Arts & Society

Gary Tischler • May 16, 2016

Just before the start of the third and last act of “Twilight of the Gods” — which is also the last act of the complete Ring Cycle being staged by Washington National Opera — some of the people who had attended all four productions in the course of a week looked around and nodded at one other in the seconds just before the lights would dim again one last time.

“My god,” one woman said. “It’s over. I can’t believe it. It’s kind of sad.”

There was quite a bit of that “We few, we happy few” feeling about this unprecedented mounting of the entire “The Ring of the Nibelung” at the Kennedy Center by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello. The experience was exhausting; the last production alone was six hours long including two intermissions. The entire cycle racked up approximately twenty hours.

But the experience was also exhilarating. Even as the cycle presented challenges of stamina and — in the age of the short attention span and Twitter — forced abandonment of our devices for prolonged periods of time (Act 1 of “Twilight of the Gods” was two hours), the four productions built a momentum of excellence rarely seen — or heard, for that matter. This Ring came as close as you can possibly get to Richard Wagner’s notion of “Gesamtkunstwerk,” a synthesis of remarkable music, poetic and free-form writing and a compelling narrative.

The production got off to a clean, affecting start with the prelude of “The Rhinegold” and never looked back, running like a powerful, speed-building train through “The Valkyrie,” “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods” in a way that focused the heart, the imagination and the mind, carried along by Wagner’s magnificent music, presented in a way that made it a true partner and facilitator of the narrative, as well as providing enormous pleasures in the playing and listening.

Wagner tossed around and inserted leitmotifs — musical identifiers of themes and characters — like some medieval farmer throwing seeds for a hundred different vegetables. Some, such as Siegfried’s trumpet sounding and the Valkyrie theme, are practically Muzak in our pop cultural memories, but all of them serve as reminders, like musical magic breadcrumbs.

In the Ring, this becomes important throughout, because characters at various times recap how they got to a particular point in the narrative, often repeating the same story from a different point of view, pushed along by the music. Everyone has their story to tell, each in their own expository and musical way. The result is that by the end of it all, you can’t get the characters — those who survived and those who did not — out of your head for a long time.

In “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods” (in German, it’s “Gotterdammerung,” more akin to “Armageddon” than to twilight), it’s the hero awakened to his many tasks of heroics: slay the dragon, capture the gold and the ring, defeat the god Wotan, pierce a ring of fire, awaken the warrior princess Brunnhilde and, most difficult of all, fall in love. In “Twilight,” it’s betrayal, tragedy and murder, as well as the gigantic self-sacrifice of Brunnhilde, which results not only in her immolation but in the destruction of Valhalla.

“Siegfried” is a true heroic epic, an adventure and a fulfillment of a great love finally achieved and experienced. It’s the Siegfried and Brunnhilde show, with great moments by two old foes, an unmatched schemer in a narrative that has quite a few and, of course, the dragon.

The dragon, which is a transformed version of Fafner the Giant (who murdered his brother to gain the gold, the ring and everything), looms like a solid steel monster, impenetrable but not undefeatable, as it turns out. He’s a dark, huge, menacing creation of the modern age, of modern man, a clanging, battery-driven menace that Siegfried overpowers and kills. He also does away with Mime, the whiny, plotting, overweeningly-greedy-with-a-large-and-sweaty-sense-of-entitlement brother of Albrecht, the mining dwarf who originally stole the Rhinegold and fashioned a ring from it, a ring that bears his deadly curse.

American tenor Daniel Brenna is an energetic, full-throated Siegfried, chomping at the bit, ignorant as only an innocent can be, a superhero for his age, but posturing like a modern one. He has a single-mindedness and a directness that are both appealing and annoying. He has no sense of mortality or of the seriousness of killing either the dragon or Mime.

In Siegfried, we begin to see more clearly Zambello’s subtext of environmental rust and decay; Siegfried himself seems to have been raised by Mime in a trailer park that was used badly by a twister sometime in the past. The projections designed by Jan Hartley and remounted by S. Katy Tucker are increasingly dominated by industrialism run rampant, with polluted water, factory smokestacks, rusted trains and blighted urban landscapes. The theme — the conceit, if you will — is never forced. Rather, its use is accumulative. It becomes an overlay, an atmosphere in the design.

