Photograph of Spacey by DFree / Shutterstock.com. Photograph of Washington courtesy of Shutterstock.
Not that we’re excited or anything, but the countdown to the annual celebrity deathmatch that is the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner has begun. The main event happens April 27, which means in less than two weeks you won’t be able to walk through Georgetown or casually sip a coffee at Starbucks without tripping over the likes of Dakota Fanning (she’s teeny and easy to miss), Charlize Theron (she’s not), or Eliot Spitzer (the only person I wasn’t too scared to ask for a photo in 2012).
We’ll have lots more coverage over the next couple of weeks, but for now, here’s a
list of the confirmed guests attending the dinner, and whom they’re going with. We’ll
update as we learn more.
NPR
George Lucas and his fiancée, Mellody Hobson
Actress Sophia Bush and Invisible Children’s Jedidiah Jenkins
Comedian Tracy Morgan and his fiancée, Megan Wollover
Author Khaled Hosseini and his wife
Musicians Ben Ruttner and James Patterson of the Knocks
Actress Jessica Alba and her husband, Cash Warren
ABC
Actress Connie Britton
Actress Hayden Panettiere
Actress Kerry Washington
Actress Sofia Vergara
Actor Eric Stonestreet
Daily Beast/Newsweek
General Lawrence D. Nicholson
Actress Nicole Kidman
Actress Olivia Munn
Producer Harvey Weinstein
Former White House speechwriter Jon Favreau
Former congresswoman Jane Harman
Senator Claire McCaskill
Among the offerings at FilmFest DC is Norway’s Kon-Tiki, nominated for an Oscar this year. Photograph courtesy of Filmfest DC.
Filmfest DC returns for its 27th year— April 11 through 21—and after almost three decades of reviewing more than 300 submissions annually, founder Tony Gittens has a definite idea of what makes a good film: “Ultimately, it comes down to the story. The stories seem to be pretty much about the same thing—people understanding their place in the world, trying to have connections with other people, and finding themselves with obstacles to overcome.”
This year’s roster encompasses 81 features, documentaries, and shorts from around the world. Films are grouped thematically, including an espionage-and-thriller category called Trust No One. Among the festival’s highlights are the US premiere of Underground: The Julian Assange Story, an Australian movie starring Alex Williams as the WikiLeaks founder and Rachel Griffiths as his mother. Also on the roster: Stories We Tell, an autobiographical documentary by Canadian actress turned director Sarah Polley (Away From Her, Take This Waltz); Kon-Tiki, the Oscar-nominated Norwegian drama about Thor Heyerdahl’s groundbreaking voyage across the Pacific Ocean; and The Attack, a Lebanese film about a middle-class man who learns his wife is a suicide bomber. “A number of things have changed in 27 years,” Gittens says. “We’re seeing a lot more variety and more diverse voices. But we have a loyal audience and they’re very knowledgeable. To know we’re making a contribution to the city’s cultural scene is a good feeling.”
Filmfest DC. April 11 through 21. For schedule, venues, tickets, and other details at the festival’s website.
This article appears in the April 2013 issue of The Washingtonian.
Cathy (Erin Weaver) and Jamie (James Gardiner) in The Last Five Years. Photograph by Teresa Wood.
“You made it to Ohio. Who knows where else we can go?” sings Cathy (Erin Weaver) toward the beginning of The Last Five Years, Signature Theatre’s moving, neatly staged production of the cult 2001 musical by Jason Robert Brown (currently also enjoying a revival at New York’s Second Stage Theatre). As statements go, it isn’t the greatest endorsement of the Buckeye State, but it isn’t the greatest endorsement of Cathy’s husband, Jamie (James Gardiner), either. Al Jolson famously boasted he’d walk a million miles for one of Mammy’s smiles; Jamie can barely be bothered to catch a redeye from Manhattan to the Midwest to save his marriage.
Herein lies the interesting conflict in The Last Five Years, whose two characters meet only once, in the middle of the play. (Jamie’s story goes chronologically from the beginning of his relationship with Cathy to the end; Cathy’s starts with the heartbreaking ballad “Still Hurting” and progresses backward to her cheerily hopeful “Goodbye Until Tomorrow” at the end.) Cathy is without a doubt the sympathetic one—so much so that I’d wager my life savings nobody in the history of theater has ever pondered silk-screening a “Team Jamie” T-shirt. Cathy struggles through bad auditions, summers taking acting jobs in Ohio, and a marriage in which everyone (including her husband) is obsessed with her husband. Jamie finds success as a prodigy novelist at 23 and never stops congratulating himself for it.
