Theater
Gender bending the boards
‘Hair,’ saints in drag, ‘Falsettsos’ and more among season’s wacky offerings
D.C.’s new fall theater season promises to be one of its better in terms of LGBT presence on stage and off. While a lot of local theatrical offerings veer more toward musical and/or cheery material this season, there is undoubtedly a wide range of shows to see. Here’s a sampling of what’s coming up.
In October, famed elderly British drag queen and gay rights activist Bette Bourne is bringing his solo act to the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater for three nights only (Oct. 28 to 30). Bourne’s celebrated “A Life in Three Acts” follows his post-war childhood to his experiences with a Notting Hill drag commune in the 1970s and his seminal role in the formation of the Gay Liberation Front in Britain, as well as his years with the world-famous BLOOLIPS gay theater company.
Other enticing scheduled offerings at the Kennedy Center include the national tour of Broadway’s first great rock musical “Hair” (Oct. 26 to Nov. 21) and the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical “South Pacific” (Dec. 14 to Jan. 16) for a holiday engagement in the Opera House.
There’s a lot to lure Blade readers to Signature Theatre in convenient Shirlington Village this fall. Currently playing is rock musical “Chess” (through Oct. 3), a Cold War love story set against the very intense international chess circuit. Marvelously reworked and staged by the Signature’s gay artistic director Eric Schaeffer, “Chess” features a top notch cast including talented Broadway regulars Jill Paice, Jeremy Kushnier and actor Euan Morton (best known for playing Boy George in “Taboo”).
Other imminent Signature productions include Ken Ludwig’s new comedy “A Fox on the Fairway” (Oct. 12 to Nov. 14). A tribute to the great English farces of the 1930s and ’40s, the madcap romp is set to be directed by John Rando ands stars the very talented (and gay) Holly Twyford. In “Walter Cronkite is Dead” (Oct. 26 to Dec. 19) by gay playwright Joe Calarco, two very different women (played by Helen Hayes-winning favorites Nancy Robinette and Sherri L. Edelen) find themselves sharing a table in an airport. Representing two sides of the culture wars – one red state, the other blue state – they reluctantly open up and ultimately find common ground. Calarco also directs. And in December, Schaeffer directs Broadway vet Florence Lacey as Norma Desmond in Signature’s hotly anticipated take on the musical “Sunset Boulevard” (Dec. 7 to Feb. 13).
The Washington Shakespeare Company (WSC) opens its season with “By Any Other Name: an Evening of Shakespeare in Klingon,” starring gay actor George Takai, best known as Mr. Sulu from “Star Trek.” This fun-filled production includes performances of well-known Shakespearean scenes in both English and Klingon, the language spoken by the fictional warrior race in the sci-fi cult favorite. The special one-night even (Sept. 25) takes place at the Rosslyn Spectrum in Arlington.
After finally leaving its funky warehouse location on Clark Street, WSC is set to christen its new home at Arts Space for Everyone (ASE) in Rosslyn with a futuristic production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” (Oct. 21 to Dec. 12). Tackling the play’s ruthless title hunchback is company veteran Frank Britton, 31.
“When I first heard that WSC was mounting ‘Richard III,’ I set my sights on playing Richard’s ill-fated brother Clarence. I’m a character actor who typically plays supporting roles and I’m fine with that,” says Britton who’s bisexual. “So when [co-directors and life partners Christopher Henley and Jay Hardee] offered me the lead it felt too good to be true. And because there are not a lot of opportunities for African-American actors to play Richard, I’m especially excited and grateful.”
For fall, Factory 449: a Theatre Collective is presenting a world premiere production of Eric Ehn’s “The Saint Plays,” an intriguing six-part work that, according to collective member and the play’s director John Moletress, “takes Roman Catholic saints and smashes them into a contemporary narrative.”
