Performance

Gary Tischler •

It’s summer, which means summer movies, which means the usual suspects from the pages of comic books—Batman, Spider-Man, the Avengers. It means the lemurs from “Madagascar” and the red-headed cartoon girl from “Brave.” It means Tom Cruise as a rocker and two Charlize Theron movies.

You wouldn’t think that summer movies meant documentaries, but they do in Silver Spring. It’s been that way for ten years, which means it’s the tenth anniversary of the American Film Institute Silverdocs Festival with a slew of top-drawer documentaries, symposiums and the presence of some of the world’s top documentary filmmakers, directors and producers, June 18-24 at various venues in Silver Spring, including the AFI Silver.

It means there’ll be films like the opening night screening of “Don’t Stop Believin’, Everyman’s Journey,” about the rise of Filipino singer Arnel Pineda from local folk hero in the Philippines to frontman for the never-say-die rock band Journey (Monday at 7 p.m. and June 24 at 12:15 p.m.). It means films like the festival closer “Big Easy Express,” directed by Emmett Malloy about the journey of three American roots-style bands—Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros and Old Crow Medicine Show—on a six-stop tour from California to New Orleans (June 23 and 24).

It means documentary film takes on the resurgence of Detroit, on the band Metallica, on artist Wayne White, theater legend Joe Papp and the grand dame Texas liberal legend and governor Ann Richards, and such serious matters as a hair-raising meeting of the Texas School Board of Education, among the many, many films to be screened, many of them world premieres, first-time-evers, all of them, in one way or another about real life, real people, not reel people.

With real persons and not reel persons, that also means the screening of “Plimpton,” a kind of life-and-times portrait of the the late George Plimpton, reporter, writer, loving WASP to his Exeter core, literary editor, party thrower, actor in films and commercials and Sports Illustrator writer who tried to embrace what he wrote about by doing it—playing golf, pitching to major leaguers and, most famously, playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions (“Paper Lion,” a book and then a movie starring Alan Alda).

“Plimpton” is a loving, eyes-wide-open documentary on the man’s life, with numerous interviews with the people who knew him best—his widow Sarah Plimpton, fellow literati and writers, athletes, family members and people who just loved being around him.

“Plimpton,” the documentary, which screens June 21 and 23, is the work of co-directors Tom Bean and Luke Poling, two 30-something film-makers but also first-timers, who’ve been working on the film for well over four years, interviewing, researching, editing film clips and sorting through huge amounts of materials.

It’s also the work of producer Adam Roffman, who has been the director of Independent Film Festival Boston for ten years. He has been a producer on five independent films and earned his keep by piling up numerous credits on major studio films as set decorator and director.

If that name rings a bell to some of our readers, that’s not surprising: Adam is the son of David Roffman, the former owner and publisher of the Georgetowner who recently retired from the newspaper and now lives in Alabama with his wife Carmen.

The word, “producer,” is one of the most used titles in the film industry. “Yeah, sometimes you never know who’s doing what and at what point in the creation of the movie,” Roffman said. “In this case, I’m working on the tail end of the production, making sure that it is screened, that it gets into festivals, that it gets talked about and known and seen — something I know a little bit about,” he said. “And I think the guys have come up with a terrific film, about an original American character.”

Roffman founded and became Independent Film Festival Boston’s only director ever ten years ago and used to report yearly in the Georgetowner from the Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival. In the IMDB directory, he is listed as on-set dresser (or set director), with work on such highly respected Ben Affleck-directed films as “The Town,” “Gone Baby Gone,” “27 Dresses,” the Mel Gibson-starrer “Edge of Darkness” and the soon-to-be-released “Ted,” featuring Mark Wahlberg in the company of a come-to-life potty mouthed teddy bear.

“It’s a real pleasure to work with somebody like Affleck,” Roffman said. “He surrounds himself with people he can learn from, the top people in the business in terms of actors, cinematographers and film professionals.” (Affleck was at Georgetown University June 14 with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others for “Child Survival: Call to Action.”)

As for Roffman, “Plimpton” co-director Bean said. “You want to know about Adam? Well, in Boston, he’s considered the unofficial mayor of the Boston film industry. I mean we have this film we’ve loved putting together, but we don’t know how to get it seen. That’s where Adam has been terrific. He’s a real generous guy. Let me tell you, he’s been a huge help.”

“We’ve read a lot and heard a lot and knew a lot about Plimpton,” Bean said. “I guess he was kind of huge back in the 1970s and ’80s. But his fame has kind of faded, and we wanted a whole new generation of people to know about him, appreciate him and what he did and the life he led.”

“Principally, we got inspired to do this because we love to read books, we love literature,” Bean said, giving rising to hope that in literary terms, all is not quite yet lost.

“People, it turned out, were happy to talk to us. So, you’ve got this whole bunch of people on film, talking, telling stories, and there’s there’s clips, interviews, quotes.