Wotan — so ably sung and played by Alan Held, makes a final appearance here, first in a scene with Alberich (the remarkable Gordon Hawkins), in which they walk like the tramps in “Waiting for Godot,” with amiable, almost nostalgic banter, and then as the last obstacle to Siegfried’s rescue of Brunnhilde.

“Siegfried” climaxes in an astounding courtship and fulfillment of Siegfried’s and Brunnhilde’s love. It’s a long, almost proud duet of mutual attraction, misunderstanding and coming together as fate wanted and would have it. Brenna and British soprano Catherine Foster (who missed doing the role in “The Valkyrie” due to injury) rise to the occasion in sweeping vocals — especially Foster, who has to navigate through the realization that she is no longer mortal, that she isn’t who she is and also that she has been rescued by the love of her life. This results in the initiation for Siegfried of the idea that love is not just an overpowering passion but a tug of war. Brunnhilde’s “I-love-you-don’t touch-me” exclamations confuse him more than trying to figure out how to kill the dragon.

In “Twilight,” things go south for the lovers, but end in triumph for the literal ring and for the Ring that is Wagner’s (and perhaps opera’s) crowning achievement. Certainly it was such for Zambello, but equally for Philippe Auguin, the WNO orchestra conductor who restored the music to its brilliant qualities, overriding the opera’s sometimes exaggerated reputation as a personification of Teutonic mythology.

What’s so affecting and surprising about the enterprise is how intimate an epic it is. There are so many full and focused scenes in which only a few characters occupy the stage and our attention, to be replaced by a gathering horde in the mines, a small group of gods, a warrior force or sheer spectacle: the death of the dragon, the arrival of the Valkyries, the fiery imprisonment of Brunnhilde and, of course, the destruction of Valhalla itself.

In the end — and from the beginning — the Ring Cycle was a rewarding experience, in ways one suspects that few audience members ever anticipated. We few, we happy few, indeed.

Gary Tischler •

Four operas and some 20 hours later, one feels a powerful residual effect from the first round of Washington National Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung,” the Ring Cycle for short. The audience at the Kennedy Center Opera House (especially those folks who, like me, took in the whole cycle) felt a little like ocean-liner passengers encountering turbulent but exhilarating seas.

It’s hard to get the saga out of your head. From “The Rhinegold” to “The Valkyrie” to “Siegfried” to “Twilight of the Gods,” the music reverberates, the characters linger: Wotan and Brunnhilde, the Rhinemaidens, Alberich and his relatives, the Valkyries themselves, the dragon, the giants and the gods, the tragic lovers. The whole supernatural bunch is ever not so gentle on my mind.

It’s difficult to encapsulate the entire cycle, or to do it justice with single reviews. So here are a few observations and thoughts on the Ring (the second cycle winds down this week and the third will begin Saturday).

A 21st-Century American Experience. There is an encyclopedic array of clichés associated with Wagner and the Ring, not the least of which is that the operas are a compendium of Nordic and Germanic mythology, of gods and monsters and heroes that sprang from the dark forests and rivers of pre-modern Germany.

If that’s the case, then director Francesca Zambello has stripped the work of its more obvious Teutonic references related to helmets and posturing (although Nordic-type helmets were being sold as souvenirs), turning it into a contemporary classic and intimate epic about humanity’s relationship to nature and failed stewardship of the natural world. This is obvious in the evocative projections by S. Katy Tucker and Jan Hartley, with their illustrations of polluted rivers, factory smokestacks and cityscapes.

But it’s also in the design and the look of things and people. Valhalla looks often like a Manhattan board room; Siegfried, raised by mordant, obsessively greedy Mime, seems to be living in a trailer park that has fallen on hard times; and the Rhinemaidens, in “Twilight,” are searching the refuse of a polluted Rhine like homeless waifs. It’s relatable throughout, without pounding the audience over the head.

