Performance

Gary Tischler • June 9, 2014

When you hear a couple of guys, great actors both, talk about William Shakespeare, you immediately start thinking about: Shakespeare.

In the case of listening to the conversation that swirled around actors Ed Gero and Stacey Keach and moderator John Andrews, the president of the Shakespeare Guild at the Woman’s National Democratic Club recently, you particularly started thinking about the great “Seven Ages of Man” speech in the Bard’s “As You Like It,” which begins thusly:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages . . .”

Shakespeare being a man of the stage often referenced the stage—the play within a play in “Hamlet” and Hamlet’s instructions to the players, Prospero’s farewell speech in “The Tempest.” The “Seven Ages of Man” speech is direct and precise, and it’s about theater as well as life its own self.

This resonated when you heard Gero and Keach — who could and probably have given master classes on acting — started talking about the roles they were playing at Harman Hall in the two parts of “Henry IV.” Gero played the king of the title role, and Keach took on Falstaff, the boisterous boon companion to Prince Hal, the future Henry V.

The professional lives and trajectories of Gero and Keach have been different. Keach, although he is one of our finest Shakespearean actors, has taken a few detours into movies and television, not always choosing wisely, as he has acknowledged, Nevertheless, he has played his characters memorably. Gero has spent a lot of time on the stage in Washington (and elsewhere), assaying 60 Shakespearean parts along the way. Whatever stage of man they may be in now, rich in family life, children and so on, the roles they have played brought them together on stage—notably in a Chicago-Goodman-Theatre-based production of “King Lear,” in which Gero was Gloucester to Keach’s Lear—but the roles themselves have criss-crossed and bumped into each other.

“I played Falstaff once when I was in my twenties,” Keach said. “I had to gain some weight and wisdom I think to play him then. I didn’t have to do that this time around. I need to lose some weight now.”

Gero’s experience with the history plays and the paths of the Henry’s in particular seems like an alternative life lived inside the theatre. He played the lead in “Henry V” at the Folger, when he too was much younger. Then, he performed in “Richard II” as the rebellious Bolingbroke who usurps the crown of Richard II, not once but twice, opposite Philip Goodwin and Richard Thomas. Bolingbroke would become a troubled and often guilt-ridden Henry IV, fending off rebellions and uprising, trying to separate his son Henry from Falstaff.

“Things can get circular, but I think all of that helps you bring the virtue of experience to the parts,” Gero said. “I’m the father, I was the son, I was the usurper and now the king. Henry IV has become a master politician. He knows how to manipulate people, hold and exercise power, like a modern politician. He’s a modern man and that resonates today.”

“I’ve tried not to play Falstaff like a buffoon, which is often done,” Keach said. “There is a huge amount of comedy in the part, but he sees himself as a serious man. You not only have to get the laughs, you have to get the audience not just to like Falstaff but to respect him. His biggest audience is Prince Hal, and when he becomes king in the second play, the comedy stops. Things become more like an elegy. You should take into account that now Hal has to be Henry. He has to act like a king, and he can’t embrace Falstaff, who has some hopes. You can see that again in “Henry V”, when he has to approve of the execution of one of his old companions for desertion.”

Keach is associated with many screen roles, big and little, and is therefore better known. For anybody who goes to the theater a lot in Washington, he has performed brilliantly here as “Richard III.” For this writer’s money, he played the best Richard III ever: dangerous, mocking, self-aware and funny. He also played Lear and Macbeth. But then, there’s a woman who comes up to him after the talk and says ,“You’re my favorite Jesse James.” It was a reference that means a lot to Keach obviously but very little to anyone who hasn’t seen Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders,” a wondrous, stylized, banjo and guitar-driven Western about the outlaws Jesse and Frank James and the Younger boys, robbing banks, one step ahead of a fatal bullet. If you watched television and the “Mike Hammer” private eye series, where Keach was tough and slick with a mustache and a cocked hat, well, there you are. You remember.

Gero, too, has had his share of parts—on the stage—where he’s delivered memorable performance and been rewarded with Helen Hayes Awards. He’s been Scrooge at Ford’s Theater and the artist Mark Rothko. Now, he’s taking on the part of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia for Arena Stage next season.

“Interesting, fascinating,” Gero said of his preparation for the man and the role.

The world remains the same: a stage for a man to play many parts.

— “Henry IV” parts one and two will be playing at the Harman Theatre through this weekend. Check the Washington Shakespeare Company for tickets, dates and times.

Gary Tischler • May 23, 2014

One of the finest—and most original—music albums of any sort came out late last year,  further enlarging the artist’s reputation and resurrecting a ghost of a jazz legend at the same time.
       

That would be the provocatively entitled “I Wanna Be Evil” by the surging and one-of-a-kind jazz singer Rene Marie, who with a ten-song work on the Motema label has managed to bring alive the high-spirited one-of-a-kind life and music of Eartha Kitt.

       
The album—subtitled “With Love to Eartha Kitt”—came out late in 2013 and proved to be a wonder.  It’s rich in the trademark songs of Kitt, who was one of those singer-performers who was way beyond category with big hits like “C’est Si Bon” and the hugely popular “Santa Baby” back in the 1950s, when she was one of the singular “New Faces,” right through 2008 when she passed away.
       

