Performance

Gary Tischler • June 30, 2014

It’s hard to think of two shows more different from each other than “Sideshow” and “The Lion King,” now settled in for longish runs at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre and Opera House, respectively.

One is a resurrection and renovated redo of a legendary 1997 Broadway show about outcasts and outsiders, in particular two sisters joined at the hip who rise from sideshow, carny attractions to vaudeville stars. The other is the enduring Broadway musical version of the popular Disney cartoon, in which brilliant director Julie Taymor not only resurrects the story — along with Elton John and Tim Rice’s music — but offers an entire dream of Africa at its most optimistic. The one show is attempting to rise out of its early critically approved but audience-sparse past. The other remains an unstoppable entertainment phenomena.

But the two shows share something: both are embraced passionately by their audiences, although the audience for the two shows are probably very different, too. But each show had more than its share of electricity coming not only from center stage outward but out from the audience, which were often noisy with spontaneous applause and whistles in the first case, and vocal delight by the youngsters—and their adult companions—in the second.

These kinds of occurrences in the theater—call them happy disturbances in the theatrical field—are always there, of course, but in these two instances, the infectious passions generated by the shows, setting, stories and music became impossible to ignore, unless you arrived minus curiosity, empathy, heart, brain and soul. It’s what makes live theater so precious when it becomes rich in a series of moments that you want to take home with you as a keepsake.

This is especially true in the best sense for “Sideshow,” which has new songs, a new more literal and dramatic concept—thanks in large part to new director Bill Condon, the Oscar-winning director of the film version of “Dreamgirls.”

“Sideshow” tells the wrenching, but also oddly romantic tale of the Hilton Sisters, Violet (Erin Davie) and Daisy (Emily Padgett), the alluring co-joined twins and carnival attractions when we first meet them. That’s when the sinister, twisted side-show master named Sir invites us, at the top of things, to “Meet the Freaks”—the bearded lady, the three-legged man, reptile man, tattoo girl, half-man, half-woman, fortune teller, dog boy, Venus di Milo, the world’s tinest cossack woman and man, the pin cushion and Jake, the cannibal king.

The stars of the midway, the Hilton Sisters, who sing in keening voices like sirens , and who will for two bucks let you see where they are joined at the hip

This is depression-era America, where two guys from the vaudeville circuit. Hustlers and salesman and agents and dancers named Buddy Foster and Terry Connor are enchanted and see them as potential stars of the vaudeville circuit. “We are very well connected, “ they tell the sisters. “So are we,” the sisters say.

So, the fairy tale comes true in huckster nation. They become stars, they fall in love, they go to Hollywood, except … that they’re not like everybody else … they’re exactly like everybody else.

The notion—cliché-like—that the sisters are us, as are their boon companions from the sideshow, just happens to be true. For instance, were the sisters not the joined sisters, this could pass for a classic story-boarded and story-book romantic musical, and musically, you haven’t heard impassioned ballads like “I Will Never Leave You,” “Who Will Love Me As I Am” and “You Should Be Loved” in many, many years.

Yet the first, sung in and out of tandem by the sisters, is loaded with irony and yearning, of the kind that is the hallmark of most romantic joy and friction—don’t leave me, leave me alone, I’m so alone, I want to be free, I love you, I hate you, that everyone can hear their own heart bludgeoned, flying, battered and bathed, in them.

“Who Will Love Me as I Am” is practically an anthem for the sisters and their friends on the midway, but separate from that, is also a grand musical expression of the hope we all carry around to our dying day. “You Should Be Loved” is sung by Jake, who accompanies the girls on their journey, and is a not-quite surprising declaration of love for Violet and Jake is a double-outsider, being an African American in Jim Crow America. Those songs are so affecting—with incisive, empathy-loaded lyrics by Bill Russell and music as an expression of the heart by composer Henry Krieger—that the audience all but levitates with feeling at their climax.

The show often dips in an almost nostalgic ways with bows to Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret.” The hair-raising “Meet the Freaks” is a little bit of an echo of Joel Grey in “Come to the Cabaret,” as is the ménage-a-trois song, “1 + 1 = 3”.

Here’s a special bow to Emily Padgett as Daisy, and Erin Davie as Violet: it’s a triumphant pairing, together and apart, voices a little different, emotions very different. They’re the big stars of this show, but there’s room also for David St. Louis to shine as Jake and the total stellar cast. I would bet too that the audience in the end is an equal star in this show—there’s a definite feeling of the audience celebrating itself here. Come to the Sideshow, indeed.

“The Lion King” is Julie Taymor’s signal triumph, before she met a handsome but difficult stranger named Spiderman. Even if you’ve seen the show before, the entrance opening of the show with stately giraffes and animals sidling down the aisle, and all the puppetized creatures of the jungle, along with live actors take the breath away.

This isn’t about outsiders, but all the members of the lion kingdom, celebrating the circle of life, the traditions of their life, in spectacle and stunning costumes and lighting—this is Taymor—who dazzled in cinematic versions of Shakespeare—at her totemic best.

