Ford’s ‘Liberty Smith’ Evokes Laughter, Delight from Audience

On Wednesday evening, Nigel Ashford, Tim Hulsey, Richard Morrison, and I were able to see the world premiere of Liberty Smith at Ford's Theatre. Before the show and during the intermission, I was able to chat with the show's composer, Michael Weiner, who spoke to me by telephone a few weeks ago.

Here is my review of Liberty Smith, intended for next week's edition of The Metro Herald.

Romance! Danger! Comedy!

Ford’s ‘Liberty Smith’ Evokes Laughter, Delight from Audience

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

If your weekend plans include seeing the new musical Liberty Smith at Ford’s Theatre, you don’t need Rebecca Black to tell you to expect “fun, fun, fun, fun” on Friday, Saturday, or the Sunday that comes afterwards. If you don’t yet have tickets for Liberty Smith, why not? You should.

Ford’s latest production is a wholesome family musical, appropriate for theatregoers of all ages. That said, it is neither sedate nor anodyne. Instead, the rollicking show offers all the romance, danger, and comedy that another new musical across the river fails to supply.

Liberty Smith is historical fiction set in the time of the American Revolution. Far from a docudrama, however, it takes liberties (no pun intended) with the facts so that sticklers for chronology might be puzzled or offended. No matter, since it’s all in good fun and serves the purpose of entertaining the audience.

The story opens, Cyrano-like, when an old (132 years old!) Liberty interrupts a clumsy stage production of Parson Weems’ story of George Washington and the cherry tree, saying “that’s not how it happened. I know, because I was there.” The year is 1859 – not incidental, since that was the eve of the Civil War, an event that would change the prism through which American history is observed. The story proceeds as a series of flashbacks, with Old Liberty (Drew Eshelman) narrating here and there but not obtrusively so.

As the narrative begins, the young George Washington (Gregory Maheu) has befriended the eponymous Liberty Smith (Geoff Packard), an orphan farmhand living near Mount Vernon in Virginia. (These types of heroes are nearly always orphans, perhaps because family ties would anchor them to a specific place and prevent their free spirits from wandering where the story needs to take them.)

Enamored with neighborhood belle Martha Dandridge – played by Lauren Williams with all the tact and charm of a middle-school Queen Bee -- who mockingly bids him to free the colonies from British rule, Liberty sets out on a knight errant’s quest (like the role model in his favorite book, Don Quixote) that takes him to Philadelphia, Boston, Paris, and more.

Along the way, Liberty encounters Betsy Ross, Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, James Otis, Thomas Jefferson, King Louis XVI of France and his consort, Marie Antoinette, and dozens of other patriots and knaves (including a villainous Benedict Arnold).

Like Zelig or Forrest Gump, Liberty Smith finds himself in places where history is being made and, in fact, inadvertently makes it himself – though others invariably end up with the credit. And throughout, his story is told through song and dance.

The songs are all Broadway-style, many pastiches of familiar forms. Composer Michael Weiner draws not only on colonial-era tunes (“Yankee Doodle,” for instance) for atmospherics but also on 20th century standards and showtunes for his inspiration. In combination with lyricist Adam Abraham, the team becomes a latter-day Stan Freberg.

There’s a comic list song (“The Art of Wit”) that catalogs proverbs, quips, and clichés. “One Shocking Moment” not only shows the protagonist’s state of mind but makes wicked fun of over-the-top Ziegfeld Follies-style dream sequences. “Declarations” uncovers a less-than-ideal process of writing the Declaration of Independence.

A feminist anthem (“A Better Tomorrow,” sung by Kelly Karbacz as Emily) echoes Ragtime’s “Back to Before” while the first-act finale (“The World Turned Upside Down”) is a de rigueur spoof of Les Miserables, the sort of send-up we can trace at least to 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. It is to the creative team’s credit that they can poke fun at meta-musicals like Urinetown and Avenue Q with subtlety and wit while avoiding the snarkiness of the “originals.”

Liberty Smith’s conventional musical style is no disadvantage – when you see two young people disdain each other in Act I, you know wedding bells will ring by the end of Act II – and instead extends and reinforces the overall entertainment experience. Predictability, in this case, enhances the comic twists that pop up like Whack-a-Moles every five minutes or so.

While the subject matter may be the stuff of the 18th century, Liberty Smith is peppered with contemporary pop-culture allusions. Although the writing team responsible for it has been working on the script and songs off-and-on since the mid-1990s (and in earnest since 2006), which might have resulted in stale creakiness, Liberty Smith is as current and fresh as a headline from The Onion or a “Funny-or-Die” viral video.

Some dialogue echoes the scene, oft-repeated late at night in dorm rooms, from Monty Python’s Life of Brian about the “Judean People’s Front, People’s Front of Judea,” etc. One song’s lyric mentions “George W” and the “coalition of the willing.” There is even a reference to Johnny Tremain, the main character of the Newbery Award-winning book of the same name, whose similarity to Liberty Smith is winked at by Mrs. Paul Revere, who says “that’s another story.”

The 20-member cast is made up mostly of Washington-area actors, including at least six Helen Hayes Award nominees and winners. (Music director Jay Crowder, who leads an 8-person ensemble with a richer sound than its size would indicate, is also a Helen Hayes recipient while fight director Brad Waller and director Matt August have both been previously nominated.)

