Arts & Society

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"]

Mary Bird •

Hope Connections for Cancer Support’s annual gala was held March 18 at the Park Hyatt, where Judy Deason, a cancer survivor and tireless advocate, received the Celebration of Hope Award. The Partnership Award was given to Capital Elevator Services for its pro bono installation of a chair stair at the historic Beaumont House facility. Winnie Feldman-Lindauer and Diane Malhmood were honored with the Special Volunteer Award for opening a fund-raising thrift shop to support the mission. Hope Connections President and CEO Paula Rothenberg announced that the programs will soon be expanding into Prince George’s County.
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Robert Devaney • April 13, 2015

Neighbors, volunteers and benefactors gathered at the George Town Club March 12 to cheer the new season of Concerts in the Park, a program of the Citizens Association of Georgetown. Concerts are slated for May 17 (Rebecca McCabe) and June 14 (Father’s Day) at Volta Park — and July 12 at Rose Park. [gallery ids="102027,134909,134904,134906,134908" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Harry Schnipper, executive director and owner of Blues Alley, recalled the first time he went to “the nation’s oldest continuing jazz supper club.”

“I was 17, I was a kid. It was 1968 and guitarist Larry Coryell was playing,” he said during an interview at the National Press Club. “I’ve been going there ever since, in one way or another.”

“In a lot of ways, it hasn’t changed a bit.”

And in a lot of ways, it’s changed a lot.

This is Blues Alley’s 50th anniversary year, and, physically, it hasn’t changed much at all. The sign is the same, and in the namesake alley, just off Wisconsin Avenue down from M Street, you have to jump back if you’re occupying the same space as a delivery truck.

Outside, a window displays Down Beat magazine signs from 2012 and 2014, designating Blues Alley as a Great Jazz Venue. Inside, it’s almost an idling time machine. It’s Friday afternoon, and Senegalese guitarists Cheikh Ndoye and Baaba Maal and their group are setting up on the small bandstand, presided over by the classic Blues Alley logo, a tuxedoed player hunched over his trumpet.

There are amps and bongo drums and instruments all over the lit stage. Japanese pianist Manami Morita, who’ll be playing with the gang that night, is tuning things up on the piano. Manager Chris Ross, stepson of former owner John Bunyan, is overseeing things.

The bar is still smallish, not enough to host a rugby team, with the usual bottles of high-end blends and bourbons and what not. The posted sign says Capacity 124. Nearby are rows of black-and-white photos of performers who have appeared at Blues Alley, from stars like pianist Ramsey Lewis to relative newcomers like trumpeter Sean Jones.

The pictures are resonant of an international reputation. The storied history of Blues Alley as a place where big names got their start, and where bigger names came back time and again, have given the place a vibe that is indicative both of excellence and of the changing, swiftly expanding world of jazz.

The list of names is actually kind of astonishing: Lewis, Monty Alexander (still rolling hot), Mose Allison, Tony Bennett, the late jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd (who opened up his own place down the street for a time), Steve Jordan, Les McCann, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus, Peter Nero, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, George Shearing, the sublime vocalist Sarah Vaughan, Grover Washington, Jr., Nancy Wilson, Ron Holloway, Ahmad Jamal, Stanley Turrentine and Earl “Fatha” Hines.

And, of course, there was the great jazz ambassador with the big cheeks and the wholly original style: Dizzy Gillespie, the pioneering trumpet player who took bebop beyond Charlie Parker and brought it into the mainstream. Gillespie was closely associated with Blues Alley. He was honorary chairman of the Blues Alley Jazz Society, which – along with the Blues Alley Youth Orchestra, to which he lent his time and name – are thriving under Schnipper as audience- and artist-building non-profit enterprises.

Schnipper is an organized kind of guy. He knows what he wants to say, he has a plan, a schedule. But the more you talk with him, the more you see a guy who’s driven by a passion for jazz. There isn’t any question that Schnipper – who’s also an adept and busy businessman and real estate broker – is still smitten with jazz. He keeps his eye on every table and napkin in Blues Alley, and seems to remember every note from a quartet, a sax, a vocalist, that he’s ever heard there.

“The thing about this is that you really get to know all the players, the musicians, the performers. People have built their careers here.”

Notable among them is Wynton Marsalis, without question jazz’s reigning superstar. In December of 1986, when he was just 26 years old, he recorded “Wynton Marsalis Live at Blues Alley.” Other “Live” albums followed, including one by the haunting local vocalist Eva Cassidy, who died of cancer, age 33, in 1996.

A musician, clarinetist Tommy Gwaltney, opened Blues Alley in 1965, but it was Bunyan – a businessman who loved jazz unabashedly – who steered it to prominence, to the point that big-name musicians played there regularly.

This year is also the 30th anniversary of the Blues Alley Jazz Society. Schnipper, who came on board in the mid-1990s, likes to use the title of executive director, which is a job description, but in truth, he said, “I am the owner and have been so since 2005.”

With the two nonprofits, the Jazz Society and the Youth Orchestra, “we look to the future,” he said, “Jazz is different now.”

