The defining distinction between a tribute concert and a cabaret honoring a legend is … what now? Having just put myself through the gut-churning but ultimately gratifying experience of Jeff Hamlin’s 16-hour cabaret intensive at the Studio Acting Conservatory, I’ve gotta argue it’s the personal touch: If it’s not clear by the end of the evening why the singer cared enough to put the program together, it’s more of the former. If you’ve gotten a sense of who the singer is — and who the honoree is to her — then you’ve got a proper cabaret.

By those lights, Nova Y. Payton’s boisterous, buoyant salute to Aretha Franklin in Signature Theatre’s intimate ARK space lands somewhere in the middle. There’s a bit of chat about Franklin’s place in the pantheon, and perhaps a touch more background on Payton, one of Signature’s brighter home-grown stars, who came up in DC’s Petworth neighborhood and toured internationally with superstars including Roberta Flack before making a name of her own in musical theater. But the tight 75-minute format of Signature’s summer cabaret series doesn’t leave a ton of time for patter — even if Payton does live up to her top-of-show threat to run a little longer than her contract calls for.

So while Payton’s Respect: Aretha Franklin, playing through August 30, doesn’t shed a ton of new light on either of the ladies whose prowess it celebrates, it certainly serves up a healthy helping of tunes the Tennessee-born, Detroit-rooted diva either created or recreated into something entirely her own.

The title tune, of course, features prominently, reshaped (bold move) by Payton and her excellent four-piece band to swing a little more loosely than it does in Aretha’s canonical reading. That comes later in the evening, though, once both singer and players have demonstrated their chops with more traditional takes on tunes like “Chain of Fools” (complete with crowd work that had the aunties surrounding my corner table singing and swaying righteously along) and of course monster hits like “Think” (which Payton compares to a pre-hiphop exercise in rap-style rapid-fire lyricism). Then, of course, there’s “Natural Woman.”

Payton seizes the opportunity of that particular smash to summon the purse-carrying, train-trailing, fur-dropping memory of Franklin’s legendarily grand Kennedy Center Honors performance in tribute to songwriter Carole King. King, of course, made no bones about whose song “Natural Woman” came to be: She might have written the anthem, but it was Aretha who transformed it; what was once a tune about a defeated woman revitalized by a man’s love became forever the triumphant declaration of an indomitable creature who might once have needed a pick-me-up, but has long since claimed her place — and proclaimed the fullness and sufficiency of her own spectacular self.

On the more introspective front, Payton drifts raptly through the euphoria-tinged fresh-love ruminations of “Daydreaming” and deploys the slow sorrows of “Today I Sing the Blues” as a reminder that even the Queen of Soul might have had her bad days. And to celebrate Franklin’s civil rights activism, she offers up a stirring take on “A Change Is Gonna Come,” paired with a “Bridge Over Troubled Water” that makes for a sobering reminder of how sturdy the shoulders of this nation’s Black women have had to be — on behalf of us all.

A note for anyone in search of Aretha imitations: This isn’t that. Payton doesn’t sound all that much like her subject; her bright, silvery tone is its own thing, and she’s not trying to mimic the bronze notes of Franklin’s rounder, huskier instrument. Nor does she bring vocal backup, as Franklin most always did; that’s for the audience to supply. But fear not: Payton does bring to the table the vocal agility — and the pure soul — to do Franklin’s catalog plenty of justice.

If the evening starts a little quietly — with “I Say a Little Prayer,” a relatively relaxed groove by Franklin’s standards — Payton ratchets the dials up soon enough, and by the time she’s made her way to “Rock Steady” (satisfyingly funky, maybe even a little sweaty), she’s broken out both some enticing hip action and a portable fan. But then cabaret can be warm work, and by the midpoint of the performance I saw, Payton’s lavish false eyelashes had had to be sacrificed for the hard-working singer’s comfort and sanity.

The singer’s closing gambit — a spin through the disposable ’80s bubblegum hit “Freeway of Love” designed to get the audience up and moving once again — succeeded alike with both the aunties and my own distinctly Caucasity-afflicted table, where few of us were able to demonstrate credible moves but at least one of us knew all the lyrics despite the song’s essential cringe factor. (It was me, child of the Reagan Era that I am.)

Happily, “Freeway” wasn’t the last we’d hear from Franklin, or from Payton, who returned to the stage to pay one last tribute to Lonell Johnson’s superbly laconic quartet — and to offer a welcome lagniappe in the form of a grateful “You’re All I Need to Get By.”

Cross-posted from DC Theater Arts, which commissioned this piece.

Worth checking out:

The excellent Howard Sherman (always) on ticketflation:

Downstage Center

Off-Broadway at Broadway Prices

I remember the uproar when Broadway ticket prices reached the $100 per ticket mark…

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6 days ago · 5 likes · Downstage Center

Toronto Star critic Joshua Chong on alternative ways of seeing/talking about shows in community.

Actor/comic Robby Hoffman in a New York Times profile you may have missed.

Beloved badass Rhea Seehorn on SAG-AFTRA’s I Am An Actor podcast, again just in case you missed it earlier in the summer.

And I’m glad she did, because she didn’t just pull my behind out of a fire (studio time is expensive y’all!) and rescue our long-planned episode with celebrity chef Carla Hall, whose solo show Please Underestimate Me is in the spotlight this episode. Gilbert also brought her distinct chaos-muppet energy to the conversation — and in so doing, demonstrated exactly why we’ve built this show around the anchor of a rotating co-host.

When it’s just me, I know (mostly) where I’m going.

Add in somebody like The Kimmah, though? All bets are off. Y’all enjoy.

Next time,

tg

You’ve seen the social-media buzz, the breaking-news story in The New York Times, maybe even the follow-ons at DC Theater Arts and NOTUS. Hard to have missed the news, in other words, but if by some chance you did: Hana S. Sharif departed Arena Stage on June 30, three years into a tenure as artistic director that was meant to last at least five.