The film has that voice of Plimpton, who had that upper-class, New England veneer and was to the manor AND manner born, but never sounded as if he was talking down to anyone. Otherwise, Plimpton might not have survived being tackled by a Lion. He was the first editor of the Paris Review, the legendary, hugely respected literary review which included the best work of the post-war generation of serious and gifted writers.

“There was nobody like him,” Bean said. “That’s basically why we had him narrate the film with his own voice.”

Plimpton died at the age of 76 in 2003 of a heart attack. “I think sometimes making this movie was our chance to be with him. It was a great experience,” Bean said.

For a full schedule of screenings, events, locations and venues and film information go to SilverDocs.com. [gallery ids="100863,127053,127059,127065,127072,127077,127085,127090,127097,127105,127047,127041,127035,127134,127002,127127,127009,127123,127015,127117,127022,127029,127110" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

People forget. Larry Kramer won’t let you.

There was a time in the early 1980s when gay men all over the country were dying at an alarmingly increasing rate of an unidentified disease which killed their immune system and no one seemed to notice.

Kramer, a gay writer and activist, noticed, because people he knew died, because the disease, invisible, undiagnosed, unresearched seemed to be all around him in New York. He wanted others—including his peers in the gay community who were living in what they thought was a free-love golden age—to stand up and take action.

In 1985, he wrote a play called “The Normal Heart,” which debuted on Broadway and shocked the world in its chronicle of the early fight against AIDS, when the disease did not have a name and went unrecognized, devastating the gay community, but also already spreading outward.

It told the story of a Kramer stand-in, an abrasive writer named Ned Weeks and his friends, and his battle to make the world, the government, gays themselves see what was happening. Weeks is a hyperbolist, a man with apocalyptic tendencies, urgent, impolite, impolitic, insensitive, passionate and complete out of control and in focus in his crusade. “The Normal Heart” is the story of his battle, with and against his friends, including a closeted gay named Bruce, who is a banker and former Green Beret who wants to work from the inside. There’s the embattled, ferocious doctor named Emma Brookner who first notices the diseases and some of its symptons, there’s Ned’s straight brother who tries reluctantly to help, there’s Felix Turner, a New York Times fashion writer who becomes Weeks’s lover and various activists, officials and victims to-be.

In 1985, the play startled New York and the country’s audiences with its hard-driving, polemical and super-charged, dramatic style and also moved them.

Today, after millions of deaths, and almost 30 years later, a new production of “The Normal Heart” at Arena Stage (and after a critically acclaimed revival in New York ) has astonishing power. It seems as fresh as it was in its debut, perhaps even more so because time has worked its insidious ways by making people, if not forget, allow themselves a considerable distance from what remains a worldwide crisis.

The play—directed by George C. Wolfe—retains its power and gains some, too. You shouldn’t be surprised if you notice, especially in the emotionally charged second act, that people around you are wiping away tears or sobbing, or for that matter, if you are, too. Mind you, there is not an ounce of sentimentality in this play: it’s as clean as a knife to the heart. Kramer has taken care not to create martyrs or characters who are types. That unaffected uniqueness shows through especially with Weeks, who on the surface is the least likely person to lead a crusade, he’s loud, driven, he hurts people without trying, and he has a desperate need for love. “The Normal Heart” is always about people in a moment of extreme crisis — they fight, they battle, they cling to each other, and they yell and shout and weep and cry out.

If need screams at government officials for not caring, Weeks is tough on himself and the gay community. “We’ve got to stop thinking we’re just about sex. We’re Michelangelo, we’re DaVinci, we’re Socrates and Alexander the Great, we’re Keynes and Porter,” he says. “. . . And we’ve got to stop doing this [casual sex]. We’re killing ourselves.”

No one thanks him for his observations.

Weeks display a combative style. Confronted with the prospect of love, however, he becomes a puppy who thinks he doesn’t deserve his lover.

This production never lets up and when the disease draws closer, it grabs you by the throat and shakes you up—or in the street vernacular—messes you up. Bruce’s lover dies and he recounts a harrowing experience to take him home to Arizona, the doctor unleashes a jeremiad against the government and medical community and Weeks’s lover becomes ill.

Our hearts swell and crack in those moments. No one, I think, at that point can feel separate from the stage and the people on it.

In a host of outstanding performances, Patrick Breen as the combative, bristling, enraged and enraging Weeks is so kinetic that you start to feel toward him exactly as his friends and allies do. Luke MacFarlane as Turner has—like the character must—charm to burn until the bitter end when he himself is consumed. Patricia Wettig—of television’s “Brothers & Sisters” and “Thirtysomething” fame among many credits—gives a blunt, brave coating to the doctor, in a wheelchair for most of her life because of polio—and her outburst in the second act inevitably draws cheers.

