Performance

Celebrating Washington Theater and More, Tonight Through April 29

Gary Tischler • May 3, 2012

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Everybody in Washington’s theater community will show up tonight for the 28th annual Helen Hayes Awards at the Warner Theatre, but that’s only the beginning for what this year is theatreWeek in Washington, which would be April 23-29.

Sponsored and spearheaded by theatreWashington, the D.C. group that supports, promotes and represents Washington area theatres, artists and audiences, theatreWeek will make its debut with a series of special events including Playtime, a series of events aimed squarely at children.

The Helen Hayes Awards and Ovation Gala at the Warner Theatre and J.W. Marriott Hotel kicks everything off, featuring awards that showcase the general and specific excellence of Washington’s theatre world, with special honors going to two-time, Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey.

On Wednesday, D.C. professionals and Washington theater-lovers hook up with “Show Tunes and Cocktails with Joshua Morgan” from 7 to 8 p.m. at Napoleon Bistro and Lounge in Adams Morgan.

On Thursday, it’s time for “Theatre Critics: It’s Only Their Opinion, What They Do and How They Do It.” (While not attending, I can be reached at The Georgetowner, if you want my opinion). Actually, it’s a conversation with Washington Post Critic Peter Marks and other critics from 7 to 8 p.m. (Location to be announced)

On Friday, you get a sneak peek at “In Rehearsal,” a new book by actor and director Gary Sloan, 5 to 6:30 p.m. at Bus Boys and Poets at 14th and V Streets, N.W.

And then there’s Playtime, with workshops, classes and tours for kids at 13 theatres throughout the region on April 22, 27, 28 and 29. Participating are Adventure Theatre, Compass Rose Studio Theater, Faction of Fools Theatre Company, Folger Theatre, Imagination Stage, National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, the National Theatre, the Puppet Company, Round House Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Studio Theatre, the Theatre Lab and Toby’s Dinner Theatre.

Summer Show Stopper

Gary Tischler •

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Who would have thought that fur—event thinking about it, let alone wearing it—would be so popular in town, especially in this weather?

But when it’s “Venus In Fur,” playwright David Ives’ witty, hot – yes, hot – and, if you’ll pardon the expression, whip-smart take on Sacher-Masoch’s shocking 19th century novel about a stage audition, sexual and creative power struggles between an actress and director, people just can’t stop talking and going.

The production—one of the best and beguiling of the year anywhere—has been extended yet again on final time to July 31 at the Studio Theatre where you can watch a breakout performance by Erica Sullivan, in assorted nasty getups and with a range that creates whiplash in the audience. If you haven’t seen this show, by all means go. If you’ve already seen it, go again. David Muse, the Studio’s new artistic director is in charge here, and he handles matters with a deft, intelligent manner.

There’s more reason than “Venus” to visit the Studio these days. There’s the appropriately entitled “Pop,” a new musical-mystery-pop-show by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs focusing on the heady (and final) days of Andy Warhol’s New York Factory scene, where Andy reigned supreme in his pursuit of putting sizzle in all things mundane and plain. If you’re interested in all things Warhol and pop art, this is your cup of tea (no sugar please), and if not it’s an education on a number of American obsessions, not the least of which is Warhol, who turned greenbacks and tomato soup into high and low art, and once made a day-long movie which had nothing but the Empire State building as its focus.

Warhol will be talked about and written about forever, so why not a musical? Especially if it has Warhol staple members in it like Candy Darling, Ondine and assorted would-be and not artists, hangers-on, feminists and girlies and whatever lies in between. Keith Alan Baker, the Studio’s pop-meister, directs with Hunter Styles and Jennifer Harris. “Pop” runs through July 31.

And speaking of the Studio Theater, we would be remiss if we did note the recent departure of David Cale’s “The History of Kisses,” a sweet, lovely string of pearls and tales performed by the one-man-show and playwright that is Cale. Less fraught with tensions and puzzles and less flamboyant than some of his previous work, this saw Cale pondering the puzzles of how people meet, love – or not – bounce and stumble into and out of other people’s lives.

An ocean theme—one of the characters was a man attending a gathering of sea shanty aficionados in California—carried the tide, so to speak, saw one woman meet an inarticulate Portuguese sailor for ship-board encounter that produced a son, if not lasting love, two gay men meeting cute and ending up deliriously in awe in front of a fish tank, an Australian land-wrecked at a seaside motel and a man remembering a wistful encounter with Judy Garland during a beach walk.

These stories pop up in my mind occasionally during a land-locked, hot summer. So sing a shanty to Mr. Cale.

The Millennium Stage, the Kennedy Center’s nightly series of free performances of music and dance has added something new for the hot month of August—it will offer a Happy Hour Series every Monday night at 6 p.m. On August 1, 8, 22 and 29, the Kennedy Center’s Atrium on the Roof Terrace will become a summer lounge with couches, a dance floor and a full bar. The Lounge will continue on August 15 at the Kennedy Center’s Grand Foyer.

