First you see it. The hands. The jazz hands. Fingers spread wide and pivoting quickly from left to right. A bit of moonwalk (a famous Fosse move before Michael Jackson came along) and the swaying of the arms behind the back with fingers again outstretched – another of famed choreographer Bob Fosse’s signature moves. Bodies slither across the floor. Face down. Belly up. Long before “The Worm” came along. Gangsters. Conmen. Jailbirds. It’s Chicago. It debuted on Broadway in 1975 and has toured the world since then.
Then you hear it. The sound of the Roaring ‘20’s. Opening with the number “All That Jazz” and a ton of dancers, the razzamatazz never stops. Not even in the murder scenes, the women’s prison and the love songs. It’s just flat out visceral.
In this latest revival of composer and lyricist Kander and Ebb’s smash hit supersonic popstar and Grammy Award-winning singer, Brandy Norwood, stars in the role of Roxie, the cheating wife and boyfriend murderer, and, amazingly, she can dance – right along with all the other seasoned hoofers. She can sing of course, albeit softer than you’d have expected, putting her own soul music spin on the end of each line. The audience is digging it. They’ve come for her and she doesn’t disappoint.
The plot isn’t much to write about in Chicago it’s just the vehicle for the music and dance. And there’s a ton of dancing by long legged, hard body dancers in sexy, black lingerie. There’s only one set – the prison (later doubling as a courtroom) where Velma Kelly (I saw it with the terrific Lauren Gemelli who subbed for Terra C. MacLeod, another Broadway company veteran) and Roxie play out their rivalry as two vaudevillian murderesses whose slick-as-a-brick lawyer, the movie star handsome, Billy (Brent Barrett), flimflams the jury with a sob story to spare them the death penalty. Barrett is terrific in the soft shoe number “Razzle Dazzle”.
With the orchestra on stage throughout, Roz Ryan plays Matron “Mama” Morton with a voice as deep and strong as blues legend Big Mama Thornton’s. In this jail Mama takes care of her girls and her girls take care of her, handing over cash for prison favors. In her show-stopping solo “When You’re Good to Mama”, and later in the duet “Class” with Velma, she really shines.
Roxie’s cuckolded spouse, Amos Hart, is played admirably by Paul Vogt, who played the role on Broadway. His rendition of the iconic tune “Cellophane Man” about a man so ignored he is transparent to everyone, is a classic – and so is the show.
Through April 16th at the Kennedy Center, 2700 F St., NW, Washington, DC. For tickets and information call 202 467-4600 or visit www.Kennedy-Center.org.
Lizan Mitchell as Lena Younger. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Smack dab in the middle of the civil rights era, African-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play “A Raisin in the Sun” premiered on Broadway and it’s just as relevant today as it was in 1959. This sensitive, often humorous, and searing drama based on African-American life in Chicago’s Southside ghetto still resonates, though today’s real world challenges may read differently. As Lena (Lizan Mitchell), the matriarch of the family, tells her son Walter, “It used to be about freedom.”
(L to R) Dawn Ursula as Ruth Younger and Will Cobbs as Walter Lee Younger. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Walter (Will Cobb) is a 35-year old man trying to find his place in a white man’s world that offers little hope of his success. His sister Beneatha (Joy Jones) is a radical feminist and pre-med student whose idea of defining her culture is to deny her American heritage and embrace her African roots guided by her adoring suitor, Joseph Asagai (Bueka Uwemedimo) a Nigerian transplant. His wife Ruth (Dawn Ursula) is a loving wife and supportive mother to their boy, Travis (Jeremiah Hasty), and together with Lena they live in a modest apartment carving out a respectable existence on their meager salaries while toiling in service to wealthy whites.
(L to R) Bueka Uwemedimo as Joseph Asagai and Joy Jones as Beneatha Younger. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Hansberry was ahead of her time, looping in issues of feminism with Ruth’s dilemma of whether to have an abortion to avoid the expense of another child, Walter’s disapproval of Beneatha’s desire to be in a man’s job, Beneatha’s desire to be a free spirit in a strict religious household, and Lena’s position as moral leader of the family.
(L to R) Will Cobbs as Walter Lee Younger, Joy Jones as Beneatha Younger and Dawn Ursula as Ruth Younger. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Taken from the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes, the title is a metaphor for the family’s dashed dreams – the slow withering of hope. As Walter says, after he has squandered the insurance money Lena’s late husband left them to pursue a better life, “I didn’t make this world. It was given to me.”
