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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the AFI Latin American Film Festival (Part 1) WTOP celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month this Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, with stories spotlighting the contributions, culture and accomplishments of Hispanic communities across the D.C. region.
Hispanic Heritage Month has officially started and movie fans have a big reason to celebrate.
The 35th annual AFI Latin American Film Festival returns to the historic AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, from Sept. 19 through Oct. 10.
“We’re really excited,” associate film programmer Josh Gardner told WTOP.
“It’s one of our flagship festivals and it’s my favorite time of year. The festival does coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month. It features 43 films from almost every country in Latin America. One of the things that’s really important to us is to showcase the diversity of filmmaking and Latin America itself, so we have documentaries that are issue oriented, comedies, dramas, thrillers.”
The AFI Latin American Film Festival kicks off with an opening night screening of “La Cocina” by Mexican filmmaker Alonso Ruizpalacios.
“It’s set in a busy Times Square restaurant and follows a Mexican immigrant chef, who’s having an affair with the waitress, played by Oscar-nominated actress Rooney Mara, and follows the intense drama after $800 gets stolen from the cash register,” Gardner said.
“For any fans of ‘The Bear’ out there, which I know there are many, I think this might be a can’t-miss film in the festival for you. We’re really lucky that the director is joining us for a Q&A.”
Baseball fans will appreciate “Clemente” about late great Puerto Rican baseball star Roberto Clemente.
“This is a great documentary about Roberto Clemente’s life, charting it from his childhood up until his unfortunate passing,” associate film programmer Javier Chavez told WTOP.
“I’m Cuban, so while baseball is not actually a big thing in my life, it’s a big part of my culture, so it was great to see this perspective of someone who really opened the door for Latinos like myself and see all of his struggles, but also how great of a baseball player he was.”
Washington policy wonks won’t want to miss a pair of issue-oriented border documentaries.
“The first one is called ‘Borderland: The Line Within,’ which exposes the border surveillance system we have in the United States,” Gardner said.
“That is going to be followed by ‘State of Silence,’ which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s a really important documentary that exposes the dangers that journalists in Mexico face for speaking the truth. That’s produced by powerhouse Mexican actors Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna.”
You also don’t want to miss the thriller “Ellipsis” by Spanish filmmaker David Marqués.
“This is the U.S. premiere, so it’s the first time anyone is going to see it here,” Chavez said.
“I describe it as Elena Ferrante meets Alfred Hitchcock, because it’s the story of a successful writer of mystery novels who writes under a pseudonym. He’s sequestered in his chalet working on his next novel when a mysterious stranger knocks on his door. Nobody knows where the writer is except his agent, so who is this man? Why is he knocking on the door?”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the AFI Latin American Film Festival (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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She’s all about that bass, no treble — and he’s all about returning to his home base, no trouble.
Meghan Trainor brings her “Timeless” tour to Jiffy Lube Live in Virginia on Tuesday alongside singer, actor and TikTok guru Chris Olsen, who grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
“I feel like I’ve listened to this [radio station] so many times in my life,” Olsen told WTOP. “This would be the radio that I’m pretty sure would be on every morning driving to school. This is D.C. This is it. We’ve made it.”
“Chris’ hometown!’ Trainor told WTOP. “He came on my podcast called ‘Workin’ On It’ and we realized our birthdays were the same exact date, Dec. 22, so we fell in love like, ‘Whoa, we’re soul mates, we are the same person.’ We’ve been inseparable ever since and I hired him to help me with my TikToks and be my best friend.”
While Olsen was born in D.C., Trainor was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and grew up listening to 2000s pop.
“I was listening to T-Pain, I loved T-Pain,” Trainor said. “I was listening to whatever my brothers put on, then sometimes I would get to have a say and put Britney Spears on, but luckily my brothers loved the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC with me so we would all listen to that together. Then my dad would play us old-school music, so we would listen to Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. Then my mom would play a lot of Madonna and Billy Joel.”
In 2014, she signed with Epic Records for her first album “Title” (2015) with hits like “Dear Future Husband” and “Lips Are Movin.'” Trainor co-wrote the songs with Baltimore native Kevin Kadish, who attended Owings Mills High School and created his own music management major at the University of Maryland in College Park.
“I was 18 I think and I was living in Nashville and I drove to Franklin to write with a guy named Kevin Kadish,” Trainor said. “We were working together on the whole album and just kept getting confused by what we were hearing from the label and managers. We were hearing different things, so we were like, ‘Let’s write a song to them saying, ‘Your lips are movin’, I know you’re lying because your lips are movin’, you just talk in circles.'”
Of course, the album’s biggest pop hit was the catchy No. 1 smash “All About That Bass.”
“[Kevin] had a title in his notes that said ‘all bass, no treble,’ and I was like, ‘Well, all the kids say, ‘I’m all about that’ when they’re saying I like something, and literally I’m all about my booty, my thickness and I got no treble,” Trainor said. “Like in music, bass is thick and treble is the thin, high parts … so I was like, ‘I’m all about that thick,’ you know? Then we wrote it that day in 45 minutes and I was like, ‘No one is ever gonna hear this.'”
“All About That Bass” was not only nominated for song of the year at the Grammys, it was also nominated for the top prize of Record of the Year alongside Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” Sia’s “Chandelier,” Iggy Azalea and Charlie XCX’s “Fancy” and Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” which ultimately won.
“He got me,” Trainor said. “I’ve never felt cooler. I was like fan-girling the whole night. I was living at like Park La Brea [in Los Angeles] and I was like, ‘What am I doing here?’ It was the best night of my life.”
The following year, Trainor returned to the Grammys to win best new artist just a few months before the release of her second album “Thank You” (2016), featuring the hit single “No.”
Her third album “Treat Myself” (2020) delivered even more hits with “No Excuses” and “Nice to Meet Ya” featuring Nicki Minaj, followed by her Seth MacFarlane duet “White Christmas” on her holiday album “A Very Trainor Christmas” (2020). Her fifth album “Takin’ it Back” (2022) delivered the hit song “Made You Look” with funny turns of phrases like, “Call up your chiropractor just in case your neck breaks.”
Now, her latest album “Timeless” just dropped in June with the single “Been Like This” featuring T-Pain.
“‘Been Like This,’ thank you for playing it on the radio,” Trainor said. “‘Whoops’ is one of my favorites, that’s been playing on the radio recently so thank you, then we just released the deluxe, which has my favorite songs: ‘Make a Move,’ ‘Booty’ and ‘Criminals,’ which is also in the new TV show ‘The Perfect Couple,’ which is my dream come true. It’s crazy seeing all these famous talented actors [like Nicole Kidman] dancing to my pop song.”
At this point, they had to run to get ready for their next show, doing makeup in the green room.
“I’m starting my makeup, so I have beautiful, blue, glittery eyes right now,” Trainor said. “You should do that for your hometown. For the hometown, if you show up, Chris is going to have gorgeous makeup that I’m gonna do.”
“Meghan is the makeup artist for this tour, so she is doing it for me as well,” Olsen said. “I’m ready. If people show up for the show, I will show up with the glittery makeup. … My parents still live in Maryland, so I’m still a DMV girl.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Kimberly Perry at Rams Head in Annapolis (Part 1) The Band Perry burst onto the scene 14 years ago with some of the best country songs of all time.
Now, the talented Kimberly Perry brings her first solo tour to Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland, on Sunday night.
“I was super excited to be invited up to Rams Head,” Perry told WTOP. “We’re kind of weaving this tour and this stop in Maryland as part of the CMT Next Women of Country tour for me, so I’m gonna be playing that set list. It’s a little bit of everything. I got to put out my first body of solo work last October called ‘Superbloom,’ so I’ll be playing songs off ‘Superbloom’ and of course, all the hits from The Band Perry. It would not be a set without those.”
Perry’s showcase is a fitting grand finale for the third annual Annapolis Songwriters Festival, which will welcome such prolific singer-songwriters as Marc Cohn, Lee Brice and Natalie Hemby throughout the entire weekend.
“Those are some of my very favorite songwriters,” Perry said. “In fact, Natalie Hemby was one of my first co-writes in Nashville when I started writing in the town. The amazing songwriters that come from Nashville, it’s just a special community and anytime we get to break it down on stage, the stories behind the songs and the atmosphere of how we wrote it in the room that day, getting to tell that and then play the song is such a cool experience.”
Born in the country-famous town of Jackson, Mississippi, in 1983, Kimberly grew up listening to the radio and singing around the house with her brothers and future Band Perry members Reid (bass) and Neil (mandolin).
“The very first foundation was we did listen to music a lot as a family,” Perry said. “Every Saturday night, our parents would listen to public radio and in Jackson, Mississippi, every Saturday night they had two hours of bluegrass, so our dad would grill some steaks, our mom would make potato salad and we would all sit around and listen to these two hours of bluegrass together, so that was my first love of country and Americana music.”
The siblings performed everywhere from shrimp boils to birthday parties before eventually moving to East Tennessee. Soon, they were discovered by Garth Brooks’ manager Bob Doyle to sign with Republic Nashville for their self-titled debut album “The Band Perry” (2010), produced by Paul Worley and Nathan Chapman.
The breakthrough album featured the smash No. 1 hit “If I Die Young,” an instant classic of visual storytelling, melancholic mood and turns of phrase as Kimberly belts the stinging chorus, “The sharp knife of a short life, well, I’ve had just enough time,” followed by the haunting coda, “Funny when you’re dead how people start listening.”
“It’s so true, right? So many artists have become massive post their death,” Perry said. “I wrote ‘If I Die Young’ at our home in East Tennessee. For whatever reason that day, I was daydreaming about life and all the things I wanted to come of it, but I also wanted to be content with where things were in that very moment. ‘If I Die Young’ is ironic in its title about making the most of every moment because you never know what’s gonna happen.”
The song won CMA Awards for Single of the Year and New Artist of the Year, while earning a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song (ultimately losing to Lady A’s “Need You Now”). They would return to the Grammys a year later nominated for Best New Artist in a 2012 class that included Nicki Minaj, J. Cole, Skrillex and Bon Iver.
Their second album “Pioneer” (2013) delivered “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely,” “Chainsaw” and a pair of No. 1 hits with “Done” and “Better Dig Two.” The latter was a stomping romp written by Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally and Trevor Rosen with a sassy Old West chorus, “If you go before I do, I’m gonna tell the gravedigger that he better dig two.”
“‘Better Dig Two’ is so cool,” Perry said. “I’ll never forget the first time they played that song for us, inviting us to record it. I was like ‘100%.’ … When we recorded ‘Pioneer,’ we had advanced from playing smaller rooms and theaters to arenas and amphitheaters, so we knew we wanted a bigger-sounding project with more country-rock elements, so ‘Better Dig Two’ felt like the perfect thread between our first album and where we were headed.”
In 2015, The Band Perry won their first ever Grammy for Best Country Duo Performance for their cover of Glen Campbell’s classic “Gentle on My Mind” for the Oscar-nominated documentary “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.”
“That was such an amazing experience,” Perry said. “They invited us to record ‘Gentle on My Mind,’ which to this day is one of the most beautifully-written lyrics of any song of all time. … We had played it a year before at the Grammys when Glen Campbell got his Lifetime Achievement Award. … We looked out during rehearsal in the front row and Paul McCartney was sitting there recording our rehearsal because he’s a huge fan of Glen Campbell.”
Beyond the early career accolades, one of Perry’s defining experiences came when the band delivered a genre-bending performance on CMT’s “Crossroads” with Fall Out Boy, taking turns playing each other’s hits.
“Honestly, that’s one of my favorite things that we ever got to do,” Perry said. “Those guys are just sweethearts. Before you even see the taping, we got to do two days of rehearsal, just hanging out, learning each other’s music. They had a great love for the country songwriting format, so I love those ‘Crossroads.’ If in the future I ever get to do it again, I just can’t wait. I was such a blast and I think our appetite was wet by that with pop music.”
After that, The Band Perry began experimenting in crossover pop music, delivering singles like “Live Forever,” “Comeback Kid” and “Stay in the Dark” that would wind up on their digitally-released EP “Coordinates” (2018).
“Creatively we were in a season at that time that felt like, ‘Hey, let’s explore,'” Perry said. “It was never our intention to let go of country, but sometimes on the pop side, you have a lot people interested in growing your sound then sometimes it feels like you’re getting a little too far from home plate. It’s been really cool since 2020, Reid, Neil and I have been individually and collectively writing songs that brought us back home to country.”
In March 2023, The Band Perry announced that it would be taking a “creative break as a group” to “focus on our individual creative pursuits.” This allowed Kimberly to release her first solo EP “Bloom” (2023) that would eventually expand into “Superbloom” (2023), which released last fall with the single “If I Die Young Pt. 2.”
“With my project ‘Superbloom,’ it was really me with my solo voice getting to go like, ‘Hey, I’ve had such an amazing journey, I’ve gotten to explore a lot,'” Perry said. “I’m all for experimentation, there’s a lot of country artists doing it now and vice versa, a lot of pop artists experiencing country, but for me, it’s just always wonderful to know where the pillow is warm and where home is: that’s country music and being a country singer-songwriter.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Kimberly Perry at Rams Head in Annapolis (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Paramount+ Movie Nights on the National Mall (Part 1) D.C. movie fans were devastated when HBO discontinued its popular “Screen on the Green” series in 2016.
Now you can rejoice with a revival of sorts as the National Mall hosts the inaugural Paramount+ Movie Nights.
“If you miss Screen on the Green, come by this Saturday evening and watch our Paramount+ Movie Night in its first-ever inauguration on the National Mall,” Executive Vice President of Marketing Puja Vohra told WTOP. “We have been doing our Movie Nights series in New York. … We picked this incredibly iconic location for our very first one in D.C. … Is there a more iconic landmark in America than to be on the National Mall, America’s front yard?”
Saturday’s free outdoor event will feature a special 30th anniversary screening of “Forrest Gump” (1994).
“The movie itself has glimpses of this iconic location, so it felt like the perfect partnership to bring this movie to the National Mall,” Vohra said. “The movie has that scene with Forrest and Jenny in the Reflection [Pool] during the protest march. … Forrest is in D.C. going to visit multiple presidents including LBJ and Kennedy, so it should be a fantastic background for us to be seeing this movie while it’s happening in the movie itself.”
In this way, the entertaining flick becomes a deceptively profound journey through American history.
“‘Forrest Gump’ is such an incredibly iconic movie,” Vohra said. “It’s kind of insane to think that it’s already been 30 years, but if you love the movie and want to remind yourself all the reasons why it’s the perfect family-friendly big blockbuster movie with some incredible stars, including Tom Hanks, come on out and see the movie this weekend.”
To this day, “Forrest Gump” remains one of the most beloved Best Picture winners of all time, having won a whopping six Oscars, including Best Actor for Tom Hanks and Best Director for Robert Zemeckis.
“It is so rare for us to have these big blockbuster movies also be critically acclaimed and award winning, sometimes those things can be very different, but this is one of those rare movies like ‘Titanic,’ like ‘Lord of the Rings,’ like ‘Oppenheimer’ that has everything: big stars, big locations, incredibly heart-wrenching story, phenomenal acting, awards, box-office bonanza, all of it all rolled into one. It’s such a part of American legend. It’s one of the greats.”
The giant screen will be located on the National Mall near the Smithsonian Metro Stop.
The lawn officially opens at 5 p.m. with the movie screening beginning at dusk.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Paramount+ Movie Nights on the National Mall (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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They’ve racked up four billion streams worldwide with a deliciously throwback blues-rock sound.
Now, the pride of Iceland comes to the heart of America as Kaleo rocks The Anthem in D.C. on Monday, Sept. 16.
“I’m pretty sure this is our second time,” Frontman Jökull Júlíusson told WTOP. “We played it about two years ago and it must have been pretty brand new at the time, but such a beautiful venue, man, like right on the water, so we’re super excited to be back.”
They’re calling it “The Payback Tour” for a reason as the band grapples with budget realities in the 2024 music biz.
“To be honest, we called it ‘The Payback Tour’ because we’re actually working our way out of debt,” Júlíusson said. “We’re a big band with two tour buses and a truck, so it’s challenging, but we’re making steps in the right direction. COVID didn’t help and obviously we feel like artists should be getting paid more in every aspect of the game, so I hope that environment changes soon. We’re happy to be back on the road and playing for the fans.”
Born in Iceland in 1990, Júlíusson’s family briefly moved to Denmark before returning to Iceland for his teenage years. He and his pals formed the band in 2012, settling on the name Kaleo, which means “the sound” in Hawaiian.
“Two of my boys were in school with me, we met when we were around 14 or 15, everybody was hugely into rock music and classic rock, so we bonded over that,” Júlíusson said. “I had obviously been writing songs for a long time, so around [age] 17 or 18 we were like, ‘We should jam,’ so we did. I think our school even provided us with a rehearsal space at the time and we went for a few years kind of doing covers around town making decent money.”
After early indie efforts, their breakthrough album was the platinum-selling “A/B” (2016) with the world-famous hit “Way Down We Go,” which topped Billboard’s Alternative Songs Chart and Rock Airplay Chart, as well as No. 54 on the mainstream Billboard Hot 100. It was even used in the movie trailer for “Logan” and the TV trailer for “Orange is the New Black,” making Kaleo the most synced artist across movies, TV shows and video games in 2017.
“How do you write any song? Just receive it, I guess,” Júlíusson said. “I was just extremely influenced by some blues at the time. To me it’s kind of a blues song really, then you just go into the studio and write more for hip-hop drums, production wise, that kind of gave it that extra lift, but I’d say it’s kind of a bluesy song to begin with.”