The play is performed against a background of a list of victims’ names and headlines, which grows during the course of the two-and-a-half hour run—I spotted without trying Liberace’s name. Suddenly, you remember where you were and where you are.

“I’m exhausted,” a woman walking out said to her husband. “We all are, honey,” he said.

Outside, there are portions of the AIDS quilt, which will also be on view in part at the Kennedy Center and will form a key part of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival this year. Outside, they hand you a missive from Kramer, which gives an update on the fight against AIDs.

People forget. We’re lucky that Kramer hasn’t.

“The Normal Heart” will run at Arena’ Stage’s Kreeger Theatre through July 29.
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Gary Tischler •

Comings And Goings

All the world’s a stage. And when it comes to Washington’s world of performance, as everywhere else, change is a constant

FOR THE NEXT ACT

Ryan Rilette has been named the new producing artistic director at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, assuming full-time duties Aug. 1.

Rilette will be following Blake Robinson, who has been producing artistic director here for the past seven, often innovative and acclaimed, years. He moves on to become artistic director at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

Rilette comes to Round House from the Marin Theatre Company, a very successful mid-sized company in Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he most recently directed the world premiere of “Bellwether” by Steven Yockey and “Gods of Carnage” by Yasmina Reza.

Sally Patterson, president of Round House Theatre’s board of trustees, said: “We are proud to be in Montgomery County, to provide innovative and challenging theatre, and to continue our commitment to artistic engagement for all ages. Ryan embodies our greatest hopes for all our aspirations.”

“It’s a great honor to follow in the footsteps of Blake Robison and Jerry Whiddon,” Rilette said. “I’ve long been a fan of both Round House and the D.C. theater community.”

CURTAINS OPEN AT OLNEY

Martin Platt, currently the co-director of the Perry Street Theatricals, a New York-based producing company, has been named the new artistic director at the Olney Theatre Center.

“There are great challenges and even greater opportunities in what we can accomplish in expanding and enriching Olney Theatre Center’s program and making Olney Theatre Center a true performing arts Center in Montgomery County with a great producing theatre company at its core,” Platt said.

Platt has headed such performing arts companies as the Birmingham Opera Theatre and the New Mexico Repertory Theatre. He has worked in London, founded the Santa Fe Stages festival and directed plays at the Cincinnati Playhouse like Sophie Bingham’s “Treason” (about Ezra Pound), “True West” and D.H. Lawrence’s “The Daughter In Law.”

BOWING OUT

Christina Scheppelmann, the long-time director of artistic operations at the Washington National Opera (WNO) will step down, effective Nov. 30.

Scheppelmann has been a WNO leader since 2002, overseeing the management of the acclaimed Domingo-Cafraitz Young Artist Program, helping to create the American Opera Initiative for young American composers and librettists, helping to produce new works, while overseeing new broadcast and simulcast initiatives and helping to select the WNO repertory of works each season.

“Christina has served Washington National Opera well in her decade here,” said Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser. “Her hard work and diligence were key to making WNO”s recent affiliation with the Kennedy Center a success.”

JOINING HANDS

Adventure Theatre and Musical Theater Center are joining up, co-mingling and becoming one.

The combination will be called Adventure Theatre MTC, “uniting award winning theater productions with high-quality musical theater training. The combined entity will be able to serve more of the DC region and its young people,” according to the new group.

“It is the right step in the exciting evolution of these two entities, Adventure Theatre’s Michael Bobbitt said.

The announcement came in March on the 60th anniversary of Adventure Theatre.

Lots of Good Theater

In years past, summertime was a quiet time for the performance arts in the Washington, usually shifting to outdoor concerts and venues. Theaters tended to shutter their doors.

That’s not the case anymore. For one thing, the time between the old season and the new one coming up has narrowed dramatically. For another — well, for some perverse reason or another — there are lots of show on the boards, lots to see and do.

Here are some interesting choices going on right now. The list is by no means complete.

TWO FOR THREE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER

You can’t get two more diverse and entertaining offerings (make that three, if you count “The Music Man” at Arena Stage) than “First You Dream” and “Memphis” now at the Kennedy Center. “First You Dream” is a showcase project, originated at Signature Theatre by Eric Schaeffer, rifling with great verve and imagination through the songs and music of John Kander and Fred Ebb and with six great singers strutting and vocalizing, dramatizing and — above all — breaking hearts with songs from “Cabaret,” “Chicago,” “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “Zorba,” and “The Happy Time.” One of the best, but not only, reason, to go is to see and hear the gifted Heidi Blickenstaff once again. (Through July 1 at the Eisenhower). “Memphis,” which won a pack of Tonys (best musical), is a totally different breed of animal, a junk yard dog of a musical about race, the South circa the 1950s, the birth of rhytmn and blues and a melo-plot, featuring a white Memphis hipster hung up on race music and a beautiful black singer. In a heated way, it’s a very engrossing and entertaining show (at the Opera House, also thorugh July 1), and the music is terrific and you can dance to it in your dreams.

