Arts & Society

Georgetowner • December 10, 2013

I kept thinking, as I watched Mikhail Baryshnikov navigate the stage of the Lansburgh Theatre in “Man in a Case,” a theater piece from the Washington Shakespeare Theatre Company by way of the Hartford Stage in Connecticut, what this might be like without him.

Watching him move, gesture, do no more than a 30-second series of moves to the blues, a little skip-and-glide, watching him collapse on a bed, or put something yearning and languid in a tentative gesture of unfulfilled love, you remember who he is. At the same time, you see him as the men on stage, you get a little lost in the Chekhov stories he inhabits along with a wonderfully eclectic and eccentric cast of performers.

It’s all a little puzzling, this echo of other lives and identities.   A young woman, kind of Chekhovian in a loose scarf, confessed that she was a little confused, as she walked out of the theater with her companion.  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s just Chekhov.”

That it is, but it’s also a little more than that.  This is the work of Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater, who combine dance, theatre and video and achieve an effect that makes audience members feel more like casual witnesses.  It’s an odd effect. When you walk in, you see folks at a long wooden table, there’s pop music—Petula Clark?—the people are hunters, who begin to talk about the efficacy of wild turkey calls.

Videos end up on screens, on tables, they’re tools to broaden the story, make faces and feelings bigger, but like the later Carly Simon song, seem to be not so much tools as toys after a while. They’re —lookee here—echoes of ourselves, because, you think, surely these characters don’t know the music.

The piece—and it is more piece than outright, formal play—is a riff on Chekhov’s riffs on love in two of his short stories: “Man in A Cage” about a professor of Greek  in a school in a small obviously Russian village and “About Love” about a man with a married woman. In the end, well, it is just Chekhov.

Baryshnikov plays the headmaster who is most at home within the strictures of rules, habit, the strait jacket of allowed behavior as well the poetry of government circulars. He narrates this tale of a love affair that only Chekhov could write properly and brings another dimension to things. The dimension that Baryshnikov brings—he is a small, but always charismatic, presence—is the Russian echo to the two stories. He came to the West from a repressive system and a world where a break in the order of things was ominous. Now, the ballet prince and king is a majordomo.

The Greek master professor is an object of both derision and fear. It’s as if everyone knows he’s taking notes on changes in the emotional and intellectual, the behavioral atmosphere, this figure in a dark coat, awkward and clumsy, at one point clumsily being pushed to dance.  Imagine that: a clumsy, awkward Baryshnikov.

It’s what makes him scary in the end, until, inevitably, he meets a girl whom he’s expected to marry. She undoes him bit by bit with laughter, a kind of fleshy silliness. She’s a disturbance in the field who causes him an ultimate kind of embarrassment until he’s still. That again is hard to think about: him still unto death.

In “About Love” is carried by his languid narrative voice. It’s a tale of circumstance that is so peculiarly Russian, evoking not the Soviet system, as the first might have, but Pushkin, Chekhov, even mad Tchaikovsky. In the telling, sometimes taken up by others, the man describes his growing love, unrequited, and what it does to the woman in question.

Taken together, the man in the case, wrapping his heart into cold confusion with pamphlets and routine and the man and the woman and the love they lost are both like a dance, choreographed between here and now and where they came from.  Something about it all is highly affecting, beguiling, sad and human—not the least of which is the presence of Mikhail Baryshnikov.  And that’s not just Chekhov.

“Man in a Case” runs through Dec. 22 in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre at 450 7th St., NW. [gallery ids="101573,148325" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • December 6, 2013

Pseudolus is back in town at long last, and so is Bruce Dow.

Pseudolus can trace his lineage back to the old Roman farces written by Plautus, and to “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” the 1962 musical with a score by Stephen Sondheim.

The musical had an out-of-town tryout right here in Washington at the National Theatre, and Jerome Robbins lent a hand with the book before the show made it to Broadway and became a memorable musical, Sondheim’s first major effort, although a long
way from the types of musicals that he would become famous for.

