Performance

Gary Tischler • February 22, 2016

It’s tempting to define the Washington National Opera production of Kurt Weill’s stoically hopeful work “Lost in the Stars” by what it isn’t, not by what it is,  by what it doesn’t do instead of what it, in the end, so powerfully accomplishes.

Let’s begin by saying that while it may be in the season slate of the WNO, it is not strictly or even loosely speaking an opera, although it has its operatic moments. It is not “Carmen,” nor is it, God knows, connected in any way to the “The Ring Cycle,” two canonical  works of opera with a capital “O” — and part of a season that also included the not-so-easy-to-categorize “Appomattox”.

Nor is it a musical disguised as an opera, the mane of confusion that sometimes is associated with “Porgy and Bess” and “Showboat.”  If the need to categorize exists, and Lord knows these days it does just so people can check to see if they’re sitting in their comfort zone seats, then let’s call “Lost in the Stars,” a play with more music than usual.

It is also a political play fueled by a large dose of imagination and empathy as well as a heart and a conscience.

The last work by Weill, who’s usually associated  with the more rowdy, anti-capitalist works with collaborator Bertold Brecht (“Three-Penny Opera” and “Happy End”), but who in this case attached himself to a project that displayed the human tragedy of the solidified apartheid policy of South Africa as it affected both the white power holders and the afflicted blacks.

The music — some of it transferred deftly and effectively from other projects — is Weill’s, empathic, soaring, powerful and searing, a varied score of genres that speaks with different voices to the fate of its characters.  The book is by Maxwell Anderson, a playwright whose works are not much performed any more, but who was much in vogue during the 1930s and 1940s for his poetic sensibility (Someone should resurrect his “Winterset.”)

“Lost in the Stars” sneaks up on you like a persistent whisper. It has its irritating moments of familiarity and expectations denied and is sometimes stingy with its music, pursuing narrative with long stretched of spoken dialogue.

by the white — and anti-apartheid — South African author Alan Paton, “Lost in the Stars” concerns Stephen Kumalo, a black village pastor who goes to Johannesburg to find his son, the not too subtly named Absalom, who, it turns out, is on trial for the murder of a white man.  Absalom admits the killing — “I will not lie any more” — which occurred during the course of a robbery with two other men. He is convicted and sentenced to hang.  Kumalo — performed, acted, and sung with stirring power by star bass baritone Eric Owens (“The Flying Dutchman” at WNO) — tries to plead for the life of his son to the murdered man, a staunch Afrikaaner, to no avail.

Yet — amid staged crowd scenes at a rail station, in court and in the village which accentuate and dramatically and musically illustrated the separation of the races — the production builds brick by emotional brick, operatically at times, dramatically at others, and most effectively, quietly.  There are showy, show-stopper songs to be sure — none more than Owens’s rendition of the title song, which makes the plight of the characters universal.  There are the sweetly and emotionally powerful songs sung by soprano Lauren Michelle as Absalom’s bereft girlfriend Irina, like “Trouble Man” and “Stay Well,” “The Hill of Ixopo,” led by Sean Pannikar and an affecting chorus, the scene-stealing “Big Mole,” performed with high spirits by young Caleb McLaughlin.

The long narrative or exposition sections of “Lost in the Stars” can sometimes make an audience restless.  But director Tazewell Thompson — who is well remembered here for his stint at Arena Stage as well as more recent work with the WNO — steers the production with both hands on the wheel deftly toward an ending that seems to demand silence.  It may seem an ending which is more hopeful than helpless in its result: The fathers both realize the monumental losses they have suffered as fathers but also as human beings and join together as part of one community.  It’s the kind of result that in today’s inflammatory political atmosphere seems to inspire sneers and snark, but also has a historical context.

People like Paton risked much in making public art — novels, in his case — that exposed the injustices of apartheid.  As a white artist, he was not alone—he paved the  way for the universally successful plays of Athol Fugard (“The Road to Mecca,” “The Blood Knot” and “Master Harold and the Boys”) which also stood in stark opposition to apartheid).

It is easy to be a little dismissive of a work that defies genre and is not easily digested and aspires to an embrace of hopefulness as a noble failure.  I think if you go—and you should—you might find that your fellow audience members think a little more of it  than that.

“Lost in the Stars” can be seen at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater Feb. 17, 18, 19  as well as Feb. 20, which includes a matinee performance.

Gary Tischler • February 18, 2016

“It is so extraordinary out there,” actress Madeleine Potter said Saturday morning after walking her dog, an English springer spaniel, in the downtown area around the Lansburgh. The apartment building is her home-away-from-home while starring as Amanda Wingfield in the Ford’s Theatre production of Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie,” running through Feb. 21. “You can’t even see the monuments. What an amazing experience!”

Along with making our city even whiter, the blizzard of 2016 caused the cancellation of last weekend’s preview performances, and perhaps others. “We shall see,” Potter said. “Everything’s in flux.”

