Arts & Society

Gary Tischler • August 15, 2013

Goodness gracious, I don’t know how much nostalgia an old body can handle.

These past few months have seen Janis Joplin re-emerged in the person of Mary Bridget Davies at Arena Stage like a furious, fiery storm of blues right out of 1960s San Francisco. I’ve seen and talked with old icon, Rambling Jack Elliott, singing under the shade of a cowboy hat as part of a star-studded tribute and centenary celebration of folk hero and working-man minstrel Woody Guthrie at the Kennedy Center.

And now, this: Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lewis on stage together live, at least in the very live facsimile persons of Cody Slaughter, Robert Britton Lyons, David Elkins and Martin Kaye, respectively, in the touring production of “Million Dollar Quartet,” a musical play by Colin Scott and Floyd Mutrox now at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater through Jan. 6.

The show is based on a historical fact—that on Dec. 4, 1956, Presley, Perkins, Cash and Lewis ended up hanging out at Sam Phillips Sun Records Studio in Memphis and did a number of impromptu songs together and separately which were taped and recorded and became known as the Million Dollar Quartet. It was the only time the four were ever together in each other’s presence at the same time, all of them having been discovered by Phillips before they became rockabilly and rock-n-roll juggernauts whose fame lasted unto death and beyond for Presley, Perkins and Cash, while Lewis, a slower and somewhat chastened version of his “Killer” self is still recording and performing.

What you get in “Million Dollar Quartet” is essentially a live concert, mixed in with less convincing and more contrived dramatic elements. There is the return of Elvis for a visit after he has already gained mega-fame and celebrity. We see Cash wanting to jump to a major record company even as Phillips is planning to extend his contract. Perkins shows smoldering resentment of Elvis and frustration with his own floundering career, while Phillips weighed an offer to join RCA, where Elvis is king. And there is an Elvis girlfriend who seems cooler, smarter and more savvy that the wailing girls usually surrounding the king of rock-n-roll in those days.

If your pop heart was baked in the songs of these four men all of your life, then this musical play is like being at a high school reunion where everybody is still alive and young and where are heard the songs, “Hound Dog,” “Ghost Riders of the Sky,” “Matchbox,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Peace in the Valley” and “Blue Suede Shoes.” You just gotta get up and dance even if you’ve got two left feet.

Everybody in this audience did get up, as some of them managed to do it very slowly. They clapped, and some shook their fragile booties, while others just slapped their program on their knees.

What’s remarkable about this show is just how good the young musicians are—they’re more musicians than actors at this stage. This realization leads you to see just how great that million dollar quartet really was, and why the music is laid so deeply in our veins—just as you recognize, beneath all the trivial contrivances in the show, what a great songwriter Irving Berlin was seeing “White Christmas” next door at the Opera House.

All of these guys—the real ones—ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and all of them influenced a host of musicians and singers and legends that came later. From Eric Clapton to Bob Dylan and beyond, all of them shone the light on the source of their particular appeal, where they heard the music and who played it—Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Jimmy Reed. They came from the sharecropper fields of Mississippi and Alabama, from New Orleans and the segregated south where all of them grew up poor. All of them heard the blues, rhythm and blues, gospel and country, and drunk with that music they invented something new. Phillips’s genius was to recognize their music as something new and overwhelming. After that, pop music was never the same.

What Lyons, Elkins, Slaughter and Kaye do isn’t exactly acting. It’s inter-acting with each other. It’s performing the music and hitting it out of the park. It’s a presence that’s convincing for the real-life characters they’re inhabiting.

Watch Kaye when he sits down at the piano as a young, completely irreverent and raw Jerry Lee Lewis—the kid doesn’t have a bone or inhibition in his body. He crawls over the piano and thumps and runs with it. It’s like a wrestling match where everybody wins and out comes “Real Wild Child,” making the Phillips character stand up and take notice. Watch Elkins as Cash, the epitome of the man in black cool. He’s kind of languorous and dangerous. He sings “I Walk the Line” and “Folsom Prison Blues” (with that cold line “I shot a man just to watch him die”), as if they were as fresh as a cold beer on a hot day.

Then, there’s Slaughter, who’s got the job of catching Elvis as a meteor rising, flush with success and a longing for simpler times. He tells Phillips of how the colonel got him to do a gig in Vegas where the older audiences booed him. “One thing I can tell you,” he says, “you’ll never catch me playing Vegas again.” He’s got a chunk of the Elvis sound and all of his moves. And there’s Kelly Lamont, as the girlfriend, coming home to meet his momma, who’s as slinky as the recently invented slinky in a pink-purple 1950s dress where women seemed to move around inside the dress, in case you weren’t paying attention. She sings the Peggy Lee standard “Fever” as if she has one.

