Performance

Gary Tischler • November 7, 2013

R&J are here to stay—for a while—“Romeo
and Juliet,” under the inventive direction of
Aaron Posner with his spouse Erin Weaver as
Juliet and Michael Goldsmith as Romoe remain
at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre through
Dec. 1.

Two to catch at Signature—Christine Lahti,
who first gained attention by stealing the movie
“Swing Shift” right out from under star Goldie
Hawn back in the day, is starring in the world
premiere production of “Pride in the Falls of
Autrey Mill”, a drama about suburban secrets
by hot new playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo
of “Really, Really” fame at Signature Theater
through December. Just to know you’re in
good hands, Michael Kahn, the Shakespere
Theatre Company Artistic Director, is directing.
Also at Signature through November 24 is
the first of three world premiere musicals. In
“Crossings”, a train station platform becomes
a meeting place across time and space. Music
and lyrics by Matt Conner and book by Grace
Barnes, directed by Signature artistic director
Eric Schaeffer.

It’s “Appropriate” at Woolly Mammoth
Theatre —Woolly Mammoth Theatre , the
city’s always cool, never-too-old cutting edge
theatre is presenting the East DCoast premiere
of “Appropriate”, a comic drama by
Washingtonian Branden Jacobs-Jekiins, directed
by Liesl Tommy. It’s a sharp-eyed, sharptongued
look at what lies beneath a Souther
families’ secrets. Through Dec. 1.

Star-Crossed Lovers—“Love in Afghanistan”,
playwright Charles Randolph Wright’s new
play about what happens when a hip hop star
entertaining troops in Afghanistan, meets a
young AFghanistani enterpreter committed to
the fraught-with-danger cause of helping her
country’s women. Through Nov. 17.

An Argument—“The Argument”, a newly commissioned
2013 edition of Alexandra Gersten Vassilaro’s relationship drama is now at [Theater
J]9http://washingtondcjcc.org/center-for-arts/theater-j/) through Nov. 24. [gallery ids="118705,118699,118694,118679,118687" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • October 31, 2013

Donovan Leitch was in the wind, halted for a day and night in Georgetown.

Like all poets, minstrels, the self-professed Hurdy Gurdy Man was on the move, like a stitch of moon on the rise.

He had done a concert at the Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center in Rockville, Md., the night before, appearing surely a little like an unexpected apparition and legend there. Next day, he was on his way for a visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, the scene of a signal triumph only the year before. That’s when he was inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame, an event many of his admirers, of the torch holders with giddy lyrics of 1960s hits like “Sunshine Superman,” “Mellow Yellow,” “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” running through their heads was way overdue.

And he was singing and talking about “Shadows of Blue,” a resurrection album of sorts, perhaps also long overdue, which he recorded in Nashville this year, the place where much of the music began for him. It was full of songs he’d put aside, like notes for a novel or a poem, and they sat in his life waiting patiently along with some new works.

We caught up with him then in the lobby of the Georgetown Inn. He wasn’t difficult to spot: in the flesh, as in the music, there is no one that looks or sounds like Donovan Leitch. We’d run into him before, at the Govinda Gallery, where some years ago he had an exhibition of his “Sapphographs,” at the Kennedy Center with movie director David Lynch of “Blue Velvet” fame where on a Transcendental Meditation event, and most recently and again at the Kennedy Center where he was a part of a star-studded tribute to Woody Guthrie, a man whose life and music haunts him and inspired him.

There’s a singular look to him, and now that look, which had the air of a Celtic Rimbaud, an affable, seductive boy-poet about it, is still there, weathered a bit, deepened, but still, in his sixties, having already lived a few lives, youthfully buoyant and full of eager curiosity. He is one of those singers whose singing voice sounds like his speaking voice. It’s not exactly musical, but it has the singer’s loop of valleys and ridges and side roads.

“By God, it’s good to be here,” he said. “I love Georgetown. So many good memories and good friends and people.”

In his hotel room, a weathered guitar lies on the bed, a green and color-hued guitar, it looks well-used, no spit and polish there. “It’s seen some days,” he said. “But I like it that way.” Whereupon, he launched into a story about Jimmy Paige of Led Zeppelin and his cache of electric guitars, their own, shiny, cleaned and tuned every day, and never played. “He showed them to me once,” he said. “Can you imagine, all of that, finely tuned, no sound?”

“These songs in this album, they were waiting, for a long time,” he said. “It’s like poetry, the time has to be ripe and right. It was right now.”