At just a little over a year old, the company — whose name references Warhol’s factory and the date the group was established – is still finding its aesthetic. Like the collective’s successful premier production “4.48 Psychosis,” “The Saint Plays” will incorporate film and video elements. Also like its predecessor, this production isn’t very long — while individual parts run from six to 31 minutes, the entire play clocks in at about two hours.
One segment dealing with one of the more commonly known subjects – Saint Joan — places the Maid of Orleans (played by Zehra Fazal) in an undetermined country wracked by civil war.
“I’m interested in the gender issues surrounding Joan,” says Moletress who’s gay. “When she died her charred naked body was paraded to prove that she was actually a woman and hence had no real power to begin with. For me, it ties in with DADT and how in order to serve some soldiers must hide certain aspects of themselves.
“Typically the church doesn’t like to talk about sexuality and gender,” Moletess says. “Part of what is so great about Ehn’s plays is how they travel through time and address these issues.”
Following on the heels of last season’s success, “Naked Boys Singing,” Ganymede Arts is anchoring its fall arts festival with another musical — William Finn and James Lapine’s “Falsettos” (tonight through Oct. 10). The story of Marvin, a gay New Yorker who grapples with his ex-wife, young son and gravely ill lover Whizzer, “Falsettos” is a musical comedy about life, loss and love.
Sometimes termed an AIDS play, the Tony Award-winning musical is more than that, says Jeffrey Johnson, Ganymede’s gay artistic director who is both staging and playing Marvin in the production.
“This is the story of the universal struggle that draws people close and defines what a family is. Yes, the characters are brought together by someone dying from AIDS, but any other tragedy could have been the catalyst.”
Ganymede’s latest venue is the affectionately named “Noi’s Nook,” an improvised theater located in the back of “Go Mama Go!” a 14th Street corridor gift shop formerly run by the company’s late and great patron Noi Chudnoff. The intimacy of the space and the fact that a lot of Finn’s songs are kept alive by cabaret singers has inspired Johnson to strip away scene changes and focus on the telling of the story.
“Falsettos sticks with Ganymede’s mission of telling the LGBT story,” Johnson says. “It’s not some 42nd Street, hyped up, toe-tapping good time. It’s an entertaining musical about real issues.”
At Woolly Mammoth, Sarah Ruhl’s funny and poignant take on turn-of-the-century hysteria treatments, “In the Next Room or the vibrator play” runs through Oct. 3. Gay actor Sarah Marshall is featured.
Also this fall, the Studio Theatre presents “Superior Donuts” (opening Nov. 10) from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts (“August: Osage County”). The comedy follows the unlikely friendship between a cranky white Chicago shop owner and an ambitious black teenager with a secret. Studio’s talented gay associate producing artistic director Serge Seiden directs.
Shakespeare Theatre Company is kicking off its season with “All’s Well That Ends Well”” (Sept. 7 through Oct. 24) staged by the company’s now legendary gay artistic director Michael Kahn. Set just prior to World War I, the production features Tony Roach as Bertram and Marsha Mason as the Countess of Rossillion. For readers under 40, Mason was a big movie star in the 1970s.
Alexandria’s MetroStage opens its season with the world premiere of “Glimpses of the Moon” (Sept. 8 through Oct. 17), a Jazz Age musical based on an Edith Wharton novel. Helmed by David Marquez, a gay New York-based director/choreographer, the production features a fabulous cast including Natascia Diaz, Lauren Williams and Sam Ludwig.
Next month, Arena Stage inaugurates its superbly renovated waterfront campus with a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic “Oklahoma!” (Oct. 22 through Dec. 26). Arena’s artistic director, Molly Smith, stages a truly diverse cast in the fabled show that defined the modern American musical. The production features local favorite E. Faye Butler as Aunt Eller, and hot gay New York-based actor Nicholas Rodriguez as Curly.
Theater
‘Suffs’ an entertaining chronicle of battle to pass 19th Amendment
Tony-winning musical highlights trailblazing women’s rights activists
‘Suffs’
June 16 – 28
National Theatre
1321 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
$115 and up
Broadwayatthenational.com
Poised to kick off a two-week run at D.C.’s National Theatre (June 16-28), “Suffs,” the Tony Award-winning musical written by Shaina Taub, promises an entertaining chronicle of what was the arduous political battle to pass the 19th Amendment.