My own take on the transition was published in Washingtonian this week, pulling together allegations and observations from roughly a dozen conversations with Arena insiders.

Backstage tales have continued to surface since I filed that piece, too.

Some of the questions I’d still like to ask are for people like Catherine Guttman-McCabe, who chaired both the Arena board and the search committee that hired Sharif, and Karen Zacarias, who served on that search committee and (presumably) worked closely with Sharif when she staged Zacarias’ adaptation of The Age of Innocence in 2025.

I’d also very much like to talk on the record to someone else who’s had their hands on Arena Stage’s books, because my very strong instinct is that the last shoe hasn’t dropped in that department.

For the moment, I’m sitting back to catch up with other stories. But y’all know how to reach me.

I mentioned a while back that I’d been thinking about some organized trips, offered as part of what I do here. The idea was that they’d be a perk of membership, open first to paying subscribers — including those of you who have a comp subscription because you supported me financially when I moved to Florida to try being a flight attendant, right before COVID wrecked everything.

The time, he has come. The idea, she has matured. And the spots, they are 16.

That’s it.

Our itinerary — though there’s room for a bit of change, considering how little of the fall Off Broadway season has actually been written in stone — has been mapped out. It’s November 12–15, three nights in Manhattan, and we’re not going to be roughing it.

We’re staying at the Algonquin, because of course we are. (The hotel cat is named Hamlet, and he is the Eighth of His Name, which was given to the original by John Barrymore. There have also been three Matildas.)

And we’re brunching that Sunday at Chez Josephine on 42nd Street, also a historic venue … because there may once, for instance upon the occasion of the opening night of The Lion King, have been a shenanigan involving a devastatingly handsome gentleman who lived upstairs. An incident that irrevocably alienated the drama critic of the Associated Press. But I digress.

There’s plenty of other goodness (and gossip) built into the trip, too: train fare from Union Station, discounts on your stay at the Gonk (including breakfasts!), four other meals with the group, and group prices on the shows1. I’m even working on a surprise guest or two from the worlds of theater and/or journalism — more on that soon.

Pricing: starting at $2,200 per person, depending on whether you’re sharing a room. Traveling with your sweetheart is encouraged! There is also a budget-conscious track available with a slightly less glamorous but still central hotel option, if that’s helpful for fence-sitters. Feel free to inquire. A 20-percent deposit holds your spot.

To repeat: At the moment, this trip is open only to paid subscribers, including founding supporters who have comp subscriptions.

But in two weeks, on Monday June 29, slots will open up to any subscribers — actively paying, currently comp’d, or at the free-forever level.

And two weeks after that, slots will become open to anyone at all.

Sixteen people.2 Two weeks’ head start. The full itinerary is here. I’ll wait.

South Carolina Rescues a Trump-Kennedy Refugee

Sometimes my SC homies do me proud, y’know. And I love that one of our DC peeps is out there spreading the good theater gospel in my home state.

Three reading recommendations, while I have you:

1. Helen Shaw continues to try to convert me to the practice of hero-worship, though most recently she’s done it in the most agreeable way: with a musically literate(!) critical essay about one of the most sophisticated and emotionally plangent works in the musical-theater canon. I got misty reading the piece itself — and then I clicked through to the video of St. Bernadette et al. singing “Sunday” on the TKTS steps and lost my shit entirely. Best happy cry I’ve had in a while.

2. Also I must report that this bee-alchemy essay, which manages to name-check both Seneca and Montaigne — and which I believe I discovered via ArtsJournal, my current at-launch browser homepage — was unexpectedly moving. Also, the author’s surname is “Pollen,” which is almost too perfect.

3. And please (hello!) enjoy this, which is charming and perceptive, especially with regard to the singularly Gallic smoothness of the French Admiral’s approach: The Sondheim Hub: Please Hello: Oui, Détente!

Ask me five years ago what Bill Rauch might eventually win a Tony Award for, and I’d eagerly have shared ideas. None of them would have been the wildly unlikely — and wildly successful — revival/rethink of Cats that got its start at Lower Manhattan’s Perelman Performing Arts Center, where Rauch has been artistic director since 2018.

It’s not that Rauch hasn’t been in Tonys contention before. His 2014 production of Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way took home a pair of the spin-top trophies, in fact, for star Bryan Cranston and for best new play.

It’s just that I might’ve expected the honor to come for something huge and ambitious like the Schenkkan play — something civic-minded, serious, and scaled to meet the big-think track record Rauch has built for himself.

I met and was hugely impressed with him a bit over two decades ago, at one of Sasha Anawalt’s legendary NEA-backed arts-journalism fellowships in Los Angeles. At the time Rauch was already a budding superstar, working at major regionals around the country but still known mostly as cofounder of the Cornerstone Theater Company — a super-creative roving institution (later settled in L.A.) that created all kinds of opportunities for theater rooted in communities, involving people who don’t often get to participate. (Good background articles here.)

His move to Oregon to run the much bigger Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland came not long after he shared his theatermaking philosophy at that NEA fellowship. And his 12-year tenure at OSF was marked by major commissions or co-commissions like Schenkkan’s All the Way and its sequel The Great Society, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat, and Paula Vogel’s Tony-nominated Indecent. (That last landed the directing Tony for Rebecca Taichman, who’s made a splash here in D.C. as well, not least with a gorgeous Twelfth Night at the Shakespeare Theatre Company.) OSF’s reach and resources are almost unparalleled; with help from one of his Cornerstone posse, Alison Carey, Rauch commissioned 37 new works (a deliberate number, as any Shakespeare nerd will recognize) during his tenure.

