Performance

Gary Tischler • November 3, 2011

Elizabeth Ashley is back in town, and it’s about time.

It’s been eight years since the volatile, gifted and outspoken actress graced a Washington stage, and a lot has happened since then.

And yet, in some ways, as you visit her for an interview in the apartment on Massachusetts Avenue where she’s staying for the run of the Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” a lot of things haven’t changed.

She’s as brash, direct, self-deprecating, emotive, blunt as ever, so much that you do what you’ve done in three previous encounters: you proceed gingerly, on the lookout for possible landmines, but with an anticipation that is not disappointed.

It’s been eight years since she starred as Regina in “The Little Foxes” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. A lot has happened to Ashley since then, not all of it pretty. Her domicile in New York was destroyed in a fire, along with most of the contents within. “I lost everything,” she says. “That’s an experience.”

Later, she was injured in a boating accident. And, she recently turned 70.

“I don’t worry about it,” she said, nor does she noodle the subject. She seems to embrace it, which would seem to indicate a certain abandonment of vanity. “I did the wild, intense, youthful period, I embraced and left behind middle age. Maybe when I was young, you think about looks. I was a cute young thing, I guess. But if you spent your life worried about how you look, you’re going to be in trouble at this stage.”

She was more than cute, she had a way about her, pitch black hair, deep brown eyes, a challenging persona, and a tremendous acting gift which she nurtured with work, constant work, flourishing most effectively and sometimes brilliantly on stage, especially in a legendary production of a Michael Kahn-directed revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” in which she played Maggie the Cat and triumphed by way of reputation, performance and, of course, billboards.

Now, she sort of drapes herself on the couch in her split-level apartment, smoking cigarettes, wearing a loose blouse, slacks, hair in a ponytail, bare feet tucked under, her hands and arms doing a lot of talking. Two dogs are in tow, one recently adopted from a local shelter, the other a pug named Che Guevara.

“The name is meant to be ironic,” she says. “This is the least warrior-like dog I have ever seen in my life.”

Clearly, she loves him too, and the name probably has something to do with an affinity for outsiders and maybe even revolutionaries. Who knows?

In all the eventful times of the past few years, there’s been a constant that’s scattered throughout her life and career, and that’s a deep and abiding professionalism, a respect for the work, not just her own but her peers and fellow actors. She has not been still or shy, probably not ever: Callas in “Master Class,” Mattie Fae in the epic “August: Osage County,” a matriarch in the late Horton Foote’s “Dividing the Estate” and a small but recurring role in the highly praised HBO series “Treme.”

No matter what personal drama went on in Ashley’s life, no matter what amount of indulgence and excesses may have been initiated or experienced by her (three marriages, including an intense bout with the late Hollywood star George Peppard), the work was her grounding point, her rock. She went into everything with 100 percent effort, playing or acting hurt, if you will, and elevating many projects to a higher level. Her presence on episode television like “Miami Vice,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Law and Order: SUV,” “Homicide” and the recurring role of the bawdy, loud, hypnotic member of the cast of the Burt Reynolds sitcom “Evening Shade” were all enriched by her professionalism and her gifts.

“You can’t just collect your paycheck,” she says. “I don’t do that. I don’t coast.”

She was a razzle-dazzler early on in the theater when Broadway sparkled at its brightest in comedies like “Barefoot in the Park.” She shone briefly in her youth in films like “The Carpetbaggers” with Peppard, but always there was the theater, the sail and life boat of her working life.

She sounds more like a pragmatist, one who still cares quite a bit, even though she describes herself as a cynic. She often talks in sports metaphors, especially of the pro football variety, and loves to talk about old football stars, many of whom she called friends, including the Oakland Raider quarterback Kenny “The Snake” Stabler.

And now she’s back, watching the tragedy in the Gulf unfold from a great distance, more or less, but also brought back by tragedy. She’s taking on the role of Mrs. Warren, which was originally to be done by Dixie Carter, who passed away recently from breast cancer.

“Dixie was a tremendously classy lady,” Ashley said. “She even thought she could do it although everyone knew she was ill. But when she went back to the hospital for tests, [the cancer] had gone everywhere.” Ashley worked with Carter’s husband Hal Holbrook on “Evening Shade.” “We all knew each other, were friends. Dixie was elegant, she was extremely intelligent, she was witty, wry, she was sophisticated without being affected, she was generous … she was the best of breed among us all.”

Her presence came as a result of following once again one of her credos: “When the mighty Kahn calls, I go.” That would be Michael Kahn, who asked her to take over, and she did with no debate or agonizing “In that kind of situation, you don’t negotiate, you don’t chit chat, you don’t hesitate. You go.”

In the Shaw play, she plays a woman who runs a number of high-class brothels, much to the embarrassment and dismay of her daughter. “Children,” she says. “I told my son Christian once that I wasn’t a very good mother, no Betty Crocker, no, but that now that he was grown up, I’d be very interesting company.”

It’s always interesting to listen to her talk about fellow actresses like Betty White, Vanessa Redgrave, Carter, Estelle Parsons, the local chameleon Nancy Robinette. She is unstinting and disarming in dishing out praise, respect and awe, a rare quality in the business.

These days, she talks of herself as a “mechanic, an old pro” or “a survivor,” although if you’ve ever seen her in action on stage, she is considerably more, and always has been. And if she’s without vanity these days, she’s not without great gifts or ego.