The same album also featured the killer track “No Good,” which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance, losing to Leonard Cohen, who had just died the previous year. It was also featured in the HBO series “Vinyl” (2016) co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, who invited Kaleo to open for The Rolling Stones.
“I like to write riffs, I worship rock ‘n roll music, I love to perform, it’s a lot of energy, so that one is great to play live,” Júlíusson said. “We had played it live for years before we recorded it, so that’s the kind of music I really enjoy performing live. I just went to an AC/DC concert a couple months back. That kind of music is meant to be played live! It’s another blues track for sure, but kind of rock ‘n roll. … I would love to see more of that come back.”
Five years later, their next album “Surface Sounds” (2021) was released during the pandemic, featuring songs like “Skinny” and “I Want More” — the latter of which they performed on “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” on CBS.
“I write a lot of the songs beforehand,” Júlíusson said. “I definitely had more time I would say on ‘Surface Sounds,’ so I did try to sonically explore more and I do think that it was a learning experience for me, producing myself as well as my collaborators in studio. I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun, most of it was recorded in Nashville, which has become like a second home to me. … I’m proud of that record and we’re playing a lot of those songs live.”
Through it all, they’ve played all of the biggest festivals in the world from Coachella to Lollapalooza to Bonnaroo.
“Our experience is so different from the consumer or the fans that attend, but it was so special going to South America with the Lollapalooza franchise doing Brazil, Argentina and Chile,” Júlíusson said. “We also just went to Morocco this year to perform at a festival. I think they’re all different, but in a good way. I’d love to play a couple we haven’t done still like Stagecoach — and we haven’t done Glastonbury, that would be sick.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Kaleo at The Anthem (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Annapolis Songwriters Festival (Part 1) Are you a lyrical wordsmith who wants to pick the brains of the best songwriters in the biz?
Or are you simply a music fan who wants to enjoy some cool concerts in Maryland’s capital?
The third annual Annapolis Songwriters Festival returns this Thursday through Sunday, modeled after the 28-year-old Key West Songwriters Festival.
“We purchased the Key West Songwriters Festival about three and a half years ago and one of the goals was to bring a sister festival here to our own town in Annapolis,” Festival owner Kyle Muehlhauser told WTOP. “There’s a lot of great synergies between Annapolis and Key West, we bump into a lot of people from Maryland when we’re in Key West. It’s just a great, historic, maritime town. It really showcases the city.”
The first year welcomed Jake Owen, the second year hosted LeAnn Rimes, Blondie and Michelle Branch, and now this year’s star-studded lineup features 140 artists across 15 different venues across the city.
“You get to just bop around town and see all of these different shows and it kind of highlights all of these different venues and parts of the town,” Muelhlauser said. “We have some emerging young artists that aren’t quite established yet and they’re getting to mix in with some of these established songwriters. We’ve got guys here that have written songs that you’ve been listening to on the radio for years and years.”
It kicks off Thursday with a full day of events leading up to a ticketed event with American folk duo Johnnyswim at Maryland Hall, followed by another full day of events on Friday, headlined by Citizen Cope at Annapolis City Dock.
Saturday at Rams Head you can see Natalie Hemby, who won a Grammy for Best Country Song for “Crowded Table” with The Highwomen and another for Lady Gaga’s “I’ll Never Love Again” in the film “A Star is Born.” She’s also been nominated for CMA Song of the Year five times: “White Liar” (Miranda Lambert), “Pontoon” (Little Big Town), “Automatic” (Lambert), “Rainbow” (Kacey Musgraves) and “Bluebird” (Lambert).
It all culminates Sunday with arguably the biggest lineup, including country music hitmaker Lee Brice (“I Don’t Dance”) at Annapolis City Dock, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Marc Cohn (“Walking in Memphis”) at Maryland Hall, and Grammy winner Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry (“If I Die Young”) at Rams Head.
“It’s a great family-friendly event,” Muelhlauser said. “Annapolis is a very walkable town, so being able to walk around and see all of this great music, it’s really a fun event. … Seeing all of the songwriters walking around town with their guitars on their back, it’s kind of like the whole town kind of transforms for the weekend.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Sojourners' at Round House Theatre (Part 1) Immigration is front and center in the heartfelt new dramatic play “Sojourners,” which opens Wednesday night at the prolific Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, running now through Oct. 6.
“It’s a timely topic,” director Valerie Curtis-Newton told WTOP. “There’s a lot of conversation about immigration that doesn’t take into account how many folks really love where they came from. They come here for education, to move ahead economically, many go back or send money back, and they contribute to our society. It’s not a one-way transaction. It’s a give and take that makes America stronger to have new ideas and different perspectives woven into the fabric of our country.”
The story follows a pregnant woman named Abasiama and her husband Ukpong, a pair of Nigerian immigrants studying and living in Houston in 1978. Ukpong is excited by the promises of America and grows to love their new home, while Abasiama becomes homesick and increasingly frustrated by Ukpong’s frequent absences.
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- Grammy-winner Debby Boone to perform at Rams Head in Annapolis on Sept. 21
“They had an arranged marriage and they come to the U.S.,” Curtis-Newton said. “One of them is in love with the country and the other one still hungers for home, so the idea of how they work together to settle that tension in their relationship and what the experiences are for each of them is the heart of what the play is about. … A sojourn is a temporary stay. … That’s one of the tensions: whether to go home or to not go home.”
Similar to August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” of 10 plays, “Soujourners” is the first in an epic nine-part “Ufot Cycle”depicting the Nigerian-American experience. It’s written by playwright Mfoniso Udofia, who grew up in Massachusetts with parents who immigrated from Nigeria. You might recognize her writing from “Little America” (Apple), “A League of Their Own” (Prime), “Let the Right One In” (Showtime) and “13 Reasons Why” (Netflix).
“This play ‘Sojourners’ is actually the first in the cycle, it’s the origin story. all of the foundational characters are present in this play, so we see them arrive here and wrestle with what it is to be an immigrant,” Curtis-Newton said. “I think Episode 3 of ‘Little America’ actually is the story of a Nigerian immigrant who came here to go to college, so there are a lot of themes and ideas in that show that are present in our play.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the ICYOLA in DC (Part 1) Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t the only groundbreaking California force making history in Washington.
America’s largest full-time Black and Latinx orchestra is paying a special visit to the nation’s capital as the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (ICYOLA) kicks off its exciting fall season with a pair of concerts timed with the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Weekend in D.C.
“When we talk about being the largest orchestra of color in the United States, we’re talking about an orchestra that has a regular season that operates year-round,” founder Charles “Chuck” Dickerson told WTOP. “That’s to be distinguished from what we might call ‘festival orchestras’ that come together for one or two performances.”
Fittingly founded in 2009, the same year as the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama, ICYOLA continues its original mission of transforming the lives of inner-city youth through high-quality music education.
“Nine African American high school-aged instrumentalists approached me at the beginning of that summer looking for an opportunity to play their instruments,” Dickerson said. “They said, ‘Mr. Dickerson, we need a youth orchestra in our own community that can serve the young people who live here in the inner-city parts of Los Angeles. I frankly did not ever anticipate that this would turn out to be what it has turned out to be.”
Indeed, the group has grown from just nine musicians in its humble beginnings to a total of 139 musicians taking the stage for its most recent season finale show at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles back in July.
This weekend in D.C., the ICYOLA was asked to limit its size to just 20 young performers, whom Dickerson will proudly conduct at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Thursday.
“This is really a hallmark opportunity for us,” Dickerson said. “We’re gonna play a little bit of Mozart, a little bit of Holt, a little bit go Grieg, and a little bit of Beethoven. … We have also a jazz combo playing very well-known jazz pieces: ‘Stolen Moments’ by Oliver Nelson, ‘All Blues’ by Miles Davis, ‘Bags’ Groove’ by Milt Jackson. We’re actually also gonna play ‘As,’ a very well-known Stevie Wonder song, [and] a couple pieces by The Isley Brothers.”
After the Black Caucus convention, music lovers can watch their free show Friday at the Kennedy Center.
“It’s gonna be the same set list … but we’re expecting an entirely different audience,” Dickerson said. “At the Washington Convention Center, we are performing for the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Weekend, I think those who attend had to have registered to be at the convention. On the other hand, the performance at the Kennedy Center is gonna be at the Millennium Stage, which is open to everyone and free.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the Prime docuseries 'The Money Game' (Part 1) Jayden Daniels may have lost his rookie season opener with the Washington Commanders on Sunday, but he’s starring in a brand-new documentary on a revolution in college sports.
The six-episode docuseries “The Money Game” premieres Tuesday on Amazon Prime Video, chronicling the aftermath of a 2021 Supreme Court decision that allowed college athletes to make money off their “Name, Image and Likeness” (NIL), a financial barrier long held by the NCAA for its student athletes.
The series is told through the lens of one specific school, Louisiana State University, which saw numerous athletes sign groundbreaking NIL deals with a big impact on the economy of not only Baton Rouge, but on college sports nationwide. These include product endorsements, television commercials and even video games (archival footage shows former UCLA hoops star Ed O’Bannon playing himself in an NCAA video game with zero compensation).
Episode 1 is fitting titled “The Wild West” for such uncharted territory. The opening credits introduce our five main characters with nifty graphics showing their number of Instagram followers: gymnast Olivia Dunne (15.6 million), football star Jayden Daniels (300,000), women’s basketball stars Angel Reese (7.9 million) and Flau’jae Johnson (3.4 million), track star Alia Armstrong (53,200) and men’s basketball star Trace Young (360,500).
Ironically, Daniels appears to have the most apathetic approach to social media and NIL deals, knowing that his true earning potential will come by turning pro. Episode 1 shows Daniels’ breakout victory over Alabama in 2022 before his electrifying 2023 season got him drafted at No. 2 overall in the NFL Draft. Episode 1 wraps with Daniels injured with a concussion, an effective cliffhanger even if we already know he bounces back to win the Heisman.
While football carries 90% of the LSU Athletic Department’s annual budget of $199 million, the smaller sports have to scrap for more exposure by churning out social media content to ink NIL deals. Young comes across cocky on and off the basketball court as he approaches WWE scouts at a convention, while Armstrong is a lovable track-and-field underdog, dutifully meeting with school NIL liaisons, then giving the glory to God with each hurdle.
Still, no one is more successful at this new “money game” than gymnast Dunne, who has quickly built her name, image and likeness into a global brand worth millions. The filmmakers show her at home playfully making TikTok videos with her sister, who is also her biggest fan screaming her head off in the stands, but at what price? Dunne was surprisingly benched in the finals as her teammates won LSU gymnastics its first national championship.
Last but not least, you can be damn sure the docuseries chronicles the LSU women’s basketball program, namely Reese and Johnson. LSU alum and the docuseries’ co-producer Shaquille O’Neal said, “When I purchased Reebok, the first person I called was Angel.” We even see flashbacks of O’Neal breaking backboards and branding his “Shaq” character, intercut with him now cheering on the sidelines during games and DJing at college parties.
More than Daniels on the gridiron, the main character (or even “antihero”) so far is Reese, who transferred from the University of Maryland to LSU. Episode 2 is titled “The Price Just Went Up,” a phrase declared by Reese and Johnson after winning the 2023 national title, while Episode 3 is titled “You Can’t See Me,” referring to the John Cena hand gesture Reese made to Caitlin Clark, sparking discussion over claims of a double standard.
That’s where I left off — with three episodes to go. I can’t wait to watch Episode 4, 5 and 6. All I can tell you is that Episode 3 ends with another cliffhanger as controversial LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey benches Reese and refuses to explain why during press conferences. One analyst quips, “NIL has divided the locker room” as Twitter/X posts wildly speculate about a rift. Reese replied, “Don’t believe everything you read.” Cut to black.
NOTE: I found the subject matter personally amusing since I visited LSU to watch my cousin Jake Fraley play baseball for the Tigers before being drafted into the MLB. This was back when NIL wasn’t yet a possibility for players like Jake, who is now on the Cincinnati Reds. I’d be curious to get his take on this at the next Fraley family reunion.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Great Frederick Fair (Part 1) Maryland has many county fairs, but the Great Frederick Fair proudly calls itself the “G.O.A.T.”
That’s the double-meaning slogan for this year’s event, running Sept. 13 through Sept. 21.
“This year is the G.O.A.T.: The Greatest Fair of All Time,” General Manager Karen Crum told WTOP.
“Ironically, we have more goats than we’ve ever had. We had to build another barn for them. We had ‘great’ in our name ‘The Great Frederick Fair,’ so it seems fitting. We have the greatest sponsors, the greatest vendors, participants, members, exhibitors, so we just loved the play on words with that. We truly do feel like we have the best people involved in our fair and our community tradition.”
This year’s grandstand lineup kicks off with hip-hop megastar Flo Rida this Friday, Sept. 13, featuring hits like “Low,” “Right Round,” “Club Can’t Handle Me,” “Wild Ones,” “Whistle,” “Good Feeling,” “I Cry” and “My House.”
“Bring your apple-bottom jeans for Flo Rida — and boots with the fur, you can’t forget those,” Crum said.
“I just had a really good feeling that he was going to be really good. We’re really excited to have that genre. Even when we were picking the entertainment, I named a bunch of Flo Rida songs, then you keep listening and he has like 100 hits. … Half the track is seated and half the track is standing room only for those who want to be up and dancing.”
Classic rock fans will enjoy Bachman Turner Overdrive on Saturday, Sept. 14, delivering timeless hits like “Takin’ Care of Business,” “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” and “Let it Ride.” The show will also feature British rocker John Waite, who is best known for his chart-topping hit “Missing You.”
“We’re excited,” Crum said. “They’ll be taking care of business that night — every day. … You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Country music fans will sing every word with Tracy Lawrence on Sunday, Sept. 15 for hits like “Time Marches On,” “Alibis,” “Texas Tornado,” “Paint Me a Birmingham” and “Find Out Who Your Friends Are.” Opening up is Sara Evans with “Born to Fly,” “Suds in the Bucket,” “I Keep Looking,” “No Place That Far” and “A Real Fine Place to Start.”
“Paint me a Frederick Fair!” Crum said. “We’re just excited when you get those combos. Some people prefer to listen to the male artists, others the female artists, so why not two in one night?”
Next week closes out summer with The Beach Boys on Thursday, Sept. 19, followed by country star Riley Green with John Morgan on Friday, Sept. 20 and the Christian rock group Casting Crowns on Saturday, Sept. 21.
“Hey DMV, we really hope that you come to the Great Frederick Fair from Sept. 13 through Sept. 21,” Crum said. “Whether you’re coming to a concert or if you just come to enjoy all of the delicious food, fun, games, rides, carnival and animals, there’s over 4,000 animals on sight, so there’s something for everyone.”
Find concert ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'DC Originality' at the Kennedy Center (Part 1) Did you ever grind to Ginuwine’s “Pony?” Did you crack up watching Anthony Anderson’s “Black-ish?”
The Kennedy Center welcomes both stars for a special two-night event called “DC ORIGINALITY: Showcasing the Cultural Beat of Capital City” on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
“I’m from D.C., I was born here and I know the rich culture of the city,” curator Carlos Simon told WTOP. “I know how special the city is and I know the amazing talent and amazing culture that comes out of this city, so I was like, ‘Let’s highlight some of that at the Kennedy Center, the nation’s cultural stage.'”
The event will be co-hosted by “Black-ish” star Anthony Anderson and Dr. Tonya M. Matthews.
“Anthony Anderson needs no introduction, he’s an amazing actor and he’s absolutely going to bring that fire in hosting,” Simon said. “He’s of course known for the big show ‘Black-ish’ and he’ll come and host the show with that same energy. Then we have Dr. Tonya Matthews, who is an engineer and also works with the Maryland Science Center, so they’ll tag-team the event hosting and emceeing and introducing the artists.”
While born in California, Anderson has strong D.C. ties as a proud graduate of Howard University.
“Howard shows up a lot in this concert through artists who graduated and also we have some students from the Howard University Music Department: Afro Blue,” Simon said. “We have Imani-Grace Cooper, who’s a graduate of the university, Kenny Lattimore, who’s also a graduate of Howard University, so Howard is well represented in this concert. Hopefully we have some alum who will come support these local and homegrown artists.”
Lattimore will perform chart-topping R&B hits, alongside another D.C. native, Ginuwine.
“Kenny Lattimore is an American R&B singer, born in D.C., grew up in the DMV area, whose songs include ‘For You,’ ‘Love Will Find a Way,’ ‘Stay on My Mind,’ so it was really important to highlight the R&B element of the city in what it has to bring in contemporary R&B,” Simon said. “Ginuwine will follow Kenny Lattimore and sing those classic hits like ‘Pony’ and ‘Anxious.’ … He is legendary across the world as an R&B singer.”
Other hometown performers include Christylez Bacon, The String Queens and The D.C. Go-Go All Stars.
“The String Queens are a local legend, but they’re performing all over the country now. The name is pretty indicative of what they do, they play strings, but they are exciting, they bring some heat and energy to the classical space,” Simon said. “You cannot have a concert featuring D.C. music and not feature go-go. … We close out the program with the D.C. Go-Go All Stars. It’s going to be really exciting to have the orchestra play go-go music.”
That’s right, the National Symphony Orchestra will lend its epic instruments to the catchy tunes of the late “Godfather of Go-Go” Chuck Brown, as well as other legendary D.C. natives from Marvin Gaye to Duke Ellington.