Bad Boy Wagner. Wagner himself, historically, has a reputation for being a terrible human being, arrogant, profligate, almost misogynistic. Without making an argument in his defense — personal character shouldn’t be a central issue where art is concerned — one wonders how (if Wagner was a human monster) to account for the creation of Brunnhilde, Wotan’s daughter, the true heroic figure of the cycle, whose sense of accountability and heroic sacrifice make her the critical character in three of the operas.

The Two Brunnhildes. When British soprano Catherine Foster suffered an injury in rehearsal that prevented her from portraying Brunnhilde in “The Valkyrie,” she was replaced by Christine Goerke, who was performing “Siegfried” at Houston Grand Opera. The segue, back and forth, was seamless, with both sopranos delivering outstanding performances.

The Conductor Also Triumphs. This was, in terms of both critical and audience response, a huge triumph for WNO conductor Philippe Auguin, who supported the singers and led the orchestra in interpreting Wagner’s music with a nuanced mastery — and without being overly Wagnerian (except when necessary).

Stand-Out Performances. One of the most memorable performers was American baritone Gordon Hawkins as Alberich, the evil dwarf who steals the gold, makes the ring and curses the ring. Hawkins sang the part powerfully and, even more impressive, acted it in ways that brought out all the complicated characteristics of the part. The scene in “Twilight” when he’s almost seductively urging his son Hagen to kill Siegfried and steal back the ring is a prime example of the dual nature of the cycle as an intimate epic.

I was touched by the plight of the young lovers, brother and sister, Siegmund and Sieglinde, portrayed with high-dudgeon passion by Christopher Ventris and Meagan Miller in “The Valkyrie.” And for sheer consistency, Alan Held brought the right size to the role of chief god Wotan. This god behaved like a god, and was tortured by his very human decisions. Kudos also to the Rhinemaidens, headed by Jacqueline Echols and including Catherine Martin and Renée Tatum.

Being a part of the experience of the Ring was exhausting, not necessarily in the physical sense (although sitting for so many hours in a chair had its effects), but in an emotional and mental way. It required focus, it came at you like a long, unending parade and it washed over you with sublime music.

Many critics and audience members had seen other Rings and compared. But even without that, you sensed every night that this Ring, which began on a high note, got better and better as it went along.

Robert Devaney • May 9, 2016

They call this week and long weekend many things for the main event that is the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner (what with the president, politicos and journalists showing up) and all the attending parties before, during and after — “Harmless fun,” “Nerd prom,” “Yes, I was invited,” “the End Times,” “Look, it’s Joe Biden.”

Thursday, April 28

Dog Tag Storms the Hill Day Reception (with the Altria Group) — 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., 101 Constitution Ave. NW (Suite 400W).

Third Annual Women & Journalism Awards — 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at the Kalorama home of Gloria Dittus.

“Global Beat” Party: Devex, Foreign Affairs, UN Foundation — 6:30 p.m. to 8:30pm, 1750 Pennsylvania Ave. NW (UN Foundation headquarters).

“Bytes and Bylines” reception-buffet — 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., Spanish Ambassador’s residence, 2350 Foxhall Road NW.

“Swipe the Vote” Party: Tinder and Independent Journal Review with Rock the Vote — 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., Hotel W Rooftop, 555 15th St. NW.

Friday, April 29

Time and People Magazine Reception — 6 p.m. to 8pm, St. Regis hotel, 923 16th St. NW.

“Celebration of Journalism” Reception with Screen Actors Guild-Variety-Washington Post — 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Washington Post, 1301 K Street NW.

Voto Latino-Our Voices (“Diversity in Media”) — 6:30 to 9:30pm, Hay Adams (rooftop terrace), 800 16th St. NW.

The Hill-Extra-Thomson Reuters reception — 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., Embassy of Canada, 501 Pennsylvania Ave NW.

The Creative Coalition’s Night Before Dinner (hosted by Tim Daly, Emily Ratajkowski, Nina Dobrev, Rosario Dawson, Neve Campbell, Gabrielle Union, Tyler Posey, Wendi McLendon-Covey,  AnnaLynne McCord, Constance Zimmer, Lisa Edelstein, Richard Schiff and others TBA) — 8 p.m., the Supper Suite by STK, 1250 Connecticut Ave. NW.

