Performance

Gary Tischler • July 26, 2011

Call me sentimental, call me plebian, call me irresponsible, call me a sucker for flying nannies, if not nuns.

I am not in the least embarrassed to admit that I really, really enjoyed myself at a recent performance of “Mary Poppins,” the Cameron Mackintosh Disney musical now ensconced at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House through August 22. And at my age — why, any self-respecting 40-year-old theater critic would drum me out of the ranks. Luckily, I’m older than that, like 10 going on … well, you know.

For many critics, it’s easy to flaunt the smug gene when merely confronted with the name Disney, let alone by a musical that insists that “just a spoonful of sugar will make the medicine go down,” when considerably less than a spoonful makes them gag.

For myself, I admit to a weakness for big and small musicals if they’re affecting, if you’re not walking out humming the scenery, and if they include some variations of a big tap dance number. These are usually enough to overcome soft-pedaled life-affirming messages, the presence of cute children and unnecessary special stage effects designed to wow the eyes, if not the heart.

In short, I loved Gavin Lee as the good-hearted high-energy chimney sweep and man of many parts Bert, as nimble and more appealing than Dick Van Dyke. Bert leads the sweeps, Mary and assorted others in a rousing “A Step in Time,” which is a tap dance by any other name, and made me very happy indeed. Always does.

In short, Mary Poppins, while ably and sternly performed with prim, brisk energy and lovely voice by Carolyn Sheen, is not really the star of the show. Instead, they are Bert, the Banks children, the Bird lady, the whole big show. Mary, in red suit, tiny hat and open umbrella, is a familiar figure standing still, singing, dancing or flying, but it’s the show itself, with all of its components, that engages the audience, especially children. This is a family-friendly show if there ever was one, and it delivers in more ways than one.

With all spectacle of rooftop dancing, flying acts, gypsies, statues that come to life and a truly terrifying anti-Mary nanny, the intimacy of the show is bound to appeal to the whole family, because it’s about a family and families, about what happens when fathers spend little or no time with their children, all wrapped up in work, when wives have their dreams thwarted, when children are spoiled rotten.

You need a little and a lot of magic.

“Mary Poppins” has plenty of magic, but its Victorian shoes are also firmly planted on the ground so that the characters are recognizable to even small children. For adults, one of the terrific rewards of this show is to watch children reacting to it. I saw a grandfather and his three grandchildren sort of submerge into the proceedings, all four at one point trying to grab projected stars.

Corny? Sure enough. But a good kind of corny. This being a Mackintosh-Disney enterprise, “Mary Poppins” delivers the entertainment goods in a big and lavish way, and it delivers its not-so-subtle messages about parents and children without leaving you with a hit-with-a-frying-pan headache. Take the kids, the wife, the husband, the grandparents, the nanny (legal and registered, of course), and the dog, if they let you. It’s super-califra— sorry, not in spell check. Finish it yourself.

“Mary Poppins” runs through Aug. 22.

Read Gary’s interview with Tour Director Anthony Lyn.