While funnier than most in a genre characterized by self-important sobriety, Liberty Smith would not be out of place as an outdoor drama (for example, the Outer Banks’ venerable pageant, The Lost Colony) and, with a trim to about 80 minutes from its current two and a half hour running time, could easily become a successful fixture at Colonial Williamsburg or Busch Gardens. As it is, many tourists visiting Washington as well as school groups will be able to take advantage of the show’s presence at Ford’s through May 21. (The “Child Actor,” played on opening night by grammar-school-age Noah Chiet, is on stage in almost every scene, a compelling presence to keep the attention of kids in the audience.)

Liberty Smith could also be easily adapted for performances by high school or college theatre groups, even without the elaborate, eye-popping costumes designed by Wade Laboissonniere and the multi-leveled set (which fits nicely into Ford’s narrow performance space) of scenic designer Court Watson.

It is hard to think up enough complimentary terms to praise Liberty Smith. Totally unpretentious, the creative team – book writers Marc Madnick and Eric R. Cohen in addition to librettist-lyricist Abraham and composer Weiner – achieve precisely what they set out to do: to deliver an enjoyable, entertaining romp into America’s revolutionary past.

While it does not “advance the form,” Liberty Smith is a delightful throwback to the sort of Broadway revue one might have seen in the 1950s. This is not an Adam Guettel-style cerebral challenge. As a matter of fact, too much thinking might detract from the overall enjoyable experience: just sit back and let flow its life, “Liberty,” and the pursuit of happiness.

Liberty Smith: music by Michael Weiner, lyrics by Adam Abraham, book by Marc Madnick, Eric R. Cohen, and Adam Abraham; choreographed by Denis Jones; directed by Matt August, continues through May 21, 2011, at Ford’s Theatre, 511 Tenth Street, N.W., in Washington. Performances Monday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (except April 25), matinees on Fridays and Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. (except April 1 and 15 and May 6 and 13); noon matinees on May 6 and 13. Ticket prices: $15 to $55 with discounts available for groups, senior citizens, military personnel, and those younger than 35. Tickets available through Ticketmaster at 800-551-7328 and www.fords.org.

If you've read this far, you should know that I really liked Liberty Smith. I strongly recommend it and may even go to see it again myself before it closes next month.

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An Interview with ‘And the Curtain Rises’ Playwright Michael Slade

Tonight is the press preview of And the Curtain Rises, a new musical at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia. Here is an interview with the show's playwright, Michael Slade, which I wrote for The Metro Herald.

Recreating the Birth of the American Musical Theatre:

An Interview with ‘And the Curtain Rises’ Playwright Michael Slade

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

The curtain rises officially on And the Curtain Rises, a new musical at Signature Theatre in Arlington, on Tuesday, March 29.

The play tells the story of The Black Crook, a spectacular originally produced in 1866 that is often identified as the first American musical play. At a time when a run of two or three weeks was considered exceptionally long, The Black Crook was such a sensation that it had 475 performances in its first run, plus two revivals in 1870-71 and 1871-72 totaling 193 performances, according to the Internet Broadway Database (ibdb.com).  It also toured the country for years.

The story of The Black Crook has been told once before on the musical stage, in The Girl in Pink Tights by composer Sigmund Romberg, lyricist Leo Robin, and librettists Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields. The Girl in Pink Tights took its title from the phenomenon that made The Black Crook so racy: under the sharp limelight, the pink tights on the dancing girls made their legs look nude, a shocking sight in the 1860s.

The Girl in Pink Tights had a tepid run of 115 performances over three months in 1954, but it marked the Broadway debuts of Maurice and Gregory Hines, who were then 11 and 9 years old, respectively, and featured in its cast Marni Nixon, later known for her dubbing the silver-screen singing voices of Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

Signature’s take on The Black Crook is part of its American Musical Voices Project, which has previously commissioned the new musicals Giant (by Michael John LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson) and Sycamore Trees (by Ricky Ian Gordon and Nina Mankin).

The creative team behind And the Curtain Rises consists of director Kristin Hanggi, composer Joseph Thalken, lyricist Mark Campbell, and playwright Michael Slade, who spoke at length with The Metro Herald about the project, its origins, and the production process.


From actor to playwright
Slade is a New Yorker by birth, having grown up in Syosset, Long Island, and earning a BFA in theatre from Ithaca College. Although he always had a love of writing dating from his childhood, he began his career as an actor, appearing in “hundreds of commercials, a couple of TV pilots, a couple of national tours, and a couple of off-Broadway plays,” he said.

'And the Curtain Rises' playwright Michael Slade / Photo courtesy Signature Theatre

Growing tired of the business of acting – with the many cattle-call auditions, quickly-disappearing jobs, and all the stresses and strains of the profession – Slade, with the encouragement of friends, turned increasingly to writing even though his “agents were disappointed.”

His first play, a one-act called Thanksgiving, was produced by the Manhattan Class Company (now the MCC Theater at The Lucille Lortel Theatre) in New York about 20 years ago.

“It was a wonderful, wonderful production and I got a lot of notice from it from people and that was a great experience,” he explained.

“That was validation for me,” he said, because until a play is performed on stage by actors, “it’s not fully finished.” This is unlike a novel or short story, which can be read in any form even if they are not published. “Production and performance are the components of a finished piece” of theatre, however.

After the success of his first play, Slade went on to write about ten “family musicals” for Theatreworks/USA including Superfudge, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, The Great Brain, The Three Pigs, as well as a Radio City Music Hall production of Pokemon Live!. In addition, he has written teleplays for the long-running soap opera, Days of Our Lives, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for writing episodes of One Life to Live.

The idea of basing a musical on the making of The Black Crook originated with Joseph Thalken, whom Slade had met in New York. The two of them had been discussing possible projects to work on together for some time.

