Hell, Purgatory and Heaven at the Museum of African Art
• September 17, 2015

“The Divine Comedy,” the National Museum of African Art’s current exhibition, on view through Nov. 1, toys with the gravity of religious symbolism and points an ambiguous, often irreverent eye toward the grandeur of shared mythologies. It is also a sincere and moving exploration of the notions of faith, belief and tradition, which gracefully entwines many conventionally rigid boundaries of religion. Further, it deals with troubling histories of colonialism in Africa and the assertion of Christianity and Western ideals over native spiritual systems.

However, to put it more plainly, it is also one of the most beautiful, visionary and elegantly composed shows in the city this summer.

Curated by the internationally acclaimed writer and art critic Simon Njami, “The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists,” reveals the ongoing relevance of Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic as part of a shared, globalized intellectual heritage. This dramatic multimedia exhibition includes original commissions and renowned works of art by roughly 40 contemporary artists from 19 African nations and the diaspora. An ambitiously expansive show that runs in pieces throughout three full floors, it is also the first exhibition to take advantage of the museum’s pavilion and stairwells, taking over the space like vines spread across a brick wall.

Celebrated artists like Kader Attia, Wangechi Mutu and Yinka Shonibare explore the themes of paradise, purgatory and hell with video, photography, printmaking, painting, sculpture, fiber arts and mixed-media installation. In so doing, they probe diverse issues of politics, heritage, history, identity, faith and the continued power of art to express the unspoken and intangible of this life and beyond.

Hell is in the basement. With a dark and cavernous open floor plan, the gallery is transformed into a harmonious chaos of navigable space, a cacophony of sounds and eerie spectacles where artworks and installations literally fall on top of one another. (This author chose to start at the bottom, preferring, if you will, the ascent to heaven to the descent into the netherworld.)

One of the most troubling if beautiful pieces in the gallery is a heavy boat made of burnt poplar by Jems Robert Koko Bi, “Convoi royal (Royal Convoy),” which is filled to the brim with roughly carved wooden heads. Reminiscent in spirit of paintings by American artist Kerry James Marshall, this is an incredibly redolent confrontation with the strange, spectral atrocities of the Atlantic slave trade and the subsequent loss of identity among countless native African cultures.

In a similar vein, it is impossible to ignore “Tyaphaka” by Nicholas Hlobo, a lumpy, python carcass-like sculpture made from rubber inner tubing and ribbon that sprawls across the gallery floor. It feels almost nauseating, like a sack of bodies devoured by a monster, or the snake leaving Eden and taking with it in its belly the now tainted souls of man.

At the entrance (or in my case, the exit) sits a monumental sculpture by Wim Botha, “Prism 10 (Dead Laocoön).” Blurring the lines of historical connection, this sculpture is a take on the Greek Hellenistic masterwork “Laocoön and His Sons,” as if it were set on fire to reveal that beneath the white polished marble of the original sculpture lies a framework of brittle, jagged and black coal. It is the veritable fruit of the underworld, the destructive but necessary commodity of industrial progress that is excavated under oppressive labor conditions and transformed to smoke in order to fuel our economic consumption.

Purgatory lines the stairwells and the pavilion, and here there is no work more transfixing than “The 99 Series” by Aida Muluneh. A series of manipulated photographs of a woman covered in chalky white paint and wrapped in striped cloth, the duplicity and fractured spirit of the individual is starkly and breathtakingly rendered, as the disorientation of space, dimension and human anatomy speaks for a sort of judgment and inquisition, either by one’s self or a higher power.
Walking into the galleries of Heaven is bewitching, for this is a paradise represented not in the image of angelic Hollywood depictions or in the Vatican gift shop, but as a sort of pagan, polytheistic cabinet of curiosities, where all are welcome — but not as it could ever be imagined.

The toxic, ethereal beach scenes of Youssef Nabil have a violently saturated exuberance. The photographs show a man wrapped in cloth by the ocean with the sun setting radiantly on the horizon, portraying an almost overwrought notion of heaven’s divine beauty as something that we can’t really see, perceive or understand through our earthly lenses.

