The Kennedy Center has clearly lowered their standards

I'm in Florida for a few days visiting my madre for Christmas, so I feel a little out of touch with anything mid-Eastern related. Imagine my absolute ELATION when I switched the TV onto the last 25 minutes of the Kennedy Center Honors. I immediately felt a little closer to home. And then to make it even better, they were in the middle of honoring Leon Fleischer by performing Beethoven's Choral Fantasy. I felt all learned and artistic because 1. I knew who Leon Fleischer was and had seen him perform live in the last 5 years, and 2. had actually sung the Choral Fantasy (though totally during a traumatic time in my college career). It was still quite enjoyable until they panned around the audience and I saw Vanessa Williams and Kristen Chenowith in the crowd. Who let these ninnies in to the flippin' Kennedy Center?! Honestly... what have either of them done that requires talent? What am I saying? I LOVE Ugly Betty. Okay... let Vanessa in... kick Kristen out.

At any rate, then I saw the most insulting thing ever as they panned across the other recipients of the award: Diana. Ross. Really. Clearly a whole bunch of other people were on the short-list for the award this year and all must've turned it down or had previous engagements or something because... Diana? The only person that she's "inspired" is Beyonce... and all she really taught her is how to take over a pop group for yourself and make your fellow group members back up singers. I lost my gourd. They've gone from flippin Sydney Poitier to her ridiculousness. I got over myself, though. I mean, she is famous... she did have Barry Gordy wrapped around her wiry little finger.

So I had just recovered from Kristen and Diana, and then they started honoring Brian Wilson. Art Garfunkel called him the "Mozart of Rock 'n' Roll" which threw me for the loop, but I love that "God Only Knows" song that they play at the end of Love Actually, so I sucked it up. That is until the Kennedy Center decided to "honor" Brian Wilson by asking LYLE flippin' Lovett to sing it for him and a hall full of people. And then Hootie and the Blowfish sang two random songs followed by some scary English choirboys in white cult-like-looking robes. They apparently failed to tell Hootie and his Blowboys that people stopped wearing fashionable flannel around 1996. Poor Brian Wilson. I would've thrown myself over the balcony the second Lyle Lovett's croony voice started singing a song I wrote. And I know for sure that he's not nearly as mentally stable as I am.

Oh well. Better luck next year, Kennedy Center. Time for me to go. The news is on now, and in Florida, most people lack teeth. My stomach is starting to turn.

It's the holiday season....

...and I've been feeling more like a musician and less like a theatre artist lately. I'm sure all of that will change as soon as January comes around. I'm actually not sure which is better.

In the past week or two, I've been to two concerts (one at the Kennedy Center to see Paul Goodwin conduct Messiah), A Christmas Carol at Chesapeake Arts Center to see friends MW, CJ & JK, and finally to see Sweeney Todd on Saturday night.



I should start off by saying how glad I am that musical film adaptations are making a comeback. It brings a love of the genre to whole new generation of audience members, which makes me glad... I'll still have a job 30 years from now. I should then disclose that regardless of my zeal for musical film adaptations, I'm awful at going to see them. I saw Chicago in the theatre opening weekend. I didn't see The Producers at all. I saw RENT, but was highly disappointed. It took me 3 months to finally see Dreamgirls in the theatre. I still haven't seen Hairspray. So imagine my surprise when I overlooked my disdain for Sondheim in favor of my blind lust for Tim Burton and Johnny Depp to see Sweeney Todd at the Charles Theatre on Saturday night. I really enjoyed it... which quite surprised me seeing as you couldn't PAY me to see Sweeney Todd on stage (especially not the most recent revival with flip-top Patti LuPone the Avenue Q puppet).

The film was probably my favorite musical film adaptation since Chicago because it was actually a good film and not just a show put on stage. There was a lot of blood, but the cinematography was beautiful. Tim Burton clearly cast actors and not singers since he has to cast that blasted wife or life partner or whatever of his in every movie. She acted the crap out of the role... probably more than Johnny Depp, but she sounded like she was highed up on the crack everytime she opened her mouth to sing. The most memorable moment was probably By The Sea. I almost killed myself during Green Finch and Linnet Bird, and every time that Gerber Daisy playing Anthony Hope started singing Johanna (which is definitely like once every 25 minutes), but the comedic genius that is Sasha Baron Cohen made up for it. And that's my stream-of-consciousness review in a nutshell.

My favorite thing about going to The Charles is that it's attached to Tapas Teatro, one of my favorite affordable restaurants in Baltimore. I go to the restaurant way more often than I do to the theatre, but whenever see a movie there, it's a built-in excuse to eat before or afterwards. It's beautifully decorated for Christmas now, so if you have a chance to go before New Years, I definitely suggest it.

I hope everyone has a safe and celebratory Christmas holiday!

The ACL revival

I know this isn't about Baltimore, but I was in NYC this weekend. We didn't plan in advance to go and see a show... the strike just ended a week or two ago, so it wasn't like we could've made reservations ahead of time. At any rate, as soon as we got off the bus around 11 am in front of the Winter Garden Theatre (Mamma Mia), we headed over to the TKTS booth to see what was going on. The bus driver told us that because of the strike, he had heard that they weren't offering tickets 50% off, and we'd be lucky to get 10 or 20% discounts. Much to our surprise, however, we found a list 3 screens long of tickets to matinees all 50% off. Stephen said I could pick whatever I wanted to see. I started to make my list(for which I'm sure I'll be judged): Spring Awakening, Avenue Q, A Chorus Line... and then I saw it at the very end of the last screen... XANADU! I started jumping up and down and screaming like that announcer dude on The Price is Right had just called my name and said "COME ON DOOOOOOWN!" Stephen even agreed that the tongue-in-cheek roller disco romp was a good choice since it was something like 70 minutes with no intermission, so we could get in and out and still cram lots of stuff in our short day in the city.

We stood in the long but quickly-moving line and got to the window within 45 minutes. When we got there, we were informed (by the super rude woman behind the window) that there were three tickets to Xanadu, but we couldn't sit together. We went to the second choice of A Chorus Line and got mezzanine seats for $45 + tax. Despite the fact that I'm a singer before anything else and the original Bway cast recording is horrendous because they're all dancers before anything else, I've been obsessed with ACL for awhile, so I was super stoked.

We ate at Playwright's Tavern and got out just in time to run the few blocks back to the theatre to get seated. In keeping tradition with his totally charmed life, 6'5" Stephen complained to an usher that he couldn't sit in the [way-more-cramped-than-the-Hippodrome] seats and asked if he could move to an unoccupied end seat in an adjacent row. She told him no, but then let him sit in an unoccupied box by himself so he could lounge to his heart's content (can you imagine... paying $45 for a $200+ seat?!). The show was everything I expected and more. There were three understudies on. I can't remember which ones were. Everyone was amazing, though. And the singing was so TOTALLY on point. And I got to see Deidre Goodwin ("And then he ran into my knife: he ran into my knife TEN times" from the film adaptation of Chicago) as Sheila, on whom I have a small woman-to-woman crush.

Overall, the Broadway experience this go-around was quite enjoyable. If only the Chinatown experience that night had the same outcome....