Thirty-seven. That’s three a year, even if you stretch it out across Rauch’s dozen years running the Festival. (Like Arena Stage’s similarly visioned Power Plays initiative, launched by then-artistic director Molly Smith eight years later, OSF’s American Revolutions project formally spanned a decade.) That may not sound insane now, given how the American theater has evolved in that same time, but when Rauch and the OSF launched the project it was pretty damn ambitious. Of the other global heavy-hitters, only the Royal Shakespeare Company has operated on such a scale for such a stretch.

And Rauch hasn’t rested on his proverbial laurels. Even before Cats: The Jellicle Ball blew up and earned him and co-director Zhailon Levingston1 their shiny new Tony trophies, he and his crew at the brand-new Perelman Center had announced a 25-show, 5-year commissioning project “exploring the nature, friction, and diverse perspectives of modern democracy” across theater, concerts, dance, mixed-media, and opera. The first two shows have already premiered — one of them in Santiago, Chile, where its instigating company is based. That detail alone tells you something about the scale of Bill Rauch’s ambitions. (Would that we had someone with like gifts to take over at our own national landmark of a PAC, which certainly needs a kick in the ass fresh leadership.)

Now that the Tony Awards have pointed out the obvious, it occurs to me that actually, Jellicle Ball fits pretty neatly into Bill Rauch’s history of queering canonical stories and opening doors and taking risks with classics. (Yes, Cats is both canon and a classic, and one with a T.S. Eliot pedigree to boot. Snobs will just have to deal.) The adaptation is in fact radically civic-minded. The lessons it teaches are in fact deadly serious. They’re just bundled up in a hugely entertaining package marked indelibly with the stamps of black and queer struggle — and black and queer2 joy.

One of the commissions fresh from the Perelman pipeline is Giulia, the Poison Queen of Palermo, a new musical from Sugarland frontwoman Jennifer Nettles about a 17th-century Italian witch/feminist activist who may or may not have helped as many as 600 women to poison their dickweed husbands. (I am so very onboard.) It’s opening this month at PAC-NYC, directed by the always intriguing Mary Zimmerman, another towering force in the American theater. (And another notable veteran of both the Shakespeare Theatre Company and Arena Stage.) You’ll find a snippet or three in the PAC NYC YouTube channel.

A Scandal That Can’t Be Papered Over

I’ve mentioned, I think, that I’ll be leading a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe next August. (That’s August 2027, y’all. Still plenty of time to get interested. Ping me if you are.)

One of the resources I rely on for news about Fringe and about theater in the U.K. more broadly is Fergus Morgan, who’s a writer for The Stage and the author of The Crush Bar, a truly indispensable theater ’stack. Please enjoy his take on the latest unbelieeeeeevable scandal to engulf the festival.

Pro tip: Do not sign up for the Edinburgh Fringe Society media list unless you are genuinely interested in the hundreds and hundreds of email pitches you will receive about shows aiming to conquer the world by staggering in the footsteps of Dudley Moore3 and our favorite Fleabag herself. My inbox is awash, I tell you. And there’s some hilarious shit. I’ll share some of the juicy ones in the coming months.

Three Things

• This is a badass story. They found china! Chandeliers! Stemware! I remember reading recently, in an update on the Malaysia Airlines mystery, that more than half of the world’s oceans remain largely unmapped and unexplored. Which is f*cking cool, yeah? Imagine the things we don’t know about what’s down there.

• The apples-to-oranges metaphor in this argument amused me greatly. Let it be a caution to you. People are wise to those claims about your home city being the X-busiest theater town in the country, is what I’m saying.

• With a handful of Tony-winning theaters anchoring the D.C. scene — Arena, Signature, STC, and Woolly Mammoth; did I miss any? — it’s worth a repeat shoutout to this year’s regional-Tony winner, which I highlighted back in April but didn’t really know all that much about. Full disclosure: I’m not always hugely impressed by the regional Tony choice, governed by the recommendations of the American Theatre Critics Association, of which I am not a member. But now that I look deeper, this joint looks genuinely special. (And I’m told at least a handful of D.C. theater types have worked there.) Bonus recommendation, if I haven’t pointed it out here before: The new outdoor Shakespeare palace in the Hudson River Valley is calling my naaaaaaame. Road trip!

They’ll tell you Pippin is a musical-theater classic, but that’s just because Stephen Schwartz has all the money now, which means everything he’s made must be good — so you have my permission to ignore “them.”

The fact is, Pippin is a dog of a show that’s occasionally been groomed elaborately enough — first by Bob Fosse, who directed and choreographed the original production, later by Diane Paulus, whose 2013 revival reimagined it as a spectacle unfolding as part of a big-top circus — to almost pass as best in breed. Perhaps a third of Matthew Gardiner’s new staging for Signature Theatre rises to that level, which I’ll grant you is enough to make it worthwhile, even if you’re not a particular fan.

Pippin is the sort of thing that happens when, say, an early-’70s impresario notices that Candide is in fact a (messy) classic and Cabaret has recently been a monster hit, and wonders whether a mashup of the two might turn a reasonable profit. The wandering-naif hero of the former meets the mysterious, possibly malignant Emcee of the latter (here called the Leading Player, so as not to invite lawsuits), and the one guides the other through a highly fictionalized version of various events from his life.

Pippin, you see, is inspired by Pepin, one of the real-life sons of the emperor Charlemagne, and he’s quite the character: Brilliant, we’re told, and convinced he’s cut out for extraordinary things. (The odor of unearned privilege is strong with this one. Happily, Brayden Bambino has enough affable-quarterback charm to keep him on the right side of insufferable.)

When he doesn’t find the fulfillment he yearns for within the first few weeks after college graduation, Pippin sets about looking in all the usual places: In battle, in the bedroom, and here and there beyond. Naturally it all dismays or bores him. He really is rather a tiresome git, at least until well into the second act.