Of course, the relentless, bizarre, Hieronymus Bosch-like sculptural installation by Jane Alexander is totally unignorable. Like a fairytale nightmare, a bizarre, incomprehensible drama unfolds on a field of granular red clay, with figures of mice on men’s bodies leading a cart being dragged by bird-headed slaves. The cart is wrapped in freight packaging, and on the top sits a leather chest with an inlaid postcard of the Madonna and Child, upon which a lamb presides over the entire scene. There are more birdmen guarding and directing traffic up a rickety wooden ladder that leads through forced perspective up into the presumed heavens. There is also a sort of voodoo colonialist ghost with scythes and machetes on his belt, black feathers for a head and giant foam hands the likes of which you typically only see at a Green Bay Packer’s game.

There is almost nothing more I can say — or, rather, I don’t want to infect the curiosity by trying to connect it to literary or literal metaphors — but this exists and it has to be seen. I have never in my life experienced a piece of work provoke so much discussion among museum attendants.

Every one of us has a unique understanding of life, love, death and the beyond. Whether or not we believe in heaven and hell, our moral compasses are invariably catalyzed by that eternal logic of good versus evil, decency versus vulgarity. Through “The Divine Comedy,” the Museum of African Art helps reveal that one person’s vision of heaven, purgatory or hell might not match another’s, yet we are all driven by our conflicts and trials with humanity.

Soundcheck Opens on K Street
• September 9, 2015

Washington, D.C., nightlife fixtures and Echostage owners Antonis Karagounis and Pete Kalamoutsos held an opening party for their new downtown concept at 14th and K Streets NW, Soundcheck, on Aug. 20.  According to Karagounis, the new club is “retro-inspired? and meant to deliver “recording-studio sound in a nightclub atmosphere? to a 300-capacity audience—all with an ultra-quiet envelope that keeps the sound downstairs, not on the street.

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6th Sustainability Fair at the Fairmont
• September 6, 2015

The Fairmont Hotel on M Street held its Sixth Annual Sustainability Fair in its Colonnade Room Aug. 21. The hotel showcased its own green program and commitment to waste management, energy and waste conservation. Guests enjoyed honey tastings from the hotel’s rooftop hives and an exhibit by Sean McKenzie, president of Capital Bee Care. A broad range of participants included representatives from the Metropolitan Police Department, World Wildlife Fund, D.C. Central Kitchen and Capital Bike Share. [gallery ids="102305,127309,127297,127280,127289,127301" nav="thumbs"]

Statesman, Author James Symington Regales at Politics & Prose
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Jim Symington was his usual captivating self, as he read from his new book, “Heard and Overheard,” at Politics & Prose Aug. 19. Introduced by bookstore co-founder Barbara Meade, Symington promised to write a longer dedication in the books that had not yet arrived. “I haven’t seen this many people since I was running for office many years ago,” he told the overflow crowd. “Heard and Overheard” is divided into three parts and draws upon a long, distinguished career of interacting with “politicians, statesmen and real people.” Symington served as aide to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Chief of Protocol, four-term U.S. Representative from Missouri and more. In response to questions, Symington lamented the “lack of cross aisle fraternization” in the current Congress. [gallery ids="102304,127310,127305" nav="thumbs"]

Fall Visual Arts Highlights
• September 2, 2015

Surrealist sculpture at the Hirshhorn, five decades of a groundbreaking print studio at the National Gallery, a woman’s lens on mid-century America at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, modern art from the Phillips Collection’s Swiss counterparts — these are four of the most anticipated fall exhibitions at Washington’s art museums.

Surrealism is known primarily through painting, photography and film. But at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden this fall, audiences will get to experience its full force in three dimensions. “Marvelous Objects: Surrealist Sculpture from Paris to New York” (Oct. 29–Feb. 15) is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the sculpture of Surrealism.

Bringing together more than 100 works from across Europe and the United States, the Hirshhorn aims to reveal the breadth and depth of Surrealism’s greatest artists. Featuring masterpieces by Dalí, Miró, Giacometti, Duchamp, Man Ray and others, the exhibition will bring sculpture to the fore as a vital part of Surrealism, and one that has influenced artists well into the 21st century.

