Milk

Laurent and I went to see the late showing of Milk tonight at the E Street Theater. It's a poignant film and well worth seeing, especially to see Sean Penn's portrayal of Harvey Milk.

After the show, Laurent said he liked the movie, but he thought it must have resonated a lot more with me. Meh. He makes me feel geriatric. I was in college when Milk was elected and assassinated; Laurent wasn't even born yet.

Being in the heartland of the country, we heard (barely) bits and pieces of Milk's activism, though his name was not familiar to me at the time. There really wasn't much gay activism in Oklahoma and Kansas in the mid-1970s, and what he was doing was just branded more of that "California" kind of hippie/radical extremism. We certainly knew about his nemesis Anita Bryant—she's a former Miss Oklahoma and runner-up Miss America—and her viewpoints that were considered very normal in middle America. When Milk was assassinated in 1978, I heard about his death because that was my Georgetown semester, and it was news in D.C.

Recently the phrase "men who have sex with men" has been created by the HIV/public health community; it's a phrase we really needed in the 1970s, because there were a lot of us MWHSWMs who did not embrace the queer, gay, homosexual, or even bisexual labels. We didn't think of ourselves as being closeted, either, because we didn't think of ourselves as being gay, secretly or otherwise. Back then, I was busy being a typical fraternity man and overachiever who'd go on the occasional date (with a girl) arranged by fraternity brothers and with a little private "hobby" on the side. If there was a gay movement in Oklahoma or Kansas, I missed it.

So, the movie has made me a bit melancholy.

I'm also a little saddened because thirty years later, we're still fighting the same conservative Christian voters with the same ignorance and tired arguments who are choosing to vote on gay civil rights. Back then, it was employment security; today, it's marriage rights. There are times when democracy is a very disappointing and unsatisfactory form of government. I can't wait for science to conclusively prove the biological etiology of homosexuality and the futility of attempts to "cure" it. Then, perhaps, people will be more open minded to seeing gayness the same as race or gender.

Obviously, we still have our issues and our need to progress, but at least Milk gives us a brief, sanitized, and scrubbed look at gay life of the 1970s and tells us the story of one of the great heroes of the gay rights movement.

Dilemma

:::sigh:::

Booked a ticket to go away for Thanksgiving, and now today I get an email asking if I'm available to be a super and dance with the San Francisco Ballet when they're in town over at the Kennedy Center to do Giselle. Alas. I would have loved to have done that gig.

Somebody go to the show and report back and let me know what I missed.

20th century music

The National Symphony Orchestra played a concert of all 20th century music last night at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, featuring Jennifer Koh as violinist and Michael Christie on the podium. It's not often we get to hear a classical concert where all of the music is less than a century old.

The program included two Stravinsky works and one Bernstein.

The three of us sat on the far side on the first row behind the cross-over, which is about a third of the way back into the house. The sound is fine there, and as we were on the left, we had an excellent view of both the soloist and the conductor, plus being on that first row gave us all a little bit more leg room—always a plus.

The concert opened with a work for just woodwinds and light brass (no strings) by Stravinsky called "Symphonies of Wind Instruments." It was interesting, and sounded very stereotypically Stravinsky, with tonality arriving only at the very end of the ten minute piece.

Strings returned to the stage for Bernstein's "Serenade after Plato's Symposium" to accompany Miss Koh, who opened the work with a solo melody. As the first movement developed, I kept hearing snippets of Bernstein's famous musicals from the early 1950s Each of the five movements were quite different, the penultimate being the most interesting due to the very high piano pianissimo of the soloist as the movement wound to its conclusion. The final movement included much of the jazzy feel for which Bernstein was famous.

Koh engaged her audience, though the usual standing ovation was rather half-hearted, I think, and mostly from those seeking to race to the lobby for a cocktail to beat the crowds. She played enthusiastically, occasionally so vigorously she broke horsehair on her bow and would have to break it off between passages. She wore a fire engine red Grecian-style dress gathered at the bust line, then allowed to drape down in front. Silver shoes completed her ensemble.

After the intermission, the full orchestra returned to play Stravinsky's ballet, Pétrouchka.

Christie is a young, short leader who conducts as with a broad brush. The orchestra sounded well under his baton, and played the difficult modern music clearly and crisply.

Additional performances of this concert are tonight and tomorrow night.

Can you spare 30 seconds for opera?

Bows flying through the air

It's always nice when a cello soloist finishes his phrases with a flourish, but last Friday night while we were at the Kennedy Center watching the National Symphony, the cellist had such a flourish we practically saw bows flying through the air.

British cellist Steven Isserlis played the Haydn Cello Concerto in C Major for a highly appreciative crowd. His appearance and performance technique were striking, however. He has a lot of salt-and-pepper, long, curly hair that he tossed around. His hair and bow flinging were in great contrast to the fleet-fingered, light, and delicate way he played—made love to—his cello. While some cellists sit hunkered over their instruments, he sat upright with his head elevated, and instead of scrubbing the strings, he lightly caressed them with his bow.

The Haydn was preceded by a work I'd never before heard, the 1906 work Serenade, Op. 3, by Hungarian Leó Weiner. I found the work rather frothy and trivial, but under the steady hand of Maestro Iván Fischer, the NSO played with a lovely, tight, ensemble sound.

After the interval, the full orchestra returned to play Rachmaninoff's famous Symphony No. 2 in E minor. It was a very solid performance, and Fischer really punctuated the fourth and final movement with a lot of conducting acrobatics.

I was pleased to see the concertmistress looking better this week. She wore a long, three-quarter length sleeved blouse with rhinestone studded cuffs over a full floor length skirt.

Marlowe? Bacon? DeVere? What's-his-name's play.

In the 16th century, the English language finally was settling into what we now know as "modern English." Elizabeth I was on the throne, and the people were finally starting to calm down about who was more Christian, Catholics or Protestants. England was a conservative place. Morals were enforced by designated churchmen, much the same as Saudi Arabia has religious police today. And, one of those morals was a prohibition on women appearing as actors on stage.

It was into this environment that William Shakespeare penned one of his most popular and well-known plays, Romeo and Juliet, knowing that the role of Juliet would be played, not by a beautiful, young, teenaged girl (Juliet is only thirteen years old), but by a boy with an unchanged voice. Such was the world of drama in Elizabethan England.

Here in modern Washington, we are blessed with a stable, well-funded, experienced group of actors at the nationally-known Shakespeare Theatre Company. During October, they have been running Romeo and Juliet, and we were fortunate to have seen the show this past weekend.

Director David Muse wanted to do something to "freshen up" the production—clearly one of the old war horses of the Shakespearean category—so they opted to follow the practices of Elizabethan England with an all-male cast of characters. With all the gravitas they could muster, men played each of the female roles in the play. And, this was a very serious play, not some gay-inspired farce, that sought to replicate old performance practice.

It worked.....almost. Certainly, I was not bothered by the men playing the roles, and those men playing the older women were all very effective. Even the man playing Juliet was very good, but therein lied the fault; a man played the role, not a boy. That may not have been a problem in and of itself, but it was, to me, a failure in the pairing of the Juliet they cast, James Davis, with the Romeo, Finn Wittrock. Now, in their own scenes, Davis and Wittrock both were very good. Wittrock was very believable as a 15 or 16 year old teenager with his energy and his angst. Davis made a comely and effective young woman. That was problem number one. Juliet seemed to be a young woman, whilst Romeo seemed to be a teenager. Then there was the physical pairing. Romeo was quite noticeably shorter than Juliet, the nurse, and Lady Capulet. And finally, when they were together, I didn't feel the love and infatuation between them.

That lack of emotion seemed underscored in two key scenes. First, in the famous bedroom scene, there was no bedroom scene. They simply walked out on the balcony, Juliet in her dress, and Romeo with his shirt off (but quickly put back on), then Romeo climbed down the wall, and all the lines were delivered from there. No love. No romance. No "ahhs." Finally, in the end, the suicides were too quick and mechanical, especially Juliet's, and there was no room for the audience to cry, to mourn, to experience catharsis.

Otherwise, this is a dazzling production. Making use of the thrust stage in their new Harmon Center for the Arts (they continue to retain their proscenium stage at their Lansburgh Theatre in another building downtown), the stage was painted in wood tones with a large sunburst pattern in the center. In the background, we could see a series of three flat arches for depth and various entrances upstage. The furthest downstage arch housed a balcony and a series of bars were attached to the side support wall for Romeo to climb up and down.

Costumes were fascinating and varied—that's one of the advantages of being in a house with a large budget and a large wardrobe department. There was a little of the red and blue Capulet and Montague theme going on, but it wasn't overwhelming.

The thing that impressed me most, though, were the props. With essentially a bare stage and no curtain, all of the atmosphere had to be created with props. Many of the props were ingeniously designed, serving many different purposes with just quick adjustments. Some props, too, were stunning, such as the tall, beautiful, floral topiaries brought in for the Capulet ball.