(L to R) Will Cobbs as Walter Lee Younger and Dawn Ursula as Ruth Younger. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Director Tazewell Thompson guides a brilliantly interlocked cast to powerful performances – most especially from Mitchell who is the centerpiece of the play. Her gestures and facial expressions are both economical and meaningful and her delivery is pure magic reflecting a time when Southern gentility could dominate with an iron hand in a velvet glove.
Donald Eastman’s 1940’s one room kitchen/dining/living room set in the round frame the humor, tough love and inspiration that take the family on a journey from poverty to the promised land.
Highly recommended.
Through May 7th at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., SE, Washington, DC 20024. For tickets and information visit www.ArenaStage.org or call 202 488-3300.
Morgan Keene (Stina) with Jp Sisneros, Evan Casey, Chris Sizemore and Stephen Gregory Smith (Hired Boys). Photo by Margot Schulman
Midwestern Gothic is an unexpected palate cleanser – a sharp-as-knives psychological thriller reminiscent of Fargo – the Coen Brothers brilliant cinematic drama of crime and revenge in America’s heartland.
In this twisted tale of jealousy, seduction and sexual domination, our focus falls on Stina (Morgan Keene), a honey blonde nymphette whose movie star dreams of James Dean and Natalie Wood lay far beyond the farmhouse she shares with her lascivious stepfather, Red (Timothy J. Alex) and four hired hands who form a harmonious Greek chorus of unfulfilled desire. But this creamy-thighed siren has set her sights on Anderson (Sam Ludwig), a love-struck greenhorn who does her bidding – some of which involves neighborhood thieving, putting him squarely at odds with Sheriff Dwayne (Bobby Smith) who urges him to walk the “Straight and Narrow”.
Timothy J Alex (Red) and Rachel Zampelli (LuAnn) . Photo by Margot Schulman.
Meanwhile Stina’s mother, Deb (Sherri L. Edelen), runs a shot-and-beer bar where she finds the attention she has been missing from Red. In the number “Whiskey Courage” she works her boozy magic on Rodney (Evan Casey) spiking Red’s anger. To get revenge he runs off with the town tramp, LuAnn (Rachel Zampelli), to put a hurtin’, as they say, on Deb. But his revenge is not so sweet after all when Stina catches them back at the house in flagrante delicto.
Writer and Co-Lyricist Royce Vavrek and Composer Josh Schmidt set a complex balance in this World Premiere production adding quaint references to curling, cows, rednecks and Jesus while splicing in Stina’s dizzyingly cruel imagination and her powers of emasculation.
Sherri L Edelen (Deb) and Timothy J Alex (Red). Photo by Margot Schulman.
Keene, using a haunting flat-accented vibrato voice, is wonderfully cast as the beautiful and voracious sex kitten who lures, then punishes, every man within her small sphere. A supporting cast, cleverly directed and choreographed under Matthew Gardiner, fairly flies through seventeen musical numbers encompassing a range of emotions, from Stina’s love song to a spring flower in “Tell Me a Story, Crocus” to “Saint Sebastian” with Stina, Anderson and the burly hired hands (Evan Casey as Rodney, Jp Sisneros as Evodio, Chris Sizemore as DJ and Stephen Gregory Smith as Brett), in a song that backgrounds a bizarre scene of crucifixion.
Timothy J Alex (Red), Sam Ludwig (Anderson) and Bobby Smith (Dwayne). Photo by Margot Schulman.
As the latest installment in Signature’s American Musical Voices Project, the musical is spellbindingly dark, think Truman Capote’s classic “In Cold Blood” and Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita”, and yet utterly riveting. An audience member likened it to TV’s Criminal Minds.
Highly recommended for adults only.
Through April 30th at Signature Theatre (Shirlington Village), 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, VA 22206. For tickets and information call 703 820-9771 or visit www.sigtheatre.org
In director Roger Sherman’s latest documentary In Search of Israeli Cuisine (Menemsha Films) we learn there’s a lot more to Israel’s culinary culture than just milk and honey. Our guide is the James Beard Award-winning chef Michael Solomonov who leads us on a journey throughout Israel from an obscure mountaintop restaurant and a city-centric restaurant where Palestinian cooks work the line beside Jewish cooks to seaside cafés, where dozens of varieties of fish are found in vast outdoor markets, to discover the “true” Israeli cuisine through its people.