The second act is when the chiefest of the Signature production’s undeniable virtues — Awa Sal Secka, a superbly musical singer who’s also becoming a mistress of subtext on par with Nancy Robinette — turns up to teach Our Hero the value of domesticity and personal connection, though naturally he won’t understand it fully at first. Another such virtue is Naomi Jacobson, who in the early going slurps alive the juicy horny-grandma scene that is the sole reason for her character’s existence.

Back to Act Two, though: That’s also when Roger O. Hirson’s shabby book gives up utterly on anything like believable character growth. Perhaps leery of the lessons of Candide, which gets bogged rather gruesomely down in its title character’s endless array of misadventures, Pippin hurtles directly from that I’m-bored-with-domesticity moment to the final crisis that will teach him its value, without anything intervening to further season him. It reeks of dramaturgical desperation to bring the thing in under the 150-minute wire.

Yet somehow I didn’t hate it, not at all. Erik Teague presents the eight members of the ensemble as something between the commedia-style clowns of Fosse’s original and the Cirque du Soleil-style acrobats of Paulus’s reinvention — lots of garters and bustiers, long-nosed masks and distancing Pierrot makeup. Gardiner doesn’t gender-swap his leading player, as Paulus did when she cast Patina Miller in the part that made Ben Vereen a star, but he does set Cedric Neal loose to explore so many possibilities in the realm of crypto-queerness that it makes precious little difference. And as always at Signature, the thing’s credibly sung — sometimes even gorgeously so.

Still, Pippin will never truly be more than what the critic Clive Barnes called it when it first presented its metatheatrical come-ons to a New York audience in 1972: “a trite and uninteresting story with aspirations to a seriousness it never for one moment fulfills … a commonplace set to rock music.”

Oh, right, the music: Schwartz, I’ve decided over the years, is capable of precisely two memorable songs per show, and in this case they are “Magic to Do” and “Corner of the Sky.” Both of them have been done to death by eager theater kids in show choirs and cabarets since they were new, so you’ll doubtless have heard them.

Of course they’re both offered up at the very top of Act One — and I’m afraid it’s mostly downhill from there.

Pippin plays at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, to July 26.

* This joke is for exactly two people, both of whom are probably Carolingian scholars.

In the episode’s main segment, Ashleigh and I talk to Dr. Thea Kano, artistic director of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington. After 22 years of history with an organization that boasts more than 300 singing members, there’s not much Kano hasn’t seen or heard either onstage or backstage.

GMCW, Kano explains, is both a niche operation and the largest queer arts organization in the DMV. And they found themselves making national headlines last year when the Trump Administration started tinkering with programming at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Kano’s take on what went down when the chorus’s World Pride concert with the National Symphony Orchestra got canceled starts at around 28:20, for anyone who wants to skip straight to the she-said version.

And yes, my non-singing gheys: I did ask Thea about what kinds of shenanigans go down out there in the woods on GMCW’s legendary (notorious?) annual retreat. These are the things you can always count on me for.

No spoilers in this post — you’ll have to listen for yourself. But there’s a reason The Washington Blade keeps ranking GMCW as the best LGBTQ+ social organization in town.

Recorded live at the Barrel House Cafe and Bar in Logan Circle, with plus-one Ashleigh King and headline guest Thea Kano. Host: Trey Graham. Executive producer: Solomon HaileSelassie. Production assistant: Megan Hannah.

I learned a bit about “white balance” along the way — nothing at all to do with DEI, apparently — and in fact we ended up deciding to drop this first episode in a black-and-white version, for reasons.

But then my headline guest — Woolly Mammoth Theatre artistic director emeritus Howard Shalwitz — and I are both creatures of a certain vintage, so a monochrome look is hardly inappropriate.

N.B.: This interview contains an exchange related to this here comment thread, which will I hope interest at least a few of the gossips among you.

Enjoy! Send feedback!

Recorded live at the Barrel House Cafe and Bar in Logan Circle, with plus-one Chris Klimek and headline guest Howard Shalwitz. Host: Trey Graham. Executive producer: Solomon HaileSelassie. Production assistant: Megan Hannah.

Now that we’ve got the podcast in gear, it’s time to dive into the culture-related travel project I’ve been planning. This is about real-life, real-time adventures for those of you who really consider yourselves part of the In Good Company gang.

A bunch of y’all responded enthusiastically to the idea of a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe next season, so that project is actively underway. I’ve already reached out to Edinburgh contacts about arranging tickets and a block of rooms, so watch this space.

In fact, TBA very soon: the identity of an In Good Company guest diarist who’s taking a show to this year’s Fringe, plus a dedicated chat thread for anyone who’s thinking of coming along next year. We’ll use that space initially to work out our travel dates and some other high-level details, with more formal web-based itineraries, booking and payment portals, and suchlike a bit further down the road. I can’t wait!

And For Now …

In the nearer term, I’m putting together a New York weekend for the fall. We’ll start to hear tomorrow which of Broadway’s current shows will evaporate after the annual Tony Awards winnowing, and the process will only accelerate after the June 7 awards ceremony.

Once news of those closings breaks, we can expect the annual raft of early announcements about the plays and musicals that’ll fill that newly empty real estate. (I expect the folks at Arena Stage wouldn’t mind hearing about a spot for Damn Yankees before the last of its buzz fades, though dates also depend on Jordan Donica’s Gilded Age shooting schedule and other projects, presumably.)

Yankees or no, I’m going to take a small group to Manhattan in September or October, once the season gets fully underway. Between now and then I’ll be recommending some promising shows, but the trip will be at least partly a choose-your-own-adventure affair. Travelers will be welcome to see all the same shows I drop in on, but we’ll also make room for those who want to gather for dinner, head off to a show of their own choosing, and regroup afterward for cocktails and a postmortem at one of my favorite Theater District dives.

