Arts & Society

Gary Tischler • May 20, 2016

Even though “The Rhinegold,” the opening salvo in Washington National Opera’s and Artistic Director Francesca Zambello’s much anticipated production of Richard Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle, is — at around two and a half hours — the extravaganza’s smallest and shortest component, it by no means lacks size or importance.

As the prologue to what follows, the increasingly tragic saga told in “The Valkyrie,” “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods,” “The Rhinegold” is critical as a kind of prelude and chronicle of a disaster foretold. It’s the vehicle that sets things in motion on an increasingly precarious and spectacular path.

But it’s also a work that has its own identity, its own rich rewards, in which Zambello makes visible and audible some of her reverential and referenced concerns, giving this production (and presumably the whole WNO “Ring of the Nibelungs” cycle) resonance with the chaotic times we live in.

Not altogether clearly, this production is set in a quasi-modern, global-warming-era America, albeit a somewhat mythological one. Matching their raw, clean tone to the musical one, the sets echo both pristine wilderness vistas and high-tech industrial vibes that are a retreat from the natural world.

Wagner’s music — especially in the beginning — serves as a majestic, irresistible engine that advances the story and the emotions it contains. It’s a tone-setter, a kind of promise of things to come, presented by a huge WNO orchestra, under the intelligent and forceful baton of Philippe Auguin, as a kind of proud gift. This is especially true in the opening sequence, illustrated by one of those projections of the natural world created by Jan Hartley and S. Katy Tucker, a parade of gurgling, swirling imagery.

In this world, we encounter the Rhinemaidens — Woglinde, Wellgunde and Flosshilde (love those Wagnerian names), ably and seductively played by Jacqueline Echols, Catherine Martin and Renée Tatum — gaily splashing in the river, playing on the rocks as they tease and generally enrage the dwarf Alberich, sucker-punching him with an all-consuming desire, which leads to his discovery of the gold which can only can be taken by someone who is willing to renounce love. And who would do a thing like that?

Elsewhere, Wotan, the ruler of the gods, is nettled by his wife Fricka for having allowed the giants Fafner and Fasolt to take her sister Freia away in exchange for the giants building his new abode for the gods’ Valhalla. Also on hand: Froh, Donner and Loge, a trio of gods as millennial types. Wotan learns of the theft of the gold, and he and Loge descend into the underground mines and caverns of Niebelheim, where they encounter Alberich and his brother Mime and a horde of dwarves. Alberich has not only used the gold to make a magical chain that makes him invisible, but has forged a ring that can make him all powerful. Wotan and Loge steal the ring and everything else. Alberich casts a curse of destruction on the ring.

Wotan is forced to give all the gold and the ring up in order to save his sister-in-law from the giants, but he and the gods have Valhalla. And so it begins, as they step on a gangplank that could be the road to heaven, or an invitation to the Titanic.

This is resounding, magic stuff, magic of stagecraft, magical music, a creation of a deeply lived-in world. Zambello has staged the complete cycle before, but a complete cycle is a first for Washington. It’s well worth the wait.

Even as a precursor, “The Rhinegold” is part Greek tragedy, part warning, with nature — both the natural world and the best and the beast in human (and divine) nature — on display. It comes at you in sections: the playful but disastrous encounter between the Rhinemaidens and Alberich, the wide-open spaces where Wotan contends with his family, the other gods and the giants and the blazing, burning underground.

In the Ring Cycle, Wagner envisioned something on the order of total theater, where design, music, theatrics, and drama became welded together into something passionately new. In the era of the great romantic operas, the cycle must have seemed exactly that: totally new, and not a little overwhelming in its ambition, perhaps even something of an affront to the senses. Not that Wagner’s music doesn’t have its own form of romanticism, the kind that sweeps everything before it.

“The Rhinegold” is carried by the music, but it’s the weaving together of a plot with its later consequences, and a group of characters played by performers who sing extremely well and, I’d say, act even better and convincingly, that carry you away. I was especially impressed by Gordon Hawkins as Alberich; his singing isn’t the most precise, but the sheer energy, relentlessness and bullying in his voice evokes a hunger for sex (if not love), ownership, power and control that is frightening, especially in these our times. It’s desire run rampant that’s on display here. The Ring itself embodies a kind of primitive force that says the wearer can literally have it all.

Wotan — sung and played with quiet, steady force by Alan Held — is also drawn to it, but uses it instead to save his family from the giants. Particularly evocative among them are two young gods, including a sharp, edgy and slick Ryan McKinny as the hammer-wielding Donner and William Burden as Loge, singing with a strong, clear voice, evoking a very contemporary coolness.

Gary Tischler • May 16, 2016

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.