“We’re educating young musicians through the society and the orchestra. This, in turn, at some point, expands the audience, and expands the world of emerging artists.” Schnipper was named the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival’s Jazz Educator of the Year in February.

In many ways, the operation is a word-of-mouth happening that has persisted for five decades. While Georgetowners like the idea of Blues Alley and its international cred and rep, they don’t make up the bulk of the club’s audience. “Tourists, people from all over who have heard of the place“ are the majority, said Schnipper. “You can travel abroad in Europe and Asia and other places, and people know Blues Alley.”

Programming is changing, too. Blues Alley now sponsors a yearly Big Band Jam with a tribute theme, featuring top-notch players. This year’s jam – the eleventh – is a special tribute to the “Ella and Louis Legacy,” with Sean Jones as artist-in-residence. It will be held April 18-30 at venues including (besides Blues Alley) the Kennedy Center, Pershing Park and THEARC in Ward 8.

“Jazz itself is like this big umbrella, and it includes its roots, different kinds of music. Its singular core is improvisation, which is why it is such an appealing live performance event,” said Schnipper. “One of the things you’ll see just looking at the schedules and calendar is the variety – lots of emerging musicians and artists, but also established stars, and groups and artists from around the world. But we try to present the whole world of jazz.”

Check out Blues Alley’s rich, full-of-stories website and you’ll get a sense of that world.

He calls his wife, Madeline (they’ve been married 21 years), “the glue that holds the place together. She does everything here, and she knows everything.” An attractive, warm and straight-talking redhead, you can find her in the booth upstairs where the lights and sound get turned on, or all over the place.

Ross, the manager, pointed to the Green Room. “When Eartha Kitt sang here, she complained that there wasn’t a window in it. So we had an artist paint a window on the wall. That’s why this painting’s here.”

“In the end, this place, any real jazz place, is about atmosphere,” Schnipper said. “The music, the lights, the people. Listening.”

In Blues Alley, there’s a “quiet, please” rule while the musicians play. Out of respect, for sure. But also because you might miss something: a note that hangs out there like a curve ball, a riff that goes to a place musically unmapped, a song that takes you tripping.

And at times like those, you can hear the backbeat musical whisper of everyone who’s ever played there.

Dear Georgetowner,

I just remembered that when we met last Thursday you encouraged me to contact you on or before today. First, let me say that I am sorry that you two could not attend that evening’s performance. The shows were a game-changer and shall evermore change the way we present music at Blues Alley. Furthermore, I wish to remind you that my two favorite jazz artists are probably Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones for their instrumentational/compositional/orchestrational and inspirational abilities.

Finally, we chatted about some of the more identifiable personalities that have graced the Blues Alley stage over the past five decades. Stand-out artists would include the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis, Phyllis Hyman, Tony Bennett, Mary Lou Williams, Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughn and Billy Eckstine. Some of my own personal favorites include Dr. John, Miles Davis, David Sanborn, Boz Scaggs and Harry Connick, Jr. A compendium of all performers or performances should exist but regrettably does not. Thank you for honoring Blues Alley with our first feature article.
— Harry Schnipper [gallery ids="102022,134924,134916,134922,134925,134918,134920" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

Showing up for the fourth time at the Gridiron Club dinner, President Barack Obama proved himself a more than able comic-in-chief, joking about Hillary Clinton’s email snafu and D.C.’s partial legalization of marijuana. Also at hand were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, doing stand-up for the Republicans and Democrats, respectively.

Put on by the Gridiron Club and Foundation, formed by newspapers and news services in 1885, the evening of fellowship demands that journalists and politicians call a truce and mock themselves. There were also musical skits by press members. The U.S. Marine Band was there, and everyone sang “Auld Lang Syne” at the end. The 130th annual dinner was held March 14 at the Renaissance Hotel on 9th Street NW with photographers, reporters and onlookers waiting in the lobby. [gallery ids="102028,134900,134898,134896,134894,134892,134890,134888,134886,134884,134878,134882,134880,134902,134903" nav="thumbs"]

Charlene Louis •

On Saturday, March 14, the Washington, DC Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc. celebrated 75 years of empowering children, families and the community at a fundraising black-tie gala at the Ritz-Carlton on 22nd Street. The event raised money for the Town Hall Education Arts Recreational Campus (THEARC) and the Jack and Jill of America Foundation. Established in 1938 in Philadelphia, Jack & Jill of America, Inc. provides social, cultural, and educational opportunities for African-American youth between the ages of two and 19. [gallery ids="102029,134876,134870,134877,134874,134872" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Spanish Ambassador Ramón Gil-Casares, who expressed his admiration for Latino Student Fund’s “commitment to the Spanish community and to youth,” served as the honorary patron of the gala at the Organization of American States March 12. The organization is dedicated to making a positive impact on the lives and education of Latino youth through Saturday classes, merit-based tuition stipends and other programs. Leon Harris of WJLA-ABC7 News emceed at the dinner, which was preceded by a reception and silent auction. [gallery ids="102030,134866,134869,134868" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

The James Bond spy series was the theme of this year’s Night of Vision gala supporting Prevention of Blindness Society of Metropolitan Washington’s sight-saving programs at the Four Seasons March 21. The event included silent and live auctions, a dinner with award presentations and dancing to music by Retrospect. Night of Vision chair Sally Ann Pilkerton presented supporter Gloria Butland, cited as “POB’s fairy godmother,” with the Community Service Award. Gloria quipped, “Honey, if you don’t ask for it, you’re never going to get it.” Wendy Gasch, M.D., received the Professional Service Award.
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Gary Tischler •

As the smartly brief but epic musical “Freedom’s Song: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War” moves to its inevitable end at Ford’s Theatre, a shot rings out, loud, sudden and startling – all the more surprising and emotionally powerful because it’s familiar, because we’ve been expecting it.

