Performance

Gary Tischler • August 31, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gary Tischler • August 17, 2015

If you spent your whole summer catching all or many of the performances and acts at the Wolf Trap’s Filene Center, you might just ran the gamut of every kind of musical genre that exists, from pop rock to rhythm and blues to country, to opera and symphony music, to classic jazz to classical music.

It’s enough to make your musical head spin—in just one week, you can go musically from here to there, beginning with the clean, clear, optimistic and original vocal stylings of the Indigo Girls (Tuesday), neo-soul, singer-songerwriter and Grammy Award winner Jill Scott (Wednesday), to the reunion of Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals (Thursday), and folk and Americana legend Rufus Wainwright (Friday).

Sometimes, as was the case with legendary jazz stylist Diana Krall last Saturday, you get the best of many possible worlds. Krall—she’s married to Elvis Costello, is the mother of two, a native of British Columbia—is notable just by walking on stage, letting the blonde shake out and singing with a clarity that seems both effortless and powerful. A pre-eminent jazz singer, she’s lately been branching out, or rather looking backward a little in terms of musical offerings and interest, beginning with the album “Glad Rag Doll,” which explored 1920s man-woman blues, and most recently, with “Wallflower,” which made up large parts of her concert with the Wolf Trap Orchestra.

In “Wallflower,” Krall looked to the music of her youth, specifically songs written by some of the top song-writers of the late twentieth century, including the title tune “Wallflower,” by Bob Dylan, which, if you missed the concert, you can catch on YouTube with Krall singing in an off-handed, but moving manner. It’s as clear as a troubadour singing a farewell song. While hitting personal and popular jazz tropes, Krall made “Wallflower” a key part of the concert, trolling the album list, which includes such songs as “California Dreamin’” (Michelle and John Phillips), “Desperado” (Glenn Frey and Don Henley of The Eagles, just announced as 2015 Kennedy Center honorees), “Superstar”, which the late Karen Carpenter sang, Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word,” as well as Jim Croce’s “Operator,” among others.

Diversity remains the watchword at Wolf Trap all through August—opera with “Madame Butterfly,” Aug. 7; “The Music of John Williams” (Aug. 8) and the music of “Star Trek” (Aug. 2), and “The Rodgers Family: A Century of Musicals” (Aug. 1 and 2); ever popular rockers “Counting Crows”on Aug. 10; the one-of-a-kind Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, Aug. 14; country stars “Little Big Town” on Aug. 26; the rare-fried make you jump rock stars “ZZ Top”; the Jersey Boys themselves, Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons, Aug. 19; the return of Gladys Knight and the Pips, Aug. 22; blasts from the past “The Beach Boys”, August 23 and 2013 Kennedy Center Honoree Santana and the great vocalist Kristin Chenoweth, August 28.

Makes your head spin.

Gary Tischler •

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gary Tischler •

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gary Tischler •

In this town, people are talking about Francesca Zambello.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gary Tischler •

On the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater’s stage, it’s not that easy to spot Stuart Ward among the crowd of musicians milling around with audience members on a set that very effectively imitates a Dublin pub. He’s in there somewhere among the crowd of fiddle players and violinists, the accordion player, the red-headed woman, the big publican and the assorted audience members who’ve braved it out and come waltzing on stage for the half hour or so prior to the start of “Once,” the Tony-Award winning musical having a road stop here through Aug. 16.

You’ll recognize him soon enough—he’s the guy, playing the “guy” part in this sweet, big-hearted but oddly un-sentimental show about a guy named just “guy,” love-lorn and locked up with his music, and a girl named “girl”, a spritely, blonde, optimistic Czech émigré and single mother who has inspiration written all over her, and how they connect through music surrounded by an endearing group of eccentrics and regular folks blissfully playing and making music through the course of things.

The minute Ward, with that rugged-sensitive two-day beard handsome-but-shy look, picks up a guitar, you, and the rest of the people in the play notice him. That guitar is “guy’s” connection to the world and his own heart and that of the audience’s, and, as in the course of things, the “girl’s” heart, too.

And from then on, you’re in their world, and the fact that half of the characters somewhat disconcertingly are from Prague seems perfectly natural, and that the “guy” and the “girl” should start to have feelings toward each other. That’s as natural as having a Guinness in a bar with similar, fizzy-feel-good results.

And that Ward should be at home with a guitar is pretty natural too. “I’ve been playing guitar since I was six,” Ward says in a telephone interview with The Georgetowner. “I’ve been doing that since seems like most my life.” On stage, the Englishman drifts easily into an Irish accent, and a little bit of a lilt remains over the phone.

Ward, who plays guitar for English rock legend Sir Cliff Richard, tried out for “Once”—formerly a cult independent small film turned into a West End musical-cum-Broadway musical—and was an understudy. “I got to go on a few times, but mostly I watched and waited and learned, and it was such a phenomenal show, so new and different.” When the national show was starting up, he was asked to take over the lead “boy” part in a show that won a ton of Tonys.

“It’s something very special that happens here,” he says. “There are actually a few shows like that in England, with that kind of music and process, musicians playing parts, they’re organic. Ask me, I think it’s the coming thing—there’s so much more room for the audience to react and even participate, this thing of being able to go up on the stage before and during intermission.”