It’s a different way to catch entirely characteristic performances that have been the hallmark of the Millennium Series. The Happy Hour Series includes singer Badi Assad, who presents a world flavor with an exotic mixture of ethnic sounds on August 1. DeboBand presents Ethiopian flavored music August 8. New Orleans singer/songwriter Mia Borders blends funk, soul and contemporary styles August 15. August 22 brings Alma Tropicalia and a tribute to the classic BrazilianTropicalia movement of the 1960s. On August 29, Rahim AlHash and the Little Earth Orchestra are on hand with its group of world musicians from Iraq, Brazil, Africa, Palestine and America.

And now for something completely different. At Georgetown University’s Davis Performing Arts Center and its Devine Studio Theatre, there’s a chance to see “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” a world premiere production of an adaptation of Michael Pollan’s famed non-fiction book about how, why, where and what people eat in the modern world. It’s written, conceived and directed by Natsu Onada Power of Georgetown University, and can be seen July 27-29 and July 30 and 31. Check PerformingArts.Georgetown.edu for details.

Want to find something to laugh about—and God knows we all do? Check out the opening of D.C.’s new Riot Act Comedy Theater with a grand opening celebration of the city’s own star comedians, Big Al Goodwin, Tony Woods and Charles Fleischer, who perform at 801 E St. beginning August 11-13.
And we would also be remiss without mentioning, although we do it with some trepidation, the impending last performance of Cherry Red Productions, arguably the city’s filthiest—in a good way—theater company ever. We could produce some of the more memorable titles from the Cherry Red past as offered, but can’t. Suffice to say that Cherry Red offered—often in small and dark places—dark plays that had the whiff of a zeitgeist that combined the American 1980s with the worst and best times of Weimar Berlin. I think.

In any case, founders Ian Allen and Chris Griffin are closing out with a production of “The Aristocrats,” a stage version of what’s described as the dirtiest joke of all time. Cherry Red’s promised to do bad things to the joke, which also came in movie form with an all-star cast of potty-mouths like Sarah Silverman.

Look for it at the Warehouse Theater August 27 at 8:30 and 11 p.m.
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2011 Fall Opera Preview

Gary Tischler •

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Washington experienced a wrenching and rare one-two weather punch in one week — an unprecedented earthquake followed by a hurricane.
The Washington National Opera Company had a year that was almost as momentous and earthshaking, but with much more salutatory results. In 2011, the company saw the resignation of its long-time maestro, Artistic Director Placido Domingo. This was followed this summer by the announcement of an Affiliation Plan by the WNO with the Kennedy Center, a far-reaching development that brings a great deal of stability, while adding the musical jewel that is the WNO to the Center. In addition it was announced that Francesca Zambello, a renowned director familiar to Washington audiences, was appointed the WNO’s artistic Advisor. No replacement has yet been named for Domingo.
That’s a lot of change and upheaval for any artistic institution, yet the WNO is preparing to start the 2011-2012 season with its production of Puccini’s “Tosca” Sept. 10 in an upbeat, high-energy mood.
“Obviously, the affiliation is a win-win for everyone,” said Christina Scheppelman, director of artistic operations for the WNO. “It’s been in the works and talked about for a long time and that makes it an exciting time for us. But the 2010-2011 season has been planned four to five years in advance and was in place already before all of this came about.”
With “Tosca” to be followed by Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” in November, the WNO starts its season with two operas that are more operatic than most. “They’re very dramatic operas, they’re full of the kinds of devices and characters with over-the-top situations with grand, familiar, classic music and singing and arias,” Scheppelman said. In other words, they’re full of murder, tragedy, great passion and sacrifice and larger-than-life heroines and villains, not to mention suicide, madness and other sundry deeds on wind-swept battlements.
It’s familiar stuff, to be sure, and familiarity and popularity sometimes grates on critics who want to see more cutting edge stuff. “Our first responsibility,” Scheppelman said, “is to our audiences, and to make sure that we deliver artistic productions of the highest quality. So, yes, you’re going to see a ‘Madame Butterfly,’ but people forget that we’ve also, successfully I might add, done terrific productions of ‘A View from the Bridge’ and ‘Billy Budd’ among other more contemporary operas.”
Michael Mael, the newly appointed executive director, hailed WNO’s new affiliation. “It gives us all the resources which the Kennedy Center can bring to bear, plus we have the center’s president, Michael Kaiser, who has run an opera company, who has a great passion for opera, who is an exceptional representative and leader for the arts world-wide.”
“My responsibility is to make sure we have a world-class company and that we never sacrifice artistic excellence,” Mael said. “I came to opera relatively late, but when it happened, I fell in love with it”
Many of the programs put in place by Domingo remain including the Celebrity Artist series, which won’t begin until March with soprano Angela Gheorghiu. Domingo himself has not disappeared—he returns to conduct “Tosca” which will be directed by Dzvid Kneuss.
“Tosca” will also be part of the WNO’s hugely popular “Opera in the Outfield” series, in which a live performance of the opera will be simulcast to audiences at the Washington Nationals Park for free on Sept. 22.
“Tosca” is why Puccini, as a composer of classic opera, is the king, all Wagner devotees aside. Puccini has the three most popular, most enduring and tear-stained, high-drama operas ever written. And the music that goes with them lives outside them in familiar forms. Giacomo Puccini, as the composer of “La Boheme,” “Madama Butterfly” and “Tosca,” made an achievement something on the order of hitting 60 home runs three season in a row without the aid of steroids.
The promos call “Tosca” an “irresistible combination of passion, pathos and despair,” the trifecta of tragic opera. It includes the classic arias “Vissi d’arte” and “E lucevan le stele.” It stars the country’s top singing actors in soprano Patricai Racette as Floria Tosca, a hot-blooded singer placed in impossible situations trying to save her lover from the double-crossing, impassioned and lust-struck Baron Scarpio, performed by bass-baritone Alan Held. (Natalia Ushakova will sing Tosca Sept. 23).
There are nine performances on Sept. 10, 12, 14, 16, 20, 22, 23 and 24 and one matinee Sept. 18.
Donizetti may not have had as many super-legendary hits as Puccini (who has?), but he came up with one of opera’s most hysterical, hugely dramatic, over-the-top and, well, operatic, operas in “Lucia di Lammemoor.” Famous for its mad scene (see the late Joan Sutherland), a challenge to any living, high-note soprano in the world willing to take on the role. It’s directed by David Alden and double-cast with Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova and Sarah Coburn as the Lucias. There are eight performances Nov. 10 through 19.
Let the season begin.
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Till Fellner: Past, Present and Future of Classical Music

