheila’s unique, one of a kind jewelry pieces – better known as “adornment for confident women.” Find holiday gifts that range from one of a kind jewelry pieces to fun and playful bejeweled objects. The event will take place at Sheila’s Jewelry Studio, close to the Cathedral. Open from 12 noon to 5 pm on both 12/1 and 12/2.

Address

4000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 1630, Washington DC 20016

Winter on the Water

December 1st, 2012 at 04:00 PM | Free Admission | info@thewashingtonharbour.com | Tel: 202-295-5007 | Event Website

Come celebrate the inauguration of Washington DC’s newest, largest, outdoor ice skating venue, the Washington Harbour Ice Rink, with a fete of continuous strolling entertainers, ice skating performances, choral singers, a St. Lucia parade, and artistic lighting effects, with food and beverages served outdoors by the restaurants of the Washington Harbour. Free admission.

Fees for ice skating and skate rental: Adults – $9.00; Children/Seniors/Military – $7.00; Skate Rental – $5.00
Address

The Washington Harbour; 3050 K Street NW

Washington Bach Consort presents “Great Glad Tidings”

December 1st, 2012 at 05:00 PM | Tickets $23-$65, Students 18 and younger $10, Pay Your Age 18-38 | contact@bachconsort.org | Tel: 202.429.2121 | Event Website

An all-Bach program contains cantatas composed for Advent and the Christmas season, including one of the six that make up the Christmas Oratorio. J. Reilly Lewis performs the Canonic Variations on Von Himmel hoch, one of Bach’s most famous compositions published towards the end of his life.

Note day and time

Address

National Presbyterian Church; 4101 Nebraska Avenue, NW

Jackson Art Center Winter Open Studios

December 2nd, 2012 at 12:00 PM | Free | Event Website

Join The Jackson Art Center and 44 Georgetown Artist for when the art studios will be open to the public for free with music by Robert Hanson.

Address

3050 R Street NW (on R between 30th & 31st Streets)

Football 101 Open Bar, BBQ, Seminar and Game Watch

December 2nd, 2012 at 06:30 PM | 25.00 | contactmlgf@gmail.com. | Event Website

Bobby Johnson will kick off the event by taking you through the fundamentals of the game, followed by Warren Powers who will share his insights on the NFL from his perspective as a former player.

Then watch the Philadelphia Eagles take on longtime rivals the Dallas Cowboys on the big screen at 8:20PM EST while enjoying a BBQ dinner and OPEN BAR throughout the game.

Tickets are $25 and all proceeds go to Septima Clark, a public all-boys charter school in Southeast DC. Purchase your tickets

Address

Fisher Colloquium, Rafik B. Hariri Building

McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University

Embassy of Sweden Presents Norrbotten NEO

December 2nd, 2012 at 05:00 PM | Free | Event Website

Embassy of Sweden presents Norrbotten NEO; Sweden’s newest voice on the contemporary music scene. Formed in January 2007, NEO has a core ensemble of seven musicians: Flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, and cello.

Address

Embassy of Sweden; 2900 K ST NW

Santa Claus at Volta Park

December 2nd, 2012 at 10:00 AM | Event Website](http://voltapark.org/)

Join Santa Claus, your neighbors and friends on Sunday, Dec. 2, 10 a.m. to noon at the Volta Park Playground on 34th Street for a morning of Yuletide fun.
Trim the Volta Park Christmas Tree and Playground with ornaments made at the craft table.

Santa will listen to all children’s Christmas gift requests and pose with them for photos(Pictures with Santa are $10.)

Brought to you by the Friends of Volta Park with generous support from Nancy Taylor Bubes.

Address

Volta Park Playground on 34th Street NW

Robert Devaney • November 26, 2012

Today provides a good excuse — and a good cause — to go to Sprinkles Cupcakes, the Beverly Hills’s bake shop that started the national cupcake craze. On Nov. 12, Sprinkles Cupcakes Georgetown at 3015 M St., NW, will donate 100 percent of the proceeds from its red velvet cupcakes (which will be adorned with red crosses) to the Red Cross’s Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund. Similar promotions raised $25,000 in March 2011 for the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief Fund and $20,000 in January 2010 for the Haiti Relief Fund.

Robert Devaney •

Musician and activist Bono will speak at Gaston Hall this evening to Georgetown University students as well as leaders in the corporate, nonprofit and political sectors. The Nov. 12. event is being hosted by the Georgetown McDonough Global Social Enterprise Initiative in partnership with Bank of America. Brian Moynihan, Bank of America CEO, and John DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, will introduce Bono.

According to the university, the Global Social Enterprise Initiative, part of Georgetown’s business school, “advocates for solutions to global challenges in health and well-being, economic growth, the environment and international development.” The Atlantic Monthly is the media partner for the event, which will be webcast live on Georgetown.edu.

“Beyond his fame as the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2 and winner of 22 Grammys,” according to the university, “Bono is also known around the world as an activist in the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. He is the co-founder of ONE, a grassroots advocacy organization with more than 3 million members that urges policymakers to support effective programs, including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Global Fund, which are saving millions of lives in the poorest parts of the planet. Bono also co-founded RED, a private-sector initiative involving some of the world’s most iconic brands. RED has channeled nearly $200 million to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa.”