“They’re a top-tier orchestra with some of the best musicians,” Simon said. “Of course they do classical music like Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, but they also perform works by popular artists. … It shows the wide-ranging talent of the musicians in the National Symphony Orchestra. They can do so many types of music so well.”
Rounding out the concert is a fresh original piece composed by Simon specifically for this concert.
“It pays homage to a D.C. native born in the 1920s known for bringing jazz to Europe,” Simons aid. “His name was James Reese Europe. He led a band called The Harlem Hellfighters, they fought in World War I, Black Americans unable to serve in combat but they were able to play at different bases in Europe to boost morale. They played jazz music from Harlem, music from D.C. and this element of Black American music across the world.”
Arrive early and stay late for pre- and post-shows, pop-up vendors, drink tastings, photo booths and more.
“Be prepared to get out of your seats,” Simon said. “This is not a concert where you’re just gonna sit down and enjoy. No, be prepared to get up and clap your hands and dance a little bit. It’s going to be really exciting.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Lake Street Dive at Merriweather (Part 1) Lake Street Dive is bringing its 20th anniversary tour to Maryland this weekend.
The band rocks Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, on Friday night.
“We’ve been in the region many times over the years, but this is our first time at this specific venue,” Drummer Mike Calabrese told WTOP.
“It’s always been great for us down there for sure. We were playing tiny clubs in D.C. back in the day, then the 9:30 Club, then we did Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, and we’ve been in the small clubs of Baltimore, too, so this has been a good all around regional area for us.”
They’re calling it the “Good Together” Tour, fittingly named after the title track of their latest album.
“It’s named after the song but figuratively it really is about the fact that we’ve been a band for 20 years and we’ve been able to make it work and it’s still working this long. Also, some of the subject matter in the songs is very much about how people can connect, making connection possible, remembering that with some intention, the right focus and the right work you can work well with anybody. That can be found as a common thread throughout.”
Formed in Boston in 2004, the pop-soul, alt-jazz and folk-rock band mostly met at the New England Conservatory of Music.
The original lineup featured Calabrese (drums), Rachael Price (vocals), Bridget Kearney (bass) and of course Mike “McDuck” Olson (lead vocals, trumpet and guitar), who named the band after a dive-bar-style bowling alley on Lake Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that was a family favorite among his hometown relatives.
“There’s a spot called Bryant Lake Bowl on Lake Street in Minneapolis that one of McDuck’s uncles, who is also a trumpet player, frequented,” Calabrese said.
“Back in the day it was one of the cool underground clubs and that was the original idea, it would be a band you would see in a dive bar. That’s how we got our start and developed a following in Boston and we still try to bring that to the stage even if the stage is as big as Merriweather Post.”
Lake Street Dive’s first full-length indie album “In This Episode” (2007) was partially funded by Kearney winning the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, using the $1,000 cash prize to produce 1,000 CDs of their first gritty effort.
“It was pretty cool,” Calabrese said.
“We don’t even sell that album anymore because it’s not our best work, but Bridget had written a song that the band recorded called ‘Sometimes When I’m Drunk and You’re Wearing My Favorite Shirt.’ … She took half her winnings and donated it, then took the other half like, ‘Hey, I know this is a brand new band, but you guys helped me record the demo, so let’s put this toward making our first album.'”
After their second independent album “Promises Promises” (2008), the band delivered its true breakthrough studio album with the self-titled release “Lake Street Dive” (2010).
“The first album that we still sell is the eponymous one, ‘Lake Street Dive,’ which is technically our third but that was the first album where we decided we’re not going to pursue the jazz element, we’re gonna go this new route with back beats and four-minute songs,” Calabrese said.
“We still play songs from that record because it still somewhat represents us as a band, our more concise, cogent pop songs, so that’s kind of where we start.”
The band continued to evolve with their next album “Bad Self Portraits” (2014).
“The title track is still a big one for us, and also ‘You Go Down Smooth,’ those are two songs we play almost every show to this day, but a great tune from that record that we haven’t played in a while is ‘Just Ask,’ written by McDuck,” Calabrese said.
“That was one of the better songs he ever wrote and it was a turning-point song for us where we embraced this more moody, emotional side of us in a perfect way. I think about that song a lot.”
Their next album “Side Pony” (2016) delivered the tunes “Call Off Your Dogs” and “I Don’t Care About You.”
“‘Call Off Your Dogs’ we brought back because we’ve been touring around with the Huntertones, this horn group, but we didn’t play the title track ‘Side Pony’ for years because although McDuck had written it, he was very embarrassed by it, he kind of wrote it as a lark, basically a love song for his wife who at their wedding had a side ponytail, and the greater meaning of it is more about what makes you you, what is your flair or your signature?”
In 2018, the band recorded the Emmy-nominated theme song for the Netflix foodie series “Somebody Feed Phil,” the same year as their sixth album “Free Yourself Up” (2018) with fan favorites like “I Can Change” and “Shame Shame Shame.” It also included arguably their catchiest, most mainstream hit “Good Kisser.”
“It’s just a great sentiment,” Calabrese said.
“Bridget wrote that one with a great melody, hook, feel, all that stuff. … Breakup songs usually go one of two ways: begging someone to take you back or you’re the worst and I never want to talk to you again … but what’s good about ‘Good Kisser’ is that it’s like, ‘OK, be fair, tell the whole truth, if you’re gonna gossip about me after we break up, how about you tell them all the good stuff too?'”
After a pandemic hiatus, they released their much-anticipated seventh album “Obviously” (2021), which featured the tracks “Making Do,” “Know That I Know” and the popular song “Hypotheticals.”
“We started work on that album in late 2019,” Calabrese said.
“We took a little break and did a cruise for a week in February 2020, we were hearing all this news, got back from the cruise, finished the record and three days after flying home it was lockdown. All the songs were written and recorded before the pandemic hit, so we were able to mix and master it remotely, but we had to sit on it for a year and a half before we played a single show.”
McDuck left the band in 2021, leaving the rest to emerge from the pandemic with “Good Together.”
“He did some soul searching and it just was not right for him or his family, which is 100% understandable and respected, and he went into education,” Calabrese said.
“It was very amicable and maturely discussed. … For years we’ve just been notorious amongst ourselves as the lowest-drama band I think you could possibly find. We’re not cool, there’s no hijinx, we don’t trash hotel rooms and we don’t have big blowout acrimonious fights.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the new thriller 'Strange Darling' (Part 1) Stephen King called it a “clever masterpiece.” Mike Flanagan added, “Sublimely brilliant. You must go in blind.”
Allow me to throw my own stunned support behind the must-see new thriller “Strange Darling,” written and directed by JT Mollner, who is now officially a filmmaking force to be reckoned with in the horror genre.
The film opens by claiming it’s based on a true story of “the final known killings of the most prolific and unique American serial killer of the 21st century.” Films such as “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974) and “Fargo” (1996) have taught us that this is often apocryphal, but it’s an effective tease as we enter rural Oregon for a one-night stand that goes terribly wrong in the grand finale of a bloody rampage across the Pacific Northwest.
The film works as well as it does because of the complex performances by its two lead actors. Willa Fitzgerald previously starred in Flanagan’s miniseries “The Fall of the House of Usher” (2023) and her performance here is truly harrowing, transcending the label “scream queen” with chilling shrieks. You’ll also recognize Kyle Gallner from the horror flick “Smile” (2022) and here his mustached loner is creepy right from the opening frames.
The coolest casting coup is Barbara Hershey, who had a run of ’80s classics in “The Right Stuff” (1983), “The Natural” (1984), “Hoosiers” (1986), “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986) and “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1987) before her resurgence in horror films like “Black Swan” (2010) and “Insidious” (2010). She joins Ed Begley Jr. (“St. Elsewhere”) as a nice old couple making Sunday breakfast and doing puzzles before hell arrives at their doorstep.
These actors weave in and out of a nonlinear script brilliantly presented out of order as Mollner intentionally rearranges his scenes to subvert audience expectations. He first drops us into the middle of the story in Chapter 3, then leaps ahead to the penultimate Chapter 5, rewinds back to the setup of Chapter 1, races ahead to Chapter 4, doubles back to Chapter 2, and finally drops the dramatic conclusion of Chapter 6, followed by a brief Epilogue.
The genius fractured narrative is clearly inspired by Quentin Tarantino, right down to catchy titles for each chapter (“Here Kitty, Kitty”). There’s a similar energy to the proceedings, including an enclosed space like the buried-alive sequence in “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” (2004) and a roaring car chase that recalls “Death Proof” (2007). As for the Pacific Northwest setting, I found it to be reminiscent of John Hyams’ underrated thriller “Alone” (2020).
Homages aside, Mollner deserves credit for his own creative voice. He’s a 16-year “overnight success” since his first short film “The Red Room” (2008) before getting the horror rub from Dee Wallace (“The Hills Have Eyes,” “The Howling,” “Cujo”) in his short “Flowers in December” (2015). His feature directorial debut “Outlaws & Angels” (2016) starred Luke Wilson at Sundance, using Kodak film stock and old-school Panavision cameras and lenses.
Similarly, “Strange Darling” rebukes contemporary digital cameras to shoot on 35-mm film for a gritty throwback feel. You’ll be wonderfully surprised by the end credits to see who is behind the camera as actor Giovanni Ribisi (“Saving Private Ryan”) makes his debut as a cinematographer, while also executive producing. Together, Ribisi and Mollner demonstrate a strong visual eye, even in mundane moments such as overhead shots of breakfast plates.
The soundtrack is gloriously mischievous with Z Berg’s female cover of Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” with symbolic lyrics such as “love scars” that are both melancholic and meta considering the male voice on the track is Keith Carradine. Not only did he sing “I’m Easy” in “Nashville” (1975), his brother was the late David Carradine (“Kill Bill”), who had a child with Hershey and whose shocking manner of death hauntingly echos in “Strange Darling.”
If the film has one flaw it’s the late scene of a male cop making misogynistic quips to his female partner, though I suppose the entire film is a commentary on genre and gender, so maybe that’s the point. Driving down the road in the final shot, the color slowly drains from the image like blood draining from a body, but it lasts a little too long before the end credits arrive. The unblinking final gaze of Ti West’s “Pearl” (2022) still takes the cake.
Don’t worry, that’s just some necessary nitpicking by a film critic who has to point out extremely minor issues in order to justify his otherwise overwhelming praise for a vibrant instant classic without simply saying, “No notes.” Without a doubt, “Strange Darling” is one of the best horror-thrillers I’ve seen in years, maybe one of the best that you’ll ever see, and certainly one of the most unpredictable. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s truly electric.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Jaja's African Hair Braiding' at Arena Stage (Part 1) “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” recently competed for Best Play at the Tony Awards in June.
This Friday, the acclaimed Broadway comedy hits Arena Stage in D.C. now through Oct. 13.
WTOP caught up with the Nikiya Mathis, who won a Special Tony for her hair and wig design.
“I was blessed this year to win a historic Tony because there actually is no category for hair and wig makers, so I am actually the first person ever to win a Tony for my wig design,” Mathis told WTOP. “They actually announced it before the awards so I was fortunate enough to know that I was going to the Tony Award and I could tell my mom, ‘I’m winning.’ … That was freaking amazing, but I was still nervous to hear what other categories we might win.”
In addition to Mathis’ special award, the show earned five other Tony Award nominations, including the top prize of Best Play (Jocelyn Bioh), Best Direction (Whitney White), Best Scenic Design (David Zinn), Best Sound Design (Stefania Bulbarella and Justin Ellington) and a victory for Best Costume Design (Dede Ayite).
“I feel like all of those people should have won,” Mathis said. “We could have totally swept across the board because there are some amazing collaborators on this project. Jocelyn wrote such an amazing show, Whitney really created an atmosphere that we all thrived in. … I feel like we all worked really closely in tandem.”
Written by Bioh, the show is set in Harlem following the escapades of Marie, Bea, Miriam, Aminata, Ndidi, Jaja and others as they navigate life, laughter, cultural identity and the American dream in Jaja’s bustling hair salon.
“You really see a day in the life of these hair braiders, which is exciting because no play like this has ever been written,” Mathis said. “The life of a hair braider, especially for Black women or any woman who has gone to a hair salon, knows what it is to have so many different personalities. … One hair braider or stylist, you might go to one, but then you see that you like the work of another. … We’ll have a little drama amongst the hair braiders.”
The salon is the perfect setting for hilarious banter as a gathering place for the community.
“When you rub one personality that is completely opposite of another personality against each other, that is just space for comedy, especially when people don’t hold back their opinions when they should,” Mathis said. “We also have character work being done and there are people playing various characters, so that’s always fun trying to navigate accents and character transformations. There’s just a lot of jokes and a lot of laughter in the play.”
When you’re not busy laughing, you’ll be marveling at the stage magic of constant hairstyle changes.
“You’ll see the magic of Black women going from their natural hair to, let’s say, micro braids, corn rows — how the heck does that happen?” Mathis said. “That’s really the magic of the show. It’s the magic of the character work and comedy, but also the magic of how do we transform hair to completely different styles without leaving the stage?”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews Season 2 of 'The Rings of Power' (Part 1) NOTE: The following contains spoilers from Season 1, but I shall do my best not to spoil plot points of Season 2.
“The Lord of the Rings” prequel series “The Rings of Power” was a blast when it hit Amazon Prime Video back in 2022.
Since then, it’s been an excruciatingly long two-year wait for Season 2 to arrive due to the Hollywood actor and writers’ strikes, leaving us all anxiously coveting “my precious!”
To fill the time, my wife and I enjoyed a chronological re-binge of the entire “Hobbit” trilogy (2012-2014), which I surprisingly enjoyed much better this time around. We followed up with the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (2001-2003), which delivered the most recent film on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 with epic fantasy world-building that still holds up two decades after it first mesmerized me as a teenager at the multiplex.
Now, after our nearly 20-hour return to Middle-earth, the moment has finally arrived with “The Rings of Power” dropping its first three episodes of Season 2 this past week. Before you start, you might want to look up a YouTube refresher of Season 1 beyond the brief recap provided on Prime Video. Like “House of the Dragon,” it’s hard to remember all of the characters, but I’ll do my best to refresh you on Season 1 below without spoiling Season 2.
Adapted by showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay from J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic books, “The Rings of Power” is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the Third Age explored in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning blockbusters. This means that the events take place after the First Age where the armies of good defeated the Dark Lord Morgoth, shown in flashbacks. Now, we explore the last alliance between Elves and Men.
Episode 1 (“The Elven Kings Under the Sky”) is written by “Breaking Bad” alum Gennifer Hutchison, opening with the back story of dashing sea drifter Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), who was revealed last season to be the evil Sauron shapeshifting in disguise. Our heroine Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) warns the elves about him, while being tempted by the rings with a transfixed gaze like Frodo or like Indiana Jones reaching for the Holy Grail (“Indiana, let it go”).
Episode 2 (“Where the Stars are Strange”) is penned by “Sopranos” album Jason Cahil, who reintroduces lovable dwarf spouses Durin & Disa (Owain Arthur & Sophia Nomvete). We also learn more about the mysterious Stranger (Daniel Weyman), who sparked fan theories about his identity last season. Is he Ian McKellan’s beloved Gandalf or Christopher Lee’s evil Saruman? The juicy clues continue, including a premonition of a magical wizard staff.
Most recently, Episode 3 (“The Eagle and the Sceptre”) is penned by “13 Reasons Why” alum Helen Shang, exploring the horseback journey of Isildor (Maxim Baldry), forefather of Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen, hence “The Return of the King”). Tolkien die-hards know that Isildor will eventually battle Sauron for the Master Ring with an epic struggle and aftermath that will cause the ring to get lost in the river to be found by Gollum in the Third Age.
We also meet Isildor’s dad, Elendil (Lloyd Owen), protector of Númenor’s queen regent Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson, who grew up in Silver Spring and spoke to WTOP in 2022. You’ll recall her character was blinded by the volcanic eruption of Mount Doom, devastating an entire village of the Southlands in Episode 6 (“Udûn”). It was last season’s best cliffhanger, forcing us to hold our breath to search for survivors in Episode 7 (“The Eye”).
Both of those standout episodes were directed by Swedish-French filmmaker Charlotte Brändström, who showed more restraint than the murky episodes by the usually brilliant J.A. Bayona (“The Orphanage”). Brändström now directs most of the episodes in Season 2. If you still somehow doubt her directing chops, she also directed the third episode of FX’s “Shōgun,” which boasts a leading 25 Emmy nominations before the ceremony on Sept. 15.
That’s all I can say without spoilers, but now you are officially “primed” for Episode 4, which drops on Thursday. Hopefully it all builds to a more satisfying finish than Season 2 of “House of the Dragon,” which did way too much teasing of Season 3 without much payoff in the Season 2 finale. The rumored plan for “The Rings of Power” is a five-episode arc (or is it orc?). Die-hards will be delighted, though I doubt casual viewers will make it that far.
To quote Bilbo Baggins, “The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the road has gone, and I must follow, if I can.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews Season 2 of 'The Rings of Power' (Part 2) Source
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the DC Shorts Film Festival (Part 1) How did you celebrate your 21st birthday? A beloved local film festival blows out 21 candles this week!
The 21st annual D.C. Shorts International Film Festival returns Thursday through Sunday.
“Let’s be honest, when you turn 21, your life gets wild and I think that’s D.C. Shorts Year 21, we’re about to get wild,” Program Director Joe Carabeo told WTOP. “The films are more in your face, they’re more impactful, you’ve never seen these filmmakers make these types of films before.”