“There wasn’t anybody like her,” Rene Marie said of Kitt. “It’s why I wanted to do this. She inspired me more than anybody. I always wanted to sing, but I got kind of a late start.”
       

We had occasion to talk on the phone with Rene Marie a while back when she appeared in Bethesda.  She’s one of the most personable, straight-ahead people you ever want to meet.  On Saturday, May 24, Washington fans of both Kitt—and of Rene Marie, born Rene Marie Stevens, in nearby Warrenton, Va.—get a chance to hear her doing songs from the album as part of the two-day 19th Annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz festival at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. Other performers on May 24 include Trio 3 performing a Mary Lou Williams repertoire and rising star Anat Cohen and her quartet.
       

Rene Marie isn’t exactly like Kitt, although both have appeared in Washington, D.C.—we talked with Kitt a number of years ago when she appeared at the now gone Charley’s Supper Club on K Street.  Kitt had a style that was damn tough to imitate and reproduce, and she had attitude to spare, but she also more often than not flat out made you listen and watch if you had the good fortune to catch her in person. 

In 1999, the year her career started to take off, Rene Marie performed at Blues Alley, also in Georgetown. Rene Marie has an attitude too, but it’s the of the kind that’s looking to share music and help others. On line, you can see her singing for homeless people, in shelters or impromptu occasions.
       

She always entertained the thought of singing—her voice has a clarity that’s hard to subdue, but she was as she has said in “an abusive marriage” for years.  Rene Marie continued to try to sing and perform until her husband said, she told us, “Choose, me or your music.”  Encouraged by her  grown children, she chose music. “At that point, well, it was an easy choice,” she said.
       

So, Rene Marie was off at the age of 42 to start a singing career. It wasn’t easy, but she’s at what amounts to a personal zenith now, but never forgets that songs—like “Strange Fruit”—are about people, history and times, as well as the joy of making music. She’s written much of her own materials and songs as well as hewing to her own unique style of singing standards. 
       

When you listen to Rene Marie’s voice, her singing on the Kitt album, you hear strains of other voices—influences like Betty Carter, Ella, Dinah, Nancy Wilson and Sarah Vaughan, and, of course, Kitt. Mostly, however, it’s a voice you’ve also never heard before. 
       

The tribute to Kitt is different from Kitt. It’s a musical praise for Kitt’s courage as much as her unique talent. But Kitt always had something growly, a hot touch, unbeatable but not necessarily classical. 
       

Rene Marie is the real thing. She makes all the songs on the album her own, and therefore emotionally stronger, clearer and better.  She has a rangy, beautiful voice. “Santa Baby” becomes more than a playful tune, as does “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.” She has that throaty optimism that makes “I’d Rather Be Burned As a Witch” a lights-out effort.

Georgetowner •

When Ford’s Theatre’s co-production with Signature Theatre of “Hello Dolly!” won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Resident Musical (a tie with Olney’s “A Chorus Line”), it was a sweet moment of validation for Ford’s Director Paul Tetreault.

“Actually, this was the first award Ford’s had received as an organization, and that was a really amazing moment for us,” said Tetreault, who is in the midst of his 10th anniversary as director of the historic theater. “Imagine that. We’d gotten individual awards for acting and such, but never a production award in the history of Ford’s.”
The award was significant because it showed that Tetreault had not only kept Ford’s status as a popular (and money-making) theater with a historic mission, but elevated it to the status of a theater respected for its productions and unique vision.

Signature Theatre’s artistic director Eric Shaeffer shared in the award for the remounting of Jerry Herman’s hugely popular musical, which originally starred Carol Channing. The “Hello Dolly!” co-production also featured a cast filled with local actors, including Ed Gero, who for the last several seasons has played Scrooge in Ford’s annual holiday show, “A Christmas Carol.”

“That was gratifying. Everything about the production and the result was certainly an achievement for both organizations,” Tetreault said. “Eric and I had worked together before with the ground-up production of the musical of ‘Meet John Doe,’ so it seemed natural for us to do so again. And I think this kind of cooperative effort is beneficial to Washington theater.”

Still, the award had its bittersweet aspects. Tetreault had high hopes for the season-opening production of “The Laramie Project,” the emotionally charged, realistic and inventive play about America’s reaction to the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard and its aftermath.

“The Laramie Project,” by Moisés Kaufman and the Teutonic Theater Company, was scheduled to open during the infamous government shutdown. Because Ford’s Theatre is a National Historic Site, the theater was also shut down, and with it the opening production.

“Woolly Mammoth offered us a space, and we staged a production for the media, without the usual theatrical bells and whistles of lights, sets and so on. The sparseness was emotionally powerful, as were the productions we did free to the public at a church.”

The shutdown ended soon after.

It’s fair to say that Tetreault’s tenure so far has had its challenges – not forgetting the shutdown, but also remembering the conditions that prevailed when he first came here and took over the reins. Those reins had been held for 35 years by the legendary Frankie Hewitt, who had succumbed to cancer.

Tetreault arrived after an administrative career that included stints at Madison Square Garden and the Circle Repertory Company in New York and the Berkeley Repertory in California. He was managing director of the famed Alley Theatre in Houston, where he and artistic director Gregory Boyd produced over 100 plays and won the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre.

