Performance

Gary Tischler • February 23, 2012

“He was America’s greatest playwright. He was the writer who influenced everyone who came after. He plumbed the deepest mysteries we encounter in life. He wrote about the darkest moments in our lives.”

Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith was talking about none other than Eugene O’Neill, who, with probably not too much argument from anyone, was and perhaps remains our finest master of theater and literature, exploding with a rich and troubled career of the kind of scope and ambition this country had not seen before.

O’Neill is the subject of a two-month, far-ranging in venues and events homage and festival, an homage and celebration of O’Neill’s work and lasting influence through performance, discussion, readings — and sometimes events not entirely easy to categorize.

“It’s also a great opportunity to initiate collaborative projects with other theaters or with our universities. Sometimes, that’s become an increasingly effective creative force in the city and become a characteristic part of this city’s culture,” Smith said.

The festival is spearheaded by three full-length productions, two at Arena Stage and the third at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. In addition, there will be 20 readings, workshops, radio plays, lectures, panels, presentations and art exhibits throughout the Mead Center, and a number of diverse partnering groups, organizations and institutions, among them the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, the Capital Yacht Club, Georgetown University, George Washington University, the New York Neo-
Futurists, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Taffety Punk and the University of Maryland.

“At Arena, we’ve had similar festivals for Arthur Miller several years ago and for Edward Albee last year,” Smith said. “I would think it’s about time we honored O’Neill in a similar way.”

It is easy enough to see O’Neill who was born in the last part of the 19th century as a kind of progenitor in the middle of the 20th century and father of modern American Theater, and it is not too crazy to compare him to non-American geniuses like Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen and Chekhov.

The three plays being performed offer ready-made examples of the O’Neill oeuvre: there is “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” at Arena’s Kreeger Theater, the long, classic and hypnotizing family epic, loosely based on the travails of his own family; there is “Strange Interlude,” one of the less seen works because of both its epic and poetic nature, and “Ah, Wilderness!,” the 1930s play about small-town American life, and often seen as O’Neill light, as in light-hearted, fueled by an unusual amount of optimism, a play which makes the similar “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder look downright bleak.

Smith, who has directed productions of such O’Neill plays as “A Moon for the Misbegotten” and a brilliant “Anna Christie” at Arena, sees “Ah, Wilderness!” which in the distant future from its opening morphed into a musical starring Jackie Gleason and called “Take Me Along,” as evidence of O’Neill’s Irish humor, although some of the great, ambitious and/or autobiographical plays like “Long Day’s” and “The Iceman Cometh” are scarcely laugh-filled. While Arena is the major force and organizer behind the festival, Smith herself did not direct any of the three plays.

“O’Neill looked at the darkest part of himself and his family and America,” Smith said. “He influenced everyone that was a serious playwright, from Williams to Miller and so on.”

The festival runs from March 9 to May 6, while “Ah Wilderness!” is probably the official kickoff event in full flower, opening March 9 and running through April 8. The play is a kind of coming-of-age story at its heart, portraying the Connecticut Miller family during plans for a Fourth of July celebration, and features a group of Washington’s outstanding actors, including Nancy Robinette, Rick Foucheux and the teenaged June Schreiner who made such a splash in Arena’s Oklahoma. Long-time Arena favorite Kyle Donnelly will direct.

“Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” directed by Robin Phillips will run at the Kreeger Theater, March 30 through May 6, as the Tyrone Family battles each other and the travails of money and ambition.

Shakespeare Theater Company Artist Director Michael Kahn tackles one of O’Neill’s most difficult plays in his production of “Strange Interlude” which spans two decades. It was hugely controversial in its time (a1920 debut) and then became a smash hit, a hugely dramatic modern American tragedy. (March 27 through April 29)
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Gary Tischler •

In addition to current offerings as well as the O’Neill Festival with all of its main attractions and special events, the spring leading up to summer offers a treasure trove of new and old plays all over the region. Here’s a look at some of the more alluring and interesting, as well as entertaining, bets coming soon to a theater near you:

“Brother Russia” — How about a rock musical about Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, the mad monk and evil influence on the Czar of all the Russias who helped fuel the Russian Revolution? Signature Theater artistic director Eric Schaeffer, never one to shy from a challenge, takes a show being put on by a rag-tag Russian troupe putting on rocking versions of classic works by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But this time they’re featuring their star, impresario and inspiration, Rasputin, the mad monk. With music by Dana Rowe and lyrics by John Dempsey — the creators of popular Signature hits “The Fix” and “The Witches of Eastwick” — Schaeffer is directing another world premiere. John Lescault will star as the infamous rocking monk. “Brother Russia” will be performed at Signature’s MAX Theatre March 6 through April 15.

“You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” — I know, I know, sounds sappy, but we say it isn’t so. Who doesn’t like Charlie Brown and Peanuts and Lucy and the rest of the Peanuts gang? An enduring musical returns to the Olney Theatre Center this week and runs through March 18.

