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.
Monty Python’s Spamalot runs at the National Theatre April 10 through 14. Photograph by Scott Suchman.
Opening This Month
Two performances run in repertory at Shakespeare Theatre this month: Artistic director Michael Kahn directs Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein, about the infamous 17th-century general; and Studio Theatre artistic director David Muse helms Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, about the tragic war hero. Through June 2.
Aaron Posner directs The Last Five Years at Signature, the last-minute fill-in for Crimes of the Heart. The two-person musical stars James Gardiner and Posner’s real-life wife, Erin Weaver, as a couple pondering their relationship. April 2 through 28.
Andy and the Shadows, a world premiere play by Theater J artistic director
Ari Roth, opens at the
DC Jewish Community Center in a production directed by Daniella Topol. Alexander Strain stars as Andy Glickstein,
the son of two Holocaust refugees exploring his heritage. April 3 through May 5.
Olney Theatre revives Neville’s Island: A Comedy in Thick Fog by Tim Firth, writer of the movies Calendar Girls and Kinky Boots. In the play, four Englishmen are shipwrecked on a minute island in the Lake District, ensuring mishaps and adventures during their quest to get home. April 4 through 28.
Taffety Punk stages Oxygen, Ivan Vyrypaev’s music-themed play set in contemporary Russia to a soundtrack by E.D. Sedgwick, the Caribbean, and more. April 5 through 26.
The Hub Theatre presents A Man, His Wife, and His Hat, the local premiere of Lauren Yee’s magical realism story about a man who loses two very important things. Shirley Serotsky directs. April 5 through 28.
Monty Python’s Spamalot returns to the National Theatre, featuring songs riffing on the tale of King Arthur (“His Name is Lancelot”), an evil rabbit, and the Knights Who Say Ni. The musical adaptation of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail won three Tony Awards during its Broadway run. April 10 through 14.
New Round House producing artistic director Ryan Rilette directs the East Coast premiere of Bill Cain’s How to Write a Book for the Bible. The autobiographical play explores the relationship between Cain, who is a Jesuit priest, and his elderly mother during the last year of her life. April 10 through May 5.
Georgetown University presents the world premiere of Christine Evans’s Trojan Barbie, juxtaposing ancient and modern culture in a contemporary spin on the legend of Troy. Maya E. Roth directs. April 11 through 20.
Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris as Elizabeth Keckly, Naomi Jacobson as Mary Todd Lincoln and Joy Jones as Ivy in Mary T. & Lizzy K. Photograph by Scott Suchman.
In the odd, zeitgeisty way in which cultural depictions of certain subjects seem to come along like buses (nothing for decades and then three at once), Elizabeth Keckly is very much alive again—seen portrayed by Gloria Reuben in last year's Lincoln, and as the subject of a recent book by Jennifer Chiaverini. But it’s almost impossible to imagine a more intriguing, nuanced portrayal of Keckly than the one Tazewell Thompson has crafted in Mary T. & Lizzy K., his world premiere play currently at Arena Stage. Immaculate in a gown of bronze patterned silk, and ferocious as she crafts a dress around the First Lady, Thompson’s Keckley (played by Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris) is one of the most riveting female characters seen all season.
Photograph by Ursa Waz.
The last time monologuist Mike Daisey was in town, it was with a revised version of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, the play whose earlier incarnation sparked controversy when it was revealed he’d played with some facts. Daisey performs his new work, American Utopias, at Woolly Mammoth March 25 through April 21. The work explores three idealized visions: Disney World, the Burning Man festival, and Occupy Wall Street. We caught up with Daisey to discuss why utopias fail, his close relationship with Woolly Mammoth, and his complex feelings about social media.
How did you come up with the idea for American Utopias ?
The idea came to me about three years ago. It was born out of the desire to talk about communities that are bound by a dream to make a world more perfect than the one they live in. I’d become obsessed with utopian communities in the 19th century, and I became interested in finding modern analogs to this desire to find a community to transform your life. I settled on Disney World and Burning Man. Then the Occupy movement happened, and it became clear it was the same expression of an impulse to see yourself as part of a tribe.
