Performance

Gary Tischler • December 7, 2012

I think it’s getting into my DNA,” said Ed Gero, as we talked on the phone.

Gero, who’s been a vivid presence as an actor, teacher, performer and good theater citizen on the Washington scene since 1981, was talking about his fourth gig playing Ebenezer Scrooge at Ford’s Theater, the theater’s yearly contribution to Washington holiday traditions.

“Sure, it’s familiar, and it gets easier,” Gero said. “That doesn’t mean that you can sort of ease your way through it, that it doesn’t remain fresh. My family knows I’m one of the people that works during the Christmas holidays.”

“You know, we’re talking six days a week plus matinees, and the people always come from all over the country,” Gero said.

We were talking about Scrooges, references to Greek tragedy, Lear, and Joseph Campbell and the idea of the hero in humanity drift in natu- rally. Gero is one of these guys—doesn’t mat- ter whether the subject is, be it Mark Rothko, American art, the classics, Shakespeare, teaching theater—who’s a great talker and a good listener. Interviews, no matter what the length, end up being conversations.

“You always find new things in Scrooge,” Gero continued. “I mean Dickens is like Shake- speare in that sense. He creates enduring characters, and Scrooge is always present in our minds no matter how you do it.”

As for the character in question, Gero said: “He’s a man who’s lost his way. He’s losing his humanity. He’s incredibly lonely and a loner and so that’s how this journey—with the ghosts, in time—begins. It’s a journey of renewal, self-discovery. He’s come to this state entirely of his own mak- ing: he is the pitiless, all alone and bit- ter man he is because of the decisions he’s made. What’s true for Lear is true for Scrooge — and Oedipus Rex for that matter.”

Gero has played the Scrooge role four times. “I look forward to it each time,” he said

Here is an actor, who some- what later in his career has suddenly launched himself into the big roles, and Scrooge, no matter what you might say of its popularity, is a big, demanding piece of work.

At Arena last season, Gero commanded the stage in “Red,” a two-character play about the giant American Expressionist artist Mark Rothko, which he first performed at the Goodman Theater in Chicago before it was brought to Arena. Before that, Gero was an astonishing Gloucester in a Goodman production of “King Lear” (Stacey Keach was Lear) at the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

He’s done Richard Nixon, Solieri in “Amadeus,” Chekhov, Bolingbroke twice in “Richard II” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. He was a haphazard and addled member of a group of drunken Irishmen in Martin McDonagh’s “The Seafarer.”

“You can’t get lazy just because you’ve done a part for a long time,” Gero said. “For one thing, we always haves children in the cast, and each year, they’re a different group. Sometimes, there’s a new Tiny Tim, as well as new actors. To them, it’s completely fresh. You can take some cures from that, plus it has the effect of making it new for you. There’s the added fact that there’s always a new audiences, a new group, new visi- tors, more kids and families. You’re keenly aware they’re out there and that to many of them, it’s a first time.”

Gero’s career in the D.C. area began in 1981 at the Barter Theater at George Mason University where he now teaches classical theater.

He has been a stalwart performer at the Shakespeare Theatre Company but also has been a regular at the Studio Theatre, where his work was more in the contemporary vein (“Skylight”, for which he won a Helen Hayes Award, “Shining City” and “American Buffalo, among many) and Round House Theatre.

His stage work has grounded him here where he’s raised a family and lives in Maryland with his wife Marijke, a special education teacher.

The Ford connection for Gero is getting deeper. He will take on the role of Horace Van- dergelder opposite Tony Nominee Nancy Opel as Dolly in the Ford’s Theatre production—co-produced with Signature Theatre—of “Hello Dolly” in March.

“It’s not a departure for me, and I’m really looking forward to it,” Gero said. “I’ve done ‘Sweeney Todd.’ So, I’m comfortable in a musical. Actually, I played the same part in a version of the Thornton Wilder play, “The Matchmaker.”

It’s another addition to what has by now be- come a hefty gallery of roles, getting larger, later.

We didn’t ask about Macbeth or Lear, which he has not done yet.

Nor did we ask whether he would do Scrooge again next year. It’s gotten so that it’s hard to imagine a Scrooge without Gero

Gary Tischler • December 6, 2012

I was talking with a friend of mine today about Larry Hagman, who died Nov. 23 at the age of 81.

“Ah, Major Nelson,” he said.