The show saw some very strong performances from Aubrey Deeker as a great, energetic, fun Mercutio, and from STC regular Ted Van Griethuysen as Friar Lawrence, plus a noteworthy but slightly over the top go at the nurse by Drew Eshelman. I wasn't quite so impressed by Cody Nickell as Tybalt, but that may have been an issue of direction (more on this later). We also saw solid work from Hubert Point-Du Jour as Benvolio, Dan Kremer as Lord Capulet, and Tom Beckett as Lady Capulet.

It's been a while since I last read the play, so I'm not totally sure exactly who was to say what. I seem to recall, though, that some of the lines seem to have been rearranged or maybe even supplemented with new text. I don't know what was the practice in the 16th century, but there were parts of the prologue and epilogue that weren't delivered by a single actor, but by multiple members of the large cast.

They played up the bawdy nature of some of the lines—again, a common period thing—and there was quite a bit of sexual humor, including one spot after the party when Mercutio relieves himself on stage.

Now, I don't think I'm spoiling anything, given how well-known is the play, but they made a major change in the mechanism of death for Tybalt. As you know, Tybalt stabs Mercutio, then Romeo gets mad and kills Tybalt.....Shakespeare had Romeo kill Tybalt with a sword, but in this production, Romeo does the deed by drowning Tybalt in a barrel of water on stage! It was a very effective and violent death, but we were just kind of looking at one another thinking, "huh?" and then thinking that again when Lady Montague's lines referred to stabbing.

Finally, there was one sour note running through the production. Original, 21st century music was written for this production by a group called The Broken Chord Collective, and it just didn't fit. What's more, the actors singing the music weren't really what I would call "musical," but the production—same as the bad habit we often see on Broadway—didn't want them to be musical. It annoyed me, and I don't think it added to the show.

Last weekend was the last weekend of the run (actually, it had been extended), so, you won't get a chance to go see the show. Sorry I didn't get my review written up more quickly. Nonetheless, STC has a full season planned, and I'm looking forward to Twelfth Night in December.

Mahler Third

Last Thursday night, Scott and I went to the Kennedy Center to hear the National Symphony Orchestra play Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D minor, featuring Birgit Remmert, contralto; the Children's Chorus of Washington, and the women of the University of Maryland Concert Choir, all under the baton of this year's principal conductor, Iván Fischer.

We got there a bit early, since the Metro's been a bit undependable of late, so we wandered around the Kennedy Center and went out on the terrace to watch all the crews rowing up and down the river.



Some Swedish boys' school choir was singing in the far end of the Grand Foyer for the Millennium Stage. We listened about two minutes, then quickly moved on. Sometimes I have to be in the right mood to get engaged with choral performances.

Finally about a quarter to the hour, we wandered into the concert hall to find our seats. We were down on the right, first row, by the second violins and the percussionists. It's an okay place to sit, mostly because I like having all the extra leg room! We're also in the position to be able to watch the conductor work from the side, which I always find fascinating.



The concertmistress came out wearing black hostess pajama bottoms (why would she wear pants when all the men are in white tie and tails?) with a black sequined belt worn low on the hips gypsy style. Not one of her better outfits. Maestro Fischer came out in white tie. He's always fun to watch—and hear—since he's a very animated conductor with audible heavy breathes and vocalizations.

The Mahler Third is rather an unusual work, thought to have been inspired, in part, at least, by Friedrich Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus spake Zoroaster). It's about a 90 minute piece, and half of it is devoted to the first of six movements. As I find typical of Mahler symphonies, I think the first and last movements are great, and the internal movements are okay, but they get rather sleepy. And, Mahler is one of those composers who can't quite put down the pen—you think the movement is over, but it goes on and on and five minutes later, he's still ending.

There's something about Mahler finales, though, that I love, especially the Second ("Resurrection"), but also in this work, that makes me feel the yearnings inside me being pulled and stretched by the music. It can be very emotional, and the NSO did a good job with the intensity and the feeling here in the Finale of the Third.

The beginning was impressive, too. Early in the opening phrases, we felt the distinct physical rumble of the low brass and then low woodwinds. In the middle, the trombone section provided terrifying music of the heavens, and ensemble member Craig Mulcahy did the solo work. The movement ended with the conductor punching the air like a boxer.

They took a short break after the first movement to get the choirs into the performance space. The university women were all attired in long black dresses. The children's choir wore wine colored sweater vests and white shirts, the boys in olive khaki trousers and the girls in olive-toned tartan plaid skirts. As the maestro reentered, we also saw for the first time the contralto soloist. Miss Remmert is an attractive young lady. She wore a simple long black dress held up by a wide strap over one shoulder. A sheer black thigh-length overlay with black sequined edges and clasped on the opposite shoulder from the dress strap finished the ensemble.

The second and third movements were pretty and pastoral, and the orchestra played well for Fischer. Movement four introduced Miss Remmert's voice to sing "Zarathustra's Midnight Song." The song, though, was short and did not afford Remmert much opportunity to show off her voice. Movement five used the two choirs, the children singing as bells and the women providing textual support. I had the impression that this movement didn't really belong in the symphony, as it had a light bounce to it that was out of context with the mood of the preceding and following movements.

Finally we got to the sixth and final movement, Adagio, beginning with a long exposition of the string section with such tight playing by the ensemble I was able to float on the music. The music was neither fast nor slow, it simply proceeded towards its goal. Fischer kept the energy and tension there to get that Mahlerian "pull," milking out every last emotion from the players and the audience. I do believe that Mahler's finale is so good that were I only to hear the one movement instead of the entire symphony, I would feel rewarded.

Saturday fun

The local Scottish Rite valley held its annual Americanism program last night to give out awards to D.C. public schools junior ROTC students. They also had as a speaker Ivan Ware, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, who gave quite an interesting talk. One of the other bits of entertainment included the Williamsburg Field Musick, the trio pictured above that gives lectures around the area telling about the use of music in the early American armies. I had to go, too, since I was singing and playing the national anthem, and I played the prelude.

They had a great standup dinner beforehand with heavy hors d'oeuvres and a raw bar featuring some of the best, plumpest oysters I've had in years. I chatted with the caterer afterwards, and he told me they came from the Chesapeake Bay and had been harvested just yesterday morning. Yum.

Schedule overload

Went to the National Symphony last night. Tonight is the Shakespeare Theater. Tomorrow I have to play the organ at a big Americanism program. Busy weekend. I'll try to post something substantive soon.

W.

Did you know the President ran for office because he had a calling from God Himself?

Tonight we attended the Washington premiere of W., Oliver Stone's new movie (opening nationwide this coming weekend) about George Walker Bush. It was a full theater, including half a dozen rows of press. The audience was surprisingly supportive of the President, and when the movie tried to portray the President's malapropisms in a negative light, the only titters of laughter I heard came from the press section.

The movie weaves scenes of the Bush presidency with the history of his life since his Yale undergraduate days, with a repeated dream motif of Bush in the outfield of an empty baseball park. While some are calling the film a biography, I'm going to have to call it semi-biographical.

Certainly there are a lot of statements and materials about the President's past, plus public accounts and news footage of him over the past twenty years, so there is history available. The problem was, many things were used completely out of context, and the conversations and positions of high level governmental officials in private White House meetings are purely conjecture and highly speculative.

Josh Brolin, as the President, put in a surprisingly strong performance. He had down a lot of the President's mannerisms and way of talking, though he did, I think, from time to time, cross the line a bit into caricaturism. On the other hand, Richard Dreyfuss's performance as Vice President Cheney was chilling. Certainly, Dreyfuss will be up for a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for this movie.

Scott Glenn did a fine job as a particularly smarmy and obnoxious Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Toby Jones was effective as Karl Rove. Elizabeth Banks sympathetically did a great job as Laura Bush, and James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn portrayed the elder Bush couple.

I did have problems with the casting for then-National Security Adviser now Secretary of State Condolezza Rice. Thandie Newton did the job, but she didn't capture anything of Rice at all except the hairdo, and I felt almost offended at some of her portrayal. While not as bad, Jeffrey Wright was okay, but I don't think he had the strength or the command presence of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The movie offers two basic themes for George Bush's life.

First, they overemphasized the presumed tension between father and son and GWB's constant quest for paternal approval from GHWB. They went so far that GHWB, long known to be a gentleman and statesman, came across as a bully and a jerk. Of course, this led to one of my favorite lines in the movie (one you've probably seen in the trailers), where GHWB is dressing down his son and his party boy behavior and says, "Who do you think you are...a Kennedy? You're a Bush. Act like one."

The second theme is the President's evangelical Christianity and how it seeps into every aspect of his life. They protray him closing every staff meeting with prayer, something I'd not previously heard reported by departed staffers in their memoirs. They also have a scene where he announces to his long-time pastor that he has heard a call from God to run for president, because something is going to happen and the country is going to need him.

Naturally, the movie spent a lot of time dealing with the Iraq war, and they got pretty judgmental about it being prosecuted solely for the preservation of the oil reserves in the Middle East. Again, the writers were speculating. There's no doubt in my mind now, though, that Oliver Stone must be against the Iraq war.

