Performance

Gary Tischler • September 29, 2014

The space—a bare room with a table and chairs, no decorations on the wall in the Shakespeare Theatre’s rehearsal studio near Eastern Market—seems the ideal setting for an interview with Nancy Robinette. She is here to rehearse her role as Daisy Werthan in the Ford Theatre’s upcoming production of “Driving Miss Daisy,” which runs from Sept. 26 to Oct. 26.

She’s still in the middle of the rehearsal process and there’s a certain clean slate aspect to talking about a play you haven’t seen yet, and which isn’t totally locked in yet for the actress.

“One thing I’ve discovered is that the play really holds up well. I was really pleased to see that,” she said. “I think it has a lot to say about how we deal with race and prejudice, not just in the play’s time setting, but for us and how we live today.”

Playwright Alfred Uhry won a Pulitzer Prize for “Driving Miss Daisy,” which starred Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman, with Freeman eventually reprising his role in the movie version with Jessica Tandy. Julie Harris and Brock Peters were in a touring version and in 2010 the play was revived on Broadway with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave.

The play revolves around widow Daisy Wertham, a retired Jewish school teacher in her seventies living in Atlanta in the 1960s. Her worried nephew has hired Hoke Coleburn to be Daisy’s chauffeur after she’s caused a car wreck. The play becomes a time-spanning saga about the relationship between a prideful, stubborn woman, who has experienced prejudice herself, but is deeply set in her ways, and a recalcitrant, proud black man. Theater-goers watch as they try to overcome their initial feelings about each other and experience the civil rights struggle taking place around them.

Robinette, one of Washington’s theatrical gems and treasures, is working with longtime Washington actor Craig Wallace. Jennifer L. +Nelson is directing the season opener.

“I think while the film was lovely, it was almost too naturalistic in its physical details,” she said. “We’re working with suggestion as far as the noise and reality of history is concerned. I think one of the things that occurs in the play is that both realize that they’ve suffered in the South and been outsiders. But this isn’t just about racial issues, it’s also about class. Daisy, in many ways, will not change because she’s from an upper class family where you didn’t do certain things and say certain things. I want to get into her strengths and her independence, which she’s losing because of age.”

Robinette had only recently finished starring as Winnie in the Scena Theatre’s production of Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days.” “That was my first Beckett,” she said. “You’re immobile through the whole play, buried halfway up to your neck in sand, reminiscing, trying to be alive. You have to figure out a way to connect to the audience.”

“You know, Robert (McNamara, the artistic director and founder of Scena Theatre) is one of the most under-appreciated theater artists in this city.”

We had talked several years ago when she starred with Kimberly Schraf and Holly Twyford in “The Carpetbaggers’ Children,” another Southern-resonant play by Horton Foote.

She remains careful in what she says, and how she says it, an approach you suspect she uses in dealing with her characters to do them justice and get them right. This comes across as caution and reticence at first, but after a while, you discover she has a gift for listening and watching so that at some point in the interview we start swapping theater stories and people stories. She has a knack for encouraging that sort of thing—tales of Beckett, other actors, other plays, her life in the theater, arrived at and built with some caution. “I couldn’t really say I was an actress full-time until I could give up my day job.”

When she came to Washington more than 20 years ago she studied with Studio Theatre founder and artistic director Joy Zinoman, which was a transforming experience. “She was my great teacher and mentor,” Robinette says.

During the course of our conversation, I began to feel as if I knew her.

And in many ways, I do. I’ve seen her on stage many times, have spent two-hour chunks of my life over two decades with her at the Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage and at other venues. I been able to watch her build a life, reputation and career. She has won three Helen Hayes Awards, including one for her role as Florence Foster Jenkins in “Souvenirs” at Studio Theatre.

Actors have a way sometimes of becoming totally immersed in their parts or bringing some unique and special quality to them, to create what the late Tana Hicken said were “transformations.” Robinette brings a voice, a kind of kinetic quality that’s all-at-once trembling and vulnerable backed by a tensile, but warm strength. Put her in tall, restoration wigs, floating-ship dresses for Shakespeare or Wilde, and she can make you laugh until it hurts. In spite of the formidable echoes of other Daisy Werthans that exist—Harris, Tandy and Redgrave—you can be sure that Nancy Robinette will make Miss Daisy her own.

“Driving Miss Daisy” runs at Ford’s Theatre Sept. 26 through Oct. 26

Gary Tischler • September 18, 2014

It’s already evident that the recent crop of new cultural and art institution leaders who have taken over the reigns at the region’s biggest and most revered institutions are striking some common themes.

You could hear them from Arvind Manocha, who took over as President and CEO at the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, as he spoke at the Georgetown Media Group’s second Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the venerable George Town Club Sept. 11.