Gary Tischler •

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There are certain images that come to mind when you think of classical music, and pianist Till Fellner, a rising star in the world of classical music performers, embodies quite a few of those if you’ve ever seen him perform.

The last time Washington saw Fellner, who is being presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society at the Kennedy Center Oct. 1, he played at the Austrian Embassy as part of Jerome Barry’s Embassy Series Season, which was also the concluding program in Fellner’s ambitious project to perform the complete 32-part cycle of Beethoven sonatas.

Played on a Sunday afternoon before a sold-out but intimate audience, the Embassy Series program was a coming together of artist, music and audience, and a rather romantic display of the culture of classical music. It came with all the practiced history and rituals one would hope for, from the hollering of “Bravo!” to the flying of tailcoats.

An occasion like this has its roots in the 18th and 19th centuries, when music was played in front of kings and members of the courts. It was played by candlelight and under chandeliers, in churches and the drawing rooms of aristocracy. The audiences are no longer quite so elite or powerful, but certain manners, mannerisms and behavioral traditions still persist. Just like the tradition remains that important cast members take curtain calls in between acts at an opera, so there are certain expectations at a concert or recital. After all, the music of the classical Forefathers—in this case Beethoven—is being played.

Fellner is Viennese and European to the core, but he is also a citizen of the world by dint of the global explosion of interest and competition in classical music. He understands and appreciates the seriousness of what he does. “The music is all that matters,” he said in a brief international telephone conversation, where he was taking in the evening tide in the old city of Vienna. “You are in service to the music, it’s the most important thing there is. And on such occasions, there are certain ways of doing things. There’s a respect that is due to the music, from myself playing it to the best of my abilities and understanding, and from the audience in terms of listening.”

You don’t get grand gestures from Fellner, no thumping on the keys with over emphasized drama, no hair or headshaking that one might get from musicians who play the keys to elicit applause. Fellner, although tall and almost boyishly handsome at age 38, will not try to seduce an audience with body language. Rather, he tries to ford the defenses of the heart with perfect performances and worship the music with his playing.

The airy embassy spaces, sunlit and bright, were an ideal setting. Fellner walked up to the shiny black piano with a quick and friendly nod, resplendent in tuxedo and tails, sat at the piano—arranging the tails just so—and began to play to the kind of communal silence that sometimes catches you off guard.

“I believe,” he said, in precise and fluent English, “that there are certain traditions to be followed, and that it is a part of the music, the occasion. There’s a certain formality and I like that, but it doesn’t interfere with feelings and emotions.”

Fellner carries with him the life of a concert pianist, and with it a mountain of ever-growing challenges. He lives in a world that seems to be at a contradictory phase—there are more and more classical musicians being trained all over the world, especially in Asia, while at the same time interest in classical music, while not in any sort of dramatic decline, still seems pointed to a closed world made up of the affording class.

