Performance

Gary Tischler • January 10, 2013

William Shakespeare was supposed to be a pretty fair story teller.

A blind poet by the name of Homer wasn’t so bad, either. His work—his one (two, counting “The Odyssey”) story, told over and over again—continues to compel attention and to bring us back to our core of hearing stories.

A teller, not a writer, Homer was an outloud poet, if he was anything—although we know even less about Homer than we do about Shakespeare.

Homer sang his tales, and they’re still around. “The Iliad” about the war between Greeks and Trojans, with the gods joining in like some Olympian pugilists, starring Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Priam, Helen and Paris, and a cast of thousands of warring combatants before the gates of the city of Troy—its other name is Ilium—about 4,000 years ago.

We all know the story. We’re familiar with it from tales told at school and books we were forced to read in college, and movies we saw and plays we saw that used the great war and the Greek warrior-king Odysseus’s eventful journey home as jumping-off points to tell us about ourselves. We saw Kirk Douglas sailing, Brad Pitt fighting and various Helens launching a thousand ships.

But it’s still the same old story—a real fight for love and glory—best told in the semi-dark, around, if not a campfire, at least on a bare and barren stage, by one man, who, if not blind, could pass for the real deal, if he had lived and told the same tale all over the world, on stages, on street corners, amid the tents of other warriors and fighters, in castles for a piece of lamb, in taverns for a drink and a memory

That’s essentially what’s happening at the Studio Theater where artistic director David Muse helmed a production of “An Iliad,” adapted by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare from a Robert Fagles translation of Homer’s epic poem.

It features one man: a ragged man, the story teller, who speaks with such power and clarity, that you believe every word he says, because he sounds as much a witness as a poet—a witness, it should be made clear, to all the brave, ravenously courageous and horrifyingly destructive wars men have ever fought over things they’ve soon forgotten.

Scott Parkinson looks very much the part of a man whom you’d spot for a few drinks in a bar, just to listen to him talk. The talk is about the last weeks of the war, about Agamemnon’s destructive fight with the great warrior Achilles, about the loss of Achilles’s best friend, about his towering rage, about his foretold doom, about the Trojan warrior Hector, about loss and rage, and war’s discordant and affecting music.

It’s not much, and it’s everything. So scruffy-good is Parkinson, so casual, so many-voiced that soon enough you hear the clash of spears and swords, the screams of wounded men, and the anguish of people wounded to their souls with loss. “The Iliad” is as before and always, a great story, but in their adaptation Peterson and O’Hare have made it so much more. It is a huge story, bounding and echoing across lands, borders, time and space. We know without being told that this story has always been about us, about war, about what it does to us, an invention, not of God or gods, but of our own, where men, leaders and spit-upon-privates carrying spears can catch a sense of something god-like and monstrous in the rivers of blood that are spilled.

All that’s there on the stage are the tools of the trade—of story-telling, not war—a trunk, a shaggy coat, a stick, a woman (Rebecca Landell) in a flowing white gown, playing the cello beautifully and serving as a kind of chorus, movie score and subtle carrier of grief to come. There are stage lights that look like masks or discarded armor, but that may be your or my imagination.

Mostly, Parkinson is the teller of tales—sometimes funny, sometimes sage and sagacious, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes like a man carrying old wounds and memories. He tells the tale, but it become something more. It seems to involve everything from the Crusades, to the Persian wars, ancient and modern, to Vietnam, Afghanistan, all those forays by one group of nationals or alliances into the lands of another group of nationals and alliances, to come to grief, to cause great destruction and create new stories over and over again.

That’s the underlying minefield of this tale, the tragedy of mankind, but its surface is full of phosphorus, the hot blood and rage of individuals, their deeds and deeds undone. Parkinson plays all the parts—the ragged poet, but also Hector and Achilles, and Priam and Achilles, the king and the greatest warrior, meeting in the middle of the night after Achilles has killed Priam’s son Hector. The meeting of king and warrior has a calming effect on Achilles after Priam begs for his son’s body. It’s as if the stage suddenly filled up with people in the silence and became dotted with tears.

Parkinson also follows Homer’s telling of the tale. This poet stops before the creation of the Trojan horse, the foretold death of Achilles, the destruction of Troy, the awesome fall of a Bronze-Age Asian civilization, its aftermath of epic journeys and the stuff of Greek tragedies.

When the actor is done you feel like leaving a giant tip, or a wreath to wear, some token of appreciation that you’ve understood every word, even the haunting spackles of ancient Greek.

“An Iliad” runs through Jan. 13.

Gary Tischler •

That Quentin Tarantino. He’s such a cut-up.

After bowdlerizing and generally having a grand old time with the Holocaust in his fantasy-action-god-knows-what-genre movie “Inglourious Basterds,” Tarantino, never a director to cringe from any subject, now matter how low or high, has tackled slavery and race in America to unhinge our sense of history further and to bolster the survival of the mashup genre.