Manocha came to Wolf Trap from a long career in California at the Hollywood Bowl, the “Best Major Outdoor Venue in America,” according to the industry. Additionally, he served previously as the CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Asssociation. Over breakfast, Manocha stated his aim and desire to cooperate with other cultural institutions with regard to both the performing arts and museums.

Wolf Trap and its Filene Center—an outdoor and indoor performance center which began operations in 1971– is the brain child and amazing creation of philanthropist Catherine Filene Shouse. As a performing arts center, it has become an institution in the traditional sense of the word, providing a huge array of performing arts events and concerts, ranging from opera to symphony concerts to recitals to jazz, classic rock and pop concerts. The venue has expanded its interests and that of its audience over the years. It now features the Barns, a more intimate venue that allows Wolf Trap to be a year-round performance arts center.

“Let me tell you, living and working in Los Angeles as I did, you can feel like you’re a little spoiled,” said Manocha, who displayed both enthusiasm for the arts and a sense of humor. “Los Angeles is this huge sprawling place, and I worked at very visible institutions. But I have to say, I was amazed at what a great urban arts community this city and this area has, and we’re so glad to be a part of it.”

To Manocha, the summer programming at Wolf Trap is like a summer festival, and a unique one at that. “It functions like a festival, because it’s a festive atmosphere, and it has this ongoing celebratory nature, but no festival – not Tanglewood, Lalapalooza, the opera festival in Santa Fe – offers such a variety and scale of concerts and events. There is literally something for everybody, for every taste, and it changes every day. Nobody does this in this country on this scale, which, of course, is what we all love about Wolf Trap. It’s a challenge to put this together, to do the kind of programming we do. It never ceases to amaze me. I come from the world of music. So, some of my interests and expertise obviously lie there.”

Manocha was proud of Wolf Trap’s long-standing opera company and opera series, and the fact that it is basically comprised of young artists, who vie to perform, learn and master their craft at Wolf Trap. “The thing that we do that nobody else does is that we guarantee that people in our program will be singing lead roles, not just being a part of the chorus or smaller parts. And it has worked. You should have seen ‘Carmen.’ It was astonishing, and we used a lot of new technology there.”

“We’re also proud of our early education program, the Early Childhood Institute for the Arts, which brings children to Wolf Trap, and lets them be exposed to the arts at an early age.”

Manocha noted that the Filene Center and the Barns hold more than 200 events every year, and that each not only bring regulars back time and time again, but events also attract new audiences.

“That’s the challenge for every institution,” he said. “To bring in new audiences, to continue our regular audiences. I’ve seen and talked with a lot of people who tell me they and their friends and families have been coming here for years, and that’s what we want to continue. We’ve changed some things – there have been pop musicians that seem to come every year, they’re traditions, so sometimes we’ve tried to shift the focus just a little to newer kinds of music, more of this, less of that. We have some advantages – while you have to commit to come out there, it’s a beautiful place, there’s no other arts and cultural experience like it. Our prices are lower for one thing, what with lawn seats and all, it’s accessible. We’re proud of our educational components and you can’t find a more family friendly place anywhere.”

“ ‘Carmen’ is an opera for people who might not go to opera,” he said. “I know lots of people who brought their kids to Wolf Trap this summer, and then the kids had their first experiences with classical music or opera.”

“With ‘Carmen,’ we saw a lot of young people on the lawn, lots more than we’ve ever seen before,” he said. “That’s an encouraging sign. They’d never been there before.

“Of course, you can always spot newcomers. They’re the ones that didn’t bring blankets, wine or food. What a concept—you can picnic on the lawn.”

Manocha said that, in the end, professionals in his business, “try to make things better—our own product, but also the experience that people carry with them after a concert or an event. We want to engender love and trust. We want to have the kinds of programs where everybody—myself included—has at least one to five events at Wolf Trap per year that feel like they’ve been planned especially for them.”
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Peter Murray •

The Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts hosted its annual ball Saturday, Sept. 13. The soiree was held on the stage of the Filene Center and was presented in partnership with the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates. The night’s entertainment, décor and cuisine paid tribute to Emirati culture, with guests smoking hookahs in a makeshift lounge and sporting henna art painted on-site. The event raised more than $1 million for the foundation’s arts and education programs and was well attended by members of the area’s political class, including Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. [gallery ids="101854,138212,138208" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • September 15, 2014

That little big show at the National Theatre with the cumbersome title of “Dirty Dancing, the Classic Story on Stage” might just surprise you.