Potter’s appearance in “The Glass Menagerie” is her first in Washington in a long time. It’s also her first embrace of a major Tennessee Williams role in a career that has notably included four appearances in films directed by James Ivory, the partner of producer Ismail Merchant in Merchant Ivory Productions, famed for lush and literary period pieces.

“It’s a challenge to be doing this, but it’s also exciting. It’s new to me,” Potter said. “To me, Tennessee Williams is one of the giants among the world’s playwrights. He writes especially haunting and strong women characters — strong in the sense that they survive the assaults of the world. I think Amanda is one of those women.” She continued: “I gather Amanda bears some close resemblance to his [Williams’s] mother, but also to him. She is after all a single mother in a time when this was rare and unusual and took even more courage to do. What’s really fascinating to me is her … insane fortitude.”

Listening to the slightly English-accented Potter — the daughter of an American diplomat and OSS officer named Philip B.K. Potter and his wife, the former Madeleine Mulqueen Daly — talk about theater, literature, her family and her life in the theater, you get the sense of a woman with a strong affinity for WiIliams’s women.

“You have a feeling for these women — Amanda, Blanche DuBois, the actress Alexandra Del Lago in ‘Sweet Bird of Youth,’ Alma from ‘Summer and Smoke,’” she said. “This is my first, but I certainly want to do more.”

Of Potter’s four Ivory films, two were based on Henry James novels: “The Bostonians” with Vanessa Redgrave, in which she played Verena Tarrant, and “The Golden Bowl.” The others were the remarkably electric and contemporary “Slaves of New York” and, in 2005, the opulent “The White Countess.” “Ivory’s work was so detailed, so rich, and working on this last film was a beautiful experience for me, because I had a chance to work with my daughter, who played my niece.”

“You may have noticed,” she paused to note, “all the women in my family are named Madeleine going way back.” This includes her daughter, Madeleine Daly.

On stage, Potter has performed both contemporary and classical roles, especially in plays by Ibsen and Shakespeare. “You approach things this way: all classical plays should be treated as if they were brand-new and all new plays should be treated as if they were classics.”

“I did work here once at the Folger,” she recalled, “a production of ‘Hamlet’ directed by Lindsay Anderson.” Suddenly it came back to me. She was Ophelia, a part often underdone or overdone, but, in her case, very affecting. A tough Post critic of the time (1985) said her Ophelia “was mad, but poignantly so.”

“It was such a pleasure to work with Lindsay, he was a genius,” she said. Anderson, who died in 1994, directed Malcolm McDowell in the highly regarded film “if….” (part of a trilogy), wrote a well-received book on John Ford and appeared in “Chariots of Fire.” His “Hamlet” worked like a house on fire by starting the play at its end, on a stage littered with bodies.

She knows that her performance in “The Glass Menagerie” will receive attention. In the world of Tennessee Williams, there haves been many Amandas, many Maggies, many Blanches. The playwright — whose birthday is March 26 and whose death will be commemorated on Feb. 25 — is enjoying a mini-vogue this spring. In addition to “The Glass Menagerie,” there’s are upcoming productions of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at Round House Theatre in Bethesda (March 30 to April 24) and “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore (April 6 to June 12).

You can see some of the affinity on a personal level for Potter. The play is about a mother-daughter relationship, to be sure, but it’s also about the love between a brother and a sister. “I had three brothers in my family,” she said. “Phil, Paul and Alan. Paul was an actor and a brilliant designer, and he worked here for a time in the 1970s.” It’s plain from the tone of her voice that she and Paul were close. “He was a remarkably gifted artist and a wonderful brother and friend.” Paul Gerard Daly Potter passed away last year. He worked at New Playwrights and at the late Bart Whiteman’s Source Theatre on a gritty 14th Street in the 1970s.

“The thing about Tennessee Williams,” Potter said, “was he imbued every play, everything he did, with poetry. His writing was lyrical and poetic, and my hope is that we never lose this kind of poetic language, our poetry.”

And so, a snowy morning in a shut-down city becomes filled with talk about the Irish and their qualities, about dogs and occasions, scenes from a long ago “Hamlet,” hey, nanny, nanny, about family and friends and performances done, seen and held in the heart’s eye and memory. A fine morning of theater, you might say.
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Georgetowner •

Now in preview performances at Arena Stage, “The City of Conversation” — Anthony Giardina’s play about a powerful Georgetown hostess and her friends, allies and family members at three critical moments in American politics — will no doubt spark conversations among audience members, especially Georgetown residents.

But it’s not like Washington and its politics and politicians haven’t been hot-button subjects for any number of books, biographies, memoirs, novels, movies, television series (hello, Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and such. Writers are forever taking the pulse of Washington, its palaces of politics and the neighborhoods that thrive in its spotlight.

Only recently, an episode of “Madame Secretary,” which stars the gifted Téa Leoni in the title role of Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord, saw her professor and intelligence-agent husband battling his Georgetown neighbors over the exhaust fumes from the idling cars of her Secret Service details.

Gore Vidal’s historical novels about Washington (the city, not the Founding Father) resonate mightily, as do other less literary efforts, television shows such as “The First Family” and “Veep” and the increasingly show-buzz-like political debates in this Trumped-up age.