To me, it seems she’s always told the truth, which requires several things: trust, courage, and swagger, qualities that could fit both a Hall of Fame actress or quarterback.

“Mrs. Warren’s Profession” runs through July 11 at Sidney Harman Hall. Click [here](http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/plays/details.aspx?id=185&source=l) for scheduling and tickets. [gallery ids="99148,102807" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Michael Danek comes to Washington frequently—he has friends and relatives here in the suburbs and it’s not that far away from New York where he lives when he’s not on the road, which is often.

But he hasn’t been at the National Theatre on Pennsylvania Avenue in a long time in a professional capacity.

Not since he was Harry.

Not since he was an actor in the legendary “Hello Dolly,” with the legendary Carol Channing back on 1978.

“You know the song, right,” he says in a phone interview, “the title song where everyone’s singing ‘Hello Dolly’ by way of greeting. Well, back then I was one of the waiters that comes on, guy named Harry, and she sings ‘Well, hello, Harry…’”

“That was pretty cool,” he says. “And Carol Channing, well, she was something, no question.”

Well Harry, that is, Michael, is back at the National Theatre, only this time, as stage manager for the touring company. He’s running the whole show – the show being “Rock of Ages,” the hit Broadway show about a bunch of kids finding love and music, 1980’s style.

Put another way, it’s a long way from “Hello Dolly” to “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” the iconic femme rock song sung by Pat Benatar in the 1980s. It’s a long way from the music of Jerry Hermann to Styx, or for that matter, from bustles to Afros.

“Yeah, it’s different,” Danek said. “But one things the same, they’re both big shows, big hits.”

Danek, who switched from being a performer (including long runs in “A Chorus Line”) in the 1980s, to stage managing, from onstage to backstage, couldn’t be happier. “I had a good run,” he said. “Especially the Chorus Line gig, because that was one of the most original Broadway shows ever. There’s nothing like it, so many talented people in it.”

But as stage manager, he’s basically responsible for running the show on the road, the pacing, the calling, the scheduling, getting people squared away, making sure everything runs as smoothly as it should. “The director’s going to call in, but once a show, a play gets on stage, the director basically is finished,” he said. “It’s my job now that this tour, which is pretty hectic, goes smoothly, how the company and the sets and everything work in relation to the size of the venue. Every place is a little different.”

“I love this show,” he says. “I guess it’s sort of part of my musical memory. Sure, so the music is great, but everybody in it is super. This is a great cast, a great group of people, enthusiastic as all get out. I know sometimes in road shows you get performers that sort of coast or wing it. Not here. These guys and girls, they make it fresh every night, they work like fiends.”

“And then there’s the equipment,” he says. “There’s a lot of amps, you could say it’s loud, but then the music was loud and the hair was big. Bring ear plugs.”

He continued, “We’re unloading five trucks, including the sound stuff, and the amps, so yeah, it’s a lot to get down right. And yeah, there’s a lot of hair.”

“Rock of Ages” is huge in the minds of its fans, everywhere they go. “You’ve got to like living on the road,” he says. “Especially on this show. It’s a short run show, nothing more than a month, most of it less. We had a nice run in San Francisco, with a little more leisure time. But basically you’ve got to be cool about packing up, living in hotels, out you go again kind of thing.”

Constantine Maroulis of American Idol fame is the headliner in this version, which weaves comedy and romance with a young cast of actors, singers and performers through a rich bag of 1980s hits. It runs at the national through July 24. Kristin Hanggi, who snagged a Tony Award nomination for her work on “Rock of Ages” directs. “We’re in touch pretty much constantly,” Danek says. “If there’s a problem that she needs to deal with, we talk.”

The tour includes Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Des Moines, Kansas City, Fort Laudesrdale, Clearwater, Houston and Dallas among its 15 stops. “I’ve been with the show since January,” he said. “It’s been a great ride, no kidding.”

And “Rock of Ages” is soon – in 2012 – coming to a theater near you. You’ve probably seen the clips of Tom Cruise in bare-chest vest for the movie version. “He plays an aging rocker,” Danek said. “He came backstage during the tour. He was really nice, posed for pictures with everyone, very cool guy.”

Folks come for the love story, but mostly, and most likely for the music. Songs include the anthem-like “Anyway You Want It” and “Don’t Stop Believing” from Journey’s salad days, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison “I Wanna Rock” from the wonderfully named Twisted Sister, David Lee Roth’s “Just Like Paradise,” Styx’s “Renegade,” Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night” and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive,” Foreigner’s “Waiting for a Girl Like You.”

“I’m not sorry about not performing, I don’t miss it,” Danek said. “This is theater, too and it’s the life that I picked. It’s the nuts and bolts stuff. Every night and every place is different.”

“Rock of Ages” started out in Los Angeles, performed four times in two days at King, then was performed once at the Warner Brothers Soundstage in LA before formally opening in LA at the Vanguard Hollywood for six weeks. In 2006, it had a limited run at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, then hit off-Broadway in 2008. In April of 2009, it opened at the prestigious Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway. It has since toured nationally, and opened in productions in Korea and Melbourne.

“Rock of Ages” indeed. [gallery ids="100226,106479,106487,106484" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • October 31, 2011

For sophisticates, the very hip, cool and urban trendy, there are so many targets in Samuel Hunter’s “A Bright New Boise” (now at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre through Nov 13) to feel smug, snarky and snide about that it could have been a buffet of satire, enough material for a lifetime of Bill Maher monologues.

