From the Archives - 'Annie Get Your Gun': Not Just a Shot in the Dark

This article appeared in The Metro Herald (Alexandria, Virginia) on January 22, 1999:

Annie Get Your Gun: Not Just a Shot in the Dark

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

By all rights, this year should be a great one for revivals of Broadway musicals, at least if major anniversary productions are mounted. December 30 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Broadway premiere of Kiss Me, Kate; April 7 will see fifty years since the debut of South Pacific; December 8 will be the fiftieth anniversary of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Hello, Dolly!, after a tryout at Washington's National Theatre, had its Broadway premiere on the night of January 16, 1964, making it 35 years old this month. A Broadway revival of The Sound of Music, which will be 40 years old on November 16, is already into a long run. Others celebrating forty years in 1999 include Gypsy, Once Upon a Mattress (also recently revived), and the Pulitzer-winning Fiorello. And another 35-year-old (September 22) is the great Fiddler on the Roof.

What all these great musicals have in common -- with the possible exception of the seldom-produced Fiorello -- is that members of the audience walk into the theatre already humming the tunes. (This is not to be confused with a similar phenomenon that occurs when people see a new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical for the first time.) So it is with the revival of Annie Get Your Gun now on stage at the Kennedy Center Opera House. This 1946 musical, written by the irrepressible Irving Berlin for the incomparable Ethel Merman, is jam-packed with standard melodies that should be familiar to anyone who has owned a radio during the past half-century.

Although the songs are arranged in a different order from the original production -- it now begins with that anthem to performers, "There's No Business Like Show Business" -- each one lands pleasantly and familiarly on the ears: "Anything You Can Do," "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," "The Girl that I Marry," "Lost in His Arms," "They Say It's Wonderful," "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun," and "An Old Fashioned Wedding," introduced by Merman in the 1966 Lincoln Center revival, a contrapuntal duet no doubt intended to match the success of the similar "You're Just in Love," from the 1950 Berlin-Merman collaboration Call Me Madam.

The team behind this revival of Annie Get Your Gun certainly matches that of the original production, which included Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (as producers), Dorothy and Herbert Fields (book writers), Jo Mielziner (scenic and lighting design), and Joshua Logan (director). That production was only the second book musical in Broadway history to exceed 1,000 performances (preceded by Oklahoma!).

This revival is directed by Graciela Daniele, fresh from her award-winning choreography for Ragtime; the book has been revised by Peter Stone, who has won four Tony awards; the scenic design is by Tony Walton, with three Tonys, an Emmy, and an Oscar on his shelves; and backed by Tony-winning producers Barry and Fran Weissler.

Bernadette Peters is clearly the star of the show as sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Her name appears above the title, and she can belt a Berlin ballad nearly as well as La Merman herself. The two Broadway divas are similar in many ways: Despite forays into film and television, Peters is known primarily as a stage actress, making her name in Sondheim shows (Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods). Merman seldom ventured into the movies -- she repeated her starring Broadway roles only in the 1936 Anything Goes and the 1953 Call Me Madam. Her greatest triumphs -- Annie Oakley and Mama Rose in Gypsy -- were played by Betty Hutton and Rosalind Russell in the film versions. Go figure.

Unlike Merman, Peters rose through the Broadway ranks in an era in which Hollywood does not automatically produce movies based on hit musicals. In fact, not a single one of Peters' Broadway hits has been translated into film, and only one of her films -- Annie (1982) -- is based on a Broadway musical. So, to non-theatregoers, Peters is known primarily by straight dramatic performances, and they might be surprised to learn that she has such a terrific singing voice.

In general, Peters delivers what her talent and the material in Annie Get Your Gun promise. Her interpretations of the songs are spot-on, although there is a disappointment in "Lost in His Arms." In this instance, Peters seems to build up to a huge climax, but settles down on the approach to the top. Is this her fault, or was it the decision of arranger John McDaniel? Whatever the case, the whole song feels unresolved and unfulfilling.

One serious problem with Peters performance is her cloying, backwoods accent. It is cute at the beginning, but quickly begins to grate. And why don't the three children playing Annie's younger siblings have a similar accent? Peters needs to tone this down. We're not asking for Manhattan here, but we don't need the Beverly Hillbillies, either.

TV star Tom Wopat gives a strong performance as Annie's love interest and rival, Frank Butler. Wopat's Butler is confident without being (too) arrogant.

Daniele's choreography, created in collaboration with Jeff Calhoun, has echoes of her work in Ragtime. Daniele's dancers move geometrically, complexly, exuberantly. It would be interesting to view her work from above, like the June Taylor Dancers on the old Jackie Gleason show.

Some commentators have criticized the revised book for Annie Get Your Gun for being too "politically correct." These critics are looking just at the surface. While it was probably advisable to rid the script of insensitive treatments of Native Americans (one song, "I'm an Indian, Too," has been dropped from the score), the fact is that Peter Stone's new book subversively makes fun of the P.C. crowd. The most "P.C." jokes are, in fact, self-referentially mocking.

All in all, Annie Get Your Gun is great fun and suitable for the whole family. I hope that many Washington area children get their first taste of musical theatre through this show. It wouldn't be the first time: The celebrated playwright Terrence McNally (currently represented at The American Century Theatre with a revival of his first play -- see last week's Metro Herald for a review) decided as a child that for him, there was "no business like show business" when he saw a road company of -- what else? -- Annie Get Your Gun!

Annie Get Your Gun continues at the Kennedy Center through January 24. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 8:00, Saturday matinees at 2:00, and Sundays at 1:30 and 7:00 p.m. Ticket prices range from $20 to $75 and may be purchased at the Kennedy Center box office or by calling Instant-Charge at 202-467-4600.