Gary Tischler • June 29, 2011

Even at 40, Ethan McSweeny looks too young to have done everything he’s done, to be, well, Ethan McSweeny.
He’s casually dressed, has a thin beard which still can’t prevent him from looking boyish, looks nonchalantly handsome, and is finishing up some salad after winding down a rehearsal for his production of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Washington Shakespeare Company in the Harman Center, which will open officially three days later.
He’s just said good bye to his parents, Dorothy McSweeny – the emeritus chair of the Washington D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities – and Bill McSweeny – a retired oil man, Kennedy Center trustee and journalist – along with his 7-year-old nephew, who sat in on the rehearsal. Both are prominent figures in the Washington cultural scene.
McSweeny is no longer quite a boy wonder, or wunderkind, as he was referred to back in his 20’s when he not only took a new play called “Never the Sinner” at Signature Theater to a successful Off Broadway run, but directed an all-star cast of theater pros in “The Best Man” on Broadway, making him the first director under 30 to direct a play on Broadway.
“I’m sure that rankled some people,” McSweeny admits. He doesn’t lack for confidence, and his background, which he has described as privileged, did not hurt, but there’s also no question that he’s earned his considerable accomplishments by way of a major talent, a restless imagination, a tireless gift and love for the work.
This year, he’s been especially busy with back-to-back directions of “A Time to Kill,” a world premiere stage play which just ended its run at Arena Stage, and “The Merchant of Venice.”
“You didn’t have to travel much,” he quips. “There was actually an overlap where we were doing final rehearsals for “Kill” and first preparation for “Merchant.”
He’s right at home here, of course, because although he lives in Brooklyn now, he’s a D.C. hometown boy.
“We lived across the street from the Kennedy Center,” McSweeny says. “When I was little, they [my parents] took me to see the opera ‘Boris Gudonov.’ I didn’t understand what was going on, but I was impressed, enchanted, and I think in a way that was it for me.”
He went to school at St. Albans or as he says, “survived it,” but found his true vocation early, becoming the first alumnus of Columbia’s undergraduate theatre department. He came home in 1993 to train under the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Michael Kahn, becoming his unofficial right-hand-man. He was all of 22. “Michael was a mentor, and I could not think of someone who affected me more,” McSweeny says.
Everywhere he goes – the celebrated Guthrie Theater, Broadway, the Chautauqua Theatre in New York State where he served as co-director (with Vivienne Benesch) – his style, his interests and his ideas are eclectic. You never quite know what you’re likely to get. He can go from “Romeo and Juliet” to Shaw to new, boundary-breaking plays.
While he’s built a huge reputation and accumulated over 60 directing credits, he’s obviously happy to be here where it all began and continues unabated. He did a clean, abundantly joyous and passionate production of “Ion” at the Shakespeare Theatre, a raw version of “The Persians” which echoed like a bell in the midst of the Iraq war, and production of Shaw’s “Major Barbara” that was a hallmark of clarity and singular acting achievements.
And now, “The Merchant of Venice,” a play that draws directors (and actors) like trembling moths to a flame. Many get burned and few do it perfectly. Because there’s no standard, the play is not only confounding, but changes for each audience and generation.
“It’s about money,” I suggest. “Of course it’s about money,” he says. “It’s ALL about money. It’s about what’s valuable to people, everything has a value tag here.”
So naturally, McSweeny set the play in 20th century America – specifically the Lower East Side of New York during the 1920s – teeming with immigrants who are trying to get a slice of the American dream. “To me the period and the setting resonate, the crash lies right ahead in time, but nobody sees it coming,” McSweeny says.
“It’s funny, it’s the first Shakespeare play I’ve done here, after all this time,” he says. And the most difficult.
McSweeney’s wide intellectual range is reflected in his family—his sister Terrell McSweeny is Vice President Joe Biden’s domestic policy adviser, for instance—where politics, culture, business and even sports are never mutually exclusive or trivial matters.
There might even be a critic lurking in the family – his 7-year-old nephew was asked how he liked what he saw in the theater. He gave it some thought.
“It’s not ‘Frog and Toad,’” he finally said.
It’s not. But think what Ethan McSweeny might do with “Frog and Toad.”

Georgetowner • June 2, 2011

Follies”, Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking musical, is one of those great white whales that lurk in the American musical lists waiting for an Ahab to go after it.

Part legend, part work of genius of a particular and singular kind, “Follies” is an almost irresistible challenge for directors, producers and Broadway stars of an equally singular kind, the latter still eager to test their voices, acting chops and imaginations. Let’s not even get into set and costume designers.

It’s been revived and done-over a few times, ever since its critically mixed and financially less-than-overpowering debut produced by Harold Prince in 1971. This production featured genuine movie and Broadway stars like Dorothy McGuire, Alexis Smith, Gene Nelson, a book by the best-selling screenwriter and novelist James Goldman, and music and lyrics by the fully-blown and fully-grown, pre-“Sweeney Todd” and “Assassins” master and genius Stephen Sondheim himself.

I’ve had both the blessing and perhaps misfortune not to have seen it, one of those quirky things like never seeing “Measure for Measure”. For me, there were the legends, old reviews, rumors, and knowing one theater buff who had seen it dozens of times. “None of them perfect,” he somewhat ruefully told me.

There may be a reason for that. As you can surmise from the current, spectacular, $7 million production staged from the ground-up by the Kennedy Center under Michael Kaiser, it’s obvious that the play and production itself isn’t what you’d call perfect, not even close.

But, it is ambitious, one of a kind, original (after 40 years no less), and it takes turns knocking your eyes and socks off while clenching your heart in a tight grip. When it’s not doing that, Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics are ravishing, especially when performed by the likes of Bernadette Peters and Jan Maxwell in the two female lead roles. Somehow, “Follies” manages to bring up thoughts of Ziegfeld, Fellini, The Not So Young and the Restless, opera, MGM musicals if MGM musicals could bite all at once. As play (a status it aspires to by way of the script and content); “Follies” is a mess. Even so, you can’t take your eyes off it, tune it out, or ever forget it.