Dow is returning to Washington in the sense that he was here playing Bottoms in the Ethan McSweeney-directed version of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and what a memorable Bottom he was at that, playing the stage-struck leader of the so-called mechanicals who had quite a midsummer night himself, ending up wearing the head of a donkey with Titania, the queen of the fairies.

“That was a wonderful experience, the whole production was just a delight to do here,” said Dow, who calls himself mostly a North American, being born in Seattle and raised in in Vancouver, Canada, living a goodly time in Seattle and now being somewhat between residences. He plays Pseudolus, a part he’s played before, including a memorable production at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada. “So, I’m glad to be doing this here.”

Pseudolus, the slave who schemes mightily and cannily to gain his freedom during the course of “Forum,” cast a long shadow, as does “Forum” itself, especially in its Richard Lester-directed film version, which starred Zero Mostel as Pseudolus, and featured such legendary clowns as Phil Silvers, who turned down the role on Broadway, and even Buster Keaton. Silver would return to head a Broadway revival, while Nathan Lane starred in still another version.

“You don’t ever try to compare yourself to Zero, or to the film,” Dow said. “It’s just not smart. The movie was a movie, it was very strange, zany, and so forth, but it’s not the show, the play, it’s not theater.”

“It has tremendous music in it, this was Sondheim’s first really big show, so to speak,” Dow said. “It’s more than ‘Comedy Tonight.’ It has wonderful ballads, and it has a lot of resonance. This was a show in which many of the main characters are slaves, who want more than anything to be free. You can feel that if you really listen to the song ‘Free.’ ”

“The roots are of course vaudeville, everybody in it originally came from that milieu, with its time-honored farce and physical humor and vulgarity,” Dow said.

“I knew when I was a child that this was what I wanted to do and my parents encouraged me,” Dow said. “I got superb and broad training at the University of British Columbia. I wanted to be an actor, but I had such good professors, and learned about so
many things that I joined their MFA in directing program.”

Luckily, Dow returned to acting and did a lot of it and all kinds of it at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, including two stints in “Forum,” playing the host in “Cabaret,” various clowns and character parts in Shakespeare plays, including a stint as Trimulco in a production of “The Tempest,” which starred Christopher Plummer.

He also went to Broadway in roles in productions of “Jane Eyre,” “The Music Man” and most recently “Jesus Christ, Superstar” in which he played Herod, singing nifty lines like “You’re the Great Jesus Christ, the Great Jesus Christ, walk across my swimming pool.”

Herod was a revelation to many people—this was a full blown, full-bodied, avid character—you can catch Dow singing to Jesus on YouTube, dancing, hoofing, eyebrowed and gowned, draped around a piano.

His training and his track record and that American-Canadian thing, his versatility seems not just something he learned but a quality he has. He can do Japanese-style theater, he can sing (two CDs, cabaret and pop music), he can hoof a little, he’s a clown of the highest and lowest order (there was no end to his Bottom, a truly original personification), he has written two shows. On the phone, you hear the eager clown, but also the guy on a quest.

“I think that line between comedy and tragedy, serious straight plays and musicals and musical comedies is very thin,” he said. “I’d like to do some things, ‘Timons of Athens,’which is rarely done, it’s a great challenge I think. Beckett’s tramps, they’re desperate, but they’re funny too, they’re clowns, after all.

It would not pay to tag Dow as a clown, or any other specific tag. He’s more like Bottom, a mechanical born to be a theatrical, a man of the imagined worlds and people of the theater.

