Theater
Last call for ‘Candide’
Gay actor Stone among high points of production
Gay singer/actor/dancer Joey Stone. (Photo courtesy of Shakespeare Theatre Company)
‘Candide’
Directed and adapted from Voltaire by Mary Zimmerman
Through Sunday
Harman Hall
610 F Street, N.W.
202-547-1122
One weekend remains to see Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of “Candide” — it closes Sunday.
The 1956 masterpiece has several gay angles — late composer Leonard Bernstein, contributions from a young Stephen Sondheim and actor/singer/dancer Joey Stone, who came out in high school and who (among various roles) plays an elegant Senor and a raping-and-pillaging soldier in this newest version of Voltaire’s dark satiric novella of 1759. Stone is also dance captain in the show birthed last fall at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and then transported wonderfully intact to D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Harman Hall.
The story itself is familiar, boy meets girl, but then they are sadly parted. Actually, however, in this case, “boy grows up with girl.” Handsome-but-penniless young Candide, who is illegitimate, lives on the estate of his uncle the baron, with his cousin Cunegunde, the baron’s self-absorbed-but-delightfully pretty daughter. They reside in Westphalia, one of those tiny German principalities of the time, where they are taught by the indulgent Dr. Pangloss, to believe that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”
But dark clouds of war threaten and anyway Candide himself is soon dispatched by the baron into exile. From then on, nothing is for the best any longer, as not only war but also earthquake and religious inquisition intervene, and both Candide and Cunegunde travel, mostly separately, through ordeal after ordeal, until their foolish Panglossian optimism is knocked right out of them along with their naive stuffing.
Along their way, both Candide and Cunegunde keep meeting, in various guises, the dark-haired and bearded Stone, who in one of his roles, rapes Cunegunde. In fact, much of the time Stone’s character is party to the “awful price” paid by the young couple during their many ordeals, including in one of the funniest songs, “What a Day for an Auto-da-fe” — literally, execution in the guise of purification to save the deceased’s soul — where Stone lurks darkly among the gang of religious zealots cheering on the capital punishment.
Louisville native Stone began life, he says, with his father in the military, “not too much as a brat, but definitely as an army kid.” While attending the Youth Performing Arts School (a public magnet school in Louisville), “I came out to my friends first,” he recalls now, when he was sure he was then “the only out gay dude in high school.” But he only came out much later to his mother.
He left school at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music (CCM) after his junior year in 2007 and moved to Chicago “to think outside the box,” he says, no longer satisfied with conventional conservatory study for the performing arts. Almost immediately he began to get parts, at first in “The Rocky Horror Show” — hired, says Stone, “basically the first day I go there.” Other parts soon followed, including as puppeteer and back-up singer in “The Snow Queen” and several other puppet shows.
Geoff Packard in the title role in 'Candide.' Co-star Joey Stone holds his hat in the background. (Photo courtesy of Shakespeare Theatre Company)
Living in Chicago, Stone moved on to parts in “Funny Girl,” “Cabaret,” “Mame” and “Sweet Charity,” but continues to dabble in music also, forming his own band, Barack and the Obamas.
“We are hilarious,” he says. “We pay homage to the ’60s girl-groups like Diana Ross and the Supremes.”
He also worked as assistant choreographer for several shows at the House, Chicago’s “environmental theater” performance space. Meanwhile, Mary Zimmerman, winner of a 1998 MacArthur “genius grant” and a 2002 Tony award for Best Director, was busy reinventing Voltaire’s and Bernstein’s “Candide.” Stone auditioned for the cast and was picked and the show, he says, “is exactly what I have dreamed of doing.”
“I sleep with the narrator,” he says, “and I rape Cunegunde,” though he insists that it’s all done “very elegantly, choreographed into a dance, but it certainly is rape.”
As the show’s dance captain, he also has his hands and feet full. He says “the show is not so much dance as it is orchestrated movement, sometimes very much ballroom dance.”
One of his friends in the cast is Lauren Molina, with her superlative soprano who delights as Cunegunde, the ingenue who suffers many stumbles en route to the final resolution when she and Candide vow to cultivate their gardens and give up their naivete about life. But first she must pass through harems and other liaisons as a kept woman, and one of the highlights of the show is her song of self-satisfaction mixed with self-disgust, “Glitter and be Gay.” She confesses she delights in her diamond bracelets, but unlike Mae West is far less fond of what she calls “the awful price” she must pay in bed for those glittering luxuries.
Molina joined recently in Chicago with Stone to produce a music video cover of “Fuck You,” the 2010 hit pop song by hip-hop singer Cee-Lo Green — sometimes edited for radio as “F.U.” or “Forget You,” and performed that way on “Glee.” Their unvarnished version is now a hit on YouTube. Molina also has her own CD, “Sea for Two,” for sale in the Harman Hall lobby. It includes her catchy single, “Gonna Be Alright,” a duet featuring Jeremy Jordan, her former Broadway cast-mate from “Rock of Ages.” The music video for this infectiously fun tune shows them duking it out in a New York apartment.