It’s been hanging around a number of years now, touring all over the world, tapping some wellspring of fandom that maybe the world didn’t know existed. That would be the huge following for the original movie in the 1980s, which to date has cleared close to $250 million.

Now, a freshly minted, new-cast version has started its North American tour at the National Theatre, and you know what: it’s a lot of fun.

You remember the old tale. It’s camp time in the summer of 1963—and the irrepressible “Baby,” the youngest of her clan, is at a family camp with her folks and her snooty older sister. Hormones are running wild up here, and the news is very much in the news. Baby is set to join the Peace Corps, and the son of the camp owner is going to Mississippi to join the Freedom Riders.

They’re learning dancing and acting and singing from a crew of pros, chief among them the hot stuff, very buff and cool-named Johnny Castle, a not overly educated working-class guy who’s got the moves of a catnip-for-the-ladies-of-all-ages guy but the wistful heart of dreamer who wants to move up and out. Naturally, Baby is smitten, big time, and a summer romance ensues. Baby’s dad is suspicious of the lower-class Johnny, and then there’s Penny, Johnny’s dance partner and friend, and pregnant by a summer waiter.

This is the stuff of melodrama and soap opera, but just the kind of peppery ingredients, complete with schmaltz, that made a star out of Patrick Swayze as Johnny.

This is a show all about the dancing. The music is provided like a soundtrack with two terrific singers warbling. Jenlee Shallow and Doug Carpenter belt out with big emotion, voice and heart hits, such as “I Had the Time of My Life,” “In The Still of The Night,” “Love Is Strange,” “This Magic Moment” and “Do You Love Me,” backed up by a hard-driving band.

A number of things make this show work: some inventive back projections, an energy and enthusiasm on the part of the whole cast that’s infectious and the three principals.

On that note, let’s hear it for Samuel Pergande, who has the unenviable task of dancing with the ghost of Swayze. He’s no Swayze, but he’s definitely his own Johnny Castle. Ballet-trained (the Joffrey), Pergande can act well enough, but its his own move and stage presence, something on the order of a caged cat, that counts for a lot. The guy has his very own charisma, plus he brings subtle litheness and athleticism to the part, the kind that add grace to grit.

This is a show about dancing, after all, and Jenny Winton, also ballet-trained, in her first road and Broadway-type show, knocks herself and us out with elan, high kicks and struts and blonde elegance.

As “Baby,” Jillian Mueller is by now a natural Broadway baby. She comes from the world of hundreds of auditions, starring in a similar (but not so effective) film-into-show effort, “Flashdance,” of which she was easily the standout. She has a kind of sweaty energy. She’s never going less than all out and full-tilt boogy. Small in build, she’s a giant out there.

You have to remember, too, that Mueller and Pergande—whose Johnny wants to become a legit ballet dancer—have to pretend that they can’t dance certain dances, not an easy thing to bring off.

There’s another factor, and that’s the audience, which seems to be made up of movie fans, the majority of which are women, girls, millennials mixed in with baby boomers and all points in between. Somewhere along the way, they’ve got it all covered with memory, every song, every move, every line, and most of all, they kind of go crazy with the big lift, when Johnny lifts Baby way up high, and the audience erupts. They had the time of their lives, that’s for sure.

“Dirty Dancing” runs through Sept. 14 at the National Theatre.

Gary Tischler • September 10, 2014

Deborah F. Rutter, the new president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, its first female president, and only the third to hold the post, was in the middle of her first official day at work September 2 when she took time to talk on the phone.
“My office looks terrible. There’s boxes and stuff all over the place,” she said. “We had a staff meeting to meet everyone which was absolutely great. It was a very warm occasion. I was so impressed with the people here, and I’m really looking forward to the daily process of working together.

“Actually, the most important part of the day was of course deciding what my daughter would wear to school,” she said and laughed.

Even in a half hour phone conversation, you get the impression that Rutter doesn’t stand on ceremony much. She’s down to earth, accessible, moving from conversation about day-to-day living, moving to Washington from Chicago, talking about how to engage new audiences, about music and its “power to transform.” She’s at turns eloquent and vibrant, funny, professional and warm. President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association for over a decade, Rutter was named to succeed Michael Kaiser who ended his 13-year tenure on September 1. When the Kennedy Center presented her to the press last December, Rutter exuded both confidence and affability, embracing with gusto the challenge of leading what is often considered the nation’s premiere cultural and performing arts center.

There was, of course, a reason for the confidence. She was something of a transforming agent in Chicago, spreading the reputation of the CSOA out into the city and community, persuading legendary Maestro Riccardo Muti to head the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as its 10th music director and displaying a bent for collaborative efforts, city-wide festivals, large-scale educational efforts, a gift for fund-raising and a passion for the works of contemporary classical composers . During her tenure in Chicago, famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma became the first Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant.