“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” runs through Jan. 5 at the Harman Center for the Arts; www.ShakespeareTheatre.org.
[gallery ids="118656,118662" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

The 20th anniversary of the Gala, held at the Ritz-Carlton Washington, DC on Nov. 14, raised over $560,000 to benefit victims of domestic violence. Washington’s most stunning ladies donned Great Gatsby finery in keeping with this year’s theme. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), firmly committed to keeping women and families safe, was the keynote speaker. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was live auctioneer with a surprise performance by Grammy nominated singer-songwriter Eric Benet, who garnered $31,000 to perform for a ladies luncheon. Cheryl Masri and Jill Sorensen founded KOA to raise awareness and provide protection for victims of domestic abuse. [gallery ids="101568,148576,148572,148568,148562,148591,148589,148558,148584,148580" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • November 26, 2013

There is perhaps nothing so mysterious in show biz as the sound of tapping feet, or, in one of its many disguises, the (“gimme that”) old soft shoe, or the slide, it makes hardly any sound. What all forms of tap dancing do is to make the audience happy, for reasons that are not that easy to figure out. In performance terms, it is a holy mystery.

The other mystery besides its giddy, happiness-inducing quality—who knows, if Napoleon had seen a tap dance before making up his mind to go to Moscow, he might never have went—is that to the eye of the beholder, the whole thing looks as easy as selling chocolate.

Except that it isn’t.

“Nothing about it is easy,” said Maurice Hines, the celebrated Broadway performer, dancer, singer and legend of tap, in a recent interview. “It’s supposed to look easy. That’s part of the trick, but it sure isn’t easy, I can tell you that. It’s not work, in the sense that you gotta love tapping if you’re going to be a tap dancer, but it’s hard work in the practice, the doing it right, and just about everything it can do to body, muscle and bones, when those taps hit the floor, you feel it practically all the way to your teeth.”
If anybody ought to know about tap, it’s Hines who’s spent his life in show biz and tap. So, now he’s at Arena Stage, back in Washington, a town he loves, doing “Maurice Hines is Tappin Thru Life,” now through Dec. 29 at the Kreeger Theater.

Here’s a tip about tap: be prepared to warm up with warm feelings, maybe an itch to want do a little tapping underneath your chair yourself. Guaranteed is that for a while you will absolutely not think about Obamacare or the Redskins.

“Yeah, I think for a while there, it was something of a lost art, in terms of people studying how to do it, people teaching it, or tap numbers not being part of big Broadway musicals so much,” Hines said. But Hines, who has taught master classes in tap to folks and is always on the look out for the next generation of tap dancers doesn’t just dance—he teaches. In his case, those that teach, teach because they do it and have done for all of their lives.

The show, directed by Jeff Calhoun, is also a tribute to his kid brother Gregory, his charismatic partner in dance, star singer and actor who died of cancer ten years ago. “My little brother,” he said. “When we were little kids in growing up in Harlem, there was a story about us already, and we didn’t even know how to dance. Mom would take us out, and people would stare at us. And somebody would ask, what are they doing. And somebody else would say, “Look at them walk.”

“It’s about my life in tap, about Gregory, about our musical influences, the people whose music I listened to all my life, like Ella—Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Nat ‘King’ Cole and Judy Garland. These are the folks who were an inspiration to me. Watching them on stage, in a theater, in a club, you got the sense of how great it is to be a performer. They did everything with class.

That’s a sense you get about Hines, too, if you saw him in the Arena Stage as Nathan Detroit a number of years ago (Sinatra did the movie version), if you saw his work in “Sophisticated Ladies,” the Duke Ellington show which was an Arena production at the Lincoln Theater a few years back, you get a good sense of him. You notice not only how light he is on his feet, you notice how he gets from here to there, still and all, just like a kid, although with style and elegance and something unforgettable, like a millionaire’s after shave lingering in the room. And if you saw him with his brother in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Cotton Club”—they played tap dancing brothers—you got a sense of them together.

“Tap’s been not just a part of my life, it’s a part of the country’s life,” he said. “You go back to Mister Bojangles, to the Nicholas Brothers, that’s a part of our history.”