Geoff Packard, the gorgeous tenor voice for Candide, was also a student at CCM where he admits “I was the only straight guy in my class.”
He graduated in 2003 and just missed Stone who arrived there the next year. Packard, 29 but looking closer to 19, grew up in Brockport, N.Y., near Rochester, and in high school did little with the performing arts, instead playing three sports and a band instrument, though he dabbled in school productions. Packard went on to co-star with Molina in the 1980s-style metal-rock Broadway musical “Rock of Ages” and also has his own CD out – “Fairytales and Fortunes.”
Theater
‘My Favorite Sociopath’ debuts at Shepherdstown’s CATF
Gay playwright Aurin Squire’s take on D.C. journalism in the ‘90s
‘My Favorite Sociopath’
Contemporary American Theater Festival
July 10-Aug. 2
Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Catf.org
Discernment. It’s a thing some people have, explains playwright Aurin Squire, especially when you’re gay or Black in America (Squire is both).
“You instinctively know when the mob is teaming up for the best interests of the powers that be. You can feel it in the air.”
In his sharp new satire “My Favorite Sociopath,” Squire writes about life experiences but set in a different time and place: It’s the 1990s, early days of the 24-hour news cycle, and three ambitious journalism students are pursuing success in D.C.
And now, Squire’s play, along with other new works, are making their world premieres at the annual Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) at Shepherd University in historic, queer-friendly Shepherdstown, W.Va. (just a 90-minute drive from D.C.).
“All of my plays are queer in some way,” says Squire, 46. “This one touches on harmless and dangerous lies. The characters are on the spectrum sexually, and it’s interesting how all that falls out.”
And he’s given it a lot of thought.
“Already as a kid, it seemed to me that the rage against rap music and sex was coming from closeted people resisting their own urges and temptations. For me, it was interesting to see a witch hunt led by witches. Queer people can always call out a lie.”
Since September, Squire has also been working with a TV show about the tech industry set in Silicon Valley. He says, “It seems the general flow of the tech industry is that humanity and civilization is finished and it’s just about accumulating as many goods as possible before everything collapses. In fact, those who are profiting actually agree. But for those who disagree, they believe the solution is to build bigger gates, but activists believe we can stop this”
Yet, he’s learned from folks associated with the show. “Many say the quickest way to divorce yourself from any responsibility or regulations — smash and grab. Otherwise, you have to stop and think and regulate your desires for greed and power”
Squire possesses a penchant for pithy titles. He laughs, explaining the first thing he wrote as a student at Juilliard was “Obama-ology,” the comedy with contemporary message. While a lot of people liked the name, it didn’t necessarily vibe with the author. He concedes that he chooses names based on “easy to remember” and titles that won’t be easy to lose as a file.
Another is “Defacing Michael Jackson,” a coming-of-age dramedy set in rural Florida in 1984, specifically Squire’s native town Opa-locka, Miami, a fantastical place famed for its fanciful Moorish revival architecture.
Living in the shadow of exotic structures, he wasn’t particularly fazed. Squire says “It wasn’t until returning to visit after my freshman year at Northwestern University in Chicago that I realized how weird it was: When you grow up in a place, you take surroundings for granted no matter how over the top.”
Now based in New York (where for two happy years, 2017-2019, he shared digs with drag king Murry Hill), Squire returns frequently to Miami to be with family, but this summer has been filled with both work and travel.
Currently, he’s in Shepherdstown with CATF shaping up “My Favorite Sociopath.” Later this summer he will travel to South Africa for research, followed by a silent writing retreat in Santa Fe, N.M.
Much of Squire’s work reflects the Latino, African, Caribbean, African-American, and Jewish cultures he grew up around in South Florida.
When asked if today’s winds of anti-multiculturalism worry him, he replies, “No, because that’s going to pass. Most people don’t like, people are seeing the negative results of it, and the young people coming up despise it. White male gamers were tricked momentarily through the algorithms into voting against their own interests and they’re now seeing how it’s not working out for them.
“Conservatives always try to stop progress and eventually they always lose. It’s just a question of where we’ll be in the middle of the end of civilization before that happens. I’d like to hope we can turn the ship around before then.”
In addition to “My Favorite Sociopath,” CATF summer season features three other world premieres (Lisa D’Amour’s comedy “The Smoker,” “Refugee Rhapsody” by Yussef El Guindi, “Best Line Wins: A Play Inspired by the Improvised Lives of Elaine May & Mike Nichols” by Beth Kander) and “¡VOS!” by Christina Pumariega.