Google, HBO and Smithsonian American Art Museum party — 8 p.m., Renwick Gallery, 1661 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.

White House Correspondents Jam II (bands with those in the media) — 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., the Hamilton, 600 14th St. NW.

The New Yorker reception — 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., W Hotel, 555 15th St. NW.

Funny or Die 4th Annual Party (location disclosed to those invited) — 11 p.m.

Saturday, April 30

Annual Garden Brunch — 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Beall-Washington House, 2920 R St. NW.

The New Media Party Party — noon to 3 p.m., the Brixton, 901 U St. NW.

BuzzFeed’s WHCD Pregame — 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., D.C. office, 1630 Connecticut Ave. NW.

The Young Turks-the Huffington Post-TYT Network — 8 p.m. to 11p.m., 1875 Connecticut Ave. NW.

WHCAD pre-parties — 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., the Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Ave. NW. Reuters; Atlantic Media-CBS News; others.

White House House Correspondents’ Association Dinner — 7:30 p.m, POTUS plus entertainer Larry Wilmore, Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Ave. NW.

WHCAD post-parties — 10:30 p.m., the Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Ave. NW. Reuters; others. Nearby: Annual Bloomberg-Vanity Fair (at the French Ambassador’s residence on Kalorama Road).

“Diamond Joe Biden’s Badass Balls-to-the-Wall Fiesta,” hosted by the Onion — 9 p.m. to 1 am, the Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.

MSNBC after-party — 10:30 p.m., U.S. Institute of Peace, 2301 Constitution Ave. NW.

Sunday, May 1

CNN’s Political Hangover Brunch —10 a.m. to 2pm, Longview Gallery, 1234 9th St. NW.

Thomson-Reuters Brunch — 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Hay Adams, 800 16th St. NW.

Albritton brunch — 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Q Street residence in Georgetown.

Arianna Huffington’s “The Sleep Revolution” book brunch — 11 a.m., the Four Seasons Hotel, 2800 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.

Robert Devaney • May 4, 2016

The 85th Georgetown House Tour celebrations began with a bang-up Patrons’ Party at Bill Dean’s house April 20. There was a record-breaking crowd — even the Secretary of Homeland Security showed up to check out the scene. (O.K., Jeh Johnson is a neighbor.)

The party — which raised more than $100,000, a record sum, for the social services of St. John’s Church on O Street in Georgetown — is gaining buzz as the place for thirsty Washingtonians to be on the last Wednesday night in April. It wound down too soon, and lingering party-goers simply opted to continue at the George Town Club around 9 p.m.

At Saturday’s house tour, tickets sales neared 1,500, and the afternoon tea was packed in the parish hall of St. John’s Church on O Street. (The morning rain stopped no one.)

The tour displayed 10 houses — three on the west and seven on the east side of town. Observers enjoyed the designs of living rooms, libraries, dining rooms and kitchens. Contemporary art, such as that of Colby Caldwell in the Lacheys’ house on O Street, was examined as readily as that of the Wilkisons’ image of “The Samian Sybil” after Guercino above the mantle in their N Street home.

While all of those who donated the use of their houses for the day are to be commended, we might just give the grand prize to Jane and Timothy Matz. A little more than three weeks ago, the tree in front of their house fell against their roof, hitting the chimney, which collapsed with bricks falling and smashing the car in the driveway. When people showed up at the Matz home on O Street Saturday, everything was fixed for the tour except for a few loose cable wires. Now that’s commitment.
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Gary Tischler •

If you’ve felt some turbulence in the air amid all the springy weather we’ve been having here of late, it was probably a bit of foreshadowing.

Storm Large is back in town at the Kennedy Center, and she’s keeping good company.

Large — full name, Susan Storm Large — the full-deal singer, author, songwriter, actress, recording artist and former (2006) finalist on “Rock Star: Supernova,” is back. This time, she’s here for three concerts, in which she performers Kurt Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins,” today through Saturday, April 30. It’s something of a departure for a singer who’s gone from tour and club rock star to being part of Pink Martini to singing with the NSO Pops here in a Frank Sinatra concert last year.  