Why do you think utopias are fated to fail?
Well, it’s built into their DNA. All utopias fail, and that’s in a way the major point of a utopia—they fail in the same way that all societies fail and all civilizations fail. The question is, how long do they persist for? The American experiment has only gone on for about 200 years or so, and in many ways it’s a utopian expression of ideas that were enshrined in those original documents. Right now it doesn’t feel like a utopia because we live in it and it has problems every day, but when America ends we’ll look back at it in a different way. Our terms for success are a little irrational. Truthfully, the only way you can claim a utopian society succeeded is if everyone’s totally happy all of the time.
So they set themselves up for failure.
It depends on how you define failure. Burning Man, for instance, is an environment in which there’s very little commercialization, and money isn’t used. That can be interpreted cynically, because you can be condescending about it and say all these people come from a culture filled with those things, so if they go to the desert for a week and a half it doesn’t change anything. But the truth is that being in that environment is kind of startling because it makes you aware for the very first time what it’s like to live, even temporarily, in a society that isn’t as commodified as the one we live in. In large parts a utopian attempt is really an act of faith that we can make things better.
How long did it take you to research and devise the show?
About three years. It went up for performance for the first time in July, but a lot of the shows develop for a number of years before they come to fruition because it turns out they need research that requires trips. I normally work on many different projects at the same time. But I’ve really enjoyed the amount of time it’s taken to come to the stage, because it’s a good time to talk about the Occupy movement.
What did you end up taking away from this project?
The reason I do these monologues is to explore my obsessions. I could do something else that would be easier and better paid—and cause less trouble—but I wouldn’t be able to find the things I’m interested in and have an excuse to spend enormous amounts of time exploring them. It was tremendously useful to go to Disney World with my extended family, for whom it’s their personal mecca—they worship the mouse.
How would you describe your relationship with Woolly Mammoth?
We’re married—no, dating. We’re like long-term collaborators. We really seem to understand each other. I love their audiences. They may not be the largest but they’re the most motivated and open to risk, and that’s a real commodity. Audiences are actually fundamentally the same everywhere—they’re all human beings—but at the same time, and I hope this is okay to say, I find DC audiences really hungry for compelling work. It’s not that they’re underserved by the arts community at all, because they’re getting lots of great work, but I think it’s because of the nature of some of DC. It’s this odd place that does have natives, but many people are serving terms, and for a large number of them DC is not actually the place they might have chosen to live if they felt they were free to live anywhere else. I hope this isn’t jerky to say, but it does sometimes feel like one of the reasons the audiences are so good is because people are hungry. They’re like, “Oh, my God, I had to go to the State Department, my life is in a cube, I have to go to the theater.” Hidden in some parts of DC is this wild desire to find a place to break free.
You’re very active on social media. Do you think it helps you as an artist?
I don’t know. I hope it is. I’m working on a sequel to The Agony and the Ecstasy about how everything’s changed because of smartphones. This level of social interconnectivity is very acidic to barriers, and it’s very hard to find the level of engagement that might be the right level. For most people there’s an instinct to share and aggregate as much as possible, but I actually wonder what it does long-term—not just to artists but to human relations. It’s too early to tell, isn’t it?
American Utopias is at Woolly Mammoth March 25 through April 21. Tickets ($35 to $67.50) are available via Woolly’s website.
An edited version of this article appears in the March 2013 issue of The Washingtonian.
Bradley Foster Smith as Mervyn in A Behanding in Spokane. Photograph by C. Stanley Photography.
Early on in Keegan Theatre’s production of A Behanding in Spokane, now playing at the company’s Church Street Playhouse, eccentric hotel clerk Mervyn (Bradley Foster Smith) opines upon the lack of excitement and intrigue checking in to his dingy roadside establishment. The character’s delightfully rambling description of all the outlandish scenarios he’s imagined uncovering in his years manning the reception desk quickly establishes Mervyn as the show’s most commanding, and entertaining, presence. And if he’s looking for excitement and intrigue, the grisly, beyond-bizarre sequence of events that follows more than fits the bill.