Movies abound: “Advice and Consent,” “The Best Man,” “Fail Safe,” “The Contender.” The stage is no stranger, either; it was a play, “First Monday in October,” after all, which gave us the first female justice of the Supreme Court, Judge Ruth Loomis, played by Jane Alexander. Also starring Henry Fonda, the show previewed at the Kennedy Center in 1977 (a few years before Sandra Day O’Connor got the nod).

Or take a look at New York recently: Bryan Cranston as LBJ and the hip-hop hit musical “Hamilton,” which portrays the man killed by the main character in Vidal’s first big historical novel, “Burr.”

Playwright Giardina remembers being inspired after reading “The Ruins of Georgetown,” a elegiac 1996 New Yorker essay by high-profile Washington player (and key advisor to the Clintons) Sidney Blumenthal. “It was about the Kennedys, and the dinner parties hosted by influential journalist Joe Alsop and his brother Stewart, or by the Grahams. It seemed like a magical time, where history was being made over table talk and in drawing rooms. And I thought, when I read it, that there had to be a play in there somewhere.”

The voluble and personable Giardina, Massachusetts-raised with an abiding interest in American politics, is one of those people who talk in sentences and paragraphs. “There was always the drama of politics, even its kind of heroic aspects — the battles between the liberal Republicans and Nelson Rockefeller against Barry Goldwater, LBJ and the Kennedys, Vietnam. There was always conflict, but I don’t think it was the kind of conflict that exists now, which seems so irreconcilable. People talked to each other before — and in this play, I wanted to show that world, but also where the roots of how the divide began to appear in a serious and personal way.”

We chatted in a conference room at Arena Stage when the company first began rehearsals for “The City of Conversations.” For Giardina, this was “kind of old-home week.” Arena produced one of his early plays in the Old Vat Room as part of its In the Process series. “I also did a commissioned adaptation of ‘An American Tragedy’ and ‘The Child.’ It was wonderful to work here then — the great Zelda [Fichandler] was so inspiring to work with. It was an electric, innovative atmosphere.”

The play actually came together after Giardina — known for writing plays based on his own experiences and a well-regarded novelist — decided to take on something at a little more distance. “Doug Hughes suggested I try something a little more out of my comfort zone, something that required me to imagine people I had no personal experience of.

“The City of Conversation” had its world premiere in 2014 at Lincoln Center Theater in New York, where it turned out to be a much-talked-about hit — not only with the locals but with visitors from Washington.

“Ralph Neas, who was the head of the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights during the Bork fight came. [The Bork nomination battle is a key element in the play.] So did Congresswoman Pat Schroeder and her husband. Washingtonians did take an interest. Ironically, Sidney Blumenthal wrote to tell me he couldn’t get in — the play was sold out.”

The play also impressed Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith. “Over the past 18 years, I have searched fiercely for D.C.’s voice in theater, and I’ve become convinced that our unique voice is political,” she said. “We are the city that loves to talk politics from the first moment of waking up to when our heads hit the pillow. I saw the play in New York, and the moment the play was over I contacted Anthony. I knew his play needed to be produced at Arena. This spring is the optimal time to highlight a political work, as we are all abuzz with the primaries, politicians and sound bites.”

Politics and Washington and even Georgetown have often figured strongly in the theater, but there probably hasn’t been a play quite as intimately and piercingly located in Georgetown. In “The City of Conversation,” the set — over three acts and 30 years — remains the same throughout.

“Lights come up on a living room in Georgetown. The room is well appointed, not extravagant. There should be very small signs of eccentric taste. On a credenza, an array of small framed photographs. Large windows open onto the top of a garden. Doors stage right open onto a kitchen (unseen); there is an entrance to the dining room at lower stage right. Stairs lead to a bedroom upstairs.”

That’s the description of the set in the opening scene of “The City of Conversation.” It prepares you to enter into a small place that will become a microcosm, as places like this at certain times do.

Hughes has directed a number of plays by Giardina, “Scenes from La Vie de Boheme” and “Black Forest” among them. The two have known each other for 30 years or so. “I’d say we are close friends, and we understand each other’s work as artists and friends,” said Giardina.

“You know, some people have called this a play of ideas,” Hughes told us, prior to gathering the company. “That’s a nice description, but it’s a little abstract, to think of it that way only. To me it’s a play about a family, with a very charismatic woman, the Georgetown hostess Hester Ferris, who is the center of the play, a strong woman who doesn’t just host dinners, but is part of it all, taking part. A very political person. And it takes places at critical times: on the eve of Jimmy Carter’s malaise speech, during the heated battles over the Robert Bork nomination, during which we find the family splintered, with her son’s wife a rising Republican operative taking on her mother-in-law, and then the final act, the day of the inauguration of Barack Obama.

“It’s not so much a play of ideas, as it is a play about a clash of ideas. I think that it will really resonate here, of course, but it’s a moving play, a play perhaps about who wins and loses, but also the personal cost of these kinds of conflicts.”