True, true, but that may not be the first name that comes to mind when you think of the life and career of Hagman.

When you think of Hagman, you think first, foremost and forever of “J.R.,” the unredeemably scheming, double-crossing, philandering, more Texan than Texas tycoon J.R. Ewing for 13 years on “Dallas,” the prime time soap opera where oil wells weren’t the only gushers. Hagman, with those about-to-take-off big eyebrows, a gleaming, predatory smile and the requisite larger-than-they-should-be cowboy boots and hats, was the patriarch and anaconda-in-chief for millions of viewers.

When at the end of one season, J.R. was shot in the shower by persons unknown and his fate still unknown until the start of next season—your old basic prolonged cliff hanger—record millions watched and more kvetched about J.R.’s fate and the name of his assassin all summer. Talk about the reality of unreality shows.

“Dallas” buzzed its way through the 1980s and the Reagan era, where corporate greed was as big a trend word as it is today, accompanied by junk bonds and oil wells. “Dynasty” soon followed, featuring a female version played by the rhymes-with-witchy Joan Collins. But it was always Hagman’s J.R. who was the man you loved to hated or, in women’s case, hated to love. There was something iconic and big in the part, an American character made up of equal parts of bad breath and expensive after shave.

J.R. was not all Hagman was—in fact, except perhaps for a too-long-a-time penchant for living big and giving in to his appetities, mainly alcohol, Hagman was known by reputation as one of the good guys, a gentleman, warm and funny, an actor’s actor with whom his fellow actors loved to work. Linda Gray, who played his “Dallas” wife on the show called him her best friend of 30 years. She returned for a recent TNT reprise of the show and was at his side along with his family last week when Hagman passed away from complications of his long bouts with cancer. He also had at one point chirrosis of the liver, which resulted in a liver transplant. Asked how the transplant changed his life, Hagman quipped, “I didn’t die.” In addition, he created a foundation benefitting organ transplants and became a champion of the cause

Hagman really did play other parts than J.R.—including the part of Major Tony Nelson, an American astronaut who finds himself keeping company with a fetching genie, played by Barbara Eden, in a hit sitcom, “I Dream of Jeannie,” that preceded “Dallas.” He also acted on Broadway. He had the genes for it—his mother was Mary Martin, the legendary Broadway star of “South Pacific”—in which Hagman performed with her once in London– and “The Sound of Music” not to mention being “Peter Pan” on television. Martin headed for California when she was still a teenager, and both of them understood a little something about enduring fame.

Hagman had small but significant roles in a number of films before and after he hit it big in television series, notably as the interpreter for Henry Fonda’s U.S. president in the nuclear crisis film, “Failsafe,” a blustering general in “The Eagle Has Landed” and a truly fine part of a politician who cannot quite let go of ambition in the thinly-veiled Clinton campaign movie “Primary Colors,” which starred John Travolta and Emma Thompson.

Hagman always insisted he played J.R. as a kind of cartoon, a composite of numerous Texans he had known all of his life. He also admitted that he fairly floated through the length of the show, on doses of daily champagne. He said he liked working while being a “little loaded.”

Other than for his excesses, Hagman was nothing like J.R.—he was noted for his charitable work, he was married to his wife Maj Axellson for 59 years.

He accurately noted the craziness surrounding the shooting of J.R. episodes. “We were in the middle of a hostage crisis and there was an election campaign but all everybody wanted to know was ‘Who shot J.R.?’ ”

For the record, it was Kristin, J.R.’s scheming sister-in-law and mistress, played by Mary Crosby, who shot him. Take that.

Gary Tischler • December 3, 2012

When actor Ted Van Griethuysen, as Quince, the leader of the rude mechanicals gathered in the forest for a rehearsal of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” makes his entrance, he appears quietly, almost furtively, and he starts to sing, slyly, but happily, not loudly:

“There’s no business like show business. There’s no business I know …”

It’s a little thing, a kind of reminder that this play is—among the many things it is—a paean to theater and, yes, to show business, a theme that Shakespeare being a man of the theater in his times and the man of theater in ours, addresses many times in his plays. It doesn’t stop there either: as the mechanicals torture their way through their rehearsals and encounter many a problem, Quince reassures himself with selections from “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music.”