But bridges are being built in the music industry, often with real artists on the forefront, who fuse their talents with giants from the world of pop music. But Fellner isn’t one of them—at least not yet. “I like some popular music,” he said. “Some of the artists are very good. But on the whole, I’m not that interested in rock music and things like that, nor do I have any desire to play it. There are plenty of challenges in playing the music that already exists—every pianist, violinist and so on takes on projects that are difficult and challenging. And the Sonatas was one of mine.”

Still, Fellner understands that the classical repertoire—Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms and Wagner, to name a few—needs to be replenished and added to, and he’s not stuck in the past in that sense.
“There’s actually a lot of new composers and new classical music being written, and I also like playing the works of the 20th century composers. There is a different sort of challenge in the new.”

Fellner’s program at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater on Oct. 1 is a kind of indicator of direction: the richness of the past and the potential for the future. There are Haydn, Schumann, and Liszt, and there is also 19-year-old classical music sensation Kit Armstrong.

“Kit is a prodigy. As a performer, as a composer, he’s just amazing,” Fellner said. “I’m playing ‘Half of One, Six Dozens of the Other,’ which he wrote for me in 2010.”

Fellner has been praised all over world and received raves like this from the London Observer: “Fellner confirmed his standing among the foremost keyboard virtuosi of the day; exact, limpid and feather-fingered, he exquisitely conveyed the sense of yearning haunting the andante and cruised effortlessly through the teasing syncopations of the closing allegro of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18.”
He will treat Armstrong’s music like he treats a Beethoven sonata, as if in the interpretive position of high priest.

Till Fellner will be performing at the Kennedy Center on Oct. 1, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society. For more information visit Kennedy-Center.org

‘Parade’ Shows Our Past and Present Dark Sides

Gary Tischler •

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“Parade” (now at Ford’s Theatre through Oct. 30) sounds like a musical, it pretends to be a musical, it has fast numbers, soft numbers, ballads and rousing numbers that make you want to tap your feet.
As musicals go, “Parade,” with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, is kind of subversive, so much so that an audience can get tricked into clapping after a rousing song sung by a gifted singer and then almost instantly feel weird for do so.

The number in question is “That’s What He Said,” sung by Kevin McAllister as Jim Conley, an African-American janitor at a pencil factory in Atlanta in 1913. What Conley is singing is his testimony at a trial in which Leo Frank, the northern Jewish factory manager, is being tried on charges that he murdered 13-year-old Mary Phagan, a factory worker and dumped her body in the basement. Conley is singing a song, a bald-faced lie of a story in which he says he was witnessed to the aftermath of the murder and helped Frank dispose of the body. He sings “That’s What He Said” in friendly, furious fashion, it’s almost a vaudeville tune that gets people going, makes you want to dance, in fact.

Of course, that’s not what you should want to do. You should be appalled, shocked, torn and bewildered by your own feelings, the natural inclination to clap for a show-stopping number at war with the horrible lie being told that will help railroad Frank to the end of a rope.

More important, this is a true thing, a horrible event in post-Civil War southern history that was already replete with regular lynching and murders of blacks during Jim Crow days. Frank, a northerner from Brooklyn, had married a southern Jewish woman named Lucille and moved down South to manage the factory. Mary Phagan was killed on Confederate Memorial Day in Atlanta, which included parades and picnics, a holiday memorial celebrating Confederate valor and the loss of the old South.

“Parade,” which had a run on Broadway under the auspices of producer Harold Prince no less, won a couple of Tonys but not much acclaim. It should get some here, where the story and theme resonate mightily. It’s also been deemed the centerpiece of the programming for the Lincoln Legacy Project and is a co-production with Theater J.

It’s also an often powerful, gut-wrenching hybrid theatrical evening. Unsettling and disjointed, a sharp, thoughtful and creatively staged and performed piece that has some of the aspirations of both a serious opera and the kind of conscience-hitting plays that came from Arthur Miller. But it’s also not exactly what it seems to be, which is a musical. You sometimes think that Uhry and Brown are using the genre to get audiences to interact with the material in unaccustomed ways, the better to make an impact.

History tells us—and it’s no secret to tell the results—that in the end, Frank was convicted on almost totally fabricated, suborned lies and testimony by the victim’s friends, by the janitor and the Franks’ maid, among others, to satisfy the still bitter devotion to the Glorious Cause, a lasting hatred of northerners and blacks by the local Ku Klux Klan, supported by the establishment including a rabid newspaper publisher and author whose next book was going to offer up reasons why Jesus was not a Jew.

The approach doesn’t always work. The casual use of non-traditional casting in having African-American actors be members of crowds celebrating the Confederacy seems somehow altogether wrong, for instance. The music is often stirring, or, in quieter pieces with Frank and his wife, lovely and touching. Then again, songs pop up like period pieces from the times, and then again, you get a piece like “A Rumblin and a Rollin’,” which opens the second act, sung by black servants at a party with almost teeth-bared bitterness, a song that nicely is a bookend to a young Civil War-era soldier singing “The Old Red Hills of Home” setting off for war.