We can and do, of course, wander over the course of his life, in which an idea or two figure so strongly, come together. If you remember the 1960s at all, smoked some stuff, danced with hippie girls, you were seduced and driven by the music. The music started out in protest and folk music and moved into a rich and deep musical labyrinth which was full of colorful and amazing wizardly characters. In that time, what you did more than anything was move to the music that had lyrics you never forgot. It’s easy to lose track of Donovan in all those names—the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Stones, the Animals, Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Santana, Joplin and Slick, not to mention Otis and Hendrix, and Motown in the background.

But there was also only one Donovan Leitch, a Scottish lad who had his days of street singing sticking his hat out with his pal Gypsy Dave vagabonding and busking but who would become a singer-songwriter and star in that cauldron of folk and funk and rock and roll, with his first hit “Catch the Wind.” “That’s when things went into the stratosphere,” he said. In the collection album, “The Essential Donovan,” you can catch that rising wind. He was a part of it all, with a singular do, and a singular voice, and the do is still there, a little wilder, gray streaked, and the pure eyes and just that voice, with etchings of rock and roll and balladry in it.

No question that he was a star. He has an id and an ego, and lots of his sentences begin with the letter I, but then he has a lot to say and talk about, and when he says “I think”, you tend to listen. But in a conversation like this, a lot of that doesn’t matter—you begin to realize after all these years, how much of an original he is, and how original all of them were. In that hall of fame and the roster of rockers and singers and balladeers and players, there is no other “Donovan,” not even a sixth cousin, although many have said that he was a lot like Dylan. “You can say it if you want,” he said. “I learned a lot and sure there is influence from everybody. Mine included me dad, and Dylan, sure, and Rambling Jack Elliott, who was a friend.”

There is, once you think about it, a touch of the ancient about him—ancient Greece, medieval rover-abouting, the spoken word becoming the sung truth. He was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, and he talks about his dad a lot—one Donald Leitch, a Rolls Royce factory employee, but a man whom Donovan sees as having the touch of the poet.

And that’s it too—that lyric, minstrel thing—his autobiography is “Donovan, the Hurdy Gurdy Man,” which in America is a step removed from Mr. Bo Jangles and the like. The whole book is full of poetics, and lyrics and lines both straight, and crooked. Look at the chapter headings and you can sum him up pretty well: “Rebel,” “Vagabond,” “Windcatcher” and “Folksinger” early on, “Fairytale,” “The World Is Beautiful,” “Sunshine Supergirl,” “Magician” and so on.

You end up talking snatches of memory, lines from poem, and you end up in the end really appreciating his gifts. You look him up, hear the poem he said for acceptance, listen to him sing “Season of the Witch” with John Cougar Mellencamp, how he presents himself as a gift of the muse that is music.

I sat down and wrote this article, while listening to his music. You realize, though the two albums are years apart—that it’s a long time from “Electric Banana” to “Blue Jean Angel”– the early work still seems brand new, while the later songs and music feel sometimes like an echo finally freed as well as finely ground. Those bookends make the old music new, the new music old. They come together in a kind of dance.

Donovan’s been nominated for the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone raved about “Shadows of Blue.” He’ll be in Ireland singing. It’s like, just like the song, he’s still “Catching the Wind,” not a second wind, but something as fresh as the first wind.

Gary Tischler • October 21, 2013

People who know about Sutton Foster talk about Broadway, the whole story line around her career and that’s as it should be. Broadway is where Foster made her mark, an indelible mark rewarded with two Tony awards, Drama Desk Awards and Outer Circle Awards, especially for her landmark starring roles in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Anything Goes.”

But the Sutton Foster that will be in concert at the Music Center at Strathmore, 8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 12, will not just be the Broadway star, she’ll be a star in the firmament of cabaret signers, which, as a tribe, are hallmarked for their originality. She’ll be singing Broadway songs, unexpected pop classics, songs from her album “Wish” and, oh, just wait and see . . .

“It will be a lot more intimate, a lot more of who I am, and I hope eclectic and different,” Sutton said in a phone interview. “It’s a challenge, but I’ve been doing it now for a while—all over the country, as well as at the Café Carlyle, which is really a wonderful, small place for singers.”

Sutton is one of those performers who isn’t everything she’s capable of at first glance. She’s one of those people who can do it all—a quickly disappearing type on the stage and in film and television. She can act—see her work on the much acclaimed but sadly cancelled “Bunhead”, and on Off-Broadway in “Trust”. She can sing, she can play the ingénue, the sexy, brassy powerhouse, she can be both winsome and Ethel Mermanish, she can, for sure, dance and strike a pose, and she can tap. She’s funny, physically and otherwise, the humor and optimism shine through.

