Performance

Gary Tischler • October 1, 2015

The performance arts world—specifically but not exclusively the world of classical music and opera—has been debating the issue of appealing to younger audiences while trying to hang on to its dwindling traditional core audience for quite some time now.

There’s always a critical clamor for new works and new ways of presenting traditional material, but the Washington National Opera, no slouch in that department this season, opened its 2015-2016 with a decidedly familiar and traditional piece, Bizet’s “Carmen,” which, along with such other popular stalwarts as “Madame Butterfly” and “La Boheme,” are often described as operas for people who hate operas.

But there may be a solution that lies in this grand, crowd-pleasing and emotionally affecting production: the notion that you can have your opera cake and eat it, too. The answer may lie in presenting a familiar work like “Carmen” and do it with an eye toward uniform excellence in such a way that the production elicits the opera’s considerable musical and dramatic virtues. If your production is full of almost uniformly outstanding musical qualities from the star turns to the chorus and orchestra, maybe there’s no need to take a radical approach to make things “revelant,” an approach that has sometimes soured a few productions elsewhere.

This production is remarkably brisk, moving swiftly through a three-hour, one-intermission evening in an engaging way. It’s intense and passionate when it needs to be. It creates a world that seems lived in both musically and emotionally by its characters. It makes you listen and respond.

For the long-standing opera audience, it delivers the expected pleasures and desired results. But here’s another notion: newer audiences, and there were quite a few younger folks in the audience who seemed to appreciate the proceedings, are seeing and listening to something with new eyes and ears, and to many of the them, this is surely a lot fresher material than an Elvis impersonator.

This, then, was a production that was engineered to please operas buffs and newcomers alike. It had a certain freshness to it that went with the rewards of a familiar plot and familiar music. Director E. Loren Meeker didn’t tweak the proceedings too much. It’s a production that has been staged in other places—but added a spicy as well as somewhat stately flamenco sheen to the night, and updated the setting to what could have been Peronist Argentina or Franco’s Spain, what with the notable military presence.

Evan Rogister conducted a score notable for being melodic and, well, operatic, with elan and flair, and it’s the music that tells the tale here. Although there were sequences that featured spoken dialogue the way Bizet had originally done back in its Paris Opera Comique debut in 1875, to considerable critical controversy, some critics even claiming that it had too many Wagnerian qualities.

That’s hardly true—what it has is a kind of French verve (it’s sung in French) on top of a decidedly Spanish look, and feel, and even sound, with some of the music arising from traditional Spanish folk music. It’s an opera that’s beautiful to listen to, almost all the way through. You could shut your eyes and still be moved and carried away by the drama and music.

This “Carmen” also had, on opening night, a fine “Carmen,” which is absolutely necessary, in the French Mezzo-Soprano Clementine Margaine, who’s had considerable acclaim with the role, and makes for a vivid Gypsy femme fatale. That’s probably where the expression came from: her strutting stances, her disdainful attitude and a stone-strong confidence in her allure, and the ultimate effect of it. This Carmen is big trouble for any man with a heart beat, especially in her “Habanera” and when she sings about her considerable charms and the inevitability of the disasters of love, and her passionate need for freedom.

The honorable naïf that is Don Jose, a sergeant in the billeted military unit in a small village never stands a chance, in spite of his engagement to a local village girl Micaela (sung sweetly by Janai Brueger), and his love for his sainted and dying mother. Soon enough, he’s under the sway of Carmen, who loves him passionately in her fickle fashion. Soon enough, he’s in deep with her brigand gypsy pals, and soon enough, she leaves him for the more sophisticated but equally smitten matador. On opening night, American tenor Bryan Hamel as Don Jose was the musical and dramatic essence of anguish, especially in the climatic scene when he struggles to win back a defiant Carmen even as he hears the cheers of the “Toreador Song” coming from the arena.

All of this is flavored in rich atmospherics, and the strong presence of young singers in the formations of villagers, soldiers and bandits, it makes for a rich, colorful evening, the kind of night were you can become immersed in a vividly created world of music and drama on stage.

(Morgaine shares the role of Carmen with another French Mezzo Soprano Geraldine Chauvet, as does Hamel share his Jose with American tenor Michael Brandenburg. “Carmen” will be performed at the Kennedy Center Opera House through October 2.)