And thus was the movie. It's rather longer than I expected, coming in at about two hours and ten minutes. Would I go see it again? Not if I had to buy a ticket. Should you see it? Maybe. If you're in Washington, you're a political science or government student, or you're involved in party politics (of either flavor), you should see it, simply because it's going to be discussed in the next few weeks, as well as the implications it casts about the war. For others, you should see it eventually, but you can probably wait for the DVD to come out.

Speaking of coming out, on my way out of the theater, I was stopped by reporters from Swiss Television wanting to interview me about my impressions. I declined, though, so you don't have to stay up late tonight watching Swiss TV to see me.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Walk, walk, walk!

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Sunday whilst Ian worshipped with St. Mattress, I made it up to midtown to the famous St. Patrick's Cathedral, reputed to be the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in North America. It's a stunningly beautiful place! The architecture is neogothic with great height and intricate tracery, designed by James Renwick.

I'd gotten to church early enough I was able to get a seat near the center aisle in the first archway just west of the crossing, usually a good place to hear the musical balance. At St. Patrick's, the choir sings from the loft in the balcony and the entire organ appears to be back there as well. In actuality, there is a chancel organ in the north side of the chancel, but the gallery and chancel organs are essentially unified into one huge instrument with five manuals, 177 ranks, and over 35,000 pipes, all by George Kilgen and Son, I believe.

Review: A Tale of Two Cities

The French have their Les Misèrables musical, now the English-speaking world has its A Tale of Two Cities. There's a big difference between Victor Hugo's enormously long novel of the French Revolution and Charles Dickens' long novel of the French Revolution, but the thing they both have in common is that they are both thick books with involved, convoluted plots; I don't see how either of them can be condensed into a Broadway musical.

I'm not sufficiently an expert on Broadway to predict what will and will not last. Personally, I've never seen the attraction either to Les Misèrables or to Cats, yet both of those dreadful musicals have had enormous financial success and longevity. What will happen to Tale? I don't know. Thus far, the New York reviews have been lukewarm to negative; yet what I saw last night in the house was an audience that seemed to particularly enjoy and appreciate the performance. And, strangely, I enjoyed it, too, it's rather uninspired and formulaic music notwithstanding, but I've always liked Dickens and I've still never been able to force myself to read a Hugo novel cover to cover.

A Tale of Two Cities formally held its opening night Thursday. Not having a tuxedo with me, I deferred my attendance to last night, thinking things would still be fresh and the cast would be in better voice, not having opening night jitters with which to contend. Playing at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, the musical is directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle and music is directed and conducted by Kevin Stites, using the new book, music, and lyrics by Jill Santoriello.

Many aspects of the production were very impressive. I loved the costume design (by David Zinn). So many times, I've sung operas where the characters were common peasants all dressed in dark, drab colors, but Zinn was able to find opportunity for color in their lives. "Prison clothes" even looked like they had at one time been colorful finery that now was faded, tattered, and filthy. And the happy wardrobes of the protagonists were particularly fine and beautiful. Tony Walton's scenic design fascinated me, as he used a series of three three-story iron structures, all on wheels, that were wheeled around the stage by cast members to change scenic locations, with props and the occasional flown signage helping to fill out the visual pictures. Richard Pilbrow's lighting design is particularly impressive. In addition to lighting the mass cast scenes, he also had to do pin lighting to show various tiny vignettes to draw attention from other areas of the stage during scene changes and he and the director concocted very creative ways of depicting guillotine scenes in a way that executes the aristocrat whilst leaving the actor alive for another show.

I would be remiss if I did not recognize the work of the casting agents, Barry Moss and Bob Kale. What really, really made this show was the second tier of performers, all strong character actors, and Moss and Kale did such an excellent job in casting it was as though they had plucked the very people off the streets of Dickensian London.

Now, it's unusual for a play review to mention these technical people first, before discussing the merits of the musical and the actors playing the roles, but in the case of A Tale of Two Cities, it's these technical aspects that make the show, and, hence, my rationale for their preliminary discussion.

I intentionally chose not to read any reviews until after I had seen the show. Then as I made my way home for the night, I started thinking about what to say. This morning, I read the reviews by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, plus a couple of others, and it's going to be very difficult to say much about the music and the singers without plagiarizing (and even saying that is close to plagiarizing!). They all make their comparisons to Les Misèrables. I also was reminded of recent semi-successful musicals Jeckyll and Hyde and Titanic, and those were mentioned, too. The WSJ reviewer even mentioned an opera I'd sung before called (in English) Dialogues of the Carmelites, a story of Carmelite nuns in the French revolution by Francis Poulenc, and much like him, I thought of the Poulenc during the final guillotine scene. I suppose this all goes to support my long-time assertions that there is very little that is original on Broadway these days, with practically everything falling in to the molds of the formulaic musicals of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Les Misèrables, Chicago, Rent, or the Disney productions.

Jill Santoriello is either a genius or a hack. I'm not sure yet which. She packed in a huge amount of plot into the musical, so much so that it was almost but not quite overwhelming. She did a great job fleshing out the secondary characters, and she really developed the leading man, Carton, but the other leads Lucie, Charles, and Dr. Monette were poorly developed. But, she got through the book, she developed the elaborate plot, she told the story, and she told Dickens's story, not a story of her own reimagining.

James Barbour, playing the English barrister Sydney Carton and the main character of the story, completely wowwed me. As I told him at the stage door after the performance, it's not often that I (as a baritone performer myself) like the work of other basses and baritones, but he really impressed me. I predict at least a Tony nomination for him for this role. He was witty and sarcastic, and one could see his character's development over the course of the musical. While in some of the scenes, he sang in the Broadway-stereotypical falsetto for soft, high passages, when the music demanded it, he had a full, powerful bass voice with a good top that I could hear (remembering that I was on the front row just to the left of the conductor) over the amplification system.

The other strong voice in the ensemble is Brandi Burkhardt as Lucie Manette. She has a nice, pure, spinto soprano and she was able to sing operatically and properly most of the show. She is also a very beautiful woman! I blew her a kiss during the curtain call and she not only smiled back at me, she remembered me afterwards at the stage door.

The other soprano did very well, although in a very small part, with Mackenzie Mauzy singing the Seamstress. She reminded me of Kristin Chenoweth, both physically and vocally. The mezzo is Natalie Toro, who sings the angry role of Madame Defarge. She did well but really only had one song with which to show off her talents; in other spots, though, I did not find the score kind to her.

The other two leading men were both tenors, with Aaron Lazar as the fated lover Charles Darnay, and Gregg Edelman as Dr. Alexandre Manette. Edelman did what he could with the role, trying to show that after seventeen years of unjust imprisonment in the Bastille, he'd suffered psychological damage, but I was just left feeling that Manette's role was tentative. Lazar, on the other hand, enjoyed the camp of his role and sang well, though he's sung Broadway too long—he is both too dependent upon the microphones and he's allowed his top to be a bit strangled and tight. He and Burkhardt, though, made an excellent couple and had a great chemistry between them.

And thus was my observation of the new A Tale of Two Cities. What will happen to it, I don't know. If the show lasts until the Tony Awards, it could well be around for a long time. I certainly found it entertaining, though with tickets at $110, I'm not sure how many times I would be willing to see it again (or any Broadway show, since this is pretty much the going rate these days). I actually would like to see the show at least one more time, because I want to see if any of the tunes are going to become popular tunes—a couple of Carton's ditties I'd like to sing myself. Santoriello didn't write any of the songs with repeating themes or with reprises, so the hit songs are going to take a little longer to emerge.

Tonight's show

Tonight's show, based on the Dickens novel of the same name. Opening night was last night.....I didn't go then cause I didn't bring a tuxedo to town. I'm looking forward to seeing it.....my seat is front row center, about four seats to the left of the conductor.

Opera photos

More pictures? See them in my Flickr Album.

Opening Night at the Opera

The opera season started tonight with Washington National Opera's new production of the Verdi opera, La Traviata, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It was a glittering, black tie evening at the Kennedy Center, but the more exciting crowd wasn't the 2,400 at the Opera House, it was the estimated 15,000 at Nationals Park, the new baseball stadium in southeast Washington, where operaphiles watched the show as a simulcast on the enormous flat panel HD TV in the scoreboard as they sat in the stands or out on the grass. The ball park was where Matt, Robert, and I went.

This is the fourth year that WNO has done an outdoor simulcast, though the previous three were out on the national Mall.

Now, there are pros and cons to the two locations. What I miss about the Mall is that we were able to take our gourmet picnic baskets and eat our own foods. The nice thing about the ball park was real seating and real restrooms. Of course, we would have been better off financially had we gone to the Kennedy Center, since concessions at the ball park are exorbitantly expensive (and "exorbitant" is not a strong enough word to convey their pricing plans), even more expensive than going to a big city movie theater. Robert spent nearly $7 a piece for his chili half smokes, something one can buy from a street vendor in town for $1.75. Right before the performance, I bought a little cup of faux champagne (which I had to ask the seller to top off twice, and she still didn't completely fill the cup) and a small bottle of water, and it cost me $17.50! I also saw them using tiny little cups for still wine drinkers, and they were using those little individual serving bottles of wine, but only giving people about half of one of those little bottles!

