Performance

Gary Tischler • June 10, 2016

Kicking off officially this Friday, June 10, at the Hamilton, the DC Jazz Festival, now in its 12th year, will …

Gary Tischler •

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has achieved some miracles with this play.

Gary Tischler •

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has achieved some miracles with this play.

Gary Tischler • June 8, 2016

It looked as if the Helen Hayes Awards, presented by Theatre Washington, managed to return to their roots this year at the annual celebration and trophy giveaways, held at the Lincoln Theatre May 23.

The roots, to my mind, are what separate the awards from their New York counterparts the Tonys, which are nationally televised but locally vague, more an extended ad for Broadway than anything else.

The Helen Hayes Awards, in contrast, have from the beginning, quite a number of years ago, been a celebration of the Washington theater community (which extends to our neighboring states) in all of its aspects — big and little, serious and entertaining, rich or struggling, companies with theaters and those without them.

They have always centered around people: the artists, actors, directors and gifted pros who make magic happen backstage and out front, and also the audience. There’s always been a celebratory, even party-like atmosphere to these things, named after America’s First Lady of Theater and often presided over by her son, the late James MacArthur. There was time for solemnity and eloquence, broad humor, songs and thank-you-mom-and-dad, not to mention the presence of legends like Angela Lansbury and Jason Robards and locals who made good like Robert Prosky.

Mostly, there was a lot of yelling, whistling, cheering, and screams from the contingents that had their work nominated. Winning wasn’t always everything, but when it occurred for the smaller troupes, it was really something. Being there always renewed my interest in and enjoyment of the Washington theater community (if such renewal were needed), of which I am part as critic and chronicler.

Things stick in your mind. I remember when actor Ed Gero, who was nominated this year for his portrayal of Antonin Scalia, won his first Helen Hayes Award for portraying John of Gaunt in “Richard II.” He acknowledged the passing of his father that year: “This is for Sal of New Jersey,” he said.

Last year, they kind of muffed it when, in the wake of deciding to double the number of awards and dividing them into Helens and Hayeses — basically a matter of size and membership in Actors’ Equity — they had a less-than-two-hour show that resembled a track meet and resulted in confusion.

This year, things went back to more or less normal; that is, the members of the cast and team of Constellation Theatre’s “Avenue Q,” an adult puppet musical, happily screamed their heads off throughout the night after all but sweeping the Helen musical awards.

“Yerma,” the GALA Hispanic production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s play, took many of the drama awards, including best play, in the Helen group, in what seemed like a lifetime achievement award for the long-lived group, headed and founded by Hugo Medrano and his wife Rebecca Read Medrano. The Medranos and GALA have over many years given us the opportunity to see plays by Lorca, by contemporary Hispanic playwrights and from the classic age of Spanish theater (giving the lie to the ugly Trump-eted clichés about Hispanic, Latino and Spanish culture).

It was also a good night for the successful and risky Women’s Voices Theater Festival of last fall, in which pretty much the entire Washington theater community staged world premieres of plays by female playwrights, one of which was a big winner in the Hayes arena. That would be the Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Yaël Farber’s take on “Salome,” which won several awards.

If you looked through the Helen musical results, you could see the work of two rising young directors: Matthew Gardiner at Signature (“West Side Story”) and Alan Paul at the Shakespeare Theatre (“Kiss Me Kate” and “Man of La Mancha”).

The wonderful E. Faye Butler and actor Lawrence Redmond — with a fit-for-the-theater stentorious voice — hosted the evening, which moved both briskly but patiently over two hours or so. Theatre Washington head Amy Austin talked eloquently about the mystical relationship between actors on stage and the audience.

And on they went to the 9:30 Club for the year’s biggest cast party.

Gary Tischler • May 26, 2016

It’s fair to say that we live in uncivil, intemperate times — in terms of our political discourse, in terms of the comments sections on our little screens, in terms of the way we conduct ourselves in public, on our highways and in the halls of government.

Being polite, having good manners (or just manners) doesn’t soothe the savage beast.

But music still can. There are still places and times — in a concert hall, in the drawing rooms of embassies — where people gather together and listen to the music and converse, before, in between and after, often without devices lighting up the night.

Music can be a balm and a joy, depending on the occasion. At the embassy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, it was a joy when the Embassy Series and its founder Jerome Barry helped orchestrate a fond farewell May 20 for Ambassador Jean-Louis Wolzfeld, who will be leaving as well as retiring later this summer, after a successful four-year tenure here.