Gary Tischler • September 22, 2015

For the true movie stars, the accolades never quite end.

That was surely the case for the incandescent Ingrid Bergman, who was, as the veteran Washington movie critic Arch Campbell noted, “one of the great female stars of all time,” and who was honored yet again with a stamp ceremony at the House of Sweden in Georgetown on Sept. 9.

The U.S. Postal Service, in conjunction with their Swedish counterparts Posten AB, commemorated Bergman in a special ceremony at House of Sweden, with a Hollywood Forever Stamp which features the luminous actress in a classic photograph by Laszlo Willinger from the 1940s, when Bergman achieved celebrity, fame and her first Oscar.

The ceremony included the unveiling of two Swedish stamps. Mostly, it was an occasion of celebration, which included a Hollywood-style dance party where glam-sparkling young attendees joined the party to the music of the Cotton Club, which swayed between contemporary and disco sounds, while couples, many of them who had not been born when Bergman passed away in 1982, danced the night away.

Mostly, it was Ingrid Bergman everywhere you looked—posters from her famous Hollywood movies like “Notorious,” “Gaslight,” and of course “Casablanca” filled the walls, along with posters for lesser known films from her early, youthful career in Sweden.

Guests could also get an idea of the size of Bergman’s career—and her long-lasting impact—from exhibits put together by the Swedish Film Institute. There were also clips from her films, including a tender scene from “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” the 1940s adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel about the Spanish Civil War, which starred a stoic, brave Gary Cooper and Bergman as the stunning Maria, complete with short blonde hair and eyes so blue they defined the color.

Bergman had a remarkable career, given that she was a young girl from Sweden, who had built a strong career there and came to Hollywood in 1939, after being discovered by David O. Selznick (“Gone With the Wind). She was brought to Hollywood to star in “Intermezo,” a redo of the Swedish original, which had Leslie Howard as her co-star. Selznick, according to his son, had some doubts—she couldn’t speak English, she was tall, she sounded too German and her beauty was unconventional but affecting.

She starred in a number of films small roles in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and “Gaslight,” for which she won an Oscar, as well as “Joan of Arc,” “Notorious”, “Saratoga Trunk” and “Casablanca,” a film that defied its period setting and became a classic, re-discovered by future generations.

Pia Lindstrom, a noted television news professional in New York and San Francisco, in an interview after the ceremonies, said that her mother “was the perfect screen actress. All the acting was in the face, the eyes, she was the personification of screen acting—her face contained all the emotions, she could be charming, flirtatious, serious, passionate. She acted for the camera, not the other actors. That was her audience, the light would hit her eyes, and she lit up the screen.

“I think my mother was most happy, when she was in front of a camera,” Lindstrom said. “I mean, here was a girl who had lost her mother early on, and her father in her teens, and acting was a way to retreat into make believe. And she had a tremendous gift for it.”

Everyone remembers “Casablanca,” where she was Bogart’s girl, the city was full of refugees, Nazis, suave Frenchman, forgers and thieves, and Bogart said “just play it, Sam” and “Here’s looking at you, kid” and she said, “We’ll always have Paris” and we still do.

She led a big and often turbulent life—leaving her husband and family to take up with the Italian director Roberto Rossellini while filming “Stromboli.” The affair caused a scandal in the United States—apparently she was condemned from the Senate floor. She married Rossellini, and divorced him after three children (one of them was Isabella Rossellini), and eventually returned to a forgiving Hollywood. She triumphed again with “Anastasia” and “Murder on the Orient Express,” winning an Oscar each for best actress and best supporting actress. She ended her career in triumph—directed by Ingmar Bergman in “Autumn Sonata” and portraying Golda Meir while battling cancer.

“I think she was forward looking in the sense that she did what she wanted,” Lindstrom said. “She was very strong willed. I don’t know if you call that feminism. I think it was her. After all, she spent most of her life being married, and she spent most of it working.”

She could haunt you for a long time, if you encountered her on film. She dominated her pet project “Joan of Arc”— a not particularly good film—with her portrait of Joan in which she triumphed and suffered passionately, combining a stunning spirituality with a hint of carnality. Not everyone can bring that off.

