Arts & Society

Gary Tischler • April 23, 2015

At the Helen Hayes Awards held at the venerable, history-drenched Lincoln Theatre on U Street April 7 with a party at the relatively nearby Howard Theater afterward, it was still the same old story, in the sense that the awards, named after the legendary stage actress, were meant to honor the outstanding achievements in the entire Washington theater community.

This process was always a little unwieldy and often, but not always, rewarded the more established members of the theater community.  This year, the folks in charge decided to level the playing field and broaden the reward field a little and a lot by coming up with two sets of awards—the Helens and the Hayes—with the Hayes awards designated for shows in which half of the performers and artists are members of the union Actor’s Equity, and the Helen awards going to shows which are not.

The result was a total of 47 categories to be decided in one evening, and   at least  five times that number of individuals nominated.  The Helen Hayes Awards, no matter where they were held, or who was nominated, always tended to be rich but lengthy evenings, what with special awards, musical numbers and sometimes longish speech.  The thought of the number of categories as doubled no doubt sent shivers through the spines of both the audience members, writers, nominees and other sundry folks, fantasizing an event that might run into midnight.

Surprise!   Folks needn’t have worried.  The show itself probably set a record for brevity, finishing around a quarter past nine at a clip that left everybody breathless and the bartenders out in the lobby busy.  Organizers enforced a strict 30-second time limit for acceptance speeches, which left us all with an often amusing spectacle of winners racing to the stage, women dropping or leaving high heels in the aisles or in the seats.  That left no time to thank everybody, or thoughtful if lengthy reflections on journeys from here to there and this moment, but left room for heart-felt emotions, many occasions of inventiveness, and no blame for leaving out thank yous. 

If the idea was to be more inclusive in spreading the wealth and joy, it worked—Theater Alliance, a small, but sterling, group working out of the Anacostia Playhouse, wound up with the most awards—seven—as a member of the Helen faction, for its wonderful revival of “Black Nativity,” which won outstanding musical (Helen) and the lesser known “The Wonderful World of Dissocia” which took best play (Helen).

The confusion and profusion of categories rarely abated—it was just too damn difficult to keep track of things—and that included the unlucky presenters who misplaced data every now and then. 

Certain things were still  decipherable—every year, it seems a theater has its moment of breakthrough—not just Alliance in the Helens but also Olney Theater, which burst through in the Hayes group with four awards for the highly original , edgy and one-of-a-kind straight play “Colossal,” which got playwright Andrew Hinderaker the Charles MacArthur Award for outstanding original play.  “Colossal,” which was about football but also movement and dance, was a critical smash and garnered three other awards.

Other more or less “big” winners were Signature’s “Sunday in the Park with George,”  which shared best musical (Hayes) honors with the Kennedy Center’s “Side Show,” which also won outstanding ensemble in a musical (Hayes). “George” got a best direction award for Jon Kalbfleisch, cementing his reputation as a major director via Signature.

Speaking of big wins and rising stars—Erin Weaver took two best supporting actress awards and was a part of the team that took the outstanding play or musical adaptation for “The Gift of Nothing” at the Kennedy Center.  She and her husband Aaron Posner wrote the adaptation.

The consistently original and gifted actress Kimberly Gilbert received the just rewards her character did not when she beat out Kathleen Turner (“Mother Courage” at Arena) for best actress in a play (Hayes) for her truly star turn as “Marie Antoinette” at Woolly Mammoth. 

“Little Dancer,” the ground-up and much praised Kennedy Center musical, had only one nomination but won it—a get for choreographer Susan Strohman.

And, as is sometimes the case with these awards, Studio Theatre, with no wins for the evening won the last award—best play (Hayes) for “Cock.”  Artistic director David Muse accepted the award with a funny, but perhaps predictable, observation.

So, what was different?  Well, change comes to everything as it must: no musical numbers, no long speeches, more and more rising artists, which is a good thing, loudly vocal and whistling and cheering and having a ball through the proceedings as more and more of their number ran up to the podium.  “Wow,” a Washington Post rep said, “I didn’t know actors were in such good shape.”

But it was also a sign that the theater community as a whole—divided into Helens and Hayes or not—was in good shape, in terms of diversity, in terms of interests, talent, and new works. The volume of noise and energy at the awards spoke, well, volumes to the health of the organizers, theatreWashington, of theater in Washington and of the Helen Hayes (or should we say, Helen-Hayes) Awards.    