“Yeah, that’s quite a bit different,” Large said in a telephone interview while she was taking time out in her Portland home. “It’s a challenge, I gotta  say. There’s a lot of that Teutonic, serious stuff  going on here. Very, very dark, and not so much melodic and romantic music, and I’m a romantic. But you find your way in. You find the true things and the way to make it your own — the things that speak to you.”

Weill, who famously partnered with Bertolt Brecht on scathing anti-establishment musicals like “Happy End” and “The Three Penny Opera,” also teamed up — for the last time — on “The Seven Deadly Sins,” a relatively short work, with Brecht. “It’s the story of two sisters, named Anna l and II, who may personify facets of one woman and who leaves her childhood home in Louisiana and travels to seven different cities in seven years, during which she experiences the aspects of the seven deadly sins and their opposites. 

“She finds all of the seven sins, like envy, wrath, sloth, greed and so on, but also their opposites,” Large said. “It’s not easy, but I actually love the music and the challenge it presents me for me. You have to keep embracing new challenges. I just keep on moving as I get older. You kind of grow up, you know.”

Large had performed “The Seven Deadly Sins” with the Oregon Symphony. She’s a legend in Portland, where she was part of a punk band called “The Balls” for years and where she had a reputation for musical and emotional honesty and a dramatic, flamboyant and high-energy stage presence. The Oregon Symphony was scheduled to take the piece to Carnegie Hall, but because of financial and travel constraints it couldn’t do it. “They asked me if I could be a part of this with the Detroit Symphony as part of the Spring for Music Festival.” Her answer was an emphatic yes.

It’s not her first prom with Brecht and Weill. Large starred as Sally Bowles in an Oregon theater production of “Cabaret” in 2007, but then she did a searing, nakedly honest, auto-biographical musical memoir called “Crazy Enough,” which ran for 21 weeks and was a hit in such diverse settings as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Adelaide Festival in Australia and the legendary Joe’s Pub in New York. The book version — which is noted for its revelations about a dark childhood, abuse and youthful heroin addiction as well as her life as a rock star — was named Oprah’s Book of the Week and won the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.

Even on the phone Large is a forceful, vivid presence. She can segue from profanity-peppered chatty talk to a keen, intelligent awareness of her musical challenges and approaches. She takes compliments like a sweet, demure lass.

She performed with Pink Martini in 2011 at the Kennedy Center and last year released a remarkable album called “Le Bonheur,” a remarkable run through an entirely eclectic, torchy, rock and blues-imbued and just about heart-breaking group of songs that you tend to return to. They include her unique version, hot-to-the-heart-and-ear, of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” as well as his “It’s All Right With Me,” the unforgettable rockish ballad, “Unchained Melody,” “The Lady is a Tramp,”  the American boulevardier Tom Waits’s great “Saving All My Love For You,” the spritely “Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed and two of her own compositions, the ravaging “A Woman’s Heart” and the anthem “Stand Up For Me”.

To get the full stormy effect of Large, check her out on her YouTube list: tall — six feet — and blonde. A full-ahead woman, whether she’s in front of orchestra or a punk band or by herself in the spotlight. She’s physical, funny, smart and death-defying.

Large performs with the National Symphony Orchestra at 7 p.m. Thursday, as part of the NSO Declassified Series at 9 p.m. Friday and at 8 p.m Saturday. James Gaffigan conducts and the vocal quartet Hudson Shad will also be on hand for the performances, which also include Rodgers’s “Carousel Waltz,” Ravel’s “La valse” and Dvorak’s “American Suite.”