“The City of Conversation” is also the kind of play that reads like a novel, in the sense that it’s a page-turner; the dialogue is sharp, funny, smart, witty and knowing. You don’t have to be a wonk — or, God forbid, the new “in” job title of campaign strategist — to get what’s happening on stage. Punches are given and taken, hearts are cracked, moves are calculated in a small room in the town where the locals often think of themselves as living in the light at the center of the world, a locus that engenders mixed feelings — like living inside a global chat room with your nearest and dearest.

“Is Hester based on a particular woman in Georgetown?” Giardina pondered. “I suppose it’s more of an amalgam. There are a number of influential women, and men, who took on those roles: Katharine Graham certainly, Sally Quinn, Pamela Harriman, Evangeline Bruce. But it’s not just about Hester. I like to think it’s about us,” he said.

“The larger thing, for me, is to ask the question: how important are these things to us? Do we assume that the social change we want to see happen is only going to happen through the sacrifices of other people?”

We’ll find out. “The City of Conversation” runs through March 6. The production stars Margaret Colin (who was Eleanor Waldorf in “Gossip Girl” and portrayed Katharine Graham in the docudrama “Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers”) and features Michael Simpson, who plays both Colin and Ethan Ferris.
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Neshan Naltchayan • February 16, 2016

Disney characters visited the Georgetown Public Library on R Street Feb. 9 to join the Toddler Art & Stories reading program for children. Children and their families listened to Disney classic stories, sing songs and worked on an art project. Special guests from “Disney On Ice presents Treasure Trove,” shared “laughs, excitement and reminded the children that love is the greatest magic of all,” they said, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

“Disney On Ice presents Treasure Trove” is a lineup of beloved cartoon characters

“Get tangled up in Disney’s 50th animated feature with Rapunzel and Flynn and enter the worlds of your other favorite Disney princesses — Tiana, Cinderella, Jasmine, Ariel, Aurora, Belle, Mulan and, of course, the one who started it all, Snow White,” announces “Disney On Ice presents Treasure Trove,” presented by Stonyfield YoKids Organic Yogurt and produced by Feld Entertainment. The joyful list on skates seems endless. There are Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and Captain Hook and his pirates; Simba, Nala, Pumbaa and Timon; Alice and the
Mad Hatter with the Queen of Hearts’ Army of Cards; Woody and Buzz Lightyear.

The skating and “Live Celebration of Disney’s Animated Gems” continues at the Verizon Center through Feb. 15 — DisneyOnIce.com.
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Gary Tischler • February 1, 2016

There’s comedy, and then there’s comedy. These days, there’s plenty of it to be had in Washington and not just in politics.

At the Shakespeare Theatre Company, there’s a rewardingly gut-busting or side-splitting double bill of short plays—“The Critics,” written by the playwright with the imposing name of Richard Brinsley Sheridan,  and “The Real Inspector Hound,” written by the brilliant playwright with a less imposing name of Tom Stoppard.  The plays are separated in time by 189 years—Sheridan’s play was written in 1779 (for Americans, three years after the writing and presentation to the world of the Declaration of Independence) and Stoppard’s play was written in 1968, a year of monumental events in the U.S. and the world, none of which are mentioned in the play.

At the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, you can find the road company of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love Murder,” a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of a very particular kind which has pleasures of a different kind, from a different time and place.  The show is rooted in just about every cliché about Edwardian England and its aristocracy that you can think of, not to mention old whimsical and weird English film comedies of the 1940s and 1950s, most of them starring Alec Guinness.  This is not to say there is no audience for this: think “Downton Abbey: The Murder Mystery Musical.”

While there’s a definite British lineage, through history, time, authorship or setting to both projects, they are distinctly different in tone, look, feel and outlook.  However, it doesn’t follow that in order to like one, you have to be cool towards the other.  It depends a little on what you think is funny, whether you like yours originating in the belly or with a knowing smile.  Often, each show manages to provide both, actually.

Critics, of course, might have a special  affinity for a production of two short plays that are about them. More importantly, while “Gentleman” is certainly theatrical, with abundant imaginative stagecraft as much a part of its charm as talented actors, the Shakespeare Company double-bill is about, not just critics but the theater itself.  These two plays are as much about the spirit that fuels the old Mickey Rooney exclamation, “I know, let’s put on a show,” as it is about the hyper-egos of playwrights, actors, and yes, those fiends, the critics.

Sheridan—he wrote “School for Scandal” and “The Rivals”—is famous for giving his characters personality shorthand names, such as Mrs. Malaprop.  In “The Critic,” there are critics named Mr. Sneer, Mr. Dangle, and Mr. Puff, (much better, surely than Marks or Pressley or, dare I say it, Tischler) not to mention actresses named Mrs. Buxom, Signora Decollete and an actor named Sir Fretful Plagiary.

