Arts & Entertainment
Page turners of 2013
From contemporary fiction to the JFK assassination, the year’s best books
From contemporary fiction to the JFK assassination, the year’s best books of 2013. (Images courtesy of the publishers)
Nobody has time to read everything, even I. But I do read a lot and can help steer you in the right direction. These were some of my favorite 2013 books.
NON-FICTION
At the top of my list, “Pilgrim’s Progress” by Tom Kizzia starts out with a semi-confusing (but heart-poundingly brilliant) escape by two young women. You’re not sure who they’re running from, or why, but you find out soon enough that their father has sent them scurrying. You’ll also find out how one man set an Alaska community on edge and what happened to him and his very large family. The ending comes all too soon and it’s truly every bit as stellar as its beginning.
Like many people, I kind of went on a JFK-assassination streak of reading this year. There were certainly a lot of books out on the subject, but “Dallas 1963” by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis was my favorite. But that’s not why this book is on this list. It’s here because it answers the question, “Why Dallas?” and in answering, gives readers a good sense of the time and the country’s attitudes. We’re transported back 50 years in the telling of this story — politically, socially, morally and beyond. It’s one of those books you could read, then turn around and immediately read again.
It’s easy to think that “Twelve Years a Slave” by Solomon Northup is a novel. It’s easy to forget that you’re reading words from a man who lived some 150 years ago, that he really was sold into slavery, didn’t see his family for more than a decade, endured life as a wrongly held man. It’s easy to think it’s all fiction — until Northup’s words not-so-gently remind you that this book is all true. That shook me up many times and whether or not you’ve seen the movie, this is a don’t-miss book.
Adding “The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell” by William Klaber to this list is kind of cheating. That’s because this book is fictional, but is based closely on the true story of a woman who lived as a man in the 1850s. That was scandalous, to be sure, but what was even more scandalous to the pioneers that knew her was that she was able to survive a splashy court case and later, successfully married another woman. Written as a series of diary entries, this book includes action, adventure, jaw-dropping events and history that’ll blow your mind.
For some reason, I found “One Summer: America 1927” by Bill Bryson to be last year’s most relaxing read. Maybe it’s because Bryson meanders through a mere five months of one year in history. Maybe it’s because there’s no rush in this book; it just moves gently from one topic to another to another, telling this story and that one, page after page and before you know it, this brick of a book (528 pages) is over.
FICTION
I loved the premise of “Astray” by Emma Donoghue: take an object from the past, a picture, or an article of clothing and imagine what life was like for the owner of that object. This book is a series of short stories with that in mind, all of them evoking a quiet corner of existence on the periphery of the world. Some of the stories are shocking. Some are warm. Others will make you think, but you’ll like them all.
You will probably never see “Bait” by J. Kent Messum on any other list, and that’s too bad. This story of a group of drug addicted castaways on a sandy island will keep you turning the pages to the end, absolutely needing to find out what happens to them and why they wake up, craving heroin, on a saltwater beach. I don’t dare tell you any more. Just go read the book.
If the first chapter of “Goat Mountain” by David Vann doesn’t pull you in and make you want to keep reading, then you may need your pulse taken. Told from the point of view of an adult who’s obviously painfully grown-up, it’s the story of an 11-year-old boy and his first real hunting trip with the elders in his life. Suffice it to say that things don’t go so well. It was likely last year’s most unsettling psychological thriller.
“The Ocean at the End of the Lane” by Neil Gaiman is one of those dark, dark fairy tales of which Gaiman is so famous. It’s a novel of a man who somehow gets lost on his way home from a funeral and ends up on a side road near where he grew up. He starts to remember the little neighbor girl who promised to keep him safe forever.
But, of course, she couldn’t.
This is a misty kind of novel with just the right amount of creeposity. I can’t imagine not reading it.
“Orphan Train” by Christina Baker Kline is based on real events in American history, in which New York City orphans were shipped across the U.S. and Canada in search for new families. In this case, the tale is about an elderly woman who has a secret, and the juvenile delinquent girl who learns what it is.
In “The Storyteller” by Jodi Picoult, a loner befriends an elderly man who tells her about his past. It’s horrifying, but not nearly as horrifying as what he asks her to do.
These are two novels that will pull you in quick and keep you on your seat.
Celebrity News
D.C. goes gaga for Gaga
Bisexual icon brought ‘The Mayhem Ball’ tour to Washington this week
Lady Gaga this week took D.C. by storm.
The bisexual icon and LGBTQ rights champion brought “The Mayhem Ball” tour to Capital One Arena on Monday and Tuesday.
“Abracadabra,” “Paparazzi,” “Applause,” and “Bad Romance” are among the songs Lady Gaga performed during the 2 1/2-hour long concert. Lady Gaga also celebrated her many queer fans.