CATF runs from July 10-Aug. 2 in three venues on the Shepherd University campus: Frank Center, Marinoff Theater, and Studio 112.
Theater
Carla Hall goes from ‘Top Chef’ to the stage
Solo show ‘Please Underestimate Me’ premieres at Olney
‘Please Underestimate Me’
Through July 12
Olney Theatre Center
at Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab
2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd.
Olney, Md.
$47-$101
Olneytheatre.org
Carla Hall gained celebrity status from Bravo TV’s “Top Chef.” She was funny and fun, and with her kooky signature catch phrase “Hooty hoo” and the southern-inspired recipes she lovingly cooked, Hall stood out in a kitchen crammed with contestants.
Now the D.C.-based Hall is taking revisiting her earliest love with the world premiere of her solo show “Please Underestimate Me,” currently running at Olney Theatre Center’s intimate and revamped Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab.
In the 90-minute piece (written by Hall, Lori Kaye, and Kaye’s partner Leslie Thomas; and directed by Lili-Anne Brown), Hall leads with food but quickly swerves into her personal and other aspects of her professional life. Built around an immersive fictional TV cooking show, her new play draws on experiences from her seven seasons (2011-2019) co-hosting cooking/chat show “The Chew”an ABC daytime proving ground, and her heady years on “Top Chef.” (2008, 2010).
Born and raised in Nashville, Hall wanted to attend Boston University to major in theater, but was rejected. Instead, she went to Howard University at her mother’s urging, where she ultimately majored in accounting. After graduating in 1986, she donned a bespoke business suit and briefly worked as a CPA for Price Waterhouse.
Business wasn’t for Hall. Tall and slender, she walked the runways in Paris for a while before ultimately finding her niche as a chef. Cooking seemed to come from her heart, something she learned from her grandmother who not incidentally bankrolled Hall’s way through culinary school.
Now she’s bringing the vibrancy and good humor that made her a “Top Chef” fan favorite and a popular TV host to the stage with “Please Underestimate Me.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: You seem a natural live performer. Were at all you nervous about doing this?
CARLA HALL: Anytime you step outside of what you’re known for you have to take a risk and make it happen. I’d been working on this the idea for seven years. I decided that I really wanted to do a variety show and really wanted to step back into my original love of theater.
I didn’t know what that looked like so I was asking a lot of people, actors and friends, about how to break into it. Can they see me as more than a chef? So, I told my agency to book me for voice overs, cameo roles. I got an acting coach and I was seeing a lot of single person shows. I literally embodied the thing that I wanted.
BLADE: Have you always been a vocal and public ally of the queer community?
HALL: For me, it’s natural. I came from the theater and dance world. I have a lot of gay and queer friends.
There’s something about people being gay and queer that goes with a need to be authentic to yourself. I think that’s why you find a lot of queer people in the arts. Dare to be you. Dare to be different, right? I like that.
BLADE: Long ago, I remember stopping by a Safeway in Wheaton to grab a sheet cake for a party. Your second or first episode of “Top Chef” had just aired. I wanted to yell “Hooty hoo” across the aisles, but was too shy.
CARLA HALL: My catering kitchen was near that Safeway.You should have yelled. I’d have given you a hug. I’ll hug almost anyone.
BLADE: Thanks. I think. You hear actors saying there’s nothing quite like TV fame because you’re invited into people’s living rooms. What were those days like when you started being recognized?
HALL: I like people. I tell Matthew [Matthew Lyons, Hall’s husband of 20 years], when fans say hello it’s my chance to get to learn about them. I owe them a lot; without them I wouldn’t be working.
BLADE: At Olney, Lauren M. Nichols’ surprise-filled set and Kelly Colburn’s projections of your personal snapshots from over the years are really wonderful.
HALL: It becomes really emotional. At the end of the show, I see 12-year-old me. I’m looking at that girl, and they did a put a little crown on my head, and I’m living her dream 50 years later.
BLADE: Is the pace hard?
HALL: Seven shows a week isn’t easy. I used to say “Top Chef” was my most grueling experience…well, that was before I did this.
BLADE: And is it gratifying?
HALL: At the end of the day, yes. Look, this play is filled with personal highs and lows and emotionally it’s exhausting. It’s also rewarding. Two weeks before the show started, I wasn’t sure I could do this.
BLADE: But of course, you are doing it. And you’re doing it so well.
HALL: A while back, I reached out to the executive producer of “The Chew” and thanked him for being the messenger of my lessons. Without those experiences I wouldn’t be here now doing “Please Underestimate Me.” My confidence has definitely grown. I’m a firm believer that everything that happens to you is for you.
Theater
‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic
Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London
‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org
Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.
Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.
Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.
At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.
Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.
With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.
The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.
Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.
Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)
Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.
Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.
One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.
They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.
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