This year’s festival will once again be held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on Bryant Street in Northeast D.C., as well as a new location at Crescendo Studios in Falls Church, Virginia.
“We’re trying to bring people out this direction and try to include more of the local scene,” Festival Director Anavic Ibanez Canlas told WTOP. “We’ve got 11 showcases, 14 world premieres, 12 U.S. premieres and 52 Washington, D.C., premieres, so please come out and support your creatives from the filmmaking industry.”
The festival kicks off with short documentaries ranging from the family-friendly to the risqué.
“We always start with kickass documentaries,” Carabeo said. “There’s one called ‘Entering Pornland,’ you basically follow a girl on her journey entering pornography. To counterbalance that, there’s a film called ‘Pet Store’ about a pet owner who takes in sloths. … I’ve gotta give you the two contrasting ones, that’s the diversity that we have! We also have Yoichi’s White House, a documentary on one of the main photographers in the White House.”
Friday is the best day for fans of so-called “genre flicks,” such as action, sci-fi, fantasy and horror.
“There is a film called ‘Dummy’ where someone falls in love with a dummy,” Carabeo said. “‘Leverage’ is an action movie about a down-and-out Santa Claus. We have international heist films that take place in Paris. We have ‘The Soul Trader,’ which is a socialite taking souls in Hollywood.”
Saturday brings animation, drama and rom-coms, followed by the annual LGBTQ+ showcase.
“You start your day with animation, then you want to bring it down a little with ‘Did You Feel Something?’, that’s our dramas, ‘Rom Com Is Not Dead,’ which is romance and comedy, then ‘Wonderful As You Are’ is always one of the most popular screenings because pride is strong in D.C.,” Carabeo said. “‘Tennis, Oranges,’ one of those Rumbas escapes a hospital and tries to live a normal life but discovers life on the outside is not nice.”
It all culminates Sunday with local films and the fan-voted awards ceremony.
“The first block is called ‘Oh, I Can Do That,’ essentially a block of films about creators, people who are musicians, filmmakers, artists,” Carabeo said. “Then to follow that up afterwards is a block called ‘Why Not Make It Here?’ which is our local filmmakers block. … There are so many people out there like, ‘You can’t make movies in the DMV,’ and we have proven that this is a go-to place to make movies.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews September entertainment in the DC area (Part 1) The D.C. area is still the hottest place to be, even as the cool fall weather rolls into town.
Hometown heroes like Shaboozey and growing global icons such as Chappell Roan will rock the region this month.
They’re all featured in our September entertainment guide of fun events in the D.C. area:
September Entertainment Guide:Sept. 3: Crowded House at Wolf Trap
Sept. 3-8: “MJ: The Musical” at National Theatre
Sept. 3-8: “Noises Off” at Keegan Theatre
Sept. 3-15: “Soft Power” at Signature Theatre
Sept. 4: Live & Stone Temple Pilots at Jiffy Lube Live
Sept. 5: The Washington Ballet at Wolf Trap
Sept. 5: Dweezil Zappa at The Birchmere
Sept. 5: Jon Pardi at Pier Six Pavilion
Sept. 5-29: The 22+ Weddings of Hugo at GALA Hispanic Theatre
Sept. 6-Oct. 6: “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” by Mosaic Theatre
Sept. 6: Rob Thomas at Kennedy Center
Sept. 6: “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opens in movie theaters
Sept. 6: Kim Scott at Blues Alley
Sept. 6: John Cafferty at The Birchmere
Sept. 6: Taylor Swift Dance Party at Howard Theatre
Sept. 6-Oct. 13: “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” at Arena Stage
Sept. 6-Nov. 10: “The Addams Family” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Sept. 7: John Cafferty at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 7-8: Bethesda Row Arts Festival
Sept. 5-8: D.C. Shorts Film Festival
Sept. 6: Chappell Roan “Hot to Go” Dance Party at 9:30 Club
Sept. 6: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 7: Clutch & Rival Sons at The Anthem
Sept. 7: Deep Purple at Jiffy Lube Live
Sept. 7: Roy Wood Jr. at Lincoln Theatre
Sept. 7: Oak Ridge Boys at Weinberg Center
Sept. 7: Joe Gatto at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 7: Rickey Smiley at MGM National Harbor
Sept. 7-22: “Little Women” at Arlington Players
Sept. 8: The Killers at Merriweather
Sept. 8: The Lemonheads at 9:30 Club
Sept. 8: Los Lonely Boys at Tally Ho Theatre
Sept. 8: Lynyrd Skynyrd & ZZ Top at Jiffy Lube Live
Sept. 8-Oct. 6: “The Comeuppance” at Woolly Mammon Theatre
Sept. 9: Nicki Minaj at Capital One Arena
Sept. 10: Squeeze & Boy George at Wolf Trap
Sept. 10: Peter Frampton at Warner Theatre
Sept. 10: Rob Zombie & Alice Cooper at Jiffy Lube Live
Sept. 10-11: Anthony Anderson hosts “D.C. Originality” at Kennedy Center
Sept. 10-Oct. 13: “Comedy of Errors” at Shakespeare Theatre
Sept. 10-Oct. 20: “Primary Trust” at Signature Theatre
Sept. 11: Jason Isbell at Wolf Trap
Sept. 11: Tom Jones at MGM National Harbor
Sept. 11-Oct. 6: “Sojourners” at Round House Theatre
Sept. 12: Library of Congress hosts Film Costume Ball
Sept. 12: Kygo at Merriweather
Sept. 12: Pearl Jam at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 12-15: James Taylor at Wolf Trap
Sept. 12-15: Annapolis Songwriters Festival
Sept. 12-15: Tommy Davidson at D.C. Improv
Sept. 12-22: “How to Be a Korean Woman” at Theater J
Sept. 13: Bruce Springsteen at Camden Yards
Sept. 13: Hans Zimmer at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 13: Styx at The Lyric Baltimore
Sept. 13: Flo Rida at Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 13: St. Vincent at The Anthem
Sept. 13: “Here After” opens in theaters
Sept. 13: Kristin Chenoweth at Wolf Trap
Sept. 13: Lake Street Dive at Merriweather
Sept. 13: Buckcherry at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 13-15: Kevin Hart at DAR Constitution Hall
Sept. 13-15: “Tale of Two Cities” at Folger Theatre
Sept. 14: Natalie Hemby at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 14: Common & Pete Rock at Baltimore Soundstage
Sept. 14: Bachman Turner Overdrive at Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 14: National Philharmonic’s Rachmaninoff Festival at Strathmore
Sept. 14-15: Weezer at The Anthem
Sept. 15: Emmy Awards on ABC and Hulu
Sept. 15: Twenty One Pilots at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 15: Tracy Lawrence & Sara Evans at Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 15: Lee Brice at Annapolis City Dock
Sept. 15: Marc Cohn at Maryland Hall in Annapolis
Sept. 15: Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 15: Ruben Studdard at The Birchmere
Sept. 15: Common & Pete Rock at 9:30 Club
Sept. 16: Kaleo at The Anthem
Sept. 16: The National & The War on Drugs at Merriweather
Sept. 17: Meghan Trainor at Jiffy Lube Live
Sept. 17: Ringo Starr at The Anthem
Sept. 17: Ruben Studdard at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 17-Oct. 6: “Clue” at Kennedy Center
Sept. 18: Glen Hansard at 9:30 Club
Sept. 18-Oct. 27: “Winnie the Pooh” at Imagination Stage
Sept. 19: Amy Grant at The Birchmere
Sept. 17: Christylez Bacon at Kennedy Center
Sept. 18-Oct. 27: “Exception to the Rule” at Studio Theatre
Sept. 19: The Beach Boys at Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 19-20: Marcus King at Warner Theatre
Sept. 19-22: D.L. Hughley at D.C. Improv
Sept. 20: Lawrence at The Fillmore
Sept. 20: Riley Green at Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 20: DJ Snake at Echostage
Sept. 20: Kumail Nanjiani at Lincoln Theatre
Sept. 20: Van Morrison & Bruce Springsteen Tribute at The Hamilton
Sept. 20-22: “Shrek: The Musical” at Capital One Hall
Sept. 20-22: Kings of Leon at The Anthem
Sept. 20-Oct. 13: “Mister Lincoln” at Ford’s Theatre
Sept. 21: Shaboozey at 9:30 Club
Sept. 21: Jelly Roll at Capital One Arena
Sept. 21: Zedd at The Anthem
Sept. 21: HFStival at Nats Park
Sept. 21: Maxwell at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 21: Vance Joy at Merriweather
Sept. 21: Debby Boone at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 21: Sevendust at The Fillmore
Sept. 21: National Dane Day at Kennedy Center
Sept. 21: Soulja Boy at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 21-22: Mo Willems at Kennedy Center
Sept. 21-22: Jo Koy at The Lyric Baltimore
Sept. 21-22: Atlantic Starr at The Birchmere
Sept. 22: Roseanne Cash at Strathmore
Sept. 22: The Lovin’ Spoonful at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 24: Andy Grammer at Warner Theatre
Sept. 24-26: Sara Bareilles at Kennedy Center
Sept. 25: Kenny G at Lincoln Theatre
Sept. 25: Suzanne Vega at The Birchmere
Sept. 25: Jeff Lynne’s ELO at Capital One Arena
Sept. 26: Phillip Phillips at The Birchmere
Sept. 26: Keane at The Anthem
Sept. 26: Charlie XCX at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 26: Mickey Guyton at Union Stage
Sept. 26: Lalah Hathaway at Warner Theatre
Sept. 26: “Killer Heat” premieres on Prime
Sept. 26: Emerson, Lake & Palmer at Maryland Hall Annapolis
Sept. 26-Oct. 13: D.C. Theatre Week
Sept. 27: Lady A at Nats Park
Sept. 27: The Fray at Lincoln Theatre
Sept. 27: Maddie & Tae at Jiffy Lube Live
Sept. 27: Herbie Hancock at Warner Theatre
Sept. 27: Blippi at EagleBank Arena
Sept. 27: “Lee” opens in movie theaters
Sept. 27: “Wolfs” premiers on Apple TV+
Sept. 27: “Megalopolis” opens in movie theaters
Sept. 27: “Apartment 7A” premieres on Paramount+
Sept. 27: The Marley Brothers Legacy Tour at Jiffy Lube Live
Sept. 27: Nathaniel Rateliff & My Morning Jacket at Merriweather
Sept. 27-29: Because They’re Funny Festival at The Wharf
Sept. 27-Oct. 20: “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” at Olney Theatre
Sept. 28: Chappell Roan headlines All Things Go Music Fest at Merriweather
Sept. 28: Barenaked Ladies at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 28: Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons at MGM National Harbor
Sept. 28: Funkateers Ball at Bethesda Theater
Sept. 28: “Saturday Night Live” returns on NBC
Sept. 28: Bruce Hornsby at Warner Theatre
Sept. 28: Herbie Hancock at The Lyric Baltimore
Sept. 28: National Symphony Orchestra Gala at Kennedy Center
Sept. 28-Oct. 13: “Hamlet” at Synetic Theater
Sept. 29: America at Capital One Hall
Sept. 29: Leslie Jones at The Anthem
Sept. 29: Howie Day at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 30-Oct. 1: Vampire Weekend at The Anthem
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews September entertainment in the D.C. area (Part 2) Source
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the Netflix teen comedy flick 'Incoming' (Part 1) August means back to school, so are you looking for a wild teen party flick for Labor Day weekend?
You might try the raunchy teen comedy “Incoming,” which is currently the No. 1 movie on Netflix.
It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in “Mean Girls” (2004) or “Superbad” (2007), but it’s not a total waste of time, either, with some refreshing Gen Z social updates between the potty humor.
Set near Los Angeles, the story follows four freshmen who navigate the nightmares of adolescence at their first-ever high school party. Benj Nielsen (Mason Thames) has a crush on his sophomore sister’s friend Bailey (Isabella Ferreira). When his jerk buddy Koosh (Bardia Seiri) announces that his older brother is throwing a kegger, Benj hopes for an invite along with his nerdy buddies Eddie (Ramon Reed) and Connor (Raphael Alejandro).
You could say the premise reflects the spirit of its creators who are “incoming freshmen” making their feature film debut, but writer/director brothers John and Dave Chernin have been around awhile, held back a few grades for pulling pranks in this analogy. The siblings wrote 10 episodes of FX’s hilarious sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (2005-2012) before serving as show runners on their own Fox series “The Mick” (2017-2018).
They reunite with many of their same cast members for “Incoming,” namely Kaitlin Olson (Sweet Dee from “It’s Always Sunny” and Mickey in “The Mick”) as Benj’s mom, instructing him before the party and grounding him afterward. You’ll also see Scott MacArthur (Jimmy in “The Mick”) as Eddie’s wannabe stepdad driving a sports car and making backhanded compliments to Eddie, who tells him to “put some respect on my name.”
Still, the standout adult role belongs to Bobby Cannavale as Mr. Studebaker, the “cool” chemistry teacher creating chemical reactions in class who turns out to be stuck in his high school glory days. He’s just asking to get fired when he attends the teen party, staying for one drink, then another, then another. Before long, he’s making an ass out of himself and belligerently falling into the pool like Will Ferrell’s Frank the Tank in “Old School” (2003).
Beyond the adult antics, the film really belongs to its teen cast, led by lead actor Mason Thames, who recently starred in Scott Derrickson’s underrated horror flick “The Black Phone” (2021) in which he played a young boy abducted by Ethan Hawke only to receive supernatural phone calls from past victims trying to help him escape. I highly recommend it for Halloween, especially since Thames will soon return for “The Black Phone 2” (2025).
In “Incoming,” he carries the movie as the good-hearted Benj, who is easy to root for because he is a kind soul. He’s at once nervous to talk to his crush, but also quick on his feet to make clever comebacks whenever he puts his foot in his mouth. Of course, no one is perfect, so like any good movie character, he will have to work through his flaws to see if he can redeem himself like Heath Ledger singing on the bleachers in “10 Things I Hate About You” (1999).
His polite demeanor is the opposite of his older sister Alyssa (Ali Gallo), who gets a nose job in high school because her character arc is realizing that she’s uglier on the inside than she could ever be on the outside — making rude comments and bullying classmates in the hallway. Luckily for Benj, Alyssa’s friend Bailey doesn’t share this “mean girl” behavior. She’s actually open to talking with him in the kitchen — and maybe more if Benj plays his cards right.
As for Ben’s trio of awkward friends, Koosh is the most “cringey,” inventing an elaborate scheme to score with a girl, any girl, scouting the field on home security cameras and tricking them to enter his parents’ basement spa where he just happens to “lock” the door in time for a massage and dip in the hot tub. Don’t worry, ladies, he gets his comeuppance, teaching young viewers that it never pays to be a predatory ick boy, so don’t start in high school.
Far more sympathetic are the dorky duo of Eddie (Ramon Reed), who would rather play video games, and Connor (Raphael Alejandro), whose voice cracks in puberty. Their subplot of escorting the school’s popular girl Katrina (Loren Gray) on a drunken trip to Taco Bell basically becomes the plot of the Sundance hit “Emergency” (2022), where two dudes escorted a passed-out party girl whose worried sister was played by that Sabrina Carpenter.
In the grand scheme, there have been so many teen movies over the past 50 years that it’s hard to top “American Graffiti” (1973), “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982), “The Breakfast Club” (1985), “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986), “Dazed and Confused” (1993), “Clueless” (1995), “American Pie” (1999), “Mean Girls” (2004), “Superbad” (2007), “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” (2012), “The Spectacular Now” (2013) and “Boyhood” (2014).
Over the past decade, my coming-of-age Mount Rushmore features Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” (2017), Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” (2018) and two by Kelly Fremon Craig: “Edge of Seventeen” (2016) and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” (2023). Some might include Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart” (2019), but it doesn’t crack my list.
In the end, “Incoming” will probably be “outgoing,” barely remembered in our collective consciousness due to familiar gags, drug detours, potty humor and annoying but realistic teenage profanity. Still, it’s refreshing to see three of the four male characters displaying “green flag” energy in 2024, moving away from the frat-boy humor of Hollywood’s troubled past to raise a generation that’s more respectful to women in between the jokes.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the Netflix teen comedy flick 'Incoming' (Part 2) Source
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Mercedes Moné at 'Capital Collision' (Part 1) She’s one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling over the past 10 years, first making history as Sasha Banks in WWE and now holding the AEW TBS Championship.
This Friday night, Mercedes Moné defends her NJPW Strong Women’s Championship at the third annual Capital Collision at the Entertainment & Sports Arena, home of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics in Congress Heights, Southeast D.C.
“I am facing Momo Watanabe,” Moné told WTOP. “She is a New Japan superstar, but she stands no chance going up against the ‘C.E.O.’ of AEW and New Japan. I am really the greatest women’s wrestler of all time. I know Momo is known for her knee strikes, but I am also known for my knee strikes, so I feel like tonight is going to be a battle of the knees. I’m so excited to just knee her in the face and let the whole world know that I am the queen of Japan.”
Born Mercedes Justine Kaestner-Varnado in Fairfield, California in 1992, she grew up a huge wrestling fan. She’s also the first cousin of hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg, which is fitting considering she raps her own entrance theme.
“I didn’t know him until I was probably like 10 years old and my dad was like, ‘Your cousin is a really famous rapper now,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, cool,'” Moné said. “When I was 16 he took me to ‘WrestleMania 24’ and that’s when we really started to become close. Our bond is the love of wrestling, he grew up such a wrestling fan and I grew up watching wrestling, so when we went to ‘WrestleMania’ together … I told him one day I wanted to be a wrestler.”