The show tunes are one of many conceits with which director Ethan McSweeny flavors this production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”—that the theater, with its traditions and magic, is one of the characters in the production. It’s a place where imagination comes to believable life in the form of fanciful fairies—albeit some dressed in the school of fashion accompanied by bustiers and garter belts—grand entrances, tragic-comedies told by heartfelt fools, rulers just a step removed from fable and legend, and a quartet of lovers pixilated to the point of total humiliation by an otherworldly being named Puck.

This production, which appears to be set in either somewhere north of the 1930s and south of the 1950s, in England or America or both, but always in Athens and a magical forest, is full of entrances meant to signify. Oberon, the king of the Fairies, makes his first appearance like a rock star in a cape, like Roger Daltrey in front of a white screen. Theseus and his bride-to-be Hyppolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, he in military head of state form, she as formal-dressed stunner, appear before gathered paparazzi, the fairies make their first appearances slowly, preceded by points of light from openings on the stage as if by: magic. Those same openings later become traps to fall in, trampolines to appear flying as if part of an abbreviated tumbling act.

In this production, the stage, like everyone else—or as Quince tells Bottom after he appears with the head of an ass—is “translated,” as well as always transformed.

What the production really seems to remind you of is a circus, a carnival, a sideshow, and bits of the most excessive parts of operas that don’t involve music. It’s theater and show business in all of its guises. It is, too, a dream we can swim in.

“Midsummer,” of course, has several balls up in the air. There’s the wedding of the rulers, and their sometimes not settled love. There’s the two couples Lysander-Hermia and Demetrios-Helen. Hermia loves Lysander, but is all but betrothed to Demetrios and Helena is smitten beyond reason with Demetrios who loves her not. There is Oberon, his queen Titania (ill met by moonlight), battling like a divorced couple over custody of a changeling boy. There is Puck, the frisky spirit of the night and Oberon’s hench boy, who, with some sprinkling of exotic fairie dust wreaks havoc with the lovers, makes Titania fall in love with the head-of-an-ass Bottom.

Finally, there are the rude mechanicals who have fallen in love with theater and the play they are to perform. They are worth mentioning because they are the salt of the earth and members in good standing of the 47 percent, a carpenter, a weaver, a bellows-mender, a tinker, a joiner, a tailor. They are, each and every one of them, transformed into thespians doing “Pyramus and Thisbes,” a tragedy faintly echoing “Romeo and Juliet,” but pure sweet, ineffectual nonsense in the hands of these our players. None is more the thespian than Nick Bottom, played with such honest hyperbole—Bottom’s middle name—that the word ham only begins to tell the tale. He wants to and thinks he should play all the parts. He survives the shock of his vivid dream as the lover of a queen with refreshing malapropism that sound like the truth. Bruce Dow does what Nathan Lane might try to do with the part, if only he could. His squeals, sighs and wild dog eagerness are a comic delight in a show which has many.

In dealing with the lovers, McSweeny resorts to the kind of physical comedy in which the characters suffer gross indignity—from losing much of their clothes to slipping, falling and sliding on a slippery stage. The players all bring it off with superb timing: Robert Beitzel as a kind of garage rock Lysander, Amelia Pedlow as the self-assured Hermia, Chris Myers as the smug Demetrius, and best of all, Christiana Clark, who, after enduring yet another humiliation, brings the house down with a grandiosely exasperated “Oh, excellence!”

If Tim Campbell and Sara Topham are the dream catchers and creators as the rulers—both earthly and fairyland—it is Puck who is modern mischief incarnated. He is the joker in the deck, the prospect of chaos, the knowing fool moving faster than the speed of hummingbirds, but he’s also the caretaker of his dream world and our dreams.

Puck suggests to us that “we have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear.” Fat chance of that. This “Midsummer” may feel like a dream, but it’s a vivid dream we won’t soon forget.

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” runs through Dec. 30 at Sidney Harman Hall, 610 F St., NW; 202-547-1122 — ShakespeareTheatre.org.

Gary Tischler • November 27, 2012

Jekyll & Hyde”, the pop-rock-musical version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel about a doctor who tries to separate good from evil and instead runs afoul of evil inside himself in the horrific person of Edward Hyde, may have been a grand guignol. It’s an entertaining novel, but it’s a strange sort of musical.

The show—now on a road trip before returning to Broadway from whence it came—has its own problem with schizophrenia or even multiple personalities in terms of being a musical. First of all, it’s been redone in terms of some new songs added, another repositioned and restaged, all of which may be fine, but we’re going to go with what we saw at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House having seen nothing else except an old Spencer Tracy movie version of the novel.