Wolzfeld represented his tiny country in a big way, with curiosity, open arms, a warmth that was never pushy and an intelligence that was never showy. At special events, be they an evening of cabaret music or a yuletide celebration, he was the genial host.

Naturally, they feted the ambassador of a duchy where Belgians, Germans, the French and the Flemings gather convivially with an evening of Irish music and musicians — principally the pianist Barry Douglas, founder of the chamber orchestra Camerata Ireland, noted for its membership of musicians from the north and south of Ireland, and conductor Dónal Doherty and his chamber choir Codetta, young singers based in Derry.

A song by Schubert led things off, but the offerings were notably Irish, including music by James MacMillan, as well as the infectious “Little Man in a Hurry” and renderings of traditional works like “The Coolin,” “Carrickfergas” and, of course, always, “Danny Boy.”

The singers — later joined by the school-aged group Harmony North — filled the available room in the embassy to the hilt, so that soloists could probably be heard on Massachusetts Avenue, but the teeming, high-energy, impeccably meshed young voices were all of a piece to be savored.

The final salute came as both guests and artists gathered together in one room. It was decided that perhaps an American spiritual might punctuate the evening in high style, and it did indeed, with impeccable singing from the voices scattered throughout the room.

Codetta, Harmony North and Douglas all appeared at the Kennedy Center the following day as part of the “Ireland 100” festival.

Schubert, who led off the evening at Luxembourg, provided the same service May 21 at the Kalorama residence of the Ambassador of Iceland Geir H. Haarde and his wife, Inga Jona Thordardottir. It was another Embassy Series concert of far different kind, tempo and feeling. Violinist Laufey Sigurdardottir, who was born and raised on Reykjavik, and pianist Beth Levin deftly and with a balanced fierceness played Schubert’s “Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor.” Their intense performance called for equally intense listening. One needed to catch one’s breath and pay close attention to grasp phrases and ideas. In the stylish, brightly lit residence, surrounded by expressionist art, one felt a few steps removed from the oft-noted alarums of the world.

A violin sonata by Grieg preceded the fireworks of Beethoven’s “Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor,” a work considered by many to be one of grandest in the violin repertory. It was certainly grand and tempestuous, solemn in parts, gorgeous in others and always emotional.

On a weekend of intermittent but constant rain, this was a Saturday night that seemed both civil and civilized.

The Sunday concert at the Music Center at Strathmore provided a different sort of quality, not the least of which was the star power of Simone Dinnerstein. As far as the program and its structure went, it was audacious — offering two composers separated by time, maybe space and certainly style, strung together like jewels from different shops, but jewels nevertheless, smoothly evolving from and toward each other.

The composers were Philip Glass and (hello again) Schubert. There were some raised eyebrows at this negotiation.

Dinnerstein by now carries two things with her: gravitas, which most concert pianists have, and something else — persona, charisma, charm — which not all do, at least not to the degree that she does. You can hear those qualities in her playing, but also see them, if you’re close enough, in the ease of he playing, her physical relationship with the piano.

None of this recapitulation is meant as critique; it is more about the meditative, healing power of musical moments. At Strathmore, this occurred with the added appeal of the hall itself, which (as I remember from when I heard Itzhak Perlman here at the hall’s opening) still feels like an acoustical church or cathedral. It is a hall where the acoustics illuminate the music. Folk singer Kris Kristofferson once said after a rehearsal here: “I love this place. I can hear every single mistake I made.”

You could, on another rainy Sunday, also hear the glory of Glass and Schubert, and Dinnerstein.

Gary Tischler • May 25, 2016

It’s not often that all the secret and not-so-secret Irishers of Washington, D.C., and the surrounding region get to see and be everything Irish for three solid weeks. Now’s your chance: the Kennedy Center is presenting “Ireland 100: Celebrating a Century of Irish Arts and Culture,” a festival that opens May 17 and runs through June 5.

Ireland may have a history of strife, what with famines, civil wars, religious persecution and the so-called Troubles, the late-20th-century conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. But Ireland is ancient as well as modern, very much in its peculiar way, and those tugs of war — over religion, culture and the dearly-and-with-difficultly-held old ways and language — have produced an outpouring of music, dance, literature, theater, novels and poetry. It has enriched both the old sod and much of the new, especially in America.

