Performance

Gary Tischler • May 21, 2015

Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright of comedic melancholy, is either spinning in his grave or sporting a modest smile these days.

His mostly 19th-century plays, which chronicled the decline of Russia’s privileged and landed classes, remain a source of fascination for 21st-century playwrights and — more important — 21st-century audiences, especially in Washington.

First, there was “Stupid F—–g Bird,”  a take on “The Seagull,” staged twice at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, followed by “Life Sucks,”  a riff on “Uncle Vanya” at Theater J last season.  Both were written by director-playwright Aaron Posner.

Posner is also directing “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” the Tony-Award winning play by Christopher Durang now at Arena Stage. At the same time, we have “Uncle Vanya” itself, by way of playwright  Annie Baker who’s modernized the language for this production at Round House Theater which features an all-star cast that includes Joy Zinoman (who in her time as founder and artistic director of Studio Theater, staged and directed an award-winning production of “The Three Sisters”).

Round and round it goes. There is even a comedic production—by  way of the New York Three-Day Hangover Theater Company called “Drunkle Vanya” at the Pinch Bar on 14th Street through April 25.

For the play that probably contains more references to—and probably reverence for—the Chekhov canon, you have to go to “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” hereafter referred to as VSMS, in the theater-in-the-round confines of the Fichandler at Arena Stage. 

Christopher Durang remains one of the most scathing, full-of-surprises satirist and comedic playwrights in American theater. In plays like “The Wedding of Betty and Boo,” “Sister Mary Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You” and “Beyond Therapy, ” he displayed a sharp eye on American culture. He poked tough love fun at what passed for modern society and did it with verve and imagination of the kind that made your eyes roll and your migraines start up.  Where else could you see a priest give a sizzling imitation of bacon frying on a griddle in “Betty and Boo”? Consider how Sister Mary Ignatius explained God’s answers to all our prayers: it’s just that “most of the time, the answer is ‘no.’ ”

Something seems to have happened to Durang with “VSMS.” He appears to have mellowed a little. He has afflicted his characters with painful modern crosses to bear and little wherewithal to withstand the pain, but he’s also bathed them in the warm (and sometimes fuzzy) light of hope. This is also good for the audience, which has opportunities to become fully engaged with these often hapless, self-centered, funny, sad (in a thoroughly Chekhovian way), glib, defiant characters.  At a recent matinee performance that I saw, the audience did just that and then some in a surprising and clearly visible and audible show of emotions. 

Durang makes sure we know we are in Chekhov land.  Vanya and Sonia are both from “Vanya,” and Masha is one of the “Three Sisters”, but could pass for the monstrous mother of “Seagull.” There is also Nina, a budding young actress beauty who embraces and worries over an assignment to play an molecule with all the nervous seriousness of a Broadway ingénue.  Spike is entirely with it in the here- and-now. He’s an actor wanna-be (he just missed landing a spot on “Entourage”) and Masha’s boy toy.

We’re not in a Russian dacha, but a big old house in Bucks County, Pa., where brother and sister Vanya and Sonia, in old bathrobes, start their caretaker day and get into a fight about coffee—or wait for their favorite birds to show up at the pond.  There’s also a housekeeper named Cassandra, tangled in braids, omens and warnings, from another world entirely, the old Greeks or voodoo New Orleans.

In marches Masha, a movie star in some decline but still acting acting the star and queen and a barely clothed Spike in tow. Things happen: there’s preparations for a costume party down the street. Masha wants to sell the house, which would evict the aimless Vanya and Sonia.

All of this is typical Chekhov material,  but we don’t need to know Chekhov plays to get this. In fact, a funny thing happens.  Somewhere along the way as things started to fall apart, all of the audience—which at this matinee was made up of mostly baby boomers, and two or three busloads of high schoolers—got involved.   When Sonia, (played with a startling range of emotions by Signature Theater star Sherri L. Edelen) bereft of love all her life, suddenly gets a call from a would-be-suitor, you could see many audience members were leaning over in their seats to see what she’d do, thoroughly engaged. 

Then, there was the attentive silence when Vanya (played with irascible spirit and warmth by Eric Hisson), having written a play which did include molecules, global warming and other matters, explodes into a roaring, raging riff after catching Spike texting. “We wrote letters back then. Yes, we licked stamps then,” he yelled, making it sound like Nora Desmond’s anthem, “We had faces then.” He launched into a dirge about all things lost to the Internet age, including coonskin caps, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” and the habit of snail mail.  Nobody snickered, and everyone applauded.