Now, she has her own stamp, as if she needed another way to remember. But the image seem classic, and when you see one, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to whisper “Here’s looking at you, kid.” [gallery ids="102308,126972,126966" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • September 17, 2015

Thinking about going to the theater in Baltimore? During a recent visit to Baltimore, we talked with the artistic directors of two companies that, in different ways, exemplify the idea that theaters are a critical part of the community.

A mainstay of the Mount Vernon neighborhood, Center Stage, which has been presenting plays in Baltimore since 1962, is only a few blocks from the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, now launching its second season at its impressively restored and converted digs near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

As they look to their respective 2015-2016 seasons, both Kwame Kwei-Armah, Center Stage’s electric, forward-looking artistic director, and Ian Gallanar, founding artistic director of Chesapeake Shakespeare, continue to expand notions about what a theater company can and should be in contemporary times.

Kwame Kwei-Armah took over the reins at Center Stage — a Baltimore institution — after the 20-year tenure of the highly respected Irene Lewis ended in 2011. Lewis had already begun looking for ways of expanding the company’s audience in ways that better reflected the makeup of the multi-ethnic community. Kwei-Armah, whose parents were born in Grenada and who came from London with a big, eclectic, multi-tasking reputation as playwright, actor and director (he has an OBE for services to drama), ramped up her quest in his own inimitable style.

Gallanar founded the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in 2002 as a group of like-minded artists who wanted to make the Bard’s works more accessible to a broader audience, often in unusual settings — like “the Ruins,” the mostly exposed remains of the former Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park in Ellicott City — as well as through forays to public schools. But settling into a landmark bank building and a modern theater of 260 seats certainly ramped up the stakes.

When you talk to Kwei-Armah in his office, you’re confronted with a pacer; he seems to be thinking about several things at once, even while focusing on one idea. The board of trustees has already extended his contract and audiences have increased during his brief tenure, lured by a more varied programming, new plays — some of them by Kwei-Armah himself, such as the world premiere of “Beneatha’s Place,” about the characters in “A Raisin in the Sun” — and new ways of tackling classic drama.

“People, the people of a community, have to see themselves in what’s going on onstage,” he says. “It’s not just relevance, but truth and authenticity that matters. And there are lots of ways of doing work that is meaningful, difficult, entertaining, certainly.” He likes to stir the pot a little, and it’s apparently working.
The 2015-2016 season includes a two-show residency at Towson University in the spring, due to a major renovation at Center Stage’s Calvert Street home.
“It’s an exciting time for us,” Kwei-Armah said.

The season opens with a world-premiere stage version of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (Sept. 11-Oct. 11), followed by the popular musical “The Secret Garden” (Oct. 30-Nov. 29). Then there’s “X’s and O’s (A Football Love Story)” by KJ Sanchez, co-commissioned by Center Stage and Berkeley Rep. “That’s a play that will resonate here but broadly across the country, because football is such a big part of people’s lives and culture in America,” said Kwei-Armah.

We talked with Gallanar (who has a bit of the Shakespearian thespian look about him) in Chesapeake Shakepeare’s new space. “What we wanted in terms of design was to have a theater that made the Shakespeare experience intimate. We wanted it to be a little like the Globe in the olden days,” he said. The company kicks off its season with the mismatched-lovers-matching-up play “Much Ado About Nothing” (Sept. 18-Oct. 11). Then comes “Titus Andronicus” in Grand-Guignol style, which Gallanar is looking forward to directing. Also on tap: “A Christmas Carol” with a Baltimore twist; “Wild Oats,” an 18th-century comedy by John O’Keeffe; and “Macbeth”.

Where does community intersect with theater? That time for both the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company and Center Stage came in the spring when demonstrations and disturbances of the most visibly destructive kind broke out in West Baltimore.

“We were doing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at the time,” Gallanar said. “We had a matinee at which students from the school which had interacted with the police earlier were at. It was amazing. They were absolutely engrossed. They talked, they yelled and interacted with the action vocally. They saw it as a play about two gangs. It was very real and very theatrical at the same time. “

At Center Stage, “Marley,” an original musical authored and directed by Kwei-Armah about the late reggae legend, was about to open. He and the company decided to go to West Baltimore to perform songs from the show at the entrance to the MTA subway station next to the burned out CVS that had appeared on TV.