“1776” — A must-see, not only for all those conservative folks in the country who claim first-name friendship and knowledge of our founding fathers but for those of us who don’t. All factions are bound to be surprised to find that George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and others were: human, very. This musical, a classic often done but always fresh, centers around the meeting of the delegates to the Second Continental Congress, as they decided whether to leave the British Empire, while Jefferson, missing his wife badly, writes the DOI. Great, adult, political and musical fun, this production, directed by Peter Flynn with an assist from Jennifer Nelson, opens at Ford’s Theater March 9 and runs through May 19.

“Crown of Shadows, the Wake of Odysseus” — a world premiere by Jason Gray Platt, fits nicely into the literary bent evident lately at the Round House Theater in Bethesda where Blake Robinson will be directing this play, a modern version of what happens to the family Ulysses left behind while on his long journey home from Troy. April 11-May 6.

“New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656” —Despite the long title, this is a compelling piece of theater. Ask anyone who saw it at Theater J in 2010. The play, by the versatile and eclectic playwright-director David Ives (“Venus in Fur”), is directed by Jerry Skidmore and stars Alexander Strain as Spinoza, the ardent 16th-century proponent of rationalism and brilliant absolute philosopher who is facing excommunication from his Jewish community. The production is accompanied by discussion, a companion play-in-progress called “Spinoza’s Solitude.” It also features Michael Tolaydo repeating his Helen Hayes-nominated performance as Spinoza’s mentor. February 29-April 1

“Petrushka” and Basil Twist — World famous, stylish, edgy and outrageous puppeteer Basil Twist is having quite a time for himself in Washington. Twist, regarded by the Creative Capital Foundation as one of the most “ambitious and imaginative” puppeteers in the world, is re-imagining “Petrushka,” the Ballet Russe production about a clown, a Moor and a ballerina at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre, March 16 through 25. Then, from April 4 through May 6, Twist teams up with cabaret star Joey Arias to tell the story of a drag queen in the Garden of Eden at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre — “Arias With a Twist.” Oh, and just for fun, Twist will perform in a 1,000-gallon water tank at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s Kogod Theatre March 29-31.

“Sucker Punch” — This one could provide a knockout hit for Studio Theater. It’s a new play by Roy Williams, deemed one of Britain’s finest playwrights by the Guardian newspaper, and it’s a first production for one of Williams’s plays in the United States, directed by Leah C. Gardiner with fight choreography by Peter Pucci. This U.S. premiere is about two black brothers trying to box their way to world fame in the Margaret Thatcher era. February 29-April 8.

The Tamings of the Shrews — There are not one but two “Taming of the Shrews” on tap, one in which Katarina gets to yell, and one in which she does not. Synetic Theatre, the stars from Georgia will perform its wordless version at the Lansburgh Theatre, March 29-April 22, and the Folger Theatre concludes its season with the more traditional — words by William Shakespeare — version, May 1-June 10.

“Spamalot” — The nutty knights of Camelot return to Washington in their slightly altered (via Monty Python) forms in Monty Python’s “Spamalot” the 2005 Best Musical of 2005. March 13-18 at the Warner.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”—Judith Viorst’s much beloved children’s and family book becomes a highlight of Adventure Theater’s 60th anniversary season, directed by Gail Humphries with music by Shelly Markham and starring Broadway’s Sandy Bainum. March 2-April 9.
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Gary Tischler • February 22, 2012

Don Cornelius, 75
——

He was the cool-sounding television host with the mike and the big Afro. He created a show that was the sound of the hippest train ever running.

He was Don Cornelius, the creator of “Soul Train,” which was a lively, eye-opening answer to the long-running “American Bandstand”, but with a difference. Here was a daily dance show that brought black music, entertainers, singers, bands, performers and kids to the forefront.

Cornelius, who died February 1 of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, was hailed as providing a platform for black musicians and music, but he did a lot more than that. “Soul Train,” which ran in syndication for over 30 years, was a venue where black kids not only appeared, but were seen all across the nation on a regular basis, dancing away to Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and James Brown, among many top drawer performers

More than that, the show was a kind of explosion of black popular culture—the dances, the clothes, the looks, the fads and fades and the music that rose out of the grandfather of all black popular music contributions, the blues.

The show wasn’t overtly political—it was a kaleidoscope, a positive, swinging, trend-setting regular event presided over by Cornelius, whose hair changed shape and size frequently over the years, reflecting and sometimes pacing the culture.

But it wasn’t just black kids and black entertainers who were into “Soul Train.” New white rockers like David Bowie and Elton John found a place there, too.

If the audience was primarily African American, a kind of mirror for black young people that was full of positive style and energy, it was also a window for suburban white kids who picked up every soul-flavored trend, move, and look, their hearts bursting with the sound of the streets.