“It felt like a great match,” Slade said. “We both were intrigued with each others’ way of working. We started kicking around ideas.”

He reacted favorably to Thalken’s idea in part because, he explained, he had had “a theatre history professor who was obsessed with The Black Crook. I don’t know how many weeks of the semester he spent talking about the show.”

When Thalken received the commission from the American Musical Voices Project, they brought on Mark Campbell as lyricist and poured themselves into researching the story, the principal characters, and the era (post-Civil War New York City).

Campbell and Thalken had collaborated on some songs together, but not an entire score. “That felt like a really right third component in terms of personality,” Slade noted. “We jumped into the pool together.”


Beginning in the library
Since And the Curtain Rises is basically a piece of historical fiction, the writing process began with research trips to the library.

“I love the process of researching,” Slade said.

“I was not the best student in school, but afterwards I discovered how much fun research was. One can do almost everything on line these days but there’s something about going places and handling real books and articles.”

To find those “real books and articles,” Slade said he “spent a good deal of time at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. I read first person accounts by people who were involved in original production. No two told the same story,” which added a twist to the creative process.

“We really didn’t want to write a docudrama. We were more interested in fictionalizing the story and using elements from it but really telling the story we wanted to tell about collaboration and how the theatre builds audiences and artists,” he explained.

“We decided very early on that what we would be doing is taking a lot of the facts and using our own imaginations to create and imagine what was going on at the time.”

Slade found more documents and artifacts at the New York Historical Society, which he calls “amazing.”

He found out less there about The Black Crook itself “than about the times,” the 1860s and ‘70s.

The historical society has “a whole collection of menus from restaurants of those years. There were accounts in newspaper articles about those immediate post-Civil War years in New York -- what people did, where they went, how they interacted.”

Slade was not unfamiliar with the era, having previously written about Ned Buntline, the creator of the dime novel and inventor of a gun known as the Buntline Special.

Buntline, Slade explained, had been involved in the Astor Place riots, a now-obscure episode in American history in which fans of rival actors (one British, one American) each playing Macbeth, showed their support through violent demonstrations. “There were literally riots as Americans stormed the theatre” where the British actor was performing, riots stimulated by xenophobia. There were, according to Slade, “cannons in the streets” brought out to quell the demonstrators.

A lot of “the passion about theatre at the time,” Slade said, “was stirred up by Know Nothing Party. The public perception is that it was all about the passion about who was starring in shows in New York,” but as in the culture wars today, politics was not far beneath the surface.

In addition to what he found in libraries, at the historical society, and the Museum of the City of New York, Slade discovered “a wonderful online site about 19th century actors and actresses and about what their lives were like.”


The collaborative process
Early in the process, all three collaborators did research individually and got together to talk. At about the same time, Campbell had been working on a song cycle set in the Civil War.

“I don’t think we started to put anything on paper for the first six months,” Slade said, immersing themselves in the material, and asking themselves “who were the characters, and what were we trying to say?”

After this initial period, “we started writing,” Slade said, explaining that “the way I like to work is, having hashed things out together, I came out with a fairly strong treatment, where we’d already talked about certain places where there’d be songs. Then I wrote a messy first draft of the script where there might be long monologues or overwritten scenes that could be turned into songs.”

Eventually, he said, came the tailoring and incorporating the two.

Working with his collaborators, Slade said, has “been really fearless. It’s been a really terrific collaboration. There’s been great respect between the three of us since day one. We all have been willing to really listen and take it to heart. Sometimes we have an argument but it’s been a healthy and positive collaboration that has continually made the piece better and better.”

While Thalken decided to listen to the score of the earlier musical, The Girl in Pink Tights, Slade chose to stay away from it.

“I made a distinct choice not to listen because I didn’t think it would help. I didn’t want something to unconsciously come into this play.”

In contrast to The Girl in Pink Tights, “our piece is much bigger” and more ambitious.

“I really think about this piece as a Robert Altman movie. We’ve got 16 characters with lives on stage and off. We tell our story through all of them.” And besides, Slade noted, The Girl in Pink Tights “was not a big hit” – something not desired, naturally, for And the Curtain Rises.


Historic but ‘unproducible’
For all of its legendary status, The Black Crook could not be produced today.

It was, Slade discovered, “scheduled for a third revival within the past 50 years. But they realized it’s unproducible. The original production was back in the day when you could have hundreds of people on stage because you weren’t necessarily paying them all.”

What’s more, the original production’s stagecraft was unprecedented.

“British designers came in and brought on scenic events like nothing before seen on stage. There were fires of hell, a waterfall, and a lake with boats floating on it -- not to mention the March of the Amazons.” It would, Slade pointed out, “be cost prohibitive today.”

Yet despite all the special effects, the crew consisted of “a bunch of ex-sailors pulling ropes.”

Neither was The Black Crook a very good play.

Instead, Slade noted wryly, “it’s almost deliciously bad. It borrows from melodrama and Shakespeare and Faust, all thrown into one. What made it its enormous success was the spectacle and the girls’ legs” in those notorious pink tights.

While Slade and his partners were developing the show, a staged reading of what became And the Curtain Rises was put on at the Human Race Theatre Company in Dayton, Ohio. By coincidence, “there’s an old theatre in Dayton that had been a stop on The Black Crook tour,” which traveled around the country “for decades.” While the tour did not have all of the amazing special effects of the original production, “it was a fair approximation of what had played in New York.”

Coming upon that old Dayton theatre was amazing in itself, Slade said, because the 19th century “was a perilous time for theatres, since they were wood structures using flames as lights.”