The sound comes from the hallowed presidential box. We know this because we know exactly where we are, if not in time, then certainly in history.

The moment is a punch, a kind of climax to the production at hand. It sparks a keen awareness of being here, in this theatre, and also that we are in the midst of the commemoration of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. He and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln were at Ford’s to watch a comedy, “Our American Cousin,” starring the noted actress Laura Keene.

That box to the side of the balcony is always there and always has been. In many ways, it’s the reason for the theatre’s existence, and nothing accentuates that fact more than an anniversary of the assassination.

The same day that “Freedom’s Song” opened, a press preview was held across the street at 514 10th St. NW, the theatre’s Center For Education and Leadership, for the exhibition “Silent Witnesses: Artifacts of the Lincoln Assassination.” The small space is filled with artifacts: the overcoat Lincoln was wearing, the oh-so-small derringer used to kill him, Mary Todd’s black velvet coat and fragments of her bloodied dress, letters, the president’s top hat and so on. It is an intimate space and show, but hugely resonant with the “Freedom’s Song” production.

Both events are part of “Ford’s 150: Remembering the Lincoln Assassination,” a season-long series of events that began with the play “The Widow Lincoln.” A highlight of the schedule is “The Lincoln Tribute,” a round-the-clock event on April 14-15, with talks, a one-act play, a panel discussion and living-history presentations on 10th Street about the two days surrounding the assassination, including Lincoln’s death at 7:22 a.m. at the Petersen House.

The proximity of the “Silent Witnesses” exhibition to the “Freedom’s Song” production creates a kind of reciprocal poignancy. Knowing what Lincoln carried in his pocket – two pairs of spectacles and a lens polisher, a watch fob, a pocket knife, a wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note, a linen handkerchief and, apparently, newspaper clips that included articles critical of him – adds something to his words as spoken by members of the cast of “Freedom’s Song,” the human, earthy, prosaic stuff of a great man.

It is not the first time that the presence of the box – the loca sancta, if you will – becomes important at a Ford’s production. Recent plays about Lincoln, a previous offering of the musical “The Civil War,” which forms the basis for “Freedom’s Song,” “The Rivalry,” “The Widow Lincoln,” “The Stars Hung in Black” and so on, resonate in ways that they could not do anywhere else. These days, visitors take selfies with the box in the background before the plays begin.

“Freedom’s Song” is a series of songs as vignettes, bringing us through the Civil War as if we are riding in a musical carriage. The difference is that the words – speeches, musings, outtakes, stories – of Lincoln have been added, creating another kind of effect altogether. They are spoken by members of the cast, a group of young performers playing Union and Confederate soldiers, slaves, mothers, wives and the like as the war rolls over them in ever larger waves.

Lincoln speaks through the cast: the Gettysburg address entire, words of emancipation, a droll story of the kind Lincoln loved to tell, words on the end of the war and so on, punctuating the proceedings with his singular eloquence as we move through them.

What director Jeff Calhoun and designers Tobin Ost (sets), Wade Laboissonniere (costumes) and Michael Gilliam (lighting) have done is to create an ambiance of the Civil War. What composer Frank Wildhorn and writers Gregory Boyd and Jack Murphy have done is to overlay the narrative with a march of Americana music, songs that demand tears, emotional responses, soaring hearts and reminders of the past – and how it might have been lived and lived in.

The songs are the essence of historical pop, staged like living and lively frescoes. Slaves huddled under a table sing powerfully about “The Peculiar Institution” and its horrors, a wife sings beautifully about missing her young farmer husband, Confederates soar with “The Last Waltz of Dixie” and carouse around “The Old Gray Coat” and a fugitive slave powerfully lashes out in “Father, How Long?”

American pop music plays on emotions – it’s what makes the Great American Songbook great, after all. The cast performs it more than well, especially Carolyn Agan as the wife, Kevin McAllister as the Fugitive, Nova Payton as the Storyteller and Gregory Maheu as the Union Private, an appealing young soul who practically has a Dead Man Walking sign on his back.

The music doesn’t match the eloquence of Lincoln’s words; the words have the effect of elevating the songs to a higher level.
The shot, when it comes, carrying with it echoes from the exhibition, is a jolt. You can hear people stop breathing for a moment. That, too, is part of the music in “Freedom’s Song” – that small gun doing so much damage, bringing us here to this place.

“Freedom’s Song” runs through May 20 and “Silent Witnesses” through May 25. [gallery ids="118143,118137,118132" nav="thumbs"]