Ben Gazzara, 81
——

“I coulda been a contender,” could have been a trademark line for the gritty actor Ben Gazzara, who died at 81 of cancer on February 3. He originated the iconic role of Biff in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway, and easily could have—and maybe should have—gotten the role in the movie version opposite Elizabeth Taylor. (But it went to Paul Newman, instead. That’s showbiz.)

What was more than show biz was Gazzara’s unique talent, style and way of being, and his list of diverse roles, some more memorable than others. Some live on in the theater memory including a stint as the George to Colleen Dewhurst’s Martha in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” (I wish badly that I had seen it, as does anybody reading that credit.)

Gazzara, the son of Italian immigrants, was born Biago Anthony Gazzara, and drifted into acting early on, becoming one of the serious acting students of his generation, studying under Lee Strasberg alongside folks like James Dean and Paul Newman.

He had a mixed career that flared up like fireworks: a Tony on Broadway for “A Hatful of Rain” (Don Murray in the movie version); a starring role in Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie”; and the role of Lee Remick’s mayhap murderous husband in Otto Preminger’s “Anatomy of a Murder,” a hugely entertaining courtroom drama, opposite James Stewart.

He had fine roles in a series of raw films by John Cassavettes, a good friend who cast him in “Husbands,” “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” and others. He also starred in “Run for Your Life,” a successful television series that ran for three years in the 1970s and paid the bill.

He had at one point pitch-black hair, a sharply angled handsome face, and a faintly sinister demeanor, which made him an ideal “Capone.” He worked—worked hard by his own description—and was married three times. His most popular film was probably “Road House,” an implausibly fun Patrick Swayze action flick in which he played the spewing, cussing, maniacal villain.

In his memoir, he alluded to have many affairs, including relationships with Audrey Hepburn, Eva Gabor and Elain Stritch, an eclectic trifecta if there ever was one. He will be missed.

Georgetowner • February 8, 2012

More at Shakespeare Theatre Company
—
The Shakespeare Theatre Company continues its Bard’s Broadway series Jan. 27 – 29 at Sidney Harman Hall with a concert version of the Tony Award-winning musical ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ subtitled a rock opera. Created by noted playwright John Guare, along with Galt MacDermot (of ‘Hair’ fame) and Mel Shapiro. Amanda Dehnert is directing with choreography by Terence Archie and a cast that includes Robin de Jesus, Javier Munoz, Danny Rutigliano and DC star Eleasha Gamble.

If that weren’t enough for a busy time, there’s the third installment of the STC’s and artistic director Michael Kahn’s Classic Conversations with noted theater and film actor James Earl Jones this Thursday at Sidney Harman Hall. Classic Conversations with Michael Kahn is a series of discussions with classically trained actors presented as part of the group’s 25th Anniversary Season and has already featured Patrick Stewart and Kevin Kline. Jones became a big star with his starring role in both the theatrical and film version of “The Great White Hope” and has been a powerful presence in the performing arts in America ever since.

For more information visit ShakespeareTheatre.org

‘Red’ and ‘Elephant Room’ at Arena Stage
—
One of the more anticipated productions in Washington theatre is the mounting of ‘Red,’ the Tony-Award winning play by John Logan, which focuses on the brilliant, troubled American artist Mark Rothko at the height of his career, engaged in executing a monumental commission of paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York.

The play was a big hit on Broadway, and now features Ed Gero, a four-time Helen Hayes Award winner who keeps getting bigger and better with age, as Rothko, and Patrick Andrews as Ken, a fictional assistant of Rothko’s who challenges the great artist. It is a battle of wills—not just Rothko VS a changing art world, but also the famous bouts of Rothko VS Rothko.

The production, which opens Jan. 20 and runs through March 4 in Arena’s Kreeger Theater, is much anticipated and has already engendered a weeklong extension. It’s directed by Robert Falls, the artistic director of the famed Goodman Theater in Chicago.

Not so famous, and quite a change of pace is ‘Elephant Room,’ which features magicians and semi-pro conjurers Dennis Diamond, Daryl Hannah and Louie Magic. (A magician named Magic, which should bode well). It’s coming to Arena’s Kogod Cradle Theater Jan. 20 – Feb. 26.

Billed as an absurdist magic show, ‘Elephant Room’ comes from the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. What’s it all about? The press description goes like this:

“Combine the glory of a Styx reunion tour with the transcendental power of a 200-year-old Zuni shaman and add a dash of trailer park ennui, and you come close to describing the mystical pull of ‘Elephant Room.’”

I can get down with that.

For more information visit ArenaStage.org

Holly Twyford and Donald Margulies’ ‘Time Stands Still’ at Studio
—
Holly Twyford, one of Washington’s most gifted actresses, stars as a globetrotting photojournalist who returns home from the wars in Iraq after being injured. At home the journalist, still missing the heat and thrill of covering a war, must choose between a real life and a professional one. Also featured are Laura C. Harris, Dan Illian and Greg McFadden. Susan Fenichell directs.