It’s very much a mixed bag, but there a lot of goodies in that bag, and it bristles with personality and originality.

For one thing, it has an ungainly structure: in the 1970s, veterans of a long-ago music revue resembling the Ziegfeld Follies of the 1930s, gather together in a sort of show biz high school reunion on the occasion of the destruction of the theater where they worked, sang, danced and fell in and out of love. That’s the first act set up, in which we meet the quartet of lovers, married couples and apparently ex-lovers who are the principal dramatic or more accurately melodramatic focus here. There’s Sally Durant Plummer (Peters), married to the high-energy salesman Buddy (Danny Burstein) and there’s Phyllis Rogers Stone (Maxwell), married to the successful, lazily charismatic Benjamin.

On hand are other luminaries including the vampish Carlotta, now a movie and television star of some renown, Hattie Walker, performed with aplomb by Linda Lavin, Stella Deems, and Dimitri Weismann, the maestro of the troupe (local veteran David Sabin).

Right away, we know there’s trouble in the Stone and Plummer marriages: Sally still loves Ben, and Ben doesn’t discourage her. Buddy still loves Sally in spite of himself and Phyllis, frustrated, jaded but still full of leggy, sultry glamour, has given up on her husband.

This, folks, is what we used to call soap opera. The rest, on the other hand, is just plain old razzle dazzle, provided by the designers, Sondheim, and the performers. The subject is lost dreams, but the show IS a dream, especially in the second-act’s “Loveland” segment which is like stepping into a Fellini movie where the color on stage is an overpowering red, the numbers, Sondheim at the top of his game, are overpowering, and the feel is like a particular high class carnival.

The show’s fame rests in the songs, in the performers who’ve passed through, in the sheer audaciousness of the concept. This particular production focuses strongly on the relationships, I supposed as it should, without neglecting the brassy glamour. But I suspect it neglects to focus on something fundamental which was the superheated incubator of musical theater where music and looks create a kind of permanent unreality. Sure, past and present intertwine here with the use of younger performers playing the younger selves of the principals, a nice touch that is bittersweet.

That being said, in today’s vernacular, it’s a magnetic show ably kept moving by Director Eric Schaeffer, the Signature Theater impresario who could probably do Sondheim in his sleep, but was obviously wide awake for this one.

Here are some things you don’t forget: Bernadette Peters in full voice, heart and diva singing “Losing My Mind”, one of a series of “Follies” sung by the principals. You won’t forget Maxwell at all as Phyllis, her yearnings, her bitterness—listen to the whip lash belts in “Could I Leave You?”— her fantastic tall, elegant looks. Lavin knocks “Broadway Baby”—a secondary theme here—out of the park, and Terri White does the same for “Who’s That Woman”. Janis Paige, playing the incandescent and forever fabulous Carlotta, does something wicked to the “I’m Still Here” number, often sung defiantly. She makes it a come-on by a woman used to being looked at on that screen, on that stage, when the lights go up or off.

“Follies” is a kind of high, without blacking-out, because you can’t forget what you’ve seen.

“Follies” runs through June 19 at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater

Gary Tischler •

The Shakespeare Theatre Company began planning for what’s now the ongoing Leadership Repertory of “Richard II” and “Henry V” nearly a year and a half ago. We recently talked with Artistic Director Michael Kahn, who directed “Richard II,” about the plays and the process.

“We planned to do this for some time and were in the early stages during the presidential election,” Kahn, who is tackling “Richard II” for the second time here, said. “We wanted to look at leadership, what makes a good king and leader, how does he behave in a crisis?

“Richard doesn’t know how to be a king until he’s lost his crown, Henry has to overcome the dissolute reputation of his youth to lead men into battle. And more important, it’s about the humanity of leaders, and that issue is paramount in both plays.”

Kahn directed “Richard II” with Richard Thomas a number of years ago at Lansburgh.
“What makes this different?” he said. “Well, I’m a bit older, and you learn more, I’ve learned more about myself and Richard both, I hope.”

Gary Tischler •

-The Christmas holidays are upon us and its not even Thanksgiving yet. Everywhere you look — in malls, in television ads, in the streets and storefront windows — ‘tis the season.