As a matter of fact, the legend goes, the way The Black Crook came together was when a theatre hosting a troupe of Parisian ballet dancers burned down and its manager lent them to William Wheatley, The Black Crook’s producer.


Changing the name
Wheatley’s pivotal involvement explains the originally announced title of And the Curtain Rises: “Wheatley’s Folly.”

This was, Slade noted, “a working title but we weren’t in love with it. It always felt like it took a lot of explaining.”

Change came when Kristin Hanggi was added on to the team as director. She asked if they could come up with a better title, so they considered alternatives.

“’And the Curtain Rises’ is the name of the finale in our show,” Slade continued, “and one day we said, ‘How about that? It talks to everything we’re doing here.’”

They took the proposed change to the leadership at Signature, who “graciously” agreed to it, even though the company had “printed quite a bit of promotional material with they other title. They said: ‘We’ll take care of it,’” and they did.

Slade is effusive with his praise of Signature Theatre itself.

“Signature and Maggie Boland and particularly Eric Schaeffer have been incredible with this,” he said.

“They’ve also been incredible in that we did two readings of it with Eric as director in New York. At one point, he said, it needs another character, it needs a stagehand.

“‘Eric,’ I said, ‘I completely agree, but we’ve already got 15 actors. It costs money.’”

But Schaeffer replied, “‘It’s right for the show. Don’t worry about it.’”

Slade explained: “You so seldom hear that. More often it’s, ‘Can you cut three of the characters?’” Yet Signature is going full-bore with this production.

“We have a fourteen piece orchestra,” Slade gushed. “I’m told that the revival of How to Succeed, with Daniel Radcliffe, doesn’t have 14 pieces. I’ve heard it has just 12, For Signature to give us a fourteen-piece [musical ensemble] is amazing and --because of the intimacy of the space -- it’s just terrific.”

And the Curtain Rises (directed by Kristin Hanggi; book by Michael Slade; music by Joseph Thalken; lyrics by Mark Campbell) began previews on March 17, with an official opening scheduled for March 29. Performances continue through April 10. Show times are Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30 pm, Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm, and Sundays at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm.

Tickets range from $55 - $81 and are available by calling Ticketmaster at (703) 573-SEAT (7328) or visiting www.signature-theatre.org. Group discounts are available for parties of ten or more by contacting Bethany Shannon at shannonb@signature-theatre.org or by calling (571) 527-1831. For more information please visit www.signature-theatre.org.

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An Interview with ‘Liberty Smith’ Composer Michael Weiner

Liberty Smith is a new musical having its world premiere at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., beginning next week.  Here is an interview I did for The Metro Herald with the composer of the show's score, Michael Weiner.

Bringing Early American History to the Musical Stage:

An Interview with ‘Liberty Smith’ Composer Michael Weiner

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

After he spent part of his childhood and teen years acting on iconic TV shows like The Wonder Years, Beverly Hills 90210, and Hanging with Mr. Cooper – with a brief recurring role as the earnestly clueless Kellogg “Cornflake” Lieberbaum on Fresh Prince of Bel Air – Los Angeles native Michael Weiner went on to study history at UCLA, a choice that prepared him well for his current job as composer of the score for a new musical about America’s founding era.

Once at UCLA, however, his love of music took over. He had started playing piano at age 7 and by the time he reached high school, he was practicing every day and beginning to compose music. Upon leaving college, he knew he wanted to write music fulltime.

His acting career behind him, Weiner is now in Washington working on the world premiere of the musical play, Liberty Smith, which previews at Ford’s Theatre on March 23, leading to an official opening night on March 30.


‘Forgotten Founding Father’

With a book by Adam Abraham, Eric R. Cohen, and Marc Madnick, lyrics by Abraham, and music by Weiner, Liberty Smith is set during the American Revolution and tells a behind-the-scenes story of the nation’s founding.

As Weiner explained in a telephone interview with The Metro Herald, “Liberty Smith is about a guy who grows up being friends with George Washington, who is the ‘forgotten founding father.’”

The big names – Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin – are people we all remember, said Weiner, “but under them were all these other names who had major roles. This show is about one man who sets out to do something great with his life and, although he doesn’t get credit for it, he achieves it.”

The theme of the show, he added, is that “everybody can be Liberty Smith, because they have the potential to achieve their dreams. What matters are the journey and the dream.”

That, he said, is “how America was founded. It’s about achieving a dream.”

Long creative process
Weiner and Abraham discovered the original script for Liberty Smith in the mid-1990s, when they were working as readers for a Hollywood studio. (That is, they reviewed screenplays for movie producers and made recommendations.)

“It had been floating around Hollywood but had never been made as a movie,” he explained.

When they first saw the unproduced screenplay, he said, “it originally was seen as an animated movie musical,” since it had been circulated “around the time of Beauty and the Beast.”

He and Abraham, however, “always thought that it would be great on stage.”

That was because “it had a couple of components we thought would be great for a musical: a strong central character with a clear goal,” plus “it has a great love story” as well as “a palette of music we don’t get to see very often in the theatre,” the kind of songs heard in the 18th century, he noted.

Weiner thought that, by translating Liberty Smith into a stage musical, he could “explore more musical styles.” The period of the show, he said, “can be musically colorful and the 18th century can be portrayed on stage in a very theatrical way.”

To write the show, Weiner and his collaborators “went on research trips to Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, Boston, Philadelphia.”

He collected and listened to recordings of colonial music, he said, because “I wanted the show to feel true to that era and take it back there as well, but also appeal to today’s audience, so it doesn’t feel like museum piece.”