‘Time Stands Still’ is written by Donald Margulies and will run at the Studio Theatre.

For more information visit StudioTheatre.org

Scena, Carrie Waters, Brian Frield, Henrik Ibsen and Hedda Gabbler
—
That’s the mix as Scena Theatre Artistic Director Robert McNamara directs noted Irish Playwright Brian Friel’s translation of Ibsen’s ‘Hedda Gabbler,’ featuring one of the most challenging roles for an actress ever written.
Carrie Waters, a long-time veteran of Washington, and a mightily underrated talent, is likely to handle the challenge with great power if her track record in such productions as ‘Happy Days’ and ‘The Persians’ are any indication.

Also starring are Eric Lucas (Waters’ husband), Rena Cherry Brown and Danielle Davy.

‘Hedda Gabler’ runs Jan. 12 – Jan. 29 at the H Street Playhouse at 1365 H Street, NE.

For more information visit HStreetPlayhouse.com

Lincoln and Douglass Meet at Ford’s Theatre
—
Continuing its successful exploration of theater about Abraham Lincoln, Ford’s Theatre will present ‘Necessary Sacrifices,’ by Richard Hellesen, about the two documented encounters between Lincoln and the great African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass in the middle years of the Civil War.

‘Necessary Sacrifices,’ in which Douglass challenges Lincoln’s views on slavery and African Americans, will once again feature David Selby as Lincoln, a role he performed with astonishing power in Ford’s production of ‘The Heavens Are Hung in Black,’ a play about Lincoln’s White House years. David Emerson Toney stars as Douglass and Jennifer Nelson directs.

‘Necessary Sacrifices’ coincides with Ford’s opening of its Center for Education and Leadership, which will explore the lasting effect Lincoln’s presidency has had on our country. The show will run Jan. 20 – Feb. 12.

For more information visit FordsTheatre.org

Gary Tischler • January 4, 2012

‘Ann’: An Original Played by an Original

I thought I knew Holland Taylor.

She was a lawyer, a judge, a WASP, somebody who drank martinis and complained if they weren’t done right, an East Coaster, main liner, bossy, Charlie Sheen’s mother in his unreal life, the kind of upper crusty, attractive woman around whom you tried to hide your minuscule repertoire of good manners. She had been all those things in acting roles on Broadway, in movies and big and little hit television series.
Talking to Taylor on the phone, I allowed that I had read her resume and felt like I should be a little scared. She laughed. “Maybe you should,” she said.

Actually, what really impressed me was what she was doing now, the reason we were talking at all. Ann Richards.

If you should ever be in awe of or be intimidated by a woman you’d never met, it would have been Ann Richards, the late and former governor of Texas before it turned into a puddle of Bushes and Perrys. Ann Richards, a liberal icon who once taunted Bush senior for having been born with a “silver foot in his mouth,” a woman with an elongated white hairdo who thrived as a Texan politician, who was famous for her straight talk, compassion, and the kind of sense of humor which let her play with the big boys sometimes with one hand tied behind her back. People I admired — the creators of the “Tuna” plays, the acerbic Texas political writer, the late Molly Ivins, who would always refer to Bush II as “shrub” loved Ann Richards unto death.

And here was Holland Taylor, as far removed from shrubs and bushes, and Amarillo and Armadillos as you can be, starring in “Ann,” in which she was not only the star but the author. “It is very, very different from anything that I’ve ever attempted,” Taylor said. “And it’s strange, you know, I met her exactly once, over lunch in New York, and she was the kind of woman, the kind of person, who haunts you, she’s so impressive.

In 2006, Richards was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died that same year and that was probably when Taylor first started thinking about a work about Richards. “She was an original, she affected so many people, she was funny, she helped others, and there was nobody, nobody like here,” Taylor said. “So, I spent a lot of time researching, I spent some time in Austin and Texas, and, eventually, it and we came to life and here we are.”

For my money, it takes an original to play an original. Taylor was always a fine actress, especially on stage but also in soaps, television series and films, always, it seemed, playing strong-minded women of one sort or another but never in the same way. When she finally won an Emmy for playing “a rapacious judge” on David Kelley’s hit series “The Practice,” she gave an unforgettable speech in which she thanked Kelley for “giving me a chariot to ride up here on: A woman who puts a flag on the moon for women over 40 — who can think, who can work, who are successes and who can COOK!”

We don’t know about the cooking part, but that could be Ann Richards. That could be Holland Taylor.
“Ann,” written and performed by Holland Taylor, will be performed at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, Dec. 17 through Jan. 15.

. . . And the Music of ‘Billy Elliott’

There’s more than Ann and Holland at the Kennedy Center. There’s a kid named Billy Elliott.