As contemporary musical entertainment, this production delivers to what appears to be a loyal fan base, conjuring up a good deal of spectacle and imaginative staging, plus the added attraction of a high-powered and top-drawer cast. The problem is not in the stars—which includes Constantine Meroulis (a runner-up on the fourth American Idol series) pop and r&b star Deborah Cox and the terrifically gifted Teal Wicks (Elphaba in “Wicked”). The problem is that the production, originally conceived as a concept album starring Colm Wilkes and Linda Eder, before going to Broadway where it ran for several years, even with the tinkering still seems derivative of other shows—there’s a whiff of “Les Miz”here and there, and stronger in terms of look and feel, “Phantom of the Opera”, and who knows, arena rock shows in some of its music and singing.

“Jekyll & Hyde”—conceived by Frank Wildhorn, with book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, music by Frank Wildhorn and direction by Jeff Calhoun—certainly knocks your eyes out in horror-movie fashion and with up-to-the-minute staging stuff—a scene in which Hyde and Jekyll occupy the stage at the same time makes use of video technology, as opposed to what used to involve the shaking of long hair.

It seems to me that the music is what passes for much too much Broadway composing these days—it’s made for voices who have learned to hold a note, complete with vibrato for a durable length of time that comes close to asphyxiation. This sort of music—the best of it can be heard in “Bring Him Home” from Les Mis and “The Phantom of the Opera”—is impressive when it contains operatic, pitch-felt emotions and brings audiences out of their chairs, but there are times here when its just an impressive feat not a moment of heartbreak. And the lyrics include feats of rhyming that are not in the least startling, but predictable.

All of that being said, as the emperor in “Gladiator” might put it, I was entertained, if not thrilled. Some of that had to do with the comfort zone of a familiar plot—a doctor playing god by eliminating evil from man’s makeup, gets too strong a dose of it, and ruins himself by bringing to life his inner psychotic,with murderous results.

Hyde, sung in growly, loud, raspy style by Meroulis, storms across the stage laying everything to waste, most notably the members of the board who run the hospital where Dr. Jekyll works. They’re a loud, vivid bunch of Victorian Age one percenters, a regular rich rogue’s gallery from a haughty grand dame, a lecherous, predatory bishop, a useless barrister, to a pompous model of a British major general, of the kind that Gilbert and Sullivan skewered regularly. Hyde does some skewering also.

Jekyll, going deeper into the muck, has to solve the problem of his women—one of them Lucy, a true lady of the night with a heart of gold and Ella, his delectable fiancé. The two are mightily dissimilar both in performance and voice—Cox plays Lucy with warm realism, her rangy pop voice hitting every song out of the park, including the appealing “Bring on the Men” and Teal has a chandelier-breaking voice and performing skill that brings a thankless part to life.

Meroulis throws himself into the task with such fervor—over the top in acting, on the money with his hold-on-to-your-seat rock arena voice—that you might want to ask for a recount on the American Idol vote.

This “Jekyll & Hyde”, which is taking another shot at Broadway, is as good as it can be,never more and never less than that, given the material. In the theater, that’s enough for a worthy night out.
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Robert Devaney • November 26, 2012

Last Wednesday, The S&R Foundation hosted the DC Jazz Festival Annual Trustee Reception at the Evermay Estate in Georgetown. The reception included a cocktail party, followed by a performance by 10-time Grammy winner Paquito D’Rivera performed with guitarist Yotam Silberstein and pianist Alex Brown.

Before the performance, Dr. Sachiko Kuno a founder gave opening remarks, as well as DC Jazz Fest founder and executive producer Charlie Fishman.

During his performance, D’Rivera switched between alto saxophone and guitar to play Jazz Meets the Latin Classics. The setlist included some original compositions, as well as playful takes on well-known classical music pieces.
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Gary Tischler • November 21, 2012

With the current production of “The Aliens” at the Studio Theatre, Washington theatergoers will have had an opportunity to take in the entire output of the very hot, young playwright Annie Baker-although she’s said to be working perhaps not surprisingly on a translation of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and a new play is slated to debut in New York in January.