Sometimes, things happen in the theater:  chief and often among them, the notion that we—the audience—are all in this together.  I suspect that happens often in “VSMS,” no matter what the makeup of the audience.  To be sure, it’s full of laughs, great writing, startlingly original performances—the worried star quality of Grace Gonglowski as Masha, Rachel Esther Tate’s warm Nina and Jessica Frances Dukes as Cassandra.

But mostly, it sparkles with communal acts of recognition, from a century ago and from right now.

“Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” is at Arena Stage through May 3.
[gallery ids="102065,134473" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

There is often comedy in operas, but there are few comic operas, certainly not the kind that Giaochino Rossini put together—“The Barber of Seville,” his first success, and “Cinderella” or “La Cerentola”, which he wrote in 1816, on the heels of the success of “Seville.”

Both operas are highly entertaining, and often laugh out loud funny, and both might be called the opera versions of cinematic rom-coms, in the sense that the action is spurred by romance and love, the idyllic kind that overcomes all obstacles as in the case of “Cinderella”.

“Cinderella,” sourced from a French fairy tale by Charles Perrault, which may account for its very likeable lightness, as opposed to the often grim output of the brothers Grimm. As a generic subject—a lovely young girl loses her beloved father and is pushed into the role of a dirt-sweeping servant girl, run ragged by haughty, cruel in-laws until her essential goodness and good looks triumph to snare a prince in search of a princess.

The images and themes of “Cinderella” are never far from the public eye. There have been ballets, fictional stories, television and stage musicals, and a classic Disney cartoon complete with a pumpkin that turns into a carriage and beloved mice and a fairy godmother.

This year, the Disney folks re-visited the story again in a big box-office live action film, directed by Shakespearean great Kenneth Branagh, no less. The story of a virtuous princess, a handsome prince, and noteworthy villains never seems to lose its appeal.

Now, we have the Washington National Opera ending its 2014-2015 season with a spritely, lively, full-of-eye-candy and blessed with musical and vocal bravado production of Rossini’s enduring success. It runs through May 21 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Purists might cringe at this thought, but this is one of those operas and productions that’s a crowd pleaser for the whole family—for fussy, comforted boomers, for millennials who get the jokes and for budding princesses dressed up for the occasion by their moms. A larger audience of thousands will get to view the production when it’s simulcast for free at Nationals Park May 16 as part of M&M’s “Opera in the Outfield.”

There are even mice, a half dozen or so of them, the friends of the princess-in-waiting, scurrying about, consoling friends and protectors of Cinderella, who dotes on them. This is an exercise in stage whimsy, and for those with a low tolerance for whimsy … well, too bad.

This is not quite the same old story—there’s no lost slipper (a piece of mother’s jewelry serves the same function), no evil stepmother, but there are two spectacular evil stepsisters in high-rise, high-color wigs, given full-bodied passion, nastiness, humor and drama by Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Soprano Jacqueline Echols as Clorinda and the mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel as Tisbe.

“Cinderella” should be one of those accessible (as in “Carmen” or “The Magic Flute”) operas for people who supposedly don’t like operas. It’s practically a textbook case for opportunities to admire and be in a little awe of music full of pitfalls and difficult to sing. Rossini wrote “Cinderella” at top speed , and the music seems to have a little breathless quality to it, it is as if the orchestra were part of a running marching band. It’s not music or singing made for contemplation, including two bravura sections which end in characteristic Rossini crescendos, as six characters pass the vocal ball back and forth, sometimes seeming to levitate.

Aside from the sisters—and an energetic Simone Alberghini as Dandini a fake prince—it’s the Italian baritone Paolo Bordogna who has the showiest role as the wicked stepfather modestly named Don Magnifico. He sings his arias and words faster than a machine gun, puffs himself up like a red-faced puffin and struts like a short man trying to be tall.

Goodness wills out, but it has a tougher go of it in terms of the music, which rises to inspiration, but not necessarily and perforce to singing that makes you jump out of your seat. What rising star mezzo soprano Isabel Leonard manages to make of the part of Angelina (as in Cinderella) is to give the part and the music a great deal of warmth and grace, if not drama, which is just so, given the nature of the character. It’s really hard to bring purity and goodness to great musical heights—Cinderella is, after all, the most forgiving creature on earth, which foregoes a political career. But, in the end, she shines too, as does Russian tenor Maxim Mironov as Don Ramiro, the prince.

When the sisters and Don Magnifico and Dandini are on stage, the production acquires a brash stylish, almost tongue-in-cheek knowingness to it, but when Cinderella takes center stage, it becomes quieter, an overlay of some lovely remnant of the story whence it came.