Again, I’m launching a dedicated chat thread for this little experiment, so click on through and start sharing ideas for restaurants, watering holes, and must-see shows. I’ll launch a proper invitation shortly, complete with a bare-bones itinerary and a sign-up link.

At the outset, this trip is open only to paying In Good Company subscribers, but I’ll make slots available later for drop-ins if space permits.

What think? Who’s in?

This Week’s Fun Spot

Who’s been to Back Door Tacos? It’s in the alley behind the original location of Hank’s Oyster Bar, and yes, that is the ass end of an ass in their logo. Props to their designers for not playing.

A friend of a friend is involved, and he points out that they’re wrapping up a Cinco Dias de Cinco promotion supporting UnidosUS, but this is not a paid plug! Because honestly who’s not down for $4 tacos and (emeritus)1 $8 margaritas? Check ’em out and tell ’em Trey said hi.

The faint shrieking (squealing? meeping?) you heard from my direction earlier this week may have had something to do with Thursday’s announcement of this Carnegie Hall celebration of Liza’s 80th, which I assume is sold out already, although who knows? I’ve asked Richard Kornberg and his gang if there’s any chance she’ll actually attend, and haven’t gotten an answer yet. But the casting lineup — everyone from Claybourne Elder to The Chenoweth — is pretty sweet either way. They’ll be handing out copies of Liza’s autobiography to attendees, too.

Ed Gero’s turn as a dying (and decidedly dyspeptic) Shakespearean in South Africa earned him another Helen Hayes Award nomination this past season, when he played opposite the legendary John Kani in Kunene and the King, which had its U.S. premiere here in D.C. at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. The two of them are taking the show to Minneapolis to play the Guthrie Theatre in October.

Speaking of Ed’s nomination: The Helen Hayes ceremony, which I’m writing again this year, is coming up May 18 if you haven’t got a seat yet.

And speaking of the STC, everybody made so much noise about Brian Cox bringing that Bach play to Harman Hall that you may have missed another squealing fit chez moi. That’s because STC, not content with scheduling a co-production of Follies directed by Signature Theatre’s Matthew Gardiner, also announced a holiday-season Midsummer, directed by STC AD Simon Godwin. And I appreciate you, Simon, but the squealing had to do with the news that the production will apparently incorporate massive puppets by Basil Twist, about whom I definitely feel some kinda way.

Specifically: I once stepped into an NPR elevator on a coffee run only to find reporter Elizabeth Blair talking to a slender fellow dressed all in black. When she casually gestured to the stranger and said “Hey Trey, this is Basil Twist,” my face fell open and I said — quite forcefully, and entirely involuntarily — “Shut the fuck up.”

So you know, I feel like that.

I mean, Basil Twist designed the Dementors for the Harry Potter movies, y’all, back before that IP became entirely toxic.

Dedicated D.C. theatergoers will remember an amazing little tour through the Twist-ed universe back in 2012, when STC, the Studio Theatre, the Clarice, and Woolly Mammoth conspired to stage a wildly diverse selection of his stuff.

Just to pick a favorite from back then: Dogugaeshi, a black-box show where Twist built a seemingly endless universe with dozens of sliding Japanese screens, was absolutely mesmerizing. I can’t wait to see what he does with the faerie creatures of The Dream — no mushrooms required.

Thomas Floyd is a perfectly nice fellow, as far as I can tell, and his take on A Good Day to Me Not to You for The Washington Post more or less lined up with my own. I do wonder whether the folks at Washington Stage Guild wouldn’t rather he’d skipped Caesar and Cleopatra, but that’s the risk when you make frustrated noises about when and whether the paper of record will get around to noticing local theater again.

Me, I tend to like Shaw even at his windiest and most pompous. Still, I’m glad that the Style gods have kept Floyd around. As things settle out in the wake of this year’s gruesome Post layoffs, it’s nice to have a familiar voice still looking in on D.C.’s small and midsize companies.

Next time,

— trey

P.S.: There’s extra goodness below for those of you on the paid-subscribers list, including a postcard from the kittens, a fine read about a Madison, Wisc., theater mainstay, and a deeply insidery Sondheim conversation between two of my favorite D.C. theater people. Many thanks to all of you.

Read more

We sat down back in February to record these initial episodes, and then technical difficulties intervened, and one of us lost his reviewing gig and picked up a scriptwriting gig and … you know, it’s been a lot.

Aaaaaanyway. We lived through it, and now we have a podcast!

In our second episode — we’re publishing it first, for reasons we may explain later — science nerd and theater geek Kei Koizumi joins us to explain what it’s like doing science policy in the White House, after which he helps host Trey Graham interview headline guest Jacob Ettkin.

Jacob is the education and engagement guru at Mosaic Theater Company, so we’re talking Young John Lewis (through April 26 at Mosaic), obviously.

Also on tap: the music of our youth, what it’s like getting a full-body wax onstage — “talk about the Theater of Cruelty!” — and a good deal more.

No, the podcast itself doesn’t have a name. We’re thinking about it. And there’s more to come soon — we’ve got two more of these pilot episodes in the can.

So give us a listen, tell us what we should call this thing, and spread the word. Meanwhile we’re working on planning a full season, so your feedback would be tremendously helpful.

Things we’ve learned already:

• Trey should really have hair and makeup support.

• Or at least remember to trim the beard.

• Trey needs to sit closer to his mic.

What else? Email us at treygraham@substack.com and tell us what you wanna hear about on an upcoming show.

Next time,

— trey

Recorded live at the Barrel House Cafe and Bar in Logan Circle, with plus-one Kei Koizumi and headline guest Jacob Ettkin. Host: Trey Graham. Executive producer: Solomon HaileSelassie. Production assistant: Megan Hannah.

This overnight-video thing is not going to become a habit, I don’t think, but I did want to give you a quick heads-up something I saw last night.