In photographs of her, the overall impression-while attractive-seems slight and wispy, and that also is the initial impression you might get of her plays—”Circle Mirror Transformation”, staged at the Studio several years ago, “Body Awareness”, staged as Theater J’s season opener this year, and now “The Aliens”. Insofar as Ms. Baker is concerned, that is probably a misleading impression. With her plays, it’s a wrong impression, although that’s not so obvious to the naked mind or heart. Certainly her track record-numerous awards including Obies and Outer Circle Critics Awards-and critical acclaim almost everywhere her plays have been staged-belies any sort of lack of depth and power.

Baker’s work is tricky and sneaky. It has a cumulative effect, like a junk yard dog at the pound you don’t immediately think of rescuing, let alone loving. It’s an odd process, watching one of her plays—you get twitchy with impatience almost right from the start—until there comes a point where you’re nailed to your seat with angst and alarm, the glue being an odd sort of empathy.

It isn’t that Baker simply abandons traditional dramaturgy. Each of the three plays has a requisite number of secrets that emerge with varying degrees of power. The secrets, while effective and punchy dramatically, are almost beside the point. It’s the characters and language that count and one of Baker’s gifts is to be able to articulate, with realism, poetry and humor, the general inarticulateness of American personal communication and interaction. She has her thumb on what it’s like to be alive in today’s world.

She is also a writer who manages to work from a particular locale and region. William Inge’s Midwest comes to mind in her case. New England generally and suburban, small-town Vermont in particular and make the specific universal. The members of an amateur acting class in “Circle Mirror Transformation”, the lesbian couple living in a small university town, and now the two classic slackers hanging out barely in the back of a restaurant in “The Aliens” are specific to a place, but we already know them, and recognize them.

That’s important, because Baker-although she can be funny, and knows her way around emotional combat zones, doesn’t necessarily make it easy for audiences, if not critics. That’s especially true with “The Aliens”, while it has beautifully-and-smartly written dialogue, also has great big patches of silence in which no one says anything, in which you can hear and see the characters breathing. This can be a stretch for some audiences used to bang-bang writing, or evocative language, or yelling and screaming familial battles. Beckett comes to mind, but not so much Mamet or Shakespeare where the rest is silence not the beginning.

“The Aliens” is a three-character play, and we first see two of them, KJ and Jasper, in the back of a delapitated restaurant, amid garbage cans and a degraded old wooden table-bench-chair ensemble. KJ, looking a little like a ragged, undersized beached whale, is lying on top of the table, nearly out cold, sometimes humming, but otherwise not saying a word. Jasper, tall, thin, with a ragged beard like his chum, is pacing nervously, chain-smoking some odious cigarettes.

Nothing happens for quite a while. Jasper paces, KJ breathes in and out, with the hums. It seems almost that Baker is testing the boundary line where some people might walk out. Certainly people fidget. Anyone would. Silence may be golden but its not sacred.

But they do begin to talk about things: Jasper’s breakup with his girl, about Charles Bukowski the poet, about a friend of theirs that lives on a wind farm. These two you recognize as slackers who define the word, thirty somethings, lost and vaguely creative. They used to haves a rock band called-tadah-“The Aliens”-and Jasper is working on a novel quite seriously. He reads a lengthy, steamy sex scene from it to KJ who admits to getting aroused.

Along comes Evan, a high schooler who appears to be nervous about them being in the back. “It’s not allowed,” he says, but Evan too is something of a wayward spirit, fearful of a lot of things, he’s also part of a nearby music camp. Soon enough, Evan, wisely, sharply played with smart confusion by Brian Miskell, ends up under their spurious and quite scorched wings.

The first act can be trying, because it clearly sets up the second act, which is devastating. To varying degrees, this has been Baker’s process in her other two plays. Something happens–can’t say what–and life changes like it always does, and yet, things remain difficult to say, to express, but still: this time, in addition to long periods of silent breathing, you can hear hearts in pain, wanting to scream, dance or sing something perfectly. They can’t of course, but they try, they always try in Baker’s world.

In a play like this, the audience watches everything like a hawk for clues. Young women seem charmed by the guys. Thirty-something guys seem to retreat into themselves, whether they’re alone or not. It was a guy with a purple tie who jumped out of his seat at the end, clapping.

In the end, “The Aliens” is like a mystery play. It seems to be true to life. The characters in the play keep trying to fill in gaps in language. They reach for words that elude them, but you can see them reaching. The kid’s words—when others don’t come—are always “um…cool”, still the catch-all words of at least three generations.