For any and all details, winners, nominees and other information, visit the Theatre Washington website.

Gary Tischler •

Part of the job description for the S&R Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence is to be a multifaceted ambassador to the Washington cultural world, explaining, performing, presenting and representing the goals and results of the foundation.

Grounded in its purchases in Georgetown of Halcyon House and the Evermay estate, S&R “works with its partners to encourage social, scientific and artistic innovation, and to promote cultural and personal development.”

The young Canadian pianist Ryo Yanagitani is just about the best kind of ambassador any organization or institution could have. Affable, enthusiastic, articulate and brimming with enthusiasms and energy, Yanagitani is the foundation’s first resident artist, and he’s still here, teaching, playing, bringing his considerable gifts to the community at large.

“I thought at first it was supposed to be a one-year thing, which artist-in-residence stints often are,” he said. “Well, I’m now heading into my third residency, and it’s been an amazing experience.”

According to Kuno, the S&R Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence program “is meant to not only give selected emerging artists a home and place of inspiration, but also to provide a platform for collaboration among young musicians from around the world.”

Listening to Yanagitani, you get a sense of both his background and his heritage. He’s 36, looks at least a decade younger and combines an electric curiosity with a clean, friendly formality and charm. “I’m glad to be continuing the residency,” he said. “It gives me a chance to explore myself as an artist, a pianist, a professional and a human being,” he said.

His parents emigrated from Japan to Canada, specifically Vancouver, that far-west city that seems to a visitor a 21st-century, self-consciously livable city.

Yanagitini has a master of music degree from the Yale School of Music, where he studied under Boris Berman, and has completed the residency portion of his doctor of musical arts degree. He has recorded (an album of Chopin), he’s a member of the Music à la Mode new-music ensemble in New York and collaborates with cellist Jacques Lee Wood.

His collaborative and outreach work has included master classes for piano students at Duke Ellington School for the Arts.

Yanagitani is a key part of S&R Spring Overture Concert Series. On April 15, the concert series continues with S&R Washington Award grand-prize winner Tamaki Kawakubo, conductor and double bassist Nabil Shehata and the Evermay Chamber Orchestra presenting an evening of Tchaikovsky, Barrière and Vivaldi, including the classic “Four Seasons.”

Yanagitani will perform cabaret and musical-theater selections with mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen on April 24; works for flute and piano with flutist Lorna McGhee, who will play some of the Library of Congress’s rare instruments, on May 1; and works for violin and piano with violinist Sayaka Shoji on May 12. On May 16, he will close out the spring season with a solo recital of works by Rachmaninoff.

In addition, sister and brother Melissa Margulis, violin, and Jura Margulis, piano, will perform on April 21 and the Mark Meadows Jazz Quartet on May 8.

Since its inception, the series – staged in the intimate and graceful salon at Evermay –has become increasingly diverse and ambitious in its programming.

“Music is changing,” Yanagitani said. “It’s a complicated world, and you have to be aware of what you can do in making a career out of music, how to explore your gifts while making a living in performance. It’s a little like walking on eggshells.”

He loves being in Washington, and in Georgetown, although he lives with friends in Bethesda. “It’s such a diverse area, so many things going on, and I think there is an audience that’s out there that’s really appreciative. In the setting at Evermay, the connection to the music becomes both intimate and visceral. You can talk about the music a little. But you haves to spread your wings,” he said. “I’ve even explored a little tango music, and lately, I’ve discovered American musicals: ‘Wicked’ and ‘Miss Saigon,’ for instance.

“I happen to love the romantic and classic period of the 19th century,” Yanagitani will tell you. “But one of the things about making music your life is you have to, and should, broaden your interests. I’ve played piano since I was a child, practically, and to me, it’s always been an intimate, intense experience to play, to learn, to live that life.”

Robert Devaney •

The city’s largest women’s homeless shelter held its powerhouse annual gala, chaired by Jill and Nathan Daschle, March 24 at the Ritz-Carlton, raising more than $800,000 and bringing together Washington’s political women and neighborhood women. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi presented the Founder’s Award to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Nicole Boxer, who directed “How I Got Over,” a documentary about 15 women at N Street Village. White House advisor Valerie Jarrett presented the Steinbruck Award to three women who turned their lives around: Rachel Panay, Pertrina Thomas and Dorothy Young. [gallery ids="102043,134720,134723,134718,134722" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