“The Critic” is a farce of the kind that the Shakespeare  Theatre Company has embraced with what can only be called all-out effort and energy,  under director Keith Baxter and in this production, STC Artistic Director Michael Kahn, who treats the material with full-bull bravado, a high-dudgeon approach to bewigged farce that is wonderfully shameless.  It centers, like its counterpart, around a play, in this case a rehearsal of a play about the Spanish Armada by no less a man than Mr. Puff,  played by Richard Stanton as a man who must have come out of the womb as hysteria personified, wearing a wig.  Two critics—Mr. Dangle and Mr. Sneer—promise to give him tips during a disastrous, side-splitting rehearsal, which might be viewed by Mr. Sheridan himself.  It says something for Sheridan that he is a character in the play, albeit an unseen one.

Mr. Puff is the play’s central conceit, and its heart and soul because while his peers Sneer and Dangle, played with masterful and pompous self-confidence, seem to at least give sneering lip service to art, Mr. Puff is a master of, well, puffery. “Did I see the play?” he asks, astounded.  “Good God, no.”

His attempts to actually direct a full cast represented by something less than a full stage and then stage the destruction of the Spanish Armada has to be seen to be laughed at (and with).  What fools these playwrights be.

Stoppard was and is no fool—“The Real Inspector Hound” features a performance of one of those old British manor murder mysteries like Agatha Christie’s still popular “The Mousetrap” looked over by two critics—one only a second stringer, fretting over his second-string status.  It’s interesting to note that both plays do the play-within-a-play bit, where the plays are particularly awful or seem to be.

Here the issue is where the life of the critics—Stanton again playing the nervous stringer and John Ahlin playing another wonderfully named critic named Birdboot—dissect with their profession.  Critics even today are an intrinsic, if not much beloved, part of the theater world, in it but not inside. While the play plays out on stage—the actors embracing their lot and parts with vigor and originality—the critics talk about their lives—the string wondering about his status, the married Birdboot wondering how to pursue one of the actresses on stage.  

Stoppard’s one of the smartest, wittiest and subtle playwright of modern times. Consider “The Real Thing,” “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Jumpers” and my personal favorite, “Travesties.” He gives us laughs, lots of them, but he’s also, without beating you over the head with it, exploring what’s real, what’s not and how to make the reality on stage real and engaging.

“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” doesn’t reach that high (or low), but it delivers what it sets out to deliver—impeccable stagecraft, excellent performers, a whiz-bang first act in which an English nobody suddenly discovers that he is a member of an aristocratic  family with only eight people in front of him in line for the lordship.  Without too much thought, he hits upon a solution: Kill them all.

That’s the gist—plus a number of wonderful conceits—of the show: Will he do it, can he do it, how will he do it and can he keep both of the women he loves? The answer may or may not surprise you.

Here are some pluses: John Rapson, who plays all and sundry members of the tribe of d’Asquit with gleesome and seemingly impossible costume changes, and with distinct distinctiveness.  Kevin Massey, who has dash and charm and solid charisma as the upstart and murderous Monty Navarro.  Kristin Beth Williams as Sibella Hallward, the upwardly mobile blonde ambition type and Adrienne Eller as Phoebe, a much more demure cousin. Both ladies love and want Monty.

The mechanics of the deaths of the d’Asquit appeared to especially delight the opening night audiences.  For myself, in a farce I like some door slamming, which “Gentleman” delivers in an extended scene in which Monty tries to keep Sibella and Phoebe from encountering each other in the same apartment.  Too many instances of door-slamming to count, all of them funny.

The music and songs are pleasant and  are suited to the show and are staged and sung impeccably—but may not experience much of an afterlife without the show.

In these outrageous times, both productions are good for what might aid the ailing psyche, each in their own fashion.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company double bill is at the Lansburgh Theatre through Feb. 14. “Gentleman” is at the Eisenhower Theater through Jan. 30.

Gary Tischler •

            
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…”.

It’s a hallowed poetic phrase that might well do as a job description for Monty Navarro, the dapper anti-hero of the Tony Award-winning musical, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” and it surely fits the Broadway actor and musical comedy performer Kevin Massey, who plays Navarro like a sure-footed and steady-voiced—if murderous—centerpiece of the show playing at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater through Jan. 30.

The 13 words lead off “If,” one of the most famous poems written by the British poet of empireRudyard Kipling, which is entirely appropriate to the task at hand, given that the show,  which was something of a surprise recipient of ten Tony Award nominations and winner of four in 2014 (Best Musical, Direction, Book and Costume Design), is set amongst the trappings (and traps) of Edwardian English aristocracy, drawings rooms, board rooms, cemeteries and such, all of which become—oh, my—killing grounds.

To continue, if you are one Monty Navarro, a young man with no apparent lineage, small prospects and a fetching mistress, who suddenly finds out that he is in fact ninth in the line to a huge family fortune, and if you realize that it may take more time to have to gain the fortune in your lifetime and if you have considerable pluck, charm and imagination, then there is only one thing to do: eliminate them all.  

Furthermore, if you are an actor of considerable gifts and are confronted with a large cast of English eccentrics both fetching and absurd (eight of them played by the same actor), then you must use your talents to provide a  certain charismatic steadiness to a wildly careening, hyper-kinetic enterprise.