Watching this play is like crawling through a minefield with a spoon. You’re afraid it, they and you, are going to blow up. Scott McKenzie as KJ and Peter O’Connor as Jasper convey their dusty, long friendship with such art that, led by director Lila Neugebauer, almost everyone finishes the journey safely, accompanied by the shedding of, not blood, but heartfelt emotions.

(“The Aliens” is now at the Milton Theatre at the Studio)
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Gary Tischler • November 19, 2012

Linda Lavin is a Broadway baby.

Oh, sure, she had a huge hit television series as the harried, funny, wise waitress “Alice” for nine years beginning in 1976, and she’s done films and television. But her heart, her core, her voice, if you will, belongs to Broadway.

We caught up with Lavin, who’s performing at the Kennedy Center in the Barbara Cook’s Spotlight cabaret series at the Terrace Theater, Friday, Nov. 16, on the telephone just as she was moving.

“You’ll have to excuse me, the movers are here,” she said. She and husband Steve Bakunas are moving to New York after 17 years in Wilmington, N.C., where they ran the Red Barn Studio, a community theater art studio and school, happily, and left quite a stamp. She founded the Linda Lavin Arts Foundation there “to promote and foster the advancement of the performing and visual arts, with special emphasis on arts in education.” She also acted and directed in many of the plays there, including a memorable production of “Driving Miss Daisy” and “As You Like It.”

“It was time, but it’s a little hectic,” she said. “I ordered Chinese, and they’re here. We have to move the piano.”

Something in her voice sounds a little like Alice on a hectic day in the diner. She’ll be in DC –back again after a triumphant turn in the Broadway-bound “Follies” at the Kennedy Center last year—singing. “The songs are sort of a reflection of me,” she said. “There’s a lot of variety there, not just Broadway show tunes, but different kind of songs, different moods, a little story-telling, love songs.”

She sings the way she acts—honestly, fiercely, tenderly in a way that’s unforgettable. Her gig was a hit at 54 Below, a snazzy club in New York. And she has a certain comfort zone here: Bakunas is on drums, and jazz violinist Aaron Weinstein is also in the band.

And the reason she’s a Broadway baby? That’s where she started, for one thing, going back to “It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman,” when she sang “You’ve Got Possibilities.” It’s where she did “Broadway Bound (Tony Award),” the last part of Neil Simon’s autobiographical trilogy. It’s where she followed Tyne Daly in “Gypsy” and belted out Mama Rose’s laments and anthems. It’s where she was in a revival of “Collected Stories” and collected three other Tony nominations. More recently, she starred opposite Stacey Keach in “Other Desert Cities” and the acclaimed family drama “The Lyons” by hot playwright Nicky Silver.

And of course—she sang “Broadway Baby”—in a powerful outburst of feeling and defiance in “Follies.”

“Yes, I think you can safely say that theater, Broadway, that’s my home, my place, where I thrive,” she said. She explains the variety of characters—united by eccentricity passion and strength—by noting that there’s “a lot of different women inside of me. I don’t think I’ve heard all of them yet.”

“Alice,” of course, identifies her, marks her with familiarity to millions of people still. She’s not complaining. “What ‘Alice’ did, it freed me,” she said. “It made me very rich, which is not a bad thing. But I think, too, that so many women immediately recognized themselves in the role, in who she was. It was about women who struggled, the women they talked about in the election this year, who don’t get paid the same as men, who get through the day. That part is always a part of me.”

“It’s a big deal, this move, we created something here in Wilmington, and it was all very special,” she said.

Lavin, who was married twice before, has been with Bakunas, an actor, artist and musician, for a long time. They married in 2005. When it was a suggested that he might be “a keeper,” she laughed an Alice laugh. “He better be,” she said. “No, he’s a wonderful man, a great guy.”

That would be the guy playing the drums as Lavin takes the stage at the Kennedy Center.

Gary Tischler • November 6, 2012

Vlad the Impaler, the original real his- torical figure from which sprung Bram Stoker’s fictional , blood-sucking anti- hero and the emergence of ballet as a dance art form are separated by less than a century, give or take.

It seemed to many that Dracula’s story—the one Bram Stoker wrote in the era of Victoria’s buttoned-up, repressed England—and ballet might make for a dreamy narrative match on the stage. That’s exactly what happens in the Washington Ballet production of “Dracula,” choreographer Michael Pink’s gory, heated, very bloody and seductive version of the tale at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, now through Nov. 4.