The story and characters—the noble lion king, his son, his vile, affected brother, plotting to dethrone his brother along with his followers, the scary, lurching, leering hyenas, the female pride—make for just the kind of coming of age story for children, not yet coming of age.

The actors embodying the roles have presence: L. Steven Taylor’s human swagger as Mustafa, Jelani Remy’s high-spirited Simba, Nia Holloway’s appealing Nala, Patrick Brown’s sneering, whiny Scar, the meercat and the warthog. They are vivid and lively, but so are the puppets making magic in the landscape.

Watch the children and youngsters in the audience. They give in to entrancement and enchantment almost immediately with the first bird-wielding puppeteer. We sat next to a young girl, whose heart seemed to stop as she watched Simba ascend the throne, her hand to her mouth, eyes wide.

She told her companion this: “The first thing we have to do, really, is come back and see this.”

I might add a note to self: “The first thing I have to do as soon as I can is come back and see “Sideshow”.

— “Sideshow” is at the Eisenhower Theater through July 13. “The Lion King” is at the Opera House through Aug. 17.

Gary Tischler • June 27, 2014

Sometimes the rapidly changing landscape of this city resembles an ongoing jazz improvisation, always moving, going here, going there, always changing, before it returns to its core melody, its home base.

So it feels right that, in addition to all the other changes, Washington, D.C., is becoming a new jazz city, much as it was many years ago when Duke Ellington first started out. Old-timers, fast disappearing but still talking, remember when the Howard Theatre, the Lincoln and other hot spots jazzed up the city in a Harlem Renaissance-type way.

Today there is a growing jazz scene in the very same area where Ellington used to live and play, down by 14th and U Streets, where you can find Bohemian Caverns – revived to its former glory – and places like Twins. Up in Adams Morgan, local players, trios and performers still play jazz in the evenings or on a summer’s afternoon with the windows open at Columbia Station.

The Howard Theater is reborn with a busy slate of jazz (and other kinds of music) and in Georgetown you can find the venerable jazz club Blues Alley, not far from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, whose graduates are starting to make names for themselves on the jazz scene.

The young, exuberant jazz pianist Jason Moran has taken over the jazz reigns at the Kennedy Center, which just got through holding the Blue Note 75th Anniversary Festival and the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. At the museums, you can hear jazz in the summer, in the evenings and outdoors.

But it’s probably fair to say that what’s driving jazz all over the Washington area this month is the presence of the DC Jazz Festival, now celebrating its 10th year. And like the city itself, the festival, running June 24-29, is changing.

“It’s grown phenomenally,” Sunny Sumter, the DCJF’s longtime director said. “Think about it. When Charlie [Fishman, founder and artistic director for the festival] started this, that first year in 2005, there were 13 concerts. Now look at us, look at what the festival is doing and what it’s become.”

The short version: 125 performances in nearly 60 venues, considered to be the fastest-growing jazz festival in the country, with a year-round education and performance program.

Here’s what’s happening this year:

“Jazz at the Hamilton Live” (June 24-29)

“DC Jazz Festival and Events DC Present Jazz at the Riverfront” (June 27-29)

“Jazz in the ’Hoods Presented by Events DC” (June 24-29)

Also as part of the “Jazz in the ’Hoods” series, CapitolBop.com presents the DC Jazz Loft Series, now in its fourth year, with three nights of cutting-edge music, a piano “cutting contest” and an all-evening Block Party.

Who’s coming? A partial list:

The Roy Hargrove Quintet at the Hamilton, “urban harmonicist” Frederick Yonnet, Trombone Shorty headlining a New Orleans flavored evening, Yaslin Bey (also known as Mos Def), Cyrus Chestnut presenting a riff on and tribute to Dave Brubeck, Grammy-nominee Gregory Porter, Grammy-nominee Snarky Puppy, the Brass-A-Holics, Trio Caliente, Irma Thomas, the Tia Fuller Quintet and the Helen Sung Quintet in a salute to women in jazz, Marc Cary’s Rhodes Ahead, Butcher Brown and the Braxton Cook quartet.

“I think we’ve been part of recognizing how jazz itself has spread and changed, embracing or influencing other kinds of music,” Sumter said. “The Howard Theater is part of the festival this year with a Ginger Baker concert, and he’s known for being a drumming icon in the rock and roll world, but he’s also a jazz drummer. Paco D’Rivera has had a huge influence on jazz, spreading it into the Latin sounds, and he’s being a big part of the festival all along.”

Young people steeped in rock and roll, hip-hop, rap, alt, punk, pop and Americana have rooms in their imagination for a resurgence of jazz. And in this international city, the growing international appeal of jazz draws ears from all over.

During the course of the 10th annual DC Jazz Festival, jazz will reveal itself again in all of its facets and changing styles. And it will reveal the city for what it’s becoming, too:
Jazz City. [gallery ids="101754,141548" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Legendary jazz pianist Monty Alexander is in town Friday night at 8 p.m. for what’s billed as a 70th birthday celebration and concert at the renovated Howard Theatre.