It was almost the second time I’ve missed this production, and I’m really glad I didn’t bail out this time, because I had a terrific evening.

It’s cheap, it closes today — that’s February 28th, today — but hey, you’ve still got two shots at it. There’s a 2 p.m. matinee and an 8 p.m. closing performance.

It’s the best kind of pure bare-bones theater. And it’s right over on Capitol Hill, just a few blocks from all that other, more irritating theater going on in DC.

The show is Beowulf, and I should point out -- before you groan and make sad noises and give up -- I should point out that it’s from Taffety Punk.

Specifically, it’s a 90-minute solo version of Beowulf performed by Taffety Punk’s artistic director Marcus Kyd.

And y’all, it’s good. Short version: It’s a really, really welcome reminder that we tell ourselves monster stories for a reason. And that all the best heroes have a kind of core selflessness in common.

It’s at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, directed by Chris Curtis, and it’s for sure worth a spur-of-the-moment trip if you’re not already booked this afternoon.

Or maybe if you are. Be spontaneous. Change your plans. Your sweetheart will love you.

Next time,

— trey

I mean, biggish. For me anyway. We’re gonna do this podcast thing. If you’re around D.C. this month, join me and my crew on Thursday, January 22 between noon and 4 pm at the Barrel House Cafe and Bar, on 14th Street and Rhode Island Ave., NW. (Entrances from both thoroughfares, though the 14th Street door will be closed once we roll tape.)

We’ll record three separate pilot episodes with three world-class creatives I know you’ll be interested in hearing from — plus a handful of surprise guests to help keep things interesting.

No charge for the show, regular Barrel House menu available. So come hang out, getcherself some lunch or coffee, and watch me try not to fall on my face in front of people I respect!

Drop me a line if you’d like me to save you a table — otherwise seating is first come, first served:

If you can’t make it, watch this space. The first pilot will drop here (and on most of the usual platforms, if the creek don’t rise) within a week or so of the taping.

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• I made it to that musical about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and I am here to remind you to resist judging books by their covers. (Look, I’m old and cynical, and the words “105 musicalized minutes about the Middle East conflict in a church basement” might not always inspire breathless anticipation in even the most optimistic consumer of the performing arts. I am quite happy to have been wrong.) I did not, in fact, leave humming the overture, but I did find myself humming the haunting number that frames the story. The chamber-scaled world-premiere staging from Voices Festival Productions wraps up with one final performance this evening, Dec. 7, but as Lisa Traiger’s review for Washington Jewish Week suggested, the show is smart and moving — and yes, ingratiatingly musical — enough to deserve a future. VFP’s current three-play festival continues with Imperfect Allies Dec. 11-Dec. 14 and Apeirogon Jan. 8-Jan 11.

  

• I also made it to Guys and Dolls, y’all, and DANG. Francesca Zambello’s drum-tight production of the classic gambler-meets-missionary romance rolls lucky all night long. Among the more expensive-looking exercises I’ve ever seen from the Shakespeare Theatre Company,1 which has never been afraid to spend a dollar on a big show, it’s already been extended into the New Year. Do not let the holidays make you miss the chance to see Julie Benko and Hayley Podschun (playing Miss Sarah and Miss Adelaide with just absolutely absurd heaps of sparkle and poise and confidence), along with Rob Colletti and Jacob Dickey (as a cuddly-mischievous Nathan Detroit and a seriously swoon-worthy Sky Masterson). Zambello2 draws subtle, expressive performances from her leads; their moment-to-moment beatwork felt remarkably true and human, even from the way-up-close vantage of Row C. Huge applause for the ensemble, what with the sweaty, joyous, sexy workouts Joshua Bergasse (Smash) keeps putting them through; extra-special love for Kyle Taylor Parker, who delivers mightily on the tentpole revival number “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” and Lawrence Redmond, whose gentle reading of “More I Cannot Wish You” is guaranteed to make you think warmly of the uncles and grandpas you miss the most.

• The wait for news about Woolly Mammoth’s next chapter is over: Reggie D. White was named incoming artistic director of D.C.’s near-legendary new-play factory this weekend. The announcement and the takeover will have major implications for the landscape of contemporary American drama. If you think I’m exaggerating, bear in mind that Woolly isn’t just an incubator that’s nurtured playwrights from Nicky Silver to Tracy Letts to Danai Gurira to Anne Washburn, it’s also one of the companies where Rhea Seehorn, star of Pluribus and Better Call Saul, got her start onstage.

• Hamnet — Chloé Zhao’s film version of Maggie O’Farrell’s widely celebrated novel imagining the inner lives of Shakespeare’s family — is upon us, already screening locally at the Avalon Theatre, the Alamo Cinema and Drafthouse, and at other cineplexes around the DMV. (Readers elsewhere: It expands to more theaters across the U.S. beginning Dec. 12.) Actor-impresario Austin Tichenor has thoughts for the Folger on how the film shifts focus from Anne (aka Agnes) Hathaway back in the direction of our boy William — and how much that matters. O’Farrell and Zhao join Barbara Bogaev of the Folger’s Shakespeare Unlimited podcast for a conversation about the road to the adaptation. My friends at NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour talked about the movie at some length at the beginning of this week. And here’s the trailer, if you haven’t seen it:

• Yesterday, December 6, should have been Gaurav Gopalan’s 50th birthday. He’s not with us any longer, because someone — we still don’t know who — murdered him on a D.C. street a few months before his 36th. People who knew him and worked with him across the District’s theater scene recall an insatiable curiosity, a generous collegiality, and a sparkling intellect. And as one of them recalled, in a story I wrote for the Washington City Paper in the wake of his death, “this incredibly beautiful voice.”