Even with the sweet-faced, charming (if sometimes hyperactive) Gardiner playing Jamie, the disconnect between the two characters is hard to bridge. Director Aaron Posner, who pulled together The Last Five Years in what feels like the last five minutes after his planned production of Crimes of the Heart at Signature was canceled, has created a lovely production in record speed from a show that doesn’t have a lot of heft to it. Weaver, Posner’s real-life wife, is winsome and effortlessly engaging as Cathy, belting out some numbers with perhaps even more emotion and heart than Sherie Rene Scott did in the original run. But with the characters apart for the overwhelming majority of the brief show, there’s no chance for them to build chemistry, or to convince the audience they once had a profound connection.
Ellen Burstyn at the 29th annual Helen Hayes Awards. Photograph courtesy of TheatreWashington.
If the Helen Hayes Awards were the Oscars, Aaron Posner would be Ben Affleck. The director didn’t scoop the Best Director award last night for his Wild West-themed production of The Taming of the Shrew at Folger Theatre (although at least, unlike Affleck, he was actually nominated), but the production won Outstanding Resident Play, proving itself to be hog-high, pig-tight, and bull-strong as a fusion of Shakespeare and cowboy culture.
A word of advice for the uninitiated: Helen Hayes night isn’t really about the awards. The, shall we say, eclectic nature of the judging process frequently defies interpretation, so the event functions primarily as a celebration of local theater as a whole, during which smaller companies compete to see who can scream louder when their productions appear in big-screen montages and acceptance speeches range from Anne Hathaway actor-y to inexplicable—on accepting his award for Outstanding Lead Actor, Resident Musical last night, Bobby Smith of MetroStage’s Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris claimed he was hammered on martinis and talked about “leakage.”
The event was muted without the inevitable enthusiasm of Synetic Theater, usually an oversize presence at the ceremony and on the dancefloor (the company didn’t receive so much as a single nomination this year). Still, some winners emerged. In the musical theater category, Signature Theatre’s production of Dreamgirls got rather overshadowed by the much lower-budget Jacques Brel, which took awards for Outstanding Director (Serge Seiden), Lead Actress (Natascia Diaz), and Lead Actor (the aforementioned Smith). But director Matthew Gardiner’s Dreamgirls captured the award for Outstanding Resident Musical, as well as Supporting Actor (Cedric Neal) and Costume Design (Frank Labovitz).
In the drama category, Studio Theatre’s presentation of a new adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man also had a good night, scooping Outstanding Director (Christopher McElroen), Lighting Design (Mary Louise Geiger), and Outstanding Ensemble. Francesca Faridany won the Lead Actress category for her role in Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude at Shakespeare Theatre, while Steven Epp won Lead Actor for his role in The Servant of Two Masters at the same theater. And in the non-resident productions, which usually fete celebrities who are extremely unlikely to show up (ahem, Cate Blanchett), all three winners were there in person to pick up their trophies. David M. Lutken, who starred as Woody Guthrie in Theater J’s Woody Sez, won Lead Actor alongside Felicia Boswell for the Kennedy Center’s Memphis. Christopher Saul also picked up his Supporting Performer Award for the Folger’s imported production of Hamlet by Shakespeare’s Globe, telling the audience (in case they were wondering), that yes, he is a Brit. And lest conspiracy theories arise as to winners being tipped off before they made the journey, Hamlet (Michael Benz) was also in the audience, and he went home empty-handed.
Bowman Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in The Mountaintop. Photograph by Scott Suchman.
Up until about midway through The Mountaintop, Katori Hall’s Olivier Award-winning play currently having its Washington premiere at Arena Stage, the show is a provocative, reasonably absorbing look at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last night on earth. King (Bowman Wright) is a bundle of nerves and anxious energy—he chain smokes, checks his room for bugs, removes his shoes (grimacing at the smell), and converses in a meaningfully loaded and flirtatious way with the maid, Camae (Joaquina Kalukango), who brings him a coffee. The tension that seeps into the air from the play’s setting (the Lorraine Motel, Memphis) and the date (April 3, 1968) is enough to occupy the audience for 40 minutes or so while we wait for something to happen.
Then something does happen, and tonally it’s a shift so abrupt and jarring it’s as if a Busby Berkeley chorus had tap-danced its way into an Ibsen play. To say anything else would ruin the show altogether, so let’s leave it at this: Camae isn’t who she seems to be. If you’re the kind of person who welcomes theatrical bipolarity (and maybe even if you’re not), then the subsequent action might be compelling, heartbreaking, and zanily inventive; if you’d been enjoying the funny back-and-forth between the gloomy but priapic King and his loose-lipped chambermaid, it might all feel like too much of a leap to remain invested.