Tyler Jeffrey of Beasley Real Estate, the Art Registry, Bozzuto, Havenly and Bitches Who Brunch got together March 18 at the Penthouse at the District on S Street, along with art by Dominique Fierro and Maggie O’Neill, and celebrated art and design in D.C. and springtime.
[gallery ids="102045,134712,134713,134704,134706,134708,134710" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

Held at the Washington Convention Center March 28, Leukemia Ball was set to raise at least $3.1 million for the fight against leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, and myeloma. Along with emcees Lindsay Czarniak and her husband Craig Melvin, comedian Howie Mandel and musician Michael Cavanaugh entertained 2,000 attendees, who enjoyed dinner, a silent auction and the Mercedes-Benz raffle — all to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, National Capital Area Chapter. [gallery ids="102046,134696,134694,134697" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

On March 18, Taipei’s Economic and Cultural Representative to the United States, Ambassador Lyushun Shen and his wife Christine Shen hosted Partners for the Arts’ anniversary celebration at their elegant residence Twin Oaks in Cleveland Park. The non-profit founded by Leilane Mehler promotes the careers of emerging opera singers not under management through a variety of outreach activities. The evening gave the artists a platform to let their award-winning voices be heard. [gallery ids="102047,134690,134693,134692" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • April 21, 2015

Kim Sajet is shy.

All right, she’s not shy. Not at all.

The new (relatively, since 2013) director of what was frequently referred to as the venerable National Portrait Gallery looks, moves, talks and thinks as if she’s been freshly minted, in the moment, and looking ahead and not too much behind. She demonstrated these qualities vividly as the guest speaker at the Georgetown Media Group’s Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the George Town Club April 9.

Sajet, a striking blonde presence, is not the type to stand statically behind a podium (if there had been a podium). Personable and direct, funny with a self-deprecating sense of humor, Sajet proved to be rangy in both the way she managed to get to the heart of portraiture as art (and a pioneering art form of immediacy), and her role as chief embracer and explainer of an institution which, she said, she was surprised to be asked to head. She’s a gifted, natural storyteller, an emphasizer, a pacer and an embracer of the world of now and the next day.

Nothing stodgy here. Born in Nigeria to Dutch parents, raised in Australia, a mother (two young sons, ages 20 and 17 ), Sajet is bound to be an adept multi-tasker. Her credentials are diverse and impeccable—president and CEO of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania from 2007 to 2013, former senior vice president and deputy director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, curator and director of two Australian museums, a master’s degree in art history from Bryn Mawr College and one in business administration at Melbourne University Business School, arts leadership training at the Harvard Business School, the Getty and National Arts Strategies. That’s more than enough to give her resume arts gravitas and reason enough to get the job offer for heading the National Portrait Gallery. “Plus, I speak three languages, all of them with an accent.”

But wait, there’s more. She has a bottomless well of enthusiasm enriched by thoughtfulness, a love of challenge, a willingness to not only elicit and entertain new ideas, but to have a few herself.

The idea for an American portrait gallery came from the example set by the British who’ve had their own National Portrait Gallery since 1856.

“The British can be so annoying that way,” she quipped. “They have so many kings and queens and royals, it’s kind of irritating. But we do have Katy Perry with a tiara—and nothing befits a woman more than a tiara. But she’s here because of her accomplishments—how many millions of records?”

Sajat noted that the NPG, renovated and sparkling as part of the Reynolds Center with the Smithsonian American Art Museum downtown, is about accomplishment, about “people who have had an impact on history and our own lives.” “But,” she said, “it is a living thing, about living human beings, that’s what a portrait is. We are pursuing portraiture in real time, as well as the presidents, the first ladies (we are backfilling there), scientists, artists, athletes and so on.”

But to her it isn’t just about categories of achievement, but about human beings who made decisions in their lives on their way to becoming who they were.

“You look at people like Albert Einstein or Lance Armstrong, and they made decisions that led them to become who they are,” she said. “When you look at their portraits that’s what you think about .”

“We are different from other galleries and museums—we deal in persons and personalities as well as art. Art matters, but the person being portrayed matters, too.”

“We all come to art in different ways, and when we see portraits we see ourselves. I remember when I was thirteen , a young girl, and I saw an Edward Hopper painting, one of those diners, and there were sundry people in it. Young men, lost people, a lady of the night, and in the middle of all that was a clown, and he was so terribly sad, and I thought, immediately, that’s, me, that’s how I feel, exactly, it’s my life.”

And during the courses of that story, she gave a perfectly audacious and exaggerated physical portrait of her young adolescent self.