That’s exactly what Massey, already a veteran musical comedy performer, did.  He already understudied the role of Monty  in the Great White Way Company of “A Gentleman’s Guide” and has appeared in such diverse projects as “Memphis,” “Tarzan” and “Big River”.

In a telephone interview with the Georgetowner from Minneapolis, where the show was playing on a leg of its national tour before opening in Washington this month, Massey talked a little bit about Monty, the show, and life on the road with a national touring company.

“I have to kill John (actor John Rapson, who plays all eight of the D’Ysquith heirs who stand in Monty’s way to the title of Lord) over and over again,” he said. “It’s tricky stuff, some of it really imaginative stagecraft. But you really have to be on your feet at all times.”

Massey is more than nimble—acting is always a kind of collaboration and sharing, but in a large undertaking such as this show, you can’t get lost in the crowd.  “I’ve never been involved in a tour like this, and what’s really great, is you all become like a family,” he said. “I know that’s a cliché, but it’s true.”

On stage, Massey is as steady as a rock, but he also oozes charm and sympathy, and sex appeal, and if you think about it, that’s no small thing: after all you end up rooting for a man who is what amounts to a serial killer.   Not that many of the d’Ysquiths deserve comeuppance.  But Monty is always at the center of things, conniving, juggling not one, but two loves of his life, always charming people with the story of his mother,  cruelly expunged from the family after marrying for love and the wrong sort of man, evading discovery.  

“It always amazes me still how the show is being received,” he said. “I mean, we’ve been in Florida, Minnesota, in Durham, North Carolina, which was a total blast, because I grew up in nearby Black Mountain. Family and friends came. I mean, I was amazed by the broad appeal of the show, all across America.” The show will hit Des Moines, Iowa, a day after the caucuses there. “That should be interesting,” he said.

The appeal of the show  seems to be evident in the response of younger audiences who are perhaps not so familiar with the source material, an obscure book from the early 1900s as well as an Ealing Studios film from 1947, “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” which starred Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original “Star Wars”) as all the heirs.   Audience seem to especially appreciate the stagecraft of the various disposals.

Still, life on the road is tough, especially if you’re Massey. He’s been married for a year now to Kara Lindsay, who’s in New York, starring as Glinda in the mega hit “Wicked.”   “It’s really hard to be apart like this,” he said.  “I try to take a break and see her when I can.  But I hate not being with her.”

He’s a clearly-in-love-and-smitten husband.  In a recent online Put it in Writing entry on Broadway.com, asked about “My Woman Crush Wednesday on Broadway is: “Kara Lindsay! AKA Kara Massey, (accompanied by smiley face and a cutout photo), or as in post-show I like to hang out with: “my awesome wife,” or as in if I could take a one-year hiatus from show business I would: “Travel, study to be a financial adviser, be with my family, make babies.”

Gary Tischler • January 19, 2016

Washington National Opera Artistic Director Francesca Zambello has said she wants to bring young audiences to WNO by staging productions during the holidays specifically geared toward them.

A second WNO go at composer Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel,” based on the popular Grimm Brothers fairy-folk tale, ought to be just the ticket. It runs through Dec. 20 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm still attract young children in droves to movie theaters, Broadway and theme parks (just ask the Disney corporate world), and “Hansel and Gretel,” which opened WNO’s holiday series four years ago, seems ideally suited to bring in adults with children in tow.

“Hansel and Gretel” has something that regular opera fans really appreciate. Gorgeous music throughout, it’s a listenable opera with the kind of score — complicated, often lush, diverse — that satisfies adult operagoers. As for the kids, well, just watch them. Beside the title characters, loving but sometimes battling siblings who go into the dark forest in search of food (not always plentiful in their household), there are the struggling parents, Peter and Gertrude; the Sandman; the Dew Fairy; a non-speaking but quite fearsome owl; and of course the Witch.

The witch is played in let-it-all-hang-out fashion by American soprano Kerriann Otaño, who hits the high notes in reckless, cackling fashion. Apparently as starved, nearly, as her prey, she moves around the stage as if powered by an Eveready Energizer, dolled up like one of the evil sisters from “Cinderella.” She is, as required, equal parts scary and funny, and as colorful as human fireworks.

There is a reason, of course, that fairy tales remain fodder for operas, ballets and dances, novels, plays and children’s theater. The stories themselves never get too old or old-fashioned and are pliable to reworking and making contemporary. There are today two network television series drawing on the Grimm name and the brothers’ stories and characters.

“Hansel and Gretel” is fairly simple: the siblings get lost in the woods, their parents search for them, they are captured by the witch who intends to bake them into gingerbread and the children — quite a bit more clever than they seem at first — outsmart the wicked witch and push her into the oven. Children and parents are reunited, the gingerbread children become children again and all’s well that ends well.

This sort of thing, when done and staged as well as this production is, is catnip for kids. Directed at a speed mindful of its potential audience, the two-hour affair moves along in spritely fashion, all the while never stinting the musical quality of the opera — and it is a full-length opera. The sets by Robin Vest and the costumes by Timm Burrow are a visual delight.