“There’s a body of work, and I’m proud of all of that,” she said. “This is new, it’s a little like showing some parts of yourself, you’re not playing a part. It’s very liberating, after the Broadway work. And of course, I’m working with Michael Rafter, my arranger and pianist, who is just amazing. When we did the Carlyle, it was the most intimate place, and I think at first it was scary. It’s like a living room with 90 people in it and yet, as setting like that, it let’s you be vulnerable and I like that.” You can find one part of it on You Tube, Foster, goofy, bold, making faces, singing in high dudgeon on “I Don’t Wanna Show Off” from “The Drowsy Chaperone,” a surprise hit in which she starred.”

“You want to challenge yourself,you always want to grow in this business, you can’t be looking back and trying to repeat yourself. Things move fast.

“That’s why when I was offered “Bunheads”, which aired on ABC, I jumped at it,” she said. “It meant moving to Los Angeles, and I was very much a part of New York. But the part was wonderful.”

She played a Las Vegas showgirl, teaching dance, and it was, by all accounts a unique work. “It was so amazing an experience, so different from anything I’d done.

And it got cancelled. “That was a shock, but I’d do that again in a heartbeat. We just didn’t see it coming.”

She has grown a lot since she first made her mark on Broadway when in classic Broadway lore style, she was plucked from the ensemble (she’d already been in “Annie”, “Les Miz” among others) to replace Erin Daily, the star of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” during rehearsals in San Diego in 2002. The result was the kind of impact and “star-is-born” buzz, enough to win a Tony and other awards.

Although she went on to other hit shows as “Little Women”, The Drowsy Chaperone”, “Young Frankenstein”, and “Shrek”, she had to wait until 2011, when she got the coveted part of the spectacular Reno Sweeney in the remounting of “Anything Goes” (a big smash, hit in New York and on the road) and she absolutely killed it. It’s a bravura part and she put the kind of zing on it that made it hers for the duration of her run. She wore hot costumes, red-hot, she tapped, she danced, she dazzled everybody and your momma, her voice belting out the big numbers.

You see the pictures of her, the interviews, the videos and you see all sorts of people, because of her many gifts. She’s a swan who can actually play the part of duck, if she had to, she could probably still play Cinderella, or a woman growing into herself, serious as the blues.

There’s another online video, a long session made from an “Anything Goes” rehearsal, the title song number at the end of the first act, one of the most happiness-inducing numbers (thank you, Cole Porter) ever created. In it, just about the whole cast is involved, and most are in street clothes, and there’s no glamorous, glittery costume for Foster, just a wispy pull on blouse slacks and tap heels, casual lady in ponytail.

If you watch her closely, surprising you with the gutsy range of her voice, with those languid hand gestures, light, and precise with her moves and taps, she makes everything look almost as casual as breathing in and out. This young woman (she’s 38 now and still looks a little like an ingénue, all eyes, long legs and arms, gangly and lovely) seems hardly to be working up a sweat through the number, which is fast, furious and insinuating. And here’s the thing: at the end, and throughout you see someone totally at home in her world, she’s confident, happy, there’s this rush going on around her that seems like a force of nature.

It will be a little quieter at Strathmore, although it’s hardly an intimate room, what with nearly 2,000 seats and perfect acoustics.

She’s probably going to show off, make you feel some things you didn’t expect to feel, don’t know how, don’t know when, but she will.

Gary Tischler •

From everything we know, Francesca Zambello—in her first full season as Washington National Opera’s artistic director—likes a challenge. From everything we know about composer Guiseppe Verdi, he can certainly present a challenge, especially with “La Forza del Destino” (“The Force of Destiny”), a rarely performed—for any number of sensible reasons—minefield of an opera, which presents directors, conductors and singers with an array of pitfalls.

If this relatively—it’s three hours plus but could be longer, depending on what’s in and what’s out—short production wavers and falters here and there, and sometimes threatens to crash into chaos and confusion, everyone on hand can take a little responsibility. But the principal fault is the opera’s construction, its raison d’etre. The music, as with all things Verdi, is awesome, while the libretto, based on the play “Don Alvaro” by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, written in 1835, is not so much.

Yet the production, set more or less in vague, contemporary times in Spain and Italy, also manages to be compelling, its very overwrought craziness almost works for it. For that, Zambello can take a lot of credit—just for daring not to play it safe on Verdi’s centenary with a Verdi crowd pleaser, and for moving everything along at a feverish pace, overcoming the opera’s improbabilities, and outcomes, which are just plain too, well, operatic.