Hines is joined by the Manzari brothers, John and Leo, a pair of gifted dancers he discovered while casting “Sophisticated Ladies,” along with the Heimowitz Brothers, Sam and Max, students at Knock on Wood Tap Studio, who started dancing about the time that Gregory and Maurice did.

“Like everything else, tap changes, life changes,” Hines said. “Savion Glover just got people all excited all over again with his form of more contemporary tap dancing.” Other things have kept the mystery real—the young people’s film “Happy Feet,” and 1989’s “Tap,” which starred Gregory Hines.

“Tap” is a tapestry, whose ingredients are words and moves, song and dance, the kind that re-arranged our dreams and parts of the American lexicon, the naming of the moves is like a long poem’s roster of moves and ways of moving around a stage or a living room, down the street, in a tux, or jeans, on a street corner. Listen to the music, watch the move: the pullback, flap heel, running flap, wings, the shim sham shimmy, the paddle roll, the paradiddle, stomp, brushes, scuffs, spanks, riffs, the single and double toe punch, hell click, hot steps, over-the-tops, New Yorkers, Shiggy Bops, chugs, and cramp roll turns. The hard tappers see themselves as musicians, making music.

“As far as I’m concerned, my brother was the greatest tap dancer that ever lived,” Maurice Hines said.
“I miss him, and I think of him every day,” Hines said. “I used to call him up wherever we might happen to be. I still find myself starting to do it at times. So, this is my tribute to him. To all the tap dancers, but to my kid brother, especially.”
At the Kreeger, there will be songs and rhythm, the sound of feet hitting the floor, the almost-sound of a slide and glide, the old soft shoe, maybe a shaggy bop, a paradiddle.

Guaranteed to make you happy.

Gary Tischler • November 25, 2013

Friday, November 22, will be day of remembering all over Washington, D.C., and the country and the world, but especially here in a city full of venues and cultural institution which will dedicate themselves to commemorating and remembering the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

Among the numerous screenings, talks, exhibitions and the like, the screening of a 50-year-old movie about Kennedy, his legacy and his death and funeral with a talk by its producer might not seem like such a big deal.

But the 3 p.m. screening of “John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums,” and an introduction and discussion by its producer George Stevens, Jr., is a big deal. The film—a documentary written and directed by Bruce Herschensohn, produced by Stevens and created in the immediate aftermath of the assassination for the U.S. Information Agency—has not been seen in years. An expertly restored version of the film, narrated by Gregory Peck, is now available as a DVD.

“I hadn’t seen it myself for a number of years,” said Stevens, a noted film and television director, producer of the Kennedy Center Honors and founder of the American Film Institute, “The negative was lost, God only knows how. The prints from an inter-positive negative, I think—which I did see—were smudged, cracked, awful. I didn’t think it could ever be restored properly, but the people at Warner Brothers who restored “Giant,” which was directed by my father George Stevens, did a remarkable job of restoration. When I saw it, it was an amazing experience for me.”

Stevens, who was then head of the film department of the USIA, proposed the project to its director Edward R. Murrow. “At the time, we had never made a feature length film before,” Stevens said. “We used 35-millimeter color film in filming the funeral and the internment and the lighting of the eternal flame, and I still recall how vivid the colors were, how real everything seemed, even today. We did not have color television yet at time. Looking at it for the first time in a long time, I was amazed how energizing the color was.”

The structure of the film began with the inauguration speech, went to the somber days of the funeral, and went back and forth among the administration’s major achievements, including the creation of the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress, the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. space initiative, the Cuban missile crisis, and efforts at world peace with the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and back to the funeral. All through the film, you see the president and his family, mostly, the president in crowds, the president on his trip to his ancestral homeland in Ireland and the president in Costa Rica among cheering crowds.

The narration by the familiar (to an older generation) voice of Peck seems in spots old-fashioned, with the imagery rooted firmly in its time and places. It has a grieving, but also idealistic tone and feel to it, a documentary made by a wounded heart clasping hope for a permanent legacy to its bosom. It is a documentary in the sense that everything in it is real—and therefore powerful and moving—but it is a documentary which embraced the president’s pragmatic idealism, fueled by grief and dashed dreams.