For an opera that has so much vocal virtuosity in it, the first act is something of a haul at a hefty two hours. But conductor Speranza Scappuci and director Joan Font pull together to keep things at a pace where the hours, although they do not pass swiftly, pass engagingly.

Gary Tischler •

There’s still another chance—Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Opera House—to see “Cinderella,” a revival of Rossini’s classic romantic comedy, and a number of reasons to take the opportunity.

This version of the French fairy tale  spins happily along with any number of audience treats. There’s the blazingly colorful costumes. There’s the lively Rossini music, the thrilling and trilling vocalizing by a top-notch cast. There’s Don Ramiro, an appealing prince, and Angelina (aka, Cinderella, aka La Cenerentola), an appealing heroine, and an outrageous villain (appropriately named Don Magnifico).

But there’s more — two more to be precise.  Two young performers who add a major portion of the fuel for the high-dudgeon energy of “Cinderella” are also two good reasons to laud the effectiveness of the Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Arts Program. That would be American soprano Jacqueline Echols and American Mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel, who take on the gaudy parts of Cinderella nemeses, the stepsisters Clorinda and Tisbe, respectively..

Both Echols and Nansteel had already built an impressive list of credentials, including appearances at the Washington National Opera and at the Glimmerglass Opera Festivals in Cooperstown, New York, where WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello is also in charge.

“The sisters are just terrific parts,” said Echols, who is a Detroit native. “You really an opportunity to emote, and I’m sure it looks like we’re having a great time, which we are.  But the vocals, the music, the singing in tandem together and with other characters, that’s really difficult music.”

“The sisters are great roles,” Nansteen said. “And those costumes, those wigs, wow.  You have to be able to really work together, and in the sense of this production, we operate like sisters.  We get along really great.”

Even in a telephone interview, you can differentiate their voices, which operate on the thin no-man’s land between soprano and mezzo. Nansteen’s voice a shade lower.  

Both began their careers in the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program. Echols appeared with the WNO  as Musetta in “La Boheme” (a Domingo-Cafritz performance) in the American Opera Initiative, as the Water in “The Little Prince,” covered the role of Pip in “Moby Dick” and was First Lady in “The Magic Flute.”

Nansteen sang the title of “Penny” in WNO’s American Opera Initiative and was Curra in ‘The Force of Destiny” and was Third Lady in “The Magic Flute.”

Watching the two singers and listening to the two, you can imagine them as real sisters, even though each had a different journey to the world of opera.  Thoughts about jazz, listening to chorus music, gospel and the art of acting in opera intermingle in their conversation.   They both agree that acting is important, especially in contemporary opera.  As the sisters, Echols and Nansteen prove their point—they are masters of the singing, and they dive with relish into the more obvious comedy.  But, somewhere, you see the sisters as sisters, and as real people, or as real as opera characters get.

The Washington National Opera’s “Cinderella” runs through May 21 at the Opera House of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
[gallery ids="102083,134299,134302" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • May 11, 2015

It’s been 35 years since Woolly Mammoth Theatre began its Washington theatrical adventure and journey.  Looking at this season’s offerings, and especially the current production of playwright Chad Beckim’s “Lights Rise on Grace,”  it seems like yesterday.

The play—poetic,  crude, raw and wholly imaginative—is what audiences might call a “Woolly” play, even though it had its beginning as a New York Fringe Festival entry.   It seems carved out of the time of now, it’s unlike anything you’re quite likely to see here (no disrespect to other companies meant), it’s beautifully acted and totally engaging.   The faces—three remarkably gifted actors—are new, and so is the spirit of the play and its structure, which seem beyond category. 

It’s not that we don’t see new plays in Washington these days, staged by familiar companies and groups as well as new ones with attitude and style.  It’s that new plays, new writers,   new artists, has been a Woolly trademark under Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz for all these years that a play like “Lights Rise on Grace” is part of an ongoing and singular achievement—even though it’s now in permanent downtown digs, Woolly continues to dance on the sharp edge of edgy with every offering.

“Lights Rise on Grace” is a particularly daunting, and moving example of that tradition.   It concerns a kind of unusual love triangle that plays itself out in a tough and layered urban environment of neighborhood and school, not to mention prison.   It sees Grace, a shy, but eager-for-experience daughter of strict Chinese immigrants meeting an affable, charismatic, “can’t help loving him” African American boy in school, who greets her with by saying, “I want to know you”, clearly meaning both senses of the phrase.  His name is Large—named for his size at birth, not for anything else—and the two fall deeply, it seems, and passionately, and very physically in love, in spite of disapprovals from their peers and families.