The aim, he said, was “not to create something so faithfully,” that it would seem stale and dated, but to get the feel of the 18th century while bringing a “contemporary edge to the music.”

The process of taking Liberty Smith from original concept to its debut at Ford’s Theatre was a lengthy one, Weiner explained.

“Musicals take years” to create, he said, especially original musicals.

Unlike recent Broadway successes – Hairspray, The Producers, Billy Elliot – Liberty Smith is “not based on a hit movie. Original musicals are really challenging. There’s no road map.”

After first reading the screenplay in the mid-‘90s, Weiner and his collaborators spent nine or ten years working on it off and on, “as a secondary job to other projects.” Since 2006, however, they have focused on it almost exclusively and, in the past four years, it has taken the shape the Ford’s audience is going to see.

‘Eye-opening experience’
Although two of the leads are New York-based actors, most of the cast members – whom Weiner describes as “phenomenal” -- come from the Washington area and their names (and faces) will be familiar to D.C. theatergoers: Gregory Maheu as George Washington, Christopher Bloch as Benjamin Franklin, Donna Migliaccio as Betsy Ross, as well as Drew Eshelman, Tracy Lynn Olivera, Harry A. Winter, and others.

Working with the cast during rehearsals has been “an eye-opening experience,” Weiner said.

The rehearsal period, which began about six weeks ago, has been “a great time to see material up on its feet for the first time,” Weiner explained. “We get to see how the pacing is working,” for instance.

Or not working: “We cut a song in rehearsal process that we thought wasn’t moving the story forward,” he pointed out.

“Seeing [the actors] on their feet, moving around, oftentimes we see something is overwritten” – too many lines to get an idea across – and it becomes clear “the audience is going to get it” without having it explained to them, Weiner noted.

Rehearsals are an eye-opener, he said, “because you’re able to make changes right away” and the cast “can implement them” on the spot.

One of the things Weiner learned as the musical took shape on stage is that “probably the most surprising thing is seeing things you write on the page in a way that you least expect.”

For instance, he said, “you might write a scene but decide that the actor’s look or move expresses things the way they need to be expressed” and that words are not necessary at that point. The effect of rehearsals is “learning to clarify and economize the writing [because] when it’s all up there on stage,” it makes more sense than it does alone on the page.

Liberty Smith is a good fit for Ford’s Theatre, Weiner explained, because it’s a show about American history. It is also, one might say, a good fit for the erstwhile UCLA history major, composer Michael Weiner.

Directed by Matt August, the world premiere production of Liberty Smith plays March 23 though May 21, 2011 at Ford’s Theatre, 511 Tenth Street, N.W., in downtown Washington, D.C. Tickets can be purchased by phone through Ticketmaster at (800) 551-SEAT (800-551-7328) or online at Ticketmaster.com.

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Josh Radnor Talks About 'happythankyoumoreplease'

Actor Josh Radnor is probably best known for his role as Ted Mosby on the hit CBS-TV series, How I Met Your Mother, but he is also a film director and screenwriter.

He may become as well known for those latter two jobs if his new film, happythankyoumoreplease, which goes into limited release in U.S. theatres today, becomes a hit.  Happythankyoumoreplease (read that as "happy thank you more please") marks Radnor's debut as a screenwriter and as a director; he also stars in the film as Sam Wexler, a harried New York novelist who takes an abandoned child into his home with resulting chaos and pathos.

The film's cast also includes Malin Akerman as Annie, Zoe Kazan as Mary-Catherine, Pablo Schreiber as Charlie, and Kata Mara as Mississippi, as well as Michael Algieri, in his big-screen debut, as Rasheen.  (There is also a cameo by Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins as Sam's potential publisher.)

Last November, Josh Radnor was the featured guest on the closing night of the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville.  He appeared on the stage of the historic Paramount Theatre after a screening of happythankyoumoreplease, fielding questions from the audience and from Glenn Williamson, a University of Virginia alumnus who served as executive producer of the film and moderator of the evening's discussion.

I was at the Paramount that night (November 7) and captured the entire exchange on video.  Here it is (also available on YouTube), in four parts.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Part IV:

My own assessment of happythankyoumoreplease? It's a pleasant film, good enough to rent through Netflix on a quiet evening at home, but not compelling enough to drive me to a theatre on a Saturday night. For a freshman effort, it's well-directed in an elementary manner -- Radnor admits in the Q&A above that he was not sufficiently confident in his own skills to write dialogue scenes that involved more than two characters at a time -- and a good product for a quick (23-day) shoot that often involved some guerrilla filming on the streets of New York.

As  Radnor put it in an interview with the film's publicist,

New York is the best and worst place in the world to shoot a movie – the best because you can’t beat the production design, the worst because the city doesn’t respond all that well to “quiet on the set.” (I started to get the feeling whenever we were shooting outside and called “action” Mayor Bloomberg said, “Cue the sirens.”) ... I very wisely surrounded myself with people who knew how to shoot a movie quickly in New York (I certainly didn’t know how to do it.) A lot of people try to tell you it can’t be done, that you’ve got to shoot in Toronto or Pittsburgh or somewhere. But they’re wrong. You can do it. If you get the right people on board.

Josh Radnor did win an audience award for his performance at the Sundance Film Festival, so I suspect the movie might have greater appeal than I'm willing to give it credit for.

According to Fandango, happythankyoumoreplease is not scheduled to screen in Charlottesville or near Washington, D.C., anytime soon, but it does open on March 4 at the Angelika Film Center on Houston Street in New York and at The Landmark on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles.