And what a mess this mashup of a movie called “Django Unchained” is. And I say this with all due respect to the hordes of critics and way-cool Tarantino fans who have sung the praises of the movie, while duly noting the director’s gleeful use of blood-spurting violence and the n-word.

I think Tarantino is a brilliant director who bleeds cinema, talks cineaste and has probably seen every bad B movie ever made. Here’s a brilliant guy who, unfortunately, has never made a brilliant movie. He’s made brilliant sequences, scenes, segments and such, but never a movie that amounted to something that you could hang a feeling or a revolution on. If they gave Oscars for parts of movies, why give him one for best performance by an actress, playing a character under the influence of heroin (“Pulp Fiction”), best use of gangster yakety-yak (“Reservoir Dogs”), most suspenseful, tense ten or 15 minutes to open a movie for “Inglourious Basterds,” best performance by a German actor in an 1848 American setting (Christoph Waltz in “Django Unchained”), best dissertation on the origin of the name Brunhilde and how it came to be bestowed on slave woman (“Django Unchained”).

Tarantino has been praised for tackling such a serious subject as slavery—and presenting it realistically and gruesomely—horrible scenes of whippings and Mandingo fighting, for instance. But you know what? The cruelties practiced by slaveowners and overseers are no secret. It seems to me that we’re supposed to be edified by these scenes, and horrified, and educated, but should we also be entertained? I know it’s exhilarating to see those awful guys (and one woman) to be slaughtered by the righteous Django in the film’s climax, but should this be quite so much fun? You can kill Adolf Hitler in a movie, but it’s harder to end slavery. Django said it much better when offered to be a bounty’s hunter’s partner: “Killing white people and getting paid for it? What’s not to like?” That stings, and it’s sharper than the literal-minded slaughter of the guilty at the end, especially the way Django metes out justice the hard way against Samuel Jackson’s embittered, viscous Uncle Tom character. It almost makes you wonder how Django would have handled Mammy, the stubbornly and blindly loyal slave of Scarlett O’Hara.

It seems to me that Tarantino can’t help showing off, being wickedly funny or showing how smart he is. That doesn’t make “Django Unchained” profound, it makes it at bottom a little silly, which undermines the seriousness the subject deserves. I don’t mean Steven Spielberg serious—although Spielberg, a frequent target of the cool, hip critical world, gets to the heart of the matter in “Lincoln”—but serious in the manner of respecting the audience’s intelligence instead of indulging your own smartness

It should be added that all the actors—Jamie Foxx as the hero, Waltz as his German partner, Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio in a relishing turn as the corrupt, effete owner of the plantation named Candiland, and Kerry Washington as the heroine, are pitch-perfect, and the writing as always, is sharp. What “Django Unchained” lacks, and what most if not all of of Tarantino’s movies lack, is size, which is to say greatness. Nobody—except smart-ass critics—loves a smart ass.

Gary Tischler • January 3, 2013

If you want to get an idea of the diversity enshrined in what is loosely called “The Musical,” past, present and who knows what the future holds, all you have to do is take a gander at “White Christmas”, the holiday red musical rife with nostalgia and the best works of the grand old man of the American songbook at the Kennedy Center, and down Pennsylvania Avenue to the National Theatre, where you can find “Les Miserables,” techno-upgraded but now in its second year of touring its 25th anniversary production of the big, spectacular, dramatic musical based on Victor Hugo’s 19th-ccentury novel.

“White Christmas” is based on a 1954 Paramount Studios movie musical, starring the great crooner Bing Crosby and mister-do-everything Danny Kaye as his sidekick, with Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen as their love interests. “Les Miserables” is producer Cameron Mackintosh’s national touring version of the gift that keeps on giving ever since it debuted in London more than 25 years ago—so much so that it’s become a highly anticipated, Oscar-buzzed movie with Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway in the starring roles. There you have it: a stage musical, based on a movie musical, and a movie musical, based on a stage musical.

For all that connective material, the two shows couldn’t be more different. “White Christmas,” performed with the kind of spirit that recalls Mickey Rooney, Gene Kelly and Judy Garland, is redolent of the kind of musical that once were the main staple and fare of both Broadway and major Hollywood studios. The music, the material and the style are so comfortably old-fashioned that they almost seem fresh.

“Les Miserables” is a juggernaut, a powerhouse of a certain kind of musical—call the music rock-pop with oversized operatic style—that began to originate overseas, primarily in England, featuring productions almost entirely sung, usually in a manner that required voices that could reach places and hold notes few people could. “Les Miserables,” created by a French song-and-music team and produced by Mackintosh, was probably the most successful in a long line of shows that included “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Cats,” “Evita,” “Miss Saigon” and “Phantom of the Opera” as well as “Sunset Boulevard.” Andrew Lloyd Webber was the superstar among such creators, along with Tim Rice and MacIntosh.