Give some credit, too, to young American soprano Adina Aaron, who has already had some notable triumphs, including “Aida” at Glimmerglass, directed by Zambello. She took the lead role of the tragic Donna Leonora, who is driven to a life of solitude and isolation after her beloved Don Alvaro accidentally was responsible for killing Leonora’s father, the Marquis of Calatrava as the couple were about to elope against the father’s wishes. Aaron sings movingly and with emotional and vocal range—especially in the quieter scenes, as she anguished her loyalties for love and family and pleads to be allowed into sanctuary and solitude. Vocally, she tugged at the audience with her voice and her ability to perform as a tragic heroine.

Verdi doesn’t help matters, of course, by literally disappearing her for most of the lengthy second act, which leaves the narrative and the singing in the hands of the Chilean tenor Giancarlo Monsalve, who sings Don Alvaro and American tenor Mark Delavan, who plays the implacable Don Carlo, Leonora’s brother on the hunt for vengeance for the stain on the family honor who has vowed to avenge the murder of his father and the dishonoring of his sister. The best way to do that—kill both of them. But after Leonora has made her way to solitude, Don Alvaro and Don Carlo, each searching for Leonora, each living under false names, get caught up in a vaguely modern war where the sides are not quite identifiable as gunmen, armed with AK-47s, hunt each other amid a scarred, charred city landscape, both saving each other’s lives in turn.

The trouble here isn’t just that the story gets a little silly. There’s only so much coincidence you can blame on destiny. The concern is that a certain sameness sets in: the two men sing about their plans, their cries for vengeance or despair—the vengeance for Carlo, the despair for Alvaro, who more than several times lets out that he only hopes for death. For a time, each is unaware of the other’s identity and have become sort of frenemies, buddies in risks, danger and courage. But alas, Carlo soon finds who Alvaro is, and the chase is on again after a bitter but inconclusive fight. Oddly enough, Alvaro winds up as taking up the cloth in the very same monastery where Leonora is hidden— ah, destiny. And soon enough, the three are reunited, with tragic results.

Mansalve hits his mark and notes and cuts a dashing figure, and Carlos is a menacing, large figure who you can certainly hear, but neither makes an emotional impact—and for those two, it’s a long time to carry the production before Leonora reappears. Musically, Chinese-American conductor Zian Zhang leads with energy and force, almost to a fault. The war is presented by Zambello and designer Peter J. Davison with verve, smarts and high, stark drama, the combat zone starts out as a kind of red light district, where the impassioned Preziosilla, a kind of hot-stuff seer and kinky prophetess, holds forth with bold passion as played by Georgian mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze, turns into ruins and doubles at times as a portable MASH unit.

The scenes at the monastery are striking, touching and quite powerful, and sometimes—when the whiny priest Melitone (Columbian bass-baritone Valeriano Lanchas) is on hand—even funny.

Zambello chose to put the noted overture at the start of the proceedings with the performers miming actions. It seemed a muted way to begin, especially with the opening scene exploding into startling drama and great beauty, when Leonara sings how she is torn between her great love and loyalty to her father, whom she loves. Everything seems to happen at once: “Shots fired,” confusion, escape, abandonment in the space of minute. And we and they are all off in pursuit of: glory, peace, love, adventure, danger, requitement and forgiveness, vengeance and all the usual stuff.

What Zambello has done is to bring all this to preposterous and often thrilling live action—the landscapes, and settings brim with the energies and schemes, the sorrows not just of heroes, villains and heroines, but priests, the starving, the wounded, the holy and unholy all around them.

That’s what makes this particular “La Forza del Destino”, a force, if not of destiny, at least high drama and stirring (by Aaron and the orchestra) music.

At the Kennedy Center: “La Forza del Destino” will be performed Oct. 16, 20, 24 and 26, while Amber Wagner, Rafael Davila and Luca Salsi will take on the three principals Donna Leonora, Don Alvaro and Don Carlo on Oct. 18 and 22.

Gary Tischler • October 14, 2013

To tell the truth, when it came time to pick
up the phone and call pianist Jeremy
Denk, whom the Washington Post had
called “a quintessential 21st-century performer,”
and “an omnivorous musician, who scales the
Everests of the solo literature” on his cellphone,
I felt a little intimidated, a little tenuous. I had
made the mistake of looking him up on the net,
never having actually heard him in concert.

Denk is coming to the Kennedy Center’s Terrace
Theater Saturday, Oct. 12 for a 2 p.m. performance
of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” itself
a famously challenging Mt. Everest of a composition
worthy of the greatness label, as the first
pianist in the Washington Performing Arts Society’s
2013/14 Piano Masters seasons.