From the Archives: Modern Music Brightens NSO's Future

While primarily a theater critic during my tenure at The Metro Herald, occasionally I ventured into other aspects of the performing arts, such as this example, in which I reviewed a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra. Writing for a weekly newspaper, it sometimes made little sense to write about a one-time event (as most symphony concerts are) that was in the past, with no opportunities for readers to see (or hear) it. Yet newspapers do publish such reviews regularly. In any event, this review appeared in The Metro Herald in November 1995, and it does reference some recordings:

Modern Music Brightens NSO's Future

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor 

For conductor Leonard Slatkin to choose John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 as the first piece he records with the National Symphony Orchestra speaks volumes about Slatkin's views about modern music and the direction the NSO should take. It suggests a dedication to modern, and to American, music that should undergird the NSO's entire mission.

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Slatkin, who remains Music Director Designate until next year, explained before the Kennedy Center Concert Hall premiere of the Corigliano work that "music through the ages has traditionally been the abstract," but this composer works from the concrete. The symphony, he noted, had its "genesis" in the composer's response to two things: the AIDS epidemic and the famous Names Project Memorial Quilt, which serves as a vivid reminder of those who have lost their lives -- often very young lives -- to AIDS.

Strangely enough, the Corigliano First Symphony has been played by every major orchestra in America, in over 600 performances, since its commissioning by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra five years ago. Of the country's major orchestra's, only the National Symphony waited until now to perform the work for Washington audiences.

Corigliano has written a piece for a huge orchestra. The string sections are full, the horns and woodwinds are double and triple their normal composition, and the percussionists are busier than one ever sees them. The symphony calls for three piccolos, three flutes, three oboes, six clarinets, and three bassoons. The percussion section alone could fill a music store, with some instruments that are positively odd (yet add much to the totality of the work): The percussionists must play rototoms, temple blocks, crotales, a whip, a flexatone, a metal plate, a tam-tam, a brake drum, chimes, an anvil, and a police whistle. Corigliano has also written parts for two pianos, one onstage and one offstage.

Written, as symphonies are, in four movements, the third and fourth movements slide into each other imperceptibly. The first movement ("Of Rage and Remembrance") serves as an introduction of the themes that will predominate throughout the score. The second movement is manic in its form, which technically is a "tarantella," a wild folk dance of Italy. It is meant to represent the slowly building dementia suffered by so many people with AIDS. The third movement, by contrast, is far more lyric. It is dominated by a cello solo (with a bass continuo) that was inspired by a 1962 recording by the composer's good friend, Giulio, who died of AIDS-related causes. The fourth movement returns us to the themes that have been woven throughout the piece, and with "sonic waves" provided by the brass section, the solo cello continues, in dialogue with another cello, ending in a diminuendo that terminates the symphony on the same note with which it began.

The performances of Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 on November 9, 10, and 11 were recorded both by National Public Radio for future broadcast and by RCA Victor Red Seal. In a few months, we will be able to see whether Slatkin's interpretation of Corigliano will stand up against the premiere recording, by the Chicago Symphony under the baton of Daniel Barenboim.

Accompanying the Corigliano work in this set of concerts were three other pieces: Samuel Adler's organ fanfare, "Festive Proclamation," Henry Purcell's Chacony in G minor (orchestrated by Benjamin Britten), and Hector Berlioz's "Les nuits d'été," a song-cycle performed by Dutch mezzo-soprano Jard van Nes.

Slatkin's selection of the Britten/Purcell work is an indication of his tastes in music, too. Britten is seldom performed in the United States. Slatkin, however, has recorded several Britten works as director of the St. Louis Symphony, including the opera A Midsummer Night's Dream (which is available in a video recording in the Kennedy Center gift shop). Britten fans in the Washington area have much to look forward to, as the National Symphony has not offered much of the 20th century British composer's work in recent years.

Adler's organ fanfare is one of 25 fanfares commissioned for the NSO this season by the John and June Hechinger Commissioning Fund. Its driving rhythm, strong contrapuntal technique, and use of all the registers of the organ (including some significant pedalpoint work) will bring this work into the mainstream of organ music. Though written specifically for the NSO's organist, William Neil, it is not hard to believe that this composition will quickly find its way into the repertoires of many church organists throughout the country. It would be appropriate for weddings, ordinations, special celebrations, and even secular events such as theatre dedications or presidential inaugurations.

From the Archives: Kennedy Center chief Michael Kaiser touts economic benefits of arts education

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 5, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Kennedy Center chief Michael Kaiser touts economic benefits of arts education
April 5, 2011 8:47 PM MST

Michael Kaiser

Academy Award®-winning actor Kevin Spacey set off a minor stir in the Twittersphere on April 5 when he Tweeted “Return on investment of 1 billion of arts funding (from base of 167 mil from National Endowment) is 29 billion for local & State coffers.”

Someone must have objected to his assertion, because he later followed that up with “For those who [question] the stats I have Tweeted about return on arts funding, I am getting proof u require & will Tweet it soon.”

By the time this article went to press, however, he had not provided the statistics to back up his claim.

Spacey is not alone in thinking that government funding for the arts has concomitant benefits.

Different emphasis
One who takes that position, with a slightly different emphasis, is Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Last month, at a luncheon following the annual season announcement at the Kennedy Center, Kaiser responded to a question posed by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about the message he takes to policymakers – such as Members of Congress – when he meets them in the course of his job.

