Beethoven Comes to Washington

Imagine – that we could watch as Beethoven composed the Diabelli Variations, one of the most intricate and expansive works ever written for piano. Now imagine a modern musicologist on the trail of the story behind that composition. Throw in a love affair, a fatal illness, and an on-stage pianist supplying the soundtrack to the story – and you have 33 Variations, a new play written and directed by Moisés Kaufman, best known for directing the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play I Am My Own Wife on Broadway and helping to bring The Laramie Project to the stage.

33 Variations opened last night at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in its world premiere performance. The elements are assembled with love, but for a show that appears so original in its premise, parts of the play seem over-familiar. We’ve watched the prickly mother-daughter scenes before, and the slow decline that comes with disease - this time it’s Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, often called Lou Gehrig's Disease - that becomes a focus of sentimental drama.

There’s also something paint-by-numbers in the portrayal of Beethoven’s worsening deafness… and yet… the play picks up steam as it heads to its final curtain and an ultimate, unexpected moment of hope and clarity.

Where the play succeeds, it’s because of Kaufman’s steady and empathetic work with his ensemble. There are standout performances by Mary Beth Peil as Katherine Brandt, the ailing musicologist; Greg Keller, as a young suitor to Katherine’s daughter, Clara; and Susan Kellermann, who turns a small role as a German archivist into an exemplary portrayal of friendship and honesty.

And it seems an unaccustomed treat in the theater to enjoy the work of concert pianist Diane Walsh, who plays many of the actual Diabelli variations to illustrate either the emotional truths of the production, or to assist in moving along the timeline.

(Hear performances from Diane Walsh here).

The play starts almost immediately on parallel tracks. Katherine, visiting the doctor with her daughter for a checkup and an update on her medical condition, pleads for the time to finish her latest research and for medical permission to travel to Bonn to access the Beethoven archives. She seeks to understand why Beethoven became so obsessed by a simple waltz that he needed to create 33 variations – ranging from whimsical to majestic – of Diabelli's simple theme.

Meanwhile, time flows back to 1819, and we meet Ludwig himself, grappling with this commission which will take him four arduous years to finish.

This is, therefore, a tale of obsession, creativity, and running out of time. What gives the tale some hope is the love affair between Clara (the daughter) and Greg, who is also Katherine’s nurse. Their fumbling attempts to find intimacy leaven the more intense stories of decline – the composer’s and the musicologist’s – that inevitably lead to each character’s end.

This seems like a show that could be tightened and find its way to success in New York or London. Watch for it.

Let's Put on a Show! Capital Fringe brings variety of theater to nation's capital

Karl Marx returns from the dead. A beatboxer with astonishing vocal dexterity raps a complex story about Jews and Palestinians. One playwright takes on the question of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while another creates a well made play about a painting... a play that avoids most of the clichés inherent in that subject.

A young company powers through Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury and invites the audience to join in a sing-along encore of G&S favorites.

And in Christmas in Bakersfield, an African American performer goes home to meet the family of his boyfriend, and finds out why this sleepy California town is the breeding ground for the local Ku Klux Klan.

That's just a tiny selection based on one viewer's frenzied play going during the ten day mid-July marathon. The festival concluded last week after starting on July 19th with a fire breathing, horn blowing parade. The Fringe featured more than 500 individual performances involving over 200 companies in 30 venues, located in three distinct Washington neighborhoods: downtown's Penn Quarter, the 14th Street/U Street area, and H Street NE.

The Fringe is modeled on similar efforts in Edinburgh, Scotland and New York City. It's a sprint for lovers of performance art and the kind of theater that can be done on a bare stage, with minimal technical requirements, but lots of spirit and grit.

The Karl Marx show (Marx in Soho) featured actor Bob Weick (pictured above, photo by John Doyle) as the iconic philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary. Despite the fact that his German accent came and went, the concept and execution were illuminating. The one man show, performed in a tiny venue that seats 20, allows Marx to come back to life and insist that Marxism is not, in fact, dead. Written by historian Howard Zinn, the monologue makes the case that capitalism, not Marxism, is the failed solution for modern society.

While much of the show is predictable -- we'd expect Karl to tell us that uneven outcomes for rich and poor are the greatest failing of our capitalist system -- it still tickles the imagination to hear the old guy stand up for himself.

At the other end of the spectrum of soliloquies, From Tel Aviv to Ramallah: A Beatbox Journey explores the commonalities and divides between young Israelis and Palestinians. The play came about after Yuri Lane and his wife Rachel Havrelock traveled through Israel and the West Bank together in 1999. Four years later, they created a play from their experiences that Lane performs in a dizzying verbal symphony of percussion and words.

The show revolves around a day in the life of Amir, a Tel Aviv dj and delivery boy, and Khalid, a Ramallah internet café owner whose parallel lives are separated by physical and political divides. This performance filled DC's hippest venue, the café/bookstore Busboys and Poets, and the audience listened in awe at Lane's skill and participated directly in the emotional power of the experience.