“To me it’s amazing what happens when people encounter portraits and how full of opportunity the process is,” she said. “It crosses generations—here’s a father telling a son all about Lucille Ball or George Carlin, or the teen talking about a contemporary singer.”

Technology, she says, draws people into museums and “that’s a good thing.” She adds, “People today have so many digital images at their fingertips, in the computer, the pads, the phones.”

She recognizes and talks with humor about the constant scrutiny the NPG is under, including on a recent portrait of President Bill Clinton which apparently has the shadowy presence of a blue dress recalling sex and scandal.

“You have no idea what it’s like to part of the Smithsonian Institution and what that means in terms of scrutiny, how much attention and feedback you get today as well. I check the social media all the time, how we’re seen or mentioned on Yelp,” she said.

She sees this sometimes maze-like place, with its holdings and collections, its videos and portraiture contests—“An Asian girl had done a portrait—because she noticed she was eating almost nothing but rice—a self-portrait made entirely out of rice”—as a kind of fun house full of ideas about how people see themselves, are seen by others, and remembered. And there’s room almost for everybody. “I’m interested in the concept of outsiders, of a different kind of categories, including more women, more minorities, we’re working now on an exhibition about members of today’s American military and the wars they haves fought,” Sajet explains.

The popular and very focused “One Life” series will include Dolores Huerta, who stood side-by-side with Caesar Chavez in his battles for migrant workers

She fairly bursts with ideas and stories. When you listen to her, the notion of the National Portrait Gallery as a somewhat stodgy record of triumphant lives of leading men begins to fade. “I noticed,” she said, “that the exhibition on Elvis Presley was our most popular.”

She talks about the academic rigor of the writing and labels that go with the portraits. She talks about possibilities—“We are a national institution, but we should also include the international.”

The world is clearly changing, and it appears the National Portrait Gallery isn’t so much adapting as pushing to the forefront.

And it’s Kim Sajet, chief ringmaster and pied piper, who’s leading the way, with an accent. [gallery ids="102049,134684" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Who knew that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia could be such an entertaining curmudgeon?

Justice Scalia probably does—after all he’s been known to act out a little on the court and he’s a huge opera buff—especially of the Verdi and Puccini kind—where acting out is an art form.

And playwright John Strand seems to think so—in his new play “The Originalist,” now in the Kogod Cradle of Arena Stage, he gives us a voluble, combustible Scalia sparring loudly, with strands of mercy, with a vocal, emotional self-described liberal law clerk. Scalia dominates the stage when he’s on it, which is as it should be.

Actor Edward Gero surely knows that, and a lot more, as he embodies the most lightning-struck justice on the court, the ultra-conservative darling of the right, the son of Italian immigrants, the family man, brilliant, the charismatic, funny, unrepentant and self-described defender of the United States Constitution.

Gero—who in his full maturity has taken on characters as diverse as the volatile artist Mark Rothko and Ebenezer Scrooge—dives into the character of Antonin Scalia (with due diligence of research and sitting in on Supreme Court sessions) as if it was a particularly inviting churning ocean. His portrait is full-bodied, and he also has the good fortune to bear a strong resemblance to Scalia—both men are built a little low to the ground, they’re strong and stocky in appearance.

“The Originalist” is of course a set-up play, a kind of fiction that works on our assumptions and biases, the things we think we know about the man, or that we’ve read about him. It’s also a setup in terms of the dramatic situation—Scalia has hired as a clerk a young Harvard law grad who he knows to be a very liberal type, or “flaming” as she describes herself. She’s an attractive, bi-racial young woman named Cat, who means to make a lasting impression on Scalia, perhaps even persuade him to reason when it comes to his well-known conservative and sometimes outrageous views on everything from affirmative action, (emphatically against it) to the death penalty (emphatically for it).

Cat, played with appealing energy by Kerry Warren, takes Scalia on from the get go and their sparring exposes some contradictions in the man—and this is borne out in what we know. While he and justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg are on opposite sides on most of the heated cases that have come before the court, he acknowledges that he loves and respects her, that they’re good friends. This may be because of a shared passion for the opera.

Opera is the background music for this production—directed with perfect pitch and pace by Arena Artistic Director Molly Smith—arias resound like punctuations periodically. It’s interesting that Scalia so loves opera—he insists that he is only interested in the law and its original meaning, not emotions, a kind of Sergeant Friday approach to legal cases, as in just the facts while opera, especially the Italian variety—goes straight for the emotional jugular.