We gave religious zealotry of the way-out-there-waiting-for-the-Rapture-and-Apocalypse kind. We have corporate dullness and the intellectually empty space of places like Idaho, interrupted only by malls and truck stop traffic. We have a central character so bland that he could disappear easily in a crowd, if only there were crowds to disappear into.

So what does Hunter, a gifted writer and observer, do with this material? He showers it with a deep and imaginative empathy, even love, for the characters he’s created, characters that live in a world very much reflective of our hard-scrabble, economically harrowing times. Hunter makes his play—set in a Hobby Lobby store in Boise, Idaho—a kind of microcosm of the way quite a number of Americans live today—on the edge, hanging by broken nails, embracing the outer limits of apocalyptic faith, trying to find the inner creative flame to ward of the dullness of the days while thinking about the end of days.

At its center is a guy named Will, the new guy in town, who just applied for and got a low-paying job as a clerk in the local Hobby Lobby store, specializing in selling the equipment for arts and crafts things to do—buttons, cloth, paper, paint and none-such. It’s not a big place, and the people we see are Will, vaguely religious, hugely ordinary in his checkered shirt and blue jeans, smart and a little mysterious; Pauline, the branch manager with a tainted heart of gold and a potty mouth; Anna, sensitive, abused, halting, hungry and eager for attention and a little knowledge; Leroy, an in-your-face artistic type who makes obscene T-shirts which he wears to work; and Alexis, a quiet high school kid with secrets and talent.

The characters bump against each other in the employee lounge, sometimes used by Anna to hide out in and read and by Will to work on a blog that’s becoming a novel and has fans on the worldwide web. The story he’s writing is very much like the “Left Behind” novels that were about the end of days and the humans left behind, a very popular Christian series, especially so among Evangelists.

Will—if it weren’t for his secrets and the fact that he’s looking for the son he gave up to be adopted, and for his embrace of the rapture – would pass for the most ordinary, nicest of guys, the kind of guy that for no reason at all goes postal. But Woolly regular Michael Russotto has a gift for making the ordinary seem special—Will is at turns kind, talkative, a good listener, speculative, and haunting as he confronts his past and the pain of never escaping it, erasing it and starting over.

Russotto underplays him to the point that Will is like someone in a video, an old family movie, easy to be around, difficult to know, and when his frustrated, bleeding soul comes up for air, it’s a shattering moment.

Everybody in the cast is affecting—there’s no dissing the characters, the way they live, what they say, especially Kimberly Gilbert, who’s own special gift as an actress has always been to make the sometimes more than mildly weird seem oddly affecting and attractive, and she puts it good use her in a full-bodied portrait of Anna.

Will’s life is a mess, and it’s accentuated by his surroundings, his ruinously fumbling attempt at reunion with his son, the stifling routines and weirdness of the Hobby Lobby. The employee’s lounge is never ever distant from a television monitor which routinely runs a maddeningly dull monotone-voiced in-house video featuring the Hobby Lobby founders handing out tips and news, oddly interrupted occasionally by bursts of videos showing graphic medical procedures, which nobody seems to able to eliminate.

Much of “A Bright New Boise” is sharply observant and funny, without being in any sense an exercise in cheap laughs. Much of it, more importantly, is dark and incredibly sad. You can see how Will’s (and the others’) endless days of monotony might lead to the end of days, might lead him to embrace that annihilation with a raging scream that breaks hearts.

Gary Tischler •

They should plant those old barkers they used to have near San Francisco topless bars and bordellos whispering the pointed come-on “Looking for a good time?” in front of the Lansburgh Theatre these days.

So: “Looking for a good time?”

“The Heir Apparent,” now at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre, is the reason everyone should go to the theatre as opposed to 50 critics and selected friends of the house and board.

The play, which is the opener for the company’s 25th anniversary, is the work of 16th-century French playwright Jean-Francois Regnard, who wrote it in 1708. It’s also a world premiere, the reason for which you can entirely blame and praise adapter/translator and rhymer extraordinaire David Ives, who has been having quite a time in Washington and elsewhere this year.

Ives has taken this somewhat musty, obscure comedy which has its roots in the genius-level works of Moliere as well as English restoration comedy, shaken off the dust, and re-written the text in iambic pentameter (I think) and certainly pedantic rhyme with a touch of burlesque, comedy and Catskills drollery thrown in. It’s no small measure of Ives’s considerable gifts that it’s not too difficult to imagine John Gielgud and Buddy Hackett working side by side in this production. The superb cast jumps on the rhymes like Chinese acrobats shot out of a cannon.

Ives did something similar last year at the Shakespeare Theatre play with an adaptation-re-arrangement and re-do of “The Liar,” for which he won a Helen Hayes Award for outstanding new play. With his work in “The Heir Apparent,” you know for sure that everything old is new again, especially Floyd King’s Geronte, a monstrously funny creation and capstone to King’s career as a classical theatre comic royalty.

Ives has transfixed critics to the point where they want to turn into rhymers themselves. I refuse to stoop so low as to rhyme before my time.

That being said, “The Heir Apparent” is a hoot, hewing to the traditions of both Moliere in his most sarcastic and preposterous laugh-machine period, and the wonderful excesses of Sheridanian (is that the word, my lord?) and Goldsmithian restoration comedy.

In short, there is mincing and messing around, vulgarity aplenty and lechery of the sort, where old men drool while young women breathe heavily in their not-quite-right-sized bodices, and much brainless skullduggery helped by the servant class.