In an intriguing sidebar, the show will highlight the transition from Surrealism to the postwar sculptural era of metal constructions, displaying works by David Smith and Alexander Calder.

Running concurrently is a solo exhibition by a contemporary artist, “Shana Lutker: Le ‘NEW’ Monocle, Chapters 1–3.” This exhibition will focus on stage-set-like installations of sculptures based on historic fistfights involving Surrealist artists, in which the clashes of radical artistic ideas and ideologies led to physical violence.

Some of the most important and influential artists of the past half-century have conceived and produced limited editions of hand-printed works at Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited), the renowned Los Angeles artists’ workshop and publisher founded in 1966. Coinciding with Gemini’s 50th anniversary, the National Gallery of Art exhibition “The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L.” (Oct. 4–Feb. 7) will shed light on the history of the studio and the phenomena it has produced.

The National Gallery will showcase a number of innovative and exemplary projects in their entirety, including fully realized series created by David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claus Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and Frank Stella.

Esther Bubley (1921–1998) was a photojournalist renowned in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s for her revealing profiles of the United States, its peoples and its personalities. With a talent for creating probing and gently humorous images of the national psyche, she freelanced for publications such as Life magazine and Ladies Home Journal.

At the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Bubley’s work will receive a greatly deserved solo exhibition, “Esther Bubley Up Front” (Sept. 4–Jan. 17), which highlights her influence in the field of photojournalism, as well as the importance of a woman’s perspective to our understanding of America’s history.

Developing an interest in photography in high school, Bubley received her break in 1942 when she was hired as a darkroom assistant for Roy Stryker, the head of photography for the Office of War Information in Washington. After her first assignments documenting wartime in the nation’s capital, Bubley continued to work under Stryker at the Standard Oil Company.

One of Bubley’s landmark photographic series was a profile of the oil boomtown of Tomball, Texas. She immersed herself in the town, its people and its activities for six weeks. Her images of the community provide an intimate document of small-town America in the mid-20th century.

In a unique exhibition that focuses on, of all things, Swiss art collectors in the early 20th century, the Phillips Collection will exhibit more than 60 celebrated paintings. The development of Swiss collecting around this period — which could not have been more auspicious — found patrons looking beyond regional painters to broaden their definition of modern art. As a result, the pioneering patrons Rudolf Staechelin (1881–1946) and Karl Im Obersteg (1883–1969), both from Basel, championed the work of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and School of Paris artists.

What they ended up acquiring were staggering masterpieces, including van Gogh’s “The Garden of Daubigny”; Marc Chagall’s three monumental rabbi portraits from 1914; and a double-sided canvas by Picasso, “Woman at the Theater/The Absinthe Drinker.” Needless to say, they will all be at the Phillips.

This exhibition, “Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks from Switzerland, The Staechelin & Im Obersteg Collections” (Oct. 10–Jan. 10) marks the first occasion for these collections to be exhibited together in the United States. It is an intoxicating prospect that shouldn’t be missed.

Phillips Concert Series at 75
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The Phillips Collection, one of Washington’s most esteemed and intimate art museums, is marking the 75th anniversary of its signature concert series in an artful way, true to the spirit of its founder, art collector and critic Duncan Phillips.

According to Phillips Collection Director of Music Caroline Mousset, who came to the gallery in 2009, the series is about “allowing the artist to have as much freedom as possible.” That means often reconciling tradition and history with the possibilities of new music and musicians, performing in a very special setting, the museum’s exquisite, dark-paneled Music Room.

“We have had many debuts here over the years,” she said. “And we’ve added different kinds of music as time goes on, going beyond but not excluding chamber music, into jazz and contemporary classical music.

“I like to think that the music reflects the art here, and the intentions of Mr. Phillips,” she said. “He was open to new art, but with a consistent spirit that was unique.”

The Sunday series, which opens Oct. 4 with Swiss pianist Olivier Cavé, will celebrate its historic connection to military music ensembles by presenting “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine band on Nov. 8 with a program centered on Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time.” It will also continue showcasing new and rising stars, including South Korean violinist Ji Young Lim on Nov. 1.

There will be some 30 concerts featured in the Sunday series. Also part of the season are three Thursday concerts and two concerts featuring the works of composers Avner Dorman of Israel, on Dec. 17, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir of Iceland on April 14.