Kaiser first pointed out, as a disclaimer, that he is not allowed to lobby Congress on behalf of the Kennedy Center -- a condition of its congressional charter -- so he talks to legislators “about the arts, in general, almost exclusively.”

More particularly, Kaiser said, he focuses on “arts education more than I do on performances or exhibitions because, frankly, the money they can provide for arts education [and] the leadership they can provide is more important.”

Changing economy
Kaiser gave an overview of the 21st century American economy to explain why arts education deserves more attention.

The United States, he said, “is not a manufacturing economy anymore” – although, as Richard Lorenc pointed out in The Daily Caller on April 4, “U.S. manufacturing output grew 120 percent from 1970-2009 and 10 percent in the past ten years. American manufacturing output totaled about $2.1 trillion in 2009 compared to China’s manufacturing output of around $1.5 trillion.”

As a result of what he claimed is a decline in manufacturing, Kaiser said, “we need a different kind of work force.”

This has ramifications for politics, too, Kaiser argued.

“I believe all the political anger we see,” he said, has to do with “the fact that there’s a whole part of America that used to have their whole family income came from manufacturing, from working an assembly line, where you didn’t have to be particularly educated, but you made a very good living.”

At that time, Kaiser went on, “fathers had that living and their sons had that living and that’s gone. That part of America, that part of the economy is gone. Those people who were part of that don’t know what to do and they’re mad. I really think that’s where so much of the political anger comes from.”

The point, Kaiser continued, is that we have “to train people to participate in the creative economy,” which requires that students “exercise their creative muscles in schools" through arts education programs.

That, he said, is “something we can do very inexpensively. To save a few bucks here and there per student and to cut out everything that doesn’t allow them, I think, to become fully functioning members of our economy, I think is really crazy.”

Budget cuts
That is the message Kaiser takes to Members of Congress and other policymakers.

The new, Republican-controlled House of Representatives is making cuts in arts education that Kaiser thinks are ill-advised.

“The big area that we’re worried about specifically is arts education and VSA” (Very Special Arts, a program aimed at the disabled), he said. “In the first version of the budget came out, we lost $16 million.”

Kaiser said that he and his colleagues are “hopeful, not optimistic,” that some of that money will be reinstated “but it’s very scary.”

Congressmen, he said, “don’t even know what they’re cutting. I talk to members of the legislature and say, you know you’ve cut this and they say, ‘We did?’ And I say, yeah.”

The arts education funds are “embedded in other things,” Kaiser explained, so Congress is “cutting in big chunks and they don’t really know. It’s a scary time for us.”

Scary topic
Kaiser is not really worried about the Kennedy Center itself.

“This is a building that they own. They can’t let it fall apart.”

That is why, he said, “I’m mostly scared for the education of our children, much more than I’m scared for the Kennedy Center.”

Kaiser noted that “everyone says we want to cut the deficit in order not to saddle our children with the deficit. I would rather also give them an education and give them a chance to earn and be productive members of an economy. That’s a big concern I have. We’ll see.”

He concluded, ominously, “It’s a scary topic.”

From the Archives: Holland Taylor supplies engaging on-stage portrait of Ann Richards in ‘Ann’

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on December 22, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Holland Taylor supplies engaging on-stage portrait of Ann Richards in ‘Ann’

'Ann,' a new play written by and starring Holland Taylor, at the Kennedy Center through January 15, 2012

On its way to Broadway in 2012, Ann, an affectionate portrait of the late Texas Governor Ann Richards (1933-2006), officially opened at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater on December 21 for an engagement that ends January 15.

Starring Holland Taylor, who also researched and wrote the script, the play’s setting is a college graduation ceremony, where Richards is the commencement speaker. (This kind of set-up seems almost required for one-man or one-woman shows. Thurgood, which also played at the Kennedy Center, had Laurence Fishburne as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall deliver a lecture on a college campus. A lecture is, perhaps, the most believable conceit that can explain why one person on stage talks at an audience for two straight hours.)

Holland Taylor has a long list of distinguished credits on stage, screen, and television, but today she is best known as the acerbic mother/grandmother on CBS-TV’s Two and a Half Men. Known for playing strong (sometimes headstrong) women, Taylor brings all of that attitude and edginess to her portrayal of Ann Richards.

History lesson

Richards begins by noting that she was not the first female Texas governor. That would have been “Ma” Ferguson, wife of the aptly named “Pa” Ferguson, who was elected in the 1920s after her husband was impeached and sent to prison for selling pardons to convicted criminals. “Ma” Ferguson’s winning campaign slogan was “Two governors for the price of one.”

Taylor’s script does not make the explicit connection, but this episode in Texas history may explain an aspect of Texas law that comes up in a later sequence, when in the second act Richards, who is trying to figure out what to do about the fate of a death-row inmate, complains bitterly that only the state’s parole board can grant a pardon, while the best she can do to prevent the man’s death is to issue a 30-day stay of execution.

Ann’s “commencement speech” traces her life from her childhood in a hamlet near Waco called Lakeview (“where there was no lake to view”) through her marriage and divorce and her early political career, first as a county commissioner, then as a state treasurer, and finally as governor from 1991-95, with a coda regarding her post-statehouse activities.

Along the way the audience is treated to a stream of quips, slightly dirty jokes, shaggy dog stories, and a “day in the life of the governor” when the stage is transformed from a lecture hall into Ann Richards’ office in the state capitol.

Hard work

Not shy about expressing herself, Ann says “I have a lot of opinions. Can you imagine if I were your mother-in-law? I could fix you.”

Reflecting on her work ethic, which she absorbed from her parents, Ann remembers a slogan of her local civic group: “If we rest, we rust.”