Far from a dry look backward, Taub’s dramedy brings to life a high stakes world inhabited by historical trailblazing women’s rights activists like Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt and Catt’s lifetime partner, Mollie Garrett. It manages to be upbeat without neglecting the grim bits including incarcerations and forced feedings.
Out actor Gwynne Wood plays suffragist Lucy Burns. As Alica Paul’s old college friend and fellow organizer of the 1913 march on Washington, Wood’s Lucy brings comforting humor and razor wit.
In real life, Wood, a Boston Conservatory grad, is married to lighting designer Anna Brevetti. They met in 2023 while working on the tour of “1776” (Wood played Founding Father George Read) and were instantly smitten.
In true theater fashion, they became engaged while on tour in San Francisco and tied the knot this past March in Boston on a day off from “Suffs.” The entire cast was invited to the wedding.
“The craziest thing about touring and being newly married is that you’re away from the person you most want to be with. But I do love touring (with long-haired chihuahua Gemma for company), and I love doing this show.
“During my long-distance courtship with Anna, we felt so good, seen and appreciated; we didn’t want to let that go just because I’m on the road.”
As of now, Wood is booked with “Suffs” through Aug. 9, and then it’s home to Bushwick, Brooklyn to enjoy married life.
BLADE: You’ve expressed a close connection to your character Lucy Burns.
WOOD: I was an ensemble member of the “Suffs” pre-Broadway workshop, and even then, the role of Lucy (played on Broadway by Ally Bonino) resonated.
Lucy is that friend who we all want to be and have. She’s very funny. She’ll hold you accountable but will still give support. She’s the one who brings cupcakes to the sleepover.
She also has a poignant second act ballad aptly titled, “Lucy’s Song. In it, Lucy talks about the importance of her long friendship with Alice Paul, while also officially retiring from activism. Basically, she’s saying “girl, I’m tired.”
BLADE: What about “Suffs” is especially meaningful for a queer actor?
WOOD: There’s so much about it that’s GREAT for a queer actor. I love learning about queer suffragists who were at the front of societal change. They were fighting this fight while having to deal with internal stuff like feeling marginalized, some were experiencing gender fluidity and transness. There’s documented evidence of all these things.
For a lot of lesbians in particular who felt out of place in heteronormative society, the suffragist movement was a place where they felt comfortable, a place where they were not told what to do by men.
BLADE: What was your introduction to musical theater?
WOOD: Growing up in Waynesboro, Va., Mom put me in community theater at ShenenArts in nearby Staunton. My first part was a salt shaker in “Beauty in the Beast.” My sister was the pepper shaker. We were two little tiny redheads waddling out like penguins. I was obsessed.
BLADE: Was Lucy Burns queer?
WOOD: There’s no evidence that Lucy was queer. Unlike fellow prominent suffragists [Carrie Chapman and Mollie Garrett] who were buried side by side, Lucy isn’t known for being in a romantic relationship.
I don’t know if Lucy and Alice were a couple, and I don’t want to rewrite a story that I don’t know. But I can say there is a lot of love from Lucy to Alice. That said, “Suffs” is undeniably intertwined with queerness.
BLADE: Can you see yourself as having been a suffragist?
WOOD: I’d love to say yes. It takes a lot, but I hope that I could have done it. People before us have done it, and people after will probably have to do it too.”
Theater
Timothy Nelson on the premiere of his opera ‘Song of Sakuntala’
Story of love, loss, redemption unfolds amid Indian classical music
‘The Song of Sakuntala’
IN Series
In Washington and Baltimore
Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St., N.E.
(Selected dates June 6-14)
Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., Baltimore
(June 19-21)
$25-35
Inseries.org
As the artistic director of IN Series, Timothy Nelson rarely blows his own horn, but for the world premiere of his own opera “The Song of Sakuntala,” he’ll make an exception.