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RLC Videos: Justin Amash and Randy Barnett

Congressman Justin Amash

Chronologically speaking, I may have jumped the turnstile by posting videos of the dinner speakers at the February 12 national convention of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Arlington.  My choice was not random, however; I had already noticed that YouTube views of the speeches by financial analyst Peter Schiff and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson were greater in number than the other videos I had posted from the convention.

The RLC convention lunch also had two speakers:  freshman U.S. Representative Justin Amash (R-Michigan), who at 30 years old is (I believe) the second-youngest Member of Congress as well as a longtime RLC activist in his home state, and Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett.

Amash had also spoken at CPAC (the annual Conservative Political Action Conference) earlier in the week, where he was reportedly well-received.  Amash is perhaps the first Member of the House of Representatives to post all of his votes, and the rationale for most of them, on his Facebook page (www.facebook.com/repjustinamash), a practice he carried over from his time as a member of the Michigan state legislature.  He says he wants his votes to be subject to public scrutiny and that the new media -- in this case Facebook, but presumably also Twitter, Tumblr, and the rest -- are the easiest way to bring them to light.

Justin Amash represents the Grand Rapids area in Congress, the same part of Michigan once represented by Gerald R. Ford, who went on to become House Minority Leader, Vice President, and President of the United States. (One questioner suggests his hope for a similar career path for Congressman Amash.)  He is the youngest member of the congressional class of 2011, who were elected in the wave election of November 2010. He ran on a platform of "limited government, free markets, and individual liberty."

Congressman Amash's remarks are divided into two segments.  The first is his more formal address (though it is delivered without visible notes) and the second is a question-and-answer session with the audience.

RLC activist Laura Crockett introduces Congressman Justin Amash at the RLC convention lunch in part one:

Part two of Congressman Amash's presentation, a colloquy with RLC members:

After Congressman Amash finished his remarks and his answers to a number of questions, Professor Randy Barnett took the microphone and gave a speech entitled "Rediscovering the Libertarian Roots of the Republican Party."

Barnett, author of Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law, and other books, spoke largely about Chief Justice of the United States Salmon P. Chase, who as a lawyer in the 1840s in Ohio had argued several cases about slavery and the Fugitive Slave Laws. Chase was a founder of the Republican Party after serving in the U.S. Senate as a member of the Free Soil Party. (Chase was also the first GOP governor of Ohio, a Republican Senator for all of two days, and Secretary of the Treasury in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet.)

Barnett makes a strong case for the Republican party's libertarian origins. In the Q&A period, he also discusses the Repeal Amendment that he has proposed, along with the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, William Howell, which is gaining a lot of attention around the United States.

Listen closely to Professor Barnett's remarks for some astute analysis of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as some sharp commentary on the constitutionality of the "individual mandate" in the 2010 health care law (colloquially known as "Obamacare").

Professor Randy Barnett, Part One:

Professor Randy Barnett at the RLC convention, Part Two:

Professor Randy Barnett answers questions (part three):

Still more RLC videos will be posted here. Watch for them soon.

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RLC Videos: Peter Schiff and Gary Johnson

The Republican Liberty Caucus (www.rlc.org) held its biennial national convention in Arlington, Virginia, on February 12, coincident with the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which was being held across the Potomac in Washington, D.C., that same weekend.

The day was full of policy discussions and speeches, punctuated by a business session at which new officers were elected to lead the RLC for the next two years.  Dave Nalle of Texas was re-elected as chairman, Aaron Biterman of Virginia was re-elected as vice chairman, Jason Jeff Hellenberg of Florida was re-elected as secretary, and Matt Nye (also of Florida) was elected treasurer, defeating longtime RLC activist Bill Westmiller, who in turn was elected an at-large member of the board of directors.

The evening banquet featured two prominent speakers:  investment analyst and 2010 candidate for the GOP Senate nomination in Connecticut, Peter Schiff, and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who is a potential candidate for President in 2012.

Schiff is the co-author of How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes (with Andrew J. Schiff) and of Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse (with John Downes), as well as author of The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down. He is widely credited with predicting the dramatic economic downturn of 2008 when other economists were caught with their pants around their ankles.

Schiff spoke briefly and was well-received by the RLC members, many of whom subscribe to the theories of the Austrian school of economics that are consonant with much of Schiff's analysis.

With apologies for the dim lighting (something customary in hotel banquet rooms at dinnertime), here is the video of Peter Schiff's remarks:

Schiff was followed by Governor Johnson, who the day before had spoken at CPAC and, we learned earlier on Saturday afternoon, had placed third in the CPAC presidential straw poll (with Ron Paul and Mitt Romney placing one and two and virtually tied with Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who says he lacks the arrogance to run for President after only one year in office).

The Republican Liberty Caucus also sponsored a straw poll that day, and Johnson took first place in that instance, with more than double the votes received by Texas Congressman Ron Paul (who is still a favorite among libertarian Republicans) and six times the number of votes received by the third-place finisher, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Johnson has been traveling across the country -- including numerous visits to New Hampshire and Iowa -- delivering his message, which is largely autobiographical. He talks about his experience as governor of New Mexico, where the registered voters have a 2 to 1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans, and how he was able to reduce the size and scope of government while vetoing 750 bills, some of which were passed unanimously in the state legislature. Yet only two of his vetoes were overturned. During his eight years in office, he vetoed more bills than all of the other 49 governors put together.

In his remarks, Johnson also pointed out how he had come to believe, during his term as governor, that the criminalization of marijuana is wrong-headed, that it is a waste of money and other resources, and that we need to rethink the drug war. Johnson was one of the few incumbent politicians to come out in favor of legalizing marijuana and he has not backed down from his position despite criticism.