And then, Large disappears for a long time—into prison, as it turns out, for an assault.  Grace doesn’t know why, she just known that young man who filled up her live and soul is gone without reason.   In prison, Large meets and eventually is protected by and gets intimate with a white prisoner named Riece. Eventually, Large gets out of prison and is reunited with Grace, who has left her home, made a life for herself, and is both astonished and in total turmoil of the return of her one and only love, if not lover.

Riece soon follows, and the three begin a sort of awkward, confusing, tense relationship, pushing toward a kind of family.  But Large is not the same—prison has changed  and damaged his natural optimism and charm, and his assurance about his place in the world and who he is.  Grace, too, is confused by the new Large whom she’s longed for. Adding to the confusion, but also providing a kind of solid steadiness, is the presence of Riece, especially after Grace becomes pregnant.

Things don’t tidy up—they become more confusing for the audience and characters as well as they try to do the right things for themselves and each other, faced with difficult decisions.

They occupy a space for themselves in a rich and rough environment, physical, cultural and emotional.   This is an urban and changing world of neighborhoods—much like that world is changing in the city, in this case where generations maul each other pitilessly, where violence is abundant and, economically and identity-wise, life is a grind where love, and a paying job are difficult to achieve.

The stark, prison-like set is a kind of metaphor not just for incarceration but for life itself — or at least their particular lives, which echo strongly here.

The actors are (relatively) new to Washington, although Ryan Barry (Riece), has workshopped  the play in New York, where it was directed by Robert O’Hara, who is directing Woolly’s next production, “America  Zombie.”   “Grace” is directed here by Michael John Garces, who is the artistic director of Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles and is a company member of Woolly where he directed three powerful and difficult plays, “We Are Proud to Present…” by Jackie Sibblies Drury,” “The Convert” by Danai Gurina and “Oedipus el Rey” by Luis Alfar.  If “Lights Rise on Grace”  resembles any of the three, it is “Oedipus,” which also had a stark, crackling urban air to it in taking the Greek classic to the barrio.

“Grace” is almost elliptic in the way it tells the story, which is always open-ended—characters turn to the audience to tell the story, their point of view, an effective and intimate approach, especially when Jeena Yi, as Grace, opens the play with an almost verbally naked telling of how she met and loved Large, lost him,  and then embarked on a series of almost brutal sexual encounters in the aftermath.

Yi, the hugely appealing DeLance Minefee as Large, and a quietly effective Ryan Barry as Riece, seem the best kind of actors: they’re naturals, inhabiting their characters fully, while also playing the parts of Chinese parents and relatives, Large’s street and school peers, inmates and prison folk.

In these days of instant communication and entertainment gratification, I haven’t seen a play in a very long time that so stilled the audience into silent attention.   I think there are acts of recognition here—these are characters that live in a changing world, where attitudes about sex, gender, race and multi-ethnicity are shifting rapidly.   

Beckim, who describes himself as growing up as a white kid with a preference for African American culture, is a gifted writer. Even in the realistic attitudes on stage, he finds a way to make poetic observations and gives his characters a generosity they both deserve and need.

“Lights Rising on Grace” runs through April 26 at Woolly Mammoth.

Gary Tischler •

It’s hard to categorize actor Julian Sands except for one thing: if you see him in anything—movies, television, what all—you can’t quite get his image out of your head.

He’s in Washington this Saturday at the Lansburgh Theatre to do “A Celebration of Harold Pinter,” presented by Washington Performing Arts. It is a one-man performance-production directed by the actor John Malkovitch, a theater piece that concentrates on the late Nobel Prize-winning playwright’s poetry, which is rarely heard, but probably much read, given the giant shadow cast by Pinter and his plays.

This project has become something of a legacy for Sands, who works regularly, on stages, television and in movies, but was approached by Pinter himself as far back as 2005.

Sands called out of the blue, and for some reason, beside the fact that his name popped up on Caller ID, I recognized his voice. I remember him distinctly from one of his best films and roles, the 1991 “Impromptu”, about the lives and loves of great artists, composers, and writers in which he played the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, Bernardette Peters played his wife, Hugh Grant was Chopin, Judy Davis played George Sand and Mandy Patinkin played a French painter whose name escapes.

“That was a wonderful experience,” he said, remembering. “Working with so many terrific actors, and the subject, well, that was a rare thing.”