The thing is that I found in my net travels that
Denk wasn’t just good, heck, he was great, amazing,
deft, quick and smart, eloquent, challenging,
sometimes funny and very versatile.
And I’ m not talking about the music or his
playing, although most of the adjectives can do
double duty for Denk.

I’m talking about his writing, articles for
the New Yorker, to begin with, but also an online
blog his site called “Think Denk,” which
are dense with observation, mood, thicket-like
forays into alternate realities, they’re the kind
of blogs that give bloggers a good and worthy
name, especially an entry called “The glamorous
life and thoughts if a concert pianist,” which reveal
his sharp, wicked, often self-deprecating humor
which gave rise to a thought that if you ever
got insulted, somehow, by Denk, in person or in
passing, that you might mistake it for a badge of
honor.

All this, by the way, occurred even before
Denk had been named one of the 24 major talents
to receive a grant from the MacArthur Foundation,
the so-called “genius grants” in September.

I’d only encountered Denk—who tours frequently,
and in the past has done so with uberviolinist
Joshua Bell—on a spectacular album released
by Bell called “Joshua Bell at home with
friends,” home being a New York residence that
included a full-scale studio, some of the friends,
Denk among them, including trumpeter Chris,
flautist Elizabeth Mann, Sting, percussionist
Joaquin “El Kid” Diaz, singer Josh Groban,
Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth, singer and
vocalist Frankie Moreno and Baritone Nathan
Gunn, to name a few.

Bell, Denk and Gunn combined on a rendition
of part Rochmaninoff’s “O, Cease Thy Singing,
Maiden Fair” on an album that was musically,
genre-diverse, a fair example of classical
stars reaching often far and wide to expand their
audience and their interests and challenges.

Denk isn’t exactly an example of a classical
artists with an interest in merging his gifts into
the pop scene, but his musical interests are nevertheless
diverse and intense, especially his devotion
to the work of 20th century American composer
Charles Ives and the Hungarian composer
Gyorgi Ligeti, whose etudes were part of “Ligeti/
Beethoven”, which he recorded for Nonesuch
Records last year.

Denk made his recital debut at Alice Tully
Hall as the winner of the William Petcheck Piano
Debut Recital Award from Juilliard in 1997. He
has appeared regularly over the years on tours, or
with the Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, London,
New World, St. Louis and San Francisco.

But now—the Goldberg Variations, which he
has already recorded and is touring on. I ran
across one of his articles, essays, blogs or musings,
called “Why I Hate the ‘Goldberg Variations.’
” The Variations, which Denk says are
a kind of one-upmanship of Handel on the part
of Bach, is a little like “Hamlet” in the theatrical
canon for performers, pianist become Ahab chasing
the Bach Moby Dick variations.

“I did say that, I know, but it’s not like I
hadn’t been doing the variations,” Denk said. “I
avoided it for a long time, because, well, lots of
reasons. For one thing, everybody is going to
compare you to the Glenn Gould version(s) of
the variations. But you know you will eventually
confront them, and it’s a feeling of dread. So it
will be my version.”

In the admittedly somewhat tongue-in-cheek
article, he says and repeats, “Yes, I’m suspicious
of the Goldbergs’ popularity. I worried for years
that I would be seduced into playing them, and
would become like all the others—besotted, cultish—
and that is exactly what happened. I have
been assimilated into the Goldberg Borg.”

The fact that he should be using a Star Trek
anology tells you something about Denk, although
I’m not sure exactly what. He writes in
a way that he talks—full sentences, paragraphs,
wayward thoughts seeming to be teleported—
beam me down, Scottie—he is a version of the
man that photographer Walker Evans urged us all
to be—when you go out in the world go out with
a hungry eye, and in Denk’s case, hungry ears,
hungry thoughts.

There are in that vast palace and kingdom
sever NPR segments with Denk, walking
through his Manhattan residence where he practices,
writes, and thinks and does and looks out
his window to the street below. At only 43 years
of age, there is something this grey-white haired
man in slacks and a black t-shirt working, practicing,
deft fingers, against a background of an
army of books, including variations of Proust.
“It’s full of odd things, I know,” he says. “I practice
an enormous amount of time,” he says to us.
‘You have too. This is the life you lead. It’s who
I am.” He teaches, he reads, he has, you suspect,
a big circle of friends, because even over
the phone, or in his writing, you guess that he’s
the kind of man who is enormously stimulating,
good company , a curious soul who whose table
talk is interesting, but a man who knows how to
listen, a quality which you would think is obvious.
Mock-complaining, he says the Variations
are deliberately boring, but that “they’re so good,
you don’t notice it.”