The Great Famine of the 1840s spurred a huge influx of Irish immigrants to America that really never stopped, and those same immigrants — like so many others — were not always welcomed with open arms (opposition to Irish immigrants was among the noted characteristics of the Know Nothing Party just before the Civil War). The Irish, as they are wont to do, persevered. In the cities, they became maids, butlers, policemen, firemen and, last but not least, community leaders and politicians, until one of them became the first Catholic and first descendant of Irish immigrants elected president of the United States.

That would be John F. Kennedy, whose ghost and presence is very much a part of the Kennedy Center, and of this festival. On several stages and in the Grand Foyers and Halls, we get to see what the Irish past sounded like, how the people danced, what words and in what language the poets wrote, the plays they made and still do. We get to see and hear what the present and the future sounds like, with a host of contemporary Irish performers, writers, dancers, choreographers and creators of visual art.

The legendary Irish actress Fiona Shaw — who performs and gives a master class during the course of the festival — is directing tomorrow’s festival opening, in which a host of performers, like Tara Erraught, Colin Dunne, Louis Lovett, members of the Abbey Theatre and uilleann pipers, will be on stage with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Irish conductor David Brophy.

It’s a sprawling festival, a revelation in green of everything the Irish have to offer.

When JFK visited Ireland in 1963, it marked a kind of homecoming for him, since his parents were the offspring of the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Irish immigrants on both sides. The visit, greeted by the locals with a joyous outburst of love and enthusiasm, was recorded by all sorts of cameras. Three films will be shown in the Kennedy Center’s Family Theater on May 28. One of them is a short black-and-white Amharc Eireann newsreel in the Irish language. There’s also “The Columbian Fathers Present President Kennedy in Ireland” and “John F. Kennedy in the Island of Dreams,” a 40-minute film marketing the 30th anniversary of the trip.

The following day, Kennedy’s 99th birthday will be celebrated with “Celebrating the Past to Awaken the Future,” in which notables and young artists unveil a special installation created for the Kennedy Center’s Centennial Celebration of President Kennedy.

Highlights abound of the literary, the dramatic, the musical and the footsteps kind, as well as installations.

Shaw, an artist in residence here, will be a highly active participant, showcasing acclaimed Irish texts of literature and poetry in “Blowing the Heart Open” on May 31 and, on June 3, hosting a dialogue on the importance and impact of the works of William Shakespeare.

Drama gets a grand go in the Eisenhower Theater on May 18 and 19, with the Abbey Theatre production of Sean O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars,” a tense and tenacious play about the Troubles. Samuel Beckett, the famed Irish poet of reduction, will be conjured with the Pan Pan Theatre’s production of his first radio play, “All That Fall,” and storyteller Louis Lovett’s presentation of the one-man show “The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly.” Of special interest will be Olwen Fouéré, the theater-maker who performs “riverrun,” her acclaimed adaptation of the voice of the river from James Joyce’s indestructible “Finnegan’s Wake.”

Music will be present with Camerata Ireland, appearing with Harmony North Choir; Camille O’Sullivan will give a solo concert of cabaret, Irish-style; and the 20-member ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s opera “The Hunger.” There’s also the Gloaming, a contemporary Irish musical supergroup with vocalist Iarla O Lionaird, who will give a concert in English and Gaelic.

In literature, there’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon’s gathering of words and music “Muldoon’s Picnic,” with his house band Rogue Oliphant in the Terrace Room. Muldoon and Maureen Kennelly of Poetry Ireland have also devised a weeklong literature series.

There will be food and presentations of the culinary arts, including, of course, a bit of whiskey tasting.

And as in any Kennedy Center Festival, there are installations for the eye, mind and heart. There’s the large-scale installation created by Grafton Architects, inspired by the Irish Ogham alphabet, which dates back to the fourth century. The installation interprets the ancient language into a series of large concrete fins (ten out of the original 23), inviting visitors to engage with its tactile surfaces.

Of special interest is “A Girl’s Bedroom,” the work of Enda Walsh, one of Ireland’s most noted contemporary playwrights. It’s an immersive theatrical installation that will be presented three times an hour for an audience of five people at a time. In another installation, “Gaeilge Tamagotchi,” visitors are invited to wind their way through a labyrinth of Irish linen to receive an endangered Irish word, which they will be tasked with nurturing and preserving.

The harp, a symbol of Ireland, will appear in several guises, notably a harp from 1820 created by famed maker John Egan, and the Earth Harp, a creation of the mind of William Close, originator of more than 100 types of musical instruments.