Pinter, of course was the master of the oblique, the unsaid, discerning and dissecting the lives of contemporary relationships in such plays as “No Man’s Land,” “Old Times,” “The Homecoming” and “Betrayal”.

“This all began in 2005,” he said. “I knew him of course, and he approached me about doing a one man piece focusing on his poetry. He wrote quite a lot of it, even long before he started writing plays. The thing was, he wanted me to do a master class with him, basically with him overseeing every inch of material. It was a very strenuous, even difficult task, to make something of this, me working with him. But it was a tremendously rewarding. We became friends during the course of things. The poetry is very different from his plays. More personal. You get a real sense of the person, the man. He was also a very funny man.”

The finished product premiered at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival to considerable acclaim and he has toured with it ever since, off and on. Sands had worked with Malkovitch on “The Killing Fields.” Malkovitch is an American actor who has had a similar career filled with oddities, highs and lows, independent small films, then villains in big budget Hollywood action movies—memorably “In The Line of Fire”.

“What we’ve ended up with it in not just a poetry reading,” he said. “I’ve added anecdotes from working together with Harold on this, stories about his plays, the poems, certainly, and his life,” he said. “It’s a celebration, but you know, when the lights go up, you feel like a soloist, you’re alone with the audience in a way that most playwright surely ever do.”

“Personally, I think he was the most influential playwright of our times,” he said.

Pinter was famous for the pauses—written into the script—that characterized his characters, often while taking puffs on cigarettes. “There are pauses, yes,” Sands said.

“I think it’s done very well, and so here we are, all roads lead to Washington, right”. Actually, Pinter’s plays have been performed regularly on Washington stages—at Arena, Studio, and Scena Theatre among others.

“He was all about language,” Sands said. “The utterances, the sentences are precise and revealing.”

Sands, in his 50s now and still retaininh the matinee blonde good looks of his early career, which included quality films like “The Killing Fields,” “Room With a View,” “Impromptu,” as well as distinctly offbeat fare like “Gothic,” a Ken Russell take on the Victorian poets like the Shelley and Byron, not to mention “Boxing Helena,” and “Leaving Las Vegas.” On the BBC he played Laurence Olivier in a film about the enfant terrible of theater, Kenneth Tynan.

He’s always had a penchant for offbeat horror films—the title role in “Warlock” and its sequels, the non-musical film version of “The Phantom of the Opera.” “I’ve just finished a part in ‘Gotham’”, he noted by way of his television career, which included a memorable turn as the terrorist Vladimir Bierko in “24.”

He’s married to his second wife, the writer Evgenia Citkowitz, author of “Ether,” a critically acclaimed book of short fiction. They have two daughters, Natalya and Imogen.

As for Sands, “I am an actor, I go where the work takes me,” he said. He had just completed a film in Turkey, and would be going to Mexico soon after the performance here. “I get on a train, and it takes me to the work. That makes it sometimes difficult for my family, I know,” he remarked.

An actor’s career can seem like a careening kind of thing, from one role to the next. “I’ve had stellar heights, and some projects that were perhaps less so.. But I make it a business to have no regrets. This is what I do.”

About the Pinter celebration, he feels “responsibility to do him justice. But there’s the audience. Myself and Pinter and the audience. I respect that, it’s an intimate kind of thing.”

“A Celebration of Harold Pinter” plays at the Lansburgh Theatre this Saturday at 8 p.m.

Gary Tischler •

Hey, guys and gals, looking for something new, something to do, maybe hang out in a bar you’ve never been in before?

Check out “Murder Ballad,”  the new show at Studio Theatre’s Stage 4, described as an “immersive rock musical experience,” which has been extended to May 16.   

“Immersive” experiences aren’t exactly new, although they’re primed to be part of the ideas percolating as theaters look for ways to bring in new audiences.  This one is a kind of rock opera or rock melodrama, mostly sung to music played by a stage-bound, sort-of, looks-like-feels-like rock band. It is surely immersive and thick with ambiance.  The audience gets to order drinks and sit at tables, munch on popcorn while bartenders fix drinks, wield a bat, and all sorts of faded scribblings, graffiti and posters reel you in. The place, with a bright green pool table at the center where the characters in the play often come together or circle each other in a contemporary take on love gone bad, love recovered, love gone bad again with a bad outcome for somebody.  It is, after all, called “Murder Ballad.”

I liked being there, truly—a beer, popcorn, urban audience and couples, young, younger and old and older, too, recalling the bad old days when 14th Street was a mess and not the restaurant-teeming, busy thoroughfare that it is today. Being at this show is a great opportunity for people watching, and the characters often stomp off angrily, and reappear elsewhere, from behind the bars, or off to the side or through the entrance.