Naturally, when we start to talk on the phone, I congratulate him on his birthday, which was officially June 6 and allow that I’m a little older than he is.

“Yeah?” he responds good naturedly. “How old are you? Ninety seven?”

Right away, after laughing a little, I get the sense that this might not be your everyday interview with a jazz legend. Indeed, it turns into a free-wheeling talk about this and that, Duke Ellington and Jamaica, starting out in New York at Jilly’s, which was owned by a guy named Jilly Rizzo, about playing at Blues Alley in Georgetown in the 1970s and today, about seeing Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole, when he was a teenager, about the connection between reggae and jazz, about B movie cowboy stars like Wild Bill Elliott and Tom Mix, about Errol Flynn and Clint Eastwood and what life experience means to playing jazz.

This and that, indeed.

What’s probably more important than the 70th birthday celebration aspect of Alexander’s concert is its other two titles: “Two Worlds, One Love” and “My Jamaica to Jazz,” all of which are expressions of two of his latest albums, “Harlem-Kingston Express,” volumes one and two. Also, there will be musicians playing with him that accentuate that connection and ride, such as Tony Rebel, Bob Andy, Duane Stephenson, Etienne Charles and Wayne Escoffery.

“It’ll be great, you wait and see,” Alexander said. “We’re doing the concert at B.B. King’s in New York the night before, and this is going to be even better.”

Alexander is a great believer in the idea of life experience informing art, about life as an improvisation of the jazz kind, and that jazz had in some ways a kind of glory time because of some incomparable stars, performers and musicians who came to the jazz life armed with the kind of often rough-and-tumble, even tragic life experience from which they drew their musical inspiration. We’re talking about anyone from Louis Armstrong—“Now there, there was a great musician,” Alexander exclaimed. “He was something”— to Duke Ellington, “Bird” (Charlie Parker), Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie. “All of these guys”, Alexander gestured. “Plus, they had charisma to burn.”

“I’m trying to make that connection to what I grew up with.” Alexander said. “I saw many great jazz artists when I was a kid in Jamaica, and when I came to Miami, starting out. Lot of them inspired me. My life inspired me.”

Some folks might be a little leery of the prospect of a 70th birthday. Alexander doesn’t sound like the type. He’s doing some of his liveliest, most interesting work these days, especially the Harlem-Kingston Express albums and tours. “You don’t stop,” he said. “You keep learning. You keep doing. You keep playing, you know. You get up there, and you embrace it.”

As Alexander’s biography indicates, his career spans five decades and is notable for collaborations, working with other high-flying jazz luminaries and dipping freely, joyously into other genres of music. One critic has pointed out that there’s hardly any music that Alexander doesn’t like. “It’s never one thing,” he said. “You can draw from so many different forms of music.” He helped Natalie Cole with her Grammy-Award-winning tribute album “with” her late father Nat King Cole, worked with Sinatra, provided the piano track for Clint Eastwood’s “Bird”, an astonishing film biography of Charlie Parker, is listed by Hal Leonard as one of the top five jazz pianists of all time (about which he demurs), and worked on 12 Bob Marley composed pieces and filled with rich jazz piano arrangements. One of his albums, “The Good Life,” is a collection of songs written and made popular by the ageless Tony Bennett.

The Harlem-Kingston Express albums have been on top of the jazz charts for two years now.

Viewing some videos of old and new efforts by Alexander is to get a good look at a way cool master, an embracer who makes things look both lively and effortless, intense and easy. Listen, really listen to his version of Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry”—it has the lightest, most tender feel to it, or catch him doing “Satin Doll” on the piano, lightly, very cool like champagne touched by deep love and a little whiskey, the man himself sporting a thick Afro. Look at him now, joining a whole band on stage, jumping on the stage, directing everybody. Here comes a trumpet solo. There he is on the piano, high energy, his hair a whiter shade now.

You can see and hear in that voice of his over the phone that he gets deep into anything that catches his fancy. For some reason, the subject of old B-movie cowboy stars came up, and you could just hear him getting caught up in it. “Tom Mix, Lash LaRue, Gene Autry, oh, man,” he said. “Wild Bill Elliott, man, don’t get me started. We’re going to be on the phone all day long.” He had a similar attitude about one of this writer’s childhood heroes: the swashbuckling movie star who died young and very old at the age of 50.

Just take a look at some of the tracks, just for the titles of the Harem-Kingston albums—“Freddie Freeloader,” “No Woman No Cry,” “Redemption Song,” “Strawberry Hill,” “The Harder They Fall,” “Day-O,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown,” “High Heel Sneakers” and “Hurricane Come and Gone.” You can see him sifting, mixing, bringing onboard, sliding through and re-arranging all kinds of music, all kinds of people. Moving right along.

