Arts & Entertainment
High notes for ‘Show Boat’
Opera singer Cambridge returns for fourth appearance with WNO
‘Show Boat’
Opens Saturday, runs through May 26
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House
(2700 F Street, NW)
$25-$270
kennedy-center.org
Soprano Alyson Cambridge says she’s thrilled to bring ‘Show Boat’ to her native Washington. (Photo by Enrique Vega; courtesy Bucklesweet Media)
D.C.-area native Alyson Cambridge starts a triumphant homecoming this weekend.
The former Arlington, Va., resident — she grew up here — has made a splash in the opera world with debuts at the Metropolitan Opera and other top-level houses in major productions. She opens Saturday in the classic musical “Show Boat,” the Kern/Hammerstein masterpiece that will feature more than 100 singers, actors and dancers on the Kennedy Center Opera House Stage to tell the story of a troupe of riverboat performers as they make their way through the decades. It features classic songs such as “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.”
Cambridge stars as Julie. It will be a busy month for the performer. She’ll also sing the National Anthem at the Washington Nationals game on May 11. And on May 18, the production will be broadcast live to Nationals Park for WNO’s annual “Opera in the Outfield” event. Cambridge opened the show in Chicago last year and says during a lengthy phone chat from her home in Manhattan, she’s excited about bringing it to D.C. (Cambridge’s comments have been edited for length.)
BLADE: You still have family here?
CAMBRIDGE: Yes, my parents still live in the same house I grew up in and my brother and sister-in-law live in Falls Church with my niece who’s 1 so yeah, it’s been great spending time with my niece.
BLADE: How is the art/theater/music vibe different in New York versus Washington?
CAMBRIDGE: New York is a completely different world. I’ve been there almost 11 years so it feels like home now and I’m used to a fast-paced life where I’m constantly being surrounded by artists, singers, actors and dancers all the time. The person behind the counter at Starbucks is an aspiring acturess. It’s just in the culture that there’s this assumption that you have some ties to the arts. You just feel that vibe all the time here.
BLADE: How was the Chicago run?
CAMBRIDGE: Really wonderful. It was the first time for many of us coming to this show .. and my first time doing a musical like this on such a grand scale. About half the cast is new for D.C. and it’s been wonderful welcoming so many newcomers to this production. I can truly say, there’s not a weak link in the cast, everybody is just so strong. … I hope D.C. embraces the show as much as Chicago did. We were completely sold out there and it was the toughest ticket in town to get.
BLADE: Most of your professional work has been in opera. Are the lines blurring between the opera world and musical theater and if so, is that a good thing?
CAMBRIDGE: I’ve seen a lot of change just within the last four years or so. I did “Porgy & Bess” in Washington in 2005 and came back in 2010 and the reception was very different. It’s considered a show in the more operatic vein and was really written for classically trained voices. Even just a few years ago, people warned me, ‘Oh, be careful — if you start with that, people won’t see you as a truly legit opera singer,’ but I think what we’re doing is really opening up these musical worlds to different audiences and I think it’s the perfect blend.
BLADE: Whatever raw talent you were blest with, as you discovered it and what your strengths were, did that line up pretty naturally with your musical interests as a teen or did you have to learn to appreciate opera, which can be an acquired taste?
CAMBRIDGE: Oh, back in the ‘90s I listened to pop singers and wanted to be a pop singer. I’d be blasting Christina Aguilera out of my car on campus but I discovered I could imitate any voice I heard and had a really finely tuned ear. My mom would have classical music on and I could imitate the opera singers and we had a neighbor say once, ‘You know, that’s not half bad.’ … This led to voice lessons … where I was eventually told I had natural ability in this genre. But yes, it took awhile for me to really embrace what my voice was meant to do. But yeah, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Tiffany, I loved all that too and even went through a rap phase.
BLADE: Does it feel really competitive and cut throat as your career unfolds or is there a level you get to where you don’t feel like the next soprano is just waiting in the wings snapping at your heels?
CAMBRIDGE: I think everybody has their own unique path. Mine was pretty fast. I literally went from Curtis to the Metropolitan Opera’s young artist program by the time I was 23 and had my Met debut at 24, but I have certainly leanred you’re always a work in progress and I think it’s a misconception that you don’t have to keep learning. … It’s very much about always coming out and bringing your A game.
BLADE: What is your tessitura?
CAMBRIDGE: I’m a full lyric soprano.
BLADE: Is that the highest one? I can never remember.
CAMBRIDGE: No, a coloratura is the highest and the lightest … It’s a fuller sound with more meat to it. … The role of Julie, is really a mezzo role. It’s quite low but it suits me quite well.
BLADE: Do you have a gay best friend in New York? Your world must be teeming with gay energy.
CAMBRIDGE: It’s all over the map. I’m surrounded by gay people, trans people, bi — everything. It’s really all across the map. But yeah, I’m going to the wedding of one of my college best friends this summer in New York. She was straight all through college but she’s marrying a woman and she’s never been happier.
The Petal Release Party and Drag Show was held at Spark Social on Friday, July 31. Performers included Tiara-Missou, Labianna and Darcy de la Cuadra.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
Celebrity News
Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam
Kylie Minogue made surprise appearance alongside gay icon
AMSTERDAM — Madonna on Sunday headlined the final night of the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam.