I haven’t heard his version, but I have heard
Simone Dinnerstein’s version, and you can hear
and see what a commitment it is.

Back in the 19th century, Americans in salons
might have sat absolutely still for it—this was the
world of Emily Dickinson, Melville and Whitman,
all of whom he admires and reads.

You presume Proust is on the list, all of
which may account for the tone of his writings,
the sheer excellence of it.

I particularly liked his written reaction to the
fact that the Library of Congress wanted to included
his blog in the library, or a seemingly panick
stricken blog, titled “Bizarre Boston Blog, in
which his cure for living in a state of emergency
is to banish real emergencies by making trivial
matters emergencies.

In any case, all genial protestations aside, I
am willing to bet that Denk’s “Goldberg Variations”
won’t be a battle to overcome boredom,
that his will be in the playing (which critics have
often noted for its generosity) and in the feeling,
be another variation, his own.

Gary Tischler • October 7, 2013

Tom Clancy, author of dozens of mega-million best-sellers sharpened by his knowledge of high-tech military gadgetry that often made him seem like a prescient consultant of the future, died at 66 this week, just as his next best-seller (no question about it) that features his hero Jack Ryan was set to be published in December.

By profession, Clancy was an insurance man, although, after his success, he often liked to dress in a style that screamed ex-military, even though illness kept him from serving. What he ended up being was neither insurance man nor intelligence officer nor GI Joe, but the kind of writer of block-buster novels that endeared him to millions of readers, probably most of whom are men.

With his money, he managed at one point to buy a tank all his own, and I supposed he was entitled. He probably would be the first to say he wasn’t writing literature, but he does belong right up there, in contemporary terms, with Stephen King, John Grisham, and later David Baldacci and others, even Joe Patterson, who is not so much an author but a machine and a factory all rolled into one.

Clancy’s first book, about a rogue Soviet submarine on the loose in the dark days of the Cold War during the Reagan Administration was published by the Naval Institute Press, a small publishing house located fittingly in Annapolis, specializing in naval history of all sorts, but never in fiction. Clancy’s price for “The Hunt For the Red October” was $5,000, which wouldn’t cover train fare to a submarine base in California these days.

Lots of folks discovered Clancy, including President Ronald Reagan, who put it on his reading list. Clancy never had to sell another insurance policy after that. “Red October” was made into a major Hollywood movie that starred Alec Baldwin, and Sean Connery as the Russian sub commander. It was the kind of movie Hollywood did really well—not so far removed from humanity like the Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis movies of the time, let alone Chuck Norris. It was filled with action, populated with interesting characters, starring top stars and made with no expenses paid. You didn’t have to be embarrassed watching them.

This is something Clancy’s work had in common with that of King and Grisham—their books made great thoroughly professional and entertainingly first-class movies. Baldwin played Jack Ryan, and then gave up the part to Harrison Ford in two other excellent Clancy books that become films: “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” Later, Ben Affleck played a younger version of ryan with Morgan Freeman as his mentor, and Baltimore hit by a nuclear bomb in “The Sum of All Fears.” Chris Pine stars in “Jack Ryan: Shadow One,” opening December. Ryan, in subsequent novels, rose to become President of the United States.

Those books became great movies—as good as Stephen King’s many movie version of his novels (except for Nicholson in “The Shining”) as good as Grisham films of his books like “The Firm” or “The Pelican Brief.”

Clancy—like the best of story tellers if not the best writer like a Faulkner or even a King—invented a kind of history, a whole world that looked and sounded familiar, what with the weaponry, the conspiratorial battle of armies and intelligence services, and he created heroes who behaved like heroes.

That’s not a bad legacy.

There’s a picture in the Washington Post tribute which shows Clancy in a room thick with wall-to-wall books, reading one of them (we know not which). Chances are that the book was written by someone else, and so were the ones in the room. Patterson, on the other hand, could fill the room full of his own books, something that would probably never have occurred to Clancy.

Gary Tischler • October 2, 2013

The folks with “Million Dollar Quartet” announced on Twitter that it was one city down for the start of its national tour after taking down the house at the Pullo Center in York, Pa. Next stop: the Kennedy Center for an encore performance.