The interesting thing about Traviata as a popular opera is the matter of familiar tunes. There's really only one tune—the famous "Libiamo" duet and chorus—with wide recognition, and then amongst hard core operaphiles there are maybe one or two well-known arias, but those arias aren't really recognized by the general public. I was prepared, though, for the "Libiamo" chorus with my glass of champagne so I could drink along with the cast!

Speaking of drinking champagne, the ball park is trying to be "green" now, so they were using some of the same biodegradable cups made from corn that Nancy Pelosi forced upon the House of Representatives and its cafeterias. Unfortunately, those cups have a rather disconcerting tongue "feel" that distracts from the enjoyment of the wine. I'm also of the opinion that these supplies have a taste, or at least the flatware does, since I've experimented with chewing a spoon before and it definitely was not taste-neutral to me. If the ball park is going to charge triple the cost of a bottle for a little cup of wine, they need to provide a decent glass or cup from which to drink.

We went, though, to see the opera, not eat the ball park food. La Traviata is one of the "old war horse," very popular, and commonly done operas, and those of you who recall the Richard Gere/Julia Roberts movie Pretty Woman will remember their trip to the opera to see Traviata. Some people have also compared elements of the opera to the Nicole Kidman/Ewan MacGregor movie Moulin Rouge.

After opening with the national anthem (which surprised me), they moved straight into the overture for the opera. The Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra was under the baton of Dan Ettinger, a new conductor I'd never seen who Robert said reminded him of Perez Hilton. I don't know about that, but I was absolutely appalled by the get-up he was wearing; it looked like an old, black, '70s leisure suit with a long, long tail, rounded in back, and some kind of black shirt underneath we never could really clearly see.

The fabulous Elizabeth Futral stars as Violetta. She was in magnificent voice. I thought she looked tired during much of the show, though, and I couldn't tell if that was "real life" tired or an attempt to portray the terminal illness of the character. Co-starring with her as Alfredo is Arturo Chacón-Cruz, a young Mexican tenor who was wonderfully youthful, earnest and energetic, and I really liked his voice. He's definitely a singer to watch. While the two of them sounded good together, I didn't sense a lot of chemistry between them, and with the telecast close-ups, their hugs and love scenes were not convincing from just the visual perspective.

Lado Ataneli as Germont père and Margaret Thompson as Flora both offered strong supporting roles.

During the scene change in the middle of act two, they projected on the ball park screens that it was the "seventh aria stretch."

Marta Domingo, wife of the artistic director and general manager Plácido Domingo, was the stage director and put together some impressive crowd scenes and kept the action going. In fact, she chose to chop off the last two pages of the score, ending the opera as soon as Violetta dies.

Costumes and sets are beautiful and lavish. I was particularly impressed with the lighting design by Joan Sullivan-Genthe, who kept the action areas of the stage illuminated without harsh spotlighting and who allowed Violetta's bed at the end of the opera seemingly to glow, rather than being directly lit.

There are another six or seven performances of La Traviata between now and October 5. This would be a great show for people looking for their "first opera" or who just like Verdian grand opera.

From what I was hearing from WNO staff, they are planning on doing this again next year at the ball park. I suppose that's okay (I miss the picnics on the Mall!); certainly the television screen in the scoreboard is far superior to the temporary screens they've put up in the past. I'm not sure what I feel about the amplification of sound, though, since the sound came from behind us, not from in front in the area of the screen. And, they've got two major problems to address. First is the concessions cost. It's totally out of hand, especially given the very long lines. Second, they've got to deal with noise from the concessions area. Throughout the opera, we could hear noise from the vendors drifting down into the stands, and it was most especially noticeable and distracting during the final act as Violetta was dying. The vendors were yelling at one another, playing their own music, and moving loud, noisy carts up and down the walk ways.

Opera does attract a different element from the usual baseball crowd. Generally at baseball performances, people leave their concessions trash and refuse laying on the floor by their seats, but tonight I saw countless people carrying out their trash to put in trash cans that quickly and unexpectedly filled.

Robert brought his camera tonight and he and I took about five dozen photos. Once he sends them to me, I'll edit a few and put them up. Robert was cranky after the show because there was no place in the area to go for a post-performance cocktail or even a nice place to grab a bite to eat. We ended up at a McDonald's a few blocks away from the ball park. If anybody wants to try a new business venture, setting up a bar with food really near the stadium with the capability of handling big crowds before and after ball performances and other events could be an extremely profitable venture.

Took him long enough

You know, if Fred Thompson had spoken as well as he is tonight back when he was actually supposed to be running for president, he might actually have been a serious candidate and possible nominee. I guess having a script makes a big difference for an actor!

Outdoor concert

Every year for Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, the National Symphony Orchestra, in conjunction with the National Park Service, performs an outdoor concert on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol. It's a fun evening of socializing and picnicking on the lawn while listening to orchestral pops music.

Neighbor Joel and I decided sort of at the last minute to go last night (the Memorial and Labor Day concerts are always on Sunday night of the weekend), so we quickly dressed and headed down to the Capitol. Once there, we waded through the throngs of picnickers spread out on the lawn and found us a little patch of grass down towards the bottom of the seating area, giving us prime seats as close to the orchestra as we might have been in the concert hall at the Kennedy Center. Since we hadn't planned this trip, we were without food, so we were tortured by all of the sights and smells of the foods around us. There was a full array of food choices, too, from people who had simply picked up a few bags of chips to those who brought complex and elaborate gourmet suppers.

It was a beautiful evening, with lovely weather and clear blue skies. As the sun went down, we could see first orange and then deep red skies on the horizon through the back of the stage backdrop. And, actually, by the time the concert was over about 10 p.m., it was actually cold! I should have brought a summer sweater.

After the national anthem, the orchestra, under the baton of principal pops conductor Emil de Cou, opened with a suite of pieces in honor of the 100th birthday of composer Leroy Anderson, including his most famous work, the Christmas song, "Sleigh Ride." De Cou explained to the audience that it was included since Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, is the official start of the Christmas shopping season!

Next they played a series of works used as the sound track for lots of the old Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons, including "Merrie Melodies" and "Powerhouse" ("Powerhouse" is the jazzy work excerpts of which were often used for chase scenes and for mass production/manufacturing scenes), then doing Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," which was used in Fantasia, and the concluding the first half of the concert with "Kill the Wabbit" from What's Opera, Doc?, a/k/a "The Ride of the Valkyries" from Wagner's Die Walküre.

After intermission, they opened with an arrangement of "Seventy-Six Trombones" from The Music Man that was interspersed with themes from Sousa marches. In honor of the start of the fall school semester, they next played Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance Military March No. 1 in D" (the "graduation" march) and then Robert Planquette’s "Le régiment de Sambre et Meuse," also known as the "Script Ohio March" that is traditionally played before Ohio State football games. That was followed by Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave, which includes the hymn tune Russia, a melody that always reminds me of Boy Scout summer camp and the Order of the Arrow official song, "Firm bound in brotherhood."

Next we went to Hollywood and the sea and heard Korngold's "Overture to The Seahawk," an old pirate movie (I've never seen the movie, but this piece gets played a lot at various pops concerts), and then, in honor of all the Washingtonians who are at Rehoboth Beach this weekend, they played John Williams's "Main Theme from Jaws." The Hollywood section continued with more John Williams music, a suite from Harry Potter and the "March from Raiders of the Lost Ark."

They concluded the concert with "America the Beautiful," asking everyone to stand and sing along in solidarity with the Gulf Coast residents preparing for the hurricane. It amused me; the arrangement they played had essentially two "verses" of the song, so when the melody first came up, people started to sing, yet when we heard the melody the second time, the conductor turned around to lead the audience in singing. Some people didn't know what to do and stood silent. Some sang the first verse again, but I went ahead and (though I can't guarantee the accuracy of the words) sang the second verse.

As the audience left the lawn (or stood and listened, as was the case with many of us), they played Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever."

---

Something I noticed at the concert bothered me a bit. There was a decided lack of diversity. Now, this was a free concert, completely open to the public as it has been for years. One of the park rangers we talked to as we were leaving said there were probably between six and eight thousand people there at the concert. Since some 600,000 people live in the District, that meant over 1% of the population came to the concert. Yet, if you don't count the police and security people, I didn't see a single black person sitting in the audience. There were lots of white people, of course; we were sitting near Spanish-speaking Hispanics, east Indians, and Asians; Joel and I represented the American Indian element; yet, there weren't any black people. The audience was young and old, with elderly, middle aged, young, and little children, and it looked to have the full socio-economic spectrum. The concert was all pops, with familiar tunes from cartoons, musicals and major movies that all Americans should recognize.

So, why didn't the black people come?

Gutter TV meets opera

"Well, dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!"

Last night, Richard, his friend John, Robert, and I were at Studio Theater to see their production of Jerry Springer The Opera. I can't remember when I last laughed so hard or so enjoyed a musical.