“Billy Elliott the Musical” isn’t about Christmas but may warm up some hearts anyway, and it’s bound to please. This Broadway smash — 10 Tonys — is based on a critically acclaimed film in which one Billy Elliott, a would-be-kid boxer, stumbles into a ballet class and changes his life and that of everyone around him.
The show features music by Elton John, book and lyrics by Lee Hall, choreography by Peter Darling and direction by Stephen Daldry.

“Bill Elliott the Musical” runs Jan.15 at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House.

Romeo, I Can’t Hear You

And of course, there’s the eternal Shakespeare play of “star-crossed lovers,” Romeo and Juliet. “Romeo, Romeo Wherefore Art Thou?”

At the Synetic Theater in Crystal City, Romeo’s not saying. Synetic, as we all know, is the great beyond-category theater company where words — even and especially Shakespearean words — are secondary. In Synetic’s unique acting style —combining movement, dance and mime— it’s not the rest that’s silence but everything. Synetic is in the midst of its Silent Shakespeare Festival, “Speak No More,” and its production of “Romeo and Juliet” had six Helen Hayes nominations and two Helen Hayes awards for outstanding director and ensemble.

This production runs through Dec. 23.

History Being Made and Acted at Arena Stage

At Arena Stage, history plays a big part in both Amy Freed’s “You, Nero” and Bill Cain’s “Equivocation.” The latter concerns Shakespeare, the infamous Gunpowder Plot and the relationship between artists and kings. It comes from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Cain’s play will run through Jan. 1 with the cast of the original Oregon Shakespeare Festival production.

“You, Nero” is part of Arena’s American Voices New Play Institute, with Freed continuing to work on a play which first opened at South Coast Rep and Berkeley Rep in 2009. Making its D.C. debut, it runs through Jan. 1. Danny Scheie stars as Nero, an emperor who may have been the first emperor-as-public-celebrity.

Off the Beaten Track at the Studio

If you’re in the mood for something in a completely non-holiday spirit and different, head over to the Studio Theater where there’s still time to see Lauren Weedman, a correspondent on the Daily Show who brings “Bust” her acidic, tough and funny autobiographical one-woman show about her experience as a volunteer advocate in a Southern California prison for women to Studio’s Stage 4 through Dec. 18.

Spoiler Alert: Second City is Back

For something perhaps a little more fun but still dark, there’s the wonderfully titled “Spoiler Alert: Everybody Dies,” whereby Chicago’s famed comedy troupe Second City returns to Woolly Mammoth Theater in a collaboration with D.C. artists, including actors Jessica Frances Dukes, and Aaron Bliden and designer Colin K. Bills. Here’s the way the press release describes the proceedings: “the most gleeful anti-holiday celebration of doom ever”.

God bless us every one.

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Gary Tischler • December 19, 2011

Near the end of his “Classic Conversations” visit with Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Michael Kahn, actor and sometime movie star Kevin Kline noted that he loved the big parts, the scary parts.

“Why are we here if not to do the hard parts?” he asked.

Why indeed. Kline, who is a gifted Shakespearean actor and a fair-sized movie star, has done his share of the hard parts, done them more than well and risen more often than not to the challenge of being Cyrano, Falstaff, Hamlet, Richard II and Richard III, Henry V and, in his first movie role no less, the quicksilver, charismatic and doomed Nathan opposite Meryl Streep in “Sophie’s Choice” among other roles.

His old Juilliard compatriot introduced him as the actor who has been called “the American Olivier,” high praise in indeed, once issued by New York Times Drama Critic Frank Rich.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “I mean, Olivier, good God.”

“And remember, when I was a kid, I hated Shakespeare,” he said.

But then, when he was a kid in a Catholic private school which included corporal punishment, he didn’t like a lot of the things he grew to love. “Actually, I wanted to study music. I had a rock band, if you can believe that.”

He probably didn’t imagine himself to be a movie star, either, or traveling the country with the Acting Company, the creation of John (“We make money the old fashioned way. We earn it”) Houseman, a stern original from film and theater times past. “That was the best experience you could possibly have, doing the different plays in different places, small towns one night, big city the next, a college campus, and so forth. I loved that. And you learn from that.”

Kline has always returned to the stage—it’s his main love, it’s where the biggest tasks, those Moby Dick-size challenges await him.

Kahn and Kline are obvious old friends. “Remember, next year you’re going into, I don’t know what decade in theater and acting. Maybe you could do something special. Maybe we’ll give you another Will Award.”

“It has been a long time,” Kline noted. “I like always going back to the stage. But the movie industry—I have to say I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the audience. It’s teenage boys. I mean I have a reputation as being very, very careful in the roles I choose. I have a nickname to uphold. They call me Kevin Decline. Or Doctor No. I’m known for turning down roles. I even turned down Nathan at first, not to mention Dave.”