A special occasion will come on Jan. 10 when Toronto-born pianist Stewart Goodyear will present a re-enactment of legendary pianist Glenn Gould’s 1955 U.S. debut at the Phillips.

Mousset sees the musical gatherings at the Phillips as opportunities to create special and serendipitous moments. “Who has not switched on the radio and stumbled upon an unknown piece of music so bewitching that you immediately search out everything by that composer? That’s serendipity, and its power to widen our musical horizons shouldn’t be underestimated, precisely because it hits us with something marvelous when we’re psychologically off guard.”

2015 Fall Performing Arts Highlights
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With so many things happening in Washington in September and October (Hello, Your Holiness!), it’s impossible to fix and fixate on everything. Eschewing any attempt at comprehensiveness, we’ve selected a little bit of this, a little bit of that — the intent being to conjure up in advance the excitement that the first weeks of the new season will bring.

Theater

Gala Hispanic Theatre is celebrating its 40th anniversary by starting the season with a production of a new adaptation of “Yerma,” from a text by celebrated Spanish author Federico García Lorca, directed by José Luis Arelano (Sept. 10–Oct. 4).

Speaking of anniversaries, at the Shakespeare Theatre, they’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Shakespeare Free For All series with a staging by gifted director Ethan McSweeney of his 2012-2013 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Sidney Harman Hall. Artistic Director Michael Kahn calls it a love letter to Shakespeare. We agree. And there’s the plus of having Adam Green return as Puck — and the fact that it’s free (through Sept. 13).

As part of the World Stages Series at the Kennedy Center, Lebanese playwright Wajdi Mouawad will direct and star in his semi-autobiographical play “Seuls” (Sept. 18–19), followed by a commissioned song cycle “Wagner, Max! Wagner!” in the Terrace Theater (Sept. 25-26).

Also at the Kennedy Center, in the Opera House, we’ll have the musical hit and tribute to Carole King called “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” (Oct. 6–25). Star power is the big attraction for “Antigone” at the Eisenhower Theater, starring the luminous French actress Juliette Binoche (Oct. 22–25).

At Round House Theatre, “Ironbound,” a world premiere by Martyna Majok, kicks off the season as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival (Sept. 9–Oct. 4).

Olney Theater launches its season with Noel Coward’s still sophisticated “Hay Fever” (Sept. 2-27), and also participates in the Women’s Voices Theater Festival with “Bad Dog” by Jennifer Hoppe-House (Sept. 30–Oct. 25).

Washington playwright Karen Zacarías’s musical takeoff on Latin American Telenovela style, “Destiny of Desire,” opens the Arena Stage season, again as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival (Sept. 11–Oct. 18).

Check out what’s going on with U.S. politics in the searing, funny musical “The Fix,” now at Signature Theatre (through Sept. 20).
There’s also the U.S. premiere of “Chimerica” by Lucy Kirkwood, directed by Studio Artistic Director David Muse at Studio Theatre, about a man who took an iconic picture in Tiananmen Square (Sept. 8–Oct. 18).

Opera and Music

As long as people love, die and sing while doing it, there will always be a “Carmen.” Directed by E. Loren Meeker and conducted by Evan Rogister, this “Carmen” — which starts the Washington National Opera season — features Clementine Margaine and Geraldine Chauvet, along with Sarah Mesko in the title role (Sept. 19–Oct. 3).

We’ll have to wait a while for the return of Washington Concert Opera, with its much-appreciated emphasis on staging often neglected operas. This time, the season opens with Rossini’s “Semiramide,” with Jessica Pratt making her WCO debut in the title role at Lisner Auditorium (Nov. 22).

The National Symphony’s Orchestra’s Season Opening Ball Concert will feature Broadway star Sutton Foster and percussionist Martin Grubinger with Music Director Christoph Eschenbach and Principal Pops Conductor Steven Reine on the podium (Sept. 20). With the NSO Pops, Rajaton, a six-member a-cappella group, will perform all the songs featured in “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (Sept. 25–26).