Mezzo-soprano Aleksandra Romano as Hansel was strong-voiced while soprano Ariana Wehr not only sang Gretel to perfection but played her with a winsome, coquettish, bright-eyed charm. Most impressive vocally was Russian American tenor Aleksey Bogdanov, who sang joyfully and with great authority.

The audience — and it’s fair to say that around half the audience was made up of children — was a great barometer of the steadfast appeal of the opera. We watched two sisters, eight or nine years old, sitting intently interested on the edge of their seats throughout the proceedings, sharing a set of small opera glasses
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Gary Tischler • January 11, 2016

By now, it’s probably not a surprise that rising theater star and associate artistic director at Signature Theater Matthew Gardiner would be the obvious choice to direct the Arlington theater’s production of “West Side Story,” which runs through Jan. 24.

Gardiner was nominated, after all, for two Helen Hayes awards for best director this year—for “Sunday in the Park with George” (winner) and “Cabaret.” And he’s been a go-to director for both more or less mainstream musicals (“Xanadu”) and more off-the-beaten-path straight plays like “Tender Napalm,” “Art” and “Really, Really.”

“Actually, ‘West Side Story’ is my all-time-ever favorite musical,” said Gardiner, who was picked for the associate artistic spot in 2011. “It’s perfect. I think it’s the best structured musical drama ever written. For me, it’s practically perfect.” 

“My first contact with it was the film version, pretty much like most people and I fell in love with it. That opening scene of the gangs coming at you in the screen, that was really memorable,” he said. “I also saw the touring pre-Broadway production several years ago, and I actually liked it a lot, although some critics had problems with it.”

That version had dialogue and lyrics spoken and sung by the Puerto Rican in Spanish.  “I thought that made sense, I think it was very strong. But we’re not doing that.”

Gardner grew up with his twin brother James in College Park, Maryland.  He started out wanting to be a dancer, and as such had roles in productions of the Christmas venerables, “The Nutcracker” at Washington Ballet and “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theatre.

“It’s remarkable, I know, that we’ve never actually done ‘West Side Story’ before,” Gardiner said. “The lyrics, after all, are by Stephen Sondheim, and we certainly are known for doing Sondheim.  It’s no small undertaking, that’s for sure.”

There are two factors at work for Gardiner in approaching what is such a classic, familiar work.

“You always think in big, expansive terms with this show, it has all this dancing,” he said. “You’re looking at it in a panorama way. The theater here is set up differently, and so we can emphasize the intimacy of the show as well as its larger component.  You’re going to be ten, 20 or more feet away from the stage up close and personal, and I think this way, you’ll get involved with the characters in ways that aren’t possible in the move or a normal stage.”

“To me, the lyrics and the music are so moving, and experiencing things this way brings something touching for the audience,” he said.

The other critical component of “West Side Story” is that it will feel brand new or, as in the expression “ripped from the headlines.”

Gary Tischler •

When it comes to the holidays for Washington theater-goers, Christmas isn’t over yet.

There’s still plenty of theatrical goodies available, for latecomers, or late gifting, going even past the new year, with regular runs finishing up, and some shows being extended.

It’s not just Yuletude shows—but those oddities, funny and serious, appealing and different that this season has to offer.

Yes, there’s still a chance to see “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theatre with Edward Gero through Dec. 31. Indeed, there’s still a chance to see another kind of Scrooge—also through the end of 2015—at the Keegan Theatre on Church Street in Dupont Circle with “An Irish Carol,” which is about the travails and  troubles of a wealthy Irish pub owner who gets to take a deep look at his troubled life.

Elsewhere, there’s lots of music, music and musicals, a number of shows extending their runs and others completing theirs, a list that has something for everyone.

At the Kennedy Center, there’s something from Broadway, and something that’s hopefully going to Broadway.

There’s  the road company of “Matilda the Musical,” a smash Broadway hit that manages to be both heart-warming and dark, in the inimitable fashion of author Roald Dahl, who created the title character of a much put upon and long-suffering girl named Matilda, who has some special powers, lots of courage and energy, with which she combats her criminally-minded parents and a dire and monstrous school director named Mrs. Trunchbull played with grand relish (and mustard) by Bryce Ryness.  This may be the first big and splashy musical about abuse and bullying, but the production, directed by Matthew Warchus and choreographed spectacularly by Peter Darling, with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and a book by Dennis Kelly, brings it off. It’s fast moving—with terrific sets and a cast headed by several Maltidas over the course of the run.  It’s good to go at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House until Jan. 10.

Also at the Kennedy Center at the Eisenhower Theater is the pre-Broadway run for the  Americana-Folkish new musical “Bright Star” with music and book by Steve Martin and music and lyrics by Edie Brickell.  A charmer that imagines a South full of rustic folks and would-be novelists, it’s fueled by banjo, guitar and fiddle music. It contains a great centerpiece performance by Carmen Cusack, who stars as a woman who published a literary magazine in North Carolina after World War II and has a big, and romance-fueled secret.  Through Jan. 10.