Tetreault didn’t lack for a resume or a vision, but the Ford’s job was still somewhat daunting.

“Frankie, you have to give her all the credit in the world, she was the mainstay of the theater and gave it energy and life. She was a legend, a major Washington figure, and that sort of thing is a challenge for anybody coming in,” he said, adding: “I like to think like an outsider in some ways, to see myself that way.”

In Washington and beyond, Ford’s Theatre has a unique niche. As the place where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, it’s a shrine to Lincoln and his ideas and ideals, complete with the presidential box where he watched “Our American Cousin.”

“It’s an American theater, a certain kind of place that exists not only as theater but in the public imagination,” he said. “So, there’s some things you can’t do.”
What Tetreault has done is to create a kind of theater of Americana, not in the cliché sense, but with productions that strike the themes of American inclusion: race, opportunity, outsiders and their dreams. And he kept the theater in the public eye when it lost a little more than a season during major renovations.

The Lincoln plays that have been done – and a commissioned work about Mary Todd Lincoln that’s on the agenda for 2014-2015 – have been remarkably good theater, from the musical “The Civil War” to “The Heavens Are Hung in Black” and “The Rivalry.”

Standout productions have included the powerful musical “Parade” about the lynching of Leo Frank, a controversial production of “Our Town” and “Black Pearl Sings,” as well as “Meet John Doe,” the musical based on populist director Frank Capra’s common-man hit.

“I’d still like to see that show again, to keep it alive,” said Tetreault.

Gary Tischler • May 15, 2014

Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith called the songs of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller the soundtrack of a generation, the songbook of our lives.

Listening to and watching—and moving to and being moved by—the Randy Johnson-directed production of “Smokey Joe’s Café,” which features some 40 songs by the dynamic songwriting and rock-n-roll pioneering duo of Leiber and Stoller, you got the sense that this music could connect generations.

Often with early rock-n-roll songs, you get that karaoke itch. They’re the song still being done on public television nostalgia shows by surviving members of the groups that had hot hits with them quite some time ago. When you’re talking soundtrack and songbook of a generation, you have to ask just a little which lives, what generation, which songs.

There’s no question that this music might not get to everybody —for every bobbing bald and white haired head in the audience, there were at least a few folks like the two thirty-something men next to me who just barely seemed to manage a heartbeat.

This version of “Smokey Joe’s Café” avoids the karaoke pitfall thanks to Johnson’s heartfelt if narrative-free concept and direction. It lets the very gifted, high-energy and individualistic performers tell the story of the music, and in the process shakes off the dust of over-familiarity from the songs, some of which got tens way back on American Bandstand.

The production wasn’t trouble-free. It had to contend with the over-heated expectations and energy of an official opening night (Stoller was in attendance; Leiber died in 2011.) Some technical glitches like a dead mike and projections that did little to clarify matters. Such things no doubt will be dealt with for the show—which runs through June 8.

It’s really a salute to a time and place and the gifts of two young guys in tune with the coming times who were also deeply saturated in the blues. Their songs were recorded by just about everyone worth talking about, all kinds of singers—Peggy Lee, Elvis, the Coasters, Ben E. King and the Drifters, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Little Richard, Muddy Waters and, yes, even Edith Piaf.

Johnson’s direction and the choreography by Parker Esse provide a kind of welcome mat—along with the band in the center of the stage, the balcony and staircase, the jukebox, along with cool duds from the period, old stuff which has often been worn anew and again.

This isn’t just kid stuff—although Leiber songs like “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock” helped send Elvis into the teen stratosphere of the 1950s—because the blues, jazzy torch songs and the fast-paced patter-chatter songs of the Coasters make their way in here as well as less familiar songs.

The ostensible out-of-town star of this show, Levi Kreis, who won a Tony for his piano-banging Jerry Lee Lewis stint in “Million Dollar Quartet,” takes on “Jailhouse Rock.” While not trying to be Elvis, he makes it his own—without ever losing any of its jolting flavor. But it’s E. Faye Butler, as dangerous as ever, full of the blues that they all but spill out of her with emotion, who ends the first act with the God-loves-you Gospel rouser “Saved.” She adds her own often rowdy, always accessible soul and blues flavored style to the proceedings as she has done before in “Crowns,” “Dinah Was” and “Oklahoma.” She’s one of ours, even if she still lives in Chicago.

There’s a gaggle of Coasters-flavored fun songs—“Young Blood,” “Yakety Yak” and “Charlie Brown”—the kind that made rock and roll rock and also did yeoman duty in fueling the culture-bridging blowback of pop music.

Watch great dancer Ashley Blair Fitzgerald show Austin Colby just what to do in “Can You Show Me How To Shimmy?” Listen to Colby’s deep yearning when he sings “Spanish Harlem” and Butler make an anthem out of “Fools Fall in Love.” Nova Payton and Stephawn Stephens break hearts in the “Love Me” and “Don’t,” a combo of searing ballads.

Often, it’s the unfamiliar that surprises you here: “Don Juan,” “Shopping for Clothes,” “D.W. Washburn,” “Pearl’s a Singer” and “Some Cats know.” They’re practically a showcase for the song-writing range of Leiber and Stoller.