From the archive: Where grief and joy collide

Speaking of occasions for grieving: Six years ago today, I hit publish on the essay below, whose subhead at the time was “I’ve been crying a lot lately. I couldn’t be happier about it.” That was partly because my shrink and I had finally gotten my psychopharmaceuticals properly balanced, so I could actually feel things for the first time in quite a while— thanks, Dr. B.. And it was partly because, effective meds or no, three years of the first Trump Administration had left me in something of a state. Not a despairing one, though; quite the opposite. I found myself hyperaware of, and hyper-susceptible to, any hint of beauty, and it took me a while to figure out why. This reflection was the result. Because it all began with a choir and a Christmas carol, I thought I’d offer it up again here as the holiday season gathers steam. — tg

Aswim in the unbearable exquisite

ABOARD THE SILVER METEOR (Dec. 7) — It started with a question about Christmas carols:

I had an opinion, obviously, and then a second opinion, and it was a fun Twitter moment to be part of, but then I got distracted by the fact that I was laugh-crying all of a sudden — and where the hell did that come from?

I mean I know when it came. It came in the descant verse of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” a tune I’ve sung a bajillion times, professionally and otherwise, without losing my shit. Specifically it was in the descanted final verse of the David Willcocks arrangement of the carol, which represents for your average smells-and-bells Anglican what you might call A Tentpole Moment in A Tentpole Hymn of the festive season.

(It’s not The Tentpole Hymn of Christmastide, mind you — that’s “O Come All Ye Faithful,” which has an even better Willcocks descant — and of course Christmastide is not The Tentpole Season, because duh that’s Easter, which (a) is the whole point of Christianity and (b) is also when we get to bust out Hyfrydol, which is stately and badass, and which presents many an amusing opportunity with its multiple iterations of “A-ha-ha-ha-ha-lay-LOOOOOO-ee-yah.”)

(Their little treble pipings! I die!)

An aside: I know that Anglicans, pale male Anglicans especially, aren’t meant to have actual feelings about anything, certainly not anything to do with religion, but the fact is that secretly we kinda groove on our church-music tradition, whose sophistication is A Thing We Can Be A Touch Snotty About. It’s a reserved kind of grooving, this enthusiasm for our Willcockses and our Wesleys and our Charles Villiers Stanfords — honest to God, his name was Charles Villiers Stanford, and yes we do stan-for(d) him. Stiffly, with our jaws in regulation Cantabrigian clench, but still it is undeniably stanning.

When our pleasure in these things does make itself actually manifest, though, it typically surfaces as a kind of beaming, clubby “Good show!” sort of thing. I mean, I’ve definitely been part of some high-holy services (hi there, Church of the Good Shepherd) where choir and congregation alike got a bit flushed as we roared our collective way through a favorite hymn setting.

(It is just a tiny bit possible that at one or more of these services, my friend Skip and I played the fool and joined the sopranos on some of those Willcocks descants. Maybe. Perhaps. Because THEY’RE FUN TO SING SO SUE ME).

(Also our Holtkamp pipe organ had a zimbelstern mounted high up, front and center, and if you’ve never sung a boisterous Christmas hymn under what’s basically a spinning hood ornament that’s making glockenspiel noises while the organist lays down a boss pedal trill, you Have Not Lived.)

So anyway last week — last week, with the blubbering, was different. I was alone, for one thing. At home, after a bit of a day. It was the end of Thanksgiving week, so there had been all those goings-on out at the farm with my folks, and then the trip up to D.C. and an on-air shift at WETA. And a day up to my ears in music is a day with some live nerve endings, to be sure, so I was probably a little thin, emotional defense-wise, when Prof. Mosley tweeted out that question, which steered me eventually to a video of “Hark, the Herald” as delivered by the Winchester Quiristers, who sing it ravishingly and with the oh-is-it-Tuesday-again aplomb only a boys’ choir with 600 freaking years of English public-school tradition behind it can muster.

ANYWAY I’m singing along with the Quiristers, natch, as I’m loading the washing machine, and we get to “Born to raise the sons of earth,” and I can’t sing anymore because my breath is gone and my throat has closed and my chest is tight and my eyes are burning. And I laugh at myself, which is when the dam breaks for real, and there are the actual sobs — gasping, wide-eyed, guttural.

Which: What the hell, man? It’s a Christmas carol.

Thing is, this has been happening here and there. When Jessye Norman died at the end of September, I listened to a bunch of her stuff, and it was no surprise that there were some tears. She was important in my baby-ghey world, a diva at the peak of her fame when I was coming out, a singular, larger-than-life personality who’d somehow emerged from my hothouse of a hometown and gone on to conquer the world. Listening to her recording of Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” — about escaping the world’s tumult, about dwelling peacefully in solitude and in song — on the day we got news of her passing, just as I was starting a new and quieter chapter in my own life … well, you know.

But it’s not been just the sad stuff, or the milestone stuff. I got teary the other day talking to a friend about the softness of Rembrandt’s eyes in the self-portrait I love so much at the National Gallery in Washington. I felt a lump in my throat a few weeks back watching actors pretending to land on a version of the moon that doesn’t exist — a moon the Soviet Union reached first, a moon to which women journeyed alongside men and where ice deposits promise them longer journeys outward — on For All Mankind, the new alt-history space opera from Ronald D. Moore, the ST: DS9 nerd-hero who also rebooted Battlestar Galactica so intelligently a while back. Hell, I choked up watching David and Patrick navigate a relationship hiccup on Schitt’s Creek earlier this year, not because it was a big deal but because they were so tender about it.

It’s something about that, I think. The presence of anything these days that bespeaks kindness, gentleness, mildness, grace. And hope? Forget about it. Show me hope, show me optimism, remind me that we are capable not just of good but of greatness, and I’m done.

Not just done — undone.