Michael Kahn directs here, and he moves things along with such reckless timing and all-in gusto that you have to remind yourself that Kahn is not known for his splapdash comedy shows and has never been on Saturday Night Live.

But the highlight of the evening—all right, one of the highlights—is when the would-be heirs try to eliminate far-flung cousins with the appearance of not one, but three female pig farmers, big and pink as a pig’s snout, bearing gifts of bacon and pork, and that’s something you haven’t seen on a Washington stage, at least not for real.

Ives and Kahn have a wonderful cast to pull off a rousing comedic miracle, especially King, who outdoes himself as Geronte, whom we first see in raggedy old clothes, a stringy wig and a nightcap which no one but the dead should wear. Geronte scuffles on as a phlegmatic apparition, a living cough who talks mostly about money and bowel movements before he lets on that he wants to marry Isabelle (Meg Chambers Steedle), the young woman his nephew is in love with.

This leaves the charmingly inept but very cool nephew Eraste (played with breathless aplomb by Andrew Veenstra) speechless and sets the servants Lisette (Kelly Hutchinson) and Crispin (Carson Elrod), a frend of Eraste, to scheming nonstop because they know Geronte is worth a million, a million, as they remind themselves with grand goofiness.

Nancy Robinette is also on hand as Madame Argante, one of those greedy aristocrats who walks in billowy dresses as if fighting a headwind, and Clark Middleton has a nice turn as the lawyer Scruple who is height deprived, or, in short, short.

“The Heir Apparent” is such grand entertainment – the set is deliciously detailed and lacks only a dozen doors that should be slamming – that you forget the price immediately because you get your money’s worth.

Pssst.

Looking for a good time? Go see “The Heir Apparent,” running through Oct. 23.

Gary Tischler • October 3, 2011

As the final days for the production of “Oklahoma” at Arena Stage run down, people are still talking about the show, in some ways as if it were a brand new phenomenon that wound its way through town like a tornado.

The production, directed and selected by Arena Artistic Director Molly Smith, played to packed houses in the Fichandler after it opened Arena’s 2010-2011 season in its new $100 million plus Mead Center for American Theater. Some critics were skeptical of the choice which seemed a little safe, but the show was in keeping with Smith’s exploration of American theater and musicals, proving to be a monster hit with audiences and critics alike. The resurrection hauled in all sorts of honors, at one point being considered for a Broadway production.

The show was so popular that Smith and Arena decided to bring it back for an end-of-summer, start-of-fall run that ends Oct. 2, starting something of a theater recycling trend in Washington.

The other night while attending “The Habit of Art” at Studio Theater, I chatted with a couple sitting next to me, and, after talking about dogs and theater in general, the couple said they had just seen “Oklahoma” for the first time.

“We’d seen the movie,” she said. “You know, Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones and all that stuff. But we were so surprised and it was so fresh. Having the salesman be a Middle Easterner was a surprise, it sure wasn’t Eddie Albert. And that Ado Annie, she was something. She was delightful.”

That would be June Schreiner, the 16-year-old (when the show opened) Madeira School senior who was bowled over with critical praise for her portrayal as the girl with two suitors who sings “I Can’t Say No,” an enduring highlight tune among many classics in “Oklahoma.” Not to mention she executes some nifty roping moves with Cody Williams, who plays one of her beaus, a cowpoke named Will Parker.

One of the unique things about the production was that even in the process of performance, the company seemed tightly knit, a community of sorts. I got a real sense of that several weeks ago when I sat down with Schreiner and Teresa Burrell, who had just taken over the part of Aunt Eller, the almost totemic matriarchal figure in the Oklahoma community. The part had formerly been played by F. Faye Butler, who moved on to star in Arena’s “Trouble in Mind.”

Schreiner, a thin, pretty blonde teenager, showed up pumped after taking additional roping lessons. Burrell, a veteran actress familiar with the Arena Stage scene, had just made her first appearance as Aunt Eller the previous night.

“You know, you’re replacing a key member of the company, and not just any company, but this one, which is like a family, you could tell that right away,” Burrell said. Burrell looks rangy and vivacious and hardly resembles a matriarch. She is still remembered for her dazzling starring role in Duke Ellington’s “Queenie Pie” at the Kennedy Center a number of years ago, and is also currently working on a show about Ethel Waters, the legendary African American singer and performer.

Schreiner said Burrell “fits right in.” She should. She’s something of an Arena veteran, having starred in their ground-floor musical version of “The Women of Brewster Place” among other productions, and has been seen at Signature in the iconic role of Julie in another American classic, “Showboat.”

It’s interesting to watch and listen to Schreiner and Burrell talking. One moment, Schreiner is exactly the senior in high school that she is, daughter of show biz parents, a young American girl, still excitable, the next she sounds like a theater veteran (which she is) who got a tidal wave of media attention after “Oklahoma” opened. When the talk is about the show, she and Burrell dive in, dissecting, describing, figuring things out. “It never gets old,” said Schreiber, who’s now played the part too often to count. “Every night, there’s something different. It’s like you’re in the group of people the characters, you’re part of something that’s happening to them in the country a new world.”

“I’m so happy to be in this, to take this part,” Burrell said. “It’s such a fresh production. It’s a little darker, and then again not. It’s complicated, more grown-up in a way. Aunt Eller is the rock of the community, she has to have size, but she’s also very human, warm and funny.”