The duo is also the reason for the huge success of Ben E. King—still performing—and the Drifters in the early 1960s, from “Broadway” to the evocative “Dance With Me” and “There Goes My Baby,” ending up with “Love Potion No. 9” that eventually just caused the audience to sway and levitate a little. And, then, the best for last: “Stand By Me,” a personal keepsake for this writer and many in the audience from the look and sound of things.

What this high octane company—and Johnson—manages to do was to give the Leiber and Stoller songs a way to jump up and live again, fresh as the first time anybody heard them. In this way, we repeat ourselves, come full circle to the place where everything old is really new again.

Gary Tischler • May 12, 2014

“Blue Note at 75,” the week-long diamond anniversary celebration of the iconic jazz recording label climaxes this weekend with a series of performances, exhibitions, and, on Sunday, with “Blue Note at 75, The Concert,” with an all-assembly of vocalists and top jazz musicians at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.

Rarely has a recording label been such an iconic, emblematic presence for a genre of music—except perhaps for Deutschegrammaphone in the classical arena—as Blue Note has been for jazz, which sprang out of America to become the world-wide sound that it is today.

Blue Note was founded by two German immigrants and childhood friends, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, who settled in New York in the 1930s. Together with recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder and commercial designer Reid Miles, they put Blue Note and with it jazz into the stratosphere, recording the music and its stars as it moved through hot jazz, Boogie Woogie and Swing, through Bepop, Hard Bop and Post Bop, to Soul Jazz, Avant Garde and fusion and beyond.

Most of the major performers, musicians, bands, vocalists and stars of jazz were on the label—from Cannonball Adderely to Miles Davis, to Dianne Reeves to Wynton Marsalis, from Donald Byrd to Bud Powell, to Thelonious Monk, a list that includes some surprises like Norah Jones and Willie Nelson.

Jones will be on hand for the all-star concert Sunday, which will also feature singer Dianne Reeves, saxophonist Joe Lovano, Blue Note recording artist and Kennedy Center artist advisor for jazz Jason Moran, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Brian Blade and organist Lonnie Smith, among others.

The week-longer celebration has been held all over the Kennedy Center, as well as venues throughout the city. The center’s Millennium Stage was a venue for many of the performances and will feature bassist and composer Dereck Hodge on Saturday, Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band on Sunday and an all-star Washington D.C.-based group of musicians that will salute Blue Note on Friday. Featured D.C. musicians include Elijah Jamal Balbed, tenor/soprano sax and musical director, Lyle Link, alto sax and flute, Kenny Rittenhouse, trumpet, Raynel Frazier, trombone, Tim Whalen, piano, Eliot Seppa, bass and Dave McDonald, drums, playing compositions from various Blue Note recordings.

Multi-Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Terence Blanchard will perform with his group at the Terrace Theater Friday. In the center’s Atrium, the Grammy-winning hip-hop jazz pianist Robert Glasper brings an up-beat note to the Blue Note proceedings with his cutting style, in “The Crossroads Club: Robert Glasper Experiment.”

There are also films, exhibitions, panel discussions and concerts around town throughout the month, including an ongoing “Blue Note at 75 Grammy Museum Exhibit” in the Hall of States at the Kennedy Center through May 21.

For all information on times, venues and dates, go to the Kennedy Center website

Gary Tischler • May 9, 2014

Americans have dreamt and pursued the goal of driving across the USA in your Chevrolet or Audi, but here in Washington, D.C., they can go around the world in May.

That’s when Cultural Tourism DC presents its seventh annual Passport DC event, when the city’s unique array of international embassies open their doors to the public not only for visits but with a wide range of special events.

Passport DC has become a uniquely Washington event, because of the city’s embassies and because of a growing turnout every year, abetted by the city’s changing and growing population.

Passport DC starts off big-time with the Around the World Embassy Tour, May 3, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., in which 50 embassies from six continents invite residents and visitors alike to visit their countries by way of giving you a taste of various cultures, from food, to art, dance and music, Tango lessons, henna applications, Ceylon tea tasting, Dominican rum tastings, and even Thai massage.

On May 10, it’s Shortcut to Europe: European Union Embassies Open House. In fact, Passport DC came out of a European Union open house event which attracted thousands. Twenty eight embassies as well as the European Union Delegation to the United States are inviting visitors in to taste, see and hear the cultures of their countries.

On May 15, it’s the Embassy Chef Challenge, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. This is also Cultural Tourism’s annual fundraiser. In this annual competition, world-class embassy chefs—of which there are quite a few—present special small plates of their countries culinary specialties. A panel of celebrity chefs and food critics select the winner of the Judge’s Choice Award, while guests can cast a ballot for the people’s choice winner. There’s also a live and silent auction.

On May 17, it’s the National Asian Heritage Festival, featuring the Fiesta Asia Street Fair, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., a fair that features more than 1,000 performers on five stages, representing some 20 cultures. There’s pan-Asian cuisine, a shopping bazaar, kid-friendly, interactive activities, a parade, Bollywood street dancing and crafts, all on Pennsylvania Avenue between 3rd and 6th Streets.