The gay icon took the stage shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday) during Club Confessions, a set that MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, organized.
“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people.
Stuart Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album and “Confessions II,” which debuted on July 2, DJed the set.
Kylie Minogue made a surprise appearance. She and Madonna performed a new remix of “Love Sensation” from “Confessions II.”
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. “With MISTR, (CEO) Tristan (Schukraft) is expanding access to HIV prevention and sexual healthcare for everyone. Through this work, he’s helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”
Minogue in an Instagram post thanked Madonna, Price, Schukraft, and MISTR.
Madonna appeared at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., in April. Madonna in June celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York’s Times Square.
Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced the World Pride Music Festival that also featured Bebe Rexha and Paris Hilton, among others.
“Pride has always been about bringing our community together,” said Resnicow. “At a moment when too many people are being told to hide or make themselves smaller, gathering openly, joyfully, and without apology matters more than ever. I couldn’t be prouder of what this festival brought to life in Amsterdam — one dance floor, completely free.”
Theater
Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth
First five shows a reminder that ‘pressure is a privilege’
Madly talented and preternaturally energetic, Reggie D. White, 38, is about to launch his first season as artistic director of D.C.’s boundary-pushing Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
White brings a lot to the job. As actor, playwright, and director, his varied resume includes a 2019 Broadway acting debut in Matthew López’s Tony Award–winning play “The Inheritance,” his semi-autobiographic play “Fremont Ave.” that opened to acclaim last season at Arena Stage, and a number of exciting regional directing credits.
A longtime admirer of Woolly, the out theater-maker was selected from a pool of candidates before receiving the offer last November and starting work in January. His season of five world premieres kicks off with gay playwright Steve Yockey’s “Venus” (Sept. 9-Oct. 4), a darkly funny study of modern relationships told through two lesbians looking back on their first encounter.
White was introduced to Woolly Mammoth as a pre-law student at Cal State Hayward in the San Francisco Bay Area, long before he foresaw a life in the arts. “As part of a random theater history course, I was assigned to write a paper on a counterculture company called Woolly Mammoth,” he recalls “Strange name. I was like what the hell is that?”
Nineteen-year-old White was intrigued. Research acquainted him with Howard Shalwitz who co-founded Woolly in 1980, and the company’s commitment to living playwrights and new work. He also learned how theater could be used as a tool for difficult conversations and shape the way people thought about social issues by employing imagination and rigor.
“Never in a million years did young me envision that one day I’d be Woolly’s third artistic director in its 46-year history,” says White. “It’s kind of serendipitously insane.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Was there a moment when the enormity of the job hit you?
REGGIE D. WHITE: After I’d signed my contract and finished all the paperwork, I got my keys and sat in the theater by myself in the dark and thought about what an incredible honor it is to be trusted with what happens in this beautiful space [in D.C.’s Penn Quarter]. I might have cried. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember it’s real.
BLADE: Are you curating the upcoming 2026–2027 season?
WHITE: Yes, I am. It’s very rare that an incoming artistic director gets to program their first season, but I was lucky in terms of time. After being hired late last year, I asked Woolly’s managing director Kimberly E. Douglas, if she thought it would be crazy if I programmed the season. She warned me it would be hard.
I invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King’s maxim “pressure is a privilege” and got to work.
These plays [dubbed White’s “first five”] represent both the kind of theater that Woolly can do really well and speak directly to my voice as curator and how I want to contribute to the larger theatrical conversation in the DMV.
Getting here has meant a lot of late nights. But I knew the juice would be worth the squeeze.
BLADE: As a queer artistic director, what makes you unique?
WHITE: When I was playing in “Inheritance” on Broadway, after a performance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer came backstage to meet the cast. She spoke about how her lens on the world as a Puerto Rican woman shapes her decisions. Similarly, because I’m a queer Black man I see through a lens that shapes my work.
I know I’m not the only queer artistic director in town. For me, it influences how I make editorial decisions. Out of this season’s five plays there are explicitly queer characters in four [“Venus,” “Chanukkah Spectacular,” “Ten Grand,” and “Love I Awethu Further”] and I’m directing two [“Venus,” “Ten Grand”].
BLADE: Will we see familiar faces?
WHITE: Every show this season will feature a Woolly Mammoth company member in its cast. Our company also includes designers and directors who we’ll include. I’m invested in continuing to provide a showcase for their work.
BLADE: How do you think queer audiences will receive the season?
WHITE: Very well, I think. For queer people who’ve had to navigate the world subversively and solve problems in unique ways, I think it will be especially interesting. I find theater a potent place for questions.
Like all artistic directors. I’ll show up for the job in my own way. I’m just excited that I’ve been invited to bring the fullness of myself to the role.
PHOTOS: Petal Release Party
Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam
Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth
PHOTOS: Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade
Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade draws hundreds of thousands
BLADE ENDORSEMENT: Susan Stewart for mayor of Rehoboth Beach
PHOTOS: Lambda Legal in the Pines
Calendar: July 31-August 6
Taiwan’s government has failed to update process to change gender markers on ID documents
