The 22 shows of 2018 which made our ‘favorites’ list

An Opera production

WNO’s  The Marriage of Figaro  with stage direction by Peter Kazaras

“The Marriage of Figaro is an easy favorite, but who could have predicted that the luminosity of singing, musicianship displayed in the orchestra, and spot-on casting and acting of the ensemble would shoot off like a display of brightly colored fireworks?

Dance is a metaphor for the whole production. Mozart has indicated this right from the get-go with Figaro singing about wanting to out-fox the crafty Count in Se vuol ballare. “If you want to dance, good sir, I’ll mark the time.”

All the singers have created distinctive physical styles of movement for their characters so that the whole opera indeed moves like a complex ballet.  Figaro never seems to stop bouncing from a sheer life force – putting me in mind of no other than AA Milne’s Tigger. The Countess glides languorously, swan-like, so that nothing ever seems to touch the ground. Susanna moves through the various partners thrust upon her in a kind of nimble gavotte. Cherubino swoons and slouches like a lad one moment then, in disguise, prances precariously like so many teenage girls who’ve not yet mastered balancing in high heels.  Marcellina spins like a top, except when she and Susanna get into the most delicious cat fights, swatting at each other.” – Susan Galbraith

A Musical Production 

The Scottsboro Boys at Signature Theatre directed by Joe Calarco

“Signature Theatre and its own “Scottsboro boys” have given us a musical for our times.  Smart. Searing. Dangerous. Funny. Provocative. And – as it continues to expose and engage us in a conversation about race – it is immensely moving. And it’s all wrapped up in a Kander & Ebb musical entertainment. Giving double meaning to the term “black comedy” and like one of its more macabre songs about the electric chair, the musical delivers high-power voltage.”

The original production on Broadway was flawed but courageous. I didn’t understand the unfavorable reviews then, but this made Signature’s show even more powerful. I went to see the show three times.  And it just kept getting better. – Susan Galbraith

And a Straight Drama part of Kennedy Center’s World Stages

Measure for Measure – Cheek by Jowl and The Pushkin Theatre Moscow

William Shakespeare, Directed by Declan Donnellan and designed by Nick Ormerod,

“Cheek by Jowl and The Pushkin Theatre Moscow have brought to Washington a great Measure for Measure. The experience spoke straight to the heart of what we have been living in the nation’s capital. The production contained such visceral power and emotional truth that there were audible gasps and quite a few tears from the audience. No one should miss this production.

Never has the play spoken so directly to an audience in my experience…When Angelo asks the nun to lay down “the treasure of [her] body,” he then meets her shocked and angry response with, “Who will believe you, Isabella?” and later, “My false outweighs your truth.”

It was as if we were reliving the male bastion of power close ranks during the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and the shameless shambles in the Senate that turned the Kavanaugh proceedings into a circus. – Susan Galbraith

A Moment

Eric Owens in Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo.

It is, to my mind, a most curious opera in search of a lead character, but…

“Eric Owens opens Act II alone on stage in a kind of extended soliloquy. And how beautifully the cello part sets up the scene. Owens starts sitting facing three-quarters upstage; the great octagon “dome” has become a window open to the turbulent skies. As King Philip he stares up at the heavens contemplating his own mortality and sings, “She doesn’t love me,” realizing that his wife Queen Elisabeth of Valois still carries a picture of his son in her jewelry box.  For all his imperial power his is a world fraught with stress and filled with enemies against whom he feels he must always be on guard, making the presumptive strike. As he slowly builds the aria, connecting and laying out each line of thought for us with measured eloquence, the whole opera takes on an emotional depth, leaving the audience breathless and in awe. The opera at that point is his.”

Urban Arias.  Why is Eartha Kitt Trying to Kill Me?

Keith Jamieson sings a monologue in an opera re-imagined as a duet!

“It turns out, director Sam Helfrich, has played a trick on all of us, and such a brilliant, brainy and totally tantalizing trick at that.  The Actor doesn’t exist. Helfrich has made up [a second] character to give substance to the story line and give the [lead actor] someone to play off of.

The opera, it turns out, was conceived as a one-man, gob-smacking monologue that is sung throughout by the quite fabulous singer-actor Keith Jameson… It is a tour de force that the man can sing such a complex score with changes of rhythm and much syncopation and to do it so unaffectedly. I totally believed him in every moment of his journey, which it turns out for the audience is quite the emotional roller coaster.”

Another Moment

Natascia Diaz as Fosca in Signature’s production of Passion

While I did not get to review this, I agree with Roy Maurer’s words about Natascia’s “bold performance” that “breathes transformative life into Fosca.”

The actress, who has wowed audiences with everything from her high kicks (West Side Story at Signature) and her passionate (and fluently bilingual) delivery of cabaret songs  (Jacques Brel at Metro Stage) to her feisty grit (In the Heights, a co-production of Roundhouse and Olney) but always heretofore brings onto the stage a kind leading lady persona. Here she erases her beauty and star quality (though not her luminous voice) in the service of delivering the soul of a woman who in her obsession exposes her deepest self. As she reveals Fosca, singing “A love as pure as breath, as permanent as death,” Natascia reveals in the most courageous role of her life – herself.