Most interesting of all in this show where the glory tends to be shared and nurtured except when Jerry Lee Lewis is in the area is Robert Britton Lyon as Perkins, who looks like a walking, dark-haired short fuse, but who plays an electric guitar like he came out with it on day one. He is the master musician, if not the great singer among the four. Still burned up over Elvis gaining fame with “Blue Suede Shoes,” a song that Perkins rode to number one status until a car wreck sidetracked his career, Perkins lets the anger get into his playing which makes it zing with danger.

It doesn’t take long to talk yourself into feeling, if not knowing, that you’re present at the creation. Your feet twitch, your elbows get restless, you shake your head. It’s 1956 when you were . . . well, no you’re not.

But, still, it feels like a million bucks up there and out there, too.

Mary Bird •

WPAS launched the first of this season’s Stars Series with a sold-out concert by cellist Yo-Yo at the Kennedy Center Dec. 3. WPAS’s staunchest supporters enjoyed a pre-concert Silk Road buffet in tribute to Ma’s Silk Road Project, a nonprofit arts and educational organization. The performance was generously underwritten by Gary Mather and Christina Mather. The program included the first three Bach cellos suites and marked the 30th anniversary of Ma’s first appearance under WPAS auspices. The cellist conducted several workshops at the Savoy Elementary in Southeast Washington the following day. [gallery ids="101095,137968,137964,137947,137959,137954" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Canadian Ambassador Gary Doer, the nonorary patron of this year’s Choral Arts Holiday Gala, hosted supporters at a Dec. 6 embassy reception. On behalf of the ambassador, Canadian Minister Deanna Horton and Choral Arts Executive Director Debra Kraft greeted guests who later joined the embassy’s holiday party in the Canada Room. Members of the Choral Arts Chorus serenaded guests following the festive tree lighting. Lyrics from a Canadian carol, “In the Moon of Winter Time,” inspired the theme of Choral Arts’ 32nd Annual Holiday Gala, which will take place at the Kennedy Center on Dec. 17. [gallery ids="101096,137970,137960,137966" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Jean-Louis Wolzfeld, the new Ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to the United States, was still getting acclimated.

Over coffee and cookies, which had an appropriately holiday feel to it, in a small room dominated by portraits of the imposing and courageous Grand Duchess Charlotte, an inspirational figure in exile during the World War II Nazi occupation and annexation of her state, we talked with Wolzfeld about Luxembourg’s cherished Christmas traditions, about Luxembourg’s role in the European Union, about U.S.-Luxembourg relations (very good), and other matters historic and cultural.

Wolzfeld became ambassador a month ago, just in time to preside over what has become practically a tradition, the annual Christmas event, musicale, concert followed by champagne and dinner presented by the Embassy Series at the Embassy of Luxembourg at 2200 Massachusetts Avenue, held Dec. 6, 7 and 8.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Wolzfeld said. “I’ve heard a lot about it already from many people including my predecessor Jean-Paul Senninger.”

“It started in 2010,” said Jerome Barry, director and founder of the Embassy Series. “When Ambassador Senninger and I were standing at the buffet table at an event at the Embassy of Turkey. He suggested we have some series events at his embassy, and we thought of it in terms of Christmas. That first year involved ‘Call Me Madam’ and was a kind of festive, three-concert holiday event centered around ‘Call Me Madam,’ Irving Berlin and his music—he wrote ‘White Christmas’ after all. Berlin’s daughter was there. We did it again last year, again with music, carolers, and a theme of Luxembourg Christmas traditions—the embassy had gifts laid outside at the door per Luxembourg custom. It’s become something really special.”

This year’s event—“Luxembourg at Holiday Time—A Celebration of Mostly Baroque Music” will include a the German School’s children’s choir singing carols of the season and performances by baroque trumpeter Marc Weydert, pianist Maurice Clement, pianist George Peachey — and on Saturday, the Thomas Circle Singers.

Barry himself will add his baritone voice to the proceedings. The evening will also include champagne, wine, hors-d’ouvres and a buffet dinner.

“Thursday is a special day when it comes to Christmas in Luxembourg,” Ambassador Wolzfeld told us. “We don’t have a Santa Claus per se, but we have St. Nicholas Day, which is celebrated December 6. The custom is that children put out their slippers in front of their doors with the hope that St. Nicholas will bring a gift.”

It’s also customary to leave out plates in the kitchen or dining room area which are filled by St. Nicholas with sweets and cookies. On Christmas Eve, Luxembourgers attend midnight mass and gather for suppers the dishes of which include black pudding and mashed potatoes and apple sauce. “I remember this from childhood very well,” said Wolzfeld, who is a 61-year-old bachelor and career diplomat. “We, too, had a good and a dark Santa, who was very strict and made sure that children receiving gifts had actually been good. It was a different time, of course, slower and more traditional. The state, the duchy and Europe has changed.”