Jerry Springer The Opera is a send up of the notorious Springer television show. Years ago, Springer was a serious talk show host with credible and respectable guests discussing serious topics, but they had terrible ratings. His producers found that as they got more and more sensationalistic and outlandish, their ratings went way, way up. Now, the show is little more than pablum for trailer trash, a demographic amongst whom the show is still wildly popular. The formula show includes adulterers, fornicators, transvestites, bigots, drug addicts, freaks, and people with limited vocabularies (the F-word seems to be their only adjective or adverb) inclined to fisticuffs.

Composer Richard Thomas, who co-wrote the book and lyrics with Stewart Lee, has translated that television show to the stage in a highly controversial opera that opened in London in 2003. I remember a few years ago seeing a few minutes of the Springer television show, and the censor's beeps took up more that half of the audio track; the opera isn't censored, so the dialogue includes a constant stream of profanities from the "guests." In fact, one British journalist reported that there were over 3,000 uses of the F-word.

In the opera, act one is a taping of a typical Springer show. At the end of the act, one of the signature fights breaks out, and in the melee, Springer is actually shot by a guest. In act two (acts two and three are combined into one in this production), Springer first is seen in the hospital and then he is taken to Hell, compelled to be the host of a satanic show, "Jerry Springer In Hell." In Hell, Satan has a confrontation with a diapered Baby Jesus, and God himself makes an appearance. Needless to say, hard core Christian groups have objected to the show and most productions have had their share of picketers. While we didn't see any picketers at Studio Theater last night, I understand there were some on opening night.

What particularly amazed me about the "opera" is that the music was actually good. While Jerry speaks all of his lines, the rest of the show is fully sung by the cast. The opera opens with an audience chorus that was remarkably similar to Bach and Mozart Masses I've sung. At various other parts, there were very elaborate and complex musical numbers including a Dies Irae and a "Jerry Eleison" (Kyrie). When Satan and Jesus have their confrontation on the show in Hell, Satan and Jesus sing a long and extended duet in full Handelian style with a massive melissma on "fuh-" as the two sing "F- You." In other parts, cast members—especially female—have complex modern melodies to sing in full operatically trained voice style, and many of those bits of music reminded me of modern operas I've heard and sung.

And there was choreography. Lots of fight choreography was required, of course, but what really brought the house down was a stage full of tap-dancing Ku Klux Klansmen. The finale of the show was a full cast tap dance reminiscent of the finale of A Chorus Line. I found myself watching the end of the show with a big, silly grin on my face.

The real star of the show is well-known local actor Bobby Smith, who plays the dual role of Springer's warm-up man Jonathan in the first act and Satan in the second act. His portrayals were perfect and fit the roles with sleazy confidence. Dan Via as Jerry Springer, though, disappointed me a bit. He was okay, but he seemed a little too young for the role and lacked the sense of gravitas that the real life Springer has. Other standouts included Patricia Portillo as the Valkryie and Florrie Bagel as Baby Jane, both with some difficult operatic music to sing, and character actor Ron Currameng as a short, fat, diaper-clad Montel in act one and Baby Jesus in act two.

The local production is directed by Keith Alan Baker with choreography by Matthew Gardiner and music direction by Christopher Youstra. The work of both Justin Thomas as lighting designer and Kristopher Castle as costume designer was impressive.

I really would like to go see the show one more time before it closes next weekend, because there is so much to see and absorb. I'd also like to see a different audience. The paying audience actually becomes a part of the show, with much of the dialogue delivered from the house, and with the eighteen-member show "audience" actually seated out in the house amongst the paying customers. That audience sings and dances the whole evening, sometimes even interacting with the regular audience.

My one main criticism of the show is that the orchestra ensemble is too loud. It looked as though the singers were performing without microphones either on their bodies or on the stage floor, and many times the band covered their dialogue.

So, Jerry Springer The Opera turns out to be a surprisingly good and entertaining show. If you have a chance, go see it before it closes next Sunday night. Be aware, though, that there is a lot of raw language in the show and that very adult topics are discussed, much like the real life television show—but without the censoring bleeps!

Enormous bats and shadows

Finally I got around to going to see The Dark Knight more than a month after it opened to all the acclaim and hype about Heath Ledger's performance. Eh. There was no rush. I wanted to wait for the IMAX version to come to D.C.

The IMAX theater at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is a great venue for blockbuster films, if only because the crowds are much better behaved than the ones at standard movie theaters. We get to sit in comfortable, high-backed chairs in steeply banked stadium seating facing an enormous 66' x 90' curved screen. In anticipation of an IMAX release, the director of Dark Knight actually shot some of the footage with special IMAX cameras. All I can say is that if you are the least bit acrophobic, put on your seat belt!

This movie was absolutely full of major stars. Christian Bale is Batman and Heath Ledger is the Joker, but the list doesn't end there. Morgan Freeman is the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Michael Caine is butler Alfred, Gary Oldman is Commissioner Gordon, Aaron Eckhart is DA Harvey Dent, Maggie Gyllenhaal is Rachel Dawes, Eric Robert is gangster Sal Maroni, Anthony Michael Hall is a TV anchorman, Nestor Carbonell is the mayor, soap opera actor William Fichtner is the bank manager, and even other celebrities make cameo appearances such as WWF wrestler Tommy "Tiny" Lister and U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy.

Ledger acquitted himself well, and, given the sentimentality of the Academy, will probably get the best actor Oscar. It was odd, though; I had no sense that it was him up there on that screen. What with all the makeup and the weird voice he was using, plus the rather psychopathic role he played, I never really saw a glimpse of Ledger the person, not even in the way he moved.

The movie itself is entertaining and gripping. It's long—two and a half hours—but the time flew by and I never found myself checking my watch to see if it was over yet. The editing and cinematography are excellent. All of the technological tools and gadgets and toys Batman has are intriguing, though their use and some of the plot elements do stretch the limits of credibility. While special effects and makeup were great, my one big criticism was their decision to make Harvey Dent's Two Face makeup too comical and comic book, though I understand the director thought realism was too frightening. I'd have preferred the fright, since that would have helped to fill out Dent's character and explain his descent into criminal madness.

I'm not sure if it was the script or the acting, but I didn't feel much empathy for Christian Bale's Batman. I did not see Batman Returns, the immediately previous movie in the Batman franchise, so I can't compare his performances. His "Batman whisper" was almost comical to me. I also found Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance to be rather wooden. The script left me a bit dissatisfied, too, because we had no clue who the Joker was, where he came from, or how he got the skills and technological expertise he had to be able to pull off all his heists.

On a higher level, though, I found the overall movie disturbing for its underlying message. I haven't seen any of the Batman movies since Michael Keaton's first portrayal in 1989 (I can't remember if I saw Batman Returns in 1992 or not), so I'm not sure where things have been going. I remember watching Batman on television as a child, though, and the one thing I remember about Adam West's Batman is that he was always admonishing Robin about respect for the law.

Now we have a Batman who feels the ends justify the means, no matter the cost, no matter the laws broken, no matter the rights violated, no matter the property damage, no matter the lives lost. If Gotham City has a problem, Batman just throws more money and technology at the problem until the problem is solved, and heaven help the innocent citizen or police officer who happens to get in the way. Batman is a wealthy bully who gets what he wants by might and money, not by right. This is not the sort of message that we should be teaching our children. This is the very attitude that is causing us Americans so many problems on the world stage right now, too.

Perhaps we should not expect movies to inculcate morals and values in our children anymore like they used to do. People today claim to want gritty reality, not happy idealism. We must, though, be aware of what we show on screen and what those movies teach so that we can have a dialogue as a family, if not as a society, as to the ethos of fantasy. Doing any less will lead us into a generation of amorality.

Are this summer's movies anti-Catholic?

This month I actually got twice to the movie theaters to see new releases, in fact, the first and only movies I've seen in 2008. The lucky productions getting my theater going dollars were The X Files: I Want to Believe and Brideshead Revisited. It just so happens that I am intimately acquainted with the stories behind both of these movie plots, so I can see more in the scripts than many people.

In retrospect, what particularly struck me was the viciously nasty anti-Catholic tone of both movies.

It seems an eternity since The X Files was on television every Sunday night. I watched it religiously, even in its very first season. As the characters developed over the years, we knew that Agent Mulder was an agnostic Protestant and Agent Scully was a devout Catholic. Then we get to this movie, where we find neither as agents anymore, with Mulder in hiding and Scully working as a physician in a Catholic charity hospital. The movie, much like the shows, had two simultaneous plots, both dealing with the Catholic Church.

The major plotline for the movie involves the kidnapping of an FBI agent and what turns out to be a series of murders. A defrocked pedophile Catholic priest claims to have visions regarding the investigation, and appears quite unsympathetically throughout the movie. Dialogue from multiple characters snipes not only at the former priest but also at the Church (are we tired of pedophile priest jokes yet?), and Scully is particularly disrespectful. The secondary plot line involves a child patient of Scully's with some rare, most likely fatal disease, with no known cure. The hospital's administration, led by a particularly sour priest, wants to shuffle the boy off to a hospice-type facility for palliative care, but Scully somehow chooses to defy them and treat the boy with some highly experimental stem cell therapy (stem cell therapy, since it deals with cells from unborn fetuses, is vehemently opposed by the Catholic Church). There are a lot of unlikely scenarios in the plot and it just doesn't quite work when viewed as a free-standing work apart from the culture and tradition of the series.