Here’s some links to all the activities:

CulturalTourismDC.org

www.facebook.com/CulturalTourismDC

www.twitter.com/dcculture

Hashtag: #PassportDC

Gary Tischler •

“Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín” is never just a concert, a performance, a presentation of a masterpiece. The multimedia concert-drama, which has been presented many times, most recently at the Music Center at Strathmore on May 1, has always been something more, larger and larger still.

But it is also something as troubling and always evocable and intimate as the remembrance of the heart and mind of a people straining with music to be free in the midst of constant death.

The concert, as well as a documentary film of the same name, has been performed all over the world, and will continue to be performed. It is at heart the resurrection of what was an obscure but heart-rending and powerful story from the annals of the Holocaust, which hardly lacks for unique and powerful stories.

For Murry Sidlin, the founder and creator of “Defiant Requiem,” the Baltimore-born conductor and music educator at Catholic University in Washington, the story, the music, the concert has become a life’s mission. This mission has resulted in the creation of the D.C.-based Defiant Requiem Foundation and the telling and retelling and resurrection of a story of great courage and the indomitable spirit of one man.

For Sildin, it began on a sunny day in the late 1990s, when he was a faculty member of the University of Minnesota’s school of music. He ran across a used bookstore, the kind that you always saw in cities and universities in America. “There was a bin, a cart outside,” he said. “I stuck my hand in and pulled out a book, an old book.”

The book was “Music in Terezín”, by Joza Karas, a Czech writer and composer who had collected the music of Jews imprisoned at Terezín, a Nazi camp in Czechoslavakia, where thousands were killed and from which thousands more were sent to Auschwitz.

“I had picked the book out of sheer luck,” Sidlin said. “I opened it up and there was a chapter on a man called Rafael Schächter.”

“He was a composer, he was an opera coach,” Sidlin said. A Czech Jew, he had been rounded up and sent to Terezín carrying a lone, shopworn copy of the music of Verdi’s Requiem inside his coat.

Terezín in popular accounts is known as the camp which the Nazis tried to pass off as a model camp, to show Red Cross members and other inspectors that Jews were being treated well.

“That’s not exactly right,” Sidlin said. “They did that once, when the Red Cross came and it was then that Schächter, with 200 members of the camp, put on a recital of the Requiem in front of the Red Cross and the Nazis.”

“For those in the chorus – they were accompanied by a three-legged piano – it was an act of defiance, an act of courage. Schächter had them rehearse after every day of hard labor and impossible conditions in the basements of the camp,” Sidlin said.

“But the camp already had a lively culture – here were writers, singers, artists, professors, directors, composers, musicians from all over Europe, and there were lectures, cabaret music and singing, plays, operas, put on after the day was done. And Schächter was at the heart of it. He held 14 performances with 150 singers at the camp for the other prisoners.”

“The book and the story moved me in ways that I can’t begin to describe,” he said. “I wanted that story to be told and sung, and to be remembered. That’s what I’m doing, that’s what everybody that’s involved is doing.”

The result, in the end, was a foundation, the Defiant Requiem Foundation, with Sidlin as its president and Stuart E. Eizenstat as its current chairman. In turn, the foundation sponsors the Rafael Schächter Institute for Arts & Humanities. Next month, for the first time, the Institute will be held in the U.S., at American University’s Katzen Arts Center.
At Strathmore, 50 survivors of the Holocaust attended, including Edgar Krasa and Marianka May, who were members of Schächter’s Terezín chorus. Soloists including Arianna Zukerman (the daughter of Pinchas Zukerman), mezzo-soprano Ann McMahon Quintero, tenor Issachah Savage and bass Nathan Stark. D.C.-area theater star Rick Foucheux appeared as Schächter, with Rheda Becker, who often performs speaking roles with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as the Lecturer.

Interspersed there were clips from the “Defiant Requiem” film, as well as clips from a Nazi propaganda film.

Schächter himself was sent to Auschwitz, where he survived until the remaining prisoners were sent on a death march, in which he perished.
The Strathmore concert was performed in memory of Fran Eizenstat and Amy Antonelli.

There will be a screening of the “Defiant Requiem” documentary as part of the Schächter Institute, June 8 to 12 at the Katzen Arts Center, with a book signing by Richard Breitman for his book “FDR and the Jews,” Phillip and Noreen Silver performing works by Terezín composers on piano and cello, a one-woman show “The Tin Ring” and a panel discussion led by Eizenstat on “Anti-Semitism in Europe Today.”

Gary Tischler • May 5, 2014

Randy Johnson, the director-playwright and three-ring-circus master of theater, knows his way around icons—iconic performers, singers and musicians, iconic music, iconic people, iconic times and events.

With Johnson, who directed and wrote “A Night With Janis Joplin,” which received no less than two successful runs at Arena Stage plus a Broadway run, everything is always different. If there is a trademark for Johnson productions, it’s that they’re going to be nothing that you might expect.

He’s back at Arena, directing “Smokey Joe’s Café, the Songs of Leiber and Stoller,” a 40 hit-song paean to the music of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who, Johnson says, “all but invented rock and roll.”

“This is a little different for me,” said Johnson, who is not to be confused with Randy Johnson, the famed and tall major league baseball pitcher. “This will be one of the few times that I haven’t also written what I’m directing.”