Gary Tischler •

As you settle in for what is a brisk evening in the theater at Theater J’s production of Mark St. Germain’s “Freud’s Last Session,” it seems an odd place to be in these times, these days in the 21st century.

We’re in London, in a not-so-merry England, just as the nation and the world are about to embark on what will be World War II as Great Britain, its prime minister and king, will go on the radio air to announce a declaration of war on Nazi Germany after its invasion of Poland in 1939.

We’re in the study of Sigmund Freud, the great psychoanalyst who fled to London from Austria after the Nazi takeover. Freud was the man who ushered in the age of the couch, obsessions with dreams, buried memories and psycho-therapy with his revolutionary writings. He’s receiving an evening guest, the English writer C.S. Lewis, intellectual heavyweight and member of the Inklings, an Oxford literary group of the time that included J.R.R. Tolkien.

With war clouds—actually—overhead, Lewis and Freud embark upon what can be construed as a theological discussion: is there a God? It is that timeless question which even today is being constantly polled in terms of whether people believe in God or are a part of organized religion. To Freud, the profoundly atheistic professorial great man in history, the answer was always been a determined “no.” Lewis, who became an atheist or a disillusioned non-believer after the death from cancer of his first wife at an early age, has come full circle and is now a converted believer. He is in some ways a gentle fantasist whose belief in faith resounds nicely in his own literary works as in “The Chronicles of Narnia,” which enjoyed a recent comeback of popularity when his books were turned into movie box-office hits, beginning in 2005.

This is not a didactic debate. It is a clash, not warlike, but a clash, nevertheless—of different personalities, tastes, sensibilities and styles. Freud—as played brilliantly by the gifted Rick Foucheux—comes across as combative and impatient, stubborn and even arrogant, even as evidence of his battles with mouth cancer emerge, while Lewis, played with soft upper lip and erudition by Todd Scofield is seen as almost a classic Englishman of the period, intellectual, compassionate, a convert who never wavers.

The setting seems, in one sense, long ago. World War II seems ever more long ago, especially in an English setting, and a drawing room of books is less commonplace today in atmospheric terms. While the conversation is more in the nature of a debate, involving sentences that come almost in paragraph form, it is a rarity in today’s age of texting and twittering.

Yet, the talk is serious, it’s seen as a clash between sensibility and a kind of sensitivity and it also seems urgent. Freud, who is Jewish and dying, has an inkling of what is coming, and Lewis is sensitive to that, but neither really knows or can imagine the dimensions of the disaster that has been launched, the scope of the destruction and the breadth of death.

With all of that, the play is often funny, sometimes in sly fashion, sometimes in the telling of jokes, some of which fall flat, others which elicit genuine laughter in the audience. For instance, when Lewis arrives, he asks if should perhaps sit on the omni-present couch. Freud offers a chair instead.

This is a play about two human beings, creative as well as pragmatic men, talking about what it is to be human. Both in a way are experts—Freud through his ground-breaking examinations of the human psyche and human dreams, Lewis with his story-telling that shines not only with adventure but with a landscape full of roads and places, where moral decisions and issues of faith abound.

Periodically, aside from this debate, something happens. An air raid siren which sees Lewis armed with a gas mask and after-shocks from his World War I experience. Freud gruesomely and bloodily almost choking on his prosthetic for his cancerous mouth. News comes on the radio—the prime minister’s announcement of a declaration of war, the famous king’s speech. Lewis asks why Freud never listens to music for pleasure as a soothing salve for the grim world. Freud’s answer is that he cannot stand to listen to something that he does not understand, the hows and whys of creation.

These are not the sort of people, and the sort of conversation we hear today, almost anywhere except perhaps in a seminary or a literary book club. More’s the pity.

“Freud’s Last Session” runs through June 29.

Gary Tischler •

Once upon a time, say, Oct. 16, 1997, a musical opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway.

This is not news today, nor was it then. Musicals open on Broadway all the time, some to move on to glory and musical memories everlasting, and some to exit street left, never to be heard from again.

The musical in question was called “Side Show,” with a book and lyrics by Bill Russell and music by Henry Krieger of “Dreamgirls” fame. It was a show about the life and times of Violet and Daisy Hilton, conjoined (“Siamese”) twins who were sideshow (“carny”) attractions and even bigger vaudeville stars.

Directed by Robert Longbottom, it featured Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner as the sisters and received Tony Award nominations for best musical, best book, best music and best acting in a musical (Ripley and Skinner for one role).

But 91 days after it opened, “Side Show” was gone. Over the years, it became something of a legend, a theatrical rumor about remembered magical moments.

“I don’t know exactly what happened,” said Bill Russell when we sat down and talked with him. “It was a lot of things, I suppose. I think a lot of people thought the show would sell itself, and just about everybody we ever talked to who actually saw it loved it. Maybe it wasn’t marketed enough, maybe the whole idea of a musical about people who were very, very different from everybody else – and especially the twins and their attempts to find love – rubbed some people wrong.”