Just so you know: “The Addams Family” (the musical) is landing at the Opera House beginning July 10 and running through July 29, click, click. Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday Addams, Uncle Fester, Lurch and the rest are all here.

CLASSICAL LAUGHS AND A NEW DIFFERENCE

Laughs in the classical vein are still available at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. There’s the return of Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” directed by Brit Stephen Raye, a very late Shakespeare play which features scheming wives and the return of Falstaff through July 18 at Harman Hall. Queen Elizabeth loved Falstaff. Extended at the Lansburgh is the latest (well, circa the 16th Century) rage in laughs, commedia dell’ arte style. Through July 8.

The Studio Theatre, under Joy Zinoman and now under David Muse, could and can always be counted on for the new, the odd, the unusual and the original. Two examples are now being staged there, beginning with the caustic “fem” comedy, “Bachelorettes,” directed by Muse himself and extended through July 8 at the Mead Theatre. In the nothing-like-it category is the hauntingly titled “The Animals and Children Took to the Streets” in collaboration with the group 1927, the Spoleto Theatre Festival and the Studio Theatre. It’s a beyond-category piece, described as part Tim Burton, part Dickens, “a graphic novel burst into life.”

IF YOU GIVE …

Speaking of Adventure Theatre, there’s the popular “If You Give …” series: now with “If You Give a Moose a Muffin,” a sequel and, if you can believe, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” Directed by Jeremy Skidmore with Michael Russotto, now through Sept. 2 at Glen Echo.

THREE DAUNTING WORDS

For the ultimate theater nut in you, heed these words: Capital Fringe Festival, July 12 to July 29.?

Georgetowner •

Gene Kelly would have been 100 years old this August 23.

“Singing’ in the Rain”, the iconic MGM musical (and best ever Hollywood musical, according to most audiences and critics), which saw Kelly doing a slop-slippy tap dance in the rain, is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Here is Pixie-haired Patricia Ward Kelly, widow to Gene Kelly and keeper of the flame for his dance and film legacy.

Here’s Rita Moreno, dazzling at 80 years old, and one of the few still living members of the “Singin’ in the Rain” troupe (along with Debbie Reynolds and co-director Stanley Donen), twirling a signature “Rain” umbrella.

Here’s a wall of momentos and puff and stuff from the Warner Brothers library of films, like Clint Eastwood’s costume-bedraggled cowboy wear from the Oscar-winning “Unforgiven.”

Here we are at the Smithsonian American History Museum for a screening of “Singin’ in the Rain,” and marking the arrival of a three-disc ultimate collector’s edition of the movie. This writer is celebrating.

Not only is Kelly and “Singin’ in the Rain” being celebrated, but so is the Smithsonian’s summer portion of its Warner Brother’s film festival, with three movies celebrating the advent of sound: “The Jazz Singer,” “The Broadway Melody” and “Don Juan,” screened last weekend.

Moreno—a triple threat winner of a Tony, an Emmy and an Oscar (for supporting actress in “West Side Story”)—looked like a red carpet wowser, at any age. She recalled being “in awe of Kelly. I worshipped him. I was 17 and I had a small part in the movie, and here was this man, already a legend, and it was just astonishing to be there, to be in this movie. I watched all the great song-and-dance segments being filmed: Donald O’Connor in “Be a Clown”, “Gotta Sing Gotta Dance”, Gene and Cyd (Charisse).”

“When I met Gene, he was a man in repose,” Kelly’s widow set. “I think by choice, in some ways. He wasn’t dancing any more, at least not in public, because he wasn’t the Kelly you saw on the screen anymore. But he was still dynamic, smart, handsome. I had a writing job back then on a Smithsonian project, he was doing something for a television show on the Smithsonian. I get embarrassed even now that back then I had no idea who he was.” They met, they eventually married, in spite of a much buzzed-about age difference—he was in his 70s, she was in her twenties. Now she’s everywhere, talking about Kelly, “Rain,” the man and American dance, and working on a biography of Kelly. She’s a Trustee of The Gene Kelly Image Trust, and Creative Director of “Gene Kelly: The Legacy,” a corporation established to commemorate Kelly’s centenary world-wide.

“There’s going to be lots going on,” she said. “Gene was all about dance as an American art form. He was muscular, confident. He embodied in dance, I think, what it was to be an American .”

Moreno remembers how tough it was to forge her career as a Latino actress in the 1950s. “I was always an Indian maid, a Mexican spitfire, something like that. When you were under contract, you had to do what they gave you.”

Washington theater goers will remember her from her entirely convincing and funny portrait as the slob of “The Odd Couple,” a female protagonist version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” also starring Sally Struthers at the National Theatre.