In 2012, she signed with WWE for its developmental brand NXT, quickly winning its women’s title. Her 30-minute Iron Man match against Bayley at “NXT TakeOver: Respect” (2015) was the longest women’s match ever at the time and was “Match of the Year” by Pro Wrestling Illustrated, which also declared her “Woman of the Year.”
“We did so good that they had to give us the main event,” Moné said. “I remember that match going over 30 minutes. Any time I’m in the ring with Bayley she is one of my favorite people to perform against. There’s always magic when we’re in the ring together, so that’s definitely one of my favorite highlights of my career. At that time women were not even given 10 minutes for a match, so to be given 30 minutes was so incredibly special.”
In 2015, she was called up to the big leagues of the main WWE roster, and a year later, she became the youngest ever Raw Women’s Champion, a title she would eventually hold five times. Also in 2016, she and Charlotte Flair became the first women to headline an official WWE pay per view at “Hell in a Cell,” ultimately delivering the “Feud of the Year” by Pro Wrestling Illustrated, surpassing even John Cena vs. A.J. Styles on the men’s side.
“It meant a lot because I started out with Charlotte in 2012 and I remember being in developmental with her,” Moné said. “With that last name of Flair, I was like, ‘Just because you’re a Flair, you’re not me.’ … Having that feud with Charlotte was such an amazing experience. I really feel like it helped put women’s wrestling on the map and she pushed me to new heights that I’ve never been before in the ring, so I had an incredible feud with her.”
In 2019, she reunited with her former foe Bayley only this time teaming together to win the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship at “Elimination Chamber.” In 2020, she became the youngest WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion, causing her to be named Sports Illustrated’s “Wrestler of the Year,” etching her forever in the history books next to Kenny Omega, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes as the very best of their craft.
Still, her biggest achievement of all may have been at WWE “WrestleMania 37” (2021) when she and Bianca Belair became the first Black women to ever headline a “WrestleMania” main event. The two visibly fought back tears when the opening bell rang and the crowd stood on its feet for a chilling moment that actually won an ESPY.
“It was so emotional,” Moné said. “That was one of my biggest dreams since I was 10 years old, but it was so big I didn’t think it was possible, then here I was at ‘WrestleMania 37’ in the middle of the ring looking at Bianca like, ‘Wow, we are doing this, this is so much bigger than us, bigger than wrestling.’ That moment was so special. The way she looked at me, I was like, ‘Girl, you better stop before I start bawling and we slip in the ring from our tears.'”
Sadly, the name “Sasha Banks” disappeared when she infamously walked out of WWE in 2022 as she and Naomi forfeited their tag-team belts over a contract dispute. A year later, she changed her name to Mercedes Moné for NJPW/Stardom at “Wrestle Kingdom 17″ (2023) at the Tokyo Dome. She remains a NJPW titan by defeating Stephanie Vaquer at “Forbidden Door” (2024) to win the aforementioned Strong Women’s Championship.
Meanwhile in AEW, Moné memorably made a cameo in the crowd of London’s Wembley Stadium at AEW “All In” (2023), teasing her free agent status. She made her official AEW in-ring debut in Las Vegas at “Double or Nothing” (2024) to win the AEW TBS Championship by defeating Nightingale, then successfully defended that title against Dr. Britt Baker at “All In” (2024) in front of 50,000 people at Wembley Stadium this past Sunday.
“I’m still on a high from it,” Moné said. “Last year I was just a fan in attendance with a broken heel dreaming about which company I’m going to be in. Now this year performing at ‘All In’ at Wembley was such a dream come true, it was so amazing, the crowd was electric and I can’t wait to do it all again next year at ‘All In’ in Dallas, Texas. It’s been such an exciting time for professional wrestling because of AEW — and I enjoy being the face of TBS.”
Indeed, you can watch her on TBS every Wednesday on “AEW Dynamite,” not to mention as Koska Reeves in the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian” on Disney+. As fun as it is watching from your couch, there’s nothing like watching wrestling in person, like “Capital Collision” this Friday at the Entertainment & Sports Arena in D.C.
“Professional wrestling has been the best it’s ever been in the past 10 years, so I’m so happy to be part of it,” Moné said. “AEW is going global, so any woman who wants to come after my championships, I’m always ready.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Mercedes Moné at 'Capital Collision' (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Rare Essence at the Summer Soul Music Fest (Part 1) Dancing on the eve of Labor Day means you can party without having to worry about work the next day!
The beloved D.C. go-go band Rare Essence headlines the third annual Summer Soul Music Festival at the Charles County Fairgrounds in La Plata, Maryland, on Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.
WTOP caught up with founding member Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson as Rare Essence leads a lineup that includes Northeast Groovers, DCVybe, The Kim Michelle Experience and All-Star Experience, as well as DJ Frisco and DJ Biggs.
“For decades now, we’ve always done a big show on Labor Day Sunday,” Johnson told WTOP. “This is the very first time that we’ve done this festival and this venue, so this is going to be a really big deal here. We used to play in that area a lot back in the ’80s and ’90s, some of the venues aren’t there anymore, but the people that live in that area, they travel up to D.C. and Prince George’s County sometimes, but we’re glad to be going to them this time.”
Johnson met his future bandmates as kids at St. Thomas More Academy in Southeast D.C., including Quentin “Footz” Davidson, Michael “Funky Ned” Neal and John “Big Horn” Jones. How did he get his nickname?
“I used to listen to a lot of pop music, which was rock music at the time, so a lot of Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Kansas, The Eagles, all of those groups, and all the music was guitar-driven. I’m a guitar player, so I would learn those songs and play those songs at band practice,” Johnson said. “They started teasing me saying, ‘You’re playing all that white music, we’re gonna call you ‘Whiteboy.'”
Rare Essence officially formed as a band in 1976, playing all the clubs in the D.C. area and moving to bigger venues, such as the Washington Coliseum, the Capitals Center and the D.C. Armory.
“They were just gigs to us. We had no idea because we were young. We just knew we were playing in a big place today, we didn’t realize the magnitude of what we were doing at that time,” Johnson said.
While E.U.’s hit song “Da Butt” went nationwide thanks to Spike Lee’s classic film “School Daze” (1988), Rare Essence’s song “Lock It” similarly went nationwide thanks to the soundtrack of Kevin Hooks’ comedy flick “Strictly Business” (1991) starring D.C. native Tommy Davidson and future Oscar winner Halle Berry.
“That was great,” Johnson said. “The record already had really good buzz on the East Coast and we were signed to Uptown Records, who Andre Harrell was one of the producers of that movie. He said, ‘I want to put one of the songs in that movie,’ so we were like, ‘Yeah, great, that’s fine.’ After he put it in, that’s what made it really national.”
After many live albums, the band’s first studio album was “Work the Walls” (1992), including a hit title track that came to be with help from a cement bench along the side wall of The Celebrity Hall, later known as The Black Hole.
“When we were playing a lot of the women would jump up on there and start dancing facing the wall, so that’s actually where the idea came from. We’re watching them and screaming, ‘Work the walls! Work the walls!’ — and it turned into a song,” Johnson said.
Their second album, “So What You Want?” (1995), was partially recorded at The Eastside Club in D.C., where they used to play every Wednesday night.
“The Eastside just had a vibe to it. Every time we walked in there on a Wednesday night until 3 in the morning, they jam packed in there and everybody was just all the way amped up. Plus it had a really good sound to it, the ceilings weren’t real high, there was a lot of wood, so that’s why we figured it would be a good spot for a live set,” Johnson said.
That same year, they joined the holiday go-go compilation album “Let’s Go-Go Christmas” (1995), doing for D.C. what Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’” did for Harlem and Run-D.M.C.’s “Christmas in Hollis” did for Queens.
“The great thing about that is every Christmas since the release of that song and that album, they play those songs on the radio, so it’s great to even be part of the Christmas holiday,” Johnson said.
Evolving from “Body Snatchers” (1996) to “We Go On and On” (1998), their music continued to reflect the times as the song “Overnight Scenario” delivered lyrics that influenced Jay-Z’s “Do It Again” released the next year.
Meanwhile, their album “RE-2000” (1999) featured Redman on “We Push” and their album “Turn It Up” (2016) featured collaborations with DJ Kool and Raheem DeVaughn.
“We are going along with what’s current, we’ve always been able to do that,” Johnson said. “We’re from the ’70s, but you can’t sound like you’re from the ’70s in the ’90s, so we were able to morph into a ’90s sound, a 2000s sound. Even today, we make sure that we keep the band sounding current while still being able to do the classics.”
Today, Rare Essence has carved a spot on the proverbial Mount Rushmore of D.C. go-go bands, including the Chuck Brown Band, Trouble Funk and Experience Unlimited (WTOP has gratefully interviewed them all).
“It’s absolutely an honor to be a part of the first generation of go-go,” Johnson said. “We’re all following Chuck Brown’s lead. Again, at the time, we had no idea that it was gonna turn into what it turned into. We were just out there having a good time playing from clubs to school gyms to rec centers and out at the parks. We were just having a good time performing and this all morphed into a genre and it just kept us going decade after decade.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Rare Essence at the Summer Soul Music Fest (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Appaloosa Music Fest (Part 1) Front Royal, Virginia is the place to be this weekend if you dig bluegrass or Americana music.
The ninth annual Appaloosa Music Festival returns to Skyline Ranch this Saturday and Sunday.
WTOP caught up with Dan Fedoryka, who cofounded the festival with his brother Alexander.
“My band Scythian started as a D.C. band, we used to play every Thursday at Fado Irish Pub in Chinatown,” Fedoryka told WTOP. “After we did the 9:30 Club and the Carnegie Library, we knew we had a really strong D.C. following, but always having to leave D.C. to find good roots music festivals. … So, nine years ago, I told my brother, ‘If we build a festival close to D.C. people will come.’ Sure enough, last year had 8,000 people.”
The Fedoryka brothers have a knack for consistently finding the genre’s next breaking artists.
“We can spot them before they get big,” Fedoryka said. “Some of our alumni have been Billy Strings, we had Billy Strings for a couple of days and he was teaching workshops. You could have been like three feet away from Billy Strings at our festival. Molly Tuttle played our stage then went on to win a Grammy, also Sierra Hull, all these names in Americana and bluegrass. Our hashtag is #WhereYouFindTheNextBigThing.”
This year, Scythian performs both days, including Saturday with Ashes & Arrows and Tophouse.
“Ashes & Arrows, we played with them at MerleFest in April, now they’re on ‘America’s Got Talent’ and just went on to the semifinals, so since we’ve booked them, they’ve gone viral, their videos have millions of views,” Fedoryka said. “[Tophouse] is a Mumford vibe, but it doesn’t seem derivative. … They sold out 40 shows in a row and Molly Tuttle just asked them to open for her at the Ryman, so their star is seriously on the rise.”
Scythian returns on Sunday with a stellar lineup of Kat Higgins, Shadowgrass and Carbon Leaf.
“[Higgins] is the writer of Kenny Chesney’s No. 1 ‘Knowing You,’ then she went on to write Cody Johnson’s ‘The Painter,’ also No. 1,” Fedoryka said. “Shadowgrass is good friends with Billy Strings, kind of like Railroad Earth, Greensky Bluegrass. … Carbon Leaf, we’re good buddies with those guys, we’ve been touring on the same circuit for about 15 years. Last year was the first year they ever made the festival and it was so electric.”
The festival is fun for the entire family. Kids 12 and under get in free with tons of activities, including face painting, a bouncy house and youth music workshops. On the other end of the grounds, adults can enjoy a craft beer garden with six private-label drinks, including brews from the local brewery Vibrissa.
“Appaloosa has the perfect balance of craft beer, reclaimed lumber, we have a beer garden but then there’s 1,000 kids running around every day,” Fedoryka said. “Just 60 miles west of [D.C.] is basically nature’s paradise. The Shenandoah River splits into two there, so it’s the canoe capital of Virginia. Our festival is only five miles from the entrance of Skyline Drive. The [night] stars are stunning, they’ll take your breath away.”
Find more information here.
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Would you like some cool live music to send you soaring into Labor Day weekend?
The D.C. Jazz Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary from Wednesday through Sunday.
“It’s become quite a cultural destination in D.C., right up there with cherry blossoms and the Folklife Festival,” President and CEO Sunny Sumter told WTOP. “When Charlie Fishman, our founder and his wife Stephanie Peters started the festival on a paper napkin 20 years ago, little did they know that they would be starting with 12 concerts and fast forward 20 years, we are celebrating with over 100 concerts over five days and 70,000 people.”
The festival kicks off Wednesday with a lunchtime concert by The JoGo Project combining jazz and go-go at Franklin Park, followed by Howard University graduate and bass player extraordinaire Eliot Seppa at The Kennedy Center. You can also enjoy The Jazz D.C. All-Stars at The Hamilton, followed by sold-out shows at the Embassy of Australia with saxophonists James Morrison and Lakecia Benjamin.
Thursday brings Baltimore’s Ebban & Ephraim Dorsey Quintet to The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, as well as Montgomery County’s Paul Carr with The Junto Trio at Takoma Station. You also don’t want to miss the Billy Strayhorn theatrical tribute “An Evening with Strayhorn” developed by George Washington University professor Barry Moton at Mr. Henry’s on Capitol Hill, followed by “D.C.’s Ella Fitzgerald” Sharón Clark at Kreeger Museum.
Friday brings Virginia trombonist Shannon Gunn to The Kennedy Center, followed by Jazz Night in D.C. at Westminster Church for a tribute to Donald Byrd and Kevin Toney, the late founders of The Blackbyrds. The night wraps with an A-list lineup on The Wharf at The Anthem, including Jacob Collier, D-Nice and three-time Grammy winner Samara Joy, who just won Best New Artist in 2023 and joined WTOP to preview this weekend’s concert.
Saturday returns to The Wharf on Transit Pier with Reginald Cyntje, Stephen Arnold & Sea Change, Joe Block Open Heart Trio, Nicholas Payton & Light Beings, Paolo Fresu and Emmet Cohen Trio and Houston Person. Nearby, District Pier hosts Michael Thomas Quintet, David Murray Quartet, Cimafunk and Stanley Clarke. Arena Stage hosts Jabali Billy Hart, Kenny Barron Voyage Trio, Terri Lyne Carrington and Carmen Lundy. And Union Stage hosts the D.C. Jazz Prix Finals, Jazz Fest Jam, Confluencia, Nasar Abadey and Supernova.
Sunday wraps on District Pier with Bobby Sanabria, Dianne Reeves, Galactic and Chuck Brown Band. Transit Pier hosts B.J. Simmons, Amy K. Bormet Trio, Clovis Nicolas Quartet, New Jazz Underground, Brandee Younger Trio and Bill Frisell Four. Arena Stage hosts Muneer Nasser, Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons, Ron Carter Trio and a Sonny Stitt tribute. And Union Stage hosts Monika Herzig and Joonas Haavisto, Next Jazz Legacy and Corcoran Holt Quintet.
“Come to celebrate all things jazz in D.C.,” Sumter said. “We are a global brand now, people are coming from all around the world, but we want each of you to come celebrate with us for five days, 12 neighborhoods, over 100 concerts, a lot free, moderately-priced tickets, come and celebrate this great music over Labor Day weekend.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Samara Joy at The Anthem (Part 1) What do Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Megan Thee Stallion and Olivia Rodrigo all have in common?
They won the Grammy for Best New Artist directly before Samara Joy took the crown in 2023.
This Wednesday, the modern jazz icon releases “You Stepped Out of a Dream,” the first single off her new album “Portrait,” just days before performing with her new octet at The Anthem on Friday night at the D.C. Jazz Festival.
“I’ve never been to The Anthem before, so I’m looking forward to my debut,” Joy told WTOP. “It’s eight of us total, doing arrangements to hidden standards that I love but also jazz compositions that I put lyrics to, kind of like an incubator for cultivating my dream of what a group like this would sound like. It’s four horns: trombone, trumpet, alto sax and tenor sax, then piano, bass and drums. I’m really looking forward to hearing people’s response.”
Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1999, Joy admits that she didn’t listen to much jazz growing up.
“I didn’t start listening to jazz until college,” Joy said. “Growing up, I was pretty much an ‘old head.’ My parents introduced me to a lot of Motown, soul and R&B, as well as gospel. That’s kind of the area that I was most comfortable in as far as listening. I had a mini iPod Nano that surprisingly fit all of that music on there, in addition to some pop stuff here and there, but definitely sticking to my parents’ generation for sure.”
Her big break came when she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition in 2019.
“It was definitely a big turning point because, at that point, I had only been listening to jazz and really studying it for two and a half years,” Joy said. “Getting the opportunity to compete was exciting enough for me because I hadn’t really been performing publicly at that time, I was just strictly doing school. So to compete and then to win was definitely a big introduction to this whole new world that I hadn’t really been a part of or known before.”
In fact, one of the judges of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition helped her invest the prize money — combined with a Go Fund Me campaign and a viral video on Facebook — to produce her self-titled debut album “Samara Joy” (2021) — all while she was still a student studying at SUNY’s Purchase College.
Her second album “Linger Awhile” (2022) won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album the year after Esperanza Spalding’s victory, as well as the Grammy for Best New Artist, defeating powerhouses like Molly Tuttle.