Narrative ballet—from “Swan Lake”, to “Don Quixote,” to “Romeo and Julet”—as opposed to more abstract works of modern dance, have always seemed to me like the dream version of a story, it’s dreamt essence lying at the core of the tale, just as opera is fevered version of the same tale, with the emotions riding on the music, and drama and plays carry the narrative with character and words.

On those terms, “Dracula” surely feels like a dream, even if that dream resembles more often than not a nightmare. Actually, it begins with a nightmare, one dreamt by the much- put-upon Jonathan Harker. This “Dracula” is remarkably faithful to the Stoker tale, with its bedeviled, haunted Harker, the bug-eating, madhouse resident Renfield, who acts as a kind of portal for Dracula, the beguiling Lucy and her swains, Lord Arthur Godalming and the rifle-toting, buckskin-wearing American Quincy Morris, a very romantic-looking, Byronian Dr. Van Helsing, and Mina, Harker’s fiancé, the real object of Dracula’s sinister affections, as well as assorted couples, female vamps, gendarmes, and peasants, including a horde of infected victims of Dracula.

The production itself lets out all the stops with Lez Brotherson providing a set and costume design that encompasses Dracula hallmarks — the stark sanatorium, the imposing staircases, the castle, the graveyard, beds and cof- fins, all bathed in a score by Phillip Feeney full of bells and whistles and screeches and pounding heartbeats, the ominous sounds of a hungry heart accompanied by an impending feeding frenzy.

This production, (which was originally directed by Christopher Gable) has different casts in different productions, with Jared Nelson cast in the red-caped and ninja-black role of Dracula. This is about Dracula, no question, and his overpowering will to feast. The production – a nerve-wracking and haunting two hours plus event is wrapped, and stacked around the architecture of three seductions in which Dracula overpowers Harkin, visiting his castle on business, the flirtatious, enchanting Lucy at what appears to be a gala brunch of couples moving up and down a staircase, into chairs and out on to a dance floor, and Nina at night, alone in a bed, beckoning her to his bloody, bared chest.

These dances—and that’s what they are, almost classic manifestations of ballet, but also almost Olympic-style athletic feats—show us Dracula’s magnetic, physical powers, as well as his hypnotic powers and for Nelson—and also for the dynamic Jyum-Woong Kim—the require- ments for the parts are a display of emotions, strength and lean-muscled strength so that the effect on the audience is as hypnotic as those of his victims.
These three pa-de near-deaths are interjected like a stiletto into the production, which includes the desperate presence of Renfield, a kind of ritualized, loud, brazen and bloody peasant folk dance which ends with the sacrifice of a wolf.

In England, there’s a ball, and as much flirtatious, happy, stylized, fashionista and high energy style dancing to make you almost forget who’s coming to dinner. In this production, Nicole Haskins, makes for a heartbreaking Lucy, she’s so full of energy, such forgiveable flirtation that her submission to Dracula and her trans- formation into a bloody-tooth, virally hungry otherbeing is a tragedy.

The presence of Dracula—for the audi- ence—even when he’s not in plain sight provides the tension of a violin bow, it speeds up the nar- rative, no matter what’s happening. This way, it becomes an adventure tale which moves to a kind of action climax, one, by the way which is as graphically violent as a stage production can
manage.

Pink’s “Dracula” is like a loud, almost unbearably and frightening dream, the tale remembered at some primal level, becoming real. In this season, that’s not a bad fright night.?

Gary Tischler •

Cab drivers ask about these things. “Long, yes?” he asked. “Very long?” “Yes, it was long,” I replied. It clocked in at just under three-and-a-half hours. But maybe not long enough.

When you are talking about Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” time, quite often, but not always, flies. Ideally, you forget where you are, forget all your troubles, and become immersed, like going under, knowing you don’t have to worry about holding your breath.

“I saw ‘Amadeus’ when I was young. Mozart, yes, and the ending was about that, yes?” asked the cab driver. I saw “Amadeus,” too, when I was young, or not so young. Ever since I’ve wanted to see the opera, considered by many to be the best opera ever by anyone, no comfort to Salieri there. Well, here we were at last, better late than never.