“Dave” was one of his more popular movie roles, in which he played a man who is forced to impersonate a president. He worked with director Lawrence Kasdan on “Grand Canyon” and something he thoroughly enjoyed, the star studded improbable western “Silverado” and the iconic “The Big Chill.”

That’s when he was bonafide catnip for the ladies, a movie star as well as a grounded, gifted, talented actor. “I was scared to death on “Sophie’s Choice,” he said. “But Meryl was so generous. She said don’t be intimidated. Improve. Don’t be scared to throw me around.”

Kline got an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the cultish “A Fish Called Wanda.”

Kline these days seems to lead the most normal of lives, married to actress Phoebe Cates for over 20 years with a grown son, Owen Joseph Kline, who had a major role in “The Squid and the Whale.” “Time Magazine called it one the best performances of the year and he was a teenager. But he said he didn’t care to become an actor. Can you believe it?”

He always comes back to Shakespeare, to the parts that are big and scary, including his embrace of Cyrano, which is French, but still big and scary.

When Kline, still boyishly and elegantly handsome, walked into the room, a woman in front of me whispered: “His hair is white.”

Gary Tischler • December 7, 2011

I got a confession to make.

I’m a huge fan of the long-running CBS crime show “CSI” (for “Crime Scene Investigation”), the pioneering (first seen in October 2000) series set in Las Vegas, which spawned “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: New York.” I’ve always watched the original, mainly because I figured anything with Bill Peterson in it couldn’t be all bad, it had a cool theme song by The Who and it was set in Las Vegas.
Turns out that Robert David Hall is a big fan, too. The actor who has played Doctor Al Robbins, the chief medical examiner and king of the morgue on the show talks a little like a fan about the show, not even close to getting tired of the part, or the show, which has undergone numerous cast changes, top to bottom, over the years.

As these things often happen, he looks just like Doc Robbins, casually dressed, in a room at the Marriott in Woodley Park. There’s the doc’s characteristic white beard, the shiny top, compelling blue eyes, making him look younger than the 65 years he carries well. There’s a walking stick lying on the floor by the table we’re sitting at, the only immediate evidence that he’s also an actor with disabilities. In 1978, Hall, at the age of 30, lost both his legs and suffered major burns when his car was struck and crushed by a tractor trailer.

The good — and gruff, dark-humor loving, eccentric and not entirely PC—Doctor Robbins is also disabled and walks with the aid of a crutch and uses prosthetics, like Hall. Sometimes, Robbins has been seen in the show using a crutch like an air guitar and even singing with Bill Peterson, the original star of the show who played Grissom.

All of this, of course, speaks to his presence in Washington, a place he’s pretty familiar with. This time, he’s here as one of the recipients of the 25th Anniversary Victory Awards, given by the National Rehabilitation Hospital to individuals “who best exemplify exceptional strength and courage in the face of physical adversity.” He was among five honorees that include country singer Mickey Gilley, U.S. snowboarding champion Kevin Pearce, opera star Marqita Lister and NRH founder Edward Eckenhoff.
Hall has been a tireless advocate for job equality and his fellow actors with disability. As he says, “If you support diversity and thinks shows should give a portrayal of what America truly looks like, then performers with disabilities must be included in the equation. People have been very good at being politically correct. But there has been an assumption that disabled actors could slow down production, can’t do this or that, or that people won’t want to see them on screen.”

Hall, of course, goes beyond that. He’s visited Walter Reed Hospital many times and talked with veterans of America’s Middle Eastern wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who have suffered disproportionately with loss of limb wounds.

“I don’t try to preach or tell them what to do,” he said. “What you’re there for as far as I’m concerned is to listen. And I think that’s what they want more than anything. They can see I know what it’s like. They’re not moping. And all I can say is that they will get over it, working every day, if they don’t give in to despair, if they have hope.”

Honored by the award, he’s also a little uncomfortable with the nation of “being some kind of brave and courageous hero.”

“I don’t see myself that way,” he said. “It’s a process. I like to think in all that time I’ve moved on quite a bit. Not entirely. Nobody does.”

“But what I am is Irish and that makes me stubborn. So, I’d say I’m stubborn and tough — not in a tough-guy sense, but hard and persistent, yeah, that’s okay. I got from my father and his father, Naval Academy guys.

He’s not a dweller on the past. What he is — and you sense this just walking into the room — is a guy looking for the next thing, the next word, the challenge. His eyes, a hypnotic blue, are alert-looking, interested and curious. He’s a talker, a story-teller. “Do something you’re afraid to do,” he said. “Accept challenges. Do something new, risky.”

“You know, you go to certain places from where you’re at, you know going to your job or the store, that kind of thing,” he says. “It drives my wife nuts. I don’t like routines, so I go a different way every time.”