Johnson staged a flamboyant, nostalgically and emotionally exhausting “Janis” by turning the show about the late 1960s and 1970s rock and blues singer who succumbed to a heroin overdose into a partial rock-ous concert, which also included contributions from female black blues and rhythm-and-blues legends like Bessie Smith and Aretha Franklin, the sources of inspiration for Joplin.

“Smokey Joe’s Café” originally opened on Broadway in 1995 and proved to be a hit. “This will be different,” Johnson promised. “For one thing, we’re doing this in the Fichandler, which means theater in the round, which means you have to be acutely aware of the audience in so many different ways.

“For another, I’ve had the good fortune to be friends with Mike Stoller (Leiber died in 2011), which has given me some unique insights into the songs and music they created together,” he added.

Leiber and Stoller were a regular hit factory for any number of early rock and roll legends, including Elvis Presley, the Coasters, Ben E. King and the Drifters.

“You could make a very good argument that Leiber and Stoller created rock-and-roll,” Johnson said. “Certainly, rock-and-roll would not be the same without them.”

The 40 songs in the songs in the show—performed by a cast that included Levi Kreis (Jerry Lee Lewis in Broadway’s “Million Dollar Quartet”), the incomparable E. Faye Butler and Nova Y. Payton and Jay Adriel, Austin Colby, Ashley Blair Fitzgerald, Michael J. Mainwaring, Stephawn P. Stephens and Kara-Tameika Watkins—are rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues classics.

“I don’t think there is such a thing as one American songbook,” Johnson said. “Yes, of course, we have Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin, Lerner and Loewe and Stephen Sondheim from Broadway. It’s generational for certain singers. But the works of Leiber and Stoller constitute a songbook of a different sort, the songbook of rock and roll for another generation.”

Those songs—Carole King and Burt Bachrach would provide later pop samples—are memorable because they had lyrics that stuck in your head just about forever, and, as Dick Clark might have said, “You could dance to them.”

It’s hard to think of Elvis, for instance, without “Jailhouse Rock” or “Hound Dog.”

“It’s great to be back in Washington and to be working with Molly [Arena Artistic Director Molly Smith] again,” Johnson said. “She has done spectacular work here.”

It’s a mutual admiration society. “Randy Johnson is a true theater artist,” Smith said of Johnson. “What sets him apart from others is that he is that rare breed of visionary director writer truly in a league all his own. I have rarely met anyone like him—he has the ability to move between theater, the broad culture, the concert world and everything in between…”

Johnson certainly doesn’t lack for ambition or vision, or social conscience. In the strictest sense of the word, he isn’t a theater director—that might be too much of a constricted space for him, although he’s certainly done well there.

Much of his work is flavored and driven by music—all kinds of music. Think of “Elvis, the Concert,” Michael Bolton’s World Tour with “Bolton Swings Sinatra,” in England “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” a tribute to Judy Garland or shows about Patsy Cline, (“Always Patsy Cline,” which re-opened at the original home of the Grand Ole Opry.) and Conway Twitty.

Johnson directed and co-wrote the world premiere of “Mike Tyson, the Undisputed Truth,” starring Tyson himself at the MGM Grand, and staged and directed Pope Benedict’s appearance in New York—giving us two men not usually mentioned in the same sentence. He also wrote and directed “The Wildest—The Music of Louis Prima and Keely Smith,” Smith being one of the most under-rated American pop singers ever. “Isn’t she though?” Johnson asked. “She’s also my godmother and just a truly remarkable singer. Period.”

“The people, the projects, the music I’m interested in are all a part of my life, a background to it and people of my generation,” he said. “This is what we grew up with, and these songs by Leiber and Stoller, are the songs we grew up with.”

Gary Tischler • May 2, 2014

Here’s a hot tip: “The Magic Flute” is coming.

Mozart’s last opera was a big hit at its 1791 premiere at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, where it ran for an unheard-of 100 performances, though Mozart himself did not live to see that milestone.

It’s been a hugely popular opera ever since, with the whole-family appeal of its stirring fairy-tale story: a brave prince named Tamino, with the help of the Queen of the Night, attempts to rescue her daughter, Pamina, from the evil sorcerer Sarastro. Magic stuff indeed. It’s cliff-hanging adventure, fantasy, comedy and romance tonight, with the musical gifts of Mozart on display in full force.

So the news that Washington National Opera will be staging “The Magic Flute” would perhaps not be big news ordinarily. But the WNO production of “The Magic Flute,” which runs May 3-18, is no ordinary project or production.

Perhaps most importantly, this production of “The Magic Flute” will be sung in English, in line with Artistic Director Francesca Zambello’s initiative to broaden the WNO’s audience base. It’s a boon for fresh audiences and a challenge for singers, and it adds a new dimension to the opera, usually sung in German.

That especially concerns bass Soloman Howard, the Washington-born-and-raised bass who sings the part of Sarastro.

“It’s a part I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “Singing in English is a challenge, and it’s the kind I like to face, but having the opera done in English, well, it’s a step that should bring in people who don’t normally go to the opera, or find it too intimidating. It makes things accessible, and this opera as a story, and a look and design, is already something everyone can embrace. Kelley Rourke, our dramaturg, did this new version in English, and she works with all of us singers. You have to find how to stretch or not different vowels, how low or high you can go with a word, a feeling in English, as opposed to German.”