“We sent camera crews to 14 countries to capture the world’s reaction,” Stevens said. “By law, we were not supposed to be allowed to screen for American public consumption, since the agency created material for overseas consumption. But the congress passed a special law allowing this film to be distributed in the United States in 1964. There was a screening at the State Department, which the New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther attended, and he praised the film in the highest terms.”

“I don’t what the box office results were, but I think it did very well and it was popular,” Stevens said.

“You know that it is a film very much of its times,” he said. “But Kennedy, he seems so real in it, he speaks very much to us still. I have my own feelings about what might have happened and I think the country as a whole would have been better for that. He had a quality. He inspired men and women to do, not just to dream, to change the world through action.”

That ability to inspire on the part of Kennedy—and his much-lauded humor– comes through in the film, he might as well be alive so vivid are the scenes of his speech at the inauguration, after entering in the wake of top-hatted Ike and Nixon, his reception in Costa Rica, the gladness of it all, and the sheer happiness on display among the crowds all over Ireland.

What makes the film truly powerful—you can scrutinize it all you want for flaws or cinematic style, but no matter—is its artlessness. It is not seamless, the language is often culturally and socially anachronistic, things move too swiftly in the funeral procession of the mighty led by Charles De Gaulle. But it’s not presenting art. Viewed from this distance by people who were alive then and have echoes in their heads about the day of drums, it’s almost shattering to see Caroline—now the U.S. Ambassador to Japan—along with Jackie, Ted and Robert, and, John, Jr., saluting. Viewing this is knowing the rest of the story, which is the story of our lives.

On Friday, Nov. 22, there will be noon and 3 p.m screenings of the film at the American History Museum; George Stevens will speak at the 3 p.m. showing.

Gary Tischler •

Singing in America is once again a really big deal. From voice competitions on network television ranging across vocal genres, to the critical importance of singers in opera, to “Glee” on television and Broadway musicals where big, rangy voices, which are the hallmarks of shows like “Wicked,” are in demand.

It’s entirely fitting then that the Kennedy Center is presenting an unprecedented three-day (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) festival of voices and singing, called “American Voices.” It’s equally appropriate that soprano Renee Fleming, one of the premiere American and world-class singers will be moderating, curating and leading the festival.

“Everywhere in our country’s popular culture—from ‘Glee’ and ‘106 &Park’ to ‘American Idol,’ ‘The Voice’ and ‘Nashville,’ at sporting events and national ceremonies—the art of singing is suddenly center stage. This festival will explore, across a range of genres, the artistry, business, technology, pedagogy and community of American singing,” Fleming said.

The festival will also feature some of the top vocalists and singers in the country, holding master sessions and performing in the centerpiece “American Voices” concert, 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 23, at the Kennedy Center. In addition, there will be several symposiums on a variety of subjects, concerning music and singing in America today.

Fleming will also be a part of the “American Voices” concert, featuring Sara Bareilles, Kim Burrell, Kurt Elling, Ben Folds, Sutton Foster, Josh Groban, Alison Krauss, Norm Lewis, Eric Owens and Dianne Reeves with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Steven Reineke.

Heading master sessions will be Eric Owens on classical music at 2 p.m., Friday, Nov. 22; Dianne Reeves on jazz at 8 p.m., Friday, Nov. 22; Alison Krauss on country music at 10 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 23; Ben Folds on pop music at 3:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 23; Sutton Foster on musical theater at 11 a.m., Sunday, Nov. 24; Kim Burrell on Gospel at 3 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 24. Fleming will head a Sunday wrap-up session. All master sessions will be held in the Terrace Theater and will be moderated by Fleming.

