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.