“It was just something we decided to do. We are part of the community of Baltimore, and that’s part of Baltimore. The whole thing — the response by the people to what we were doing there — was exactly, I think, what theater should be doing.”
[gallery ids="102287,127695,127698" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

If you’re a D.C. theater-goer, you’d be forgiven if you’ve gotten the impression that this has been the summer of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul in Washington.

The talented musical hotshots first surfaced at Arena Stage this summer with the world premiere of “Dear Evan Hansen,” a contemporary musical about the complicated life of an angst-driven teen trying to get the girl in the worst and best possible way.  The show—which had, in addition to Pasek and Paul, a top-notch team with book author Steven Levenson , director Michael Greiff (“Next to Normal,” “If/Then” and “Grey Gardens”), and star Ben Platt (“Pitch Perfect,” “Ricki and the Flash”)—was a hit here, with pretty much unanimous critical and audience approval.  As a results, its slated for an Off-Broadway debut  at Second Stage.

Now we get “Dogfight,” an earlier Pasek and Paul effort which got critics going in New York but failed to be a popular hit.  The folks at Keegan Theatre, now permanently settled in its renovated but still intimate Church Street space are staging what is just a challenging a show as “Hansen” with tight verve and imagination, given us another opportunity to take a good look at the work of the dynamic duo that appears to be (mostly successfully) trying to reshape the musical to reflect the times.

“Dogfight” is a different kettle of dramatic tea than the smoother “Hansen”—if it’s not easy to create a musical around the subject of teen suicide and bullying as “Hansen” was, it’s even harder to make a sustainable show which features as its plot-driver the nauseous idea of too-young-soldiers about to be shipped out to Vietnam holding an ugliest date contest.

But you can now see a little more clearly certain ticks and gifts shared by Pasek and Paul in these two shows. They’ve created music which is as close to a reflection of contemporary pop music as may be possible. It’s not necessarily new, but it’s narrative-driven, serving the needs of a difficult plot in both cases.   They also appear to have their finger on the pulse that might bring in that elusive blockbuster audience of millennials—the two composer-authors (both 30), seem to be in sync with their young characters.

“Hansen” was very much a part of these our times—“Dogfight” is set in 1963, the beginning years of blood-letting in Vietnam as a group of young, teenaged marines set out on a last night out in San Francisco (which everyone refers to as “Frisco,” a sure sign you’re not a native to locals).  Three of the leading jarheads call themselves the “bees,” as in Birdlace, Boland and Bernstein.  They’re an exuberant trio, accompanied by high-energy pals looking for girls and sex, about which they appear to know little, the 1960s apparently not yet in full flower-power bloom.

The very thought of the dogfight—apparently some sort of tradition with the trio—can fill an audience with dread. It’s one of those horrible by-products of buddy outings fueled by beer and testosterone which is predictably a painful disaster, especially for the women who are tagged for participation.

Birdlace, the nominal “hero” of the trio,  charismatically played by Franco D’Affuso with lean, strutting and awkward intensity, picks out Rose, a shy, warm young waitress with folk-singing aspirations (these were the days of Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez at brash, youthful zenith) and with no fashion style, a dark-haired, inexperienced  girl whose physical charms remain purposefully hidden.  But, with actress-singer Isabelle Smelkinson (who’s still a student at American University) inhabiting her, she manages to shine like a San Francisco Bay lighthouse. It’s such an appealing and authentic performance of intelligent, if clumsy, innocence that she makes every scene she’s in seem as real as today.

Birdlace and Rose (could be a singing duo) meet cute with an argument over Woody Guthrie until the whole scheme breaks open at a ratty club with a dance contest hosted by Chad Wheeler as a lounge singer straight out of an SNL routine by Bill Murray.

If the proceedings in “Dogfight” move along less smoothly—there’s an ugly, near rape of a prostitute in the first, and the Vietnam war setting seems to have been derived more from movies and plays (think “Streamers, The Musical!”) than the real thing—the show, especially as pulled off by the Keegan group under the youthful co-direction of Christina A. Coakley and Michael Innocenti, has more than a few moments.  

What might have been an unsettling piece of theater somehow finds its sea legs, spurred on by some terrific songs—“Nothing Short of Wonderful,” “It’s a Dogfight,” the aggressively cynical “Hometown Hero’s Ticker-Tape Parade” and brassy plot-driven songs and sweet ballads alike.  