Still, it’s plain that while under Rutter the CSOA became a force not only throughout the city of Chicago, but nationally and internationally as well, heading up the Kennedy Center is a different matter. That’s because of its various pieces—theater programming, jazz, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington National Opera, which came under the center’s wing only recently, Very Special Arts, Young People’s Program, the annual Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the last two of which result in very public red-carpet festivities and events.

“I realize the challenge,” she said, “and I look forward to it.” At the time of the announcement, she said “It’s an honor and a challenge to continue to build on the tremendous work that Michael Kaiser has done here for the past 13 years.”
While September 2 was her official first work day, she’s been busy meeting with people all along and scouting the city and the center. “We moved here and now live in American University Park, which we found to be a great place. It’s residential, it’s close to things, there are all kinds of things within walking distance. Our daughter Gillian goes to Sidwell, and she sings in a choir, which I think is terrific because that’s where you learn about working with others, about collaboration to produce beautiful music and sounds.” Her husband Peter Ellefson teaches at Northwestern and Indiana University and plays the trombone. Rutter herself grew up playing the violin and piano.

During the course of speaking with Rutter, I allowed that I hadn’t been interested in classical music when I was in high school, that I was a rock and roller. “Don’t kid yourself,” she said. “At one time or another, we’re all rock and rollers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fan of the Kinks, Sting or Dave Matthews, you listened to rock and roll at some point and it’s not forgotten.”
She said that she was “was amazed at the depth and breadth of the every-day programming at the Kennedy Center, and at the audiences’ interest in what the center offers.” “I was happy to be able to attend the NSO’s Labor Day concert which had to be moved inside to the Concert Hall because of the weather and it was absolutely thrilling to see how people were happy to be there.”

“There are so many tent poles, and silos, to the Center, the different departments, and one of the things I thought was that whatever event was going on—a concert, an opera, a ground-up musical, a dance or ballet performance, that the center’s various parts would interact and reflect individual productions—that a single project would resonate among and inspire the rest of the building.”

“Sure, I will miss Chicago. It’s a unique American city. It’s a tough place in many ways, strong and receptive, and all the myths and personas of the city are true,” she said. “But you don’t lose friends in this business. You will always see and connect with people who work in this field. And this city, as I’m beginning to see, has its own personality. It’s totally different.
“We have this historic place here. It’s connected to history, and it’s a monument as well as a performing arts center,” she said. “But there are always different ways to bring the arts to the community and the community to the arts.

She shared the experience of being at a concert for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “Truth to Power” festival at which Jason Moran, the Kennedy Center’s jazz director, performed original blues compositions with conceptual artist Theaster Gates. “Jason is such a gifted, innovative player and person,” she said of Moran.

That kind of collaboration attracts here as well. “I’m very excited about the “Little Dancer,” she said, referring to the Kennedy Center’s musical production about the relationship between the Impressionist painter Degas and the model for his famous ballerina sculpture which begins in October and coincides with a special exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.

Gary Tischler • September 3, 2014

Joseph Marcell has become Lear again.

The native of St. Lucia, board member of Shakespeare’s Globe, member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and one-time global television star, is on another tour of “King Lear,” the Bard’s grandest, most difficult, most compelling tragedy.

This Shakepeare’s Globe production will be coming to the Folger Theatre for a limited run September 5-21, bringing Marcell in full dudgeon – raging, as Dylan Thomas said, against the dying of the light. Shakepeare’s Globe’s production of “Hamlet” played for a limited run earlier this summer.

Marcell is sure to be remembered not just as Lear but as Geoffrey, the imperious butler on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” the ’90s television sitcom which made Will Smith a huge star. It didn’t do badly for Marcell in the recognition department.

“I realized when we toured that this show struck a chord worldwide, from England to Turkey,” Marcell has said. He told reporters about an incident when he was touring with Lear at Brighton in England. There comes a point when Lear asks himself (and the audience to some extent), “Who is Lear, who am I?” Someone in the audience yelled: “You’re Geoffrey.”

He is the first black actor to portray Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The part is exhausting for any actor, but “it strikes a chord with people,” said Marcell. “It is tremendously difficult, but it speaks to us. He’s a very complicated character. He is a warrior king, autocratic, prideful, but he’s become tired of 50 years of fighting and killing. He makes mistakes in judgment.

“He will not accept that he is old. That’s the crux of the matter. He can’t accept that he can’t any longer have his way and, tragically, he sets the stage for his own further downfall. It’s a generational battle as much as anything with the other two daughters.”

To Marcell, there is nothing like performing on stage.

