Arts & Entertainment
Revisiting ‘Les Mis’
Anniversary touring production in town just before film opens

‘Les Miserables’
Through Dec. 30
The National Theater
1321 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
$40-$118
800-447-7400

Actor Jason Forbach met his boyfriend at auditions for the current touring production of ‘Les Miserables.’ They’re both in the show.
With the hotly anticipated film version of “Les Misérables” poised to open on Christmas day, it’s an exciting time to be connected to the musical.
“For me, just being in ‘Les Mis’ is a dream come true but to be in it right now is almost overwhelming,” says gay actor Jason Forbach, a cast member in the show’s 25th anniversary tour production currently playing at National Theatre. “It feels like a perfect moment in time.”
Forbach plays Enjolras, the iconic young revolutionary who leads the students in an ardent but unsuccessful anti-monarchist uprising. In Victor Hugo’s epic novel (on which the show is based), Enjolras is described as angelically beautiful. “No pressure there,” quips handsome Forbach before rhapsodizing on his character’s other admirable qualities: “I’m in love with this guy. He’s a passionate idealist who dies for what he believes in. Trying to grasp on to that magic is a challenge. It’s the most important role I’ve ever played.”
Set against the political conflicts of early 19th century Paris, “Les Misérables” follows the travails of Jean Valjean, an honest French peasant who spends almost 20 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. After his release he breaks parole and attempts to make a fresh start under an assumed identity, but Valjean’s attempts to separate from the past are thwarted by police inspector Javert who remains doggedly on his trail. Hugo’s material translates into powerful and uplifting theater.
While it sometimes feels there was never a world without “Les Misérables” and Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg’s popular score that includes familiar tunes like “I Dreamed a Dream,” “On My Own,” “Bring Him Home,” “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” and Enjolras’ stirring anthem “Do You Hear the People Sing?,” the show in fact premiered in London in 1985 and made its American debut at the Kennedy Center in 1986 before moving to New York where it set records as the third longest-running Broadway show to date. Over the years, it has toured the globe. The production now playing in D.C. was especially reconceived for the anniversary tour that began two years ago and shows no signs of ending anytime soon.
“The new production has enough familiar elements so as not to disappoint diehard fans, but a lot of innovation to keep the show young, including co-director Laurence Connor and James Powell’s new staging and efforts to make the show grittier, more real,” Forbach, 34, says. “Emotions are raw. There’s nothing played or musical theater about it.”
Also, the famous turntable is gone; instead the new production features a series of 3-D projected images fashioned in the style of Hugo’s paintings.
“These sepia-toned cityscapes and abstracts make both the actors and the audiences feel more immersed in the story,” Forbach says.
“Les Misérables” is a hard show to sing, even for Forbach, a Kansas City native who studied classical voice in graduate school at the New England Conservatory in Boston before trading a budding career in opera for Broadway musicals. It’s also physically demanding — he suffered a dislocated rib and has had other injuries playing Enjolras.
“It’s demanding all the way around. Eight performances a week of dying on the barricades while screaming out a complicated score can be difficult but it’s the realness of this extreme situation that makes it easier to keep the show fresh. You just can’t fake it.”
Touring can be a long and grueling business, but there are upsides. With few expenses on the road, Forbach has managed to pay off his college loans; and since his boyfriend is also in the cast (they met at auditions in New York and not long into the tour a romance developed) it’s not lonely. He’s completely comfortable being an openly gay actor.
“I wouldn’t be as successful a creative artist if I weren’t true to myself. I don’t know if I’d want the success if I had to compromise to achieve it.”
Ultimately, Forbach credits the universality of Hugo’s grand novel as the reason for the show’s enduring popularity.
“At its heart, ‘Les Mis’ is a story of redemption, a lifelong journey of making wrong right,” he says. “It’s something to which everyone can relate.”
Books
New book goes behind the scenes of ‘A League of Their Own’
‘No Crying in Baseball’ offers tears, laughs, and more

‘No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of ‘A League of Their Own’
By Erin Carlson
c.2023, Hachette Books
$29/320 pages
You don’t usually think of Madonna as complaining of being “dirty all day” from playing baseball. But that’s what the legendary diva did during the shooting of “A League of Their Own,” the 1992 movie, beloved by queers.
“No Crying in Baseball,” the fascinating story behind “A League of Their Own,” has arrived in time for the World Series. Nothing could be more welcome after Amazon has cancelled season 2 of its reboot (with the same name) of this classic film.