I was listening to Mahler’s Second Symphony a week or two ago, on one of my drives from D.C. down to the South Carolina coast, down to where Nikki Haley says there are no hateful people and where the flags are about service and honor and tradition, down to where earlier this year a white man was convicted of enslaving a developmentally disabled black kitchen worker — basically caging him up in the back of the restaurant and beating him when he made a mistake or when he just, you know, looked at somebody wrong.

And as Leonard Slatkin’s St. Louis Symphony and the massed choirs thundered into the wild and elated faith-claim of the final chorale — Aufersteh’n, ja aufersteh’n wirst du, Mein Staub, nach kurzer Ruh! goes the shout of 100 choristers and more: “You will rise again, my ashes, my dust, in an instant, and he who has called you will make you immortal!” — I found myself driving blind. I had to pull over and sit on the side of the highway, shoulders heaving, body clenching and unclenching and clenching again with sobs.

I am not religious, mind you. I’m barely what the twee folk call “spiritual.” This was something else, something to do with that hunger for reassurance in an ugly time, but also something to do with a renewed sense of wonder, and of gratitude, at what towering things we humans are capable of when we are our better selves. If my new, slower life has left more room for grief at how awful we can be, it’s also left so much more room for that wonder and gratitude. And I keep getting blindsided by it.

I mean, the audacity of the poet’s cry in that text. The titanic wash of sound that is a Mahler orchestra rounding third base, with nothing and no one between it and home. The utterly leveling overload of those final passages — the choir hurling its exaltation into the hall and then falling spent and dumbstruck while first the warm low horns and then the higher, brighter brass repeat the call up to the heavens, faltering, fading, and then — oh god, oh god — rallying for one last ecstatic sunburst over an earthquake in the tympani and a tsunami of jubilation from the concert-hall pipe organ — there are just no words for it, even were I better at this than I am. You have to hear it, and if possible see it:

The bells! I always forget about the bells until the percussionist gets out his hammer. And three gongs, each brawnier than the last!

It is just too much joyful in one place and moment. It is an explosive, agonizing kind of happiness merely to know that this astounding thing … exists. This luminous thing, and all things that are good on this order of goodness.

There’s this term, to anneal, from metallurgy, that’s long since drifted into metaphor, where it means to subject something to the sort of cleansing and tempering that’s possible only in a fire that burns away the weak, the bad, the brittle.

I am just so crushingly happy that these good things exist, these scouringly pure and beautiful things, these distillations of the unbearable exquisite. For me, for us, for everyone, for always.

Not just to watch or listen to, but to partake of, to surrender to, to spread our arms wide before — to be awash in, to be annealed by, just now, when we need strengthening so very much.

And finally …

The kittens, who are now six months old, discover something new and exciting every week. This week, the new and exciting discovery has been … loose pennies.

Do you have any idea how much noise a kitten can make with a loose penny on a hardwood floor? And for how long? And at how many different inconvenient hours of the day?

As you gird yourself for the escalating insanity of the holidays, I wish you all the wonder and energy of a six-month-old kitten. Please do not shed on the carpet.

Next time,

— trey

… heard of a theater box office rep asking a patron for his age, and then asking for his ID, before handing over a pair of tickets. Is this a thing that happens? It happened to a buddy of mine not too long ago at a established D.C. theater company. (Naming no names, but the troupe’s tagline will be strangely familiar to readers of this newsletter.)

Get this, though: Not only was my guy asked to prove his identity, he was denied seating for the show because his D.C. non-driver ID card was expired. That was $65 out of his pocket, and a nasty taste in the mouth of someone who lives three blocks from the theater in question — and who might have become a regular if he’d been treated differently.

Am I insane to think this is a weird story?

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• There’s a new installment of “Dear Fefu,” a recurring inside-theater advice column from Lauren Halvorsen’s Nothing for the Group and the crowd at 3Views on Theater, which if you haven’t discovered it is a really intriguing and decidedly of-the-moment approach to building a healthy conversation around theater.

• The good folks at American Theatre have recently taken note of the latest work product from the other good folks at Theatre Washington: a fiscal-impact report that crunches publicly available data to argue “that theatre in Washington is both artistically essential and economically significant.” One key takeaway: “For every dollar of public funding, on average, the study found that $2.78 of spending is generated.”

• Per the excellent folks at CityCast DC, via a days-old email that I’ve only just gotten around to reading, it’s officially ice-skating season again! And sure, other cities are quite rightly partial to their Prometheuses and whatnot, but I …

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The reviews were polite if not rave-y, and headliner Jordan Donica (HBO’s Gilded Age) had damn sure been singing the bejesus out of Young Joe Boyd’s heartfelt ballads. No shade to Quentin Earl Darlington, who played the older Joe, but when Donica made his initial entrance to take over the soaring “Goodbye, Old Girl” in its closing bars, I sat back in my seat like somebody had smacked me. As he’s demonstrated in Broadway productions of My Fair Lady, Sunset Boulevard, and even Phantom of the Opera, Donica’s is legit a hair-raising voice — a round, rich Brian Stokes Mitchell/Norm Lewis baritone with just enough tenor-ish ping on the top end to add some thrill.

Plus, “Jimmy Nederlan…

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And yet: There are people I want to talk to, questions I’m dying to ask, communities I’d like to gather, and live events I’d like to stage. A well-made show could be the catalyst for those things.

That “well-made” feels critical. There are certainly too many half-ass shows out there. My years at NPR and WETA turned me into a bit of a geek — my friend Sean would say a snob — about sound and rhythm. But then my onetime Pop Culture Happy Hour colleague Glen Weldon literally wrote the book on why, how, and how seriously NPR works to make great audio storytelling. So if I’m gonna do this, it has to be good.

Something lively and smart and worthy of your time. Something that won’t hurt your ears. Real producer, real studio time, real editing, which means budget to pay professionals for their spaces and their …

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