Soloman is in his third and last year in the WNO’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program. In June, he will appear in the world premiere of “An American Soldier,” composed by Huang Ruo with a libretto by playwright David Henry Hwang, the season-ending American Opera Initiative production.

The biggest news is that he has signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera Company to sing the part of The King in their fall production of “Aida.”

“I’ve been very fortunate, and it’s a great honor to get something like that,” he said. “But I’ve grown here, being able to perform here, getting out into the community, working with children in the area where I grew up. I’m going to miss it – the company, the director, all the people you work with. It’s like a family.”

Soloman, who has a phenomenal lower range that appears to come straight out of the ocean floor, has made big impressions and big strides here. He got to sing “Old Man River” in Zambello’s production of “Showboat,” he was a stirring and moving Muhammad Ali in the powerful “Approaching Ali” produced for the WNO’s new commissioning program for contemporary opera and he was a roaring lion in the wonderful WNO children’s production, “The Lion, the Unicorn and Me.”

“To me, seeing kids and going to the schools here is a way to make a difference. They see me, and they maybe recognize there’s all sorts of avenues out there,” he said. When we talked with him about Ali, he recalled his own growing up going to high school in Suitland, Md. “People wondered about why I was doing classical music. They’d say, Why aren’t you doing pop, or gospel or blues? Well, I can do that, I suppose. But the challenge is what’s important.”

Solomon is joined in the youthful “Magic Flute” cast by newcomers to the WNO Maureen McKay and Eri Nakamura as Pamina, Kathryn Lewek and Anna Siminska as the Queen of the Night, Joseph Kaiser and Paul Appleby as Tamino, Joshua Hopkins and David Pershall as Papageno, Jordan Bisch as Sarastro, John Easterlin as Monostatos and Ashley Emerson as Papagena.

WNO Music Director Philippe Auguin will direct the WNO orchestra and Harry Silverstein, who directed a popular “Marriage of Figaro” here, is directing the production.

Of particular interest are the costumes and sets designed by the brilliant Japanese-American set and costume designer Jun Kaneko, who has created a unique, high-tech look and environment that includes the use of projections. There will also be a special exhibition of his artwork in the Hall of Nations through May 19.

Opening night of “The Magic Flute” on May 3 will be part of the WNO’s popular and popularizing “Opera in the Outfield” program, in which the opera is broadcast live to the high-definition NatsHD scoreboard at Nationals Park beginning at 7 p.m. Admission is free and the gates open at 5 p.m.

As part of the ballpark program, there will be pre-game entertainment in the form of Taiko drumming, a meet-and-greet with Ms. Brown (“Chief Chocolate Officer” of M&Ms), photo ops with the living statue of Babe Ruth, cutouts of characters from “The Magic Flute” and a costume trunk.

On May 5, there will be a free preview performance of musical highlights from “The Magic Flute” at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, performed by members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program and other artists from the production.

In addition, there will be pre-performance education events called Opera Insights prior to every performance in the Opera House.

Performances for “The Magic Flute” are May 3 and 5 at 6 p.m., May 7 at 6:30 p.m., May 8 at 6:15 p.m., May 10 at 6 p.m., May 11 at 1 p.m., May 15 at 6:30 p.m, May 16 at 6:30 p.m., May 17 at 6 p.m. and May 18 at 1 p.m.

Gary Tischler •

No matter how much you change things, core things remain the same.

That was the case with the 30th annual presentation of the Helen Hayes Awards, held last Monday. The changes were big-time, sometimes startling, even confusing. But in the end, it was still the same old story – not a fight for love and glory but a celebration of the Washington-area theater community.

It’s a community that sometimes seems to be bursting at the seams, reflecting the almost boomtown growth of the city. But it’s also a community that seems to be coming more and more together in collaborative and identifiable ways. Here’s a change: the folks at Theatre Washington decided to hold the awards ceremonies at the National Building Museum. It’s a great space for what used to be called the biggest cast party ever, but not so much a theater space.

The proceedings – more often than not held at the Warner Theatre or the National Theatre, followed by a trip to a hotel ballroom for the big shindig – were altered in a way that proved in the long run to be more efficient. The whole thing was over by 10 p.m. (although the partying went on).

The set-up was three sessions of award-giving, with two very strict 20-minute intermissions. It began with food and drink, lots of both, and continued that way through the intermission. The effect was sometimes as if you were at a show on a cruise ship, which resulted in a lot of jostling, intermittent dancing and non-stop schmoozing.

And the business at hand, the handing out of awards got done almost – but not quite – at a fast and furious pace, with merry singers shuffling recipients off the stage if they got too long-winded. During the intermissions, an ominous gong that sounded almost like a cannon called folks back from partying.

As for the awards themselves, there were a few real surprises and a shock or two in the mix, but they seemed mostly about spreading the wealth, as opposed to honoring juggernauts.

What you saw was a parade of talented, gifted, high-spirited, often funny actors, performers, directors, leaders, costume and sound and set designers get their just rewards in the spirit of being honored by their peers and being part of a greater whole.