Posek and Paul, you realize, are looking to do right by the American musical by re-imagining its sound and tone, but also by creating characters that, after horrible moral mis-steps are looking to do the right thing.   In the end, “Dogfight” isn’t about a creepy plot ploy, or even Vietnam.  It’s about a boy and a girl finding each other, and finding each other comely and simpatico in the best way, losing each other and trying to find each other again.   That’s not so bad a thing, especially when you have Smelkinson playing Rose. She’s a winner.

Gary Tischler • August 31, 2015

There’s only a couple of weeks left to see “Dear Evan Hansen,” a highly original, up-to-the-moment world premiere musical now in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage through August 23. My suggestion: go see it while you can, unless, as may be possible, this production achieves its Broadway aspirations.

“Hansen”—about a tongue-tied, lonely teen who pretends to be the best friend of a friendless teenager who’s committed suicide—is an amazingly audience-affecting show. The material seems to blitz emotionally across the generations during the course of a packed-house performance at which the audience often whistled and cheered or remained tellingly silent at emotional moments. This was an audience made up of millennials, teens, parental-type adults, and people older than that.

This meant that the show’s creative team of Steven Levenson (book), Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (music and lyrics) and director Michael Greif have managed to put on a show that is suited to the times where the subject of teen bullying, teen angst and teen suicide is high profile. But it never hectors or presses the point. It’s too busy creating a lived-in world set against a highly evocative and energetic stage framework of the digital world of e-mails, social networks, Facebook and texting, in which the characters live.

Evan Hansen is a teen so shy that when he encounters the girl of his dreams, his every other phrase is a version of “I’m sorry.” His mother works as a nurse and is taking night classes and while she’s loving, she barely notices Evan’s pain. By chance, Evan has an encounter with another loner, Connor Murphy, who steals Evan’s shrink-assigned note to himself. Later, Evan learns that Connor has committed suicide, and was found with the note.

Swiftly, Evan is welcomed into Connor’s grief-stricken family circle because they think he was Connor’s best (and only) friend. That circle includes Connor’s sister Zoe, the object of Evan’s unabashed love. Matters, as they say, get out of hand, as events and information—made-up e-mails, the note, a whole and false biography of a friendship and alternative Connor—make their way through the busy-body world of social media.

This could be sappy, overly sentimental material, but the music, the writing and especially the performers never descend to a level beyond honest sentiment. There’s a surprising amount of humor in the show, and songs that touch the emotions. What’s impressive is just how accurately Evan’s world and his friends, his mother, and Connors’ family is portrayed—it feels lived in, honest and authentic, a world that’s right out there in a neighborhood near you.

Ben Platt, a budding bona-fide movie star (“Pitch Perfect,” “Ricky and the Flash”) portrays Evan with just the right amount of bumbling, painful awkwardness, awed by finally finding his dreams of love and family coming true, stricken by the lie he is living. He has a strong partner in the appealing Laura Dreyfuss as Zoe. There are also quite sharp and funny bits by Alexis Molnar and Will Roland as Evans’ co-conspirators.

But the adults in this show—Jennifer Laura Thompson in the emotionally stirring part of Connors’ mother, Michael Park as an almost classically stoic, gruff and in-pain dad, and the remarkable Rachel Bay Jones as Evans’ mom—are a revelation.

Musically, “Dear Evan Hansen” is kin to “Rent” and “Next to Normal,” and the contemporary American musical’s attempt to move forward and find own voice and songs, side-stepping out-and-out rock and roll, creating new pop music that’s narrative-friendly and in service of the story. Songs like “For Forever,”“Words Fail” and others move character and narrative, but the presentation is still more in the mode of front-and-center top of the stage offering than a fluid event that flows out of the story at times.

It’s a small quibble. A larger one is the quiet resolution for Evan’s dilemma, which is a huge one where conscience has collided with need.

Still, “Dear Evan Hansen” is top-notch—in terms of originality and emotional power, not to mention an authentic affinity for the world it portrays. Let’s hope

Gary Tischler • August 17, 2015

Here is your lineup for this 38th annual Kennedy Center Honors, announced this week:

Three women—a quadruple threat actress who won two Emmys, an Oscar, a Tony and a Grammy; perhaps the best pop-rock singer-songwriter of the 1960s and 1970s, and an iconic, authoritative African American star of stage and screen­­. Also to be honored, the emblematic pop-rock band of the 1970s, a gifted film director who created more than one fantasy world for millions of movie goers, and a stellar conductor who set new standards at world-class orchestras.