She grabbed an umbrella and started coquettishly twirling. Cameras snapped. “Hey, how’d you do that,” Kelly yelled.

“I’m a pro,” Moreno said.

Kelly. Moreno. The movies.

Unforgettable. [gallery ids="100907,128433,128424,128414,128405,128396,128385,128377,128366,128357,128452,128346,128458,128467,128474,128443" nav="thumbs"]

Alexis Williams • August 2, 2012

There is still time to catch a show at the Seventh Annual Capital Fringe Festival, which continues until July 29. With more than 140 productions, the vast selection has performances for all age groups.

For adult audiences, comedienne Vijai Nathan’s one-woman show, “McGoddess,” is grade-A humor with a side of religious insight. As the only American-born member of her Indian family, Nathan grapples with which traditions to embrace and ignore. The main issue is her family’s unabashed love of McDonald’s, which conflicts with her mother’s Hindu beliefs in the sacredness of cows. Nathan, who also wrote and directed the play, expands upon her journey of understanding the concept of God — all while influenced by a traditional Hindu mother, a born-again Christian sister and a cynical, Marxist father. With non-stop jokes and countless embarrassing yet relatable family stories, “McGoddess” is a provocative and clever performance that will have you craving for more laughs and a Big Mac.

As for a family affair, hear ye, hear ye, fair subjects of Georgetown! All ye in attendance at Scott Courlander’s “Medieval Story Land” are in for a treat. Noble and naïve elf Todd must fulfill his destiny by going on an epic quest to save the kingdom of Medieval Story Land from its impending doom. But fear thou not, for this show is the furthest thing from “Lord of the Rings.” With sword in tow, a disgraced knight, an overzealous dwarf, and a wisecracking troll accompany Todd on his pursuit. Along the way, he must wrestle up the courage to slay dragons, fight an evil army, triumph over a mystical wizard and defeat the eerie “dark, black darkness.” Entertaining for both children and adults, “Medieval Story Land” gives a wonderfully effortless twist on the classic renaissance hero story.

Visit capfringe.org for ticket information, or call 866-811-4111. Catch “McGoddess” on July 26, 7:30 p.m., or July 28, 9:15 p.m.; “Medieval Story Land,” July 28, 7:15 p.m., or July 29, noon. Both shows are performed at the Milton Theatre at the Studio Theatre located on 1501 14th St., N.W. [gallery ids="100914,128721" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • July 19, 2012

As a Broadway musical, “The Addams Family” has had its share of tumult, upheaval and critical sneers before it ever went on the road, including the replacement of stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in mid-run.

The road company—now at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House through July 29—is not quite the same show that first opened on Broadway: it’s got a fresher feel, new songs added and old ones gone. The show has already hit numerous stops before coming to Washington, but it too has suffered some critical adversity. But there’s another thing that the two productions share: a consistent audience approval in spite of the critics.

The road show also has something else that makes it rise above critical outcries and into the audience’s lap. Sure, it has instantly recognizable appeal of a branded production—in this case the Charles Addams cartoons of a dizzy, death besotten—in a good way—family, a highly successful television series, starring Carolyn Jones as the sexy-pale Morticia and her unto-death, fully in love and faintly toreador husband Gomez. This was followed by two box-office hit versions starring the wonderful Raoul Julia and Anjelica Huston in the leads presiding over the usual suspects, the plodding Lurch, Uncle Fester, offspring Wednesday, Pugsley and Grandma.

It also has—as a big plus—Douglas Sills as the undeniably gallant, springy, elegant—in a weird way—and totally still in desparate love Gomez. And Sills is the kind of guy who can make all the difference in the world. He’s the glue to this show, which can often seem unhinged, and not always in a good way.

Sills—a Broadway veteran, and old-school born-to-the-stage performer—overcomes the show’s situational schtick—daughter Wednesday is in love with a so-called normal guy and his folks are coming for dinner—and some of its lagging numbers in the second act by his sheer joyful, bust-the-seams, gleeful presence.

“Sometimes it feels as if we’ve been across the entire country,” Sills says. “It’s not an easy life—this is a relatively long run, actually, sometimes we’ve been in a city for a week and off we go.”

Sills is what I like to call a member in good standing of the Broadway baby family, actors and performers who are most at homes under the footlights, in front of live and lively audiences, who can do a show a hundred (or more times) and still find a spot of freshness in it, performers who can kill a song, do a soft shoe and make you believe that it’s the first time they’ve ever done it.

“Well, we also have (Director) Jerry Zaks restaging things” Sills said. “He’s a real pro, and I think he’s really helped make this thing go.”

Maybe so. But Sills, whose Gomez has made a promise to never keep anything from his beloved Morticia, keeps something from her to his utter shame, chagrin and pain. His mortification, seemingly endless, while singing “Trapped” twists him up into a man who sounds a little like Ricardo Montalban and feels like Stan Laurel.