“Side Show,” of course, is back, bigger than ever with new characters and ten new songs added, directed by Bill Condon, the Oscar-winning director of the movie version of “Dreamgirls.” It’s a Kennedy Center production – part of the Michael Kaiser legacy of rescuing critically acclaimed shows with passionate followers such as “Ragtime” and “Follies” – in association with the La Jolla Playhouse in California, where it had a successful run.

“One thing I know, and one thing I saw, was that young people seemed to really get into this show,” Russell said. “And I’m not surprised. Thinking in terms of the characters in the show, people that were considered freaks, outsiders, and here they’re the main people in a musical and you see their yearnings and strivings to be like other people, to love and shine.

“The sisters were real people. They even played themselves in that 1930s movie ‘Freaks’ by Todd Browning. But they were never alone from each other, people always looked at them, they were different from each other.”

The production at the Kennedy Center, more of a musical drama than a musical, is by all accounts elaborate. And while it may appear larger and richer, and thick with memorable music and songs (not to mention memorable costumes and makeup) – “Here are the Freaks” still opens the show in rousing fashion – it aims straight at the hearts and emotions of the audience.

This is a show that includes not only promoters and ballyhoo folks, but the bearded lady, little people, the three-legged man, the living Venus de Milo, reptile man and, of course, the girls. Emily Padgett, a veteran of several national tours (“Rock of Ages,” “Cats” and “Legally Blonde), plays Daisy and Erin Davis (“A Little Night Music,” “Grey Gardens”) plays Violet.

Russell’s list of credits includes the long-running Off-Broadway show “Pageant,” which won two Olivier nominations for its West End production, as well as “Elegies for Angels,” “Punks and Raging Queens” and “Family Style.” But it’s probably fair to say that “Side Show” is something special for him, and not just because of the Tony nominations and the Broadway run.

“I know a little something about being an outsider,” he said. “Think about this: I was born in Deadwood and raised in a town called Spearfish in the Black Hills of South Dakota. “My father was a popular guy whom everybody called Cowboy. He was a cowboy, and here I am, coming out to him and the town newspaper as gay. He was not happy with me. He worked in rodeo, he herded cattle. Eventually we reconciled, and he got to see some of my work and I think he appreciated what I did and who I was. But it wasn’t easy.”

Fathers stay in the heart. Russell wrote poems about his father including one called “Cowboy.”

As for “Side Show,” which is in the Kennedy Center Opera House through July 13, what happens next? Broadway?

“Hard to say,” Russell said. “Sure would be great, wouldn’t it?” [gallery ids="116368,116357,116364" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Jay Leno — who retired four months ago as host of the Tonight Show for 22 years with one dramatic, controversial hiccup in the run — has been tapped to receive the Kennedy Center’s coveted 2014 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

That means a parade of Leno friends, peers, guests—no sure if the intern will show up or, for that matter, Conan O’Brien—at the really big show Oct. 19. Leno is the 17th recipient of the prize, the latest in a list that includes Richard Pryor, who inaugurated the event by being the first recipient on a somewhat anarchic and profane night as friends and peers like Chris Rock and Robin Williams saluted the ailing comedian in an irreverent style that had rarely been seen at the Kennedy Center.

Subsequent festivities—all televised, all big-star red carpet events—were not quite so footloose and featured salutes to a varied parade of talents, including, among others, the beyond-category Jonathan Winters, the great banjo player and comedian Steve Martin, the irrepressible Lily Tomlin, Bill Cosby, who turned the award down twice because of the profanity-full first award show, a parade of Saturday Night Livers like Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Will Ferrell, playwright Neil Simon and the funky George Carlin. Fey was the youngest performer (40 at the time) to receive the award. Three of the last awardees have been women—Fey, last year’s winner Carol Burnett and Ellen DeGeneres.

There is a certain amount of belated irony in the choice of Leno. The successor to the incomparably cool Johnny Carson, Leno’s undeniably the last king of late night television—having trounced David Letterman, the popular choice of the cool and the hip, and the first late night host to win the award. Leno is a survivor, often decidedly middle brow, a worker bee of the highest order, who works almost as obsessively on a monologue as Van Gogh might have on a painting. He survived a very public dispute-wrangle-and-dance with NBC, whom he regularly skewered on his show, when NBC made Conan O’Brien his successor, letting Leno implode on an hour-long prime time show. while O’Brien regularly gasped for air and ratings in his Tonight Show incarnation.

Leno came back and worked the audience like the pro that he has always been, having done his bit for 22 years, being an equal opportunity host in his targets, having presidents on his show as well as up and coming comedians, the usual movie stars and pop queens, kids, political candidates, and contest winners and animal trainers. He was recognizably one of a kind with his malleable face, the buffet of hair that turned white, the news bits, the man on the street bits, otherwise known as jaywalking.

Let’s hear it for Jay Leno. The Mark Twain Award for American Humor is the best kind of applause.

Gary Tischler • June 9, 2014

When you hear a couple of guys, great actors both, talk about William Shakespeare, you immediately start thinking about: Shakespeare.