“In touring, we’ve been in all sorts of venues, all kinds of theaters, big, small, outdoors, indoors, which makes every performance completely different. You cannot duplicate it. The outdoor-indoor thing is about space as much as anything. You have to project more, get the voice beyond the first two rows, and you’re also at the mercy – or, in one instance, the blessing – of Mother Nature.

“We had an outdoor performance once, in the afternoon, and right during the scene where Lear is wandering with the fool in the barren landscape, full of wind and fury, and he’s raging and blind in the dark and rain, why, we had a big storm come up, wind and rain and all that, and we played through, and it was like nature supplied our special effects. It was simply rough magic.

“In a theater like the Folger, indoors, compact, small, it’s different, things become more intimate, a kind of pact between actors and audience. There’s a world of difference between playing outside and inside, certainly there is.

“It’s very special to be where I am, to do what I do,” Marcell said. “But to be at the Globe, to be where it all started in some ways, to play The Big One, that’s challenge and gratifying.”

Gary Tischler • August 28, 2014

Remember this? During the summer of 1963, 17-year-old Frances “Baby” Houseman is on vacation in New York’s Catskill Mountains with her older sister and parents. Mesmerized by the racy dance moves and pounding rhythms that she discovers in the resort’s staff quarters, she can’t wait to be part of the scene, especially when she catches sight of Johnny Castle, the resort’s sexy dance instructor.

In 1987, this was the scenario for a little movie called “Dirty Dancing,” made by a small studio, and headed by a cast of little known performers named Patrick Swayze, as Johnny Castle (is that a great name or what?), Jennifer Gray as “Baby” (Is that a great name or what?) with Cynthia Rose as Johnny’s dancing partner Penny Johnson.

“Dirty Dancing” turned out to be a smash hit, provided a few numbers to the soundtrack of our lives, especially “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” and made a sexy star out of Swayze, who did more of the same in “Ghost” and “Roadhouse.”

It also become a very successful musical with different productions in far-flung places like Australia, Germany and the West End in London. Now, it’s time for the North American tour of “Dirty Dancing—The Classic Story On Stage,” running Aug. 26 through Sept. 14 at the National Theatre in Washington.

This production is also a 10th anniversary celebration for the show which was first performed at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, Australia, in 2004. The show opened in 2011 in the West End in London with an 11-million pound advance.

Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the original screenplay for the movie and the book for the show, said, “The company for the North American tour is beautiful and truthful.”

The show at the National, which kicks off an extended tour across the United States as well as Canada, has a brand new cast, headed by Samuel Pergande as Johnny and Jillian Mueller as Baby, with Jenny Winton as Penny Johnson. Mueller has had some experience in starring in a movie musical, heading a national tour of “Flashdance” recently.

With an orchestra and singers providing vocals with such songs as “Hungry Eyes,” “Hey Baby,” “Do You Love Me?” as well as the memorable hit “I’ve Had the Time of My Life,” “Dirty Dancing” is still the same old story. It’s all about the dancing, dirty and otherwise.

That’s a good thing for Pergande and Winton, both of whom bring considerable experience from the world of ballet, with both spending time with the renowned and very electric and eclectic Joffrey Ballet.

Pergande, who trained with the Milwaukee Ballet School, the San Francisco Ballet and the Bolshoi Academy in Moscow, has appeared with the American Ballet Theatre and with the Joffrey under Gerald Arpino, the co-founder of the Joffrey. Pergande was in two different companies of “Dirty Dancing”, including understudying Johnny in the London Cast. He’s also been with the U.S. national tour of “Billy Elliott” and worked with Cirque du Soleil.

“It’s very different, when it comes to dancing,” Pergande said. “The music is different. You do different things in terms of moving around. It’s edgier. Your body has to adjust to different stresses. Your energy level is different. In some ways, it’s harder. In other ways, it’s not. You bring different tools to dancing in this show.

“I loved working with Mr. Arpino,” Pergande said. “He taught me so many things. But the main thing is this: you present yourself as a man, as someone imposing, on stage. He caught me once in a rehearsal. I guess I was sort of striking a pose, looking up at the skylight. He said, ‘Sam, what are you doing? What are you looking at? You should be looking out for your woman.’ ”

“Mr. Arpino meant I should always be watching my partner, the ballerina, taking care of her, the woman dancer,” Pergande said. “Mr. Arpino said that’s what you’re there for, your partner relies on you and needs to feel safe with your strength and abilities.”

That’s probably even more true for a show like “Dirty Dancing” where the dancing is fast, sharp, full of lifts and girls leaping into the arms and strong hands of their partners.

“Exactly,” Pergande said. “You have to be there for her.”