“You are precious to us,” she said on Tuesday night before she performed “Born This Way.”
Photos
PHOTOS: Capital Stonewall Democrats 50th anniversary
D.C. LGBTQ political group celebrates milestone at Pepco Edison Place Gallery
The Capital Stonewall Democrats held a 50th anniversary celebration at Pepco Edison Place Gallery on Friday. Rayceen Pendarvis served as the emcee.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Theater
‘Inherit the Wind’ isn’t about science vs. religion, but the right to think
Holly Twyford on new role and importance of listening to different opinions
‘Inherit the Wind’
Through April 5
Arena Stage
1101 Sixth St., S.W.
Tickets start at $73
Arenastage.org
When “Inherit the Wind” premiered on Broadway in 1955 with a cast of 50, its fictional setting of Hillsboro, an obscure country town described as the buckle on the Bible Belt, was filled with townspeople. And now at Arena Stage, director Ryan Guzzo Purcell has somehow crowded Arena’s large Fichandler space with just 10 actors, five principals and a delightful ensemble of five playing multiple roles.
Inspired by the real-life Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s fictionalized work pits intellectual freedom against McCarthyism via the imagined trial of Bertram Cates (Noah Plomgren), a Tennessee educator charged with teaching evolution. Drawn into the fracas are big shot lawyers, defense attorney Henry Drummond (Billy Eugene Jones), and conservative prosecutor, Matthew Harrison Brady (Dakin Matthew). On hand to cover the closely watched story is wisecracking city slicker and Baltimore reporter E.K. Horneck (played by nonbinary actor Alyssa Keegan).
Out actor Holly Twyford, a four-time Helen Hayes Award winner who has appeared in more than 80 Washington area plays, is part of the ensemble. In jeans and boots, she memorably plays Meeker, the bailiff at the Hillsboro courthouse and the jailer responsible for holding Cates in the days leading to his trial.
Twyford also plays Sillers, a slack jawed earnest employee at the local feed store who’s called to serve on the jury. And more importantly she plays Brady’s quietly strong wife Sarah whom he affectionately calls “Mother.”
When Twyford makes her memorable first entrance as Meeker, she’s wiping shaving cream from her face with a hand towel. With shades of Mayberry R.F.D., the jail is run casually. Meeker says Cates isn’t the criminal type, and he’s not.
“There’s a joke among actors,” says Twyford. “When an actor gets his shoes, they know who their character is. And it’s sort of true. When you put on boots, heels, or flip flops, there’s a different feeling, and you walk differently.”
Similarly, shares Twyford, it goes for clothes too: “When Mother slips a pink coat dress over her cowboy boots, dons a little hat and ties her scarf, or Meeker puts on his work shirt, I know where I am. And all of that is thanks to a remarkable wardrobe crew.
“Additionally, some of the ensemble characters are played broadly which is helpful to the actors and super identifying for the audience too.”
During intermission, an audience member loudly described the production as “a proper play” filled with beautifully written passages. And it’s true. Twyford agrees, adding “That’s all true, and it’s also been was fun for us to be a part of the Arena legacy as well. Arena took ‘Inherit the Wind’ to the Soviet Union in the early ‘70s when the respective governments did a cultural exchange. At the time, the iron curtain was very much in place, and they traveled with a play about a man with his own thoughts.”
When the ensemble was cast, actors didn’t know which tracts exactly they were going to play. “What came together was a cast, diverse in different ways. Some directors, including myself when I direct, are interested in assembling a cast that’s a good group. No time for egos. It’s more about who will make the best group to help me tell this story.”
At one point during rehearsal, ensemble members began to help one another with minor onstage costume changes, like jackets and hats: “We just started doing it and Ryan [Guzzo Purcell] picked up on it, saying things really began to come alive when we helped each other, so we went with that.”
“For me, it was reminiscent of ‘The Laramie Project’ [Ford’s Theatre in 2013] when we played five different parts and we’d help each other with a vest or jacket in a similar way. It worked so well then too,” says Twyford.
“Inherit the Wind” isn’t about science versus religion. It’s about the right to think, playwright Jerome Lawrrence has been quoted as saying. And it’s a quote that makes the play that much more relevant today.
Twford remembers a chat in a hair salon: “I was getting my hair cut and the woman next to me shared that she was tired of message plays. Understandably there are theater makers who believe that message plays are the point, while others think it’s all about entertainment. I feel like ‘Inherit the Wind’ sits in a nice place in the middle.”
She adds “the work is a creative way of showing different opinions and that, I think, is what we should be paying attention to right now. Clearly, it’s not right or wrong to express what you think.”
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‘Inherit the Wind’ isn’t about science vs. religion, but the right to think
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