That’s especially true for the performing arts, where seasonal favorites of all sorts are being prepared, sugar plum fairies being outfitted, little boys everywhere practicing how to say “God bless us, every one,” venues large and small brightening up their stages and halls with traditional holiday fare searching for a new and all-inclusive way to celebrate the season for their patrons.

Christmas is about pleasing the most people, it’s about sharing in the spirit of the season, and so old stories are resurrected in old and new ways. Music as familiar as a hometown is heard again, the atmosphere and environment become rich and thick with iconic elements, from Scrooge’s nightshirt and the ghosts that haunt him to stars to wrapped packages under a tree to the full-lunged glories of symphonic music and the quieter joys of quieter carols.

We’re offering a sampler of what’s in store in the way of Christmas in the performing arts around the Washington area, and we’ll take a close look at how two institutions are approaching something old and something new, one making a traditional holiday offering new again as an institution, the other attempting to create a new tradition.

An Old Story and a New Scrooge

There is probably no story that says Christmas more loudly, more intensely and with more familiarity than Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Scrooge, Marley, Tiny Tim, the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future have become such a staple of American film, television, and theater that it’s hard to imagine Christmas without it.

Right now, productions are being prepared all over the country and a new digitally created movie starring a facsimile Jim Carrey as Scrooge has already hit theaters.

Meanwhile, the folks at Ford’s Theatre are busy finishing rehearsals for its own production. With some interruptions, “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theatre is as much a Washington seasonal tradition as the lighting of the National Christmas Tree. As a result, the show has been seen by critics as something of a sentimental chestnut. Audiences, tourists and locals alike flock to it.

This year, it’s a brand new show. “We’ve added lots of music to the show, Christmas music and carols,” new director Michael Baron said. “That’s going to be a crucial element of the show. They say Dickens practically invented Christmas, so we added a true magical, seasonal element with the music. There’s a real flavor and sense of period and place to.”

“The odd thing,” Baron, who directed Signature Theatre’s cabaret series, said, “is that in England they don’t do the show. They do pantomimes and such.”

This production has something else that’s bound to make it fresh. That’s the presence of Edward Gero, one of Washington’s most honored, down-to-earth, natural actors taking on the part of Scrooge. Gero, who’s played everyone from Nixon to Bolingbroke to haunted, drunken contemporary Irishmen, knows that there’s not just the ghost of Christmas past here, but the ghosts of Scrooges past too.

“Oh God yes,” he said. “That dark, really scary Alistair Sims, George C. Scott, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, and, yeah, Mr. Magoo. That’s a long line, not to mention the people who’ve done it here. It’s a challenge, but you know, performing here at the Ford’s Theatre has always been on my bucket list, and I suppose, yeah, doing Scrooge.”

It’s hard to imagine Gero as Scrooge, or as anyone. He is the least chameleonlike of actors, a regular guy, blunt, funny, of Italian heritage, almost a working man’s actor. His wife is a district elementary school teacher, and while he teaches at George Mason University and does narrations and voice overs and some television, he is the essential great community actor who’s performed with almost all of the theaters in Washington.

“It’s a ghost story, it’s the Christmas story,” he said.”I’m looking forward to being Scrooge, he’s a haunted man long before the Marley and the ghosts come, haunted by his childhood, haunted by the past.”

“A Christmas Carol” begins Nov. 23.

Out of the darkness, into the light

If Scrooge rewards and reassures audiences with traditional material made rich again, “Take Joy!” the big Christmas show at the Music Center at Strathmore, takes a radical new approach to seasonal entertainment.

“It’s different, it’s spectacular, we’ve tried to present something that will be special to people who are living regular lives today, right here and now,” Eliot Pfanstiel, president and CEO of Strathmore and executive producer for “Take Joy!” said. “It begins almost as soon as you walk toward the center, over the bridge, with the sights and sounds of all sorts of music, carolers, people dressed for the season.”

“It’s the solstice, the darkest night of the year,” Pfanstiel said. “It’s a journey from the darkness into the light, a journey taken by a group of people, family and a shepherd in search of a pageant.”

At play is the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Emily Dickinson, traditional Christmas music, gospel music, hip-hop, classical, folk and Celtic. “Call it a new kind of holiday show, wholly original, transforming and transporting. It’s not any one thing, just as the holidays don’t mean one thing for everybody. It’s about a community gathering together on the darkest night of the year and coming out into the light at evenings end.”