That would be Rita Moreno, Carole King, Cicely Tyson, the Eagles, George Lucas and Seiji Ozawa.

They make up six honorees—one more than usual—for the annual salute to outstanding performance arts stars, honoring a lifetime of excellence. The Honors Gala will be held at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House on Sunday, December 6, preceded by the presentation of the Kennedy Center Honors medallions at a State Department dinner hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry.

The December 5 celebration at the Opera House will be recorded for broadcast on CBS on December 29.

This year’s production will be produced by Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss of White Cherry Productions, marking the first time in Kennedy Center history that the Honors have not been produced by George Stevens, Jr.

White Cherry Productions has produced the Tony Awards for 13 years along with the Emmy Awards, Super Bowl halftime shows, and the Democratic National Convention, among others.

“When I look at this year’s outstanding slate of Honorees, I am struck by a powerful common theme—artists as history-makers, artists who defy both convention and category,” Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter said. “Each Honoree and their career-spanning achievements exemplify a rare quality of artistic bravery. Their individual paths to excellence are inspirational and their contributions to the fabric of American culture are equally permanent and timeless.”

Rita Moreno was a five-year-old immigrant from Puerto Rico who came with her 23-old mother to the United States and carved out a distinguished, eclectic and often electric performance arts career as a singer and actress on stage, screen, television and in the music industry. She is one of four artists who has won the top awards in show business: a best supporting actress Oscar for “West Side Story, the Tony, two Emmys and a Grammy and is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Beautiful, graceful and witty, she paid her dues in Hollywood being cast often in ethnic roles, including Native Americans in westerns. She was seen in Washington in a female version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” playing the slob to Sally Struther’s nervous neatnik.

Carole King’s album “Tapestry” is one of those rare achievements, a work of popular art without a single song that was anything less than memorable—we’re still singing those songs, as did many performers for whom she wrote—with Gerry Goffin, such hits as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow, “One Fine Day” “Natural Woman” and “You’ve Got a Friend.”

The Eagles—Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmit and Joe Walsh—were the pre-eminent pop rock group bringing a touch of country to a distinctly Southern California sound, selling over 120 million albums that included songs like “Hotel California,” “Desperado,” “Already Gone” and “Take It Easy.”

George Lucas—What can you say: Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Luke, Princess Leia, Hans Solo, Harrison Ford, American Graffiti, creatures from the farthest corners of the universe that exists in the noted director’s imagination. More “Star Wars” tales are coming. A new movie will premiere Dec. 18.

Seiji Ozawa—The native of Shenyang, China, he was a force among the top orchestras of the world and the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony, Tanglewood, the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony.

Cicely Tyson—Strength is something that seems to come out of Tyson’s every breath as an actress, now and pretty much forever. Tyson, after a 30-year absence from the stage, returned in 2013, starring as Mother Carrie Watts in Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.” She will be back on Broadway this year with James Earl Jones in “The Gin Game.” She won an Emmy for her performance in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. An iconic African American actress who made the stories of race in America come fervently to life. [gallery ids="102146,133089,133069,133078,133082" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

If you see “Once,” the award-laden, almost fabled musical show now in town at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater through August 16, once might not be enough given the amount of pure and unalloyed original pleasure it gives an audience.

I call it a musical show because both strictly and loosely speaking, this musical, based on a slight but critically acclaimed indie film about a lovelorn, struggling Irish busker musician who finds inspiration when he meets a young Czech emigrant in a Dublin bar, doesn’t behave like any sort of musical Broadway musical anyone might be used to from R&H, to Cole Porter, to Sondheim and “Cats” and the green witches of “Wicked”.

It’s a true one-of-a-kind, which made it from the original film directed by John Carney by starring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova as characters named simply “Boy” and “Girl,” to an Off-Broadway incarnation and a Broadway smash that won a load of Tony Awards and now appears as very successful road company version.

It’s probably not everyone’s cup of Guinness—we heard one older couple walk away with the man grumbling that “well, at least we can’t say we didn’t try something new.”