Then we get to Brideshead Revisited, based on the 1944 novel by former popular British writer Evelyn Waugh. This happens to be one of the very very few novels I've ever read twice, I have seen multiple times the faithful 1981 BBC/Granada six-episode, twelve-hour mini-series, and I worked with many of my students to analyze the work in their papers on early 20th century British novelists. So, being so familiar with the twelve-hour treatment of the novel, I found myself spinning trying to keep up with the instant two-hour long movie. The screenplay writers took so many liberties with the story line, I took the novel with me to brunch today to reread it so I could refresh my memory.

In the "new" version, the entire story has been rewritten to focus on the Catholic faith of the family, giving it sinister and evil overtones, and having it ruin the lives and happiness of its adherents. Meanwhile, Teresa Marchmain (played by Emma Thompson) has become a vindictive and overbearing matriarch in the name of Catholicity, which is totally different from her character in the novel, and the narrator of the story, Charles Ryder, has become a staunch atheist who actively works against the family's Catholic superstitions and practices, again contrary to his novel character (in the novel, there's even a line where someone refers to him as an atheist, and he corrects them, saying he's agnostic, plus, he would have been way too polite to have acted in such ways).

So, what's the deal with all the negative treatment of the Church?

Anyway, let me give a brief analysis of the movies.

The X Files was both satisfying and disappointing. It was little more than a two-part TV episode, and an episode with a weak plot line, at that. Because of the length of time since the television show was in original release, the writers seemed compelled to use a whole lot of expository dialogue to explain the backstory, some of which was rather annoying (like when Skinner made his first appearance on screen, Scully says, "It's Assistant Director of the FBI Walter Skinner!" as if Mulder didn't know who he was). The writing was poor and plot elements weren't connected. The overall series story arc really isn't going in a good direction. The editing felt choppy (and as if much of the important plot development was left on the cutting room floor). The cinematography at times lacked focus while at other times it moved in a way that gave me a headache. The musical score was pretty hideous. But, at the same time, it was The X Files and Mulder and Scully were back together again. With a better storyline and writing staff, I'd be willing to go see another movie. Recommendation? If you're an X Files fan, go see it, you'll enjoy it well enough. If you're not already an established fan, it's okay, and it's certainly better than a lot of the trash movies out this summer.

Meanwhile, Brideshead is a beautiful movie, reminiscent of the Merchant-Ivory type movies. I've heard Emma Thompson has gotten some supporting actress Oscar buzz.

In the past, my alma mater Oxford University (where much of the novel is set) did not allow film crews at the university, so "Oxbridge"-type movies set at Oxford (Chariots of Fire, Oxford Blues, the Brideshead mini-series, et al.) were actually filmed at rival newcomer Cambridge University. I was very pleased to see this movie was actually filmed on location in Oxford, as it brought back many memories. I also thought it highly interesting that they chose to go to Castle Howard as the location site for the scenes of the fictional "Brideshead Castle," the same location where they shot the mini-series. Consequently, all the sets (as well as costumes) were beautiful.

Naturally, adapting a full-length novel to a modern two-hour movie time frame requires a lot of cutting and rearrangement. I realize this. This version, though, I found to take a few too many liberties not only with the plot but with the characters. I've mentioned Lady Marchmain; Rex Mottram's character was so changed, his now-minor character was a particularly nasty cad and opportunist; Anthony Blanche has become a cameo role with biting lines not in the novel.

Casting was also a bit of a problem. The novel spans twenty years, from the time Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) meet as 19-year-old undergraduates at Oxford, to a point about ten or twelve years after that for Charles and Julia's affair, to Charles' time as a 39-year-old Army officer in World War II. The movie appears to have shortened the intervals so the actors ultimately end up playing their real-life ages. Because of how so much of the story was truncated and compressed, more than half of the movie is devoted to the time when Charles and Sebastian are 19, yet the actors were much too old to convincingly play teenagers, with Goode at 30 and Whishaw at 28. I think I would have found younger actors, especially since—Goode's intensely clear and bright blue eyes notwithstanding—neither of these actors gave particularly memorable performances.

I've been looking for an intelligent, literary person who's never read this novel or seen the mini-series so I can have him or her watch this movie and then tell me how it works for them. If this description fits any of you, go see it and then write a comment. Meanwhile, for Waugh or Brideshead fans, you'll want to go see this movie just because it's Waugh and Oxford and Castle Howard and your unrepentant anglophilia.

Summer music al fresco

Several restaurants have patios around the big quadrangle at the Department of Commerce downtown. During the summer, they often have live musicians playing on the outdoor stage, and on this past Friday lunchtime, they had a jazz trio with a "lounge singer." One never knows where one will find free culture in the Nation's Capital.

Lodge hall

View of the East from the entrance to the lodge room.

Several people asked about the meeting room where we had the DeMolay investitures this past Sunday, seeing the hieroglyphics and stuff in the background of the pictures. We met at Naval Masonic Lodge on Capitol Hill. They have an old building that dates back to 1893. The lodge room is up on the fourth floor, and I think it's one of the prettiest lodge rooms in town. Probably a hundred years ago (it would be cost-prohibitive to do it today), someone painted Egyptian symbols, motifs, and hieroglyphics on the walls and affixed gold leaf stars on the ceiling. To my knowledge, there is no special Masonic "meaning" or secret to the designs; they are purely decorative. Now, up in the East (where the master or president sits during meetings), there are some Masonic symbols like trowels, books, squares and compasses, etc. painted around the opening, but that's it, and those aren't Egyptian.



Views of the West and the South in the lodge room.

Up in a balcony organ loft, they have a very interesting old pipe organ. It needs a little bit of maintenance (the pedal division is dead), but it could be a fun little instrument. It's only ten ranks, but that was probably a "normal" size for the space at the time it was installed. The swell and great each have only four ranks, and there're just two ranks in the pedal division, but they've got couplers to supplement things. It all sounds rather like a reed organ, and it has stiff tracker action. Couldn't find a manufacturer's label or mark anywhere, so I don't know who made it.

M.P. Möller was at the height of operation in nearby Hagerstown, Maryland, about the time the lodge room was built and furnished, so I'm curious whether or not this might be a small Möller. That would require opening up some things and digging around, though—dusty, dirty work.

One of the unique things about the building itself is the tiny, manually-operated elevator. Most people are going to prefer to use the stairs to walk up. The elevator is crowded with three people in it. This is the only manually-operated elevator I've been in in decades.

Anyway, that's the story about the room we used.

Another new play

Sunday evening, my friends Jim and Meredith and I went to the Kennedy Center to see a new play sponsored by the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. It was a busy night at the K.C., as we were competing with sold-out performances of The Lion King and the 210th anniversary concert of the U.S. Marine Band, and lost-looking people were everywhere! Fortunately, though, we were upstairs in the Terrace Theater, away from the bulk of the crowds.

The Terrace Theater is a nice, 500-seat, steeply-banked theater designed for more intimate performances of plays, chamber music, and other things not suited to the 2,000-plus seats of the three large houses downstairs. It was a bicentennial gift from Japan, and the design shows a calm Asian simplicity, with plain pink panels on the walls separated by gold-tone sound deflectors, and a full proscenium stage.

This particular play is called Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter. Written by Julie Marie Myatt, it premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival before coming to Washington for its first real theatrical production, having opened here on Saturday night.

Welcome Home is the story of a young woman (played by Gwendolyn Mulamba) returning home from service as a United States Marine in Iraq after having suffered devastating injuries there. She is having difficulty making the transition from soldier to veteran, and she doesn't quite know how to return to California to her mother and her two small children, fearing their rejection of her. At a bus station along the way, she meets Lou (Kate Mulligan), an eccentric, funny woman who takes Jenny to stay with her for a few days at Lou's home in a squatters' camp in the middle of the California desert called "Slab City." There, Jenny is able to interact with the other residents and make decisions about her future and her life.

It's a challenging topic. Certainly, it is a challenge to try to portray the emotions of returning soldiers after their traumatic experiences in the Middle East, and playwright Myatt wanted her work to focus on the viewpoint of a woman, not just be another masculine "war story."

The problem with Welcome Home is that it's a story about Lou, not Jenny. Lou is the only character with lots and lots of lines and scenes and with a fully developed character; we hardly got to know Jenny, let alone learn her feeling and emotions, or develop any real sense of sympathy for the character. About all Jenny does is sit or lie there while Lou chatters away. The war trauma aspect was demonstrated with the clichéd balloon pop that made Jenny tackle and "shelter" Lou from "danger," and the worry that no one would love her now that she's injured—both thoughts that have been used in any number of war stories from Iraq to Vietnam to Korea to World War II and probably every other war in history. I think Mulamba's understated performance did what it could with the part of Jenny, but the weakness was with the script. The world went on around Jenny who did little else but quietly sulk and watch things go by, yet we never looked into Jenny's soul or began to hear her thoughts, understand her motivations, or feel her pain.