Summing up quickly, “Murder Ballad,” set in New York,  has as its center the fortunes and misfortunes of a slightly lost, appealing young girl named Sara, who strikes tough poses to avoid being hurt.  She hooks up with a charismatic bartender  and  someday bar owner, named Tom,  a guy who’s always been catnip for the girls, especially wounded sparrow types like Sara.  They meet, and they hook up, passionately, until Tom, sensing that the word, “love,” might come out of his mouth by accident any day now, dumps her.

Horribly wounded, Sara is at sea, feeling hopeless, until along comes the appealing, caring Michael, a guy who really cares and has a real job, to boot.  They meet, they love, they marry and they have a child. Soon, however, a restless Sara starts to pine for and remember Tom.  “He made me weep,” she sings, as if this were a good thing.   Predictably, Sara and Tom meet, they hook up, she feels horribly guilty. Michael feels betrayed. Tom suddenly thinks Sara is the one that got away, the love of his life, and sings, ominously “You Belong to Me”.

The story is told almost entirely through music, driving, often soaring songs like “Answer,” “You Belong to Me,” “I’ll Be There,” “Built For Longing,” “Sara” and others.   The story’s driven by a kind of narrator played by the big-voiced Anastacia McCleskey,  who is always there.

But truth be told, it’s Christine Dwyer who carries the show, musically, dramatically, as Sara. It’s Sara’s story after all, and Dwyer, slight of build, often guilt-driven, makes her presence  felt. She can belt a ballad and carry a musical load, but it’s more than that.   She’s one of these young female performers who’s got chops and charisma, a deceptive, and ultimately beguiling kind of charisma that touches heart and soul

Tammar Wilson, who’s the nice guy Michael, does gentle and angry equally well.

The show—conceived by and with book and lyrics by Julia Jordan and music by Julian Nash and directed with verve by Studio Theatre’s artistic director David Muse—is appealing enough.  You even care about the people, and the ambiance alone is worth the price of the ticket.

This is not exactly new—the 1960s were full of shows that almost demanded that you be a part of the show, or occasions where body contact with the cast occurred, as it did with “Hair,” where cast members clambered over seats and ran through the aisles   Studio in the past has used its new spaces the same way. There was a terrific show a number of years ago about Jack Kerouac and the beats,  played out in a bar.

I’d like to have seen—not just immersion—but a little more direct contact from the cast with the audience.  I don’t mean physical contact, but playing to the audience.   If you’re this close to the action,  things ought to be a little more personal or reactive.  Opportunities sweep by, untaken. 

But there is room for surprises.  My lips are now sealed.
[gallery ids="102070,134374,134375" nav="thumbs"]

Peter Murray • May 6, 2015

Pop music can be fickle game for its many princesses. While Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry have hit seemingly unreachable heights, others, including Lady GaGa and Rihanna, are trying to reinvent themselves in different genres (in RiRi’s case, by throwing an eclectic mix of songs at the wall and seeing what sticks, judging by early singles off her eighth album) to avoid the pop industry’s cannibalization of its stars, which seems to happen when every time an album produces only one hit. The original princesses of the modern era, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, still manage to cash in on their celebrity and land songs on the radio sporadically but haven’t had big hits in years. Meanwhile, upstarts like Charli XCX, Kiesza and Tinashe are chasing stardom by reviving old pop tropes, often to the extreme. Lorde and a few others are just making it up as they go.

That’s what Kesha, America’s favorite valley girl turned ratchet, did when she debuted as Ke$ha in 2010 with infectious dance-pop tracks on which she sang, rapped and shouted about drinking, dancing, hooking up and dicks (among other things) in a language that young people ready to party were attuned to.

The star’s world has been tumultuous of late; after rising to the top of pop with her valley girl gone ratchet routine in the early 2010s, Kesha went to rehab for an eating disorder, decided to ditch the dollar sign from her moniker and filed suits against her long-time collaborator and pop music phenom Lukasz Gottwald (the producer better known as Dr. Luke) of rape and emotional abuse.

Amid controversy, Kesha surfaced a few weeks ago at a Haim-led charity event in Los Angeles where she dressed down and performed a stripped version of “Your Love Is My Drug” with the increasingly prominent pop-rocker sisters.