In a large cast, some of whom double and triple up, Euan Morton and Jenny Fellner stand out as Leo and Lucille Frank, who, singing and acting, manage to give a full portrait of a married couple. Often at a distance from each other in the early going they reveal their boundless love for each other in crisis. Will Gartshore is downright scary as an extremist politician and newspaper owner, steely and merciless. Stephen Schmidt as governor, John Slaton and Hugh Dorsey as a solicitor general with political ambitions, effectively define men dealing with their consciences: Slaton finds his; Dorsey misplaces it.

In the end, Slaton, after reviewing trial transcripts, commuted Frank’s death sentence to life, costing him his political future. A mob of KKK types broke into jail and hauled Frank out and lynched him. Frank’s murderers were not brought to justice and Mary Phagan’s killer was never found. Frank was granted a posthumous pardon in 1986, showing again, as if we didn’t know, that the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow.

“Parade” is, I think, a complicated, nuanced work, and the production does it justice and honor. It is not a history lesson, or even a heavy-handed dose of moral lesson. It’s a powerful hybrid that uses the musical theater form as a way of reminding us in disturbing, moving, complicated ways, of how we live today, how far we’ve come, and how issues of tolerance, race, ethnicity, and just plain expressions of out-and-out irrational hatred remain with us. [gallery ids="99240,104014,104018" nav="thumbs"]

Septime Webre on the grace of ‘Gatsby’

Gary Tischler •

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Septime Webre is fresh.

Celebrated, influential and exceptionally charismatic, Webre has been the Artistic Director of the Washington Ballet since 1999. Whether talking about Balanchine or the weather, everything he says seems fresh, in the moment, right now. He may have a spiel, but if he does, it is surely of his own immediate invention.

Walking through the halls and mirrored classrooms of the ballet school on Wisconsin Avenue, you get the sense that Webre’s mind is a restless one. He is thinking ahead and remembering all at the same time, while somehow maintaining total focused.

No questions about it, he’s got the charisma, a star quality that is also down-to-earth and earthy. You’re likely to end up talking about anything at all, not just the subject at hand.

The subject at hand is the return of “The Great Gatsby,” Webre’s spectacular dance version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, an unforgettable take on the grand theme of the American dream.
“That’s exactly it,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about. The idea, the imagining of the American dream. I loved that movie version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, which seems to be an ideal visualization of the book. It was just, I don’t know, enthralling.”

This is the second go around for Webre’s “Gatsby,” but if you listen to Webre, it’s as if he just thought about doing it a minute ago—and for a lifetime too.

“Two years ago, it was a huge success, no question about it,” he says. “But we had no idea that’s what was going to happen. I thought it was a risky thing, adapting a great American novel and making a ballet out of it. There was another version of it in Pittsburgh, but that’s the extent of it to my knowledge. And what I saw was something that transcended classical ballet and modern pieces. It was a dance based on a novel, a modern story ballet.

“I knew this would require new ideas, new ways of doing things, different sorts of music. It would be very American in spirit, look, tempo, movement and sound. We tried to get the sound of the times—the roaring twenties—into it. That up-beat, Charleston music, the blues, beginning jazz and ragtime. It had a certain tempo and I knew it would be very different than what audiences were used to. It goes against the grain of classical story ballet but it is a story ballet.”

Sitting behind his desk, Webre still looks lanky and casual, his hair dark and loose as if spent the morning dancing and was still shaking it off. He is the type that wants to share what’s on his mind, the kind of stuff he dreams or hears in music. The late and strange jazz singer Chet Baker is a strong favorite of his and you could see how his music might work its way into the background of a dance piece. “Baker was an original,” he says. “We didn’t use his music, but we incorporated narration, blues singing, tap dancing .

“We didn’t know what to expect,” he says of his first production of Gatsby. “We had no idea how it would be received, or if anyone would come.”

They did. While critical reaction was sometimes mixed, Webre was applauded for creating something different, new and original, and audiences came in droves. “In attendance terms, it was our best production outside of ‘Nutcracker’,” he says.

“But that’s not the only reason to do it and see it,” he goes on, trailing evermore into the winding pathways of his thoughts. “Two years ago we were in a recession, and we’re still in hard times—look what’s happening out there. There’s this vast divide economically. People on the outside looking in. And that’s what Gatsby is, an outsider. That’s what drew me to the project. I understand that feeling. I’m an immigrant. And it’s the central tragedy of Gatsby.”

But his motives reach beyond the immediate present. “I also wanted to make it big, sprawling, entertaining,” he says. “I wanted to capture a time when the American Dream seemed possible for anybody, not just the moneyed class that Daisy Buchanan comes from. There is a tremendous amount of energy in this production. We’ve done more than try to get at the essence of a novel. It’s about the spirit of an age in American history where anything was possible.”