Hall wanted to be a musician—“I played in bands, rock and roll folk.” He just cut an album. He has a voice made for acting, and for radio, and certainly music. If you don’t believe it, check out the YouTube clip from a “CSI” show in which Grissom and Robbins are cutting up a body and singing, and Hall sings the cause of death. It’s funny, but the voice carries and is grand, and could maybe wake the dead.

“CSI,” you can tell, has been a gift for him. He’s worked with everyone, those who starred and left, and those who stayed. No bad words here from him, not even about the other “CSI” shows. “You can say that, I won’t stop you,” he said. “I can’t. But we’re very competitive about status.”

“I got to be a regular halfway through the first season,” Hall said. “You know you’re doing good there when your face is on the opening credits.”

His character is kind of crotchety, off the wall, authoritative and funny. “I modeled him after my dad a little and a track coach in high school,” he said. “My dad was, well, okay, tough. Sometimes, I thought he was even mean. But I always knew he loved us, all of us. He just didn’t know how to do that touchy feely stuff.”

“You know, I’ve always got sort of back story in mind for the doctor,” he says. “It doesn’t matter to anybody. But on the Dec. 14 episode, just so you know, he’s going to take center stage. You’re going to meet the wife Judy (Wendy Drewson), and there’s a body at his house and a CSI investigation.”
It’s not hard to imagine Hall at the center of one or many of “CSI” episodes; what’s hard to imagine is this CSI without Hall.

“You know I look at days in terms of percentages, starting with 100 percent,” he said. “Today, it started out 100 percent because our plane landed safely and my wife is scared of flying. I got some aches and pains during the day, so it dipped a little but that’s all right. I like talking to people. It goes up.” [gallery ids="100416,113417" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • November 29, 2011

Twenty five years ago, an unlikely phenomenon and juggernaut burst on the Broadway musical scene. It had a huge set including a giant barricade from which young revolutionaries battled the powers that be in a sort of Occupy Paris spectacle. It was based on a classic novel by Victor Hugo, it had enough death scenes to make Dickens weep, it had a brave and saintly hero named Jean Valjean and a relentless pursuer named Javert and it ran just about forever, unstoppable in spite of some critics who sniffed sentimentality in the air.

It was called “Les Miserables,” a big three-hour-plus musical and spectacle with an operatic score and plot, a Cameron MacIntosh production with music by Claude-Michel Schonberg and a book by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel.

Complete with a logo of a revolutionary waif, the show actually made its American and pre-Broadway debut at the Kennedy Center and it was a huge smash for all concerned, sparking perpetual U.S. and world tours and an amazing Broadway run.

And now it’s back in a 25th-Anniversary production that’s revved up, half an hour shorter, kinetic, energetic and replete with a youngish cast, some of whose members were likely not born when “Les Mis” first exploded on the scene.

For the younger members of the cast who play the parts of the dashing revolutionary leader Enjolras, the tragic Fantine, the student Marius, Cosette and Eponine, “Les Mis” may be a legend, but it will also be as fresh as “Spiderman” in terms of size and impact.

But for Richard Vida, a born-to-be-on-Broadway performer if there ever was one, “Les Mis” is a dream come true—again.

Vida, who started dancing and performing when he was still a kid, always wanted to be on Broadway and in musicals. And he’s got one of the juiciest parts in “Les Miserables,” that of Thenardier, the disreputably opportunistic, shameless landlord, gang leader and party crasher of the show.

“God yes, he’s vile, he’s disgusting, he’s a terrible human being,” Vida said in a phone interview. “That of course is what makes him a wonderful character to play, and I’ve played him before, but he never gets old. He’s a survivor—master of the house indeed, and when he’s on he tends to steal the show. You can’t help but be fascinated by him.”

“Les Miserables” arrives just in time to add a little musical flavor to the current goings-on in Washington and all over the city. Revolution is once again in the air as tent cities full of people with grievances sprout up everywhere, modern-day barricades as rebukes to the contemporary power structures.

“I think it’s all very fresh,” Vida said. “The digitalized backgrounds make for a very electric set, much different than before. It all moves a lot faster.”

“I do think I provide a little bridge for some of the younger people in the cast,” Vida, who is in his forties, said. “They don’t haves the context of the show’s history and why it had such an impact at the time. But we’re all family in this production—everybody helps everybody out. I really am enjoying this. You had that feeling at the curtain call that we had done it once again.”

Vida played Thenardier in the 1990s both as an understudy and in performance for a time on Broadway so he’s thoroughly familiar and steeped in “Les Mis” lore. “I was also very much aware of it when it first came to Broadway, it was a show everyone was talking about,” he said.

“I’m back at the Kennedy Center,” he said. “I was here with a revival of “Forty Second Street,” the one that had Dolores Gray in it.”