Even when the play takes a darker turn, Ann keeps her sense of humor. In discussing her battle with alcoholism, which hit her hard in her early 40s, just as her political career was about to launch, Ann says she “was like a poster child for functioning alcoholics everywhere,” because she never let her drinking get in the way of her many tasks and commitments.

At the time, she claims, being an openly alcoholic politician was something novel and noteworthy. “Nowadays,” she points out, just about rolling her eyes, “you can’t even get into a primary unless you’ve been to rehab.”

What’s missing?

Oddly enough, the play continues for two hours without Richards ever mentioning the names of her two bêtes noires, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush (who defeated her gubernatorial re-election bid in 1994).

Even more amazingly, although the play opens with a “clip” of the 1988 Democratic National Convention speech that made then-state treasurer Ann Richards a national celebrity, Taylor’s script never quotes the snarky line that made Richards famous: “Poor George! He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” That comment alone sent Michael Dukakis’ poll numbers soaring – although that may have been the high point of his ill-fated presidential campaign.

Throughout the play, and especially in the extensive “day in a life” sequence, Taylor’s Richards expresses the political and social values that animated her: concern for equality, racial harmony, gender equity, justice, and a “government that looks like Texas.”

“Life is not fair,” says Richards, in one of many epigrammatic utterings, “but government should be.”

Given the subject, it should come as no surprise that the play has a liberal bias. There’s no hidden agenda, though it was somewhat disconcerting when some in the opening night audience applauded Richards’ mocking of Second Amendment rights. (Ann speculates that her pro-gun control views were what led to her defeat for re-election.)

Despite exhibiting the rough-and-tumble life of the governor, the on-stage Taylor always looks elegant as Richards, from the famous silver beehive (“Molly Ivins said I have Republican hair”) to her businesslike jacket-and-skirt combination. In this, Taylor is ably assisted by costume designer Julie Weiss.

Production design

Other aspects of the physical production are noteworthy, as well. Scenic designer Michael Fagin has created a fluid set that benefits from projections (by Zachary Borovay) of long-ago Texas scenes and from the lighting design by Matthew Richards (presumably no relation to the title character).

Benjamin Endsley Klein took on the difficult task of directing an actress in a play of her own creation. Not to suggest that Holland Taylor is herself a diva – I have no evidence of that and suspect that it is not true – but it must be daunting to translate page to stage when the playwright is also the star.

It is clear from this production that Taylor has a great deal of respect for her subject, and also substantial affection. At the risk of committing a cliché, she embraces the role with gusto, radiating both energy and intelligence along the way.

Ann continues at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater through January 15, 2012. Ticket prices start at $54. For ticket information, call the Kennedy Center box office at (202) 467-4600 or (800) 444-1324, or visit www.kennedy-center.org. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

Interview with Playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo

Signature Theatre’s press release announcing its next production, Really Really, begins like this:

“An elite university. A not-to-be-missed party. A startling accusation.”

Rumors have circulated that Really Really is loosely based on the Duke lacrosse case of 2006, but playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo is reticent about the plot.

When posed what The Metro Herald characterized as “a basic question: What’s your play about?,” Colaizzo hesitates.

“That’s actually not a basic question,” he replies.

“That’s actually proved to be a very hard question,” he explains. “When people ask me these questions, I tend to answer thematically because that, to me, is what the play is about but usually that’s not what people are looking for.”

Playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo at Signature Theatre

The reticence – or intrigue, depending on how one looks at it – extends to members of the cast, as well. During an interview with actress Bethany Anne Lind, she responds to a question about her character, Leigh, by looking over to Colaizzo shyly and saying, “I don’t know what I’m allowed to say.”

The intrigue may be uncovered after Really Really has its official opening on February 12, but in the meantime we will have to remain satisfied with the thematic background information that the playwright is willing to discuss.

Really Really is Colaizzo’s first professionally produced play, at the age of 26. He found his inspiration for the play, he says, in what he calls the “post-abortion generation” of people born since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

The post-abortion generation, he says, is “the most wanted generation in American history, because there was the option not to have us.”

The conscientious desire of that generation’s mothers and fathers to have offspring led to a lot of what is called helicopter parenting and the inculcation of self-esteem in children without regard to actual achievement or, as Colaizzo puts it, the idea that “everybody gets a trophy.” This, in turn, resulted in “an incredibly entitled and narcissistic generation that is sort of an anomaly in American life.”

Colaizzo describes “this period of time,” in which is own generation was brought up, as one that saw every child as “wanted and loved” and told that every one of them is “amazing, just for being them.”

When that generation reached young adulthood after being pampered during a period of economic abundance, they suddenly faced the economic crisis of 2008 and the recession and slowdown that followed. College graduates who expected a job immediately after graduation were sorely disappointed. Failure and the necessity to cope were new to them.

This situation, Colaizzo explained, led to a “divide” between those who really were resilient in the face of the challenge” of the economic downturn despite the “entitlement teachings” they grew up with, and “those who went the other way,” the ones “who live in their parents’ basements” and who accept the poor job market as a given and have given up looking for something better to do with their lives.

This is the background of Really Really but, Colaizzo asks rhetorically, “Will you see any of that in the play?” The answer is no.

The cast of Signature Theatre's 'Really Really'

The closest Colaizzo gets to describing what happens in his play is to say it “is about a rugby team. It takes place after a party on campus, the morning of the return from the party, and [during] the next two days that follow.”

In the course of the play, “the truth of what happened at the party comes into question. It becomes every man for himself,” in that “there’s suddenly a risk to each character’s future.”