Directed by Robert O’Hara, a playwright himself who won a Helen Hayes Award for Antebellum when it premiered at Woolly Mammoth in 2009, The Mountaintop takes a fascinating premise—the reality of a very mortal American hero who seems to sense his days are numbered—and suffuses it with a wry sense of self-awareness, as if both characters are aware all along that they’re playing parts. There’s even a scene where Camae puts on King’s jacket and shoes and acts out her own impression of the Reverend Doctor, a not-so-subtle allusion to the playmaking going on.
Find something to add to your book collection at the Carpe Librum pop-up book sale. Image via Shutterstock.
Monday, April 8
DOUGHNUTS: After months of teasing and pop-up shops, Astro Doughnuts & Fried Chicken is finally open. Skip out of work now if you can—the first 200 customers today will get a free doughnut (with purchase of anything else). The first 50 there for lunch get a free side. 8 AM until the doughnuts are gone.
BOOKS: Carpe Librum, a huge pop-up book sale, returns for the 11th consecutive year. With more than 50,000 used books, CDs, and DVDs, you’ll definitely be able to find something to add to your library. Sales help fund programs for DC Public Schools children. The sale starts today (1030 17th St., NW) and runs through May 15. 10 AM to 7:30 PM.
In a shocking twist, Olivia wears a patterned shirt. Photograph by Richard Cartwright/ABC.
The show continues to barrel ahead at its usual jaw-dropping pace. This week we got plenty of reminders that our characters are all deeply flawed people who, despite having the ability to solve others' problems and talk at a pace faster than normal humans, can't seem to manage their personal lives, even when they know the people they love are not good for them in any way. To the recap!
Charlie in the Storage Unit, With the Lead Pipe
The case of the week involves the season’s ongoing story arc: Late former CIA director Osborne’s widow comes to Olivia insisting her husband did not commit suicide but was actually murdered, which we already know. Her proof? His suicide note referred to her as “Susan,” when in 30 years of marriage he only ever called her “Susie” or “honey.” It takes the Dream Team approximately five seconds to figure out the widow Osborne is right—that envelope of cash in his freshly dry-cleaned suit was for betting on horses, and Molly, Wendy’s friend who first fingered Osborne as the mole, just had thousands wired into her bank account.
So the real mole is still out there, which means one thing to Abby: that Jerk Jeremy, briefly deposed from his perch on the HQ couch, is still in danger. She frantically rescues him from his apartment, and once back at HQ, he at least makes himself useful by offering to use his Department of Justice connections to have Molly put on the no-fly list. “Gladiators in helmets, right?” he says. He also takes the opportunity to ask Abby whether she still has feelings for him, and when she confesses she does, he says he can’t love someone who won’t admit to stealing his flash drive and ruining his life. Which, good point.
Harrison and Abby question Molly, who says the mole threatened to cut out her tongue and kill her if she didn’t help frame Osborne. Will you be at all surprised if I tell you Molly doesn’t survive the episode? She’s killed in a “hit and run,” further evidence of how dangerous the mole is.
Olivia calls Cyrus—who has apparently been staying in a hotel for nearly a month per Ira Glass Lite’s request (more on that later)—to tell him Osborne was not the mole as they drink wines on opposite ends of the phone. But twist! Cyrus doesn’t care, because El Prez already announced Osborne was the mole on national television, and now that Mr. Bean has clawed his way back into El Prez’s good graces he’s not about to rock the boat. He accuses her of trying to sabotage the administration, which offends her, but he tells her he has to ignore the situation.
Huck traces the wired money back to the mole’s bank account and finds a charge for a storage unit in Virginia. He and Quinn go to investigate, but he makes her stay in the car. He finds the unit, which contains only a wooden crate that appears empty—and as he’s looking in it, someone comes up from behind him and bashes him over the head with a lead pipe, Clue-style. When Huck doesn’t return to the car for a few hours, Quinn goes in to look for him—and demonstrating some impressive moxie, she goads the manager into showing her the security tapes, on which she sees a suspicious guy in a baseball cap. She eventually finds Huck, gagged with duct tape in the crate, and takes him back to HQ, where his PTSD comes flooding back to a paralyzing degree. The Dream Team surmises Baseball Cap Guy works for the mole—and we see, as he makes a call to Cyrus, that it’s none other than Charlie Brown.
First Fenway Park, now Nationals Park. Paul McCartney—formerly of a band your parents might once have talked about (and no, we’re not talking about Wings)—is coming to Southeast DC for a stop on his Out There tour July 12, his first Washington show since 2009. The Nationals teased the news on their Twitter feed earlier this morning.