“I never wanted to be anything else except to be performing on Broadway, in theater, in musicals,” Vida said. “

Vida is used to the vagaries of the business—“I’ve always been performing, and you do all kinds of things—the perennial ‘Law and Order’ parts, which all actors in New York miss tremendously, voiceovers, shows that succeed, and shows that don’t.”

One of those that didn’t was a fairly recent mounting of “The Best Little Whore House Goes Public,” a sequel to “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” It didn’t go very public. “It ran for 11 performances,” he said. A very original and interesting show called “The Drowsy Chaperone,” which has not been seen in the Washington area, was very successful. “It was very unique; a kind of musical-within-a-play and it did very well.”

More than likely, the 25th anniversary production of “Les Miserables” did and will do very well. For Vida, he’ll remain the master of the house, the beggar at the feast and what a feast it is.

(You still have through this weekend to try and catch the 25th anniversary production at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House.)
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Gary Tischler • November 28, 2011

There’s a whole bunch of reasons why “Jersey Boys,” the show biz bio-musical of one of the most successful pop-rock groups ever, is still running strong on the road after opening on Broadway in 2005.

For one thing, as non-stop entertainment, the show just plain delivers, unless you listen to nothing but chamber music and prefer your drama to be flavored by Ionesco. You have to have a heart of stone not to be affected by the tale of the Four Seasons, a pop-rock group fronted by rangy singer Frankie Valli who churned out hit after memorable hit in the 1960s and beyond. Give a listen to “Sherri,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Oh What a Night,” “Walk like a Man” and two incomparable love songs “My Eyes Adore You” and “Can’t Take My Eyes off You,” among dozens of other hits.

If the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys were the dominant groups of the period of the mid-sixties through early seventies, Frankie and the boys were right behind them if not right up there with them. And they had their own special flavor, and their own story to tell, and it was a story about the boys from the neighborhood, specifically urban and suburban New Jersey, where the mob and the church held sway as role figures.

New Jersey and the mob, wise guys, priests and lounge singers, are of course strong in the imagination of the American public from the films of Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppolla, to “The Sopranos,” to the current “Boardwalk Empire” and, God help us, to the annals of Snookie and The Situation.

“Jersey Boys” is almost a classic rags-jail-time-to-riches story of the kind Hollywood used to deliver routinely, starting off with the founder and eventual destroyer of the group Tommy DiVito (a sharp turn by John Gardiner), who, between jail stints, stubbornly kept trying to put together a group that would take him and his friends out of the neighborhood.

That didn’t happen until he found the angel-voiced Frankie Castelluccio, soon to become Frankie Valli (not with a y), and then later, Bob Gaudio, a teenaged one-hit wonder composer (“Who Wears Short Shorts?”), who would provide the group with all of its string of hits.

Those hits were not generic rock and roll songs in the strictest sense of the word: they were pop songs created at a very high level, which is probably why you can see so many mouths lip-synching, whispering the lyrics in the audience. The songs have staying power every bit as strong as pop ballads from the Great American Songbook.

The music and the storybook merge together in this show which has a snazzy but sparse set, authentic clothes and tough talk from the era(s) it covers. You hear doo-wop music from the early sixties of the kind practiced by rock-star-wannabes, you hear a girl’s group called the Angels sing the thoroughly familiar “My Boyfriend’s Back,” but mostly you hear the playbook of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

And this group, the guys on stage at the National Theater, give off a vivid illusion of at least sounding maybe better than the originals, at least if all you know of the originals in performance mode are the scratchy offerings on YouTube. As rock and rollers, the Seasons are no Stones or even Beatles, although the guitar playing every now and then breaks off into some wild riffs. What Valli and Guido, the true creative forces behind the group, created was a unique sound, pitched by Valli’s high, high and higher notes, and then pulled together into harmonies that sweep over the audience like the kind of surf the Beach Boys rode in on.

Valli, in this show as well as in previous visits to D.C., is performed by Joseph Leo Bwarie – diminutive, with big, pitch-dark eyes and a voice to match Valli’s as well as a tangible stage presence as an actor. He doesn’t have Valli’s harder, masculine, handsome look but you could see why girls might swoon and want to mother and smother him. Those high notes, sweeping out of nowhere, put the soprano in “The Sopranos.”

The group’s story was of course full of strife, drama, hysterics, betrayals and jealousy, like any normal marriage of four guys with egos and talent. DiVito, never far from the wise guys, runs up a huge gambling debt (not to mention a tax lien), which Valli and the group decides to cover. Marriages fail, and Valli loses his talented daughter to drug addiction and overdose at 22. Things happen, and the fact that these guys are from Jersey, which is not quite heartland America but full of tough guys, tough love and heart, makes the show as affecting as the music alone.

At one point, one wise guy asks the guy holding the gambling debt, “Why aren’t these guys dead yet?” He says, “Well, we really like their music.”

Me too. And so will you.

(“Jersey Boys” runs at the National Theater through Jan. 7, 2012.)