Sills is a jack-of-all-trades—he’s coming off of tours of “Secret Garden” and “Into the Woods”, but made his real mark in “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, where he buckled and swashed like an energized, fire-breathing hero in a musical that also had some initial critical backlash but was hugely popular with audiences.

“It got so there would be people that came back time and time again,” he said. “I think it was pretty gratifying.”

Sills was raised in Detroit, in a good Jewish family household, and was trained at famed director Bill Ball’s American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. “That was a great place to work, some wonderful actors went through there—Michael Learned, Ray Reinhardt, Peter Donat, Annette Benning, Paul Shenar. You learned to do every kind of part, which I think has served me well.”

It’s fair to guess that there are few, if any nights, when Sills doesn’t do his best, go all out. He’s earned his respect and deserves it. He has a certain authentic politeness about him especially when talking about actors of yore like Olivier, or the Shakespearean greats or a Pacino. “I think it’s our responsibility to honor the ladies and gentlemen who came come before us, and the best way to honor your heritage is to do the very best you can do.”

He acknowledged that the plot devise of the normal family meeting the not so normal family has been done before: “La Cauge Aux Follies”, “You Can’t Take it With You,” he says. “But in this way, the show becomes a story about family.”

Sills and Sara Gettelfinger make a convincing and sexy Gomez and Morticia, they always seem about to break into a tango when they come with a foot of each other.
The audience members, if not always the critics, perhaps full with more Addams fire than is healthy, get it. They snap their fingers, they laugh at the jokes, get into the dark shadows spirits of the show. Sills helps make that easier by not just acting Gomez but being him.

Gary Tischler • June 18, 2012

There’s a certain air of expectation that hangs over artistic director Molly Smith’s production of “The Music Man” at Arena Stage, now running for a better part of the summer there.

It’s the rarefied air of success achieved by Smith with “Oklahoma,” the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with which she chose to open the newly renovated Mead Center for the American Theater, a grand old musical that has quite a few things in common with “The Music Man.”

Broadly speaking, it’s a show, like “Oklahoma,” which resurrects the spirit of a mostly vanished turn-of-the-20th-century America. “Oklahoma” bristled with western confidence, its characters are swept up by and embrace change. “The Music Man” is carried and buoyed by what happens when a burst of con-man energy lifts a classic Midwestern small town out of its narrow-minded, time-locked lethargy. Smith’s way with classic American musicals is to bless them with a breath of fresh air that is both energizing and engaging. It’s as if she waves a magic wand over things and makes the proceedings both rejuvenating and meaningful for today’s audiences.

Meredith Wilson — book author, composer and lyricist of “The Music Man”— may not have a Rodgers and Hammerstein resume but he has the Broadway musical pedigree. “The Music Man” is at turns energized by spirited dancing, it has bowl-you-over songs that make a perfect sales pitch like “76 Trombones” and “Trouble” and soaring ballads, none more pertinent and moving than “Til There was You.” It has romance, it has conflict, it has a believable and recognizable setting, and it resolves itself, not with schmaltz, but with a believable inevitability.

And so far as entertainment machines go, “The Music Man” delivers. It’s a robust vehicle that never flags and runs right past potential pitfalls, thanks to Smith. It has a deftly selected cast that couldn’t be more gifted, especially in the leads. Kate Baldwin, as Marian the town librarian and music teacher, is slight and dynamic, all blazing red hair with a shining, patient sort of charisma. Burke Moses strikes up the band and revs up the room temperature as Harold Hill, the con man as magician. He’s every bit as high-stepping and high-spirited as the iconic Robert Preston, sweeping almost all before him as he works his con of talking the town folks into the dream of a marching band, complete with lessons, uniforms and instruments.

The number of persons who might have seen the original Broadway production “The Music Man” is probably pretty small, although we have the happy coincidence of Barbara Cook, the original Marian, singing for two nights at the Kennedy Center next month. Our memories, if we have any, are tied to the film, where Preston shares the screen with Shirley Jones.

It seems to me that “The Music Man” and “Oklahoma” are about change. They’re transformative to audience and characters, and Smith makes change the beating hearts of both shows, especially this one. You could do a “Music Man” that hits all the highlights of song and story and not disappoint a soul, but this production does a little more for an audience that’s plugged into the whole wide world. The first thing you hear is a slow, almost mournful instrumental riff off the usually jaunty “76 Trombones,” accompanied by the sound of a train on its tracks, the rhythmic, familiar syncopated sound of movement and progress. Out of the Arena stages rises a table and seats filled with traveling salesmen, railing musically against change—you can’t give credit, you gotta know the territory, and so on. They gossip about one of their own, the elusive Harold Hill whose specialty is boondoggling small towns with promises of a marching band.