Can Paul McCartney, arguably the greatest songwriter of the 20th century, rival the Boss’s almost four-hour-long show last summer in terms of greatness? Can he redeem himself for his less-than-stellar rendition of “Hey Jude” at the London Olympics’ closing ceremony in 2012? We jest, we jest. Tickets for the Fenway Park shows go on sale tomorrow at 10 AM EST via Live Nation’s website—as yet there’s no mention of the Nationals Park show on McCartney’s own site, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for updates.
Their bromance was as vibrant as their sweater patterns. Maximiliano Hernandez as Chris and Noah Emmerich as Stan in The Americans. Photograph by Craig Blankenhorn for FX.
Given the many, many hints at Stan’s dark past (when he was embedded in a cell full of white supremacists) that have popped up this season on The Americans, it was sort of inevitable that something at some point would tip him back over the edge. Was it also inevitable that the not-quite-kidnapping of his partner, Chris, might be the final straw that broke Beeman’s back? No. Were all the flashbacks with Chris outlining his playa’s guide to life a bit clunky? Sure. But the final scene of last night’s episode, when Stan shot a Russian agent (whose one crime was going jogging with Arkady on Mondays and Wednesdays) from such point-blank range that the bite of hamburger he was chewing shot out of his mouth along with his brains, was a shocking and visceral end to an otherwise less-than-thrilling episode.
The main problem seems to be Philip and Elizabeth’s separation, which, much like Stan’s breakdown, was precipitated by not that much at all. Here are two people who regularly sleep with others to get what they want, and yet Elizabeth, who up until not that long ago had her own fancyman on the side, suddenly can’t forgive Philip’s New York tryst with his former longtime love? Both developments feel driven by plot necessities rather than realistic character development, so it’s impossible not to side with furious Paige and poor desolate Henry and be really angry at the Jenningses for being so stupid.
The irony, of course, is that they’re the perfect couple. In the episode’s opening scene, when they had to go and ruin the kids’ picture-perfect American dinner of fried chicken by announcing their separation (as a child of divorce, I can tell you Henry will never want to eat KFC again), even their responses to Paige’s questions were perfectly synchronized. These are two people who can work together in perfect harmony, who clearly think the same way after years of working as a team, and who have real feelings for each other. The idea that they’d disrupt their children’s lives out of one case of deception just doesn’t ring true.
Also ironic: that the Jenningses would spend practically the whole episode trying to learn whom the FBI were targeting when that information was openly discussed by Agent Gaad at the Beemans’ party, and that if P and E had spent more time creeping and less time worrying about the consequences of their breakup (Paige’s sullen face, Henry staring into a glass of Kool-Aid, Mrs. Stan observing Philip leaving) they might have had a much easier time of figuring out that Arkady was in trouble.
See fireworks at the Southwest waterfront on Saturday. Photograph via Shutterstock.
Thursday, April 4
PARTY: Fringe Festival is getting started soonish—okay, in a couple of months—but to keep your interest piqued, it’s hosting the annual Gala Gala, complete with open bar, dancing, and Fringe-y weirdness. Don whatever you think most closely approximates “creative Rat Pack attire” and head over to Fringe HQ on New York Ave. Tickets ($50) are available online. 9 PM.
BOOZE AND CRAFTS: Creative types should check out the Renwick Gallery’s Handi-Hour—DC’s only (I think) event that combines arts and crafts with booze. You’ll spend two hours learning how to repurpose old books into cool pieces of art while you sip two free craft beers selected by ChurchKey’s Greg Engert. Tickets ($20) are available online. 5:30 PM.
Friday, April 5
ART: The Corcoran’s Pump Me Up has gotten a lot of people excited about DC’s old punk scene—but it’s also gotten some people riled up about how it kind of glosses over go-go culture. That’s why Contemporary Wing is hosting Mumbo Sauce, a complement/competitor/response to Pump Me Up, featuring go-go show posters and works by BORF, Cool Disco Dan, and many more. The show opens Friday with a reception and music from deejay Stereo Faith. Free. 6 PM.
KARAOKE: DC’s best purveyor of live-band karaoke, HariKaraoke, heads to the Hamilton Friday night. It might be your only chance to sing on a stage that’s been graced by Grammy winners, so bring your A-game. $5. 7 PM.
IMPROV: Washington Improv Theatre is taking over Source Theatre for most of the month to determine which improv troupe is DC’s best. The March Madness-style tournament is down to the sweet 16, so you won’t have to suffer through any bad performers. $12 online or $14 at the door. 10 PM.
VARIETY: The Encyclopedia Show DC takes on explosives this month, meaning you’ll learn all about shrapnel, bombs, volcanoes, the Boston Molasses Disaster, and pop in the show’s typically irreverent style. The lineup includes a slam poet, spoken-word artists, a performance artist, a standup comedian, and a reggae singer. $11 online or $15 at the door. 8 PM.