In the case of listening to the conversation that swirled around actors Ed Gero and Stacey Keach and moderator John Andrews, the president of the Shakespeare Guild at the Woman’s National Democratic Club recently, you particularly started thinking about the great “Seven Ages of Man” speech in the Bard’s “As You Like It,” which begins thusly:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages . . .”

Shakespeare being a man of the stage often referenced the stage—the play within a play in “Hamlet” and Hamlet’s instructions to the players, Prospero’s farewell speech in “The Tempest.” The “Seven Ages of Man” speech is direct and precise, and it’s about theater as well as life its own self.

This resonated when you heard Gero and Keach — who could and probably have given master classes on acting — started talking about the roles they were playing at Harman Hall in the two parts of “Henry IV.” Gero played the king of the title role, and Keach took on Falstaff, the boisterous boon companion to Prince Hal, the future Henry V.

The professional lives and trajectories of Gero and Keach have been different. Keach, although he is one of our finest Shakespearean actors, has taken a few detours into movies and television, not always choosing wisely, as he has acknowledged, Nevertheless, he has played his characters memorably. Gero has spent a lot of time on the stage in Washington (and elsewhere), assaying 60 Shakespearean parts along the way. Whatever stage of man they may be in now, rich in family life, children and so on, the roles they have played brought them together on stage—notably in a Chicago-Goodman-Theatre-based production of “King Lear,” in which Gero was Gloucester to Keach’s Lear—but the roles themselves have criss-crossed and bumped into each other.

“I played Falstaff once when I was in my twenties,” Keach said. “I had to gain some weight and wisdom I think to play him then. I didn’t have to do that this time around. I need to lose some weight now.”

Gero’s experience with the history plays and the paths of the Henry’s in particular seems like an alternative life lived inside the theatre. He played the lead in “Henry V” at the Folger, when he too was much younger. Then, he performed in “Richard II” as the rebellious Bolingbroke who usurps the crown of Richard II, not once but twice, opposite Philip Goodwin and Richard Thomas. Bolingbroke would become a troubled and often guilt-ridden Henry IV, fending off rebellions and uprising, trying to separate his son Henry from Falstaff.

“Things can get circular, but I think all of that helps you bring the virtue of experience to the parts,” Gero said. “I’m the father, I was the son, I was the usurper and now the king. Henry IV has become a master politician. He knows how to manipulate people, hold and exercise power, like a modern politician. He’s a modern man and that resonates today.”

“I’ve tried not to play Falstaff like a buffoon, which is often done,” Keach said. “There is a huge amount of comedy in the part, but he sees himself as a serious man. You not only have to get the laughs, you have to get the audience not just to like Falstaff but to respect him. His biggest audience is Prince Hal, and when he becomes king in the second play, the comedy stops. Things become more like an elegy. You should take into account that now Hal has to be Henry. He has to act like a king, and he can’t embrace Falstaff, who has some hopes. You can see that again in “Henry V”, when he has to approve of the execution of one of his old companions for desertion.”

Keach is associated with many screen roles, big and little, and is therefore better known. For anybody who goes to the theater a lot in Washington, he has performed brilliantly here as “Richard III.” For this writer’s money, he played the best Richard III ever: dangerous, mocking, self-aware and funny. He also played Lear and Macbeth. But then, there’s a woman who comes up to him after the talk and says ,“You’re my favorite Jesse James.” It was a reference that means a lot to Keach obviously but very little to anyone who hasn’t seen Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders,” a wondrous, stylized, banjo and guitar-driven Western about the outlaws Jesse and Frank James and the Younger boys, robbing banks, one step ahead of a fatal bullet. If you watched television and the “Mike Hammer” private eye series, where Keach was tough and slick with a mustache and a cocked hat, well, there you are. You remember.

Gero, too, has had his share of parts—on the stage—where he’s delivered memorable performance and been rewarded with Helen Hayes Awards. He’s been Scrooge at Ford’s Theater and the artist Mark Rothko. Now, he’s taking on the part of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia for Arena Stage next season.

“Interesting, fascinating,” Gero said of his preparation for the man and the role.

The world remains the same: a stage for a man to play many parts.

— “Henry IV” parts one and two will be playing at the Harman Theatre through this weekend. Check the Washington Shakespeare Company for tickets, dates and times.

Nicole Cusick •

“The Admission” lives on at the Mead Theatre at the Studio Theatre after its run as a workshop at Theater J. This controversial piece by Motti Lerner, an Israeli, addresses the often difficult conversations that can go on between Arabs and Jews across the world.

Andy Shallal, former mayoral candidate, restaurateur and owner of Bus Boys and Poets, is producing this second run of this show. Lerner’s inspiration for “The Admission” comes from the story of Giora, a wounded veteran of a military action in Lebanon. Giora tried to retrospectively understand the motives behind the murder of a group of Palestinian civilians by a unit under the command of his father – an Israeli soldier — some 40 years earlier during the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.