Burrell, next to Schreiber, is so energized she might as well be a teenager too. They talk about Ado Annie as a character. “With Schreiner playing her, and playing her with that kind of absolutely fresh way she has, she’s something different than say an older woman who’s been around a little,” Burrell says. “It’s a little more innocent—she wants things and likes both the young men who like her, but there’s something endearing about that and she gets them going that’s for sure.”

“Ado Annie is a young person in that time, she’s like me, age wise,” Schreiber said. “That makes it a lot more fun, for one thing.”

Schreiber wasn’t nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for her role. It was a major omission to many observers, but not to her. “The whole thing was just so amazing to me, the process, the time spent in a show like this, the people, all those talented people and Molly,” she said. “That didn’t bother me. I’ve gotten so much out of this.”

Gary Tischler • August 10, 2011

August may be the dog days of summer, but it also has every year now for the past seven years been the occasion to look forward to one of the top musical events of the year.

That would be when the Music Center at Strathmore, with Bandhouse Gigs, hosts its annual tribute concert honoring iconic figures, events and themes from rock and pop music history featuring the very best of an array of local musicians, singers and performers.

Originated in 2004 by Bandhouse Gigs—a not-for-profit volunteer group founded by Ronnie Newmyer, Chuck Sulllivan, David Sless and Danny Schwartz—the concert began as an outdoor venue at Strathmore but soon moved indoors into the concert hall. The first tribute concert honored legendary solo and group (E Street Band) rocker Neal Lofgren. Others followed: Neil Young, an almost archetype California rocker and the “Heart of Gold,” member of Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, the band considered by some the best rock band ever; Bob Dylan; folk-and-jazz queen and pure singer Joni Mitchell; Woodstock as the music and watershed 1960s event; and The British invasion.

This year’s Bandhouse Gig is the Tribute to Simon and Garnfunkel and Paul Simon on August 25 at 7:30 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore’s Concert Hall.

“How could you not?” Ronnie Newmyer said in an interview. “Simon, with Garfunkel, and as a solo performer and composer, has probably had more hits than anybody alive and has influenced more musicians than you can count. Think about it, they had their first hit in high school.”

As a duo, beginning in 1965, Simon (Paul) and Garfunkle (Art), the short one and the afro-blonde one, came up with songs that defined a generation of young people from the early 1960s on, kids that weren’t necessarily born rock and rollers, kids as sensitive, slightly alienated outsiders who could appreciate a song that begins with “Hello, darkness my old friend” (“The Sound of Silence”). The guys weren’t jocks but were fans, they weren’t popular but they were cool and smart and they carried certain angst around with them with a sweet flair. Some of them wore leather jackets instead of letter jackets.

“That was the first stage, all those wonderful songs and harmonies, “The Boxer,” “Scarborough Fair,” “Mrs. Robinson.” “They were poems, quiet anthems,” Newmyer said. “And they were hugely popular.”

“What we were trying to do here is not just make it Simon and Garfunkel, but also Paul Simon, who’s still going strong,” Newmyer said. “I’d say the program is split half and half between S&G and Simon solo. And let me tell you it was tough picking the songs, hard to make the cuts and then to match them with performers.”

So for S&G purists and Simon fans, be prepared to have your feelings hurt. There are some notable absences, including “My Little Town,” the touchstone song Simon and Garfunkel recorded after they broke up, “I am a Rock….I am an Island,” and “Slip Sliding Away.”

“That was hard,” Newmyer, who has his own band called “Soul Cracker,” said. “But hell, you could make a tribute concert out of the “Bridge over Troubled Water” album alone, that’s how good they were and are.”
It would be a mistake to think of these concerts as if they were one of those public television or Time Life golden oldies occasions, although no questions, old songs return like transformed angels.

The most revolutionary and exciting aspect of these concert is the mash of a very familiar song-list—for the most part—with performances drawn from a rich array of Washington performers, some nationally known, others young and new and gifted, some of them graduates of Strathmore’s artist in residence programs, like the youthful rock/pop dynamo Margot MacDonald, who will be on hand again this year.

“That’s the really rich part of this, because the performances transform the songs, make them seem fresh and contemporary,” Newmyer said. “Plus, I think it’s a true showcase of Washington area performers who play everywhere in local venues like the Birchmere or the 9:30 Club. This isn’t a sing along, it’s about as an exciting a concert as you can imagine.”

“We’ve got Julia Nixon, who is such a gifted singer and who’ll be doing ‘Bridge over Troubled Water,’” he said. “There’s this new, young singer, Victoria Vox, who’ll sing ‘Mother and Child Reunion.’”

“We’ll have a lot of younger performers this year, which should be interesting,” he added.
Other performers on tap include Deanna Bogart, Eric Brace, Chopteeth, Lea, Deep River, Ellen Cherry, The Sweater Set, Cal Everett, Deeme Katson, Ed O’Connell, David Kitchen, Ted Garber, Esther Haynes, Ronnie Newmyer and Owen Danoff, among others.

Just goes to show you, all pop/rock music history is a circle. Danoff is the son of Bill Danoff, one of the founders of Starland Vocal Band, which produced the 1980s hit “Afternoon Delight.” Danoff and co-Starland member Jon Carroll, a regular tribute participant, performed at the Joni Mitchell tribute two years ago.
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Gary Tischler • July 26, 2011

At the outset, it needs to be said that I am not an expert or aficionado. I can’t even read music. But I think I can listen to it.