“Pretty freaking crazy,” Joy said. “I wasn’t prepared at all to make a speech, I just wasn’t, because I just didn’t expect to be chosen among that group of wonderful and very popular artists. I don’t really remember it, I just remember my family was there, we got an Airbnb in Beverly Hills and they were super excited to be in a mansion for the first time, so I was just really grateful. It doesn’t seem like it’s real or that it actually happened.”
Since then, she has released the albums “Linger Awhile Longer” (2023) and “A Joyful Holiday” (2023), not to mention the digitally-released single “Tight,” which won her yet another Grammy for Best Jazz Performance.
“That experience was a lot more chill actually because it was the nontelevised category,” Joy said. “The only reason I was a part of the televised category was to announce the next Best New Artist as a passing of the torch. … They phased out Best Instrumental Solo to Best Jazz Performance, that was the first time this category had ever been announced and I won, so it was nice. I’m trying not to be greedy. Maybe I won’t go back next year.”
Of course she’s joking. If the rest of her new album “Portrait” is even half as good as Wednesday’s aforementioned new single “You Stepped Out of a Dream,” there’s a good chance that the Grammys will be inviting her back.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the Season 4 premiere of 'Only Murders in the Building' (Part 1) Fourth seasons of sitcoms are often their funniest from “Seinfeld” (The Contest) to “The Office” (The Fun Run), from “The Simpsons” (Mr. Plow) to “Cheers” (the arrival of Woody Harrelson). Maybe we need a little time to get to know the characters. Maybe we need a few seasons to embrace the unique tone. Or maybe the writers have finally gelled in the writers room and are finally swinging for the fences with their wildest, most creative ideas.
Whatever the reason, “Only Murders in the Building” is doing just that for me. Season 1 was an intriguing setup that felt too stretched out, Season 2 was too much of a rehash of the first season, Season 3 finally hit its stride with a change of scenery to Broadway with Martin Short staging, “Death Rattle” and Steve Martin hilariously singing, “Which of Pickwick Triplets Did It?” On Tuesday, it returns for Season 4 with a killer opening episode.
Don’t worry if you missed last season — the Broadway murder of Ben (Paul Rudd) is officially a closed case and we’re moving on to another murder mystery for Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) to solve. All you need to know is that the Season 3 finale ended with Charles’ body double Sazz (Jane Lynch) being mistakenly murdered in Charles’ Arconia apartment in an apparent botched attempt to kill him.
As our trio of protagonists return to Charles’ apartment in the Season 4 premiere, the writers brilliantly mess with audience expectations at every turn as the characters keep finding ways to not discover Sazz’s body. They gasp in the dark, point at things and inspect the floor in what amounts to a bunch of close calls to fake out the viewers, before the camera pulls backwards out of the window to reveal a bullet hole, which the characters don’t see.
They’re too busy celebrating their podcast, which is being made into a movie if Paramount can convince them to sign over their life rights. Mabel is skeptical of her portrayal as a “mumbling millennial;” Charles is tempted by a return to fame as TV’s Brazzos; and Oliver is ecstatic for a chance to rekindle with love interest Loretta (Meryl Streep) and bounce back from his showbiz setback: “Broadway is a racket, but Hollywood never let me down!”
Seeing the trio travel to Hollywood is more than just Lucy and Ricky moving west, it makes for some genuinely hilarious situations with several laugh-out-loud moments. Steve Martin is in top form, recalling “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” (1982) by speaking dialogue that might as well be narration: “Hollywood: where movie stars live side by side with eccentrics who’ve been here for decades, everyone from Scarlett Johansson to The Black Dahlia.”
It’s also great to see Molly Shannon (“SNL”) show up as Paramount producer Bev, as well as a trio of famous movie-star actors (appearing as themselves) who attend a lavish L.A. party to meet their fictional counterparts. I won’t spoil who they are, but let’s just say Charles will be played by a hilarious sitcom dad, Mabel will be played by a desperate housewife, and Oliver will be played by a deliciously deadpan actor who now hosts a viral talk show.
Just when you thought Season 4 premiere couldn’t get any better, it ends with some truly powerful filmmaking intercutting Charles watching the classic Spaghetti western “Once Upon a Time in West” (1968), admiring Sergio Leone’s ability to rivet us with no dialogue, only imagery and windmill sound effects. “Only Murders” follows suit with a largely silent revelatory montage, ending with a powerful image that cuts to black at just the right moment.
I know it’s only one episode, but I’m hooked! I’m so glad this show is back. It keeps getting better and better. Here’s hoping for more zany adventures in Hollywood between the necessary clue-finding at the Arconia.
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In order to view the video you must disable your ad blocker.‘American Idol’ alum Jordin Sparks on her winShe’s sold over 10 million digital tracks in the U.S. since winning “American Idol” back in 2007.
On Thursday, Jordin Sparks brings her “No Restrictions: Live & Intimate” Tour to The Atlantis in D.C. The tour is named after her new “No Restrictions” album that drops next month.
“There’s something for everybody on this album,” Sparks told WTOP.
“We’ve got my southern gospel roots, my choir roots. We’ve got country, acoustic, piano ballads, a power ballad, we have pop, we have R&B. So ‘No Restrictions’ makes sense because I was like, ‘I’m gonna give everybody everything because I love all types of music’ and people met me that way on ‘Idol.'”
Born in Phoenix in 1989, Sparks grew up watching the previous seasons of “American Idol.”
“I definitely watched ‘Idol,'” Sparks said.
“I watched every single season. I watched Kelly (Clarkson), Ruben (Studdard), Fantasia (Barrino), Carrie (Underwood), Taylor (Hicks) and then I got to audition. I was a really big fan so when I got to audition I was really excited to be there, but at the same time I believed in what I could do, so I was like, ‘If all the things line up, there are so many variables, I think I can actually do this,’ then it happened!”
Indeed, Sparks won Season 6 to become the youngest “American Idol” champ ever at age 17. She said she’ll never forget Ryan Seacrest announcing her name with confetti falling after 74 million votes were cast in the finale.
“It was literally the moment that changed my life,” Sparks said.
“When Ryan called my name, I put my hands over my face like, ‘Oh my gosh, this really just happened!’ Everyone was clapping, confetti pyrotechnics were going off, but I couldn’t hear anything. It was like a movie, all I could hear was my heartbeat. I was looking at my family then Ryan hands me the microphone, ‘Here to sing her single.’ … I sang the song, but I don’t remember singing it.”
Her coronation song “This Is My Now” immediately ranked No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
“It was a great song,” Sparks said.
“It was just so beautiful. That was the first time on ‘Idol’ that we put stuff up for iTunes, so we had to prerecord the songs before we actually had to perform them and that made it a little more challenging because you could only perform two minutes on the show but the songs were three, four, five minutes, so that would make us more nervous. … I definitely love that song. It really holds a special place in my heart.”
Her self-titled album “Jordin Sparks” (2007) earned a Grammy nomination for her Chris Brown collaboration “No Air,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, while “One Step at a Time” hit No. 17 and “Tattoo” hit No 8.
“It’s funny because, now all these years later, I listen to that song (‘Tattoo’) and I don’t think I even really understand the weight of what I was saying at the time,” Sparks said.
“I interpreted it as best I could being 17 years old. … I remember hearing it and I was like, ‘This song is so much fun, I love singing it.’ It was so catchy, I was like, ‘This is a fun song, I really, really like this,’ then we decided that it would be my first official single and it blew up.”
Her second album “Battlefield” (2009) proved that there was no sophomore slump thanks to a smash title track that reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as the catchy “S.O.S. (Let the Music Play).”
“Look, I thought there was pressure on the first album, but when we started the second one I was like, ‘How do I follow that up?’ I had my own shoes to fill,” Sparks said.
“I missed the days when pop-rock power ballads were the thing, so I was like, ‘I can definitely do that.’ … As soon as I heard (‘Battlefield’), I was like, ‘This is where I am in my lifetime, I relate to this.’ … I wanted to lean more into my rock influences and let my voice just soar and fly.”
After her third album “Right Here Right Now” (2015), Sparks expanded into acting, playing Whitney Houston’s daughter in the film “Sparkle” (2012), plus the Hallmark movie “A Christmas Treasure” (2021).
On Broadway, she starred in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” (2010) and Sara Bareilles’ “Waitress” (2019).
“I’ve always loved live performance,” Sparks said.
“Broadway was where I really saw live stage performance and everything came together: acting, singing, dancing in a live performance every night. I loved that. Being able to showcase those things and get to experience them in real life, it’s just been incredible. Broadway is a huge commitment, it’s a lot … After doing ‘Idol’ and Broadway, everything else is a cake walk. I can handle anything.’
Along the way, she cowrote the Ariana Grande hit “The Way” (2014), released the Christmas album “Cider & Hennessy” (2020) and earned a Grammy nomination for collaborating with the Christian duo For King & Country on the song “Love Me Like I Am” (2023).
Next, her fifth studio album “No Restrictions” will be released on Sept. 13.
“At this point in my life as a mom, wife, friend, artist, songwriter, human, I feel like I’m letting go of things that, not held me back, but just didn’t serve me anymore,” Sparks said.
“We grow, elevate and evolve, so there are different pieces of me that I’m like, ‘I appreciate you, but I can’t bring you with me in this next chapter,’ as well as I don’t want to be restricted in a box for my music or by other people’s opinions. I feel like I’m in a really good place.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Anonymous' on USA Network (Part 1) A Charles County, Maryland, woman is competing on the cutthroat TV series “The Anonymous” on USA Network.
Episode 4 airs Monday at 11 p.m. — fittingly right after WWE’s “Monday Night Raw.”
“I’m gonna lay the smack down right on ’em,” Tyrenna Tolbert told WTOP. “I’m so excited to see what goes down tonight. I’m telling you, if you’re not watching tonight, you are missing out on some big stuff. You’ve gotta watch.”
The show pits contestants against each other in various group challenges as they live in two different houses. First, they share face-to-face interactions mingling on the grounds of the lavish “Circle House.” Then, they spend each night in the “Square House,” where they log into a digital realm to hide behind anonymous avatars.
“You’re two different people,” Tolbert said. “You have this ‘Anonymous’ mode, you pick out a handle from different characters … something so removed from your personality that you can throw people off. In anonymous chat mode, you can talk as much trash as you want. … In the real world, you have to be this phony kumbaya, ‘you can trust me, tell me your secrets,’ then you use that against them because at the end of the day, it’s about $100,000.”
Filming took place over about a month back in April, with one consistent theme emerging.
“Don’t trust anybody, that is the whole premise,” Tolbert said. “When money is involved, you have to make sure, double, triple, don’t trust anybody at face value because who you think is your friend may be your frenemy, your enemy, your backstabber, your front stabber, trust no one. $100,000? You have to always be sharp and ready.”
Proudly born in the Bronx in New York City, Tolbert moved to Charles County in 2004, meaning this year marks her 20th anniversary of living in the DMV working for the federal government.
“It’s part of Southern Maryland, so I’m kind of in the backwoods, so to speak, but it’s a really nice place,” Tolbert said. “I moved because my job was here and a better quality of life, so that’s how I ended up in the Maryland area. Working for the government brought me down here, they moved me here, it was a promotion, so I took the job, they paid for me to move here, it was a great opportunity, so why miss it?”
Her big break into TV came when she auditioned for a different show but didn’t make it.
“I loved this show called ‘The Circle,’ I had been watching it all during COVID, just binge-watching, so I applied,” Tolbert said. “I got a call and thought it was a spam call, so I almost hung up and realized that it was an actual legit casting agent. Fast forward, I got all the way to the end and I wasn’t selected, but I then got another call for ‘The Anonymous’ asking would I be interested and of course I said yes because it was something right up my alley.”
If the 54-year-old wins the competition, how would she spend the $100,000 prize money?
“I’m a little bit more seasoned; I would probably put some away toward my retirement,” Tolbert said. “I have two wonderful parents that I would definitely help out with whatever needs they had around the house, same with my fabulous daughters, just so I can share some of it amongst my family — and of course take a fabulous trip! You just have to be luxuriating and demure in all of the gloriousness of that $100K that I can stand on a trip.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'American Ninja Warrior' (Part 1) Growing up in North Potomac, Maryland, Karen Potts loved watching NBC’s “American Ninja Warrior” on TV. On Monday night, she’ll compete in Stage 1 of the finals.
“I’m definitely excited to watch,” Potts, 19, told WTOP. “I know what happens, but I love to see the way they put it all together and then a bunch of my friends are competing too, the way you meet people through there. I’ll be back at school by then, so I think my softball team and some other friends are all going to watch it together.”
She currently attends Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she’s majoring in nutrition and psychology with a minor in sports medicine — all things that come in handy on “American Ninja Warrior.”
“Nutrition is big when you’re competing in sports, especially when you’re competing in something like ‘Ninja’ where it’s very active, a lot of strength is involved,” Potts said. “Then psychology, being on the course and especially with this being a TV show, there’s a big mental aspect, so that definitely goes hand in hand.”
Her athletic prowess began at Wootton High School where she was a goalkeeper on the soccer team in the fall, a post player on the basketball team in the winter, and a shortstop on the softball team in the spring.
“Hand-eye coordination, agility and overall athleticism helps a lot with ‘Ninja,'” Potts said.
This isn’t her first ninja rodeo. The teenager previously competed in Season 2 of “American Ninja Warrior Junior,” followed by Season 14 of the adult “American Ninja Warrior” where she fell during the finals in 2020.
“In Season 14 on Stage 1, I fell on something called the Giant Rollercoaster,” Potts said. “There’s three different tracks, so you’re hanging on a bar on the first one, then you slide down it and lache, which is what they call jumping from bar to bar. You have to lache to another track, slide down that one, then for the third one you have to carry the bar with you and place it in smaller handles and dismount from there. I fell on the transfer with the bar.”
Now, she’s making her comeback on Season 16 trying to finally get over the finish line.
“I definitely wanted to come back because I love the sport itself,” Potts said. “Ninja has such a great community, so the experience of being on the show is just super cool and super fun. You get to meet people from all over, so I wanted that aspect again. I also wanted to do better than I had done. … I wanted to try that one again and hopefully beat it. I was super excited when I was called to be on Season 16 because I wanted another chance.”
This season started with her placing first in the qualifying round, becoming the only woman to reach the fifth obstacle in a six-obstacle course. In the semifinals, she won a side-by-side race in another obstacle course.
“The beep sounded, which started our race, I was running across steps, you have to go back and forth, and went through these laches,” Potts said. “I was a step and a half ahead of my opponent into the wing nuts … made the dismount then onto the next obstacle, hop scotch, which is small cliffhanger ledges to little laches. I was about one move in and saw my opponent fall next to me, so I knew the only thing I had to do was complete that obstacle.”
Now, she faces her biggest challenge yet in Stage 1 of the finals in Las Vegas.
“Tonight, there’s a bunch of big obstacles,” Potts said. “It starts with big agility strides into a double barrel, which is two big swings on rotating barrels to dismount, followed by the Giant Rollercoaster, which is actually the obstacle that took me out last year. After that, there’s a spider wall, which is a trampoline jump, you have to prop yourself up between two walls. There’s another upper-body obstacle, then the Warped Wall, a staple of ‘Ninja Warrior.'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Jackpot! (Part 1) It’s currently the No. 1 movie on Prime Video after its straight to streaming release this past week.
John Cena and Awkwafina team up in the new action comedy “Jackpot!” by Amazon MGM Studios.
Originally titled “Grand Theft Lotto” (a better title actually), the film is set in the near future of 2030 Los Angeles where California has created a Grand Lottery where the losing ticket holders have until sundown to kill the winner and claim the prize. There’s just one catch: no guns allowed. When former child actor Katie (Awkwafina) wins the $3.6 billion lottery, she enlists the protection of Noel Cassidy (Cena) for the low cost of 10% of her winnings.
Cena has quickly rivaled Hulk Hogan, The Rock and Dave Bautista as the biggest crossover stars from WWE to Hollywood. He first showed his big-screen comedy chops in Judd Apatow’s “Trainwreck” (2015), followed by “Daddy’s Home” (2015), “Blockers” (2018), “Playing with Fire” (2019), “Vacation Friends” (2021) and “Barbie” (2023), not to mention hilariously “streaking” at the Oscars in a show-stealing segment earlier this year.
In “Jackpot!” he plays a super nice guy, like the absolute nicest, like one of the most benevolent characters you’ll ever see, a persona that clicks considering Cena in real life holds the record for granting the most requests by the Make a Wish Foundation. He is beloved inside and outside of the ring, which is why folks can’t wait for his WWE retirement run on Netflix in 2025, hopefully trying to break Ric Flair’s record to become a 17-time world champ.
Cena’s earnestness is juxtaposed with the delightfully sarcastic Awkwafina, who burst onto the mainstream movie scene with the one-two punch of “Ocean’s 8” (2018) and “Crazy Rich Asians” (2018). After her deserving Golden Globe win for the indie dramedy “The Farewell” (2019), she’s become a blockbuster star from the animated hit “Raya & The Last Dragon” (2021) to the superhero smash “Shang-Chi & The Legend of the Ten Rings” (2021).
Here, she reunites with “Shang-Chi” co-star Simu Liu, who charges 30% for high-tech protection. The supporting cast also includes Ayden Mayeri (“The Afterparty”) as a crappy Airbnb host, Leslie David Baker (“The Office”) as a wax-museum owner, Seann William Scott (“American Pie”) as a lotto winner, Dolly De Leon (“Triangle of Sadness”) as an assailant, and rapper Machine Gun Kelly as himself (I laughed when Awkwafina called him “Mr. Gun Kelly”).