The question is, Colaizzo concedes, “at what level will these characters and members of this generation go to protect [their futures] in an unpromising world [of] these days?”

In his own life, Colaizzo was born in Pittsburgh but his family moved around a lot as he was growing up. They lived in New Jersey and Florida and he went to high school in Georgia. When it was time for college, his parents moved to California while he went to New York University, where he studied drama.

After graduation with a BFA from the Tisch School of the Arts, he acted for two years but “wasn’t happy enough,” and that is when he “decided to switch my path to writing.”

His interest in “exploring social ideas in a dramatic way” was sparked by his encounter with Alan Ball’s work while he was in high-school. (Ball is the Oscar-winning screenwriter of American Beauty and creator of the TV series, Six Feet Under.)

Ball, he said, was writing about “the dark side of American life that wasn’t painted in this glittering-gold way that my conservative upbringing had led me to believe” was the normal way that people lived.

As a high-school student in Georgia, Colaizzo found that point of view “fascinating.”

That informs what Colaizzo enjoys about playwriting.

“My favorite thing about working on plays is,” he says, the way that he can “try to explore dichotomies in contemporary American life without pretension.”

He likes to hold “a mirror to the audience and say, What are you terrified of? What part did you relate to?”

He also likes to “explore unanswered questions or things that are a little scary to confront.”

Colaizzo compares his role as a playwright to that of a pet owner with a sick pet who needs medicine but refuses to swallow it.

“I call it the pill in the peanut butter,” he says, “because when you feed a dog a pill, you have to put it in peanut butter because the dog’s not stupid enough to just take the pill. So I have the pill that I really want to sell, but I have to put it in peanut butter,” so the audience will swallow it.

“The trickiest, and probably also the most fun part,” he explains, “is figuring out a way to explore these real human emotions and parts of our culture that are incredibly terrifying and put it in peanut butter so the audience can digest it and [be] willing to take it while also secretly getting the medicine.”

Colaizzo wrote the first draft of Really Really in 2007 and friends of his sent a copy to Matthew Gardiner, who is directing the production at Signature Theatre. In 2009, it had a reading as a work-in-progress at the Kennedy Center, where Gardiner saw it and recommended it to Signature’s founder and artistic director, Eric Schaeffer.

Schaeffer decided he wanted to produce the play but Colaizzo was skeptical. He asked, “Are you sure?” but, as Colaizzo reports it, Schaeffer replied: “Everyone is afraid of this play, and that’s why I want to do it.”

Colaizzo has nothing but praise for the way he has been treated at Signature. Schaeffer, Gardiner, and managing director Maggie Boland, he said, “have been so incredibly supportive,” urging him to make changes in the script only when the play demands them for artistic reasons and not simply to please audiences and make it more commercially acceptable.

He calls their attitude “unbelievably liberating” and “so I admire everything that they’ve done so far.”

Performances of Really Really run through March 25, 2012. 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 $56 - $80 and are available by calling Ticketmaster at 703-573-SEAT (7328) or visiting www.signature-theatre.org. Student discount tickets are $30 and must be purchased the week of the performance. For more information please visit www.signature-theatre.org.

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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.

Guest Blogger Tim Hulsey Reviews 'Sanctified' and 'Locomotion'

Sanctified satisfies at Lincoln Theatre; Locomotion derails at Kennedy Center

Tim Hulsey

Special to The Metro Herald

“Democracy,” said H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

If that's true, then the new musical Sanctified, now playing through November 14 at the historic Lincoln Theatre, is theatrical democracy in action.  A potent brew of shout-and-holler gospel music, country comedy, Sunday-school piety, and aw-shucks know-nothingism, Sanctified knows exactly what its audience wants, and gives it to them good and hard.

The plot, what there is of it, involves the East Piney Grove Baptist Church, a dwindling African-American congregation in deep but otherwise unspecified financial trouble.  The young pastor (John McClure, Jr.) has pinned his church's last hope on a 30th anniversary Gospel Revival, and brought in his opera-diva cousin (Mary Millben) to assist with the proceedings.  A lay minister, Deacon (Frederick Strother), respectable to the marrow but lacking spiritual fervor, schemes to remove the pastor from his post.

Meanwhile, two mysterious “delivery men” (William T. Newman, Jr., and Joshua Nelson) work behind the scenes to ensure the revival's success – and it hardly counts a “spoiler” to reveal that these delivery men are actually angels in disguise.  Of course, the pastor's plans for this revival will go awry in a most amusing and heartwarming – if predictable -- manner.

Still, scene-stealing turns from Almonica Caldwell as a gossipy church lady and Ellis Foster as a doddering, unintelligible elderly chorister keep the proceedings lively, even through Sanctified's overlong, overstuffed second act. 

Moreover, playwright Javon Johnson provides a generous helping of strong comic business – most of it amusing, and all instantly recognizable -- for the squabbling, backbiting members of the East Piney Grove Gospel Choir.  But Bernadine Mitchell, as elderly Sister Sarah, walks away with the heart of the show, delivering her character's Christian homilies with world-weariness and absolute sincerity.

Then there is the score, a blend of traditional gospel tunes and original material by Rollo Dilworth and Raymond Reeder.  For a patchwork score like this, the music of Sanctified holds together fairly well, and the original title tune, “Sanctified,” is an instant Sunday-morning classic, guaranteed to linger in the mind for days.  Mary Millben, a Leontyne Price-soundalike (with showy coloratura to match), gets top honors for solo vocals, though gospel-music veteran John McClure, Jr., a top-five finalist on BET's Sunday Best, takes a strong second place: Their first-act duet “Come Out the Wilderness” is far and away the vocal highlight of the show.  Only the treacly second-act love ballad “A Miracle in Your Eyes” and the rap number “Tougher Than My God” feel out of place here; the style and subject matter of these pieces are not in keeping with the rest of the show.  (As an added bonus, for several nights of the run, the promoters of Sanctified have asked a “guest artist” to perform the next-to-last number of the evening.)