Hill arrives in River City and knows just what to do—he warns against the evils of sin in pool halls, he sings about marching bands—those trombones again—and he lays siege to the often disappointed, but still dreamy, heart of Marian. The townspeople—a generally unfriendly, gossipy and intolerant lot—are quickly undone by Hill’s abundant charms and soon enough he has the kids dancing, the matrons smiling and the town’s long-time enemies pulling together as a barbershop quartet.

“He sure seems to be having a good time,” one audience member said of Moses as Hill, and that’s a judgement that’s self-evident. Once he collides with Marian in a kind of tug-and-pull of romance and energy, the show practically takes wing. Baldwin, as Marian, has the task of singing songs that usually provide a lull in most musicals—the love-proclaiming ballad, the high, high soprano sweet songs that can kill energy like a fly swatter. She, however, knocks them right of the park, and the show never skips a beat. They get help from the high-flying wrong-side of the track kid Tommy played with energetic charm by Will Burton, and the Nehal Joshi’s goofy sidekick Marcellus, and area veteran actors like Donna Migliacco, John Lescault and Lawrence Redmond.

The costumes may indeed be suggestive of no particular period, although the outrageous costumes worn by the local ladies’ culture club are eye-boggling. If that’s confusing, you’re not paying attention. Wilson — born in Mason City, Iowa, in 1902 — meant to resurrect his hometown with all of its shortcomings and glories, which are located in Marian’s heart, in the tuning fork hum of barbershop quartet, in the leaps of the dancers, in the whispers of gossip, in the small, but greedy ambitions of the mayor, in a time when kisses, instead of investor money, could still be stolen on the back porch.

“The Music Man” isn’t “Oklahoma,” but it is something just as good. In this show, there really is love all around, and you can hear it singing

(“The Music Man” runs in Arena’s Fichandler Stage through July 22)

Gary Tischler •

(To read the review of “Nabucco”, pick up the May 2nd issue of The Georgetowner)

Look at it any way you want–and there’s lots to look at–“Nabucco” is a big deal. It is also the nickname for Nebuchadnezzar II, he of the hanging gardens and destruction of Solomon’s Temple.

The source: the Bible and the clash between the ancient Israelites and the ancient Babylonians.

The story: rivals for a crown, queens and kings, illegitimate royals, love, sex and violence.

The music: One of Guiseppe Verdi’s greatest and first hits, this opera includes a famous chorus which became Italy’s unofficial national anthem.

The numbers: 250 costumes, eight principals, a chorus of 68, a cast of 115.

For the Washington National Opera, it’s a first-time production of the epic opera, directed by the electrifying young American Thaddeus Strassberger and conducted by Philippe Auguin, running April 28 through May 21 at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House.

For costume designer Mattie Ullrich, making her WNO debut, “Nabucco” is “a dream assignment.” “I love my job,” she says.
“One of the great things about this is that I’ve worked with Theodore before. So, we know a little bit about each other. So, we can communicate, ” said Ullrich. A vivacious, energetic and articulate redhead (“It’s starting to get a little dark,” she quipped), she likes a challenge.

“And Nabucco is a challenge,” she said. “I mean we have over 200 costumes. So, it’s quite an undertaking.”

“It’s an epic, that’s true, but you have to treat the costumes in individual terms,” she said. “They have to say something about who the characters are, what they do, their role and their personalities.” She moves easily from epic to intimate, from grand opera to off-Broadway plays and onto film.

“The first thing you do is listen to the music,” Ullrich said. “This is grand, big, operatic music. I immerse myself. I try to feel and memorize the music so that when you sit down, you have the story, the music memorized and you start to think about the characters, the people. That’s how the designs emerge. You think about what fabrics would work, how they look on people and the drawings and watercolors emerge. Then, you work closely with the talented people in the costume shop. You listen to them and their ideas.”

“When I was a young child, I saw a costume shop in a summer theatre at camp and I thought, ‘This is my playground.’ ”

Downstairs below, you walk through the various rooms, where — just a few days from the opening of the opera — it’s a little like whirling through a hallway full of hidden rooms and mirrors. Actors are getting fitted for flowing robes, a crown–designed by Ullrich–lies waiting, dark, green silk is draped over a mannequin, and the warrior-daughter’s breast plate sits waiting.

“The paintings emerge first,” she said. “Then, there’s the hunt for fabrics. I’m hands-on but not in the sense that I do the actual cutting, that’s where the dyers, the cutters, the drapers come in, the wonderfully talented people in the costume shop.” (Marsha Leboeuf is the WNO costume director.)

Down here, it’s a kind of magic–the way silk flows and folds, the dazzling (costume) jewelry, the crown, almost for real. Words hardly ever heard or spoken in most persons’ conversations: the lustrous sound of “silk chiffon,” for instance. It takes you back–thousands of years, in point of fact.