There was a time when most—if not all—of these shows dominated Broadway and the musical theater. That situation has waned, giving way to the force known as Disney. Mixed in are occasional new, sometimes rock-and-roll themed works (see “Million Dollar Quartet”) and revivals of prominent and reliable staples from the great works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Gershwin and Lerner and Loewe, and for the intellectually stimulated, Stephen Sondheim. The next thing as far as we can tell really hasn’t arrived yet, noting of course “Spiderman,” which is a Titanic that, having struck an iceberg in its early voyage, refuses to sink.

With “White Christmas,” it pays to have patience and a passion fo Irving Berlin’s music and old musicals, if you must. As musicals went, “White Christmas” was no “Singing in the Rain” but relied primarily on its star powered quartet, and Berlin’s music, which was quite enough to make it a hit. The star power isn’t in this production, although all the performers more than hold their own, and that includes James Clow and David Elder (a terrific Kelly-kind of dancer), and Stefanie Morse and Mara Davi.

The show is practically a recreation of the 1950s movie in terms of the plot, which includes the heroes, Broadway impresarios and stars, trying to save the fortunes of their old World War II commander, now running a Vermont resort into the ground. They make the rescue just in time for—you guessed it—a “White Christmas.” You kind of have to go with this because it’s part of the season, and, um, well, just because, because you’ll feel better. There are tons of 1950s references to old television shows, gossip columnists and such, which can make you feel very old or very confused.

Here’s what you do: kick your feet back and watch what happens after a somewhat slow and longish first act. Because right off the top comes a little Berlin number, called “I Love a Piano,” which exists solely to make you happy—beginning small, ratcheting up to a riveting, rhythmic and spectacular dancing, much of it in the key of tap. To me, the sound of 30 or two feet hitting the floors loudly or softly and syncopated has always been good for what ails you.

So are songs like “Let Me Sing and I’m Happy,” “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” and “Blue Skies”—not to mention, of course, “White Christmas” and the torchy duo of “Love You Didn’t Do Right By Me” and “How Deep Is the Ocean.”

You’ll probably have the various themes and tunes of “Les Miserables” running around your head once again, but the residual feeling, as always, is of a pleasant and satisfying sadness, giving all the melodrama, triumphant and tragic that is so much a part of Hugo’s novel and of the musical, even more so. The presence of both the show and the movie are serendipitous, but should probably not be compared. The stage is the stage, and a movie is a movie. To be sure, the movie will be louder, and in your face. But, then again, serious weight loss and other physical changes are not a requirement for having a role in the stage production.

This staged version—instead of a turn-tabled barricade—achieves cinematic effects through back projection along with dramatic effects by way of soaring voices and affecting acting. As always the case with touring companies, or new groups, some will rise; others will stand out more. For my money, Andrew Varela as the driven, relentless Inspector Javert and Peter Lockyer as the almost saintly Jean Valjean are the standouts. This is a good thing—their mortal rivalry is the key to the show, the book and a number of songs—“Bring Him Home” knocked out of the park by Lockyer and “Stars,” sung with great revealing power by Varela. But Genevieve Leclerc makes “I Dreamed a Dream” her own song, at least until the movie comes out, as Fantine. Jason Forbach as heroic Enjolras, the leader of a student revolution, is a super-hero in this production.

As for who likes what: you say “Les Miserables,” and I say “White Christmas.” You can do both. In this season of high drama and tragedy, and the need to feel good about something, both shows have something to offer.

Gary Tischler •

(This is the fifth in a series of articles about Washington performers, singers and actors who are playing iconic roles during the holiday season at various venues).

Per his professional biography, the American tenor Corey Evan Rotz has sung more than 400 performances with the Washington National Opera since making his 1995 debut in “Der Rosenkavalier.” So, he’s used to Washington audiences. Friday, he may have a different experience.

“I expect to hear some boos,” Rotz said. “There will be children there who may not like me or what I do in this part.”

That part is the role of the witch in the WNO’s production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel.” Rotz, in a bit of unusual casting, will be playing the menacing gingerbread witch—one of the classic villains not only of opera but of fairy tales and fictions.

“I’ve done all sorts of roles over the years,” said Rotz, 40, a Pennsylvania native who has settled in Washington. “But this is very different from anything I’ve ever done. It’s funny, when it was suggested that I play the witch, I thought, ‘Huh. But why not?’ I jumped at the chance. I think it’s a real challenge—you really have to be an actor as well as a singer. You have to be convincing.”