The talented Danny Gavigan plays Giora, the wounded veteran who is physically reminded every day of the constant conflict of his country, as he can only get around on crutches. Michael Tolaydo plays Avigdor, his father, a man who is cares very much about his family and their future, as he carries the weight of his actions of the past with him. Both actors beautifully portray the conflict we all have with letting go of the guilt and memory of our past actions to prevent us from moving forward and embracing the present.

Kimberly Schraf (Yona) commits whole-heartedly for the two-hour run of the show as the wife and mother to these two and tries to keep the family together as well as her husband’s construction business going. Yona is also dealing with the loss of one son as the result of the conflict and mourns his loss with grace, while trying to keep her husband and son from doing something they will regret.

Where it seems Lerner took some creative liberties is in the relationships in Giora’s personal life. He is engaged to a lovely Jewish girl, Neta, played by Elizabeth Anne Jernigan. Jernigan’s performance is a tender display of the struggle many wives of veterans would sympathize with. Giora is also involved with a young and feisty Arab woman, Samya, played by Nora Achrati. He works with her at the university in Haifa, and they have an ongoing affair that his family and finance are aware of, but their relationship is not accepted due to their religious differences. This aspect of the play seems a little like a soap opera. There is no real way to reinvent the plot line of boy and girl should get married, but boy gets distracted by a more unique girl he can’t ever really be with because of societal or religious pressures.

In the same vein, the play also struggles structurally at points in that the show is broken down into more than a dozen short scenes. This left the piece feeling choppy and ending abruptly at times, lots of small two- or three-person scenes, when the full cast is only seven characters. The structure almost felt like the piece would play better as a movie script.

Design-wise, the production was very clean and simple. This could be due to the relocation of the production, or just to allow the audience to follow the actors through the half a dozen locations the play takes place. Klyph Shoham designed the projections, which were displayed on a screen that when not in use matched the design on the deck of the stage in a simple grid pattern. When in use, the screen displayed dull images on green landscapes, construction in the city and some images of historic ruins. The projections were only used in the beginning and very end of the show. I was left wanting them used more consistently throughout the production. It might have helped bring the audience be more easily aware of the multiple locations.
One choice that I appreciated in the design of the show was that when actors “exited” the stage they were simply seated off the stage but still intentionally in sight of the audience. They sat in silence at well-lit café tables awaiting their next scene intently watching what was happening on stage. This speaks to one of the overarching metaphors of the piece that the actions of our loved ones truly affect us whether we see their choices play out or not.

Lerner’s work takes a hard look at the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It presents difficult conversations between family members and different families trying to live and work freely in the same community. Each performance is followed by a discussion, led by a Theatre J staffer and a few of the actors. They hope to continue the dialogue the production inspires.
“The Admission” will run at the Mead Theatre at the Studio Theatre through May 18. For tickets, visit the Bus Boys and Poets [website](http://theadmission.bpt.me/).

Gary Tischler •

They called it “Blue Note at 75 — The Concert.” In truth, it was exactly what record producer Don Was said it was: “What you’ve got here with Blue Note is the history of jazz in America.”

The concert itself was made up of some historic figures from the Blue Note canon. The newer staples and mainstay star artists contained that history, too, as performers, including host Jason Moran, the Kennedy Center Artistic Advisor for Jazz, and a Blue Note Records artist himself.

In the process, they showed off the rich terrain of American jazz: its diverse personae and personalities and styles, its ageless qualities and that part of the music that continues to refresh itself in bubbling, sometimes on-fire like a musical baptismal font and stream of improvisation.

Jazz lovers, fans and friends, knowledgeable cool men and women bathed in the familiar sounds and music, were always jolted by something new. After all, you can’t have jazz without something new. Moran, a standout and individualistic pianist, played in his tennis shoes.

Blue Note, the iconoclastic jazz recording company, was founded by two German immigrants. Maintained by a tireless engineer, it continues to be a producing company and label like no other.

“Everybody knew and recognized Blue Note, by its music, its artists its energy, but also by its album covers. Those photograph, those stylized images, they were jazz,” said Moran, while hosting the concert that put a cap to the Blue Note 75th Anniversary Celebration.

For the folks who played that night and for jazz buffs, it was like being in some kind of boogie-blues-riff-and-rolls and solo heaven.

Moran himself, joined by pianist Robert Glasper, tripped the fantastic light of boogie woogie — “one of the cornerstones of jazz”, Moran said. Like some kind of wizard, he got notes out of the piano that came out like some really cool staccato, rain falling like music.

Youth was served here — Lionel Louke on guitar, Kendrick Scott on drums, the brilliant pianist Fabian Almazan, Derrick Hodge on bass, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums.

You want star singers? There were two, opposite stars shining on opposite sides of the jazz firmament. The dazzling Dianne Reeves, who joined blockbuster trumpeter Terence Blanchard on “Dreams” and made “Stormy Weather” very much her own and more like a hurricane followed by hearts breaking and reviving.