Gary Tischler • May 20, 2016

When the Helen Hayes Awards — complete with both Helen and Hayes Awards for the second straight year — commence at the Lincoln Theatre May 23 (after-party to follow at the 9:30 Club), it will be the first awards event under Theatre Washington’s new president and CEO Amy Austin.

Bringing a varied and intriguing background to her job, Austin spoke at the second 2016 Georgetown Media Group Cultural Leadership Breakfast of the year at the Rosewood Hotel May 5 to showcase the depth and breadth of the Washington theater scene and its importance to the city and the region.

Austin came to the job after a major stint as a newspaper publisher, as well as work with the Theatre Lab and, back in the day, working with Horizons: Theatre from a Woman’s Perspective under artistic director Leslie Jacobson.

“I actually had a role in ‘The Children’s Hour,’ ” she said. “I majored in theater at George Washington University [where she took classes from Jacobson] with a minor in political science — which seems like a perfect combination for this town.”

Horizons, incidentally, was a successful group which performed at Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown, with memorable productions including “Top Girls,” “Eleemosynary,” and the, yes, Helen Hayes Award-winning best musical play, “My Name Is Alice.”

Austin went on to become publisher of the Washington City Paper, the city’s often controversial weekly, including during the period when Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, sued the paper over its coverage of him and the team. “If you want to talk about stress, that was a pretty stressful time,” she said.

Theatre Washington evolved into a broader promotional and educational organization about theater from its Helen Hayes Awards origins in 1983 — with the very active participation of its namesake, who is considered the First Lady of American Theater and who also won an Oscar.

The awards were and continue to be different from other such occasions — including the Tonys — because to this day they are a boisterous evening of celebrating Washington’s theater community, which has grown into more than 50 theaters of various sizes and different sorts of audiences and content, spreading throughout the city and the region in Virginia and Maryland.

Austin noted that there was a time when in Washington there was really no such thing as regional theater — “it was a touring town” — mostly at the National Theatre, where producers either tried out Broadway-bound shows (famously, Washington Post theatre critic Richard Coe helped “fix” “Hello Dolly,” and the rest is history) or hosted national tours. Today, the National stills does that, along with the Kennedy Center, which also hosts many touring musicals, especially in the summer.

The history of what is now theater in Washington really began with the founding of Arena Stage in 1950 by Zelda and Tom Fichandler and Tom Mangum. After starting at the Hippodrome on New York Avenue at 9th Street NW, Arena moved to its present location near the Southwest waterfront.

“Theater,” Austin said, “is first of all about a shared experience among audience members and the artists in a company, about magic and special moments that you can’t have anywhere else. At its best moments, the audience and the actors are breathing the same air. Theater is full of transformative moments.”

“Theater,” she said, “is about community and communities.” Theater, she said, can also transform communities.

“The one thing I’ve noticed about Georgetown,” she said, “is that you don’t have a theater here. I know the Kennedy Center is close, but it’s not the same.”

Austin noted the power of theater — its presence within our midst — to change the urban landscape, beginning with Arena Stage, which now stands as an example of transformation, with big changes coming to the waterfront and up and down the river.

“Look at the downtown area and what happened, how it’s changed,” she said. “The Shakespeare Theatre, the Harman stage, the Woolly Mammoth, they were the pioneers there. That was also the case for the Studio Theatre on 14th Street, which was there long before the transformation that occurred there.”

“Theater can change things dramatically,” she said. “It adds to the economy. We’ve seen it. Theater is good business. It brings in audiences from all over the region and sometimes the country. Washington is going to have a heavy influx of new people over the next few years, and they’ll make up the new audiences. They’re coming here because the cultural opportunities, including theater, are so plentiful here.

“Theater is culturally influential,” she said. “Look at what’s happened with the preponderance of ‘Hamilton.’ Everybody has the CD, and people listen to it all the time.”

“New theater happens here all the time, new plays, new playwrights. We had 59 world premieres.”

Much of that total came from the Women’s Voices Theater Festival last year, in which practically all of the theaters in the Washington region opened their seasons with brand new plays by women, a risky prospect that showed off the community’s willingness to band together.

“We hope to be able to continue this kind of thing, this cooperative effort,” Austin said. “That’s what Theatre Washington is about: to spread the word, to work with other institutions. We have a vibrant community, a vibrant theater world here.”     
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Gary Tischler •

Even though “The Rhinegold,” the opening salvo in Washington National Opera’s and Artistic Director Francesca Zambello’s much anticipated production of Richard Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle, is — at around two and a half hours — the extravaganza’s smallest and shortest component, it by no means lacks size or importance.