Director Jessica Thebus also took a rather languid approach to the show, thinking, perchance that due to the short script (the play only ran 95 minutes in one act), she could afford lots of dead time and silence. While that may have worked at the beginning of the play when we spent a long time in silence watching Jenny change clothes on stage from her military fatigues to civilian clothing, by the time we're well into the play listening to the denizens of Slab City, those silences merely become awkward and I kept waiting for the prompter to step in.

One bright spot in the production is the lighting design, by Tony-nominated designer Allen Lee Hughes.

That's not to say there isn't merit in the play. It's going to have to have a serious script review and overhaul, though, keeping Lou's part where it is, and substantially fleshing out Jenny's character. What is it that makes this story unique to Iraq? What makes the experience and viewpoint uniquely feminine? There were also two potentially very interesting characters we met but hardly got to know, Hugo the bus station attendant, and Donald the cynical observer who seemed to have an interesting history of his own. Yes, it will require increasing the play to a two act production, but I think it's going to be a necessity to have any hope of conveying the play's message.

Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter runs through July 27.

Wedding dresses in a Georgetown storefront

Got weekend plans?

If you're still looking for something fun to do this weekend, let me suggest that you go to the Studio Theater here in Washington and watch their new production, This Beautiful City. The show premiered a couple of weeks ago, and will go to Los Angeles this fall and then move to Broadway after the first of the year.

Last Sunday, my neighbor Joel and I went to see the show, and it was a very enjoyable evening.

This Beautiful City is a rather unusual work that tells the story of Colorado Springs, Colorado, the "Vatican" of the Evangelical Christian movement in the United States, a Denver suburb sitting in the shadow of Pike's Peak. About two years ago, the ensemble and writers went to Colorado Springs to do on-site research and interviews in the run-up to the 2006 elections, thinking they were merely studying conservative Christianity. Fortuitously for them, during their residency, the scandal broke over the alleged drug use and homosexuality of Ted Haggard, national evangelical leader and the pastor/founder of the mega-megachurch, New Life, and that became the focus of their script. The show explores the growth of the evangelical movement in Colorado Springs, the evangelical scandals at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the Colorado anti-gay ballot measures, and, of course, the impact of Haggard's disgrace on his church and other religious institutions in town.

The cast is a three-man, three-woman ensemble called The Civilians, each actor doing multiple roles. The Civilians has done several other productions with a similar technique of research and interviewing to develop the scripts for those shows.

I'm not sure whether to call this show a "musical" or a "play with music." They seem to favor "play," yet there is a lot of music by composer/lyricist Michael Friedman—eleven big songs—so I tend to think of it as a "musical." They had a small instrumental ensemble on stage in the wings off stage right, and cast member Stephen Plunkett also played lead guitar during a lot of the songs as a part of his roles. The music, though, isn't a series of polished, production numbers, and there are not a lot of memorable tunes. Friedman was at his best crafting "praise songs" for the cast to sing when they were portraying members of New Life Church, and I could see those song being developed into actual church music. Some of the cast singing was a little shaky, but I couldn't tell if that was a performance weakness or if that was how the music was written. I really would need to see the show a second time.

The cast members were all very good in their portrayals of their various characters. Marsha Stephanie Blake stood out particularly as an accomplished and effective actress. As the lone African-American cast member, her multiple roles included both a troubled member of a large black Baptist church and the male pastor of that church. Her portrayals were full of depth, nuance, and stage presence, and I think you'll be hearing from her as a major television or motion picture actress in the future.

When I first got tickets to this show, I wasn't sure how they were going to handle the evangelical church members. Was this going to be a send-up of the evangelicals, full of caricatures and stereotypes? So many evangelicals act like caricatures in real life, what with their arm raising in prayer, their esoteric vocabulary, and their constant references to having to pray about every little mundane act in their lives. The cast and writers went to great lengths to try to be fair and balanced in what they were doing, so much so that I thought their portrayals were rather reserved compared to real-life evangelicals I know. The show definitely is not a satire or exposé about evangelicals.

It will be interesting to see how this show evolves during "try-outs" here in Washington and then later Los Angeles. It definitely needs to be trimmed and tightened (running time was about two hours, twenty minutes). There also is no sense of a plot line to the show; it's more of a newsy series of vignettes, with a few short story lines that are followed during the evening. Of course, the plotless musical is nothing new—after all, look at the success of Cats. And, while friction between evangelicals and non-evangelicals in Colorado Springs is noted, there is no "conflict" between any of the characters, except maybe the ongoing, real-life conflict between Ted Haggard and reality. So, with no real plot and no real conflict, once the show ends, the playgoer just leaves, with no sense of joy or sadness or catharsis.

Sets and costuming were simple. During much of the show, cast members merely traded hats or jackets to help establish their current character. The main backdrop of the set is a huge aerial photograph of the city with Pike's Peak in the background. On the sides of the stage are large projection screens much like those used in big evangelical churches to project song words or the preacher during the sermon. The show used the screens for other photographs and diagrams to illustrate what was being discussed, including some actual press photos of Ted Haggard as his scandal was unfolding. Lighting design, also, tended towards the simple, creating both standard stage lighting during the expository dialogue and mimicking church stage lighting during the worship service scenes.

This Beautiful City is a fun show and will provide you with an entertaining evening (or afternoon). I wouldn't mind seeing it again. So, if you don't have anything else planned this weekend, go to Studio Theater.

Yevgény Onyégin

One of the challenges of having once been an on-stage opera singer and actor is that it becomes difficult to engage in opera performances as a spectator; the task is even more difficult when the performance is a "concert version" (without costumes, sets, or acting) of the opera. Thus was my challenge Monday evening when we went to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to see the National Symphony Orchestra to see their concert presentation of Tchaikovsky's major opera, Eugene Onegin.

Onegin is not one of the "old warhorses" perpetually done by American opera companies. There are not any whistleable tunes or familiar melodies from some movie, although Tatiana's "Letter Aria" is often done by operatic sopranos in recitals. Most American audiences are not that familiar with the opera; I, however, am. The very last opera I prepared in my limited "career," just before moving to Washington, D.C., was, in fact, Eugene Onegin.

So, off to the concert hall we went. My lawyer friend Jim, who was in his long-distant youth a violinist, accompanied me (much to the disappointment and jealousy of his lady, who was left home alone). We sat on the right side of the house on row S, which is about halfway back, a place where there's usually a good sound blend.

Musical forces were provided by the National Symphony under the baton of soon-to-be retired music director Leonard Slatkin with choral music by The Washington Chorus under the direction of Julian Wachner. The soloists were almost all young Russians.

From the first phrase of the overture, I knew we were in trouble. The NSO has some amazing musicians; there have been times I've heard them and felt it was a transcendent experience; this was not one of those nights. As I have oft bemoaned over the past few years, the orchestra frequently doesn't play well at all for Slatkin. They were languid, even sloppy in their playing. It lacked care, cohesion, and crispness.

Once we finally got to hear the chorus, I was disappointed with them, too. It was a very static, sterile, "park and bark" effort with no sense of drama. And, what's worse, the diction was woefully lacking. Now, Russian is a very difficult language to sing. Russian words have a tendency to start with like a dozen consonants, all of which have to be voiced, and I know from having sung Onegin before that many of those consonant strings are on sixteenth notes at quarter note=144. So, it's not easy. But, all I was hearing from the chorus was a wash of vowel sound, with very, very little consonant expression at all.

The young women soloists were quite fine. Irina Mataeva, clad in a simple, white satin, A-line dress, sang the leading role as Tatiana. She's at the age where she can still play the ingenue credibly, and where she has the maturity and power to sing dramatically when needed. Ekaterina Semenchuk sang the role of her younger sister Olga with a tomboyish playfulness, emphasized all the more by the role's mezzo-soprano tessitura.

I was somewhat more critical of the men. The poet Lensky was sung by the young Daniil Shtoda from the Mariinsky Academy in St. Petersburg. While he had nice vocal sensitivity and a sense of drama, I thought his voice sounded rather constricted and lacked volume and power. He's only about thirty years old—considered "young" for a tenor—so perhaps his power will improve as he matures.

On the other hand, Sergei Leiferkus as the title character had just the opposite problem. Leiferkus has been a major performer for probably thirty years, and his baritone is now more suited to mature roles like Germont pere in La Traviata than to younger, vibrant characters like Onegin. When Leiferkus and Shtoda made their stage entrance together, I was confused at first; Onegin and Lensky are supposed to be good friends; while a little age difference between Russian male friends isn't unusual, when these two men entered, it looked like father and son, if not grandfather and grandson. Later when Leiferkus sang his meeting scene with Mataeva, he had to sing some of the higher notes in falsetto. Even Jim commented at the interval that with Leiferkus's interpretation, Onegin must be a "jerk" and was not a sympathetic, troubled figure at all—that makes it very difficult for the opera to meet its mark at the end of the opera, when the abandoned Onegin must be a tragic figure that garners the audience's pathos.