During a recent interview squeezed in between afternoon and evenings rehearsals, Nelson took time to talk about his opera (while nearby his “blessing of a husband” prepared a giant dinner for the entire cast and crew).
As smart and gracious as ever, Nelson explains that he wrote the opera a decade ago at a low point in his life: He was divorcing and wanted to immerse himself into something musical, all-consuming, a project tantamount to writing a thick novel.
At the time, Nelson’s mentor, the influential American stage and opera director Peter Sellers, pushed him to write again. Nelson recalls, “I hadn’t composed for some time. I wanted to see if I could do it, and I wanted to revisit Indian classical music.”
He adds, “There was never any anticipation of it being produced. It was a way of processing and dealing with life in a healthy way.”
Adapted from Kālidāsa’s 5th-century dramatic masterpiece, “The Song of Sakuntala” brings together Western baroque and Indian classical musical traditions into a story of “love, loss, memory, and redemption.” His libretto, a reflection of South Asian storytelling, includes the words of the great Indian poets Tagore, Naidu, and Vidyapati.
The story follows “a prince and a woman of the forest who fall in love and wed in secret. He departs, and she later seeks him out, only to have him deny all recognition of her. She disappears in sorrow; he spends the rest of his life searching. At the end, in the same forest where they first met, they find each other again and are transfigured.”
At 90 minutes, the uninterrupted piece features three singers (Aryssa Leigh Burrs, Teresa Ferrara, Marvin Wayne Allen) accompanied by an instrumental ensemble led by acclaimed sitarist Rajib Karmakar, who specializes in bridging Indian and Western classical traditions, and conducted by Nelson who also joins the music making on drone and harmonium.
Burrs plays the prince. Originally written for a countertenor, Nelson imagined a man singing the role but ultimately cast a woman to play the part.
Because the piece is “fiendishly difficult in almost unnecessary ways,” Nelson explains with a wicked chuckle, he knew that Burrs had the talent and sharp brain required for the role.
The prince is cruel without explanation. Despite that, 40-something Nelson admits to relating to the opera’s prince: “In midlife, you reflect on your mistakes. At least for now that’s how I feel. I might have felt different earlier and it could change later on.”
Nelson lived in India for nine months, backpacking and studying in different places, absorbing different musical styles and playing pieces as varied and complex as any Western music.
And while based in D.C., IN Series performs in both Washington and Baltimore using various borrowed venues. “The Song of Sakuntala” is playing at both the Atlas Performing Center in D.C. (6/6-6/14) and Baltimore’s beloved Baltimore Theatre Project (6/19-6/21) with its terrific acoustics.
In a past conversation, Nelson who lives in Adams Morgan, shared that all audiences bring something specific to the table. Baltimore tends to attract more risk taking while D.C. audiences often lean into the intellectual side of what the company does.
At the helm of IN Series for eight years, Nelson has relished reimagining opera and musical theater, but only recently did he decide to program his latest work. The way in which “The Song of Sakuntala” blends Western and non-Western music is very much a part of the IN Series music brand, so it seemed the perfect selection to close the season.
“I do this humbly with great hesitancy. And I know it feels a little unseemly to cheer on your own work, but I will say, it’s a piece that is successful in sitting in both places (Western and South Asia) and the Indian musicians on board are responding to it.”
Theater
Cedric Neal on his juicy narrator role in ‘Pippin’
A rash of terrific reviews for a part he’s longed to play
‘Pippin’
Through July 26
Signature Theatre
4200 Campbell Ave.
Arlington, Va.
$47-$153
Sigtheatre.org
As Leading Player in Signature Theatre’s revival of “Pippin,” Cedric Neal portrays the manipulative narrator who guides the title character, a young medieval prince, on a quest for meaning. Neal is also receiving a rash of terrific reviews for a part he’s longed to play for some time.