Angela Meade as Norma. Photograph by Scott Suchman for WNO.
Has there been a debut more eagerly anticipated than that of Angela Meade in the role of the druid priestess Norma, heroine of Vincenzo Bellini’s masterful opera of the same name? The buzz surrounding this young soprano began when Meade triumphed at the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, performing the cavatina “Casta Diva” from the first act of Norma. Meade subsequently sang the role in a concert setting, leading some critics to proclaim her the next great Norma—undue pressure, to be sure, for someone so young. For one thing, the role is astoundingly difficult, requiring elegance and stamina, an impeccable coloratura technique, and raw vocal heft. But it’s also terrain that’s been marked by the greatest voices of the last century, including Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, who owned the part, though in markedly different ways.
Meade’s traversal of the role with the Washington National Opera (in a production directed by Anne Bogart) is her first fully staged version. And for many reasons, her performance on Tuesday evening was memorable. She has an instrument that can do just about anything, and though much can be said about her effortless coloratura, her thrilling high notes, and the way she floats the quietest notes to irresistible effect, I was most impressed by the colors in her voice, as well as her musicality. Yes, this is virtuoso music. But Meade’s virtuosity always seems to be in service of the text. Her tone is both voluptuous and piercing (in her “Casta Diva,” a plea for peace in the face of Roman conquest), round and supple (in the marvelous second-act recitative “Dormono entrambi … non vedran la mano” and in the arioso that follows), and almost always pure. In the ensembles that close both acts, Meade sculpts long, arcing lines—a master class in breath control.
Catch Hello, Dolly! at Ford’s Theatre starting March 15. Photograph by Scott Suchman.
Opening This Month
Washington Improv Theater’s FIST (Fighting Improv Smackdown Tournament) is the March Madness of improv—a bracketed tournament pitting performers against each other in three-person teams and relying on the audience to choose who wins over a five-week time period. March 14 through April 13.
Arena Stage presents the world premiere of Tazewell Thompson’s Mary T. and Lizzy K., a drama based on the friendship between Mary Todd Lincoln and her black dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley. Thompson, who was nominated for an Emmy for his production of Porgy and Bess at Lincoln Center, directed the Virginia Opera’s production of The Pearl Fishers in October. March 15 through April 28.
Keegan Theatre presents Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane, the 2010 black comedy about a man looking for his missing hand and the two con artists who try to sell him one. March 16 through April 6.
Studio Theatre founder and longtime artistic director Joy Zinoman returns to direct 4,000 Miles, Amy Herzog’s wry drama about a young man who bonds with his aging grandmother. “Ms. Herzog’s altogether wonderful drama . . . illuminates how companionship can make life meaningful,” wrote the New York Times. March 20 through April 28.
Signature Theatre and Ford’s Theatre join forces to present Hello, Dolly!, Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker. Broadway veteran Nancy Opel stars with Edward Gero; Eric Schaeffer directs. March 15 through May 18.
Orson Welles was 20 when he directed Voodoo Macbeth, a version of the Shakespeare tragedy set on a Caribbean island, presented as part of the post-Depression Federal Theatre Project. Kathleen Akerley directs a new staging at American Century Theatre. March 22 through April 13.
Mike Daisey returns to Woolly Mammoth with his new show, American Utopias. The monologue describes Daisey’s experiences at three distinctly American attempts to find paradise on earth: Disney World, Burning Man, and Occupy Wall Street. March 25 through April 21.
Also at Arena Stage, Robert O’Hara directs Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop. A co-production with Houston’s Alley Theatre, the drama that imagines Martin Luther King Jr.’s last night alive stars Bowman Wright as King and Joaquina Kalukango as a maid at Memphis’s Lorraine Hotel who brings him room service. The 2009 London production won an Olivier Award for best new play. March 29 through May 12.