Cat and Scalia spar almost all of the time—yet, while the stakes, especially for Cat—are high, they seem laced with a certain amount of affectionate respect. Scalia shows sympathy when he learns her father is in a coma, and he (the champion of the right to bear arms) takes her to a gun range to teach how to shoot, which she takes to with alarming delight.

To Scalia, the Constitution is stone—to liberals like Cat it’s a living document, amendable, changeable, flexible to fit the march of time. That’s the crux of the matter here, and it comes up again when the court takers up the Defense of Marriage act, in which Cat tries to change Scalia’s tone to a more inclusive one in his sharp, defiant dissent.

All of this is both intelligent and entertaining, until Strand sets up a straw man, not in Scalia but in the person of a rival clerk named Brad, an arch conservative young tea party type who battles no holds barred, literally at one point, with Cat to curry Scalia’s favor. He’s such a devious, hateful, smug and arrogant type that, by comparison, Scalia becomes almost loveable. You long the blond, buff, smarmy Brad to get his, and he does.

This detracts from the real battle for an easy moment.

To really get the full impact, watch your fellow audience members and see how, or if they react. I went to a Saturday matinee far from the body politic and it appeared to made up of almost 100% baby boomers like me, who got all the digs, the point-counterpoint jabs, some, like Cat’s contention that Scalia was a monster and lacked a heart seemed to give even Scalia pause.

I’m sorry. I meant Gero’s character of Scalia. This is one of those contradictory occasions when we choose to embrace the man on stage, to believe in him, which is what good theatre does. The newspapers and talk shows are always less forgiving.

Alison Schafer • April 14, 2015

It is always good to be the star, and in “The Bullet” – Georgetowner Mary Louise Kelly’s new thriller – we are. Along with Caroline Cashion, the book’s heroine, Georgetown itself plays a big role.

In fact, the word ‘Georgetown’ is right there on the front page. Cashion is a (fictional, of course) professor of 19th-century French literature at Georgetown University.

Unlike most professors, Cashion is beautiful and loaded with interesting secrets, the most intriguing being: Why is there a bullet lodged in the back of her neck, a bullet (it gets even better) that she never knew was there?

Unraveling the why and figuring out the who lies at the heart of the book, which includes several familiar settings. Early on, Cashion gets drunk at the Tombs. (I say from experience that she’s among the legions who have done the same thing.) Shortly after, she cops to an obsession with Pâtisserie Poupon’s croissants – she also likes the bacon quiche – and hangs out at Saxby’s on 35th Street.

As the pace picks up, Cashion figures out why she’s carrying a bullet around in her neck. She is attacked at her house on Q Street and runs to the Georgetown University police for help. It turns out she was adopted when she was three years old, and the bullet in her neck is the same bullet that killed her mother. Who killed her parents? Why? She soon realizes that, because the markings on the bullet she’s carrying could identify the killer, she is in danger.

Kelly wrote most of the book while on sabbatical in Florence last year, where her two boys learned to rattle off Italian slang and honed their soccer skills. Now she’s back home in Georgetown. It is nice to think of her staring out at the dry hills above Florence while thinking about the coffee at Saxby’s. Now she’s probably sitting at Saxby’s thinking about the caffè latte at her favorite place in Florence. [gallery ids="102026,134910" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Over the years, I’ve probably seen five or six productions of “Man of La Mancha,” the ground-breaking musical take on Miguel Cervantes’ classic tale of an aging, would-be knight errant who’s dubbed himself Don Quixote, beginning with a 1970s touring production starring the late Jose Ferrer, which I saw in San Francisco.

After seeing and experiencing the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production, directed dynamically and unerringly by Alan Paul, I can say without reservation that I’ve never seen a better production than this one. Even while hewing fairly closely to the look and feel of other productions, Paul, a splendid group of designers and an outstanding cast have given the audience a production that looks and feels as fresh as it surely was in 1968 when the Lew Wasserman scripted play debuted on Broadway and won a Tony for best musical, with another Tony going to Richard Kiley in the lead.

The idea still seems exciting to me, even though I feared that it might be overly familiar—after all, everybody of a certain age must have hummed, or even tried to sing in a piano bar or the shower “The Impossible Dream.”