As the prologue to what follows, the increasingly tragic saga told in “The Valkyrie,” “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods,” “The Rhinegold” is critical as a kind of prelude and chronicle of a disaster foretold. It’s the vehicle that sets things in motion on an increasingly precarious and spectacular path.

But it’s also a work that has its own identity, its own rich rewards, in which Zambello makes visible and audible some of her reverential and referenced concerns, giving this production (and presumably the whole WNO “Ring of the Nibelungs” cycle) resonance with the chaotic times we live in.

Not altogether clearly, this production is set in a quasi-modern, global-warming-era America, albeit a somewhat mythological one. Matching their raw, clean tone to the musical one, the sets echo both pristine wilderness vistas and high-tech industrial vibes that are a retreat from the natural world.

Wagner’s music — especially in the beginning — serves as a majestic, irresistible engine that advances the story and the emotions it contains. It’s a tone-setter, a kind of promise of things to come, presented by a huge WNO orchestra, under the intelligent and forceful baton of Philippe Auguin, as a kind of proud gift. This is especially true in the opening sequence, illustrated by one of those projections of the natural world created by Jan Hartley and S. Katy Tucker, a parade of gurgling, swirling imagery.

In this world, we encounter the Rhinemaidens — Woglinde, Wellgunde and Flosshilde (love those Wagnerian names), ably and seductively played by Jacqueline Echols, Catherine Martin and Renée Tatum — gaily splashing in the river, playing on the rocks as they tease and generally enrage the dwarf Alberich, sucker-punching him with an all-consuming desire, which leads to his discovery of the gold which can only can be taken by someone who is willing to renounce love. And who would do a thing like that?

Elsewhere, Wotan, the ruler of the gods, is nettled by his wife Fricka for having allowed the giants Fafner and Fasolt to take her sister Freia away in exchange for the giants building his new abode for the gods’ Valhalla. Also on hand: Froh, Donner and Loge, a trio of gods as millennial types. Wotan learns of the theft of the gold, and he and Loge descend into the underground mines and caverns of Niebelheim, where they encounter Alberich and his brother Mime and a horde of dwarves. Alberich has not only used the gold to make a magical chain that makes him invisible, but has forged a ring that can make him all powerful. Wotan and Loge steal the ring and everything else. Alberich casts a curse of destruction on the ring.

Wotan is forced to give all the gold and the ring up in order to save his sister-in-law from the giants, but he and the gods have Valhalla. And so it begins, as they step on a gangplank that could be the road to heaven, or an invitation to the Titanic.

This is resounding, magic stuff, magic of stagecraft, magical music, a creation of a deeply lived-in world. Zambello has staged the complete cycle before, but a complete cycle is a first for Washington. It’s well worth the wait.

Even as a precursor, “The Rhinegold” is part Greek tragedy, part warning, with nature — both the natural world and the best and the beast in human (and divine) nature — on display. It comes at you in sections: the playful but disastrous encounter between the Rhinemaidens and Alberich, the wide-open spaces where Wotan contends with his family, the other gods and the giants and the blazing, burning underground.

In the Ring Cycle, Wagner envisioned something on the order of total theater, where design, music, theatrics, and drama became welded together into something passionately new. In the era of the great romantic operas, the cycle must have seemed exactly that: totally new, and not a little overwhelming in its ambition, perhaps even something of an affront to the senses. Not that Wagner’s music doesn’t have its own form of romanticism, the kind that sweeps everything before it.

“The Rhinegold” is carried by the music, but it’s the weaving together of a plot with its later consequences, and a group of characters played by performers who sing extremely well and, I’d say, act even better and convincingly, that carry you away. I was especially impressed by Gordon Hawkins as Alberich; his singing isn’t the most precise, but the sheer energy, relentlessness and bullying in his voice evokes a hunger for sex (if not love), ownership, power and control that is frightening, especially in these our times. It’s desire run rampant that’s on display here. The Ring itself embodies a kind of primitive force that says the wearer can literally have it all.

Wotan — sung and played with quiet, steady force by Alan Held — is also drawn to it, but uses it instead to save his family from the giants. Particularly evocative among them are two young gods, including a sharp, edgy and slick Ryan McKinny as the hammer-wielding Donner and William Burden as Loge, singing with a strong, clear voice, evoking a very contemporary coolness.