Three big musicals are having their runs extended, especially the Signature Theater’s production of “West Side Story,” directed by James Gardiner. It was already scheduled to run through Jan. 24 and has already garnered another extension through Jan. 31, because it’s become a truly hot ticket.  The Stephen  Sondheim-Jerome Robbins-Leonard Bernstein musical about rival gangs in New York comes to modern times again a la Romeo and Juliet, yes it does, with songs like  “Maria” and “Tonight” fueling the proceedings.

Out at Olnery, Jerry Whiddon is directing the Olney Theatre production of the swell musical about wise guys—all right, Broadway gamblers—showgirls and a salvation army lady—called “Guys and Dolls.” It gets a second extension, through Jan. 10.  “Luck Be a Lady,” indeed.

“Kiss Me Kate” features not only Petrucchio, Shakespeare, Kate, swell theater and broadway guys and dolls, but music and songs by Cole Porter, and direction by Alan Paul, who has brought his gifts to a series of musicals at the Shakespeare Theatre Company.  “Kiss Me Kate” has been extended through Jan. 10  at Sidney Harman Hall.

Let’s not forget the Chicago Neo Futurists, the heroes of Chicago’s underground theatre community, who’ve landed again at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre with their distinct style of audience-friendly-and-involving comedy (be prepared to be a part of the show), which touches on a set of topics (changing every night) with a complete skit.  In their production, “Too  Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind,” the troupe races the clock to perform 30 miniature plays in 60 minutes, giving new meaning to fast and furious as it applies to the theater.  Funny, topical, frantic, full of surprises, it’s a new year kind of show which may look exactly like a futurist show.  Through Jan. 3, known as Sunday.

Gary Tischler • January 4, 2016

If “Old Lang Syne” is the song of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Eve celebration with music, dancing (in the streets or elsewhere) and a smack on the lips at the last second of the old year, then the Blue Danube Waltz is probably the music of the first days of the new year.

That will be the case at the Music Center at Strathmore’s 15th annual New Year’s Concert, 3 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 3, with the annual return and presentation of the Salute to Vienna New Year’s Concert. It will be nothing less than a champagne-feel-good music-and-dance resurrection of an empire from long ago across the ocean, the world of fin-de-sicle Austria and the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Emperor Franz Joseph and the musical world of composers like Johann Strauss, the waltz king, among others.

It’s a world of tuxedoed, elegant and handsome swains dancing with their beloved, in gossamer, eye-popping gowns, and the signature piece of music to this afternoon is “The Blue Danube Waltz” by Strauss. It is a piece of music that is almost miraculous in its ability to engender feelings of joy, happiness and wanting to move around a ballroom without your feet seeming to touch the ground.  If, after a long Saturday night and morning, start your Sunday by playing “The Blue Danube,” let it swirl over you like warm light, have a cup of Viennese-roasted coffee and start your day smiling.  It will cure hangovers, the sour taste of early morning television political discussions, and any sort of angst. As music, it is its own happy dance.

“I think that it’s probably the biggest selling work of music ever,” said Marion Glatz, who, with her husband, the Hungarian pianist Attila  J. Glatz, runs the concert production company that produces “Salute to Vienna” among numerous other musical productions which tour worldwide.  

Marion Glatz—aside from her work with “Salute to Vienna”—is ideally suited to be what she is, an articulate cheerleader for the music that is emblematic of the show.  She’s the daughter of a Viennese father and a Polish mother, received a master’s degree in business in Nuremberg, Germany, lived for a number of years in Munich, a Bavarian city which has a close affinity to Vienna in temperament, culture and music. Today, she lives in Toronto with her husband.  The couple have made “Salute to Vienna” the largest simultaneously produced concert in North America.

“We are celebrating our 20th anniversary this time around,” Marion Glatz said in a telephone interview. “It is meant to make people think of a delightful, sophisticated, sparkling world,  somewhat like the annual Vienna New Year’s concert with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.  You are transported to a different world, where the idea is to make people feel good,  with a certain kind of style. It’s a form of total entertainment. The waltzes endure—they always have—and so does the music. There is, I think, especially today, when there seems to be so much trouble in the world, a special need for what this concert offers.”

The Glatz duo began with a single concert in Toronto in 1995, and the production spread like wild fire. “We were at the Kennedy Center before,” she said. “Now are [at the Strathmore] with this beautiful hall and music center. . . . Obviously, there’s a hunger for this kind of music and show.” 

The Strathmore “Salute to Vienna” will feature the Strauss Symphony of America, with Matthias Fletzberger conducting, and also features Viennese soprano Natalia Usdhakova, American tenor Brian Cheney and dancers from the Europaballett St. Polten & International Champion Ballroom Dances.  There will be vignettes from operas and operettas like “The Merry Widow,” “Das Fledermaus” and  other works, along with polkas and dances.

The couple is engaged with other productions, including “Bravissimo! Opera’s Greatest Hits,” “The Godfather Live,” the North American Tour of the Vienna Mozart Orchestra and others.

“In his time, Strauss was the biggest musician. Bigger than Elvis—and maybe the Beatles,” said Glatz, who is making sure that the music continues to create—if not eras—perfect afternoons and moments of good feeling.