I needn’t have worried. The idea of a brightly—and slightly demented—retired solider and member of the landed gentry taking to horse and arms to take on evil and “beat the unbeatable foe” in a Spain beset by the Inquisition seems almost like an urgent mission today, in a world where every other person’s a cynic, and every third person is a victim of malady, oppression, terror and the stupidity of the governing classes.

“Man of La Mancha,” then and now, is a novelty among musicals, it stands almost in a class by itself, while carrying the trappings of American musical traditions, especially with a backpack full of insidiously unforgettable songs. It doesn’t resemble Rodgers and Hammerstein efforts—missing a certain sentimental elan– it doesn’t have the rock-pop boom of a “Hair”, a “Jesus Christ Superstar” or “Godspell,”,amid which it landed. And it doesn’t have the overpowering need to overwhelm the audience often characterized by the later efforts of Andrew Lloyd Weber and his ilk.

It has itself—a brilliant book by Wasserman, with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion—and the idea that you can create a major Broadway musical hit by going back into theater’s bag of basic tricks and let three enthralling characters and their fates carry the show to enduring fame.

I would guess to new generations not in thrall to old stories, “La Mancha” carries something of an extra kick—it lets the audience imagine itself into the play. Nothing fancy here—in “La Mancha’, theater is still a matter of improvising, using what’s at hand, allowing actors and would-be-actors to play their parts through imagination. The show follows both the dictums of Hamlet’s pep talk to the players and Sir Laurence Olivier’s idea that all you really need to put on a play is a fake nose, a few props and talent.

All of those things are present in abundance here—including the long-lasting gifts of Miguel Cervantes himself who not only wrote the original book in the early 1600s, but also serves as a principal character in “Man of La Mancha.” He and a squire have landed in a grimy, dangerous prison awaiting an interview with the Inquisition, always a terrible ordeal. He’s also in the hands of his fellow prisoners, who wait to grab all of his belongings, which include costumes, a trunk and a manuscript. The prisoners put him on trial, for which he will stage a play about the life and times of a certain Don Quixote, starring Cervantes himself. If it’s thumbs down, he loses everything.

So “Man of La Mancha” begins with a time-tested (see “Hamlet”) theatrical ploy, a play within a play. In it, Quixote, accompanied by his squire Sancho, does battle with windmills he sees as three-armed giants, encounters a roadside tavern, which he sees as a castle to protect, is knighted by the innkeeper as “The Knight of the Woeful Countenance,” mistakes a barber’s tool for a golden helmet, battles a gang of vicious muleteers, and most important of all, meets Aldonza, a hardened scullery maid and sometime prostitute, who, in his eyes is the adored-from-afar great lady Dulcinea, whom he loved with all of his fevered spirituality.

Nothing good can come of this, but in the fractured world of Quixote, he is in the thick of the fight for everything good. Aldonza is drawn to him, bewildered by his kind treatment of her. Sancho follows him because “I like Him” and his niece and her fiancé are embarrassed by him to the point of disaster.

Although the musical has always been touching and moving, there is hardly an ounce of cheap, or slightly more costly sentimentality in it—the songs, to be sure are stirring, but the setting—prison and inn, are rough, unprettified. There is the inquisition, the gang of thieving, murderous muleteers. There is rape. There is death.

And yet, you walk out of it feeling better by far for having been there. A major credit goes to Paul, who is only 30 and has won a Helen Hayes Award for the dazzling, hilarious magic act called “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. His direction—energetic, paced in a way so that the two-hour-without intermission show seems to go swiftly and in fulfilling fashion but somehow makes you want more.

Everybody brings something different to the roles—I’ve seen Ferrer, Raul Julia and Broadway dynamo Brian Stokes Mitchell in the role of Quixote, but for my money, the Australian actor Anthony Warlow, a veteran of numerous musicals, tops them all. He has a great baritone voice and pulls out the musical emotions from the songs, which reminds us that “The Impossible Dream” and “Dulcinea” and the rousing opener “Man of La Mancha”, are true Broadway songs. He’s a terrific actor and an even better singer.

Newcomer Amber Iman plays and sings the part of Aldonza with such gritty force that she almost steals the show—she embodies the part—the low to the ground woman “born in a ditch” and the idealized Dulcinea as two aspects of a very human woman. And Nehal Joshi has a wonderful and heartfelt, deadpan sense of comedic timing as Sancho.

“La Mancha” feels edgy still—even in these times when going viral is a virtue. It may not be brand new, but it’s a lot newer than what passes for much of the latest new thing. [gallery ids="102033,134818,134821,134820" nav="thumbs"]