There will also be symposiums in the Atrium: “Vocal Health and Illness: Insights into the Past, Present and Future,” 4:30 p.m, Friday, Nov. 22; “The Business of Technology of Popular Singing Today”, 1:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 23; “Voice Training Today” 1:30 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 24.

There will also be free performances at the center’s Millennium Stage by the jazz vocal group Afro Blue and Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist’s Program Friday, 6 p.m., Friday, Nov. 22; Gospel singer Vanessa WIlliams and the country band Mama Tried, 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, and musical theater performer Erin Driscoll and multi-instrumentalist Jon Carroll, 6 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 24.

Georgetowner • November 21, 2013

On Nov. 13 at the historic Howard Theatre, Comcast held an exclusive screening of Universal Pictures’ “The Best Man Holiday.” The evening began with a discussion with writer, director, and producer Malcolm D. Lee and was hosted hosted by MSNBC’s Tamron Hall.

Event designer Andre Wells created a lovely atmosphere with fresh popped popcorn, childhood candy favorites and cocktails that made the viewing into one to be remember.

Robert Devaney • November 18, 2013

The 10th Annual Living in Pink Luncheon & Boutique was held Nov. 1 at the Fairmont Hotel and honored Rachel Brem, M.D., of the George Washington University School of Medicine and presented the Noel Soderberg-Evans Award to Carolyn R. “Bo” Aldigé, who founded the Prevent Cancer Foundation in 1985 in memory of her father, Edward P. Richardson, who died of cancer one year earlier.

Councilman Jack Evans presented the Soderberg-Evans Award, named in honor of his first wife Noel who died of cancer in 2003, to Aldigé. Evans noted that the award is crafted in the image of a Monarch butterfly, by which Noel asked her three children to remember her. In her acceptance speech, Aldigé echoed the butterfly theme, saying a butterfly landed on her father’s casket during his burial. There were few dry eyes in the room with that remark.

Guest speaker Pamela Peeke, M.D., chief medical correspondent for Discovery Health Television, spoke of the “Hero’s Journey,” as explained by mythologist Joseph Campbell, an archetype aptly tied to those afflicted by the scourge of cancer.

Emcee Greta Kreuz, news anchor for ABC 7/ WJLA-TV kept things moving with her witty asides.

Watching over it all was hostess Michele Conley, a two-time breast cancer survivor herself, and founder of Living in Pink, which is dedicated to aiding breast cancer research. Since its inception in 2004, Living in Pink contributions have helped fund a variety of local and national research endeavors to further the prevention and treatment of breast cancer.

Gary Tischler •

With “Love in Afghanistan,” playwright Charles Randolph Wright has written a play that covers a lot of bases and touchstone. It’s contemporary, while dealing with centuries-old customs. It’s got the familiar “Romeo and Juliet” and “Madame Butterfly” elements in it. It’s a play about the differences between men and women, Americans and Afghans, love and commitment or love versus commitment.

On the surface or at first glance, “Love in Afghanistan”—at the Cradle at Arena Stage—also appears to have powerful, original characters: Roya, a young Afghan woman, committed to working for her countrywomen, and Sayeed, her sophisticated, urbane and cosmopolitan father, both of them living among the Americans, working as interpreters. Then, there’s Duke, a swaggering, super-charming pop, rap and hip-hop star, here to entertain the troops, and his mother Desiree, a high-power business woman, living in Dubai.

At first, it’s a tale of boy-meets-girl, boy-wants-girl, girl is charmed but resists the American pop star with a keen sense of entitlement. He pushes, she yields, a little, until she finally agrees, pretending to lead him to a man that would act as his guide in a trip to Kabul, which is out of bounds for the visiting super star. The guide is actually Roya, resorting to her habit as a child of dressing up as a boy to get work and help her family, a centuries-old practice called bacha posh.

Stopping for coffee, they almost become the victims of a terrorist bombing, which, since it involved Duke, makes unwanted headlines.