That explained why we were talking by phone last week to John Countryman, the 24-year-old newbie in the cast of the show, in York. “Million Dollar Quartet,” the Tony Award-winning Broadway show about a one-of-a-kind get-together of legends on Dec. 4, 1956, at the Sun Records Studio of producer Sam Phillips in Memphis, stars Tyler Hunter as Elvis Presley, Scott Moreau as Johnny Cash, James Barry as Carl Perkins and Countryman as Jerry Lee Lewis. The latest actor to play Lewis, Countryman’s had changed dramatically this year in a very short time.

Countryman, who played piano and sung with a still active rock group, “The Dirty Names,” had auditioned for the role of Lewis, the piano-riffing, rock-and-rolling notorious rocker of “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On” fame and understudied a short stint in Chicago. “I auditioned again but I hadn’t heard anything so I kinda thought nothing was happening,” he said. By then, “I had to get a job, I was working in a bank.”

And Countryman got married. He and his wife Jennice were on their honeymoon when he got the call making him the next Jerry Lewis.

“It was crazy,” he said. “It was a dream come true. It was—you can’t imagine. I mean talk about changing your life around. But once, we all got together, this thing became like a family—like everybody looks out for everybody else.”

Countryman had been a fan of Lewis every since he started listening to the music when his mom played golden oldies. “That’s sort of how I got into all that kind of music,” he said. “You get a real sense of how rich it all is. It still rocks, and I love playing the music, being Jerry Lee. The killer. It’s just a great experience, an amazing show.”

What is original about the show—which, by the by, was directed by Signature Theater Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer –is that the lead performers—Countryman, Hunter, Moreau and Barry, play live on stage. The audience experience is one of being—if you use imagine or your memory, whatever the case may be—in the presence of legends. It’s like a live concert within the framework of a snapshot day in the lives of legends. With a book by Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott—a rock-and-roll historian and something of an expert on Sun Records—and a salty, authentic-looking set by Derek McLane, “Million Dollar Quartet” catches the protagonists at a critical time. Elvis, who drops in with a girl who also sings, is already well on the way to becoming king of rock and roll. Lewis is a sassy, brassy newcomer who wants to impress Phillips, and Cash is also established. Phillips has already lost one star and is thinking about joining a major recording firm.

All of the stars shine, and the music is as familiar as a really loud lullaby or two—and Countryman gets to blast out “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lot of Shaking Going On” around turns by Perkins, Cash and Elvis—that is, Barry, Moreau and Hunter. “It’s the style and everything,” Countryman said. “It’s how he plays, he had a real talent, because moving around a piano the way he did, like nobody else. That was special and those rolls and everything, man. I love doing this. I love Jerry Lee Lewis, always have, first time I heard him.”

Countryman saw the man who was dubbed “The Killer” a while back. He was much older, and a little battered, moving slowly across the stage. “But, yeah, the minute he got there, the minute he sat at that piano, he killed,” he said. “He was the killer, same guy. He could really play. That’s a good memory.”

“Million Dollar Quartet” is at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater Sept. 24 through Oct. 6.

Gary Tischler • October 1, 2013

It’s tough to get a vibe going on a conference call. You can’t see anybody. It’s usually strictly business, and people are always interrupting or waiting to say something.

Talking with Sandy Hackett and his wife Lisa Dawn Miller, however, you definitely get a vibe of show-business allure and legend, not to mention talk and memories of Las Vegas and L.A. days and nights, the time of the Rat Pack in Vegas—maybe true stories and the sound of the easy slick slide of cards on green tables.

Hackett and Miller are all about songs and dancing. They come with a glittering show-biz pedigree. Hackett’s father was the late Buddy Hackett, one of the country’s premier comics and comedic actors who was connected by long-standing friendship and work with the Frank Sinatra-led legendary Rat Pack. Miller is the daughter of another legend, world-class Motown songwriter Ron Miller, master of hit and classic songs, who wrote hits for Stevie Wonder, among others.

All of this funnels in like cocktail ingredients as to why we’re having this three-corner, pool-shot conversation. “Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show,” which is at the Music Center at Strathmore tomorrow night, Friday, Sept. 27, at 8 pm.

Both Hackett and Miller hasten to say that the Rat Pack Show is not a tribute show. It is a kind of theater piece, a flamboyant recreation of a time in the 1960s, when the so-called Rat Pack centered around Frank Sinatra, featuring Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop and others—and depending on the night and time—graced Las Vegas with its presence and put on memorable entertainments at the Sands Casino.

“There are a lot of tribute shows around, truth be told,” Hackett said. “But we’re doing something different.” Hackett said of the show which ” . . . we’ve been doing about four years or so now. This is a theatrical production which lets folks get a sense of what it might have been like to see the Rat Pack live on stage in 1960.”