Luxembourg is a small nation wedged among its neighbors of Germany, France and Belgium, and the cultural evidence is everywhere. “Some of the Christmas traditions come from Germany, some from France,” Wolzfeld said. “Our population is part German, French, Luxembourgers, and now, increasingly, we are getting many immigrants from Portugal.”

Wolfzeld speaks French, English, German, Italian and Luxembourgish, which he says “is more like a dialect.” But he and his capacity for languages and his record as a diplomat, speak to a state that appears very much in the European tradition, but is also, although primarily Catholic, ecumenical in its culture, welcoming in its diversity and pragmatic in its outlook toward the rest of the world. “Our economy is very good right now,” he said. “So, our immigration policy is very welcoming. Our people and our traditions come from many different cultures and traditions, and that in and of itself is a quality we can take a lot of pride in. We look outward, not just inward, and, of course, that is also what the European Union is all about, also.”

That attitude was strained during World War II when Nazi Germany sent its forces through the Ardennes and invaded France and its neighbors, resulting in the annexation of the Duchy of Luxembourg. “I think it took a long time to get over that in terms of our relations with Germany, no question,” Wolzfeld said. “One of the reasons we have such a good relationship with the United States—and we do—is that people have not forgotten that it was the United States Army which liberated us. Patton’s forces came here, and there are 7,000 graves of American soldiers here, including General Patton himself, who requested to be buried with his troops.”

“I have been a diplomat all my life,” Wolzfeld said. “It has allowed me to see the world with a practical eye, to see our similarities not just our differences.” He a permanent representative to the United Nations in the mid-1990s, as well as an ambassador to the Court of St. James and to Japan. For Wolzfeld, Japan was “a most interesting appointment. Japan was in a boom at the time, but it was a view of a very different culture and very rewarding.”

Wolzfeld remembers Washington from his time at the United Nations. “I think it was still changing at the time as a city, and there was much more crime as I recall. But it is so different now, much more cosmopolitan, if you will. There’s so many cultural opportunities now, and the cityscape has changed also. There’s an energy here.”

Georgetowner •

The Washington Business Hall of Fame brought together more than 1,000 business and civic leaders Dec. 4 at a black-tie gala and awards ceremony. It raises more than $1 million annu- ally to support Junior Achievement’s financial literacy programs for Washington area students in grades K through 12. Founded in 1988 by Junior Achievement of Greater Washington, the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Washingtonian, the Washington Business Hall of Fame rec- ognizes outstanding business leadership and significant contributions to the quality of life in the National Capital Area.

Robert Devaney •

he Georgetown Jingle held a pre-party Nov. 29 at the Four Seasons Hotel to ring up support and thank its supporters, as the hotel lobby was filled with Christmas trees and seasonal vignettes, created by designers and dedicated to cancer patients. The seventh annual Georgetown Jingle will be held Dec. 16 in two parts: “Act 1, Winter Wonderland,” 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., mainly for the children; “Act 2: Pamala Live!” 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., for the grown-ups. Georgetown Jingle was founded in 2006 by the Four Seasons Hotel and the design community to benefit pediatric cancer programs at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital. Oh, yes, those trees and vignettes in the lobby are avail- able for purchase.

Mary Bird •

Following its London launch, Egyptian investor, art collector and philanthropist Shafik Gabr was in Washington as his eponymous foundation hosted “East-West: The Art of Dialogue,” a two- part symposium at the Mellon Auditorium on Nov. 27. The foundation draws its inspiration from the 19th-century Orientalist painters as a means to transcend stereotypes and engender empathy. At an evening reception, showcasing the superb art, Dan Shapiro, who moderated the morning program, emphasized the danger of exclusion, the need to build connections and the power of communication. The distinguished attendees included Princess Michael of Kent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and former Chief of Protocol Selwa Roosevelt. [gallery ids="102492,120238,120233" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Prevention of Blindness Society of Metropolitan Washington presented the Fifth Annual American Girl Fashion Show at the Bolger Center in Potomac, Md. The event featured local models in a runway fashion show of historical clothing as well as a seated tea party reception with party favors, door prizes and special souvenirs. Guests had a photo and autograph opportunity with American Girl book authors Valerie Tripp and Sharon Cindrich. Proceeds benefited POB’s sight-saving children’s programs. [gallery ids="101083,137355,137350,137346" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

On Oct. 31, the Fairmont Washington, D.C., celebrated our faithful companions at the first annual Howl-o-Ween Trick or Treating in the hotel’s heated courtyard. Spirits were high as the good natured furry guests modeled costumes in exchange for peanut butter doggie biscuits created by the Fairmont’s famed pastry team. Regional VP and general manager Mark Andrew’s delight in announcing the winners for best costume augured that this will become an annual event. Bipeds happily toasted the prize winners with a cup of “Witches’ Brew.” [gallery ids="101055,136943,136913,136938,136920,136933,136927" nav="thumbs"]