“I love the music in this show, playing the tunes, singing the parts,” Ward said. He feels connected to the part of “guy.” Ward says, “He’s a little locked up and expresses himself with the music, that’s how he shows his emotions, and I guess I’m a little, a lot like that myself.” He says his co-star, Dani De Waal is “a gift,” adding, “She’s such a natural, it’s just so easy to work with her.”

This seems to true of almost all of the characters—there isn’t a one that doesn’t grab an instrument at one time or another, even the banker from Cork, who works up a pretty mean cello.

“The music’s a lot of things—there’s traditional—and non-traditional Irish music, folk music, thumping rock music, ballads, and somewhere in the audience, there’s something for someone.”

He loves touring. “I feel like I’m really seeing America,” he said. “It’s a lovely country, so varied, so generous.”

A natural actor, he becomes something else when he sings. “I have a musical career, so that’s a thing I’m passionate about.” He has a CD out called “Pictures.”

To watch him—and De Waal—perform the Oscar-winning song “Falling Slowly” is to see Ward take hold of himself. It’s like something pure coming out of his heart, a heart slowly filling up and sprouting wings musically.

If you check him out on YouTube, you can see that he takes to American roots naturally, by way of the tribe of Celts and Liverpool.

There’s a black and white video with Ward in the famous Sun Studios, picking up a guitar, surrounded by portraits of Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, reaching all the pain and sorrow, the high notes, the heart of Roy Orbison’s “dreams.” He seems in the midst of rock and roll, the South’s Blues, all at home. As he is on stage, and not just “Once” in “Once”.

Gary Tischler •

The Glimmerglass Festival at Cooperstown—in its 40th anniversary at Cooperstown in upstate New York this year—has a very Washington vibe to it, and not just because festival director Francesca Zambello is also the artistic director of the Washington National Opera.

The first two  of this season’s four productions included a powerful and stirring performance by bass-baritone Simon Owens in the title role of Verdi’s “Macbeth” and noteworthy appearances by bass Solomon Howard in “The Magic Flute” as the magician Sarastro and as the ill-fated Banquo in “Macbeth.” Owens came from a triumphant starring role in this spring’s WNO production of  Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” and Howard, a member of the WNO’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program, starred as Muhammad Ali in the new opera “Approaching Ali” two seasons ago at the Washington Opera, as well as appearing as Sarastro in the WNO’s production of “The Magic Flute.”  

In addition, Tazewell Thompson, who directs Vivaldi’s “Cato at Utica” here, is well-remembered as a veteran director at Arena Stage here, and Zambello directed “Candide” for the festival.

In the gorgeous lakeside setting at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, we saw the festival-opening productions of “The Magic Flute” and “Macbeth.” On the surface, you couldn’t imagine two operas that were as different in tone and story as these works by Mozart and Verdi.  Yet, in key ways, they had some distinct qualities in common. Most notably, the two productions shared unique and imaginative approaches to design and concept, and outstanding singing among the lead roles.

Director Madeline Sayet, working with sometimes startling sets by Troy Hourie and costumes by Kaye Voyce, gave us a version of the familiar and often done “Magic Flute” that seemed fresh in the re-telling and singing.  Conceptually, the production mixed and matched a nature-driven and magical set, resonant of a Native American look (which in turn echoed in the local Cooperstown history, where James Fenimore Cooper is a major figure).   It’s still the same but slightly newer story in which a bewildered hero named Tamino wanders in search of himself into a strange forest where, with the inept assistance of a local lad named Pagageno, he must go an a quest, win a princess, thwart the Queen of the Night and face the wizard Sarastro.

We’ve seen it a lot—at the WNO or in a movie version by Ingmar Bergman, no less.  But this production has a fluid speed, a winning hero in Sean Panikkar who has both charisma and singing ability to spare, and is matched by soprano as the Jacqueline Echols as the heroine Pamina.  Soprano So Young Park did not quite have the acting chops for the role of the Queen of the Night, but, vocally, she jumped at the opportunities in the role with rousing and bravura singing.

“Macbeth,” Verdi’s first encounter with Shakespeare, hasn’t often been seen in Washington, but this production, directed by Anne Bogart with an eye for the main dramatic chance as well as an eye for detail, shows you why composers often turn to Shakespeare for their source material and inspiration.  So do singers as well evidence in the spectacular performance by Owens in the title role, and he was well matched by soprano Melody Moore as Lady Macbeth.

Bogart offered up several thematic conceits that may have been unsettling to classicists. She split the witches into three groups of “apparitions,” operating in a setting that appeared to be 1930s or pre-or-post war England. The extras that we see often seem to be typical Londoners, in suits, with briefcases and baggage, coming from the market. They’re the ordinary folk that are used to unsettling effect in a second-act set piece which, shows the true suffering of the denizens of Macbeth’s tyrannical kingdom.