Miller and Hackett put together and wrote a show based on their own knowledge and experience. Hackett grew up around members of the pack, including Joey Bishop, who was the last surviving member. “To me, Bishop was Uncle Joey,” Hackett said. “He was the one that wrote most of the material, the comedy material, that gave things some sense.”

Back in 1960, the Rat Pack—there was no official membership—was a kind of Hollywood designation of what was then a group of very cool persons, headed by the very cool Sinatra, whose song stylings sold millions of albums and who was a major and often talked-and-gossipped-about movie star as well as a friend of JFK by way of Peter Lawford. The Pack included the gifted Sammy Davis, Jr., the seemingly always-in-the sauce Dean Martin, Bishop, Lawford and, sometimes, Shirley MacLaine.

“People thought this was a long-standing, yearly thing as far as the Vegas thing goes,” Hackett said. “It wasn’t. It lasted a month in 1960 when they were in town filming ‘Ocean’s 11’ [a hit precursor of the current George Clooney-led series of films with Brad Pitt and Matt Damon]. They stayed a month. And at night, they would do this show in the Sands. That was it. But it was memorable, and they were memorable.”

“The show is not a recreation,” said Hackett, who plays Bishop, who was never in the show, but was in the movie. “We’ve added some Miller songs, and the presence of a woman, the one woman Sinatra never forgot.”

By anybody’s guess, that would be the sultry movie star Ava Gardner, with whom Sinatra had a tempestuous, tumultuous, passionate affair in the 1950s which almost ruined him. “I play the woman that Sinatra never forgot,” Miller said. “I get to sing one of my dad’s songs ‘Wasn’t I a Good Time?’ Mind you, we don’t call her Ava. Some people might think it was his wife Nancy or the children whom he loved so much. We let the audience decide.”

Not that the old Sinatra Rat Pack music is neglected. “I Did It My Way,” “Mack the Knife,” “For Once in My Life” and a host of others are heard, sung and remembered in uncanny renderings by the cast, headed by David DeCosta as Sinatra, Doug Starks as Sammy Davis, Jr., Tony Basile as Dean Martin, Sandy Hackett as Joey Bishop and Miller as Frank’s one love. DeCosta, while he can’t be Sinatra, gives him his due and manages to resurrect more than hints of that great voice of experience and confidence, rue mixed with wry and rye.

“We’re all about respect for the music,” Miller said. “I couldn’t help but learn that from my dad. He knew his way around a song. Some of them are part of the show like ‘For Once in My Life.’ So, this is not a tribute show, but part of it is a tribute to the great songs.”

Hackett is working on a book and a show about his father, whose pre-recorded voice (as God, no less) is heard in the show. He would have been right at home in the banter and humor, Rat-Pack style that is audience-involving, brash and irreverent in that cocked-hat, boozy, don’t-give-a-damn but also personal style that characterized any gathering of that legendary group, be it movie, party or showtime, or after-hours bar-time.
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Jeff Malet • September 23, 2013

Each year, the McLean Drama Company sponsors a 10-Minute Play Contest. The first-, second- and third-place winners have their plays presented by the drama group at a selected venue. This year’s MDC 10-Minute Play Festival features national contest winners’ plays that are being performed in a staged reading at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Melton Rehearsal Hall, 641 D St., NW. Opening night is 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 21. Sunday matinee is at 3 p.m., followed by a “talk-back” with the audience, players and playwrights. Ticket price: pay what you can.

Rachael Bail, founder and president of the McLean Drama Company, is a playwright, producer and journalist. She is a former Voice of America editor and Supreme Court correspondent, who now lives in Washington, D.C., and originally began the drama company in McLean, Va., but has moved the staged readings to Washington. Renana Fox, also of D.C., is the director, and Ely Lamonica is artistic director.

MDC’s mission is to present and inspire dramatic writing and new American plays, by playwrights from Northern Virginia, the Greater Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area and nationwide. In the past, MDC has performed at the Capital Fringe Festival and the 450 seat Alden Theatre in McLean, Va.

This year’s winning plays are: the first prize winner, “The Brazilian Dilemma” by William Fowkes, a comedy about relationships; second prize winner “Peppered Precinct,” the story of sexual harassment in a police department, by Cynthia Morrison and “Nik & Ida,” scientist Nikola Tesla against the world, by Jerome Coopersmith.

This is MDC’s first experiment with “Pay What You Can” admission.

For more information: www.mcleandramacompany.org.

View our photos of the winning plays taken during rehearsal by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="101440,153762,153765,153756,153752" nav="thumbs"]