It’s all directed by Paul Feig, the Emmy-nominated creator of NBC’s teen cult classic “Freaks and Geeks” (1999) who directed some of your favorite episodes of “Arrested Development,” “Weeds,” “The Office” and “Nurse Jackie.” Today, he’s best known for is big-screen comedy collaborations with the hilarious Melissa McCarthy on “Bridesmaids” (2011), “The Heat” (2013), “Spy” (2015) and the female reboot of “Ghostbusters” (2016).
This time he’s not working from a laugh-out-loud script like Kristen Wiig’s Oscar-caliber “Bridesmaids.” Instead, “Jackpot!” screenwriter Rob Yescombe has largely written for video games like “The Invisible Hours” (2017). Still, it has its amusingly funny moments, which seem like improvised quips by Cena or Awkwafina, who crack up during an extended blooper montage during the end credits before a pointless post-credits scene with Johnny Grand.
As for the deliciously high concept, it’s hard to give “Jackpot!” too much credit because we just saw a similar premise on Hulu earlier this year in “Self Reliance” (2024) as Jake Johnson tried to survive 30 days being hunted by killers to win a game-show prize. The best lottery movie in recent years remains “Jerry and Marge Go Large” (2022) starring Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening in one of the most underrated flicks of the past five years.
If you haven’t seen that — or this year’s funniest comedy “Thelma” — check those out first. Then you can feel free to pop on “Jackpot!,” the type of action comedy that you’re glad you watched on streaming for a mindless date night rather than spend money at the theater. It’s the Prime Video equivalent of Apple TV’s “The Instigators” starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. They’re fine, kind of funny, but nothing we’ll remember in five years.
If you don’t have Prime, Cena will shrug and say, “You can’t see me.” See? Comedy is a tricky business because everyone’s sense of humor is so different. If you’re a comedy filmmaker, you can’t stay on the sidelines afraid to make a joke, you’ve gotta get in there and give it a shot. You can’t be afraid to take a crack at cracking us up, so I applaud any big swing trying to win the “Jackpot!” As the lotto saying goes, “You’ve gotta play to win.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Fridays at the Fountain in Crystal City (Part 1) Are you looking for a fun and relaxing way to unwind in the evening after a hard week at work?
National Landing hosts this summer’s final “Fridays at the Fountain” from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday at the Water Park at 1601 Crystal Drive in Crystal City, Virginia.
“‘Fridays at the Fountain’ is a long-standing tradition in National Landing, but we’re coming up on our one-year anniversary this fall of a re-imagined Water Park,” National Landing BID president and executive director Tracy Sayegh Gabriel told WTOP.
“The re-imagined Water Park opened in October of 2023. It had always been a wonderful community park space, but the new Water Park has a dozen eateries, a great landscape, it’s really an oasis in a city setting.”
The event has featured a variety of genres so far this summer, including jazz and funk with Clarence Ward III & Dat Feel Good, salsa with Max Rosado and the 7th Street Band, blues with Carly Harvey, R&B with Deidra Love, Latin funk with Bongo District, bluegrass with Moose Jaw Bluegrass, and the soul and R&B stylings of Bryan Lee.
This Friday’s final summer event features D.C. go-go band Mambo Sauce, aptly named after the city’s own beloved condiment, performing two live sets with a brief intermission as a DJ keeps the music going in between.
“Bring a blanket or a chair,” Gabriel said. “This is an event for all ages to enjoy great live music and fabulous food.”
Indeed, if you work up an appetite dancing, you can also grab a bite from the unique outdoor food hall.
“We have nearly a dozen eateries, most of which are outdoor concessions,” Gabriel said. “Water Park features Brij Coffee, Bubbie’s Plant Burgers, Cracked Eggery, Crush Pizza, Dolci Gelati, Falafel Inc., PhoWheels, Queen Mother’s Kitchen, Tiki Thai and Water Bar, [which is] perched on top of Water Park’s fountain.”
After the event, feel free to visit the other cool restaurants and entertainment options nearby.
“Water Park is in the heart of National Landing along Crystal Drive in a stretch that is fast-transforming with some of the most exciting businesses in the DMV,” Gabriel said. “We’ve got an Alamo Cinema Drafthouse, as well as Mah-Ze-Dahr, great tacos at Tacombi, we also have a very new concept by Peter Chang that’s NiHao. … Of course, if you need ice cream we’ve got Van Leeuwen that just opened up around the corner from Water Park.”
The Water Park is located just a block from the Crystal City Metro station.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Lady in the Lake' on Apple TV+ (Part 1) Exactly a month after “Presumed Innocent” rendered its verdict, Apple TV+ solves another murder mystery.
“Lady in the Lake” drops its seventh and final episode on Thursday, finishing with a strong splash after treading water early on to the point of nearly drowning. Glad I kept paddling.
Despite the title, this series has nothing to do with M. Night Shyamalan, Arthurian legend, nor the 1947 film-noir adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1943 novel by Robert Montgomery, who directed himself as the iconic Det. Philip Marlowe a year after Bogie in “The Big Sleep.” As my L.A. film critic pal Oliver Jones (son of legendary D.C. movie critic Davey-Marlin Jones) quipped on the Arch Campbell Podcast: “Different lady, different lake.”
This time, “Lady in the Lake” is based on the 2019 novel by Laura Lippman, graduate of Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Maryland, who based the story on a pair of 1969 Baltimore murders she discovered working at The Baltimore Sun: an 11-year-old Jewish girl, Esther Lebowitz, and a 33-year-old Black woman, Shirley Parker.
In this fictional TV version, the young Jewish victim is named Tessie Durst (Bianca Belle) and the endangered Black woman is Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram). The former’s disappearance may have something to do with the latter, both investigated by aspiring journalist Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman), who is eager to escape her abusive marriage in Pikesville to find a new apartment in the city and a new career at The Baltimore Star.
“Lady in the Lake” is billed as the first TV role for big-screen movie star Natalie Portman, who burst onto the scene as a child actor in “Leon: The Professional” (1994), “Heat” (1995) and “Beautiful Girls” (1996). Her role as Padmé Amidala in the “Star Wars” prequels (1999-2005) proved her box-office potential, “Closer” (2004) made her an Oscar nominee and “Black Swan” (2010) deservedly won her an Oscar in one of the best films of the 21st century.
However, ever since her third nomination for “Jackie” (2016), Portman’s career has sidetracked into bombastic “Thor” sequels and unwatchable Terrence Malick tone poems. Her Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress (Comedy/Musical) was puzzling because there was nothing funny about “May December” (2023), though her sultry interview scenes paint a similar identity crisis in “Lady in the Lake” with overly breathless line deliveries.
Emmy nominee Moses Ingram (“The Queen’s Gambit”) is more authentic as Cleo, perhaps because she’s actually a Baltimore native, delivering a standout performance alongside Jennifer Mogbock as drug-addicted nightclub singer Dora Carter. Wood Harris also shines as crime kingpin Shell Gordon, a Baltimore gangster similar to his Avon Barksdale in “The Wire” (2002), this time with the business sense of Stringer Bell as he runs a gambling ring.
Harris reunites with “Remember the Titans” (2000) director Boaz Yakin, who pens the pivotal Episode 5 and the conclusive Episode 7. The rest is helmed by Briana Belser, Nambi E. Kelley, Sheila Wilson and showrunner Alma Har’el, who also directs all seven chapters after winning the Directors Guild of America’s First-Time Feature Award for “Honey Boy” (2019) directly following Bo Burnham (“Eighth Grade”) and Jordan Peele (“Get Out”).
While her direction is once again dynamic, her writing starts off surprisingly confusing in the first two episodes. The pilot hints at “beyond the grave” narration that doesn’t work as well as the watery demise in “Sunset Blvd.” (1950), and while this is ultimately forgiven, it’s initially hard to follow with two different lake murders. You’ll wonder whether Durst’s pet-shop kidnapping is a flashback of Maddie’s childhood, only to realize it’s not.
Behind the camera, Har’el is still a force with fish-tank imagery providing clever foreshadowing. She beautifully captures 1960s Charm City with delicious period design, from Thanksgiving Day parades to snow falling outside Hecht’s storefronts where Cleo models colorful clothes in the window. When a character says, “I left Baltimore not knowing that soon after it would be stripped down,” audiences feel the pain because we love this atmosphere.
Thus, the series has a lot to say about postwar racism, drawing parallels between the oppression of Blacks and Jews. Maddie is shunned for an interracial romance with a Black cop (Y’lan Noel), who must enter her window rather than the front door. Maddie’s editor refuses to run Black stories and laments a female reporter in his male-dominated newsroom, stealing her byline and leaving her a “contribution” credit at the bottom of the article.
These themes carry the series across all seven episodes, even when dream sequences threaten to overshadow the plot. Like Tony Soprano’s nightmares in “The Sopranos,” these hallucinatory sequences are brilliantly directed with creative manifestations of the protagonist’s subconscious, but they provide one too many clues. Along the way, Marcus Norris’ music jolts with jumpscares and intends to creep us out with a whistling tune like “Kill Bill” (2003).
Maybe it’s whistling across a watery graveyard to set a crime tale in Baltimore where Omar’s whistle is still so beloved. If you come at the king, you best not miss, but it’s unfair to compare “Lady in the Lake” to “The Wire.” I kept comparing it to a superior Baltimore murder mystery in the Netflix docuseries “The Keepers” (2017), also seven episodes, also about a 1969 murder, but way more chilling. Stream that before dipping your toe in here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Women's Equality concert and conference (Part 1) The Democratic National Convention is set to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as the first Black and Asian American woman for president on Thursday, just days before Women’s Equality Day on Monday.
To mark the occasion, the nonprofit organization Take the Lead is celebrating its 10th anniversary by hosting the Women’s Equality Day Power Up Concert at the Kennedy Center on Sunday.
“Take the Lead’s mission is to prepare, develop, inspire and propel all women of all diversities and all intersectionalities to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across every sector,” Co-Founder and President Gloria Feldt told WTOP. “It started when I was trying to figure out why we had opened doors and changed laws and seen a women’s ‘first’ of almost everything, but women were still so far from parity.”
Sunday’s genre-bending concert will feature live music performances by world-renowned pianist and composer Marina Arsenijevic, as well as the indie-pop band Betty and three-time Grammy nominees Sweet Honey in the Rock, D.C.’s Black female a cappella group that combines song, dance and sign language.
“It’s a great lineup,” Feldt said. “We have three incredible performers.”
The event will also honor TV’s “Wonder Woman” star Lynda Carter.
“The cherry on top of the icing on the cake is that we will be giving our Leading Woman Award, which we give every year, to none other than Lynda Carter,” Feldt said. “What young girl and what women hasn’t been inspired by a ‘Wonder Woman’ character? Whether it was Lynda’s version or Gal Gadot, there are many different versions, but we have all been inspired by that woman who owns her power and uses it for good.”
Carter, who lives in the D.C. area, shared her gratitude in a statement to the nonprofit organization.
“There is nothing more powerful than a group of women working on a shared goal,” Carter said. “We are a force to be reckoned with, filled with rich determination. I look forward to joining Take the Lead Women in community for this important event.”
The day after the concert, Carter will also attend Take the Lead’s fifth annual Power Up: Together We Lead Conference at the National Housing Center located on 15th Street, Northwest. Monday’s event intentionally falls on actual Women’s Equality Day, which Congress permanently recognized in 1973.
“The Equal Rights Amendment still has not been formally put into the constitution, so we’ll be talking about that,” Feldt said. “We’ll kick off the morning with a proclamation by the mayor of D.C., then we’ll launch into Together We Lead for Health talking about women’s health. … Then we will have a Leading Man Award [for Doug Emhoff], but since the time we first invited him to receive it, his life has changed dramatically.”
Feldt says there’s extra energy in the air this year with the potential of America’s first woman president.
“I actually believe this is the most consequential Women’s Equality Day of the 21st century, so we are so excited to be hosting this conference and concert,” Feldt said. “We have seen women ascend to very high levels, including a woman at the top of a major party ticket for president who is doing pretty well in the polls right now, so this is probably the closest we have come to breaking that highest and hardest glass ceiling.”
Use promo code “Gloria10” for a 20% discount on your ticket and half off a friend’s ticket.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley speaks with the co-directors of 'Daughters' (Part 1) It won the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
This week, “Daughters” premieres on Netflix chronicling an emotional daddy-daughter dance at the D.C. Jail.
WTOP caught up with the film’s co-directors Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, who created the dance at the suggestion of young girls in her non-profit organization Girls For a Change in Richmond, Virginia.
“I run a program that advances opportunities for Black girls,” Patton told WTOP. “The girls wanted to do a social change program to change people’s perspectives and stereotypes of Black men, specifically as they showed up as fathers in their lives. As they planned this special dance to celebrate their fathers, they discovered their friend had a father that was incarcerated and they all felt it was unfair that she was unable to participate in the dance.”
So, the girls wrote a letter to the sheriff of Richmond asking if he could help facilitate a special daddy-daughter dance for girls whose fathers were incarcerated. Thankfully, their agreplea was heard.
“He said yes to this amazing experience,” Patton said. “It grew to D.C. after I did a TED Talk about this particular dance and a lot of people started to reach out to me. … When other filmmakers reached out to me, they really wanted to tell the jail story … but they never talked about the girls being the forefront. … Natalie emailed me and asked if I would meet with her about a film that would center the girls. That really sparked my interest.”
Thus, Patton and Rae met up in Virginia and decided to co-direct what would become “Daughters.”
“I met Angela in Richmond and we did preliminary interviews with Sheriff C.T. Woody at the Richmond Justice Center,” Rae said. “We got to go to Washington D.C. together and make the film as a documentary in an embedded part of this program. … That took place in 2019, then we continued following the families up until last year.”
During filming, several inspiring characters emerged, including kids like Aubrey saying the darnedest things.
“She’s just an incredible human,” Rae said. “When I first met Keith, he kept talking about her with so much light in his eyes and he almost started to cry like, ‘She’s missing her teeth right now, she doesn’t have one favorite color, she’s got three favorite colors, and she’s dancing and singing with me,’ and I was like, ‘This sounds like a really cool kid.’ When I met her, I had never (seen) such wisdom flowing out of this girl. Everything she said was so brilliant.”
Viewers also meet several of the fathers seeking repentance. As they prepare for the dance, they connect with each other during “fatherhood circles” led by life coach Chad Morris from Virginia Commonwealth University.
“One of the hardest parts of the edit has been shortening those wonderful fatherhood circles; every single one was two hours and could have been its own episode,” Rae said. “All of the fathers said such beautiful things and showed different connections to their kids. The way they worked with Chad over the course of 10 weeks, it was really special that they felt comfortable in a space that normally doesn’t lend itself to opening up emotionally.”
We won’t spoil the details of the daddy-daughter dance itself — you just have to watch it. I promise that you will laugh, you will cry, and you will definitely think about our society in a more elevated way with love in your heart.
“I thought this film would bring a refreshing perspective of Black girls,” Patton said. “Usually in film, you do not see this brilliance that already exists within them. You see Black girls portrayed in a negative light, but when you go into their world and into their reality, we are able to show you that they are dreamers, they can contribute to the world, they have goals and they have a lot to say. … As long as you get out of their way, they will open up to you.”
The filmmaking craft is truly superb. As a father kneels in front of his crying daughters and promises to change, the filmmakers cleverly cut to fluttering leaves on the ground to symbolize change. This is directly followed by a rack focus from a chain-link fence to a graffiti mural on a building reading, “None are free until all are free.”
Even more powerful than the imagery is the “where are they now” text before the end credits showing the statistic that 95% of incarcerated men who participated in the program did not return to prison after they were released. The final seconds leave us with a personal note from the filmmakers themselves: “Dedicated to our dads.”
“When I was 6 years old I learned that endangered species existed in the world and I was so upset,” Rae said. “My dad was like, “Well, there’s something you can do about it, you can make a documentary, we can rent a VHS camera, I can show you how to edit the material together.’ My dad really opened my eyes to the ability to do social-impact work and make documentaries. … I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have that support and love from my dad.”
“Why wouldn’t I include my father?” Patton said. “He’s been a champion of all the work I’ve done to support Black girls in our community, but the first Black girl he really supported was me. He’s always been my inspiration (with) character traits of showing up, being accountable, bringing humor. … He tells me I wear the crown perfectly.”
Here’s hoping that proverbial crown includes some Oscar gold after the coming award season.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Iliza Shlesinger at Live! Casino in Maryland (Part 1) Marylanders will soon have a chance to see one of the funniest standup comedians working today.
Iliza Shlesinger cracks up The Hall at Live! Casino & Hotel in Arundel Mills, Maryland, on Friday.
“This is the ‘Get Ready Tour,’ you guys are getting ready with me because I’m shooting my brand new special with Amazon, it’ll be my seventh hour in November in Salt Lake City,” Shlesinger told WTOP. “I’m polishing that hour and I’m also capitalizing on those ‘get ready with me’ videos that people like to make online like, ‘Get ready with me while I journal, have a green juice and lie about everything.’ It’s girly, it’s fun and that’s the special.”
Born in New York City in 1983, She mostly grew up in Dallas, Texas, before studying film at Emerson College in Boston, where she joined sketch-comedy groups on campus. Shlesinger then moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in standup comedy, gaining national notoriety after winning the sixth season of NBC reality competition “Last Comic Standing” (2008).
From there, she began cranking out a string of Netflix standup specials, including “War Paint” (2013), “Freezing Hot” (2015), “Confirmed Kills” (2016) and “Elder Millennial” (2018), which explored the vastly different life experiences of those on opposite ends of a generation defined as being born between 1981 and 1996.