Roger Sherman – Producer/Writer/Director founder of Florentine Films
Best known for his two Philadelphia restaurants, Zahav and its sister restaurant, Abe Fisher, where he expresses his passion for modern Jewish cooking, the young Israeli chef shows us it’s about more than hummus or falafel and deeper than kugel or chopped liver. The film gets at the root of a culture and its history through its cooks – both amateur and professional – revealing the complexity of a country whose traditions and customs have deep roots, many which descend from outside its borders.
Chef Michael Solomonov – James Beard Award Winner and owner of Zahav
We learn that Israel’s cuisine is informed by dozens of other countries and traditions over centuries of immigration – Jewish, Turkish, Arab, Muslim, Spanish, Mediterranean, Moroccan, Indian, Bulgarian, Christian, Syrian, Lebanese – in a mosaic of 150 different cuisines. The documentary is a love story of sorts – one of the self-determination of immigrants, the rejection of the old ways by Jewish newcomers and the culinary influence of those who reached its shores with their grandmother’s recipes. It is told primarily by chefs and local journalists – and it’s as much a tribute as it is a learning curve. We learn that “Food is not political,” and “Food makes peace.” May it be so.
Solomonov purchasing fresh local ingredients
Solomonov takes us into the hills to Rama’s Kitchen, a French-inspired restaurant that forages for sumac to flavor its dishes and sources all its ingredients locally, before traveling north to listen to chef Uri Geremias of Uri Buri in his restaurant by the sea. And there’s a tender segment in the simple home kitchen of a woman preparing the sacred Sabbath meal for her extended family. Noted Jewish-American chef and cookbook author, Joan Nathan, weighs in with her extensive knowledge about the changes in Jewish society where 80% of its citizens are non-religious.
Solomonov visiting country farm ingredients source.
To understand the inspiration for many of these chefs as well as Israel’s home cooks, Ezra Kedem of Arcadia Restaurant in Jerusalem clarifies, “I cook my memories.” From Moshe Dayan’s hybridization of the cherry tomato to the sophisticated irrigation system of stepped dams that water fruit trees, vineyards and olive groves, their gifts to our kitchens are endless.
Running time two hours.
The film will be released in the Washington, DC area this Friday, April 21st at Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema. For more information please visit https://www.landmarktheatres.com/washington-d-c/bethesda-row-cinema/film-info/in-search-of-israeli-cuisine
Accompanied by a phalanx of golden shield-carrying gladiators, The Goddess of Pop strode onstage last night in a massive afro and shimmering turquoise and silver ensemble that exposed one singular, very buff, perfectly rounded butt cheek. Seventy is the new twenty, if it’s Cher we’re talking about. Glamorous, fit and fierce, she seized the night with style and purpose, opening to deafening cheers with, “This Is a Woman’s World”.
A two-tiered Moroccan palace with central dome served as backdrop for a myriad of cultural themes as Cher took her fans through an intimate tour of her life before during and after the Sonny Bono years in her latest show, CLASSIC CHER. Projected above the stage were vintage videos of her childhood interspersed with film clips from her movies and bits from her three CBS variety shows – TheSonny & Cher Comedy Hour, Cher and the short-lived The Sonny & Cher Show. For fans of the raven-haired beauty this was solid gold. (Sony’s Get.TV runs the shows on Monday nights)
Just as riveting were snapshots of the clothes she wore – the bejeweled Bob Mackie gowns, the Op Art Mary Quant miniskirts and white go-go boots of the mid-60’s, the tie-dyed shirts and bell-bottoms of the psychedelic era – that brought back memories of Cher’s major influence on the pop fashion scene. There was no mistaking that this show was as much about her spectacular wardrobe as her Grammy-winning pop songs, as she took us through the history of the music, costumes and wigs from the mid 1960’s and throughout the history of her meteoric career.
As the pop diva regaled fans with personal stories about her life and times both on stage and off, she sang duets with Sonny on video of some of their most fondly remembered songs – “The Beat Goes On”, the 1965 hit “All I Really Want to Do” and “I Got You Babe”, the closing number in the pair’s first show and a song she’s been reluctant to sing in the past, fearful she’d break down in tears.
Surrounded by nine dancers, some doubling as acrobats perched high above the stage, Cher made as many as ten costume changes to dovetail with her greatest hits. There were grass-skirted African dancers, a burlesque scene from a Berlin cabaret, Cher in hot pink veils a la Scheherazade, a life-size faux elephant that emerged for the circus-themed “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”, and of course, the full-feathered Indian headdress that she wore for the 1973 song, “Half-Breed” which was only her second US solo number.