“Hansel and Gretel”—which comes from one of the Grimm Brothers’ more famous fairy tales—is a bona-fide, full-length opera which will be performed at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater Dec. 21 through 23. Humperdinck was one of the great composers of the 19th century and got the idea at the urging of his sister who had written some German folk songs on the theme of the Grimms’ fairy tale. Humperdinck apparently liked that idea and termed the result a “fairy tale opera.” It proved to be a winner and is a staple of opera companies throughout the world. It was also something of an event in its various debuts, among them in Weimar in 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss—and in Hamburg by Gustav Mahler.

“I supposed it could be a little bit scary for children, but I think it has a very triumphant ending,” Rotz said. “I know these are troubling time for little kids.” The opera is deemed appropriate for ages nine and above; there will be small children in the audience.

It’s a bit of a jump for Rotz, who’s been a mainstay for WNO audiences in a variety of roles, many of them with German themes or by German composers. He has performed roles in “The Magic Flute,” “The Queen of Spades,” “Salome,” Arturo in “Lucia di Lammermoor” and Bacchus in “Ariadne of Naxos.” He made his Los Angeles Opera debut as Abace in “Idomeneo” and his Carnegie Hall debut as Raymond in Tchaikovsky’s “The Maid of Orleans.” He also appeared in the WNO production of “Othello,” which toured in Japan with Placido Domingo.

“ ‘Hansel and Gretel’ isn’t just a children’s opera per se,” Rotz said. “It’s a major work by a major composer. ‘The Magic Flute’ is also considered something of a family opera, but it’s very much Mozart.”

The cast also includes Sarah Mesko and Julia Mintzer as Hansel; Emily Albrink and Shantelle Przybylo as Gretel; Norman Garrett as the father; Maria Eugenia Antunez as the mother—with Jessica Stecklein, playing dual roles as the Dew Fairy and the Sandman.

“Hansel and Gretel” is being presented as the WNO’s new commitment to family programming during the holiday season and is expected to be a regular part of the WNO seasonal programming in the future.

Although he performs in other venues, the Washington National Opera is essentially the beacon, the mainstay, the home of Rotz’s career. “It’s home,” he said. “Every time I perform here, it’s like going home. I know the stagehands, everybody that works here, from top to bottom. So, it’s always a great experience for me. That’s why I’ve decided to live here.

“I would say that the witch is probably the most challenging part of I’ve done, simply because the role is so different,” Rotz said.

It is a very audience-involving opera. Hence, the boos.

“I think there will be some,” Rotz said. “But I don’t think—given the news and what happened in Connecticut—that the witch and the opera is too frightening for children. And it ends on a triumphant note. There’s a quote at the end: ‘When we cannot bear our grief, God the lord will send relief.’ ”
[gallery ids="101112,138805,138799" nav="thumbs"]

Jeff Malet •

Caroling in the rotunda, surrounded by seasonal blossoms, has become a favorite family activity at the National Gallery of Art during the holidays. On Dec. 23, it was also the scene of a memorable moment for a young couple.

Each year, on each of the two weekends leading up to Christmas, visitors are invited to sing along with many outstanding guest choirs. This year featured the Xaverian High School Chorus (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Central Bucks High School West Choir (Bucks County, Penn.), the Choir of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church (Washington, D.C.) and Marriott’s Ridge High School Madrigal Singers (Marriott’s Ridge, Md.). During the last concert of this season, visitors were treated to a pleasant surprise when Iraq War veteran U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Capt. Matthew James Schmitz got down on his knees, while Marriott’s Ridge was performing Ben Folds’s “The Luckiest,” to propose marriage to Megan Elizabeth Taylor of Washington, D.C. It was a complete surprise to Taylor who accepted in front of an appreciative audience of several hundred visitors.

View our photos of each of the choir performances at the National Gallery of Art by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="101115,139094,139102,139110,139118,139126,139134,139142,139151,139158,139165,139172,139179,139088,139080,139074,139209,139203,139018,139197,139025,139192,139032,139039,139045,139052,139059,139066,139186" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • January 2, 2013

This is another in a series of profiles and stories about actors who are performing iconic roles in and around Washington during Christmastime. In terms of Shakespeare, there are few characters more iconic than Puck, the henchperson to Oberon, king of the fairies, fly-by-night, magical creature, master of dreamscapes in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” now being performed at the Shakespeare Theater Company’s digs at Harman Hall and directed by Ethan McSweeny. We talked to actor Adam Green about Puck, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, working with Zelda Fichandler, being married to an actress, and a few other things in the Patron’s Lounge at Harman Hall recently.

As Kermit the Frog once noted, it’s not easy being green. And for actor Adam Green, it’s not easy being Puck.
He’s practically become the logo for the Shakespeare Theater production of “Midsummer.” His face is on the downtown Shakespeare banners. Like a beguiling master of the revels, he’s in TV commercials and the cover of the “Midsummer.” Hair slightly askew, surrounded by sparkling stars, lit by a bulb of moonlight, he’s Puck to the world.