Having been to most of these affairs over the years – 30 years is a long time – this is the heart and soul of the awards. It’s what sets the Helen Hayes Awards apart from the Tonys or the Oscars, for instance. A play, after all, is always a collaborative effort, and so is a happening and celebration like this.

Victor Shargai, the longtime chairman of the Helen Hayes Awards and Theatre Washington, received the Helen Hayes Tribute for nurturing and helping to build and expand the group into one of the city’s major cultural forces. It is hoped that Shargai’s award is at least as much for his singular and original spirit and character, which was always on display, as for his achievements.

The Aaron Posner-penned play “Stupid Fing Bird,” a modernist take on Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” received numerous nominations, allowing every host on the stage to gleefully drop the F-bomb on a gathered multitude of close to a couple thousand people. E. Faye Butler, the not-ever-demure performer who really should be a Washington treasure even though she lives elsewhere, gave the title a full-throated bluesy note when she tackled it.

And the winner for best resident play?

You guessed it. “Stupid Fing Bird.”

Probably a bit surprising were the wins for ensemble cast and best resident musical by “Hello Dolly!” This joint production by Ford’s Theatre and Signature Theatre, staged at Ford’s, signals the rise of such projects. We saw it before in Arena Stage’s cooperative efforts with other companies in its O’Neill Festival and the citywide Shakespeare Festival a number of years ago. Kudos to Paul Tetreault at Ford’s and Eric Schaefer at Signature.

We saw familiar faces march up there or mingle: Ted van Griethuysen for a supporting actor award for Studio’s “The Apple Family” and Rick Foucheux, best actor for Round House Theatre’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

And we saw new faces in the crowd and on stage. The affair is always listed as black-tie, but from the beginning this has been an affair for young theater people, people who dress in bright colors, do outrageous dos, wear bowties that sparkle and shoes that have polka dots, and just generally dazzle with their high spirits. And they dance, they yell, they scream.

This year, they had a longer time and a bigger playpen. Break a leg indeed.

THE RECIPIENTS OF
THE 30th ANNUAL
HELEN HAYES AWARDS

OUTSTANDING DIRECTOR,
RESIDENT MUSICAL
Alan Paul, “A Funny Thing Happened on
the Way to the Forum,” Shakespeare
Theatre Company

OUTSTANDING DIRECTOR,
RESIDENT PLAY
Mitchell Hebert, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” Round House Theatre

OUSTANDING CHOREOGRAPHY,
RESIDENT MUSICAL
Karma Camp, “Hello Dolly!,” Ford’s
Theatre and Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING MOVEMENT,
RESIDENT PLAY
Irina Tsikurishvili and Ben Cunis,
“The Three Musketeers,” Synetic Theater

OUTSTANDING MUSIC DIRECTION, RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Jon Kalbfleisch, “Gypsy,” Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING SET DESIGN,
RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Clint Ramos, “Appropriate,” Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

OUTSTANDING LIGHTING DESIGN, RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Andrew F. Griffin, “Henry V,” Folger Theatre

OUTSTANDING COSTUME DESIGN, RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Merrily Murray-Walsh, “Mary T & Lizzy K,” Arena Stage

OUTSTANDING SOUND DESIGN,
RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Eric Shimelonis, “Never The Sinner,” 1st Stage

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING
PERFORMER, VISITING PRODUCTION
Samantha Marie Ware, “The Book of Mormon,” The Kennedy Center

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS,
VISITING PRODUCTION
Rachel York, “Anything Goes,” The Kennedy Center

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR,
VISITING PRODUCTION
Christopher John O’Neill, “The Book of
Mormon,” The Kennedy Center

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS, RESIDENT MUSICAL
Erin Weaver, “Company,” Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR, RESIDENT MUSICAL
Bobby Smith, “Spin,” Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS
RESIDENT MUSICAL
Diana Huey, “Miss Saigon,” Signature Theatre;

Jessica Vancaro, “A Chorus Line,” Olney Theatre Center

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR
RESIDENT MUSICAL
James Gardiner, “The Last Five Years,”
Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS RESIDENT PLAY
Dawn Ursula, “The Convert,” Woolly
Mammoth Theatre Company

THE JAMES MACARTHUR AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR, RESIDENT PLAY
Ted van Griethuysen, “The Apple Family Plays,” The Studio Theatre

THE ROBERT PROSKY AWARD FOR
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR,
RESIDENT PLAY
Rick Foucheux, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” Round House Theatre

OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE, RESIDENT MUSICAL
“Hello, Dolly!,” Ford’s Theatre and
Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE,
RESIDENT PLAY’
“Glengarry Glen Ross,” Round House Theatre

THE CHARLES MACARTHUR
AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING NEW
PLAY OR MUSICAL
“Stupid Fing Bird” by Aaron Posner, Woolly Mammoth Theatre

OUTSTANDING VISITING PRODUCTION
“The Book of Mormon,” The Kennedy Center

OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION,
THEATER FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES
“Anime Momotaro,” Imagination Stage

OUTSTANDING RESIDENT MUSICAL
“Hello Dolly!,” Ford’s Theatre and Signature Theatre; “A Chorus Line,” Olney Theatre Centre

OUTSTANDING RESIDENT PLAY
“Stupid Fing Bird,” Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company