In this era, people don’t agree on much. Yet, “A League of Their Own” is loved by everyone from eight-year-old kids to 80-year-old grandparents.
The movie has strikes, home runs and outs for sports fans; period ambience for history buffs; and tears, laughs and a washed-up, drunk, but lovable coach for dramady fans.
The same is true for “No Crying in Baseball.” This “making of” story will appeal to history, sports and Hollywood aficionados. Like “All About Eve” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” “A League of Their Own” is Holy queer Writ.
Carlson, a culture and entertainment journalist who lives in San Francisco, is skilled at distilling Hollywood history into an informative, compelling narrative. As with her previous books, “I’ll Have What She’s Having: How Nora Ephron’s three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy” and “Queen Meryl: The Iconic Roles, Heroic Deeds, and Legendary Life of Meryl Streep,” “No Crying in Baseball,” isn’t too “educational.” It’s filled with gossip to enliven coffee dates and cocktail parties.
“A League of Their Own” is based on the true story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). From 1943 to 1954, more than 600 women played in the league in the Midwest. The league’s players were all white because the racism of the time prohibited Black women from playing. In the film, the characters are fictional. But the team the main characters play for – the Rockford Peaches – was real.
While many male Major and Minor League Baseball players were fighting in World War II, chewing gum magnate Philip K. Wrigley, who owned the Chicago Cubs, founded the league. He started the AAGPBL, “To keep spectators in the bleachers,” Carlson reports, “and a storied American sport–more important: his business afloat.”
In 1943, the Office of War Information warned that the baseball season could be “scrapped” “due to a lack of men,” Carlson adds.
“A League of Their Own” was an ensemble of women’s performances (including Rosie O’Donnell as Doris, Megan Cavanagh as Marla, Madonna as Mae, Lori Petty as Kit and Geena Davis as Dottie) that would become legendary.
Girls and women still dress up as Rockford Peaches on Halloween.
Tom Hanks’s indelible portrayal of coach Jimmy Dugan, Gary Marshall’s depiction of (fictional) league owner Walter Harvey and Jon Lovitz’s portrayal of Ernie have also become part of film history.
Filming “A League of Their Own,” Carlson vividly makes clear, was a gargantuan effort. There were “actresses who can’t play baseball” and “baseball players who can’t act,” Penny Marshall said.
The stadium in Evansville, Ind., was rebuilt to look like it was in the 1940s “when the players and extras were in costume,” Carlson writes, “it was easy to lose track of what year it was.”
“No Crying in Baseball” isn’t written for a queer audience. But, Carlson doesn’t pull any punches.
Many of the real-life AAGPBL players who O’Donnell met had same-sex partners, O’Donnell told Carlson.
“When Penny, angling for a broad box-office hit chose to ignore the AAGPGL’s queer history,” Carlson writes, “she perpetuated a cycle of silence that muzzled athletes and actresses alike from coming out on the wider stage.”
“It was, as they say, a different time,” she adds.
Fortunately, Carlson’s book isn’t preachy. Marshall nicknames O’Donnell and Madonna (who become buddies) “Ro” and “Mo.” Kodak is so grateful for the one million feet of film that Marshall shot that it brings in a high school marching band. Along with a lobster lunch. One day, an assistant director “streaked the set to lighten the mood,” Carlson writes.
“No Crying in Baseball,” is slow-going at first. Marshall, who died in 2018, became famous as Laverne in “Laverne & Shirley.” It’s interesting to read about her. But Carlson devotes so much time to Marshall’s bio that you wonder when she’ll get to “A League of Their Own.”
Thankfully, after a couple of innings, the intriguing story of one of the best movies ever is told.
You’ll turn the pages of “No Crying in Baseball” even if you don’t know a center fielder from a short stop.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Theater
Rupert Murdoch’s powers on full display in ‘Ink’
Media baron helped pave the way for Brexit, Prime Minister Thatcher