Well met by moonlight, you’d spot Green as a Puck in a crowd, partly because Puck, who could be Robin, could be a spirit of the night, elfish, puckish, could be and always is an actor, the audience’s connection to the land of illusion. Mostly, Puck is an actor, more of this world than that of the world of the fairies.

In this production, the fairies and Puck often appear as if by magic, often bolted out of an area underneath the sea by jumping on a trampoline. Being everywhere and being able to circumvent the world in seconds takes it out of you.

“It’s very, very physical,” Green says. “It’s a wonderful part, but it’s really, really hard work. With a week’s work, counting the matinees, you can feel it.”

“I work out all the time a lot,” he says. “It helps, and you have got to do it,” he says.

Green walks in with back pack, street clothes, and while he isn’t back lit, you see the Puck in him right away. He’s slight, looks lots younger than he is (36-years-old) with a thin beard, trailing curiosity, as opposed to fairy dust.

“You try not to think about other people who’ve done the part,” Green says. “It’s iconic, but there’s lots of ways to do it. I saw that old Mickey Rooney movie from the 1930s. That’s really strange. Sure, there’s a lot of history in the part, in the play. It’s done so often. This is the play that young people, kids, even children, seem to love. You think of him as first, this Robin Goodfellow, who’s sent on this mission, which he messes up. Of course, given that he’s the king of mischief, that may be on purpose. He’s the chaotic element in the play. He goes back to the olden days. He can be Cupid; he can be Eros.

In this production, Green plays the parts of both Puck and Philostrate, the king’s butler. “He represents order and structure, he knows the rules, the exact words in the play the mechanicals do, he’s the exact opposite of Puck who is the prince of disorder.”
“I think audiences really get into this,” he says. “Some performances you can really feel it. They get what’s going on, the little jokes, the asides, the way it’s being done, and sure, a lot of it is about theater itself.”

You can say the same for Green. All actors set out to be a success but that means—everything from being a movie star which sometimes, but not often, rarely happens, to doing defining roles, to matching contemporary plays with classical theater—any number of things.

For Green, it’s the stage. It’s Shakespeare. It’s new plays which open up new challenges and old plays that open up new challenges.

A New Yorker through and through, he’s familiar to Washington audiences going back a little. Most recently, he managed to snag a Helen Hayes award nomination for supporting acting in David Ives’s version of “The Liar.” He was seen in “All’s Well That Ends Well” and “Two Gentleman of Verona,” all at the Shakespeare Theatre.

In New York, the plays get edgier and modern: “None of the Above” at Lion’s Theatre, “Bone Portraits” at Soho Rep; regionally in “Peter and the Starcatchers” at La Jolla Playhouse and “My Name Is Asher Lev” at Barrington Stage Company.

“I guess you could say I’m sort of a gun for hire,” Green says.

Theater is history—present and future. In 2005, Green had a part in Clifford Odets’s “Awake and Sing,” directed by Zelda Fichandler, the Arena Stage founder, and also featuring the late Robert Prosky. “That was quite an experience for me,” he says. “To work with Zelda and Prosky.”

By the way, a young actress named Miriam Silverman was also in it. Green and Silverman, who is also something of a fixture at the Shakespeare Theatre company, began dating and soon thereafter married in a ceremony at Circa 1799 Barn, a farmhouse and event venue in Ancramdale, New York.

Silverman, a luminous, gifted actress, is well remembered here for a finely crafted performance in the difficult role of Helena in “All’s Well That Ends Well,” managing the considerable accomplishment that the smart, gifted, funny and courageous heroine is in pursuit of a dolt.

“We were in that play together and in “The Liar”,” Green recalls. “Somehow, we weren’t on the stage at the same time. That’s a trick that Puck could have probably pulled off.”

Gary Tischler • December 21, 2012

In “Million Dollar Quartet.” the young man with the very rock-and-roll name of Cody Slaughter is asked to portray Elvis Presley when he’s already a little filled out. It’s 1956, and the King is already wearing a crown, but still trailing country and pickup truck dust behind him, mixed in with the stardust of growing fame.

Slaughter fills out Elvis with a mature voice, the slouched shoulders, the sudden wriggled moves and gestures that were a part of the Elvis body language that made high school girls come out with scary screaming noises.

On the phone, Slaughter, just about ready to meet the day in a Washington hotel room, sounds more like a younger Elvis, the one that was polite to his elders, loved his momma to death and had a streak of polite manners and charm that seems to come naturally to some Southern boys raised in small towns, be they rock-and-roll legends or politicians.