Ari Post •

The annual Spring Art Walk has become a seasonal fixture in Georgetown, right in step with the buzzing, foliate bloom of our gardens. As the Book Hill galleries on Wisconsin Avenue open their doors for a night of open houses — filled with paintings and sculptures, music, wine and conversation — the event, from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, May 13, becomes a local inauguration of the cultural reawakening that warm weather brings.

Addison/Ripley Fine Art

1670 Wisconsin Ave. NW
“Dan Treado: You Are Getting Sleepy”

The playful merging of science and art, the genuine delight in tools and methods and the shared interest in performance art and experimental music are at the center of Dan Treado’s recent work. He often employs tools of his own design to create luminous, richly surfaced paintings on Baltic birch panels. Treado’s paintings are process works that borrow from film and photography, physics and biology textbooks and electron microscope images.

Susan Calloway Fine Arts

1643 Wisconsin Ave. NW
“Katie Pumphrey: Heavyweight”

In August of last year, Baltimore-based painter Katie Pumphrey swam the English Channel in 14 hours and 19 minutes. For Pumphrey, athletic competition and painting are part and parcel of a single journey. Her works offer insight into our obsession with sports and athletic events, and our war-like and ceremonial glorification of star athletes. They also uncover a harmony in the hulking motion of wildlife and large animals, in rushing herds of buffalo and massive schools of fish, shedding light on our own traditions of highly social and herd-like competition.

Cross MacKenzie Gallery
1675 Wisconsin Ave. NW
“Paintings by Rafael Torres Correa”

In partnership with the Cultural Service of the Embassy of France, Cross MacKenzie Gallery is hosting an exhibition of paintings by the Cuban-born French national Rafael Torres Correa, who creates lyrical universes in his large abstract canvases. His paintings evoke memories — symbolic and emotional—and conjure imagined experiences of water and floating islands with their shifting imagery and fluid execution, using washes, drips, dabs and splashes of paint. These landscapes are transitory territories and shifting metaphors, a state that parallels the artist’s own migrations and cultural identity.

Maurine Littleton Gallery
1667 Wisconsin Ave. NW
“John Littleton & Kate Vogel”

This show of groundbreaking glasswork features the collaborative works of John Littleton and Kate Vogel. Littleton and Vogel met at the University of Wisconsin in the 1970s. Since 1979 they have lived in the mountains of North Carolina, where they began their collaboration on blown and cast glass in the studio of John’s father, Harvey Littleton. Their recent work includes a marvelous, gem-like series of desert flowers and succulents made of cast and hot-worked glass, which in the deft hands of these masters defies the perceived limitations of the medium.

Washington Printmakers Gallery
1641 Wisconsin Ave. NW
“Transitions: Prints by Gabriel Jules and Books from the Eastern Shore”

On view through May 28, “Transitions” showcases the intaglio prints of Gabriel Jules alongside gorgeous artist books of the Salisbury Book Guild and the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland. Jules engages with the intimacy and rhythm of the etching process. Her work, largely representational, explores our ties with the surrounding world. The showcase of artists’ books is uniquely wonderful, presenting viewers with many surprises as they finger through the pages; they are among the few works of art you are allowed to touch (with gloves, of course).

Book Hill Pop-Up Gallery
1666 33rd St. NW
“High Art | Low Art: Works by David Richardson and Ari Post”

David Richardson is a man who has long led two rather contradictory careers, as both a Marine Lt. Col. through multiple tours of combat duty, and as a contemporary painter. Ari Post, who studied painting and illustration, now works for the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries (and writes for The Georgetowner). In this show are recent paintings by both artists, along with other artistic ventures not usually exhibited in galleries. Post has created multiple series of political caricatures, cartoons and ink-work more typical of the Sunday funny pages than a gallery wall — a love letter to newspaper comics and political cartoons. Meanwhile, Richardson, who normally deals with the subject of war through his art using allusion and abstraction, has come out with a series of far more brazen, blunt and politically charged works, influenced by and akin to war propaganda, but infused with a fascinating, mysterious ambiguity and unmistakable painterly bravura.

Artist’s Proof Gallery
1533 Wisconsin Ave. NW
“Color in the Curve: Glass Sculptures by David Patchen”

Glass artist and designer David Patchen uses the Italian techniques of cane and murrine in an American style. Known primarily for a combination of complexity and scale in densely patterned glasses, his organic forms reveal something unexpected and precious. Patchen describes the optical properties of glass as intriguing, as the glass offers a refractive palette with the ability to bend, layer and twist color and light, modulating both density and translucency unlike any other medium. [gallery ids="102225,130468" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

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.

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.”