Too much to talk about in this short space. Bottom line: plan a trip to Washington, D.C. next summer for the third annual Fringe Festival. It's likely to be even bigger and better.

Silverdocs Photo Highlights

Reverend Billy (performance artist Bill Talen) appears at Silverdocs AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in support of his new film, "What Would Jesus Buy," an irreverent attack on our consumer society.

Director Jonathan Demme (Stop Making Sense, Silence of the Lambs) appears at Silverdocs to accept his award at the annual Guggenheim Symposium, honoring the legacy of four-time Academy Award-winner and Washington-area filmmaker Charles Guggenheim.

Silverdocs - On the Radio

The folks who produce Silverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland took a chance on something unusual this year and invited a radio festival to take part in the festivities.
(Gwen Macsai and Johanna Zorn of Third Coast)
The Third Coast International Audio Festival originates in Chicago, and brings together the country's most innovative and talented radio producers to talk shop and listen to each other's work each fall. With inspiration from Chicago producers like Ira Glass, host of This American Life, the festival has thrived and will be presenting its sixth edition in November.

At Silverdocs, festival co-director Johanna Zorn was joined by public radio host and producer Gwen Macsai for a listening session attended by about 50 people. Work from Third Coast's archives was played, including And I Walked, a compelling and unusual look at immigration across the Sonoran desert, and 'Til Death Do Us Part, a multi-layered audio home movie.

The idea was to present radio--with a focus on complex storytelling and craft--in a setting that is usually reserved for watching movies.

The producers of And I Walked, Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler have both gone on to create an impressive body of work in their early careers, helping reinforce Third Coast's reputation as a builder and nurturer of talent.

To this listener, the pleasure of listening to the radio features would have been enhanced by contact with the writers and producers of the work, but the format instead presented a survey of material associated with the festival. The listeners seemed please to hear something so familiar in a new setting, and Third Coast has plans to take the show on the road to film festivals and other venues as it evangelizes for radio art.

Silverdocs - In the Shadow of the Moon

Where were you on July 20, 1969? If you can answer that question, and if you remember the moon landing as a major event in your life, then In the Shadow of the Moon is sure to fill you with chills. Can you complete this sentence: "One small step for a man..." ? For Neal Armstrong, there was no doubt that the moon landing was a giant leap for mankind. This new movie was a major event over the weekend at the Silverdocs festival in Silver Spring, Maryland. Most of the audience members seemed to be of the generation that heard President John Kennedy's exhortation to the country to figure out how to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. NASA made it with only a few months to spare, but the effort is still considered a technological feat without parallel in the modern age.

But what of the men, and they were all men, who set foot on the moon? How did the experience change them? What did they learn, and what can they share with us?

Silverdocs Opening Night

When the press office at Silverdocs, the AFI - Discovery Channel Documentary Festival suggested that we might want to take a look at their list of films specifically connected with seniors or age-related issues, I balked. We would be interested in everything, I imagined, not just the stuff for oldsters.
(filmmaker Jim Brown and Odetta, photo by Lauren Ruane, courtesy AFI)
But after the opening night film, celebrating the life and work of legendary singer/activist Pete Seeger, and several other films that revisited some of the signal moments of the 1960s, I backed off my high horse. Yes, the Festival had something for absolutely everyone, but what it offered to filmgoers of a certain age was a reminder about the important times, places, and faces of our lives.
"Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" is a straightforward biography of an American hero. Seeger never did the easy or the expected thing in a wide-ranging career of sharing music to change the world. From standing up for workers, to the struggle for Civil Rights, to the early realization that environmentalism was as important an issue as human rights, Seeger knew that music had the power to change the world.
The toll was often high, as he was blacklisted from television and major concert appearances during the McCarthy era, and called in to appear before the House Unamerican Activities Committee to answer questions about his political affiliations. But no matter what the threat, Seeger never backed away from a fight.

NYT: Boys in the Band

It's nothing new to find the mainstream media using AARP as shorthand for older folks. Take, for example, this article in today's New York Times: The Boys in the Band are in AARP.

"The classic American midlife crisis has found a new outlet: garage-band rock ’n’ roll. Baby boomers across the country — mostly middle-aged dads who never quite outgrew an obsession with the music of their youth — are cranking up their amps and living their rock ’n’ roll fantasies."

Make sure to visit the Times article and listen to the bands, including the Tennyson 7, the Alter Ego, and the Wildcats.

It's always fun to deconstruct these references, and see if there's any sly disrespect, or whether AARP is being used simply as a shorthand reference for people over 50. Also, it would be interesting to track the mentions to find out if AARP's campaign to represent folks at the younger end of the spectrum is taking root.

What do you think?

Silverdocs Film Festival

We're going to be covering Silverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel Film Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland next week.

We'll hope to talk with some of the filmmakers, and give you early notice of some of the best new documentaries coming to theaters in about a year or so after they make it through the Festival Circuit.

Stay tuned!!