Slaughter sounds a little sleepy, just arrived this week from a tour stop in Philadelphia, which he couldn’t remember right away. “You have to excuse me, you get a little tired on a tour sometimes, you know,” he says. The voice is not exactly musical. It’s soft, easy to listen to. He’s thinking on his feet, not minding if he stumbles here and there.

“Elvis has been a part of my life for just about always,” Slaughter said. “Ever since I can remember, I have been listening to his music. I love ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ I think I sang it for the first time when I was in kindergarten or something like that.”

Slaughter grew up almost Elvis-like in a small town called Harrison, Ark., near the Ozark Mounains. He has been what most folks would call an Elvis impersonator since he was in his early teens. In the business, he’s an ETA, an Elvis Tribute Artist. Last year, he won the Horizon Award for “Best New Elvis Tribute Artist.”

“My father had a whole bunch of cassettes of Elvis music,” he said. “I kind of been around it for a long time.”

Slaughter will be leaving the show next Thursday to prep for and join up with the ongoing Elvis birthday celebrations with other stars, including D.J. Fontana, who was the drummer in Elvis’s band.

“I’ve been doing Elvis a lot, especially in Branson, Mo., but this is very different, you gotta say,” said Slaughter, who was surprised when he got the part in this show. I’m still getting used to it, even after doing it for a while.”

He calls you “sir,” and he often says that he’s “only 21” (Elvis was 21 in 1956 at the time of the session in Sam Phillips’s studio). “I’ve been doing Elvis and it’s been a tremendously important experience for me,” Slaughter said. “I mean the way people react, girls and older people all at the same time. I try to do the best I can, and I hope I’m giving them something they can remember and take to their heart. I mean, I know I’m not Elvis, but people, you know, if you do the songs right and act right, they sort of see Elvis. I understand that.

Slaughter is looking ahead, for sure, but doesn’t know exactly where the road is yet. “Sometimes I think of rapping, or pop or country. I can do that–or rock and roll or something. I’m only 21, I know that. But you’ve got to think about the future sometimes.”

Look him up on YouTube, doing Elvis by himself, and it’s almost spooky. That pitch-black hair, purple shirt, the stance that’s at once tough and embracing, the voice. In the show with the others, you can see a little of where Elvis came from, what he might have been like just at that point in time. He doesn’t try to dominate the stage: he’s among friends, Carl, Sam, Johnny, Jerry Lee and the like.

On the phone, his voice goes back a little further. We talk about that time, and I allowed that I grew up hearing Elvis and Perkins on the radio when I was in high school in Ohio. “That’s something,” he says. “Hearing this stuff when it was new, when everything was brand new.”

That was something all right. Talking with him, hearing and seeing him on stage, let me remember that it was something all right. And that’s something.

Gary Tischler • December 20, 2012

This is the fourth in a series of articles and feature stories about actors, singers and performers playing iconic roles—or simply being an icon—in plays and productions in the D.C. area during the holiday season. We’ve featured Washington actor Ed Gero—an institution himself if not an icon—playing Scrooge for the fourth year in “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theater; Adam Green, who’s playing everyone’s favorite master of the revels Puck in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and Genevieve Leclerc, who’s just arrived in the U.S. national tour of the 25th anniversary production of “Les Miserables,” playing the doomed Fantine at a time when the country’s abuzz about the movie version of the show featuring Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean and Ann Hathaway as Fantine. Our fourth performer is E. Faye Butler, who not only embodies any number of icons at Arena Stage in “Pullman Porter Blues” but manages to be one herself.

When E. Faye Butler makes her entry as Sister Juba, a big-voiced, sashaying, diva-does-it woman who’s the leader of a jazz-blues band riding the train out of Chicago down to the bitter South during the Depression she just totally sweeps everything before her. She launches herself into a chair in a way that seems like an act of sexual aggression which you can’t help paying mind to if you’re at least half alive. Her laugh, when it comes, is infectious, it’s one of those defiant laughs that dares you to say something. If flesh and body were music, Butler was singing its full-throated anthem.

Right off the bat, she reminded you of Bessie Smith and Ma Raney—check them out on YouTube—and if you had any doubts, they were erased a few moments later when she launched, full-voiced, growly, into a blues-bawdy number that insists that “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues,” which surely is one of the lies wild women tell themselves.

“Exactly right,” Butler said. “She was meant to embody Bessie, and Ma Rainey and all those women who sang defiant, heart-breaking blues. And, not to put too fine a point on it, she showed women that you don’t have to be thin to be beautiful and that curves are sexy and attractive.”

“One of the nice things about being on stage, where you can’t hide even if you wanted, is that people get to see that,” she said. “I had one woman come up to me after a performance and she thanked me. She said, ‘I don’t feel like I have to shut the light off when I get into bed.’ ”

“Pullman Porter Blues” has its flaws, but a lack of authentic characters in this play about a trio of men—grandfather, father and son—all riding the train working as porters—is not one of them. Most authentic is Butler who knows her way around a song, a stage, a microphone, a stool to sit on next to a piano in a cabaret, and she knows something about the people and the subject which attracted her to Cheryl West’s play. She opened the show in Seattle where it originated before coming to Washington.