The halting, push-and-pull courtship of Roya, who is dedicated to the cause of Afghan women’s rights has its charms, as does Duke. However, Duke is more about what he wants, than who he wants, going to great lengths to help Roya and her father, including a trip to Dubai where some things that you might expect to happen don’t, and some that you don’t expect do.

In a play that features a pop star and a cultured father in the leads, it’s ironic that the women are the most memorable, appealing characters. They understand each other and protect each other. The men, when push comes to shove, revert to being men. The results of the play’s dramatics tend to diminish the male characters, and there’s a failure to communicate here that doesn’t quite seem believable.

Khris Davis as Duke is all way cool swagger, high energy, a kind of irresistible force that is very resistible when it comes to Roya. She’s obviously a little smitten, and she, in a nod to the irresistible force that is American hip hop and video, is familiar with the young man’s work. Duke, having been raised in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Washington, D.C., is having a hard time with his second album generating street cred. He sees Roya as a kind of object of his determined affection—at best, someone in need of his generosity and help. Oddly, the father concurs in the end.

Old prejudices and habits die hard here and makes the play a kind of halting affair. But not altogether—and that’s thanks to the remarkable actress Melis Aker, who makes Roya an unforgettable character, a strong young woman, aware of the risks, even fearful of them, busy committed to who she is. That kind of commitment may not be apparent to Duke, but Aker makes it real for the audience.

Robert Devaney •

It isn’t easy being Ta’Rea Campbell these days, but it sure sounds like a lot of fun.

Campbell—who has had so far an impressive career in Broadway-style musical theater that might take some folks the better part of a lifetime to achieve—is starring in the national tour of “Sister Act,” the hit Broadway musical take on the popular 1992 Whoopi Goldberg comedy. Campbell plays, and Whoopi played a diva on the lam from the mob who enters a San Francisco convent and makes it a hideout. Laughter then—and laughter and music now—ensued.

The show is now at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House through Nov. 10 as part of an extended tour that’s a hectic pace for Campbell, who’s starred in “The Lion King,” “The Book of Mormon” and “Aida” among other hit shows.

“I have to admit this so far in my career has been the most challenging thing I’ve ever done,” the Philadelphia native said. “It’s hard work, but it’s fun because the role is so much fun. And when we were doing rehearsals, I met Whoopi who was looking in. She was the most fun, the nicest, most helpful person, just couldn’t be better. I admire her a whole lot, but you can’t just imitate her. You have to find your own way in it, how it relates to you. Seeing her in ‘The Color Purple’ and the movie itself inspired me to want to become an actress.”

“You know what it is,” she said. “This is it. This is me. There’s a lot of responsibility there, you expend a lot of energy. In “The Lion King,” I was only on stage for less than an hour. Here, I’m on stage pretty much all of the time. That’s work.”

But Campbell sounds like the optimist, glass-half-full or probably mostly full type, and she’s been wowing them all across the country. The biggest wow probably occurred in April in Philadelphia, where the show played there for a short run. “That’s my hometown,” Campbell said. “That’s where I grew up. Everybody I knew came, my family, everybody. Here’s the thing: because the show’s setting has been changed from Las Vegas to Philadelphia, the first line of the show is naturally ‘Hello, Philadelphia.’ That was kind of a big line for me.”

Campbell started out wanting to be a dramatic actress. “I still want to do that, but you know, in this business, things happen,” she said. “You can’t envision the future. Everybody’s got dreams. Mine were a little different. I studied acting, but ended up in musical theater, which has been an amazing experience.”

“What’s great about this show for me is that I can do everything in it—sing (disco, gospel). I can clown it. I can act. So, it’s kind of perfect.”

“I’ve been blessed,” Campbell said. “My boyfriend, who’s a musician, he’s a violinist, and I got engaged. He’s working in New York where I live. I get to take Stevie, my beautiful Chihuahua-Beagle mix with me. Stevie is great company.”

“Sister Act” features a score by Alan Menke and is directed by Broadway veteran Jerry Zaks.