Even though its been around a while now, new it is nevertheless, a musical theater piece as an experience, which may be an indicator of one of the future road stops of producers and artists seeking to entice new and younger audience.

For sure it’s a great opp if not app for being part of the show for anyone who’s missed out on wandering into an Irish pub—a la the local Kelly’s Irish Times, the Dubliner of Nanny O’Briens—here’s your chance to step up to the bar on stage, and meet a crew of gifted musicians who have gathered on stage to jump around, play fiddles and squeeze boxes and accordions, guitars and violins. New it is, with all sorts of opportunities. It’s an experience that allows the audience to warm up to the show and its people, as well for the musicians themselves to warm up.

Here’s a play—and it is a play, given that the gifted Irish playwright Enda Walsh has written the book—in which music is the heart and soul of things, integral to the characters and the situation, the singing and the songs and the playing flow naturally from the story and the setting. What else would you expect to find in a Dublin pub except musicians ready to stand up and sing and play without much need for prodding?

The set up—it may have been slight and endearing in the film, but is a little more expansive on stage—is that “boy”—the charismatic Stuart Ward—is at song’s end after being dumped by his yearned-for girlfriend who’s fled to America. He’s lost his ability to find his heart—which appears broken—with his music. Instead, he’s living upstairs with his “da,” making a bare living as a Hoover repairman. The pub—how odd—seems full of all sorts of characters, including boy’s beefy bearded pal looking for love, and a group of Czech expats who seem both out of place and right at home, not to mention sundry others, including a banker who plays pop-rock cello.

There is also the “girl,” an endearing, hope-filled single mother who encourages him and inspires him, and perhaps and probably, even loves him, and who saves his soul, music and all.

It’s a thin, flimsy setup, but on stage, it contains a world. Every one of the characters play an instrument—“boy” goes guitar, “girl” is light and self-contained on the piano. The songs and the music—by the original film stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova—are never far away, and they seduce, inveigle, invite and finally kidnap the audience.

The play is fully alive, and fully aware, and if the presence of Czechs and the Irish seems both whimsical and a little odd, to resist this mix and mingling is like insisting on a purebred dog at a shelter. It’s both heartless and beside the point.

The songs showcase not only the central characters, they invite every one on stage in a little at a time, especially in the just famous “Falling Slowly” (it won an Oscar) and which is reprised in the second act, and in “Gold”. Here you see, one by one, the fiddler, the accordionist, the violinist rise and rise, for a song that “boy” has written, a moment of solidarity that speaks mightily to the world of street musicians or buskers, as well as the tribe that contains the music world.

“Once” has a generous spirit, made heartwarming and welcomingly soggy by the predicament of the couple, who have unfinished business with others. The two principals embody that spirit—Ward is manly and appealing, and a little slow when confronted with such an obvious find as the “girl,” but when he finally dives into his music, he is a growling, impassioned singer and player. Dani der Wall, blonde slight, blonde, fearless, pushy in an attractive way, is an absolutely delight, no matter what she does—move across the stage, trade quips with everyone, playing the piano (“you have to say hello to it,” she insists).

This may sound sentimental and a little hokey and if that’s the way you feel, the bartender should cut you off. You haven’t had enough.

“Once” and the sweet, too-smart and cool “South Park”-made “The Book of Mormon” next door at the Opera House are packing them in at the Kennedy Center. They may be portents of the future for future audiences—but then again, they may not. They seem one-of-a-kind, impossible to imitate. But “Once” has seemed to have found a kind of music—folkish, gaelic, rock-and-poppish and dance and movement inducing—that may provide the core for future musicals on Broadway.

Gary Tischler •

In this town, people are talking about Francesca Zambello.

This town being not Washington, D.C., where Zambello is artistic director of Washington National Opera, but Cooperstown, New York. As you may have heard, this bucolic upstate village is home to the Baseball Hall of Fame, where four new members will
inducted July 24-27.

Soon thousands of visitors, many times the resident population, will be streaming in for the baseball festivities. But the weekend before, quite a few people will be heading out to State Highway 80, also known as Lake Street. Just outside of town on scenic Otsego Lake is the Glimmerglass Festival, which will be in its second week. Glimmerglass, where Zambello has been artistic and general director since 2011, is celebrating its 40th summer season of presenting top-drawer operas.