Then, out of nowhere, Kesha announced she’d be playing at the Black Cat, a grungy 750-capacity venue she played years ago on her rapid ascent to stadium and pavilion stages. Fans eager to see a pop princess from the past in an intimate venue snapped up the tickets in minutes but nobody could explain why she was playing such a small show. Would she have new music to play? Would she unveil a new persona as an artist sans-Dr. Luke? Would the show be more acoustic and less electronic like her performance with Haim?

The answer to all of those questions turned out to be no. Kesha played an all-out, bombastic dance-pop show replete with beefy and glistening bare-chested male back-up dancers, sequin leotards (yeah, that’s multiple), thumping backing tracks, animal costumes, choreography, confetti cannons and the singer’s bouncing blown-out blonde mane. Sure there were a few things that one wouldn’t necessarily expect at the show, like Kesha doing pretty impressive acoustic covers of Chris Brown (“Loyal”) and Nick Jonas (“Jealous”) and drag queens taking over the stage for the encore. But even those moments demonstrated to the crowd, consisting mostly of white women and gay men no younger than 19 and no older than 30, that this was the same Kesha they partied to and fell in love with during high school and college, just on a smaller stage.

Not that the size of the stage was a bad thing. Fans relished in the fact that they made it to this intimate show, where they could take close up smartphone shots of a certified popstar, who would notice their elaborate outfits (their “stockings ripped all up the side,” if you will) and glittered eyes. Every member of the audience had a legitimate chance to get sprayed by beer coming out of Kesha’s mouth or catch a sweaty shirt or headband tossed off the stage by the songstress.

But there were moments, or rather songs, where Kesha didn’t completely command the small crowd. The volume at the Black Cat was lower than it typically is, and as Kesha worked her way through lesser hits and the aforementioned covers, dancing slowed, talking ramped up and phones starting popping out of pockets, for photos or maybe some pre-“Tik Tok” texting. It was a bit depressing; fans who were able to get hands on tickets through tight planning, radio contests or expensive resale ended up talking and using their phones during songs they weren’t 100 percent familiar with.

Despite some in the crowd’s inattention, Kesha put on a fabulous show. She had ferocity in her eyes and swagger in her demeanor as she danced, marched, jumped and bounded on stage, her voice sounding almost exactly how it does on her records.

She was a force to be reckoned with. And when she whipped out the big hits, everyone turned up and became an ardent fan, shouting every word while dancing madly, arms in the air feet off the ground. First came “We R Who Who We R” and “Blow” early in the set, then “Blah Blah Blah” led into the classic “Your Love Is My Drug.” The show culminated with “Tik Tok,” Kesha’s debut song, before she left the stage only to return with drag queens for “Die Young” and then “Timber” sans-Pitbull wearing a sequined American flag bandana. Kesha left the crowd sweaty, drunk and blown away.

Where Kesha is headed beyond a slew of secret one-off American club shows is unclear. But her show at the Black Cat exemplified that she’s still got the star power America fell in love with in the first place. If she wanted to, she could probably bank off of college nostalgia for a few more years before figuring out something else. More likely though, the show indicated the princess’ (valiant) return to the volatile world of pop music that chewed her up and spit her out. Now, she just needs a new hit.

Gary Tischler • April 28, 2015

It’s been a big year for Lead Belly, the hugely influential blues and folk singer and musician who was born 125 years ago on Jan. 20 as Buddy William Ledbetter to Wesley Ledbetter and Sally Brown on the Jeter Plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana.

In February, the Smithsonian Channel debuted a documentary about the legendary blues man, which included color footage of Lead Belly in a cotton field and tributes from contemporary artists like Judy Collins, Roger McGuinn, Robby Kreiger and Van Morrison.

Also in February, Folkways records released a five-disc boxed set in 140-page large format book,which amounted to a first full career retrospective.

On Saturday night, April 25, the Kennedy Center in collaboration with the Grammy Museum is producing and staging an all-star concert “Lead Belly at 125: A Tribute to an American Songster” in its Concert Hall at 8 p.m.

Headlining the musical tribute are a diverse crew of performers, songwriters, musicians and singers that cut across genres which is a good indication of the wide-ranging and long lasting influence of the blues giant.

On hand are Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin) and folk and country star Alison Krauss (they collaborated on an album several years ago), Buddy Miller, Victor Krauss and Alvin Youngblood Hart, Bill Hector, Valerie June, Shannon McNally, Josh White, Jr., (son of folk legend Johns White), Dan Zane, and the bluesiest of female blues singers Lucinda Williams.

Lead Belly is one of the most stirring figures in American history—his time in prison, which included a stint at the sometimes infamous Angola, La., was often embellished in the tough times story-telling Depression. He wrote dozens of songs himself, played a 12-string guitar in masterful style, had a long-standing, often strained relationship with folklorists John Lomax and his son Alan.