Robert Devaney •

More or less, it started Thursday at Gloria Dittus’s house with Women & Journalists Awards, the Tinder-Independent Journal Review party at the W, a Dog Tag reception. Friday parties included Voto Latino, Washington Post-Variety-SAG party, Google-HBO, Hill Newspaper-Reuters at the Canadian Embassy. Saturday: Garden Brunch on R Street, Buzzfeed, Reuters, Atlantic-CBS News, the Onion, Vanity Field-Bloomberg — and the main event, POTUS at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton. Sunday included brunches by Thomson-Reuters, CNN and the Allbrittons on Q Street. Which did we — or you — miss? [gallery ids="102227,130412,130456,130439,130433,130420,130425,130444,130449" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

Evonne Connolly, Jean-Marie Fernandez and Anna Marie Parisi-Trone hosted a fashion luncheon at Saks Fifth Avenue Chevy Chase on April 20 in anticipation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” a joint production of Imagination Stage and the Washington Ballet. Saks marketing director Kerri Larkin welcomed guests and assistant general manager Amanda Whiting introduced the sporty and feminine fashions. Imagination Stage founder Bonnie Fogel spoke of providing the best of children’s cultural activities. The Washington Ballet artistic director said “working in the theater seems like home.” “Little Mermaid” Justice Icy Moral performed the signature song. [gallery ids="102226,130445,130472,130453,130466,130461" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

Contemporary social and political issues — the daily headlines of our lives — make compelling material for live theater.

Since 9/11, that seems to be especially true for everything to do with Islam. Thinking and talking about the Middle East, about religious identity and meaning, about the threat of terrorism, about followers of Islam — including those in America and those wanting to come to America — have all managed to find their way onto our stages.

Consider that Ari Roth’s new Mosaic Theater Company has just wound down its Voices from a Changing Middle East festival with plays like “Hkeelee,” “After the War,” “Promised Land,” “I Shall Not Hate” and “Wrestling Jerusalem.” Beginning with his previous stint at Theater J, Roth has been something of a pioneer when it comes to plays touching on the Middle East and on the tense and intense relations between Arabs and Jews, between the West and Islam.

The work of Pakistani American playwright and writer Ayad Akhtar, which deals with Islam and cultural identity in America, are on Washington-area stages this month. Akhtar’s “The Who and the What,” about a Pakistani American female writer working on a novel about women and Islam, will be staged at Round House Theatre in Bethesda from May 25 through June 19.

Akhtar won a Pulitzer Prize for “Disgraced,” his intensely dramatic play about an assimilated Pakistani attorney confronting his identity during the course of a dinner among friends and relatives in New York.

“Disgraced,” which had two different productions in New York, including a successful Broadway turn, is at Arena Stage through May 29, directed by Timothy Douglas. Arena has been a veritable political hotbed this season, what with the Georgetown-political-salon-centric “City of Conversation” by Anthony Giardina; “Sweat,” Lynn Nottage’s play about the effects of industrial decline in America; and “All the Way,” Robert Schenkkan’s searing, Tony Award-winning play about LBJ attempting to get a Civil Rights bill through a recalcitrant Congress during an election year.

“Disgraced” is about as hot-button a play as can be, especially during the current presidential campaign, as it focuses on the fate of Amir Kapoor, a Muslim American, a Pakistani and a corporate attorney at a high-powered New York Jewish-owned law firm.

For actor Nehal Joshi, a Burke, Virgina, native, who’s had a varied career full of challenging roles, the role of Amir is “tough,
really intense.”

“It’s so contemporary, it’s so hard-hitting. It doesn’t pull any punches. There’s no black or white stances,” Joshi said. “Amir is a Muslim, but he’s almost totally assimilated. He works for this really top-notch law firm and is set to make partner, and his wife is this really creative, intelligent white woman who’s working on a project dealing with Islamic art. His nephew somehow persuades him to do legal work for an imam who’s been accused of having connections to terrorism. And from there, we have this dinner hosted by his wife, with his Jewish friend and his African American wife, who works at his firm. And during the course of it all, things are said, questions are raised, and he’s forced to confront himself, his feelings about the Koran, about his religion, about his place in America.”

“You have to find yourself in that part,” he said. “And you know, I’ve run across it. How people react to you, your name or how you look. And they make assumptions without knowing you at all. My family isn’t Muslim, they’re Indian, but even so, you have to think of history. And in New York, after 9/11, even though he’s living in some ways the American Dream, there’s no way that you can avoid your identity.”