We’re talking about classical music here, of course—sonatas and symphonies Brahms, Beethoven and Bell. In particular, we’re talking about classical violinist Joshua Bell. Barring older legends like Itzhak Perlman, he may be the finest violinist of his generation. More than one critic or fan has called him a rock star of classical music, because they can’t think of anything else to say.

When it comes to the violin, this is a little bit of a journey for me. In Germany, where I was a boy, the violin is a revered instrument, and the people who make them and play them are revered. But it was the opening concert of the Music Center at Strathmore, with master Perlman himself, which got me on the path to the music of violinists.

Strathmore, with its marvelous acoustics, is a wonderful place to experience music, and it was the perfect place to hear Perlman. Being there felt like being in a cathedral.

I don’t remember what he played, but I do remember wanting to hear much more. And not just Perlman, but those who followed—the younger violinists you hear about, whose pictures you find in the season programs of our cultural institutions: Sophie-Mutter, Hahn, Joshua Bell.

So here we are again: anticipating Bell’s performance at the Music Center at Strathmore (January 26) with Sam Haywood on piano, playing Brahms, Schubert and Grieg—works Bell describes as: “A challenge, a test.”

On the phone in a conference call interview with Bell, reporter and writers from all over the country, some obviously more knowledgeable than others, are taking turns asking questions.

Bell gives a friendly and comfortable vibe as he patiently addresses each question, many of which he’s no doubt heard numerous times before. He is 43 now, and in pictures and videos looks unforgivably boyish and handsome, unlike the masters of old. His looks are an attraction, but they would be of no help if he were all thumbs. He’s thoughtful, with a quiet sense of humor. He’s been a super nova of a violinist and performer for a few decades now, and he obviously appreciates the rewards of the hard work, the touring, the recordings, the appearances and the fame. He’s not an Access Hollywood kind of guy, but like some of his contemporaries in the field—Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Hillary Hahn— he occupies the territory of musical prodigy and ambassador, crossing the line where classical music creates full concert halls and major commercial success.

And yet, he’s a small-town guy from Indiana, a self-described “cultural Jew,” a Midwestern kid fulfilling a musical destiny once dominated by Europeans, and now being pushed by young and talented Asian prodigies. He seems to have given considerable thought to what and who he is, where the music is going and his future in it.

“I’m at an age where you have to think about things like that,” he said. “You know the arena of teaching, of writing and composing, of spreading out and doing other things, of pushing the envelope. Classical music is a world where you leave a mark, not just in recording and performing. And I like to explore other kinds of music—bluegrass and jazz—and mix things and explore the boundaries, and where you can break that down.”

In his last few recordings—The Romantic Violin, Voice of the Violin, and his last CD, the deceptively titled At Home With Friends—you can see that process working.

The first of the trio is music that sweeps you away, that requires strength and delicacy. When you listen to it, it’s like listening to strands of beautiful hair transformed into strings and bow, notably in works by the violin legend Fritz Kreisler.

Voice of the Violin, which I listen to on mornings when I’ve slept fitfully, is a work that’s already taking a step ahead; they are musical arrangements of works meant to be sung. In his notes, Bell says, “it was a wonderful opportunity to immerse myself in the rich treasury of music written for the voice.” The most recognizable work is Ave Maria, a work so soothing that it feels like cool water on a feverish brow.

At Home With Friends is an entirely different matter.

Some home. Some friends. In the questioning interviews, Bell talks a lot about what he calls his home, a nice little pad in Manhattan, a penthouse which occupies the top two floors of what was once a manufacturing plant in the Flatiron District. Home includes a performance hall where, on a video for the album, young men and women can be seen applauding as their host plays.

“I’ve always wanted something like that, a place where you can get together with your friends, play with them and for them—and a kind of salon for music.” This turned into getting together with people like rock-pop star Sting singing Come Again; trumpeter Chris Botti, who has known Bell since high school days, doing “I Loves You Porgy” with Bell; Kristen Chenoweth singing My Funny Valentine, which may rank as one of the best versions ever; Josh Groban singing Cinema Paradiso.

“It’s also a way of stretching the boundaries, working with people that are somewhat removed from traditional classical music,” he added.

With classical musicians, long, long hours of practice makes perfect. “But it’s not just about playing perfectly,” Bell said. “You need—I need—to understand a piece of music before I’ll play it. I need to be sure I know it to do it justice.”

Obviously, Bell is hugely popular. And he’s not easily daunted. Several years ago, he played for about an hour at the L’Enfant Plaza metro station during rush hour, to see if anybody would actually listen to the music of a world class musician. It was all grist for a prize-winning Washington Post article, but it was also something of an education.

“Mostly, people just walked by,” he said. “They were going to work, in a hurry, and didn’t pay attention. Some people did. They stopped and listened. I think I made around thirty dollars. It could humble you, but it was in the nature of an experiment. Yes, it was a very expensive violin I was playing [he uses a 1731 Stradivarius—meaning that it was made in 1731]. I didn’t pretend to be anybody but myself. I wasn’t a homeless man. I think it shows how busy our lives are.”

Even Bell playing Brahms proved not to be a distraction for most of the people.

Watching Bell on video in close-up is telling. No question, there is an other worldly talent on display when you listen to him. But he’s also an engaging, fully engaged, charismatic, physical player; the body contorts, he becomes a force in black—his usual dress code on stage—often working up a sweat, the hair flying, the eyes intense.