While Moore has her musically difficult and powerful moments, it is Owens who bears watching and listening to throughout. Decked out at first as a triumphant but brusque general heavy with medals, he has some uncertainty in his bearing at the beginning, it’s a slow process whereby Owens, with his acting and singing, gradually and frighteningly becomes Macbeth in full, no more so than in the famous Banquo’s ghost scene at a banquet where he repeatedly jumps on a table to joust with the ghost and victim of Macbeth, an apparition no one else can see.

Verdi—with music that offers the full range of emotion and style—does Shakespeare justice with a big assist from conductor Joseph Colaneri.  The libretto often stays strictly true to the Bard’s most famous speeches from “Macbeth.” If you’ve never heard Shakespeare truly sung, this is your chance.

All four operas, plus other offerings, will be performed through most of August.  For Washington opera lovers, it’s worth a trip to see what’s going on at Glimmerglass. “The Magic Flute” will be performed Aug. 7, 10, 14 and 23. “Macbeth” runs Aug. 8, 13, 15 17 and 22.  “Cato in Utica” will be performed Aug. 9, 16, 20 and 22, and “Candide” runs Aug. 6, 8, 11, 15 and 21.
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Gary Tischler •

In a Broadway theater world where the search for the next big thing is always on, “Dear Evan Hansen,” the new musical having a world-premiere run at Arena Stage through Aug. 15, has a lot going for it.

In many ways, it’s a thoroughly modern musical, with contemporary music, themes and central characters, and with rising theater artists at the helm. The show — about a young man who pretends to have been a close friend of a troubled high school student who’s committed suicide — is the work of a group of artists who’ve already made names for themselves on Broadway. And the cast is both an exciting and calming mixture of young and older pros.

Directed by Michael Greif, whose credits include “Grey Gardens,” “Next to Normal” (which was rebooted for Broadway at Arena Stage) and “If/Then,” starring Idina Menzel, which had its pre-Broadway run at the National Theater two seasons ago, “Dear Evan Hansen” has a book by Steven Levenson, who penned “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin” (staged at Roundabout Theatre), as well as scripting and co-producing the hit Showtime series “Masters of Sex.”

The music and lyrics are by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, noted for the hit “A Christmas Story: The Musical” and “Dogfight,” produced Off Broadway at Second Stage Theatre (and, coincidentally, being staged at the Keegan Theatre in Dupont beginning Aug. 22).

Ben Platt is headlining “Evan Hansen” as Evan Hansen, bringing some major movie mojo to the project after being the male lead in the hugely successful “Pitch Perfect” movies (1 and 2) and appearing with Meryl Streep in “Ricki and the Flash,” now playing at a Cineplex near you. He made his Broadway debut as Elder Cunningham in “The Book of Mormon.”

For Michael Park, playing alongside another Broadway veteran, Jennifer Laura Thompson, as the shaken parents of Connor, the teen lost to suicide, “Dear Evan Hansen” has been a unique experience. “Being in a show like this from the beginning, an original American musical with all that phrase implies, is exciting. It’s really being part of the process from the beginning, from inception, all the readings, the workshops, the rehearsal. And it’s still changing. This project remains electric and alive even now, because this is the first time it’s gone in front of a paying audience.”

The hope, of course, is that the show will eventually wind up on Broadway. Like some of the other shows involving the creative team of Greif, Levenson, Pasek and Paul, it’s part of an ongoing attempt, on Broadway and in the theater in general, to find the kind of musical that taps into the temper of the times and pushes the genre forward.

Park may be best known for playing Jack Snyder on the hugely popular daytime soap opera “As The World Turns,” for which he received two consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama.

His theater credits are varied and rich. He was in the original cast of “Smokey Joe’s Café” and played Billy in “Carousel,” the difficult part of Gooper in a recent production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and Mr. Bratt in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” Off-Broadway, he was in “The Threepenny Opera” at A.C.T., “Hello Again” at Lincoln Center and “Violet” and “The Burnt Part Boys” at Playwrights Horizons.

He was also in the live television productions of “Peter Pan” and “The Sound of Music” on NBC. “That can be scary,” he said. “It’s sort of like theater in the sense that it’s live, but there’s no audience. But then again there’s an audience of millions.

“This is a very touching, moving show,” he said. “Playing a parent, well, I know about that, and it touches you deeply and easily. I’ve been very lucky to do the things I’ve done. I have a good and real life, and that keeps you grounded. I’ve been married for 20 years to my wife Laurie Nowak, who’s a music therapist, and we have three children, daughters Annabelle Jayne and Kathleen Rose and son Christopher Michael.” He understands all sorts of audiences, including the somewhat insular, fanzine world of soap operas. “Fame, celebrity, all of that is nice if it comes, but I’m an actor who loves the work, and loves my life.

“I think Broadway — especially the world of Broadway musicals — is always trying to find a new voice, a new way of creating work that touches an audience, for its music, for its drama, or style and theme. I’ve been around it a lot and it’s a crowded field. Those songs by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were wonderful. I’ve done Rodgers and Hammerstein and ‘Business’ as well.

“I think this is a pretty special creation. It’s original, down to earth, it is romantic and moving at the same time. I love being a part of it, of getting to work with everybody here. It’s very much a part of our times, and in that sense it’s very alive, and I think it will attract that elusive new audience that’s out there.”