Jenny Winton, who plays Johnny’s dancing partner, agrees. “Ballet is very different,” Winton said. “And for me, it’s the first time I’ve done anything like this and he [Pergande] has been wonderful. He’s a great dancing partner, and you learn so much from him. Your body has to make some adjustments to the music in the show. You’re doing something almost totally different—ballet is all about lines, and a kind of fluid movement. This is all about sharp cuts and quick moves.”

Winton was trained at the San Francisco Ballet School, a Bay area girl, whose parents still live in the Haight Ashbury—the hippie haven of the 1960s. She, too, has danced with the Joffrey Ballet in 2009. “Mr. Arpino had already passed [in 2008] by the time I came to the company, but everybody talked about him,” Winton said.

“It’s an amazing show,” Pergande said. “I’ve seen the audiences. They seem to know all the lyrics. They’re passionate fans of the show.

Pergande knows he’s having to deal with a shadow–the “ghost” of Patrick Swayze. “I know that’s there,” he said. “You can’t think about it. I mean, you bring your own gifts to the part, your skills, your own passion. It’s just something I don’t think about.”

Georgetowner •

When actors pass away, more than one person is lost, and more than loved ones and family feel the loss and are diminished. I was reminded of that when I heard the news of the death of Tana Hicken at the age of 70 last week at her home in Baltimore.

Hicken was a resolute, magical gem of the Washington area theater community. She left her mark and memories everywhere she worked, which included everything from Arena Stage, where she was a part of the ground-breaking production of “The Great White Hope” in 1967 and became a company member, to Everyman Theatre and Center Stage in Baltimore, to the Studio Theatre, Theater J, the Round House Theatre and theaters in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, to Hartford, Conn., to the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Her workplaces were as diverse as the roles she played—the range was phenomenal. Once you saw her in action, you never forgot her.

You never forgot Tatiana, Emily Dickinson, the addicted mother in Eugene O’Neill’s arduous, challenging “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” mad Margaret, reciting the king’s murders in “Richard III,” the vain egoist actress Arkadina in “The Seagull,” the flinty, tough-minded and tough-hearted grandmother of “Lost In Yonkers,” the vibratingly stubborn and creatively courageous woman in Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca,” the grandmother back-boned with idealistic struggles encountering her grandson in “4000 Miles” or matter-of-factly summing up a road-wreck of confusing identities in “The Comedy of Errors.” We could all go on and on, and the result would be a parade of characters created from the page and her own gifts, marching down our memories forever.

This is what happens here, if you are a theatergoer on a frequent basis in our region, you accumulate characters because this is what happens in theaters and on stage. You walk away with stuff in your head, lines said a certain way, a shake of the head, a lean body standing straight as if to ward off affection, a fairy queen seen in a new way, calculating, smart and daring. It’s the only way we can remember actors. This is what they do to us when they are doing it right. They make not themselves unforgettable, but the parts they play, the people they become.

Hicken called her work acts of “transformations,” which is true and real, I suspect, for all actors.

Whenever you saw Hicken at work, here, there and everywhere, you were reminded of what a rich company of actors is at work in the region. If repertoire companies are rare, the sheer volume and quality of professional actors working in the Washington area’s theater companies is nothing short of amazing and rewarding. If you were fortunate enough to write about Washington theater, your memories are abundant—they come in scenes, in lines, in moments, from the work of remarkable actors and performers. This is what theater performance is all about—the sound of voices calculated to reach the farthest seats without shouting, the fact that you think you hear whispers, that the audience is in the company of fleeting moments made permanent by the sheer force of the talent of the actors on stage, and the sweat, the ideas, the back and forth of rehearsals that go into the process.

You may in the course of things have had opportunities to interview the actors, or talk with them on the phone, or share off-stage moments, occasions which make the memories of the work more vivid. Because it is the work that entangles us. The really good ones—and Hicken had 20 Helen Hayes nominations and some wins to show for her work—transform us, carry us with them, into the lives being created on stage.

I talked with Hicken on the phone when she was in the midst of playing the part of the gritty, very political old lady living in New York after a lifetime of fighting the establishment, confronted with the arrival of her young and troubled grandson on her doorstep in “4000 Miles” by the gifted playwright Amy Herzog (her “Belleville” kicks off the Studio Theatre season in early September). She was a little amazed about being considered a star on the Washington theatre scene. “My husband Donald and I have lived in Baltimore for years. That that’s what we consider home,” Hicken said.

I remember seeing her as Tatiana in an Arena Stage production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and thinking that I had never thought of her in that role, which was a failure of imagination, on my part, not hers. She brought out a sharp, sizzling, and combative quality in the role that made her very much a match for her husband Oberon, and poignantly overwhelmed after falling in love with an ass.