This may be a shameful thing to admit, seeing—and hearing—“Don Giovanni” for the first time at my age, and I am a little bit ashamed. But not so much. On the other hand, it makes you feel chipper and young, knowing that there may yet be other great things to experience for the first time—winning the Powerball lottery, finding a signed Dickens book, meeting the Dalai Lama or Angelina Jolie, whichever.

Right now, there’s still time to see the Washington National Opera Company’s superb, bracing production of “Don Giovanni” (Sept. 29, Oct. 1, 4, 7 , 9 and 13), and it’s really, really worth it, whether you’ve seen it 100 times or never, whether you’ve got all the time in the world or the clock is running out.

You get a real sense of what Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was all about during the course of this production and it’s not actor Tom Hulce’s giggling man-child, but a deft, facile, include-the-whole-experience, bona fide ahead-of-his-time, modernist genius of a composer, raising every form and bit he touched to another level. That’s why “Don Giovanni” is considered the best—it lacks nothing except brevity. Wagner may have thought he was in the running, but Richard Wagner lacked a capacity for humor of any sort, at least in his operas. “Don Giovanni,” disconcertingly unclassifiable, is rich in humor—low and high, sly and naughty, earthy and witty, acting as a kind of sneezing pepper for an opera that wears and discards the mantle of a dark, philosophical tragedy until the end. In short, this is serious stuff that’s also funny, sensual and sexy, uncommonly deep and grandiose. And it flits from serenades to dances, to arias, to soaring symphonic orchestral music, sometimes all at the same time with such ease that you barely take breath between transitions. The music—the real, meaningful content—is a joy.

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I was going to see “Don Quixote” that night. I, of course, corrected him, but afterwards, thought that’s not so far off. “Giovanni” or Don Juan is not that far removed from the Spanish knight tilting at windmills and seeing saints in sinners and his trusty sidekick Sancho Panza are not that far apart. They’re exact opposites of extremes: Quixote has banished thoughts of sex and seduction totally from his mind—Giovanni thinks of nothing else. Quixote rides to the rescue, Giovanni is the man people—women—need rescuing from. Giovanni is all about his id, his world view and in that sense he is Quixote’s twin.

But life and operas and music and genius aren’t that simple. What we’re offered at the Opera House is a palette of complications paced close to perfection by director John Pascoe, who’s also provide the oversized sets and the odd costumes, apparently set in Franco’s Spain, but here and there mixing it up with Mozart’s time. He puts you right in the action—and there is a lot of action—with Giovanni, having attempted to seduce and then rape Donna Anna, killing her father and on the lam with his exasperated servant Leperello in the first 20 minutes or so.

And away we go, always sidetracked when Giovanni spies an available woman or unavailable (it matters not). He’s pursued by Donna Elvira whom he dumped and left with child, he spies a fetching young peasant girl Zerlina on the day of her wedding to Masetto and attempts to seduce her not once but any time he can, he’s hunted by Donna Anna and her fiancé Don Ottavio who want to avenge her father’s murder, and he’s chased by a mob before the statue of the man he murdered comes to his villa for dinner and takes him at last away to hell, unrepentant to the last.

And that’s not the half of it.

It pays to have a great “Don Giovanni” in this part. He must have the chops, the voice and the looks and Russian bass Ildar Abrazakov has all three, because you have to, if not be sympathetic to Giovanni, at least feel his powers. Otherwise, we’re just dealing with a rapist, a boor and a killer. For a bass, Abrazakov sings with great power, sure, but also with surprising range. Consider for a moment when he’s decides to seduce yet another woman with a street-level balcony serenade (the famous “deh, vieni alla finestra”). He’s on his knees, the voice lowers, pleading, sweet, an ode to beauty and desire, it’s pitched to passion and wanting, it’s so moving you can imagine someone’s really smart and pretty sister falling for it. It caused at least one man in the audience to elicit a loud “Bravo!” and loud clapping.

The cast is more than supportive: American soprano Meagan Miller, supple, strong and working with throat trouble and triumphing as Donna Anna; Italian soprano Barbara Frittoli, singing freely and with great passion as the conflicted and in-love Donna Elvira; Argentine soprano Veronica Cangemi as the bewildered peasant girl Zerlina, injecting continual fresh energy into the proceedings.

In the program, a writer refers to Mozart’s “Shakespearean Diversity,” and that’s exactly so. The richness of content in “Don Giovanni”—and Mozart had considerable help with his favorite librettist Lorenzo da Ponte—contains, like “Hamlet,” the world. And it’s a big world, after all.