Listen to him talk to us reporter folks though, and you think you hear a little bit of that boy prodigy who’s been to all the places that are like concert castles, traveled the world, reads and sees himself named one of the most beautiful people by People Magazines, lives high up in Manhattan, etc. I don’t mean to suggest he’s somehow still starry-eyed. Rather, he respects where he is, wonders about where he’s going and always plays with beauty and passion.

Joshua Bell will be performing at the Strathmore on Wednesday, February 2nd, at 8pm. For information, [Click here](http://www.strathmore.org/offline.asp)

Gary Tischler •

Mary Zimmerman will tell you rather emphatically that she does not write children’s plays.

I wouldn’t argue with her about it. Technically, she’s right. Her plays are plays for adults, who think like adults. The emotions they engender are adult emotions: feelings akin to intellectual sadness, near heartbreak, confronting the new by way of the old.

Zimmerman has managed, over a couple of decades of directing and writing, to create a whole new kind of play, as yet difficult to fit into a descriptive category. And yet you come back to it: children, fairytales, storytelling, tales told around a campfire, the first writings of man. It’s that kind of thing, but made complicated, and made deep. She nonetheless uses the tools and imagination associated with children’s theater, both in terms of theater created FOR children, and sometimes the kind that children create themselves in their backyard under a tent: toys, clotheslines, dolls and sticks and pebbles, maybe with some singing and barking dogs thrown in.

I think she said it elsewhere herself, quoting Willa Cather: “I will never be the artist I was as a child.”
Zimmerman may just be that kind of artist—not childish or childlike, but basic, using the stuff that surrounds her, the every day things. And coating everything with magic.

Lately, we’ve gotten a burst of Zimmerman’s gifts on display, in two very different sorts of plays that nevertheless bear her directorial and authorial mark; we have seen an electric re-staging of Leonard Bernstein’s and Voltaire’s “Candide” at the Shakespeare Theater Company, which just completed a successful run. And now we can go see a re-do of Zimmerman’s “Arabian Nights,” enjoying a buzz-filled run at Arena Stage.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen Zimmerman around here. She directed a memorable, haunting version of “Pericles” at the Shakespeare Theater Company along with her own creation, a take on the story of Jason and the Argonauts, called simply “The Argonautica.”

There is obviously some common thread running through these and other productions that Zimmerman has done with her company, the Looking Glass Theater, and the Goodman Theater in Chicago.

“I’ve always liked fairytales,” she said in a telephone interview. “I try hard not to lose that sense of wonder, that kind of imagination, as a way of looking at material. I like big, basic, iconic stories and themes. All of that. That’s one reason I like directing opera, working in that world. It’s so over the top, so emotional.”
Zimmerman has done several stints at the Metropolitan Opera, with mixed results from the critical world. “I loved doing it and still do,” she says nonetheless. “I don’t worry too much about what’s written about me or my work.”

“Candide” and “Arabian Nights” are two very different kettles of tea when it comes to theater, and she’s made both her own. “Candide” was first produced in the 1950s on Broadway, unsuccessfully, with a mixed bag of authors stirring the book, including renowned poet Lillian Hellman and Stephen Sondheim. But the wonderful music kept things alive for later revivals, and it remains the soulful heart of the show.

With Zimmerman directing, the project also returned to its original source: the great Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire’s original thin fable of a novel, in which an innocent and sheltered naïf of a young lad (Candide) is thrown out into the cruel world of competing kingdoms, religions and general tumult of the 18th-century world, with his soul-mate Cunegonde.

So much happens to them—all the representative evils of the day, like pillage, war, rape, prison, the loss and gain and loss of fortune—it would turn most normal people into cynics. But Candide perseveres in the search for his love, whom he finds and loses again all over the world, from wars in France to El Dorado and back again.

“It’s a big story,” she said. “We went back to the roots, so to speak. And I have to say, I was so fortunate in casting the leads, Geoff Packard and Lauren Molina. Geoff was…heck, he is a little like a Candide. So I think they made the production very affecting for audiences.”

So did Zimmerman’s storytelling, as she used little wooden boats, stuffed red sheep, and toys and dolls and puppets as a way of rolling around the world. It’s the kind of thing that sometimes threatens to look silly, especially to jaded eyes used to movie reality. But with Zimmerman at the helm, it never does.

“Arabian Nights” is something else again, a series of stories writ large. “We, did this the first time on the eve of the Gulf War,” she said. “Even then, it echoed what was going on in the world, and nothing that’s happened since has changed that. It’s almost like coming full circle.”

The Arabian Nights are the tales told by a young woman named Scheherazade, who’s trying to save herself from the attentions of a king, so embittered by a previously unfaithful wife that he’s wed, bedded and killed a virgin every night for a year already. Scheherazade tells the king stories, hundreds of them, to keep his knife at bay.

“That’s the first thing you do with this, is choose the stories,” she said. “They are stories of love, betrayal, disguises, revenge, and they’re tall tales, funny stories, and stories of redemption.”

While the enterprise is astonishingly beautiful, and creates a buzz of argument as well as appreciation, it manages to achieve something else, the very thing that fairy tales do. It creates a quality of universal recognition.

In that sense, it connects to the present in how we move through the world. “It’s a precondition of war that we view other people as fundamentally different from ourselves,” Zimmerman says. “It’s a pre-condition of literature that we view other people as fundamentally the same as ourselves.”

The thousand tales are part of the lore of the golden age of Baghdad, which is of course the city nearly destroyed in the aftermath of the US invasion of 2003. The wind carries the news in this play; we are not apart from the present. Or the past. All the stories here, about lovers who lose each other, about people who save and forgive each other, about the roar of jokes and situations, all recreate the glorious past of the legendary ruler Harun al Rashid. But they are also stories about ourselves.