Gary Tischler •

In a country obsessed by sports—especially football—there’s been a lot of changes.

No one runs the wishbone formation much any more—at any level of football. There is no more Southwest Conference in college football. They ran it the other day for a play in a University of Texas game, honoring Darrell Royal, the legendary coach of Texas University of Texas at Austin, who invented the wishbone and succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 88 Nov. 7.

In boxing—well, well, what can you say about boxing that’s worth saying? Russians hold the heavyweight title. There’s no Friday night fights on television, and mixed martial arts seems to be gaining ground on boxing’s fan base.

And Carmen Basilio, the lean, wiry keeps-on-ticking former welterweight and middleweight champion, who fought two memorable battles with Sugar Ray Robinson, is gone, dead at 85.

Hard to say what if anything Royal said about this year’s annual slugfest between the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners—Bob Stoops’s Sooner Boomer swamped Texas 63-21. It’s fair to say that sort of thing wouldn’t have happened in Royal’s time—gritty running and tough defense were the hallmarks of Royal football. “You’ll never lose if the other guy doesn’t score” was one of the numerous and famous sayings attributed to Royal.

During his tenure—1957 through 1976—Royal rolled up ten Cotton Bowl Championships and three national titles, as well as holding a 12-7-1 edge over the Sooners in the Red River Rivalry. Football games under Royal tended to have a slugfest atmosphere about them—his favorite players were probably fullbacks and linebackers, who tended to meet head-on on the field.

He came late to integrating his teams, not having African-American players until 1969, a fact that he later regretted.

Still, Royal’s Longhorns rivaled the Dallas Cowboys in popularity and fan base—college football in places like Oklahoma and Texas tended to be bigger and sometimes more important than life itself—from Pop Warner to the pros. See “Friday Night Lights” for a references point, or read anything by Dan Jenkins (father of Sally) to get the feel of it.

Royal loved to play golf and coin phrases. His aversion to the pass—which he shared with Woody Hayes of Ohio State University—prompted him to say, “There are three things that can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad.” He also described a runner as running faster “than gossip through a small town.”

Years ago—in the idyllic age of the 1950s—not only was high school and college football huge, but so was boxing at almost every level of the sport, but especially among the heavies where Rocky Marciano retired unbeaten in spite of Archie Moore. Among the welterweights and middleweights Sugar Ray Robinson ruled.

Until he ran into Carmen Basilio, a tough Italian fighter—and “fighter” is the word—out of Canastota, N.Y. Basilio and Robinson fought two brutal fights—there’s a picture of Basilio after winning the first fight on a decision and he looks as if a pickup truck had fallen on his face. The second fight was won by Robinson, a swirling almost elegant fighter with a knockout punch known for his graceful sparring—there was only one Sugar Ray, in spite of Sugar Ray Leoanard.

Back in the 1950s, I used to watch something called “Friday Night Fights” on network television with my stepfather, a Serbian immigrant who worked in a steel factory. We listened to the familiar Gillette commercial bells, as Gene Fullmer, Basilio, Bobo Olsen, Tony Demarco and others would knock each other silly. The welters and middleweights were filled with normal-sized boxers, wiry and tough, like Jake LaMotta (of “Raging Bull” fame), who could take punishment and dish it out.

That was Basilio to the core—he pummeled DeMarco into submission twice in welter title fights, then lost to Fullmer. Basilio didn’t just win his fights—he survived them.

Thirty thousand people saw Basilio beat Robinson at Yankee Stadium. His dad, an onion farmer in upstate New York was a “fight nut.” His son became one, beginning with boxing in the Marine Corps. He eventually retiring, teaching physical education at Le Moyne College in Syracuse. A high school dropout, he received a diploma from Canastota High school in 2009 in recognition of his achievements. He was among the first inductees in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Emily Lindstrand •

The Wednesday meeting of the Georgetown Business Association saw the election of a new member to its executive board and gave new roles to existing officers.

Riyad Said of Wells Fargo Advisors, previously vice president of the Business Association, will now serve as president. Janine Schoonover of JSWGroup will now serve as vice president. Karen Ohri of Georgetown Floorcoverings will remain in her previous position as treasurer for another year. And Molly Quigley of Clydes Group, the Business Association’s new executive member, will fill the role of secretary.

During the meeting, Schoonover presented a list of goals for the next year. Among these goals are:

– Taking on more of a lobbying role

– Increasing benefits to GBA members

– Getting GBA members involved in the re-zoning of Georgetown and the parking pilot initiative

– Building upon Georgetown’s sense of community

– Having GBA become more civically involved and charity oriented

– Building upon communication between GBA, CAG, BID, ANC and OGB

Schoonover said that she was ultimately “honored and proud to serve with [her] fellow officers and [is] excited for the differences in leadership styles and communication.”

Also, on Dec. 12, the GBA will have its annual holiday meeting at the Dumbarton House. The 2012 GBA annual awards will be presented. These awards include the Jose Pozell Public Safety Award, the Art Schultz Communitarian Award, the Business Person of the Year, the Business of the Year and the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Georgetown Business Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving and maintaining business in Georgetown. Their two principle goals are to “connect Georgetown businesses with potential customers, other businesses and Georgetown/DC leadership” and “advocate on behalf of the Georgetown businesses and professionals.”