That’s why you have E. Faye Butler, one of Washington’s finest singers and actresses, fresh off two big successes at Arena stage, singing in the production. And there’s tap dancer Quynn Johnson and actor Will Gartshore. The music—a distillation of jazz age works by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey and original music by Billy Novick—is performed by Novick’s Blue Syncopators.
Webre’s description of specific sequences—a dance set on a golf course, one of Jay Gatsby’s gin-driven parties, a solo focusing on the plight of the anguished and betrayed George Wilson—puts you almost right into the production before you even see it.

Jared Nelson will again perform the role of Jay Gatsby, and Jonathan Jordan is returning as Nick Caraway. Emily Ellis and Maki Onuki will share the role of Daisy Buchanan.

Webre says this production is not the same as the one performed two years ago. “We have different cast members, for one thing. But we’ve also refined it, tightened things up. I see it a little more clearly now, “ Webre said.

In the future, Webre hopes to venture more often into modern literature as a source for choreography and dance. “I think about Tennessee Williams’ work,” he says. “’Streetcar,’ for one. It’s an opportunity to stretch boundary, to meet new challenges.” Frankly, that’s exactly what Webre has achieved with “The Great Gatsby.”

“The Great Gatsby” will be performed at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater Nov. 2 through 6. For more information visit Kennedy-Center.org.

D.C. Theater Gears up for the Holidays

Gary Tischler •

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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

No kidding, folks. Looking ahead just a little bit, you might want to brace yourself for Scrooges and Nutcrackers, coming up sooner than you think. We give thanks, and god bless us everyone.

Just to start you off, “A Christmas Carol” returns like clockwork to the Ford’s Theatre, beginning Nov. 18 and running through Dec. 31. This is the production adapted by Michael Wilson and starring acclaimed Washington actor Edward Gero, who can go from Shakespeare to Mamet to Scrooge in a heartbeat. Michael Baron directs. Click here for more information

At the Olney Theater, Dickens and Scrooge will also be on hand with “A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas,” performed by Paul Morella and adapted from Dickens’ original novella and reading tour. Dec. 13 through Jan. 1. Click here for more information and to buy tickets

Meanwhile, among many Nutcrackers for the season, you can count on the Washington Ballet and Septime Webre’s version to return to the Warner Theater for a nearly month-long run, Dec. 1 through 24, while the Kennedy Center will have the American Ballet Theatre’s version Dec. 8 through 11.

A Couple of Guys Named Othello and Othello and Iago and Iago

These days, we’re seeing two versions of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy about Othello, the great Moor general in Renaissance Venice, the passion of his life Desdemona, and Iago, perhaps the most despised villain in Shakespeare outside of Richard III. You can see what you can do with style and silence at the Synetic Theatre’s production now in the midst of a three-way run at its Crystal City space, or take in a more classic, wordier, sound-and-fury version at the Folger Theatre, directed by Robert Richmond, which has already been extended through Dec. 4.

Seriously, Folks

There’s serious drama afoot all over the region, beginning with a production of Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall,”his most revealing, autobiographical play about a playwright named Quentin and his tragic, glamorous wife Maggie (hello Miss Monroe). Jose Carrasquillo directs this rarely performed play, Mitchell Hebert stars as Quentin, and Gabriella Fernandez-Coffey is Maggie through Nov. 27.

At Arena Stage, history plays a big part in both Amy Freed’s “You, Nero” and Bill Cain’s “Equvicocation.” 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 Nov. 18 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. It makes its D.C. debut Nov. 25 and runs through Jan. 1. Danny Scheie stars as Nero, an emperor who may have been the first emperor-as-public-celebrity.

For one night only, you’ll have a chance to see one of the landmark plays of the 1980s and the tragedy of AIDs when Forum Theatre will stage a benefit performance of “The Normal Heart” by Larry Kramer, with an all-star cast of area actors including Holly Twyford, Mitchell Hebert, Will Gartshore, J. Fred Schiffman, Rick Hammerly, Michael Tolaydo and others at the Round House Theatre’s Silver Spring stage, where Forum is in residence on Nov. 7 at 7:30 p.m.

Kevin Converses with Michael and Broadway Does Shakespeare

Star of the stage and screen Kevin Kline (“Sophie’s Choice”) will join Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Michael Kahn for the second installment in the Classic Conversations series at Sidney Harman Hall Nov. 28.

Speaking of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, the run will be short but the occasion sounds terrific, with a concert-style staging of “The Boys from Syracuse” with a book by David Ives (“The Heir Apparent”) hooked up to Rodgers and Hart’s classic score. “The Boys” is of course a Broadway musical version of “The Comedy of Errors” which features two sets of twins unaware of each other, the kids from Ephesus. Nov. 4 through 6.