Recently, after the first “Pippin” preview performance, Neal shared his thoughts. “Last night was exciting, mystic and exotic. It was magical. Words are overused, but it was all those things.”
With a powerful, rich tenor voice, Neal is best known as a charismatic West End and Broadway star (“Back to the Future,” “Hadestown,” “Guys & Dolls”) as well as for his memorable semifinalist win on the “The Voice UK” in 2019.
And now Stephen Shwartz’s “Pippin” marks Neal’s second show at Signature Theatre, a place he dearly loves. His first was as Jimmy Early in “Dreamgirls” in 2012, a raucous role that won him a Helen Hayes Award. During that production, Neal forged deep friendships with actor Nova Y. Payton and director Matthew Gardiner. What’s more, while rehearsing the show, he met his husband.
“He likes to say we met on Match.com but I remember it differently,” says Neal. “It was something called Adam4Adam. It might have been a hookup, but instead we met for coffee in Shirlington Village where we talked and talked for hours. Two years later we married.”
BLADE: Your triumphant return to town sounds pretty great.
NEAL: I’m having the time of my life. Takes me a half hour to come down after the show ends. It’s explosive.
BLADE: Is Leading Player a part you’ve wanted to do?
NEAL: Very much, and just this way. Rather than leaning on its circus troupe aspect, our director Matthew [Gardiner] explores the darkness of the story and the risk of falling prey to cultish ideology.
BLADE: Just how nefarious is Leading Player?
NEAL: I’m not judging my character. I believe at some point that Leading Player has good intentions. Somewhere along the line, ego becomes involved. The promise becomes warped.
BLADE: When doing “Pippin,” is it possible to separate the iconic Bob Fosse choreography and Ben Vereens’s sexy portrayal of Leading Player from the original production?
NEAL: Not entirely, but in our production Matthew [Gardiner] and Rachel Leigh Dolan have meticulously honored the choreography and storytelling of Fosse’s work without it being a carbon copy. I think it’s amazing.
BLADE: Was your participation in the “The Voice UK” a strategic career move?
NEAL: It was. At the time, I had just gotten a BIG NO on a West End show where the casting director told me the part should have been mine but using a then-unknown American would have created an uproar.
Then when “Voice UK” scouted me, my agent said this would be the perfect opportunity to boost my profile. Ultimately, I was given a global scale opportunity to go onstage and sing as Cedric.
BLADE: Your thrilling, original rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” made the audience and judges like Jennifer Holliday and Sir Tom Jones just go crazy (in a good way). In musical theater, do you make beloved, well-known songs like “Join Us” and “Glory” in “Pippin,” your own in that same way?
NEAL: I couldn’t always, but I can now. When I talk to younger performers, I tell them about the song in “Gypsy” where the experienced strippers talk about getting a gimmick if you want to be a star.
I come from a gospel, R&B, and serious classical background and have always retained my gospel, soulful flair on things. When I entered the world of musical theater, I’d put my twist on a song and the musical director would ask that I tone it down.
Ten years into my career, I became known for putting my flair on musicals, and that became my gimmick. To “Cedricfy” a song is a legitimate term in musical theater. And you’ll see me bring that to “Pippin.”
BLADE: Reading about you, it seems you’ve made bold choices and surround yourself with supportive friends and family, blood and chosen.
NEAL: Yes, and it’s not an accident. I come from a bloodline of revolutionaries and pioneers whose shoulders I stand on. My ancestors are all fighters and refuse to let their fight be in vain. Also, I will always step up to the plate and represent all the marginalized communities that I’m a part of: Black, gay, biracial relationships, liberals.
BLADE: Are you and your husband still living in the windmill?
NEAL: We left the windmill but we’re still in the U.K. Try to imagine our story: A Black boy from the hood in Dallas, Texas, meets a fifth-generation cattle rancher from Alberta, Canada, and they move to the UK, adopt a labradoodle, and live in an actual windmill. Isn’t that the gayest shit you’ve ever heard?
BLADE: It’s like a fairytale.
NEAL: It was. It still is.
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