This year’s festival, which runs through Aug. 23, kicked off with back-to-back Friday and Saturday openings of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” and Guiseppi Verdi’s “Macbeth.” It continues during Hall of Fame weekend with “Macbeth” on Friday, the rarely seen Vivaldi opera “Cato in Utica” on Saturday and the Zambello-directed production of Leonard Bernstein’s musically wondrous take on Voltaire’s “Candide” on Sunday.

“Up here,” one local said, “it’s baseball and Butterfly” (as in “Madama Butterfly”) or, more currently, Mantle and Mozart. The baseball you would expect. But opera, Zambello-style, that’s another matter.

And it’s had an impact. Taking in the highly original and stirring “Magic Flute” opener, a patron — who had travelled from New York City for the occasion — told us that Zambello had made “a huge difference. She’s turned it around.”

The next day, while waiting at a Main Street ATM, we talked with a local man who had moved to what he called “baseball heaven” from the New York City borough of Queens. The self-described baseball fanatic noted Zambello’s effect on the town. “Glimmerglass has a great reputation,” he said. “We’re glad to have her here.”

“She works closely and partners with other local cultural institutions like Hyde Hall,” a Cooperstown tourism professional said. Jonathan Maney, executive director of haunting and historic Hyde Hall, on the other side of the lake, praised Zambello’s spirit of cooperation and partnership.

At both openings last week, Zambello seemed to be everywhere — thanking patrons and contributors, board members, audience members and the town itself, being the evangelist for opera. This is not dissimilar from what she does on Washington Opera opening nights, turning greeter and up-close opera champion.

We spoke with Zambello at the Glimmerglass administrative offices last week, as the company prepared for its big anniversary opening. She was in her full opera-pied-piper persona.

“We want to create work and productions that resonate with audiences,” she said. “I see my job here as expanding the audience, growing it, but also making this a true festival. This is a very specific place, a beautiful place, with a lot to offer, and we want to connect to this community. As a for-instance, Madeline Sayet, our director for “The Magic Flute,” staged it in a way that the forest setting resonates to the history of the area, and the Native American inhabitants. And she herself is a descendant of the Mohicans.

“I want the festival to be an integral part of the town and the surrounding area. We draw mostly from the surrounding New York state area, and 50 percent come from within a two-hour radius of Cooperstown. We also get a lot of people coming up from Washington,” Zambello said.

The company has a 40-year history. It presented its first, abbreviated season in 1975, with four performances of “La bohème” in the Cooperstown High School auditorium. Twelve years later, the company opened the 850-seat Alice Busch Opera Theater at the Lake Otswego site. Ever since then, especially in the last few years, the company has grown in size, repertoire, variety of offerings and reputation.

There’s something heady about finding a company like this in a small town, the historic shrine to America’s Pastime. The Glimmerglass site is at once accessible and elegant with its scenic lake backdrop, stylish theater and sense of youthful energy. Here, it’s not your urban opera night out. You can ritz it up if you want, but informality is encouraged. “Blue jeans, khakis, informal — not that you can’t dress up if you want,” says Zambello.

This year’s season is characteristic of her touch. Since she took the reins as artistic director, she’s planned seasons with very specific goals. “Each year, we present a season that includes an American musical, a baroque opera, a contemporary work and an opera that’s somewhat obscure and rarely done.” In her first year, she brought in celebrated soprano Deborah Voigt to star in “Annie Get Your Gun.”

But wait … there’s more. The gifted rising-star bass-baritone Eric Owens (“The Flying Dutchman” at WNO this year), who gave a powerful, layered performance as “Macbeth,” will sing with tenor Lawrence Brownlee in a concert on Aug. 23. Voigt and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade will give master classes Aug. 7 and 21, respectively. There’s also “Odyssey,” a world-premiere youth opera featuring the Glimmerglass Youth Chorus and members of its Young Artist Program, presented at the Cooperstown Arts Festival Aug. 11, 13, 18 and 20.

“We are thinking of Glimmerglass in terms of a destination experience,” Zambello said. “It speaks to being part of this place, in connecting and resonating with audiences and offering a number of different experiences. We are telling stories here, that’s the key to opera.”