Local character tenor Robert Baker came out in a white dinner jacket and made quite a favorable impression in his turn as the French poet Triquet. His serio-comic performance gave the concert a much-needed breath of fresh air.

Other soloists included Irina Tchistjakova as Tatiana's mother's Larina, Mzia Nioradze as the nanny Filipyevna, Gustav Andreassen as Prince Gremin, Nathan Herfindahl as the captain, and Grigory Soloviov as Zaretsky.

And, thus went Eugene Onegin. I should have known better than to go to a three hour-long concert opera, especially in a language I don't speak, and especially without any big name stars to make the evening interesting.

Osage County

The play August: Osage County cleaned up at the Tony Awards last night. I really must get to New York some time to see it.

Back in the years before I moved to Washington, I used to live for about five years in a remote little house on sixty acres in the woods out "on the Osage" (so called by the locals because Osage County and the Osage Indian Reservation are conterminous), and I grew up in a town that straddles the Osage and Cherokee Nations. So, I know those people!

Extra ticket

I have one extra ticket to hear a concert version (meaning, no costumes, sets, or acting) of the Tchaikovsky opera, Eugene Onegin, performed by the National Symphony Orchestra on Monday night at 8 p.m. at the Kennedy Center here in Washington. It'll be sung in Russian with English surtitles.

Who wants to go with me?

Delawares

Every Memorial Day weekend, the Delaware Indians have their annual pow-wow at a tribal site up near the Kansas-Oklahoma border. My family has gone there for years to visit and socialize with friends and extended family, and, more importantly, to dance. When I was a child, we had a family campsite there and camped out every year. In recent years, we've driven the 15 or so miles back and forth every day from my parents' house instead of camping, losing the fun campfire smoke smell, but giving us the advantage of daily showers.

Pow-wows are social gatherings and dances that began to evolve in the early 20th century as an outgrowth of the old wild west shows. They are "pan-Indian," meaning they are a collection of people from a number of tribes, rather than being a special ceremonial or traditional dance of a single, particular tribe. In Oklahoma, there are usually two or three (or more) pow-wows every weekend, somewhere in the state.

There really aren't any pow-wows around the Washington area, so this is the first time I've gotten to dress and dance in about four years. I miss it. The drum is very centering. It was also nice to go around to the various camps and see distant family members and longtime family friends, again, most of whom I've not seen since moving to D.C. Some of my childhood friends and contemporaries were there with their now-large families, many of whom are now well into being grandmothers. Seeing camps with four generations of a family is a common thing.

Everyone likes to pass down the Indian traditions to the younger generation. Even small children are dressed in traditional tribal regalia and brought by their parents into the dance arena.



For more pictures of the dance, click here to get to my Flickr album.

Lighting the cathedral

This past weekend as a part of its celebration of the centennial of the groundbreaking, the Washington National Cathedral brought in internationally-noted Swiss lighting designers for "Lighting to Unite," an unusual event where the cathedral building was used as a canvas for interesting outdoor lighting effects. We went to go look, and it was certainly an interesting thing.

I'm not really sure what "Lighting to Unite" had to do with anything. There wasn't any theme or propaganda presentation associated with the lighting. The lights also weren't really what I was expecting. The press releases talked about he artists "lighting" the cathedral, so I was thinking they would position various lights around the place and turn them on at various times, but in reality what they did was use the building as a projection screen for colored slides. It was still pretty.

Here are a few more views. If you'd like to see a lot more of the pictures, go to my Flickr album to view them. Sorry about the blurry pictures, but I don't have a high end camera or a tripod, and it's difficult doing photos at night without the proper equipment. You can get the idea, though.

Speechifying

Yesterday was the regional DeMolay speech tournament over in Fairfax, Va., and I got drafted into serving as a judge to listen to state winners from the mid-Atlantic area. Winner got $500 and a trip to Anaheim, Calif., this summer for the national competition (where the prize jumps up to $1500!). The worst thing about youth speech contests is always the topic—this time it was "America: What's Right with It." Gag. LOL

Walked in the door and the first thing that happened was that some people from Pennsylvania remembered me from twenty-five years ago! It always amazes me when that happens....I have such a bad memory for names and faces.

The grand master (national president) was there from Kentucky. First I'd met him.....seemed very nice. Here are some pictures of the winners with the grand master, and also a shot of us judges with him.

Newseum opening

Washington is a city well-known for spin and displays of self-importance, but I don't believe I've ever seen such an enormous show of self-indulgent self-aggrandizement and self-congratulations than at the newly opened Newseum, a monument and self-funded commercial for the press.

Once a modest museum about the history of the press located in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, sponsors of the Newseum secured a lot of private contributions from the Freedom Forum (a free press, free speech group funded by wealthy publishing magnates) and several additional foundations started by wealthy publishers, allowing them to buy up a prime bit of real estate on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol and next door to the Canadian Embassy. There they built a glitzy, modern, glass-walled, seven-story museum with an attached, ultra-luxury, apartment building and a high-end Wolfgang Puck restaurant. Their sixth floor terrace overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue has spectacular views of the Capitol, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, The Mall, and many of the office complexes along Pennsylvania.

Inside, the Newseum has an impressive collection of press memorabilia and historical artifacts, including hundreds of years' worth of newspapers, plus a growing collection of radio- and video clips. In fact, they could have opted to use their collections in a venue more suited to serious study of journalism, but they've gone the reality TV, ratings-driven, least-common denominator route to higher ratings and turned everything into a brief sound bite of sensationalism. They've also taken some historical artifacts from important world events that had little if anything to do with the press (other than later news coverage) and created big, fancy galleries around them, such as a series of panels from the Berlin Wall and a piece of wreckage from a television tower that once stood atop the World Trade Center. There's a lot of wasted space in the place, what with the enormous central atrium that runs the full height and width of the building, plus three museum shops vending souvenirs. A very large cafeteria space is in the basement level of the main building with Wolfgang Puck's influence (not to be confused with his restaurant, The Source, in the apartment tower section of the building) on the menu options and the high prices ($14 for a main course cafeteria entree is high in my opinion, and on the "cheap" end, I saw a dessicated hot dog for $4 that one could buy from a street vendor for $1.25). That's not to say that there aren't some good and some entertaining exhibits and things in the building. You just have to cut through the glitz and the propaganda to get there. I especially liked the exhibit with all of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs. And, it's possible to sit at some of the interactive booths looking at news clips and getting lost in exploration, forgetting about the time.

We did go to their "4-D Movie Experience." They use their big auditorium with the big screen, moving chairs, and 3-D imagery. It was fun, but, once again, it's a lot of flash with limited substance. There were some snippets of educational information offered by really bad actors, but it didn't go anywhere and it wasn't all tied together, but they furthered their theme of the gloriousness of the press and the fabulousness of journalists, and the special effects made it all very entertaining. Ask Robert about his experience with the rat.

My favorite thing was in the men's room. They had embedded a bunch of custom tiles into the walls that featured actual published newspaper "bloopers."

With all the opening crowds, we almost didn't get to go. Friday's opening day was free admission for everyone. The museum advertised all over the place, talking about their 9 to 6 hours, with last entry at 5. Lines, I hear, stretched all the way down to the Capitol. About 2 p.m., they decided they were at their capacity, and stopped the line to great complaint from people in line and more people arriving. I'd taken off early Friday afternoon to head over to see the place, arriving about 2:30 or 2:45, and I saw some of the disappointed and angry tourists. It didn't look like the museum staff was handling things well or compassionately at all. They were basically taking the attitude that they were a private museum and they didn't care if people had been in line for hours to see a museum advertised as open until 5. Then, somebody printed up a small stack of tickets for free admission on Saturday and staffers all around were telling people to go get a free ticket from the line formed for that purpose, but they quickly ran out, and once again, people were distressed. For a press museum, they sure mishandled their public relations on opening day. I wandered off to do other things in the neighborhood and just happened to make a return pass, only to find yet another line all the way down in front of the Canadian Embassy, and they had printed up a bunch of Saturday free tickets and were giving them away. So, I got back in line and managed to get Robert and I a couple of tickets (other people on Saturday were paying full ticket price of $20 per person). By the time I got my tickets, I noticed the line was still growing, extending behind me past the Canadian Embassy. Even though I had to make a second trip downtown, I think we were better off....Friday, the museum was jam packed, and on Saturday, we had room to move around and actually see and read exhibits.

Now, while I enjoyed my visit to the museum, I'm not so sure I'd have enjoyed it as much had I paid $20. I'm not sure what the deal is about the price......$12 would have been okay, maybe even as much as $18 (what they charge at the Spy Museum), but $20 just seemed way too much. They could hold their costs down if they'd trim their staff. We saw dozens and dozens of workers and security guards milling around all over the museum, and they didn't all look busy. I asked some if they were volunteers or employees, and they said employees. Hmm.

So, I took some pictures. So as not to bore people and use up all their bandwidth, I've put them in a Flickr photo album. Click here if you'd like to see my pictures.