Here is part one of Governor Johnson's dinner speech, which begins after a short introduction by RLC national chairman Dave Nalle:

Here is part two of Gary Johnson's RLC speech:

Early in this segment, Johnson salutes Peter Schiff for his on-target analysis of our economic situation -- more than a polite gesture, the former New Mexico governor shows a great deal of passion about how the federal government needs to cut spending, including in entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as defense and so-called "discretionary" spending.

Johnson also talks about his opposition to the Iraq War from the outset, and how he thinks the United States should get out of Afghanistan "tomorrow."

More RLC videos will be posted here later.

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Kennedy Center Reveals Full Cast of 'Follies' Revival with Bernadette Peters

I received a news release from the Kennedy Center today, with a complete cast list for what promises to be the -- no, make that THE -- biggest musical theatre event of 2011:  a revival of James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim's Follies starring Bernadette Peters.

Here's the rest of the cast, as revealed by the Kennedy Center:

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts today announced complete casting for the Kennedy Center revival production of Follies. Principal casting includes Bernadette Peters as Sally Durant Plummer, Jan Maxwell as Phyllis Rogers Stone, Danny Burstein as Buddy Plummer, Ron Raines as Benjamin Stone, and Elaine Paige as Carlotta Campion.

The production will also star Terrence Currier as Theodore Whitman, Christian Delcroix as Young Buddy, Rosalind Elias as Heidi Schiller, Colleen Fitzpatrick as Dee Dee West, Lora Lee Gayer as Young Sally, Michael Hayes as Roscoe, Florence Lacey as Sandra Crane, Linda Lavin as Hattie Walker, Régine as Solange LaFitte, David Sabin as Dimitri Weismann, Kirsten Scott as Young Phyllis, Frederick Strothers as Max Deems, Nick Verina as Young Ben, Susan Watson as Emily Whitman and Terri White as Stella Deems.

Rounding out the ensemble will be Lawrence Alexander, Brandon Bieber, John Carroll, Sara Edwards, Leslie Flesner, Jenifer Foote, Leah Horowitz, Suzanne Hylenski, Danielle Jordan, Joe Kolinski, Amanda Larsen, Brittany Marcin, Edrie Means, Erin Moore, Pamela Otterson, Clifton Samuels, Kiira Schmidt, Brian Shepard, Sam Strasfeld, Amos Wolff and Ashley Yeater.

If the run of the show -- which opens on May 7 in the Eisenhower Theatre and closes on June 19 -- is not already nearly sold out, I would be surprised.

If not, according to the news release, "[t]ickets starting at $45 are available at the Kennedy Center box office or by calling Instant Charge at (202) 467-4600. Patrons living outside the Washington metropolitan area may dial toll-free at (800) 444-1324 or visit us online at www.kennedy-center.org."

I can hardly wait.

Eugene Delgaudio Channels Stephen Glass

Eugene Delgaudio is probably Virginia's most embarrassing elected official.  The Loudoun County Supervisor is obsessed with male-male sex acts and probably should never be within 1,000 feet of a Gold's Gym.  How he won his seat on the Loudoun Board of Supervisors is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in plain brown paper.

Not since "Spring Breakdown," the notorious faked 1997 article in The New Republic by serial fabulist Stephen Glass, has a more lurid portrayal of the goings-on at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) come to light.

Until now.

Today I opened my inbox to find a fundraising email from Delgaudio's "organization," the so-called Public Advocate of the United States (a name that implies authority and perhaps even government sanction) with the sensationalistic subject line, "CPAC Enables Homosexual Predators."

It seems that Delgaudio is worried that the innocence of college students -- the same ones who played drinking games and engaged in rough sex with ugly women in the Glass article of more than a dozen years ago -- might be compromised by the presence of members of GOProud, an organization of gay conservatives that last year hosted a reception in New York featuring Ann Coulter and whose board of advisors includes such radical leftists as Andrew Breitbart and Grover Norquist. (Frank Gaffney may concede that the latter is not a leftist, though he may be, per Gaffney, a jihadist. [I think he's just a Norqu-ist.])

At the suggestion of an acquaintance of mine who saw Delgaudio's missive and said, "Fascinating reading -- please disseminate widely in the name of sunlight," I reprint the man from Loudoun County's fantasy here:

For years, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was the scene of exciting speakers throughout the day.

But at night there have always been dozens of alcohol parties.

These parties are viewed as festive opportunities to meet conservatives from all over the country in a more social atmosphere.

I try to avoid parties when attending conferences as it’s hard enough keeping a day schedule and parties can be distractions which take away from the serious fight to preserve the family.

Much more importantly, the alcohol abuse and other shenanigans that take place just aren’t my idea of a good time.

It would be better to have late evening vigils and after the dinner speeches at the nearby churches.

However, I was often outnumbered when I attended CPAC back in my days serving as a member of the national board for Young Americans for Freedom.

But knowing the problems at these CPAC parties, I took it upon myself to chaperone younger visitors from around the country who were attending their first political gathering.

And the stories I have to tell will shock you.

It was not unusual for me to have to escort adult predators, even some openly homosexual men out of these parties because they could not resist the urge to prey upon the younger teenage victims at their disposal in a vulnerable place a long distance from their home and without their parents’ presence.

On more than one occasion I had to clean out the lot of them in an upheaval or turmoil that was cast as a political purge.

These days the predator homosexuals use political cover to gain access to their intoxicated victims.

Sometimes it seems my efforts were all for naught...

As I’ve told you before, the Conservative Political Action Conference has been infiltrated by the Homosexual Lobby.