At Strathmore, Christopher Seaman will conduct the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Gala Celebration with Lang Lang (Sept. 12). The BSO’s first program of the season conducted by Music Director Marin Alsop will feature Rachmaninoff’s “Paganini Rhapsody” performed by Olga Kern (Sept. 17-19).

Also at Strathmore, the National Philharmonic under Piotr Gajewski will perform “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” with pianist Thomas Pandolfi at its opening concerts (Sept. 19–20).

Conducted by Kim Allen Kluge, the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra’s opening program will include Holst’s “The Planets,” Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyrie” and John Williams’s “Music from E.T. and Star Wars” (Oct. 3).

Washington Performing Arts gets rolling at the end of September with the world-renowned music duo of violinist Itzhak Perlman and pianist Emanuel Ax, performing in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (Sept. 28). Two days later, in conjunction with Blues Alley and Strathmore, Washington Performing Arts will present the death- and genre-defying combo of music legends Bela Fleck and Chick Corea at the Music Center at Strathmore (Sept. 30).

The eclectic institution known as the In Series will salute the Women’s Voices Theater Festival with “Latina Supremes,” performing works by Latina songwriters, at Source (Sept. 19–20).

The Russian Chamber Art Society will hold its 10th anniversary gala, “Stars of the Russian Chamber Art Society,” featuring soprano Jennifer Casey Cabot, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wor, tenor Viktor Antipenko, baritone Timothy Mix, bass Grigory Soloviov and guest instrumentalists, at the Embassy of Austria (Oct. 2).

Speaking of embassies, the long-running Embassy Series opens its season with two of the best rising young violinists in the world returning from last year’s series. That would be Lana Trotovek at the Slovenian Embassy (Sept. 11) and Aleksey Semenenko at the Ukranian Embassy (Oct. 6–7).

The “experimental musical laboratory” known as Post-Classical Ensemble will co-present the first concert of its American-themed season with Washington Performing Arts at the University of the District of Columbia Theater. “Deep River: The Art of the Spiritual” will feature bass-baritone Kevin Deas, the Heritage Signature Chorale and the Washington Performing Arts Gospel Chorus, conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez and Stanley Thurston.

Dance

The Washington Ballet will open its 40th anniversary season by launching a multi-year “Project Global” program with a season-opening “Latin Heat” festival, which includes fived varied works at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. Included are “Bitter Sugar” by Mauro de Candia, “Sombrerísimo,” by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, “La Ofrenda” by Edwaard Liang, “5 Tangos” by Hans Van Manen and the Act III pas de deux from Marius Petipa’s “Don Quixote” (Oct. 14–18).

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet marks the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with “Balanchine, Béjart, and the Bard” — including Balanchine’s “Walpurgisnacht Ballet” and the Emeralds movement from his “Jewels” — at the Kennedy Center Opera House (Oct. 30–Nov. 1).

Choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess will present “Fluency in Four,” including his newest work, “We choose to go to the moon,” a collaboration with NASA, at the Kennedy Center (Sept. 19–20).

And Now for Something Totally Different

Giving a new touch to a new season is “Finding a Line: Skateboarding, Music and Media,” a multi-disciplinary festival celebrating a vibrant and influential American subculture by highlighting the creative ties and improvisational elements shared between skateboarding and live music. Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz Jason Moran is spearing this collaborative effort, featuring a ramp at the Kennedy Center Plaza, music by Moran and the Bandwagon and the involvement of students, artists, musicians, skaters and community members (Sept. 5-12).

Women’s Voices on D.C. Stages
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If you’re a Washington theater fan and you want to find out just how big of a theatrical ocean there is out there in the region, check out D.C.’s Women’s Voices Theater Festival, right here and right now, continuing through September and October and a little beyond.

The size and range of the festival are ambitious, the bottom line being what many theater people already know: women (especially playwrights, in this case) rock the theater world all across the city — and the country, for that matter.

The festival will showcase, produce and present 50 world premieres in theaters and venues big and small and everything in between. If there are Washington-area theaters missing from this enterprise, they’re hard to find.

Yes, every single play was written by a woman.

It’s all meant to showcase women and the fact that on Broadway and in many major urban areas productions of plays by women — despite their talent and diversity — are still far fewer than those of plays by men.