George Stevens Jr.: the Man behind the Kennedy Center Honors

Gary Tischler •

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Talking with George Stevens, Jr. in his wonderland office at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on a mid-November afternoon, you’d hardly know it was only two weeks until the annual national cultural fete and red-carpet extravaganza that is called the 34th Annual Kennedy Center Honors.

It was quiet at the Center, sun drenching the Hall of Nations foyer and Stevens ushering me in to his office, a remarkable place full of old movie posters, lots of Emmys and other awards, volumes of scripts and scrapbooks. Casually dressed in a blue sweater and slacks, he immediately takes you on a quick little tour of the walls and turns you into a gawker as you stare at a poster for “Shane,” a drawing of his father, the Oscar-winning film director George Stevens in a poker game with his friends, a poster for “The More the Merrier,” a 1940s more-or-less screwball comedy featuring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, a future star of gritty cowboy movies.

The office is best described as a vibrant display of the professional lives of Stevens Senior and Stevens Junior, which, taken together, are examples of lives lived that purposefully made a difference.
And we haven’t even talked about the Kennedy Center Honors, which this year, with all the usual glitz, glitter and presidential presence, will be bestowed upon Actress Meryl Streep, the phenomenal cellist Yo-Yo Ma, legendary Broadway chanteuse Barbara Cook, jazz original Sonny Rollins and singer Neil Diamond on Dec. 4 at the Opera House.

It all began in 1978 with honors to Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers and Arthur Rubinstein, and Stevens tells you a story about the audience jumping to its feet after seeing 1939 footage of Anderson singing at the Lincoln Memorial, having been denied use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

It isn’t just that Stevens is and has been the producer of the Honors, both the live event at the Opera House and the CBS television show that is derived from it (to be aired Dec. 27 at 9 p.m.) It’s that basically, the Honors were his idea, inspired very much by the words of President John F. Kennedy, which can be found carved on the wall of the center.

“Well, it came out of a conversation with Roger Stevens [founding chairman of the Kennedy Center; no relation] back in 1974, and I suggested that the center really needed its own event,” Stevens said. “Roger asked if I had any ideas. And I did. I said that the center should have an event that honored the great figures in the performing arts. A lot had to be done, but that was the basic idea.”

It was more than that of course; it was about the very idea of the Kennedy Center itself and its basic tenets as expressed by Kennedy himself in a 1963 speech at Amherst. “That statement where he said ‘I look forward to an America that is not afraid of grace and beauty . . . I look forward to an America that will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business and statecraft.’”
Stevens allows that he has some influences on the choice—made by the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees but also national cultural figures, previous winners and others. The proceedings are, of course, secret, but Stevens adds, “I like to think I have considerable input.”

Also secret are the surprises that come with the night’s entertainment and special guests, like the outburst of talent that included Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé honoring Tina Turner in 2006, or Jessica Simpson leading a star-studded array of female country superstars honoring Dolly Parton in 2008.
So is Margaret Thatcher coming for the Meryl Streep honors? “I don’t know about that,” Stevens said. “But there will be surprises.”

It’s fair to say that Stevens is a historically serious man. Being the founder of the Kennedy Center Honors is no small thing, but it’s not the only thing. There’s a note of serendipity that runs through his life and career, a kind of story with a theme about the value of culture as a way of moving hearts and minds. The Honors—an occasion for pomp and circumstances and rolling of red carpets—are nevertheless a celebration of the lifetime achievements and careers of legendary, giant-sized figures.
He has always said that the Honors are really two shows—the one that is staged in front of a stellar audience of 2,000 or so at the Opera House and the one that’s created to become a television show for the whole world.

“It’s quiet today,” he said. “But the week of the Honors—when the performers and the honorees fly in, the week of the dinners, the rehearsals, the logistics, and all the people you have to deal with, that’s still pretty intense, for me, and everyone else. It’s always thrilling; it’s always exciting, an honor and really hard work.”

For the past several years, Stevens, has worked with his son Michael as co-producer, on the Honors show and the “Christmas in Washington” yearly production. “Michael brings his own perspectives to this, his tastes, his knowledge, what he knows about music and the whole world of arts, the people he knows.

“And yes, it is very, very gratifying to work with Michael, for me, as a producer, in terms of the history of this enterprise, but also the family history. It means a lot to me as a father, and I have to tell you how important his contribution is to accomplishing what we do.”

Stevens has become with the years a kind of cultural icon in this city. He, his wife Elizabeth and his family have been Georgetown residents for decades on Avon Place. In interviews, in a recent roundtable talk on “Creativity in America” at the Aspen Institute, and in person Stevens always comes across as a serious man, without getting within a continent’s distance of becoming pompous or overbearing. He is one of the most accessible of public figures, one of the least “me-me” men you’ll encounter.