Joshi comes across as thoughtful, not just about the issues in the play, but about acting, and the acting world, the parts he’s gotten and taken and what he’s done with them. “I’m really glad to be back here at Arena,” he said. “It’s a kind of home. And you do things here, you stretch, you go against the grain.”

Probably the biggest Arena memory for him was playing the part of the peddler as an ethnic Middle Eastern character in Molly Smith’s production of “Oklahoma.” His peddler was funny, engaging, a guy trying to catch both his Western version of the American dream and a winsome local girl, who was also being courted by a cowboy.

“That was unusual for audiences. You don’t usually think of that character that way, but there’s historic precedents for it. There were many immigrants in the West then. It was the place where you could start over, and there were, in fact, peddlers like that.”

Georgetowner •

Contemporary social and political issues — the daily headlines of our lives — make compelling material for live theater.

Since 9/11, that seems to be especially true for everything to do with Islam. Thinking and talking about the Middle East, about religious identity and meaning, about the threat of terrorism, about followers of Islam — including those in America and those wanting to come to America — have all managed to find their way onto our stages.

Consider that Ari Roth’s new Mosaic Theater Company has just wound down its Voices from a Changing Middle East festival with plays like “Hkeelee,” “After the War,” “Promised Land,” “I Shall Not Hate” and “Wrestling Jerusalem.” Beginning with his previous stint at Theater J, Roth has been something of a pioneer when it comes to plays touching on the Middle East and on the tense and intense relations between Arabs and Jews, between the West and Islam.

The work of Pakistani American playwright and writer Ayad Akhtar, which deals with Islam and cultural identity in America, are on Washington-area stages this month. Akhtar’s “The Who and the What,” about a Pakistani American female writer working on a novel about women and Islam, will be staged at Round House Theatre in Bethesda from May 25 through June 19.

Akhtar won a Pulitzer Prize for “Disgraced,” his intensely dramatic play about an assimilated Pakistani attorney confronting his identity during the course of a dinner among friends and relatives in New York.

“Disgraced,” which had two different productions in New York, including a successful Broadway turn, is at Arena Stage through May 29, directed by Timothy Douglas. Arena has been a veritable political hotbed this season, what with the Georgetown-political-salon-centric “City of Conversation” by Anthony Giardina; “Sweat,” Lynn Nottage’s play about the effects of industrial decline in America; and “All the Way,” Robert Schenkkan’s searing, Tony Award-winning play about LBJ attempting to get a Civil Rights bill through a recalcitrant Congress during an election year.

“Disgraced” is about as hot-button a play as can be, especially during the current presidential campaign, as it focuses on the fate of Amir Kapoor, a Muslim American, a Pakistani and a corporate attorney at a high-powered New York Jewish-owned law firm.

For actor Nehal Joshi, a Burke, Virgina, native, who’s had a varied career full of challenging roles, the role of Amir is “tough, really intense.”

“It’s so contemporary, it’s so hard-hitting. It doesn’t pull any punches. There’s no black or white stances,” Joshi said. “Amir is a Muslim, but he’s almost totally assimilated. He works for this really top-notch law firm and is set to make partner, and his wife is this really creative, intelligent white woman who’s working on a project dealing with Islamic art. His nephew somehow persuades him to do legal work for an imam who’s been accused of having connections to terrorism. And from there, we have this dinner hosted by his wife, with his Jewish friend and his African American wife, who works at his firm. And during the course of it all, things are said, questions are raised, and he’s forced to confront himself, his feelings about the Koran, about his religion, about his place in America.”

“You have to find yourself in that part,” he said. “And you know, I’ve run across it. How people react to you, your name or how you look. And they make assumptions without knowing you at all. My family isn’t Muslim, they’re Indian, but even so, you have to think of history. And in New York, after 9/11, even though he’s living in some ways the American Dream, there’s no way that you can avoid your identity.”

Joshi comes across as thoughtful, not just about the issues in the play, but about acting, and the acting world, the parts he’s gotten and taken and what he’s done with them. “I’m really glad to be back here at Arena,” he said. “It’s a kind of home. And you do things here, you stretch, you go against the grain.”