Between snippets of songs, laser lights, Pop Art graphics and video footage, the Oscar-winning actress told of her musical influences – Tito Puente, Hank Williams and ultimately Elvis who above all inspired her to take risks. And isn’t that what this show is all about. Cher, backed by five musicians, proving that the beat does indeed still go on.
Cher performed on March 20, 2017, at The Theater at MGM Grand National Harbor – 101 MGM National Ave, in Oxon Hill, MD.
Remaining performances are on March 23, 25, and 26, 2017, and she returns on August 31, 2017 and on September 2, 3, 7, 9, and 10, 2017. For tickets and information visit their website.
Cast of the musical “Ragtime” at Ford’s Theatre, directed by Peter Flynn. Photo by Carol Rosegg
The Ford’s Theatre Society delivers a heart-meltingly tender Ragtime by gifting the audience with twenty-seven extraordinarily talented performers in this portrait of intersecting American lives. Taken from E. L. Doctorow’s eponymous novel we become willingly immersed in a sweeping 20th century saga of three distinct elements of American society – Black America, on the rise as a strong middle class in Northern cities; middle and upper class White Americans; and Jewish and Irish immigrants bent on hard work and rapid assimilation in their new found country. Director Peter Flynn masterfully takes the reins of this award-winning Broadway lollapalooza that pairs Terrence McNally’s book with Lynn Ahrens’ emotionally stirring lyrics and Stephen Flaherty’s indelible music. A drop dead amazing cast takes us the rest of the way.
In this period of America’s rapid advance, the country was forced to confront the underlying causes of racism and an unprecedented influx of immigrants. Ragtime brings us face to face with the headliners of the day – Emma Goldman (Rayanne Gonzales) an early labor reformer and union organizer; financier J.P. Morgan (Christopher Bloch); Harry Houdini (Christopher Mueller) the Jewish immigrant who became the world’s most famous magician; and Evelyn Nesbitt, the great beauty who carved out her vaudeville career on a velvet swing while paramour to millionaire architect Stanford White (Elan Zafir). It also introduces us to the fictional character of Tateh (Jonathan Atkinson), a first-generation Jewish immigrant and silhouette maker and his little girl (Dulcie Pham).
DulciePham and Jonathan Atkinson in the Ford’s Theatre production of “Ragtime,” directed by Peter Flynn. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
It harkens back to a period that both blossomed and suffered under the rapidly changing landscape of industrialization and growing civil unrest, when Ragtime music was sweeping the country and Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (Kevin McAllister), a fictional version of Scott Joplin, was creating a new sound that crossed over into White high society. Booker T. Washington (Jefferson A. Russell) the great African-American orator and Presidential advisor guided and inspired Black Americans and Henry Ford (John Leslie Wolfe) hired them. In Doctorow’s sweeping saga ordinary people become extraordinary people as their lives intersect and their humanity is tested.
A very proper Victorian family of Father (James Konicek) and Mother (Tracy Lynn Olivera) live with their Little Boy (Henry Baratz). While Father is off on a polar expedition Mother discovers a Black newborn abandoned in her garden and goes about finding the boy’s mother. “I never thought they had lives besides our lives,” she confesses while searching for the baby’s mother. When at last she finds Sarah (Nova Y. Payton), she offers her the comfort of their home – allowing her humanity to overtake her Victorian rigidity.
Tracy Lynn Olivera, Henry Baratz, Dulcie Pham and Jonathan Atkinson in the Ford’s Theatre production of “Ragtime,” directed by Peter Flynn. Photo by Carol Rosegg
Scenic designer Milagros Ponce de Leon gives us three levels of verdigris wrought iron staircases on which the cast can be highlighted for their separate numbers while on stage throughout the show. The orchestra remains in full view on the central level, remaining an integral part of every scene. The blending of the human form on stage comes from Choreographer Michael Bobbit. In one particular scene the characters perform a ragtime dance, until they realize they are dancing with someone of another race and promptly change partners.
Kevin McAllister and Nova Y. Payton in the Ford’s Theatre production of “Ragtime,” directed by Peter Flynn. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Twenty-eight songs come at you with such passion and such emotion, I had goosebumps more times than I could count as the ensemble acted out a poignant story of hope, redemption, human rights and justice.
Highly recommended. Grab your tickets now!
Through May 20th at Ford’s Theatre, 511 Tenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004. For tickets and information visit www.fords.org or call 202 347-4833.