Radical Homosexual front groups like “GOProud” will be in attendance to push their perversion on young conservatives.

This sort of predator behavior was illegal and immoral back when I had to clean house and condemn them.

And it is still illegal and immoral to create an atmosphere in which those same misdeeds could occur again.

Parents should be warned and frankly the authorities at CPAC should be told that there are minor age students who need to be looked after and protected.

Have the Radical Homosexuals really infiltrated that deeply into what used to be a pro-family movement?

Has the leadership of CPAC gone so far as to actually not read anything or think it’s just “political opinion” propagated by old fashioned and outdated leaders that adult homosexual predators exist?

Well, they DO exist and they are taking advantage of the alcohol parties at CPAC to poison the minds and pollute the bodies of young conservatives who are still too naïve to know what is being done to them.

I stand with the dozens of pro-family leaders and the thousands of pro-family supporters who are boycotting this event because of what it has been turned into.

For the Family,

Eugene Delgaudio
President
Public Advocate of the U.S.
P.S. I ask you to prayerfully consider chipping in with a contribution of $10 or more to help fund the fight for traditional values.

Thank you very much for your support in advance.

If even 5 percent of what Delgaudio wrote is true, CPAC would attract several thousand more attendees each year.

In fact, according to what I hear from CPAC (where I'll be tomorrow), the number of vendors in the exhibit area is bigger than last year, and it seems there are more people in attendance than last year, as well.

So much for the "boycott" by anti-gay organizations.  Even Sarah Palin agrees that GOProud members and other gay conservatives should participate in the annual conference.

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Ronald Reagan's Centenary

You'd probably have to live under a rock to be unaware that this coming Sunday marks the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan.

The former president was born on February 6, 1911, and the centenary celebration began on his birthday last year.

An outgrowth of the Reagan Legacy Project (which gave us, for instance, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington) and of the regular programs of the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, the 100th-year commemoration will continue for as long as people have good things to say about President Reagan.

So expect it to last for a long time.

Americans of all political stripes are offering their memories and gratitude for the life and career of President Reagan.  I'll offer two examples here.

Today Governor Bob McDonnell issued a proclamation that designates February 6, 2011, as "Ronald Reagan Day" in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Here's the text:

WHEREAS, President Ronald Wilson Reagan served with honor and distinction for two terms as the 40th President of the United States of America; winning reelection in 1984 with nearly 60% of the vote and carrying 49 states; and

WHEREAS, in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated President, he faced a disillusioned nation shackled by rampant inflation and high unemployment; and

WHEREAS, during Mr. Reagan’s presidency he worked in a bipartisan manner to enact his bold agenda of restoring accountability and common sense to government which led to unprecedented economic expansion and new opportunities for millions of Americans; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Reagan’s commitment to an active social policy agenda for the nation’s children helped lower crime and drug use in our neighborhoods; and

WHEREAS, President Reagan’s commitment to our armed forces contributed to the restoration of pride in America, her values and those cherished by the free world, and prepared America’s Armed Forces to meet 21st Century challenges; and

WHEREAS, President Reagan’s vision of “peace through strength” led to the end of the Cold War and the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union, guaranteeing basic human rights for hundreds of millions of people around the world; and

WHEREAS, Ronald Reagan’s inherent love of this country, faith in our people and confidence in freedom, renewed the confidence and vitality of our great nation; and

WHEREAS, February 6, 2011 will be the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth and the seventh since his passing;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Robert F. McDonnell, do hereby recognize February 6th, 2011, as RONALD REAGAN DAY in our COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

Log Cabin Republicans have also got into the act.

In a news release dated today, the primarily-but-not-exclusively-gay GOP group (a Kinsey 5?) said:

“Log Cabin Republicans join conservatives at home and abroad in remembering President Ronald Reagan’s powerful legacy as a champion of freedom,” said Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director, R. Clarke Cooper. “As we embark on the 112th Congress and Republicans seek to continue the success of the 2010 election, it is our hope that the GOP will recall Reagan’s wisdom in calling for a big tent Republican Party. As he said, ‘my 80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy.’ President Reagan was able to craft a broad coalition of support around the fundamental principles of smaller government, a confident foreign policy, and an optimistic faith in American individualism. Today’s Republican leaders would be wise to follow in Ronald Reagan’s footsteps by ignoring calls for ideological purity tests that Reagan himself couldn’t pass and instead uniting around Reagan’s core principles, including that inclusion wins.”

Log Cabin Republicans traces its connection to Ronald Reagan to the 1978 Briggs Initiative, a California ballot initiative that would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in the state’s public schools. In order to combat this initiative, a group of gay Republicans reached out to then-former governor Ronald Reagan, asking him to oppose the ban. Reagan joined with Log Cabin Republicans, arguing that the ban was “not needed to protect our children” and that if it passed, “innocent lives could be ruined.” The Briggs Initiative ultimately failed.

(About this time last year, I posted video from CPAC in which Craig Shirley talked about the Briggs Initiative and how Reagan's action was motivated by his libertarian impulses as well as his fundamental sense of fairness and humanitarianism.)

For those who want to learn more, there are dozens of books about Reagan, his presidency, and his legacy.  For those with less time than they'd like, the Washington Times today published a 14-page special section that, perhaps presciently, includes a full-page ad for Senator Rand Paul's new book about the Tea Party movement.

I suggest that, if you do nothing else to celebrate Ronald Reagan this Sunday, at least raise a glass in a toast between the commercials during the Super Bowl -- unless you prefer to wait until the special zombie episode of Glee.