Technical aspects of the show are uneven.  The historic Lincoln Theatre, which hosted legendary performances by Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, may be the perfect venue for a show like Sanctified, but with Sanctified, problems with the sound mix along with the unpredictable acoustics of the venue occasionally make some of the voices (especially Millben's) shrill, tinny and unpleasant.  The crew seems to be working these problems out, slowly and gradually.  But visually, at least, the show is always striking, thanks to a stylishly evocative set by Tony Cisek and moody lighting from William H. Grant, III.

Playwright Javon Johnson seems to have conceived Sanctified as a Tyler Perry-esque response to the ever-popular Smoke on the Mountain series of country-gospel musicals.  The show strikes more than its share of false notes, particularly in its callous attitude toward the “hincty” college-educated opera singer, and in the impossibly trite angel subplot.  But like the East Piney Grove Gospel Choir itself, it overcomes its many problems through sheer good will.  This isn't highbrow theater by any standard, but at its best, Sanctified illuminates the triumphs and tribulations of a close-knit community of faith.  Sanctified is a mess, but it's a rousing, entertaining mess, guaranteed to leave the audience both sanctified and satisfied.

I wish I could say half as much for the world premiere of Jacqueline Woodson's Locomotion, which just finished a brief run at the Kennedy Center.  Woodson adapted this 70-minute children's drama from her Newbery Honor Award-winning book, chronicling a turbulent year in the life of an inner-city African-American orphan who finds a much-needed outlet for self-expression in his daily poetry journal.

 The book Locomotion has become middle-school required reading for all the right reasons, but few of its rough edges and hardly any of the narrative drive have made the transition from page to stage.  As eleven-year-old Lonnie Collins Motion (the “Lo-Co-Motion” of the title), Nickolas Vaughan sounds and acts more like a happy children's television host than the brooding, introverted character of the book.  Fatima Quander, playing all the women's roles in the show, is convincing in none of them.  Of the three-person cast, G. Alverez Reid makes the strongest impression, mostly in the role of Lonnie's classmate Enrique.

 As adapter and playwright, Woodson peppers her script with easy bromides, flat speeches, one-dimensional characters and crass tearjerker moments, in a manner that, ironically enough, betrays the tough-minded spirit of her original book.  Jennifer L. Nelson's broad direction condescends to her intended audience of children, most of whom seemed bored and restless at the performance I attended.  Production values are excellent, as one would expect from the Kennedy Center, but on the whole, this Locomotion goes nowhere fast.

Sanctified:  Book by Javon Johnson, original music by Rollo Dilworth and Raymond Reeder.  Directed by Derrick Sanders.  Lincoln Theatre (near U St./Cardozo Metro Station) through November 14.  Two hours and fifty minutes, including 15-minute intermission.  Tickets $37-$47 plus service and facility charges.  For tickets, call (202) 397-SEAT or visit www.ticketmaster.com.  For more information, call (202) 328-6000, or visit www.letsgetsanctified.com or www.thelincolntheatre.org.

Locomotion:  Adapted by Jacqueline Woodson from her Newbery Honor Award-winning book.  Directed by Jennifer l. Nelson.  Kennedy Center Family Theater, October 23-31.  70 minutes, no intermission.  For tickets to Kennedy Center performances, visit www.kennedy-center.org or call Instant Charge at (202) 467-4600.

'And Things That Go Bump in the Night'

Beginning this week, the Kennedy Center is presenting three plays by Terrence McNally with a common theme derived from the playwright's lifelong love of opera.

The first play, The Golden Age, is having its world premiere as part of what the Kennedy Center is calling "Terrence McNally's Nights at the Opera," (which will not, I am confident, be confused with the Marx Brothers' classic movie).

The other two plays are The Lisbon Traviata (1985), which originally starred Tony Award-winning actor Nathan Lane (whose role at the Kennedy Center is taken by Tony-winner John Glover), and Master Class (1995), which originally starred Zoe Caldwell as Maria Callas (whose Tony-winning role in Washington will be played by Tony-winner Tyne Daly).

As I am committed to cover the Virginia Festival of the Book this week, I will -- regrettably -- miss the premiere of The Golden Age.  Fortunately, I will be able to see both The Lisbon Traviata and Master Class.  I am looking forward to the experience, as McNally is one of my favorite playwrights. (My colleague, Tim Hulsey, has the assignment to review The Golden Age at the Kennedy Center.)

In an interview with Peter Marks that appeared in Sunday's Washington Post, McNally mentions his first Broadway play, which closed after six previews and 16 performances:

"I've never felt like a critics' darling," he says, quickly summoning a memory from 45 years ago of the drubbing of his first Broadway play, "And Things That Go Bump in the Night." It opened April 26, 1965 and closed 12 days later. "I thought the reviews would say, 'flawed, uneven, by a vital, talented playwright,' " he recalls. "But one said, 'It would have been better if Terrence McNally's parents smothered him in his cradle.' Actually, two reviews of my first play mentioned my death."

Still, McNally persevered: a producer, Theodore Mann, filled the theater for that first play's short run by charging $1 a ticket, thereby bolstering McNally's faith in his abilities. And he has since faced far, far tougher days: the death of a longtime lover, his own recurring struggle with lung cancer. These days, he says, he is out of the woods and feeling better.