‘Ink’
Through Sept. 24
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814
$46-$94
Roundhousetheatre.org
Yes, Rupert Murdoch’s loathsome traits are many, but his skills to succeed are undeniably numerous.
In the first scenes of John Graham’s West End and Broadway hit drama “Ink,” an exciting year-long detail from the life of a burgeoning media baron, Murdoch’s powers of persuasion are on full display.
It’s 1969 London. Over dinner with editor Larry Lamb, a young Murdoch shares his plan to buy the Sun and rebrand the dying broadsheet, replacing the Daily Mirror as Britain’s best-selling tabloid. What’s more, he wants to do it in just one year with Lamb at the helm.
Initially reluctant, Lamb becomes seduced by the idea of running a paper, something that’s always eluded him throughout his career, and something Murdoch, the outsider Australian, understands. Murdoch taunts him, “Not you. Not Larry Lamb, the Yorkshire-born son of a blacksmith, not the guy who didn’t get a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, who didn’t get a degree from anywhere. Not you.”
Still, Lamb, played convincingly by Cody Nickell in Round House Theatre’s stellar season-opener, a co-production with Olney Theatre Center, remains unsure. But Murdoch (a delightfully brash Andrew Rein) is undeterred, and seals the deal with a generous salary.
Superbly staged by director Jason Loweth, “Ink” is riveting. Its exchanges between Lamb and Murdoch are a strikingly intimate glimpse into ambition involving an ostensibly average editor and a striving money man who doesn’t like people.
Once on board, Lamb is trolling Fleet Street in search of his launch team, played marvelously by some mostly familiar actors. He makes his most important hire — news editor Brian McConnell (Maboud Ebrahimzadeh) — in a steam bath. The remainder of the Sun’s new masthead falls handily into place: Joyce Hopkirk (Kate Eastwood Norris) the women’s page editor whose forward thinking is marred by her casual racism; Zion Jang plays Beverley Goodway, an awkwardly amusing young photographer; persnickety deputy editor Bernard Shrimsley (Michael Glenn) who learns to love ugly things; and an old school sports editor who proves surprisingly versatile, played by Ryan Rillette, Round House’s artistic director.
At Lamb’s suggestion, the team brainstorms about what interests Sun readers. They decide on celebrities, pets, sports, free stuff, and —rather revolutionarily for the time —TV. Murdoch is happy to let readers’ taste dictate content and the “Why” of the sacred “five Ws” of journalism is out the window.
Murdoch is portrayed as a not wholly unlikable misanthrope. He dislikes his editors and pressman alike. He particularly hates unions. His advice to Lamb is not to get too chummy with his subordinates. Regarding the competition, Murdoch doesn’t just want to outperform them, he wants to grind them to dust.
Loewith leads an inspired design team. Scenic designer Tony Cisek’s imposing, inky grey edifice made from modular walls is ideally suited for Mike Tutaj’s projections of headlines, printed pages, and Rein’s outsized face as Murdoch. Sound designer and composer Matthew M. Nielson ably supplies bar noises and the nonstop, pre-digital newspaper clatter of presses, linotypes, and typewriters.
From a convenient second tiered balcony, the Daily Mirror’s establishment power trio Hugh Cudlipp (Craig Wallace), Chris Lee Howard (Chris Geneback) and Sir Percy (Walter Riddle) overlook all that lies below, discussing new tactics and (mostly failed) strategies to remain on top.
Increasingly comfortable in the role of ruthless, sleazy editor, Lamb is unstoppable.
Obsessed with overtaking the Daily Mirror’s circulation, he opts for some sketchy reportage surrounding the kidnapping and presumed murder of Muriel McKay, the wife of Murdoch’s deputy Sir Alick (Todd Scofield). The kidnappers mistook Muriel for Murdoch’s then-wife Anna (Sophia Early). Next, in a move beyond the pale, Lamb introduces “Page 3,” a feature spotlighting a topless female model. Awesta Zarif plays Stephanie, a smart young model. She asks Lamb if he would run a semi-nude pic of his similarly aged daughter? His reaction is uncomfortable but undaunted.
For Murdoch’s purposes, history proves he chose well in Lamb. By year’s end, the Sun is Britain’s most widely read tabloid. Together they give the people what they didn’t know they wanted, proving the pro-Labour Daily Mirror’s hold on the working class is baseless and paving the way for things like Brexit and a Prime Minister Thatcher.
“Ink” at Round House closes soon. See it if you can.
Out & About
CAMP Rehoboth’s final concert of the season is almost here
Chorus performs ‘Music of the Night’

CAMP Rehoboth Chorus will perform “Music of the Night” on Friday, Sept. 29 and Saturday, Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. and on Sunday, Oct. 1 at 3 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church.
The chorus will sing more than 36 song selections, including “Fly Me to the Moon,” “I Could’ve Danced All Night” and “In the Still of the Nite.”
Tickets cost $25 and can be purchased on CAMP Rehoboth’s website.
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