In the later parts of her career, she was on stage twice with one of the other gifts to Washington theater, the actress Holly Twyford, in “Lost In Yonkers” and “The Road to Mecca.” Her performance in “Yonkers” at Theater J was astonishing, and, like all of her work, unforgettable.

Ari Roth, artistic director of Theater J, called her “one of the great ones.” Joy Zinoman, founder of the Studio Theater, called her a “singular artist” and “a great actress.”
There will be a tribute at Everyman Theatre on Sept. 15. The Studio Theatre will hold a tribute to Hicken on Sept. 29 at 7 p.m.

Gary Tischler • August 20, 2014

“Sometimes, it’s hard to believe it all,” said Eric Schaeffer, the Artistic Director of Signature Theatre, which has begun its 25th anniversary with a characteristic production—in terms of the theatre’s history—of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George,” now running through Sept. 21.

This anniversary season will be full of what you might call Signature’s signature, its outlook, viewpoint, production history, interests, mission and style, and yes, there will be some emphasis, to paraphrase the late Robin Williams’s riff from “The Birdcage,” on “Sondheim, Sondheim, Sondheim” throughout the year.

Sondheim provided the theatre and Schaeffer with its breakout hit back at the start of the 1991-92 season, when it mounted an electric, critically acclaimed production of “Sweeney Todd,” Sondheim’s dark and exciting take on the murderous barber of Fleet Street. “It was just our second season, and that, for sure, jumped us right out into the public eye. It’s still a little startling when you think about it.” The show won a slew of Helen Hayes awards, which was a big deal for a theatre that was only in its second season, operating out of a renovated garage in an iffy neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia.

“You’ve got to remember a little of what theater in Washington was like twenty-five years ago,” Schaeffer said. “Outside of Woolly Mammoth, which was always edgy, and reveling in plays by new playwrights, it was pretty much a large-venue scene,” Schaeffer said. “In terms of musicals, certainly, and straight plays, we were doing something different, and we still are.”

Schaeffer clearly has an affinity for Sondheim, whose often dark, daring works don’t necessarily travel well into the hinterlands. “I think he’s unique in the history of American musical theater—certainly what he did was a departure from what came before. You never know what he’s going to do next. I mean, who else would write a musical about a serial killer in Victorian England, about presidential assassins, a very dark version of Grimm’s fairy tales, and the life and loves of the French Iimpressionist scene.”

The theatre was started 25 years ago by Schaeffer and Donna Magliaccio and has consistently pioneered all kinds of theater efforts. It’s stated mission was “to produce contemporary musicals and plays, reinvent classic musicals, develop new work, and reach its community through engaging educational and outreach opportunities.”

It’s fair to say that Signature has done just that, mounting plays by new authors, serving up Sondheim (and Sondheim-like) musicals, and workshopped and fully formed new musicals (“Giant,” a musical version of the George Stevens film class and Edna Ferber move comes to mind), as well as providing new playwrights, many of them local, a venue to explore their work.

There’s more. In 2007, Signature moved to new digs in Shirlington Village, a spiffy space with a main stage and two black box theaters. The relocation caused a certain amount of economic revival in the area, much as Arena and Studio, and Woolly and the Shakespeare Theatre have done in their respective neighborhoods. It attracts about 70,000 theatergoers a year.

Schaeffer been a true theatrical pioneer. He directed key productions in the hugely successful and celebrated Sondheim festival at the Kennedy Center a number of years ago. He’s been a champion of collaboration. Recently Signature’s co-production of “Hello Dolly” with Paul Tetreault’s Fords Theater shared a Helen Hayes Award for best resident musical. The rewards have been many—320 Helen Hayes Award nominations and 82 Hayes Awards.

“I think the collaboration, working with others, and with authors, encouraging new scripts, keeps everything exciting,” Schaeffer, who’s now working on a production of “Gigi” for the Kennedy Center’s theater season, said.

In December, the curtain goes up on the world premiere musical version of the hit movie, “Diner,” by pop-rock star Sheryl Crow and film director Barry Levinson. A revival of the musical “Elmer Gantry” and “Sex With Strangers,” a new play by Laura Eason directed by Aaron Posner hit the boards in October.

And in 2015, there will be “Simply Sondheim” in April. It’s an original tribute and revue created by Schaeffer featuring six Signature performers and a 16-piece orchestra celebrating the gifted American genius and in many ways, Signature’s inspirational soul. Signature has done 23 productions of Sondheim works over the years, including this second go-around with “Sunday in the Park with George.”