By coincidence, hours before I read that article, I had just dug up my review of the American Century Theater's 1999 production of And Things That Go Bump in the Night. Unlike the New York critics of 1965, who were tepid (at best) in their reactions to the play, I liked it.

This review appeared in The Metro Herald (Alexandria, Virginia) on January 15, 1999:

American Century Theatre Goes "Bump in the Night"

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Beware, audiences: The cusp of the new millennium is sure to bring many entertainments that rely upon an apocalyptic premise. Such plays, movies, and TV dramas are not new. They are simply more likely to become both numerous and apparent as we lurch toward the year 2000. For it seems that whenever the calendar is about to flip over to the next ‘00, people go crazy with notions of impending doom. And when the odometer of life hits three zeroes, it's time to shield your fan from what else might hit.

So it is particularly timely for the American Century Theatre (TACT) in Arlington to present Terrence McNally's early doomsday play, And Things That Go Bump in the Night, which builds a dysfunctional family upon the twin foundations of an apocalyptic premise and a phantom menace (another phrase you'll be hearing much in the coming year).

In their 1982 anthology called The Apocalyptic Premise, Ernest W. Lefever and E. Stephen Hunt explain that term in this way:

"One such influential idea is ‘the apocalyptic premise,' which has always flourished in times of trouble and uncertainty. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament have vivid apocalyptic passages portraying how the world will end for both the righteous and the unrighteous. These prophetic visions, properly understood, lend perspective to faithful Jews and Christians, who believe there is a dimension beyond history that gives meaning to the here and now.

"But in current secular usage, an apocalyptic event is one that spells doom for a nation, a civilization, or the human race itself. Therefore the apocalyptic premise lacks the hope of the biblical vision of ‘a new heaven and a new earth.' . . . .

"One's view of the threat is always closely related to fear, that powerful human emotion that can be harnessed for good or manipulated for ill. Reasoned fear based on real dangers is essential for survival. Unreasoning fear based on myths or highly unlikely dangers can lead to unwise and destructive behavior."

I cite this rather lengthy passage because, although it is improbable that Lefever and Hunt were familiar with McNally's 1964 play, and impossible for McNally to have read their book (written 18 years later), there is a mutual understanding among the three thinkers that is remarkable. For, if nothing else, the family McNally portrays in And Things That Go Bump in the Night (ATTGBN) -- matriarch Ruby (Maureen Kerrigan), offspring Sigfrid (Gabriel Zucker) and Lakme (Jennifer Demayo), the physically crippled Grandfa (Alan Edick), and the emotionally crippled Fa (Mike Goll) -- is a spot-on example of the "unreasoning fear" that leads to destruction.

Like Amy Freed's Freedomland (presented earlier this season at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre), ATTGBN presents us with a stranger brought into the home of an eccentric family. It becomes clear that strangers visit this family each night, and each night the family puts the stranger -- "the friend" -- through a ritual performance that ends in torture and death.

The context for this odd, deadly ritual is an unseen (but heard) menace -- "moving west," as Fa repeats catatonically. The family, like others in their community, has taken refuge in their basement -- "sanctuary" -- and has electrified the fence surrounding their home, to keep out unwanted animals and humans. They have, in effect, retreated from the human race, from civilization itself, overcome by fear that has paralyzed their normality and set off a weird psychosexual syndrome that is one-third voyeurism, one-third vampirism, and one-third exhibitionism, spiced up with sado-masochism.

McNally wrote this play, his first to be produced on Broadway, when he was in his early 20s and the world was enmeshed in the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis had just passed, John F. Kennedy had recently been assassinated, and the Vietnam War was about to heat up. The measured optimism of the 1950s had given way to a cynical pessimism that permeates this play, which has much in common with the sci-fi horror films of the same period (not only classics like Night of the Living Dead, but also the so-bad-they're-good films of Ed Wood like Plan 9 from Outer Space).

In this light, it makes perfect sense that Ruby's key speech -- presented as a tape recording musing about the future, played back in both the first act and the second act -- is a mirror image, or perhaps better, a negative image of William Faulkner's 1950 Nobel laureate address. While Ruby proclaims "we will not prevail" and "we cannot endure," Faulkner, in the face of the same nuclear threat that motivates McNally and his characters, asserted "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."

Ruby's family consists of "dead souls," in Gogol's gripping phrase. Her husband, her children's father, sits motionless in a chair, staring at a wall. Her father-in-law looks forward to leaving the family home to take up residence in an insane asylum. Her 14-year-old daughter fancies herself as Batgirl, while her 21-year-old son is a bisexual predator who, not to put too fine a point on it, presages Jeffrey Dahmer. Sanity arrives in the form of the outsider, Clarence (David Muse), who alone has a living soul "capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance," who expresses a simple but profound reason for living that this family rejects as too lacking in despair.

The writing in this play is not that of the mature McNally, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and Tony awards for Ragtime (reviewed in The Metro Herald last July) and Love! Valour! Compassion! (reviewed here in June 1997). It bears resemblance to some of the work of McNally's contemporary, Sam Shepard (in particular, Buried Child), but it is definitely a juvenile work, entertaining in a darkly comedic way, but still as shocking in its way as it was when it was booed off the stage in New York 35 years ago.