Lead Belly wrote but also collected songs from memory that he heard in the South in his childhood and youth and put a distinct blues tinge on them—songs that became familiar to the entire country including “Midnight Special,” “Good Night, Irene”, “Take This Hammer,” a musical evocation of the hard life of men on the chain gang.

In 1949, Lead Belly passed away, but his influence was felt by the burgeoning rise of rock and roll, blues and folk singers, many of whom covered his songs—the list of songs and singers is like the biggest all-star rock and blues ever. The Beach Boys did “Cotton Fields.” Bryan Ferry and a host of others sang “Good Night Irene.” Creedence Clearwater Revival revived “Midnight Special” and “Cotton Fields,” and the list goes on and on from Elvis to Abba, to Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Harry Belafonte, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Gene Autry, Odetta, Ron Sexsmith, Rod Stewart, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the White Stripes (“Boll Weevil”), Old Crow Medicine Show, Meat Loaf, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kurt Cobain, who made a hit yet again out of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.”

Lead Belly himself had a raspy, rich voice that went from casual to heartbreak in a few licks on the guitar. Many rock stars from the 1950 through the first part of this century acknowledged the debt which you can hear in their musical styles, their voices and lyrics and the guitar playing.

Gary Tischler • April 23, 2015

By almost any measure, the world premiere of “The Blood Quilt,” the new play by Katori Hall at Arena Stage’s Mead Center for American Theater, is a big deal, resonating strongly in Washington.

For Hall, an inaugural resident playwright of Arena’s American Voices New Play Institute, the production marks a triumphant return here, the promise of a big career fully confirmed. Memphis-born Hall, a performer as well as a writer, wrote “The Mountaintop,” which won the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play and ran on Broadway starring Angela Bassett and Samuel L. Jackson. Three of her plays are currently receiving world premieres around the country.

“The Blood Quilt,” which runs April 24 to June 7, reunites Hall not only with Arena Stage but with director and Howard University alumna Kamilah Forbes, artistic director of Hip-Hop Theatre Junction, who collaborated with Hall on “The Mountaintop.”

“The Blood Quilt” is a unique theatrical event in many ways. It features an all-female cast (along with its female director and playwright).

The play is an African American-focused story, a fierce family comedy-drama in which, in the wake of the death of their mother and family matriarch, four sisters converge on their childhood home on an island off the Georgia coast to make a family quilt in her honor. Drama ensues with the reading of a will as the four women, and one of their teenaged daughters, face their own troubled history.

Yet, after talking to Caroline Clay and Nikiya Mathis, the actresses who play two of the sisters – Gio, the bigger-than-life second-eldest sister, and Cassan, the third-eldest – you get the sense that this is a play that goes far beyond race, reaching out to the universal without ever leaving the particular.

This is a play about family, first and foremost, and the women of that family, in particular; men – fathers, elders, boyfriends and husbands – are not in evidence except as figures in stories told around the circle of patching and sewing.

In person, Clay and Mathis are very different, in much the same ways their characters are. Clay has found a connection to the earthy and boisterous Gio – “There’s no filter, there, she’s just one of those people when it comes to saying without thinking.” – and Mathis is more reserved, like the sister she plays.

Clay is a recognizable part of the tapestry of D.C. theater. She’s a native, she won a Helen Hayes Award for outstanding supporting actress in a non-resident play for “Doubt,” she’s a graduate of and teaches at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. “This play has been talked about a lot and it’s been on my radar for a while, and I auditioned like everyone else,” she said.
Mathis is a New York actress who workshopped a Hall play called “Pussy Valley.” “Yeah, right,” she said. “I played a stripper. She writes so directly, so powerfully, she has a major voice.”

“There’s a lot of personal ways to relate to my character. I’ve experienced some of the things she did, I’ve made my mistakes, so you understand her,” Mathis said. “You can see her. She was the one, among four sisters, who her mother never really saw. And that’s an issue on a larger scale, this being invisible.”

There is also Clementine, the eldest, who has called this gathering of the sisters, played by Tonye Patano, and the teenager, Zambia, played by Afi Bijou.

After a while, as the conversation spread out like, well, a quilt – ranging from roles for African American actors to Roscoe Lee Browne, who died in 2007, from television’s “Empire” and “Outlander” to the American South – you could be excused if you thought you could hear the women of “The Blood Quilt” talking, remembering, making the quilt of their memories and lives.