The George in question is impressionist painter Georges Seurat, famous for his “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” which is the focus of the musical. The musical, by Sondheim and James Lapine, won a Pulitzer Prize for drama, one of the few musicals to ever win that award.

“Sondheim’s creations were different from anyone else,” Schaeffer said. “That’s also what we’re trying to do—new and original shows, new ways of approaching old shows.”

Gary Tischler • August 7, 2014

“Carrie: The Musical,” now at the Studio Theater’s 2nd Stage, carries a lot of baggage.

Everyone remembers the source material. “Carrie” was one of horror novelist’s Stephen King’s first big successes in 1974, with its story of a high school girl who is an outcast, lives with a scary ultra-religious mother and has tele-kinetic powers. The 1976 movie version, directed by Brian de Palma and starring Cissy Spacek in the title role with Amy Irving and Piper Laurie, became a huge hit, resonant with teens and adults alike, and scary as all get out. There’s also a fairly recent but not so successful movie remake.

On top of that, there’s “Carrie: The Musical,” legendary in a not so good way, a production staged on Broadway in 1988 to the tune of around seven to eight million dollars in production costs, with a three-day run after some scathing reviews, making it the one of Broadway’s biggest flops ever.

But wait: Things aren’t so bad on 14th Street in D.C. after all. “Carrie: The Musical” isn’t “Carrie,” the movie, by any means, but it’s hardly flop-worthy in its Studio incarnation, directed by Keith Alan Baker and Jacob Janssen, and featuring a big-voiced, moving star turn by newcomer Emily Zickler as Carrie White.

The musical—described often somewhat mistakenly as a rock musical—remains the work of composer Michael Gore with lyrics by Dean Pitchford and a book by Lawrence D. Cohen, which hews fairly closely to the book, with some differences.

As a musical, “Carrie” is more of a pop-rock opera: there are 25 musical numbers performed by a fierce, high-energy cast, a mix of soaring, sometimes searing and soft ballads, jump up and down guitar-driven power numbers. The songs and the music aren’t necessarily memorable—there’s no “Wicked”-like “Gravity” number, for instance, but taken as a whole, they make their impression, carry the story along with energy and fit the material emotionally.

And it’s the whole that counts here, not so much individual incidents, although individual cast members Zickler, Barbara Walsh as her crazed, God-sick mom, Maria Rizzo as Sue, a sympathetic class mate, Robert Mueller as Tommy Ross, the likeable star jock who wants to be a writer, and Eben K. Loan as the hating, hateful high school mean queen Chris do stand out.

It’s still the same old story—Carrie, a 17-year-old misfit in high school and ignorant of sex and the world, discovers the onset of menstruation in a shower with her classmates, for which she is mercilessly bullied. She lives with her mother, who keeps her away from boys by locking her up in a closet and forces her to pray constantly.

Sue Snell, the school nice girl who’s dating Tommy, the star jock, takes pity on Carrie, and makes her try to fit in by making Tommy ask her to the prom. The result is all too familiar to most of us, even if the original novel is 40 years old.

It is the staging as much as anything that pulls you in here. It’s the intimate setting of the smallish fourth floor theater at the Studio, with the results that you’re always fairly close to the actions and the actors, who emote, dance group and re-group, and sing their hearts out within sometimes inches, and feet of the audience. And the directors and designer make do mostly with imagination—this is not a million-dollar set, but a door opening here, closing there, lights shifting the scenes and acting as a kind of malleable, moving set. There’s nothing fancy here, except the choreography of shifting the groups around the stage, until all of them become familiar. What’s special isn’t the blood and guts but the young characters on stage.

There are some effective, kinetic (no pun intended) moments here—“A Night We’ll Never Forget,” which opens the second act, is resonant of the cast preparing for the dance in “West Side Story,” Zickler displaying vocal and emotional range in Carrie’s plaintive “Why Not Me?,” the lovely “Unsuspecting Hearts” and “Once You See,” Walsh singing powerfully her own youthful memories in “I Remember How Those Boys Are.”

Because Zickler has made Carrie so appealing with her uncertainty, her yearning to be normal, her painfully shy stance with Billy, the story moving at a train-wreck speed, makes you afraid for her, it fills you with dread, but also expectations. How will they stage her ragingly destructive power, how will the ultimate bad trick of the bucket of blood work out?

Well, it’s not the movie, but it still has the power to shock. Wisely, I think, the production lays off high-tech spectacle. Carrie’s power may be horrific and weird, but it’s the deed that counts.

The musical-opera has a lot of punch, surprisingly so, given the reputation of the original production. There’s a lot of talent on display here, fresh, volatile. It’s a full-throttle reminder that life can still be like high school. It’s not rock and roll, but I like it.