Patricia Racette as Manon Lescaut and Kamen Chanev as Chevalier des Grieux. Photograph by Scott Suchman for Washington National Opera.
Manon Lescaut (1893) was Giacomo Puccini’s third opera, but it was his first unequivocal success. The decision to adapt Abbé Prévost’s novella—about a young woman torn between love and her desire for the good life—was nothing short of audacious, as less than a decade before, Jules Massenet had turned that same heartbreaking text into an opera of enduring popularity. Puccini, however, was confident: “Manon is a heroine I believe in, and therefore she cannot fail to win the hearts of the public. Why shouldn’t there be two operas about her?”
Why not, indeed. Manon Lescaut bears all the hallmarks of the composer’s greatest works: ravishing melodies, searing dramatic tension, wonderful orchestral writing. In this early work Puccini exploited the forces in the pit as skillfully as he ever would, composing music of an almost symphonic quality, crucial to the advancement of the story. In terms of harmony and how closely integrated the orchestra and singers are, and the way certain motives recur in telling ways, the piece shares a few traits with Wagner’s music dramas. The work is also tricky to pull off, not just because of the vocal challenges, but also because of the wild swings in mood, moving from a first act full of ebullience to a finale steeped in pathos and dread.
This transformation is embodied by the character of Manon, a young woman of modest means who must choose between true love with the impoverished Chevalier des Grieux and a life of luxury with the older, wealthy Geronte. The American soprano Patricia Racette, singing the role at the Washington National Opera’s revival of Manon Lescaut, exquisitely spans the emotional range: coquettish and carefree in the first act, vain and indulgent in the second, anguished by opera’s end, when she realizes too late how disastrous her life’s choices have been. Racette’s characterization possesses real depth, but it’s her singing that’s so exciting, by turns warm and bright, expansive and intimate, tender in the quiet moments and rising to ecstatic heights when the music opens up in its most intense moments.
Kathleen Turner, here in Red Hot Patriot: The Kick Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, returns to Arena Stage to take the lead in Mother Courage and Her Children. Photograph by Mark Gavin.
Arena Stage announced its 2013-14 season in typical clandestine fashion last night (a post-midnight press release with details already published in the Washington Post), and it’s fair to say it’s quite a lineup. There are big-name stars (Kathleen Turner, Bill Pullman), theater gods (Moises Kaufman, Estelle Parsons), and world premieres (New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright’s play about the Camp David Accords, resident playwright Charles Randolph-Wright’s Love in Afghanistan), as well as some meaty classics on the agenda (Turner will star in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children).
The only thing missing? The Manzari brothers, who were scheduled to appear in Tappin’ Thru Life, a co-production with Alliance Theatre and the Cleveland Playhouse starring Maurice Hines. In January, Arena artistic director Molly Smith issued a letter to season ticket holders mentioning Wright’s Camp David, as well as a new musical featuring Hines with John and Leo Manzari, who all appeared together in Arena’s critically acclaimed 2010 show Sophisticated Ladies. There’s no mention of the Manzari brothers in Arena’s season announcement, however, and an Arena spokesperson was unable to confirm at this time whether they’d be appearing in Tappin’ Thru Life when it opens in the Kreeger Theater in November.
Still, with or without the local tap-dancing phenoms, Arena’s new season seems formidable. Here are the details:
Opening in September is The Velocity of Autumn, a pre-Broadway production by Eric Coble starring Tony winners Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella and directed by Smith. (The play was billed as Smith’s Broadway debut when it was announced late last year.)
Coming in October is the world premiere of Arena resident playwright Charles Randolph-Wright’s Love in Afghanistan.
Tappin’ Thru Life, directed by Tony winner Jeff Calhoun, and starring Maurice Hines, opens November 15.