“I know lots of people with parents or grandparents who worked on the trains as porters or maids—the play shows how hard that was but also how it led to African Americans finding a way into the middle class, to get ahead,” she said. “Chicago is full of Pullman people.”

Chicago is Butler’s home, but if you lived in Washington, you’d think she’s practically a native. She’s married to Washington native Bernard Johnson, a hair stylist. “This town is full of my in-laws,” she says. Recently, she sang “the Star-Spangled Banner” at a Nationals Park, a place somewhat sinful for somebody from a town full of Cubs and White Sox.

Mostly, she’s familiar because she’s omnipresent on stage, or so it seems, especially at Arena Stage where she’s scored some major triumph. She made a raw, powerful impression back a ways when she did “Dinah Was,” a searing and heart rending evocation of the late Dinah Washington, one of the greatest jazz, pop and blues singers ever, going to the 1950s and 1960s when she reigned supreme. She also appeared in “Crowns,” “Polk County” and was Aunt Eller to Julie in “Oklahoma,” the triumphant production that launched Arena’s spectacular new space. She was a jazz singer in the Washington Ballet’s “The Great Gatsby” and seems always to popping up singing somewhere.

Butler was also in a show about Ella Fitzgerald and is a bona fide cabaret singer. “Ella, she was unique, nobody like her,” she said. “But you know, it was heart-breaking for her in some ways. She struggled with her weight and her looks, and the fact that some people didn’t think she was pretty.”

Pretty is too dainty a word to describe Butler. She is powerfully attractive and compelling, and when she takes up the blues stance, she is commanding, the singing blinds you as all great singing does.

She was influenced, perhaps not surprisingly, by gospel music—“My mom, Elizabeth Butler (that’s where the E. in E. Faye comes from) worked like an agent for Mahalia Jackson. So, I heard a lot of gospel growing up. But you’ll never guess who really influenced me as a performer.”

I guessed wrong a couple of times and gave up.

“Danny Kaye.”

“You know why. Because he could do anything, and there was nobody like him. He was a great singer, a dancer, an actor, a clown, anything at all,” she said. “I loved his movies, remember when he played two people—and yes, “The Five Pennies” and he played the pied piper, I think, and that clown in “The Court Jester. That’s what I wanted to do: everything.”

Short of everything, Butler has done a lot already. As Sister Juba, she does everything—she moves and is moving, she sings out her soul, she embodies a character that you know damn well was real and alive somewhere, sometime, and she breaks your heart.

That’s everything.

Nico Dodd •

When I told my co-workers I was going to see Wanda Jackson at the Hamilton this Tuesday night, none of them could put a finger on who the singer was. Even those with a professed love of classic rock couldn’t remember what she was known for. The truth is that Jackson is a real genuine article of rock and roll, a living legend among the likes of Chuck Berry, who’s played with greats from Elvis Presley to modern stalwarts like Jack White. A brush up on her hits include “Let’s Have A Party,” “Fujiyama Mama” and “Stupid Cupid”.

At 75-years-old, Jackson is charming and unassuming. Country group Jonny Fritz and the In-Laws, who opened the show, sat in as Jackson’s band. Jackson doted on them like they were her own grandchildren. The Oklahoma native even sang a few lines of “Boomer Sooner,” OU’s fight song and demonstrated her prowess as an air guitarist.

The night was like a music history lecture or, in her words, a “musical journey.” Jackson’s entrée into rock and roll was largely due to her relationship with Elvis Presley, whom she dated and toured with. “I never saw a man with yellow before,” Jackson said, before performing the Elvis classic “Heartbreak Hotel.” After all her years of performing, her pipes are, for the most part, intact. Her gutty, playful squeal is one-of-a-kind, and she can still yodel with the best of them on her country songs like “Betcha My Heart I Love You.”

In 2011, Jackson’s career had resurgence with her album The Party Ain’t Over, on which she collaborated with Jack White, who has a penchant for working with classic female vocalists. In 2004, he also breathed new energy into Loretta Lynn’s career with their album Van Lear Rose. Jackson recounted her work with him. “I would liken him to a velvet-covered brick.” She blazed through two of the songs she recorded with him, “Shakin All Over” and her cover of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good.”