Pfanstiehl, sometimes the perfect example of CEO as inventive boy, nurtured this project with Director Jerry Whiddon, Composer Roger Ames and Producer Jeff Davis. They all worked together at Street 70 in the 1970s, a homegrown theater which evolved into the Roundhouse Theater.

“Take Joy!” which includes the wondrous F. Faye Butler, Jennifer Timberlake and Robert Quay in the cast, will be performed Dec. 18 and 19.

Nutcracker, Nutcracker, Nutcracker

If you look long enough during the holidays, you’re going to find a Nutcracker. Here’s three for everyone.

For the Washington Ballet, no less a personage than George Washington is featured in Septime Webre’s beautiful, lush imagining of “The Nutcracker,” with Washington in full uniform taking on the role of the heroic Nutcracker and King George III donning the role of the Rat King. It’s a Washington tradition that’s presented at the THEARC Dec.3-5 and at the Warner Theatre Dec. 10-27.

At the Kennedy Center, the Pennsylvania Ballet comes to town for seven performances of George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker” Nov. 24-29.

What’s special about this production is that it marks the D.C. premiere of the Balanchine version, which the Pennsylvania Ballet has performed since 1969. It’s a spectacular production with 192 costumes designed by Judanna Lynn and new sets by Peter Horne. The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra will accompany the production, which will feature the Norwood Middle School Chorus.

Meanwhile, the Puppet Company at Glen Echo Park will present its puppet version of “The Nutcracker” through the holiday season.

Christmas at the National Gallery

The National Gallery of Art will have caroling in the west building rotunda with families and visitors singing along with guest choirs and ensembles Dec. 12, 13, 19 and 20. In addition, there will be holiday concerts on Sundays in the west garden court of the west building Dec. 13, 20 and Jan. 3.

Music, music and other occasions

Washington Revels presents its annual Christmas Revels December 12 and 13 at Lisner Auditorium, featuring Renaissance Italy, Leonardo Da Vinci and celebrating Italian holiday traditions with music and dance.

The Dumbarton Concerts in Georgetown present one of the most alluring, beautiful holiday concerts in town with its annual “A Celtic Christmas” with the Linn Barnes and the Allison Hampton Celtic Consort

It’s at Georgetown’s historic Dumbarton Church December 5, 6 and Dec. 12 and 13.

The Folger Consort will be celebrating the Christmas holidays in the Elizabethan Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library Dec. 11-20 with “In Dulci Jubilo,” a concert of the festive Christmas music of 17th-century composer Michael Praetorius, considered to be the man responsible for creating the German Lutheran chorale tradition.

The 21st Annual Christmas Concert for Charity at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception will be performed on Dec. 4, featuring the Catholic University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra and other artists.

Discovery Theater will present its seasonal extravaganza “Seasons of Light,” celebrating the holiday traditions of Sankta Lucia, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and Ramadan in December.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conductor Marin Alsop brings a very different version of Handel’s “Messiah” with a re-envisioned gospel version “Too Hot to Handel: The Gospel Messiah” at the Music Center at Strathmore Dec. 13.

At the Kennedy Center, there’s the NSO Pops with “Happy Holidays,” conducted by Marvin Hamlisch Dec. 10-13 and the National Symphony Orchestra performing the “real” Handel’s Messiah Dec. 17-20.

The Waverly Consort brings its performance of “The Christmas Story” to the Terrace Theater with its eight singers and five instrumentalists Dec. 16.

There’s also free stuff: the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center will include performances by the U.S. Army Blues performing Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Nutcracker Suite” on Dec. 1, a “Merry TubaChristmas” on Dec. 13, holiday vaudeville on Dec. 26-27 and an all-star Christmas Day jazz jam.

Plus there’s the annual “Messiah Sing-Along” performed since 1972 in the Concert Hall.

Finally, there’s the annual holiday doings at Union Station, featuring all things Norwegian, including a tree-lighting ceremony of a 32-foot Christmas tree on Dec. 3 and Toys for Tots and a model train ceremony Nov. 24.

Georgetowner •

“Liberty Smith”
March 23 – May 21
Geoff Packard, who wowed audiences in the title role of “Candide,” takes on another title role with “Liberty Smith,” a new musical by Michael Weiner, Adam Abraham, Marc Madnick, and Eric R Cohen. It’s a tall-tale musical approach to the early founding days of American history with 23 musical numbers.