“I hope that’s what happens,” Zimmerman says. “I hope those acts of recognition occur.”

Not to dwell on it, but there is a tale about a prominent citizen who at last decides to marry and is standing with his bride at the altar, when he is struck by a paroxysm of gas convulsions. What ensues is an extended, agonizing fart joke, every bit as rude as “Blazing Saddles”, but also touching, finished off by a classic vaudevillian punch line. It’s pretty simple, old men and young men, women and children all laugh at fart jokes. It’s our universal kismet, so to speak.

There are sweeter and equally universal moments in this play. With Zimmerman, we’re always on a wooden toy boat, going back and forth in time, on perilous journeys, on an adventure that makes us richer for the trip.

“Arabian Nights” runs at Arena Stage’s Fichandler in the Mead Center for American Theater through February 20. [gallery ids="99597,105022" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith has accomplished quite a bold and remarkable thing here, picking and staging the great, groundbreaking and revolutionary American musical “Oklahoma!” to inaugurate its first season at the Mead Center for American Theater in the Fichandler Stage.

The choice of “Oklahoma!” in the Fichandler is loaded with historical implications, and she’s managed to make something out of everyone of them. Here is “Oklahoma,” the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which, when it made its wartime America 1940s debut, not only signaled a spectacular career for its creators, but changed American musicals forever.

Here is Smith’s production, which preserves every word, lyric, song and piece of music, probably two-step from the original, and with intelligent use of non-traditional casting and an intimacy of space and place, makes it seem brand new, fresh, authentic and of our time. This is a production that honors this musical’s historic place in theater history while at the same time offering memories of the future.

Here is the rarely revived “Oklahoma!” staged in the Fichandler, the theater-in-the-round. Resurrected almost exactly in its original form, but surrounded by a space that makes it part of a spectacular, glass/wood/pillar encased three-theater, education and community center enterprise, as opposed to being its centerpiece. It is the historic Arena Stage intact, but also transformed in the here-and-now and the future, a more intimate theater space which seems both smaller and more vivid. But, as the fella said, the play’s the thing.

So what about this “Oklahoma!?”

Well, as the fella sings, you’re doing fine, Oklahoma, and more than okay. Likely, there are few people around today who actually saw the original production, although it’s a fair bet that there any number of people who may think they know a thing or two because of the Gordon MacRae/Shirley Jones movie, because of the sheer ingratiating quality of the music and songs which are out there in the muzak ozone.

It’s nice to come to something with no junk in your head about it. I’d never seen it and now I have, and I still feel buzzed about it. This production is such a smart operation, such an emotional bottom-well, such a high-energy all-get-out kind of thing that you’d think the whole building would levitate and turn into an active version of the spaceship it resembles.

What you’ve got, peering at close range, is Oklahoma, the territory about to become a state circa the turn of the previous century. There are cowboys, cattlemen, squatters, and a bunch of people that could resemble Adams Morgan if it were relocated into the flat, hard-won dirt and land of windy Oklahoma. There’s Curly, the cowboy smitten with the high-spirited, hard-to-get Laurey, who scrapes a living on the land she and Aunt Eller (the earthy F. Faye Butler) work along with the sinister hired hand Judd. There’s the kissable Addo Annie, torn between a cowboy and a peddler, and going back and forth between them like a ping-pong ball. And there’s Oklahoma itself, perched to become a state, awash in dry land and oil. Change is coming like a runaway train or the next election.

Here’s what else happens: the moment Curly, in the person of Nicholas Rodriguez, announces himself and the show with a burst of musical optimism in the song “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” you’re pretty much a goner. This is theater in its most transporting, transforming guise. “Oklahoma!” swept away decades of song-strong, chorus-girl rich whimsy and pratfalls caused by gin musicals which had nothing to do with life as it was lived—not to diss Cole Porter, Gershwin and a host of other great composers and lyricists.

“Oklahoma!” is dark, especially when the sweaty, dangerous Judd is on stage, casting a murky spell of unrequited, strong desires that resembles those of modern-day stalkers and violent predators. Smith further deepens the musical and dishes on outsider themes by casting: Rodriguez as Curly is Hispanic, Butler and Eleasha Gamble (Laurey) are African American and Ali Hakim is clearly a peddler of Middle Easter origin as played here with long-suffering humor by Nehal Joshi. You might add in that the women in this story are strong enough and stronger and of a mind to do what they want, emotionally or sexually.

The dancing—those cowboys in high-booted and high-stepping array, the dream ballet—is of a part with the story and the tale they’re telling, which is nothing less than an epic of change and growth, writ both large and intimately. Those songs don’t just lay there waiting to be a YouTube offering or a the next big billboard hit. They weave into our imaginations and stories, and tell the story on stage, from the spritely “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” to the woeful “Poor Judd is Dead,” to “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No,” the anthem-like tale of Addo Annie, played with remarkable vivaciousness by the hugely gifted and appealing June Schreiner (a junior at Madeira School, no less).

This production, so reflecting of our lives and its surroundings, is dead solid perfect entertainment, where you leave the theater like a gourmet leaving a meal that proved to be just so. I guarantee you that days later you will hum a melody, sing a fragment, remember Judd’s fierce face, Curley’s rangy voice, the bullet-sound of boots on the ground in the service of music and be glad, really glad for having been there.
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