Norah Jones —who burst on the national jazz and music scene with a slew of Grammys for her first album like a quiet surprise —came to the concert that way, too. The spotlight found her black-outfit elfin self on the piano, about to launch into the standard “The Nearness of You” with her distinctive smoke-and-butter voice.

If you want veterans, take the presence of pianist McCoy Tyner, soft voiced in his talk, and Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, who seemed to be forever pulling secrets out of the music and his instrument, playing it like a thinker and a shaman. Meanwhile, Tyner played like a train, pulling out the blues of the keys.

The sax virtuoso Wayne Shorter ended it all by reminding us that there is no end to moments or notes, held and thrown away. They are retrieved and come back renewed and charmed. The new survives in the playing as much as the old.

Speaking of somewhat older—there was “Sweet Poppa Lou” Donaldson, at 87, as he noted, the oldest guy on the label and perhaps in the house, but close to the youngest, too. Because he played the sax, with the formidable Dr. Lonnie Smith on the piano, like it was a baby, spanking out notes, teasing, soothing, then playing hard without a sweat, and giving us what it is.

“We play straight ahead jazz and blues,” Donaldson said. “No fusion, no confusion, no P. Diddy, no nothing else.” He and the rest launched into “Alligator Boogaloo.” You looked, listened, heard and felt some kind of slight scuffed magic, which is what jazz is. It’s shaman stuff, story music. The made-up stuff comes straight for you, and you don’t ever want to get out of the way.

Gary Tischler • May 23, 2014

One of the finest—and most original—music albums of any sort came out late last year,  further enlarging the artist’s reputation and resurrecting a ghost of a jazz legend at the same time.
       

That would be the provocatively entitled “I Wanna Be Evil” by the surging and one-of-a-kind jazz singer Rene Marie, who with a ten-song work on the Motema label has managed to bring alive the high-spirited one-of-a-kind life and music of Eartha Kitt.

       
The album—subtitled “With Love to Eartha Kitt”—came out late in 2013 and proved to be a wonder.  It’s rich in the trademark songs of Kitt, who was one of those singer-performers who was way beyond category with big hits like “C’est Si Bon” and the hugely popular “Santa Baby” back in the 1950s, when she was one of the singular “New Faces,” right through 2008 when she passed away.
       

“There wasn’t anybody like her,” Rene Marie said of Kitt. “It’s why I wanted to do this. She inspired me more than anybody. I always wanted to sing, but I got kind of a late start.”
       

We had occasion to talk on the phone with Rene Marie a while back when she appeared in Bethesda.  She’s one of the most personable, straight-ahead people you ever want to meet.  On Saturday, May 24, Washington fans of both Kitt—and of Rene Marie, born Rene Marie Stevens, in nearby Warrenton, Va.—get a chance to hear her doing songs from the album as part of the two-day 19th Annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz festival at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. Other performers on May 24 include Trio 3 performing a Mary Lou Williams repertoire and rising star Anat Cohen and her quartet.
       

Rene Marie isn’t exactly like Kitt, although both have appeared in Washington, D.C.—we talked with Kitt a number of years ago when she appeared at the now gone Charley’s Supper Club on K Street.  Kitt had a style that was damn tough to imitate and reproduce, and she had attitude to spare, but she also more often than not flat out made you listen and watch if you had the good fortune to catch her in person. 

In 1999, the year her career started to take off, Rene Marie performed at Blues Alley, also in Georgetown. Rene Marie has an attitude too, but it’s the of the kind that’s looking to share music and help others. On line, you can see her singing for homeless people, in shelters or impromptu occasions.
       

She always entertained the thought of singing—her voice has a clarity that’s hard to subdue, but she was as she has said in “an abusive marriage” for years.  Rene Marie continued to try to sing and perform until her husband said, she told us, “Choose, me or your music.”  Encouraged by her  grown children, she chose music. “At that point, well, it was an easy choice,” she said.
       

So, Rene Marie was off at the age of 42 to start a singing career. It wasn’t easy, but she’s at what amounts to a personal zenith now, but never forgets that songs—like “Strange Fruit”—are about people, history and times, as well as the joy of making music. She’s written much of her own materials and songs as well as hewing to her own unique style of singing standards. 
       

When you listen to Rene Marie’s voice, her singing on the Kitt album, you hear strains of other voices—influences like Betty Carter, Ella, Dinah, Nancy Wilson and Sarah Vaughan, and, of course, Kitt. Mostly, however, it’s a voice you’ve also never heard before. 
       

The tribute to Kitt is different from Kitt. It’s a musical praise for Kitt’s courage as much as her unique talent. But Kitt always had something growly, a hot touch, unbeatable but not necessarily classical. 
       

Rene Marie is the real thing. She makes all the songs on the album her own, and therefore emotionally stronger, clearer and better.  She has a rangy, beautiful voice. “Santa Baby” becomes more than a playful tune, as does “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.” She has that throaty optimism that makes “I’d Rather Be Burned As a Witch” a lights-out effort.