“It’s not Cecil B. De Mille, exactly,” she says. “It’s more soulful than that. But it is big.”
Her husband, John Sharp, runs a gastro pub, rich in high-end beer, called Birdsall House, named after a famous Scottish tavern. The couple live in New York.

“I like big operas like ‘Les Huguenots,’ but I just worked on a film, ‘Year of the Fish,’ that went to Sundance Film Festival,” she says.

Looking at some of the sketches and watercolors of the costumes, you can see her soulful, colorful work–costumes that shine with the music, hearts and soulful story of “Nabucco.”
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Gary Tischler • June 8, 2012

If you should happen to have the opportunity to see the Washington National Opera production of Jules Massenet’s “Werther”–and you should, you should–check out your audience compatriots.

On opening night, the mish mash of reactions was almost worth the show itself: a young woman was complaining that all he ever says is “I love you, I love you, I mean give it a rest,” while another woman sitting a few seats down from us wiped tears from her eyes. Later, you could hear cheers and whistles after one of Italian tenor Francesco Meli’s soaring musical expression’s of, yes, “I love you.” At the end, there were more tears, but also bubbles of giggles here and there when Meli’s Werther recouped several times before finally succumbing to death, wearing a white shirt bloodier than that of a mob victim’s shotgun blast.

With “Werther,” some audience members in 2012 might find themselves at sea. The opera is an interior epic about the impossibility of fulfilling perfect love, especially after you’ve found it. But this production–and the opera, itself–is worth opening your mind and heart to precisely because of all of its improbabilities, its strangeness, and yes, even occasional silliness. For myself, I’d like to say “Ich Bin Ein Werther” fan, even if it is sung in French.

“It’s so over the top,” someone complained to me. For some reason, this reminded me of Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham in a Robin Hood movie, starring (improbably) Kevin Costner ordering a henchman to tear out someone’s liver with a wooden spoon. “That’s going to hurt,” the henchman said. “It’s supposed to hurt,” the sheriff yells. To which I might add, this is a real opera about a guy suffering from terminal heartbreak: it’s supposed to be over the top.

The source of “Werther” is a ground-breaking, influential novel, “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th-century uber-philosopher of endless, high-minded love. Goethe is one of those Germanic writers whose genius is so great that it’s beyond reproach. The novel depicts a young, gifted poet who falls completely, totally and painfully in love with a woman named Charlotte, already spoken for and taken. He persists and persists in proclaiming his love–idyllic, complete and perfect–and eventually kills himself. Historically, this novel by a 25-year-old Goethe not only inflamed romanticism among its impressionable readers, but reportedly sparked a number of art-imitating-death suicides among some readers.

The opera follows Goethe’s story as Werther visits an idyllic small town full of happy families and children. Here, after soaringly waxing about the beauty of this natural setting, he meets the much-beloved Charlotte. It is the perfect match of souls except that she’s engaged to be married to the somewhat stuffy and momentarily businessman Albert. The would-be-but-cannot-be lovers straddle the thin line between anguish and agony all of the time. You can almost agree with what a 19th-century critic of the opera said: in the first act, the hero despairs, continues to despair in the second act and third acts and becomes desperate in the final act.

So, why should we care about Werther and his extreme and total embrace of doomed romanticism? Here’s a few very good reasons, to my mind: the expression–musically–of the passion, buoyed by powerful storms of brass, by swells of heavy strings, and the singing and performing of a fine cast. While Meri has to carry the opera, Massenet’s music is so gorgeous that it rides right over the things that might otherwise drive you crazy about it. And mezzo-soprano Sonia Ganassi, with her supporting singing as well as her acting, makes us believe in Charlotte’s qualities, a life-affirming charm that enchants the children’s she’s helped raise for her father, which makes her utterly appealing not only to Werther but to everyone. “How can one not love Charlotte?” Werther sings helplessly.

Charlotte is an ideal, and that’s what Werther is most in love with–idylls and ideals. Werther leaves town and re-appears once, after Charlotte has married the increasingly frustrated Albert, who at one point helpfully lets a servant carry a set of pistols to Werther.

“Werther” is set in a sunny, energetic place where bon vivants drink happily outside the town church, observing the goings on of weddings, anniversaries, children and so forth. It’s a setting Werther finds idyllic, but also, with his stormy expressions of love, is outside of.

The production, directed by Chris Alexander and conducted by Emmanuel Villaume, is updated to the 1920s, which gives it a quality closer to us. The music is a weather vane, and it functions beautifully on its own. In a showcase scene, Charlotte, increasingly worried about Werther, tries to leave a formal dinner at her home, but guests keep arriving with fanfare in a tense, heightened scene with no singing and no words.

Poor Werther. Fascinating Werther. Great “Werther.” [gallery ids="100794,124376" nav="thumbs"]