After decades of performing, it was interesting to see that such an experienced performer could still have green moments. During some songs, Jackson might take a break, or forget a few of her lyrics. Despite these small road bumps, she could shrug it off with aplomb. “I’ll have to work that out in rehearsal,” she told the In-Laws. Much like a grandmother cooking without a recipe, Jackson served up a great performance even with the road bumps. Her fans ate it up. She brought the room to their feet with her final two songs, “Let’s Have A Party” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”

Gary Tischler • December 19, 2012

It seems even the cast members of the U.S. national tour of the 25th Anniversary production of “Les Miserables” which opens Thursday, December 13, at the National Theatre here are caught up in the buzz surrounding the all-star movie version which opens later this month.

As it turns, even Fantine is interested in Fantine.

We spoke with Canadian actress and singer Genevieve Leclerc, who has taken over the role of Fantine in the production, in a “Les Miserables” tour stop Kansas City in a phone interview.

“Everyone’s very excited about the film, certainly,” she said. “We’re all trying to see the latest trailers, the latest news and reading everything about it.”

The movie buzz—including Oscar buzz for Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean and Ann Hathaway as Fantine—has been building steadily, along with trailer talk, and the stories about Hathaway shedding pounds and cutting off her dark tresses to play the role of Fantine.

“I’m a big fan of hers,” Leclerc said. “But no, I didn’t cut off my hair or do any that. I’d have to do it every day.”

But there is a long line of women who have played Fantine on stage, beginning with a silent movie version in 1913 (starring Marie Ventura) and moving on to 1980 when the French version starring Rose Laurens as Fantine appeared. But it was the 1985 Cameron MacIntosh-produced version, with music by Claude-Michel Schonberg and a book by Alain Boublil, which set the show—big, epic, spectacular and moving—on its way to record-breaking success in London, at the Kennedy Center where it opened in the United States and on Broadway.

Based on the great French novelist Victor Hugo’s novel about Jean Valjean, the heroic figure imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread and his nemesis, the policemen Javert who hunts him down and finds him again in the middle of a revolution in Paris in the early 1800s, “Les Miserables,” the musical opened with Patti Lupone in the role of Fantine, the working class girl who’s forced into prostitution to provide for the safety of her daughter Cosette. Valjean becomes her and her daughter’s protector and so it goes. The 25th anniversary production features new staging, and scenery inspired by the paintings of Victor Hugo himself.

Leclerc takes over for Betsy Morgan on this U.S. 25th anniversary national tour. She is the latest in a long line of Fantines—and Jean Valjeans and Javerts and Thenardiers (husband wife), Enjolrases (the heroic rebel leader of the barricades)m, Cosettes, Eponines, Mariuses and Gavroches.

“It’s such a wonderful opportunity and its very challenging,” Leclerc said. “I had never seen the show, except for a French version I saw in Canada a long time ago. That’s one of the things you learn to do. You can’t actually let the French creep in, even though the characters are all French.”

“I’m very much aware of all the women who have played this part, and I know that every one puts their own gift, their talent and ideas on the part and so will I,” she said. “You have really one major solo song that sets you apart and you have to put everything in that song, all the emotions, everything that’s happened to her.”

Among the many songs in “Les Miserables” which have become standards as epic ballads, none is quite so wrenching as Fantine’s “I Dreamed a Dream,”, a lament on the life of Fantine, who is sinks so low as to sell her hair in order for her daughter to be taken care of. The song requires a big voice and big emotions. If you look for Leclerc on YouTube, you’ll find her singing from the production of “Torch—A Cycle of Love Songs” in which she was a lead vocalist at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in New York. The voice is big and emotionally big-bodied.

Leclerc graduated from the Ecole Superieure de Theatre Musical in Montreal where she performed in productions of “Les Enfants de Donquichote,” “Devant Les Maitress,” “Bliss” and “Les Deesses.”

Throughout her professional life, which included stints at sea performing as a guest singer for both the Princess and Royal Carribbean Cruise lines, Leclerc immersed herself in Broadway musical standards in Canada where she appeared in “A Chorus Line” and “Side Show.” Before joining the national tour, she was in “Guys and Dolls,” a favorite of hers. She also performed with Theodore Bikel and Patsy Gallant in a musical adaptation of “Lies My Father Told Me.”

“You could say I have traveled on the high seas, but this, this is so different,” Leclerc said. She had a candid way and enthusiasm about her, recalling seeing the glaciers on a cruise to Alaska, the thunderous noises of ice falling and the love she has for musicals. “This is amazing to me—this journey.”

This production marks her first national tour, and she’s drinking it all in. “This is the American heartland, here in Kansas. I’ve never been here. On a tour like this, you see America, a lot of it.”

(“Les Miserables” — which features Peter Lockyer as Jean Valjean, Andrew Varela as Javert, Timothy Gulan as Thenardier, Shawna M. Hamic as Madame Thenardier, Jason Forbach as Enjolras, Briana Carlson-Goodman as Eponine, Devin Ilaw as Marius and Lauren Wiley as Cosette — runs at the National Theatre through Dec. 30.)