Probably the biggest Arena memory for him was playing the part of the peddler as an ethnic Middle Eastern character in Molly Smith’s production of “Oklahoma.” His peddler was funny, engaging, a guy trying to catch both his Western version of the American dream and a winsome local girl, who was also being courted by a cowboy.

“That was unusual for audiences. You don’t usually think of that character that way, but there’s historic precedents for it. There were many immigrants in the West then. It was the place where you could start over, and there were, in fact, peddlers like that.”

Gary Tischler • April 27, 2016

Whatever your level of digital competency, I’m sure you’ve stopped and wondered exactly what kind of superhighway we’re collectively traveling on, and where the latest app is taking us on the never-ending treadmill known as the internet.

How private is our private life? Who’s communicating with us in the disembodied replies to our queries? Who’s watching and recording our every peck on a keyboard, click on a mouse, touch on a screen?

“The Nether,” a remarkable play by Jennifer Haley — and an amazing piece of stagecraft that’s at once gripping, really smart, imaginative, dramatically disturbing, even poetic and, yes, more than a little creepy — tackles just about any question you might have about our rapidly changing technological capacities, which allow us to confront and evade reality at an alarmingly accelerating rate.

Directed by Shana Cooper with a gifted cast headed by Washington veteran Edward Gero, “The Nether” is getting a dazzling production at Woolly Mammoth through May 1. The play can work as a detective thriller about unraveling identity, asking what is a crime in our brave new world, or as a dystopian sci-fi story. It could even be mistaken for an extended and lavishly decorated episode of Special Victims Unit, the long-running NBC cop show that specializes in sex crimes.

The play imagines a world — it could be decades away, or a month — in which the internet, where people already spend an inordinate amount of their professional, personal, imaginative and breathing time — has expanded to become the Nether, a digital space where virtual reality is as common as waking up and going to sleep.

In this world, a man named Sims is under investigation by Nether police for creating a difficult-to-hack sub-world called the Hideaway — subscription-only, apparently — where customers can spend time in a detailed recreation of a Victorian environment, geared toward an aesthetic of finely honed visual and intellectual beauty. This historical-artistic setting is a way of glossing over its real purpose: to enable users to spend time with, have sex with and do horrific violence to an avatar of a little girl. It is, in other words, as one observer commented, a daydream for pedophiles.

That notion is always there, underlying (and sometimes undermining) the plot, debates and twists and turns of the play. Sims, the creator and virtual ringmaster of the Hideaway, played with insistent evasiveness by Gero, is being interrogated by a police officer, bluntly portrayed by Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey. He does intellectual battle with his tormentor, rationalizing, using the privacy defense, above all trying to evade responsibility.

Sims — also known as Poppa in the Hideaway — puts forward an old argument: wouldn’t it be better for people to be allowed to commit virtual or fantasy crimes in the Hideaway than act out in the real world?

In the Hideaway, visitors adopt other identities. The star object of desire — for Poppa, for a youngish swain, for customers — is Iris, a virtual little girl who is at once precocious, intelligent, smart, funny and appealing, deftly played by 18-year-old Maya Brettell.

It should be noted that the entire enterprise seems virtual. The more odious implications of the Hideaway are handled with discretion and imagination. There are no graphic depictions of sexuality or violence. What’s haunting is the talk about the future of the virtual world and the internet and how we live in it, outside of it or even deeply lost in it — as one character appears to be, to the point of becoming a permanent resident or “shadow.” It’s talk, sharply written and argued, that’s already being bantered around coffee tables and chat rooms, sometimes erupting from dreams.

One of the ideas embedded in the play is that the world has denuded itself of reality. The steadily eroding environment, the disappearing plants and animals, the machines that do everything that brains and muscles should do, have made it difficult — in this world — to keep it real. This has created a niche for places like the Nether, places where anything that can be imagined, dreamed or desired can be fulfilled, made real or achieved.

“The Nether” — which in its staging seems feverishly detailed — may be in the end neither here nor there, but some of it (perhaps most if it) is coming up, straight ahead.

Click.