He’s led a big life in the big, wide world — son of legendary Hollywood director George Stevens, working on major movie sets, a JFK “New Frontiersman” working to produce documentaries for Edward R. Murrow when he headed the U.S. Information Agency, founder of the American Film Institute, leading film conservation and preservation, founder and co-producer of the Kennedy Center Honors, film director and producer (“A Filmmaker’s Journey,” “The Murder of Mary Phagan”) playwright (“Thurgood”) and author of “Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute”). In October, President Barack Obama named Stevens co-chairman of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

That’s by way of roll-the-credits bona fides. In some circles, he’s even been described as “Hollywood royalty.”

“What do I think of that?” he says. “I think it’s mostly B-S.”

The truth of the matter is that he came to do what he’s done honestly: lots of hard work, the obvious ability to lead and a passionate, creative urge to be an advocate for culture, not only for its own sake but also for social change and justice.

“We didn’t have anything like the Kennedy Center Honors, and so we have celebrated all sorts of performance excellence,” he said. “And it changed with time, sure. More and more, we all realized the importance of popular culture, and it became a part of the mix: I think Bob Dylan was the first figure of that sort to become an honoree, but not the last.”

Stevens admits working on the Honors enriched him. “I’m a film guy,” he said, “that’s my experience, my comfort zone. So, being around these huge, legendary figures in dance, opera, music, that was an enormously rewarding experience for me.”

That seriousness of purpose, that liberality of spirit and focus, comes in part from his father. Making the documentary “A Film Directors Journey” set Stevens on his own creative path, much like his father’s two-year experience of World War II turned him into a man with a mission that resulted in the great American trilogy, “Shane,” “A Place in the Sun” and “Giant.” With Stevens Jr., the documentary on his father was followed by films about “The Murder of Mary Phagan,” “Separate but Equal” and the play “Thurgood” among other projects.

There are rows of scripts for each Kennedy Center Honors in his office, and each five-minute plus film about each honoree, not to mention scrapbooks and photographs for the AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards, which he has also produced. It’s dangerous being in that office; you get lost in it, so many scenes from movies start running through your head, so many stories.

You can imagine the Stevens spending hours here without ever being alone.

“It’s been 34 years since then,” he said. “I feel more creative, fuller of ideas than ever.” Proof: he’s about to finish a documentary about the Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herb Block, and a second set of “Conversations with Great American Directors” are coming out.

Of necessity, life and death and all that make for omissions on the Honors list. One obvious one is, of course, George Stevens, Sr., who died in 1975. You don’t ask, but chances are he would have been a cinch.

Speaking in public like the recent Aspen Institute or in interviews, Stevens often tells the story about being with his father after he had won the Oscar for Best Director for “A Place in the Sun.”

“He said to me ‘We’ll know how good it really is 20 or 30 years from now.’”

Stevens thinks it holds up, 50 plus years later. It’s an American classic. But Stevens’ life, adding up the accomplishments and their meaning, also hold up with time. The son, in this case, also rises to the occasion.

Kennedy Center Honorees

It’s star power week in Washington. This is the week of the 34th Annual Kennedy Center Honors, which means that among us will be five of the nation’s finest, most enduring and sparkling legends and stars of the performing arts.

Meryl Streep, touted as the most awarded and award-nominated actress ever, will be honored again this year. Her record: 45 film roles, 16 Oscar nominations and two wins, 25 Golden Globes and so on.

Yo-Yo Ma’s selection casts him in the shadows of the major classical music performers who formed a large number of the honorees in the early years of the Kennedy Center Honors. But to say he is a classical musician is to miss the pioneer, the genre-bender and the passionate cellist which he truly is. He has recorded 75 Sony Albums and has collaborated with the likes of Paquito Rivera, Renee Fleming, Dave Brubeck, Bobby McFerrin and James Taylor.

Sonny Rollins, the oldest among the honorees at 81, is one of the last of the old giants of bee-bop and improvisatory jazz on the saxophone, or anything else, as well as being a gifted composer. As he put it when he received the National Medal of Arts in March of this year, “I accept on behalf of the gods of our music.”

Barbara Cook may be, as Alistair Macaulay of the Financial Times says, “The greatest singer in the world,” but she’s actually a little more than that. She cut her singing teeth in the 1950s on national tours of “Oklahoma,” and “Carousel” and hit all the notes in the Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.” Her career almost six decades: it’s so rich that it seems too short.

Neil Diamond has been around a long time too, and sometimes we forget that. Sixty-types remember all the big hits, forgetting that he also wrote the score to “Jonathan Livingstone Seagull,” wrote “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” for Barbra Streisand and starred in a version of “The Jazz Singer.” He’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and, according to Paul Simon, was once known as the Jewish Elvis Presley. Go figure.

The Gala Kennedy Center Honors performance will take place Dec. 4, co-produced by George Stevens Jr. and Michael Stevens, at the Opera House where the honorees will be saluted by performers, their peers, the powerful and the president. The Honors Gala will be broadcast on CBS Dec. 27 at 9 p.m.

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