Metamorphoses—director/playwright Mary Zimmerman’s interpretation of Ovid’s myths—comes to Arena Stage February 8 through March 17, ten years after the show’s Broadway run earned her a Tony Award for directing. Zimmerman is a member of Lookingglass Theatre Company and a resident director at Goodman Theatre, both in Chicago, as well as a professor at Northwestern University. In Washington she’s directed productions of Candide, The Arabian Nights, and Argonautika. Zimmerman is currently at work on an adaptation of The Jungle Book, incorporating the Disney cartoon’s songs with elements from the original book by Rudyard Kipling. We talked to her by phone about reviving Metamorphoses, staging it in New York immediately after 9/11, and why she loves Washington.
What was the impetus for reviving Metamorphoses ?
It’s Lookingglass’s 25th anniversary and we’re this small, scrappy company—or now I suppose we’re midsize. But we wanted to celebrate by bringing back a signature piece here in Chicago. There were a few theaters that wanted to take it, but the only one I was interested in was Arena, because it’s something different for me—doing the show in the round is a new challenge.
What first interested you in Ovid’s tales?
At Northwestern, where I teach, I wanted to do a show about myths using water. It wasn’t until later that I realized all these myths were actually Ovid. All my life I’d had a tremendous interest in the stories. My mother had a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology on her bookshelf with these pen-and-ink drawings that are seared into my heart. After I finished with fairy tales in childhood I moved onto those. I think I sensed the psychological and the adult content.
Where did the idea for the water come from?
The myths have everything to do with water, and water has everything to do with change—in virtually every culture it’s a symbol of change. In Shakespeare everything goes through a sea change, and water is symbolic in terms of crossing a rubicon, and of transformation. In a lot of cultures it’s where you go to meet the gods, because they come out of water. It’s a very mutable and mutating element, and it can metamorphose, and be a solid or a liquid, so it works physically and emblematically.
Metamorphoses played in New York right after 9/11 and seemed to resonate with people there. What do you think it can say to contemporary Washington?
These stories have earned their keep because they’re consistently relevant. They’re not a conspiracy by English teachers to keep us interested in the classics; they’re around because they address the ongoing problems of being a person and going through life—that is to say, unwanted, unlooked for change. Metamorphosis is a wrenching thing that happens in our lives but that produces something new in each case. The archetypal nature of the myths seems to lend itself to whatever’s in the air.
That said, our first preview off-Broadway in New York was September 16, 2001. That night was one of only two times in my life where I experienced catharsis. You could feel the audience go through the pity and the terror in the show and then somehow be released from those feelings. About 15 minutes into the show a man says goodbye to his wife because he’s going to make a sea voyage. It’s a very beautiful day, and out of the blue this horrible storm comes and he’s killed. As he’s drowning he prays to the gods, “At least let her find my body.” The immediacy of that in Manhattan on that day was overwhelming, and as we approached those lines I pressed back in my chair, thinking, “I can’t believe we’re going to do this now.” But the ancient tales tell us it was ever thus, and life has survived and presses on in new and unrecognizable forms, but it persists.
You come to Washington a lot. What do you like about working here?
I love Washington. I love walking down the street and seeing Supreme Court justices at the deli. I love that Supreme Court justices come to my shows, even if they’re not always the ones I would like to come, necessarily. I love that it’s small and monumental at the same time. And a very good friend, Natsu Onoda, who’s making a name for herself on the Washington drama scene, lives there.
The Chicago Tribune called this show your masterwork. Would you agree with that?
It’s the one I most identify with, but of course I’m always most in love with the thing I just did and the thing I’m currently doing, and I hope to always be challenging myself with the thing I’m doing next. I actually think Metamorphoses is quite quirky. It flips between a fancy translation and a more colloquial form of speaking. Often successes are full of odd flaws—a lot of operas are dramaturgically terrible. People respond to the spirit of a thing, I’ve learned.
Metamorphoses is at Arena Stage February 8 through March 17. Tickets ($40 and up) are available via Arena’s website.
This article appears in the February 2013 issue of The Washingtonian.