While all of the actors prove excellent in their roles, and the direction by Terry D. Kester deserves high praise, the real star of the show is the sound design. (Ads for ATTGBN say it is presented in "Sensurround.") Sound designer Ricki Kushner has done the heavy lifting to create the atmosphere for the show. Sound is key in many ways -- Ruby's opening speech occurs in darkness, over an intercom; the "phantom menace" is a rumble that verily shakes the theatre; recordings advance the action and let us in on the inner workings of the characters. If there is a Helen Hayes award for sound design, Kushner deserves it.

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Review of 'The Color Purple'

Here is my review of The Color Purple, now playing in the Kennedy Center's Opera House, prepared for publication in The Metro Herald.

The Color Purple: Flawed but Inspiring
Musical Adaptation of Award-Winning Novel Now at Kennedy Center
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Adapting a controversial, popular, epistolary novel to the stage is a delicate task, one with as many pitfalls as it has possibilities. The task is made even more difficult when it requires the translation of an intensely personal, introspective journey to the more gregarious needs of the musical play, with its attendant melody, dance, and spirited rhyme schemes.

The task was just as delicate for Steven Spielberg when he adapted Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple for the screen, which provides a much wider palette for a story that sprawls from the Mississippi Delta to West Africa and across nearly a half-century of time. Spielberg’s effort was rewarded with eleven Oscar® nominations and it catapulted Whoopi Goldberg to stardom.

The musical stage adaptation of The Color Purple, although it received eleven Tony Award® nominations (winning one category), is a noble attempt that ultimately fails to satisfy.

Now playing to capacity audiences at the Kennedy Center Opera House, the production’s strongest claims to success are in its design elements: sets (by John Lee Beatty), lighting (by Brian McDevitt), and especially costumes. Costume designer Paul Tazewell’s creations are almost the only way audiences can follow the chronology of the piece: as fashions change, we know that time goes by in a story that begins before the First World War and ends after World War II. Tazewell’s costumes also signify poverty and wealth, glamour and mundanity – facets that define the characters almost as well as their words and actions do.

As for the characters themselves, several performances stand out, not least of which is American Idol winner Fantasia in the leading role of Celie. Not only must Celie age from 14 to 54 over the course of two hours, she must do so almost without a break: there is hardly a scene in The Color Purple in which Celie does not appear. As weak as the material is (more on that later), Fantasia carries it with aplomb and maturity beyond her years.

Also notable is Felicia P. Fields as Sofia (reprising her Tony-nominated role), whose self-assured character is brought low by the social establishment of the Jim Crow South only to be resurrected when her sister-in-struggle, Celie, asserts herself in Act II. Similarly, Angela Robinson as Shug Avery (the woman every man wants to be with and every woman wants to be, but whom Celie gets to be with) is sexy, sensual, strong, determined, and sharp-witted: a role model for anyone.

Book writer Marsha Norman has added a sort of Greek chorus in the Church Ladies (Doris, Darlene, and Jarene; respectively Kimberly Ann Harris, Virginia Ann Woodruff, and Lynette DuPree) whose gossipy nature, vulgar comments, cutting remarks, and ever-changing costumes nudge the play along lightheartedly when it otherwise might become bogged down in melancholy and hopelessness.

Another performance worth singling out is that of Stu James as Harpo, Celie’s stepson (and Sofia’s husband) who may be the only man in her orbit who displays a sense of humanity and decency.

The major problem with The Color Purple as a piece of musical theatre is its lack of musicality. The score – which seems to have been written by a committee – is bland, undistinguished, and unmemorable. (In a good musical, one finds oneself humming the tunes on the way out of the theatre. I found myself humming a tune from a different musical, one that bore some resemblance to a song in The Color Purple, but that was far superior.)

Unsurprisingly, given that the songwriting duties were divided up among three composer/lyricists – Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray – whose backgrounds are more in pop music than in musical theatre, the score is scattered all over the place. It is not grounded in time (or location) and it fails to deliver any integrated sensibility (such as, for instance, providing motifs that follow characters through the story and link their development).

There are problems, too, with Norman’s book, which turns Walker’s wrenching portrayal of misogyny and cruelty into an anodyne pabulum that condescends to the audience, as if a producer said to the playwright, “Tone down the beatings and the rapes; I don’t want tired businessmen to walk out during intermission.”

Moreover, Norman forsakes clarity in an effort to compress the story (and fit it into a reasonable running time, which even now is nearly three hours). For instance, in the climactic scene, which takes place during a picnic, Alice Walker tells us that the gathering is meant to celebrate the Fourth of July. The play does not, raising the question of why Celie is so non-chalant about attending a party put together by her cruel ex-husband. One line could have avoided that question.

Walker’s criticism of African patriarchy is completely missing from this adaptation. In its stead is a second act dream ballet that, were it not meant to be taken seriously, could easily be misinterpreted as bad-taste minstrelsy. Add to this the absence of any mention of the Great Depression, Prohibition, or World War II in a story that spans all those major periods, and you have to wonder what the writers were thinking.

The Color Purple is a flawed musical play. Nonetheless, it will continue to draw audiences, as it did for 910 performances on Broadway. The underlying story of one woman’s triumph over adversity and evil remains inspiring. If that is enough to satisfy the “tired businessman,” then nothing more need be said.

The Color Purple runs through August 9, 2009, at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Performances run Tuesday through Sunday evenings at 7:30 p.m. with matinee performances on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 1:30 p.m. Tickets cost $25-$95 and may be purchased 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 the Kennedy Center web site at www.kennedy-center.org. (NOTE: During the matinee performances on July 12, 19, and 26, and on August 1 and 2, and during the evening performance on July 31, the role of Celie will be played by Phyre Hawkins or Brandi Chavonne Massey.

Photo credit: Paul Kolnik. Production photos courtesy of the Kennedy Center.



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