The festival itself is the brainchild of the artistic directors of seven of the leading theater companies in the area.

“We had been getting together on a regular basis for brunch or lunch, talking about theater issues, problems to solve, things we should be doing,” said Paul Tetreault, artistic director of Ford’s Theatre. “And we were talking about the need for a festival. We’d done the big Shakespeare citywide festival, we’d done Sondheim and Tennessee Williams. We thought that this would be fantastic to not only showcase women playwrights, but showcase the theater community, that it would be a huge opportunity for collaborative efforts.”

The seven directors — Tetreault, Molly Smith of Arena Stage, Ryan Rilette of Round House Theatre, Michael Kahn of Shakespeare Theatre Company, Eric Schaeffer of Signature Theatre, David Muse of Studio Theatre and Howard Shalwitz of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company — reportedly have made it a mission to see all the plays in the festival, which should be quite an undertaking.

Maggie Boland, the managing director of Signature Theatre, said that “this is a very broad festival. Some of the plays are season-openers for some of the theaters, others will appear later in the festival and continue after it. There is a great opportunity here, too, to examine ourselves — there is a little self-criticism at work also. The hope is that these plays will have an afterlife, that what we’re doing here is creating a body of work that will be looked at by producers, directors and theaters across the country and in the region.

“To me, and I think the women in this festival, it has to be all good,” said Kathleen Akerley, the director of the Longacre Lea company. “I’m a self producer, but I think for all the playwrights, this is a tremendous opportunity. The plays themselves are original, different in their outlooks. They are not women’s plays, but great plays about the human condition. It’s an opportunity for audiences to discover the talent and the different viewpoints here, men and women alike. It’s a bold thing.”

Akerley’s “Bones in Whispers” was an early starter for the festival, opening Aug. 12 on a double bill with Miranda Rose Hall’s “How We Died of Disease-Related Illness.” Her “Night Falls on the Blue Planet” opens at Theater Alliance Sept. 3. Reading about her plays, you get a sense of a sensibility that mixes funny with dark, the tragic with the hilarious, something that a fellow by the name of Shakespeare did pretty well too.
“I believe in that, really, the proximity of tragedy and comedy,” she said. She has a pretty hearty laugh to go with that belief, and if the titles of her plays are an indication (“The Oogatz Man,” “Goldfish Thinking,” “Pol Pot & Associates” and “Banquo’s Dead,” among others), she has a fearless approach to theater.

The Washington theater community has always had strong female leadership. To look at the careers of Zelda Fichandler, the founder of Arena Stage, and Molly Smith, Arena’s current artistic director, as well as those of Joy Zinoman at Studio Theatre and Frankie Hewitt at Ford’s Theatre, is to rediscover a major part of theatrical history in this city.

Not to forget, there is Venus Theatre in Laurel. And long before that there was Horizons Theatre, which operated for a long time out of Grace Church in Georgetown, a classy, original company run by Leslie Jacobson, with plays more often than not written by women and stocked with some of the best directors and actresses in the city.

From a complete listing of plays and dates, visit womensvoicestheaterfestival.org.

Rum-N-Smoke Above Georgetown at the Graham
• September 1, 2015

 Thanks to Rum Day D.C. sponsors, guests enjoyed flights of aged rum and complimentary cocktails Aug. 13 atop the Observatory at the Graham Hotel on Thomas Jefferson Street NW at the kick-off for D.C.’s fourth annual Rum fest. With views of the town, the city as well as the Potomac and nearby Arlington, smokers received a complimentary, hand-rolled cigars, courtesy of co-hosts, Cortez Cigars, to pair with the bold rums, such as Atlantico, Chairman’s Reserve and Papa’s Pilar, along with Rum punch cocktails.

Other Rum Day D.C. events included the Rum Runner bus which took patrons to taste rum cocktails at some of the city’s hottest restaurants and the Rum-B-Que held at Blind Whino and featuring DCity Smokehouse.  [gallery ids="102296,127651,127629,127613,127646,127621,127636,127640" nav="thumbs"]

‘Dear Evan Hansen’: a Top-Notch Musical at Arena Stage
• August 31, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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