“Comedy is about bringing people together by pointing out the differences,” Shlesinger said. “Elder millennials are where you’re not Generation X but you’re also not a younger millennial, so I wanted to point out, ‘While I’m not one of you, I am an elder, so I do have the life advice and I do remember things that people younger than me may not have a context for.’ All any generation wants is to leave their mark and get an apology from the one before.”
Now, she’s ushering in a new generation by parenting alongside her chef husband Noah Galuten. Their 2018 marriage was the subject of her fifth Netflix standup special “Unveiled” (2019), while her sixth and most recent Netflix special “Hot Forever” (2022) dropped before the birth of her two children in 2022 and 2024.
“I took a step back to actually give birth to a child, which I know we like to fault women for doing that, but you know, I’m doing my best,” Shlesinger said.
Elsewhere on TV, Shlesinger has hosted the game shows “Excused” (2011) and “Separation Anxiety” (2016), the late-night talk show “Truth & Iliza” (2017), the sketch-comedy series “The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show” (2020) and the stand-up comedy series “Iliza’s Locals” (2023), highlighting the best rising standup comedians.
“I’m always trying to create things from an honest and funny place and flex different muscles,” Shlesinger said.
She even transitioned into movies, starring with Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne in “Instant Family” (2018) and Wahlberg again in “Spenser Confidential” (2020), before writing and starring in her own rom-com “Good on Paper” (2021). Her most acclaimed film remains the indie drama “Pieces of a Woman” (2020), playing the sister of Vanessa Kirby, who earned an Oscar nomination and won best actress at the Venice International Film Festival.
“It’s always great to go to a set where you are the least experienced person; all you have to do is shut your mouth, watch other people and let them make you better,” Shlesinger said. “If you’re doing standup, it’s all me, I do everything; but when you go on set with people like Vanessa or Ellen Burstyn, it’s an absolute chance to get to learn something. As an actor, I want to be around people who are better than me. Standup is such a solo sport.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Wynton Marsalis at Wolf Trap (Part 1) Witness jazz greatness firsthand at one of Northern Virginia’s most beloved venues this week.
Nine-time Grammy winner Wynton Marsalis performs live at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, on Thursday, performing with The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra from New York City.
“We have a lot of original composers and arrangers,” Marsalis told WTOP. “We’re going to be playing some of my music, the music of Duke Ellington and members of our orchestra. We have eight arrangers in our orchestra, so it’s unprecedented. One of our most favorite places to play is Wolf Trap. I mean, I can remember gigs that I played at Wolf Trap in the 1980s and 1990s, just soulful with people loving the music. So we look forward to it.”
Born in New Orleans in 1961, Marsalis grew up in a musical family as the son of a music teacher, Ellis Marsalis Jr., who named him after classic jazz pianist and composer Wynton Kelly. Marsalis’ brothers, Branford, Jason and Delfeayo, would all become musicians.
“My father was struggling to play modern jazz, so it was a real eye-opener,” Marsalis said. “To be honest with you, when I was a kid, I didn’t like the style of music that they were playing, but through the exposure to it, I started to understand what the music was about. When I got to be around 11 or 12 years old, I got into the music studies of Sonny Stitt, John Coltrane.”
By age 14, Marsalis was performing with the New Orleans Philharmonic, and by age 17 he was one of the youngest students ever admitted into the prestigious Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.
“Being in New Orleans, I had a chance to play everything,” Marsalis said. “I played New Orleans jazz sometimes in parades, I played trumpet with the New Orleans Philharmonic, all the gigs like the ballet or the circus, being in the city allowed me to get a lot of experience. Then I got called for a jazz gig when I was a sophomore playing Chick Corea’s music and the music of Freddie Hubbard and that’s where I really learned about playing the music.”
In 1979, he enrolled at The Juilliard School but left in 1981 before earning his degree, getting plenty of schooling by touring Europe with Art Blakey’s band The Jazz Messengers, followed by a tour with the great Herbie Hancock.
“From Art Blakey, I learned the value of integrity, because he had integrity and belief,” Marsalis said. “From Herbie, I learned to listen to everybody. I once saw Herbie listen to a young composer from South Africa. … He sat down at the piano after soundcheck before a gig and spent almost an hour working through this tune. … Just to see Herbie take that type of time was a lesson, there was something about his humanity and interest in people.”
Soon, Marsalis would become a jazz star in his own right. Throughout the 1980s, he won a whopping eight Grammys.
“I wasn’t really big about the Grammys and awards,” Marsalis said. “People are voting and there’s no way they can hear all the music that’s sent to them, so that’s a nice social event to go to and put a tuxedo on, but it doesn’t have anything to do with music really.”
In 1995, the same year that Branford performed at Cal Ripken Jr.’s streak-breaking game in Baltimore, Wynton won a Peabody Award for his NPR radio series and PBS TV series.
“It was great,” Marsalis said. “It was with National Public Radio and I loved the team of people that I worked with. Still to this day, one of the highlights of my life was to work with that fantastic team of people on the series called ‘Making the Music.’ There was also a TV show we put out, but that was with (PBS), BBC and NHK Japanese television called ‘Marsalis on Music.’ Those two series came out that same summer.”
In 1997, Marsalis made history again as the first jazz artist to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his two-and-a-half-hour jazz oratorio “Blood on the Fields,” which was commissioned by Lincoln Center.
“I had a lifetime of studying slavery, but it was the first time I tried to write voices for a big band,” Marsalis said. “It was an oratorio about American slavery. It was a really long piece based on a story called ‘Freedom’s a Hard-Bought Thing.’ It had a lot of different music in it. I went all the way back to molds they were using even in slavery times as a counterpoint to contemporary music that I had grown up playing, so it was a very complex composition.”
In 2000, he won his ninth Grammy for his spoken-word children’s album “Listen to the Storytellers,” and in 2001, he was named a U.N. Messenger of Peace. In 2005, he received the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush, then the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2015. The National Endowment of the Arts also named him an NEA Jazz Master, but through it all, he remains humble about his place in jazz history.
“The greatest honor for me is the way that I’ve been treated by people whose homes I went into, the younger musicians I’ve played with, the great musicians around the world that I’ve had the opportunity to play with,” Marsalis said. “You can’t put yourself in the context. There’s so many great musicians who have played, so many great people in the arts. I’m just trying to get better. The older you get, the more humble you have to become.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Collective Soul at Jiffy Lube Live (Part 1) Some of the best alternative-rock hits of the ’90s are about to echo across Prince William County.
This Saturday, Collective Soul rocks Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia, on a triple bill that includes fellow ’90s sensations Edwin McCain and Hootie & The Blowfish.
WTOP caught up with Collective Soul’s longtime bass player Will Turpin to preview the concert.
“We were all signed to Atlantic Records in 1994, all three of us from the South, so we’ve always been good friends,” Turpin said. “We’ve never signed on for a 45-show summer tour together, but we’ve always played shows here and there together. This has turned out to be even cooler than we thought, as far as having fun backstage and looking at each other going, ‘Wow, we’re all three around 30 years later. Who would have thought?’ It’s pretty special.”
Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Turpin’s family moved to Stockbridge, Georgia, where his father owned a music studio. He grew up as neighbors and church pals of future bandmate brothers Ed Roland (lead vocals) and Dean Roland (rhythm guitar), who soon added Shane Evans on drums and Ross Childress on guitar to form Collective Soul.
“It goes way back,” Turpin said. “Their father knew my grandfather. Their father would have been the minister in the largest Baptist church and my grandfather was the superintendent of schools way back when, but my dad owned a small recording studio that was all between a three block radius in a small town south of Atlanta. I literally do not have a memory without knowing who Dean and Ed were because I went to their church.”
The band’s first album “Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid” (1993) was released on the independent label Rising Storm and caught the attention of the college radio station WRAS/Album 88 at Georgia State University.
“Dean delivered the record to the college station to a great friend of ours,” Turpin said. “Sandy Fine picked out a song called ‘Shine.’ We thought the first single would be ‘Goodnight, Good Guy’ or maybe another song called ‘Reach,’ but Sandy picked out ‘Shine’ and that really was the start of a tiny little snowball at the top of a hill. By the time a commercial station added ‘Shine’ to its rotation in Florida, we had pretty much every label interested in us.”
The album was rereleased by Atlantic Records and went double platinum thanks to smash hit “Shine,” which ranked No. 42 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of the ’90s. The song’s iconic refrain of “heaven let your light shine down” transcended rock radio to pull in Christian rock fans and was later covered by Dolly Parton on her bluegrass album “Little Sparrow” (2001), winning the Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
“It sounded like nothing else and it still does,” Turpin said. “I know Collective Soul has a sound, but that song, the one that started it all out, there was something special about the way it came together. … It’s basically Ed looking for answers, then Dolly rerecords the song and it kind of has a life of its own. … It’s something we really enjoy and the crowds still really enjoy singing along with us. It’s definitely one of the loudest parts of the evening.”
Their second album “Collective Soul” (1995), also known as “The Blue Album,” included the hit single “December,” chronicling the band’s struggle with its first manager by singing: “Turn your head now baby just spit me out.”
“That became the No. 1 rock song of ’95, so that was back-to-back No. 1 rock tunes from ‘Shine’ and then into ‘December,'” Turpin said. “It was a good concept song. As far as musically and harmonically, it’s kind of built around the same chord progression over and over. A lot of songs are like that, but you just build different sections and you weave in and out of those different sections and there’s ‘December.'”
The same album also included the band’s most contemplative (and singable) hit “The World I Know,” which remains one of the best songs of the era with a chilling chorus guaranteeing goose bumps: “So I walk up on high, and I step to the edge, to see my world below. And I laugh at myself, while the tears roll down, ’cause it’s the world I know.”
“He finished the lyrics right before we went to Europe when we were in New York,” Turpin said. “Ed’s lyrics are magical in the way that he might be thinking of something personal or something that the band is going through, but the lyrics are ambiguous enough that almost anybody can use these lyrics and think about their lives.”
The band has cranked out 10 more albums since, including “Disciplined Breakdown” (1997), “Dosage” (1999), “Blender” (2000), “Youth” (2004), “Afterwords” (2007), “Collective Soul” (2009), “See What You Started by Continuing” (2015) and Turpin’s favorite “Blood” (2019), as well as more recent efforts like “Vibrating” (2022) and their new double-album release “Here to Eternity” (2024) named after the 1953 film “From Here to Eternity.”
“We actually spent the night in one of Burt Lancaster’s Palm Springs homes,” Turpin said. “We also set up shop in Elvis’ Palm Springs estate for a month. We had a friend of a friend who bought Elvis’ Palm Springs home, it was a little in disrepair but it was left just like Elvis left it, red carpet, checkerboard floor. We set up in the main room looking at the pool and Palm Springs landscape and went at it. … We’re starting the set with two of those songs.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Collective Soul at Jiffy Lube Live (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews a new venture by longtime conductor (Part 1) In 1984, he founded what would eventually become the National Philharmonic, which has become a Montgomery County staple of live orchestral performances at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland since 2004.
Now, after 40 years, Piotr Gajewski will no longer be conducting concerts for the organization as the National Philharmonic is forging ahead without its founder.
“After 40 years with the organization, I am no longer music director,” Gajewski told WTOP. “As you know, in the spring, they canceled a bunch of concerts that they sold tickets to and that I was supposed to conduct. There was a concert with my good friend, violinist Sarah Chang, and Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition,’ and Mahler’s ‘Symphony No. 4,’ and lots of other great music, but then they just canceled them.”
The National Philharmonic has publicly grappled with fundraising concerns over the past several years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the summer of 2019, WTOP reported on the group’s pending closure, followed by an urgent request for donations, then a successful last-minute fundraising effort to raise $500,000 to save the organization.
Now, the National Philharmonic has announced a 2024-2025 season on its website: “Celebrating 40 years of National Philharmonic,” followed by, “Subscriptions and single tickets on sale soon! Thank you for your patience.”
“They are announcing new concerts, some of which, ironically, I planned, but I am no longer included,” Gajewski said. “I guess they want to take some new direction; I am not really sure what that means, but I wish them all the luck in the world! I hope whatever obstacles they are facing; they figure it out. But for my part, I will miss all the concertgoers who have followed me for all these years, as I will not be on the podium with NatPhil going forward.”
The National Philharmonic confirmed Gajewski’s exit in an email to WTOP: “Piotr and NatPhil have parted ways as of the end of the 2023-2024 season. Next season will feature guest conductors for all six programs.”
Rather than dwelling on his departure, Gajewski is looking forward to a new path, keeping his baton waving.
“I am launching a new venture, Capital Classical Concerts, to present symphonic programming, beginning in ’25-’26, hopefully at Strathmore,” Gajewski said. “I’m speaking with NASA and composer Henry Dehlinger to perhaps present a sequel to the wildly successful ‘Cosmic Cycles’ we premiered a year ago, and with dear friends pianist Brian Ganz, soprano Danielle Talamantes, cellist Zuill Bailey and many others.”
Learn more about Capital Classical Concerts by emailing: info@ccconcerts.org.
Stay tuned for a follow-up story on the National Philharmonic’s 2024-2025 season.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'MJ: The Musical' at National Theatre (Part 1) In 2022, “MJ: The Musical” won a Tony Award for Maryland native Myles Frost on Broadway.
Now, D.C. audiences can finally see the acclaimed production at National Theatre through Sept. 8.
WTOP caught up with Jamaal Fields-Green, who now plays Michael Jackson on the national tour.
“It’s the Broadway production literally thrown on the road,” Fields-Green told WTOP.
“I saw ‘MJ’ on Broadway two or three months before they won the Tonys. During intermission is when I got my email from my agent for future replacements of MJ. I’m in the theater, sitting in my seat, just checking my emails and it said, ‘Future replacement for MJ’ while I’m sitting there. So in that moment I was like, ‘Well, I guess I’m studying for the rest of the show.'”
Set in 1992, the show unfolds in flashbacks as Jackson rehearses for his “Dangerous” tour.
“It is the second to last day of the ‘Dangerous’ tour rehearsal,” Fields-Green said.
“MTV comes into the building and through their interview with MJ, we go through his entire life from The Jackson 5 all the way to present-day 1992. Flashbacks to his childhood, to The Jackson 5, to his time as a teenager, then his transition out of the Jackson 5. Even flashbacks to a little bit of the ‘Off the Wall’ era and then the ‘Thriller/Victory’ tour era.”
He said it’s both exciting and daunting to portray someone as iconic as the “King of Pop.”
“The biggest thing is making sure I portray MJ as authentically as possible, because we’re not playing a character that was built from the ground up or out of thin air, this is someone that lived and walked and breathed on this earth,” Fields-Green said.
“The biggest thing is that it doesn’t come off like I’m impersonating him, but rather paying homage. Of course, I’ve got to get those dance moves down. … I do indeed moonwalk across the stage.”
The proverbial “jukebox musical” means you’ll hear all of your favorite MJ tunes, with the connective tissue of dramatic scenes penned by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage (‘Ruined’ and ‘Sweat’).
“You’re gonna hear ‘Smooth Criminal,’ which is probably my favorite number in the show,” Fields-Green said.
“We start the show with ‘Beat It,’ which is the way to start off any type of show, just a great adrenaline rush and starter. ‘Billie Jean’ starts off Act 2 and I’ll leave it at that because what else can you say about that, it’s ‘Billie Jean.’ … We have ‘I Want You Back,’ definitely ‘ABC,’ we have ‘Dancing Machine’ of course, ‘Blame it on the Boogie.'”
Needless to say, Jackson was a complicated individual with a controversial life.
“What I like about the show is that it is very real,” Fields-Green said. “It is a celebration, but when you see it, you get to see the human being behind the icon. When you see the show, there’s definitely going to be some elements in there where you’re like, ‘OK,’ without giving anything away, but it’s definitely grounded in realism for sure.”
Regardless, there’s no denying MJ was one of the biggest superstars on the planet.
“He really was an alien,” Fields-Green said.
“We will never get another person like that in our lifetime at least. His attention to detail, the stuff that he was doing on stage vocally and physically is just crazy. … I would go on record to say that I think he might have been the biggest and best of all time. We’re talking about the total package in terms of entertaining and star quality. He had it: the dance moves, the singing, the music that’s catchy to this day.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'In the Heights' at Bowie Center for the Performing Arts (Part 1) Before “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda first broke through on Broadway with “In the Heights.”
This week, CenterStage Academy for the Arts presents “In the Heights” at the Bowie Center for the Performing Arts in Bowie, Maryland, on Thursday, Aug. 15 and Friday, Aug. 16.
“This is the largest cast we’ve ever had for our summer performance series, and we’re so grateful,” Artistic Director Shawn Cosby told WTOP. “This cast will bring you to your feet. They are that amazing as triple threats.”
The plot follows Usnavi de la Vega, a bodega owner in the New York City neighborhood of Washington Heights, who dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic to open a tiki bar but considers staying put when he falls for a local hairstylist named Vanessa. There’s also a love story between Nina, who drops out of college to seek justice for immigrant children, and her father’s employee, Benny, who maintains the vital work of the local taxi dispatch.
“The premise is that home is where you are loved,” Cosby said. “Your family doesn’t always have to be part of your DNA tree, but God places people in your life and surrounds you with people to take care of you and fill the voids of things you don’t have. … We all search for something different in our lives, and often times when we’re searching for these things, we don’t recognize what’s right in front of us that enriches us, that nurtures us, that heals us.”
The musical numbers include the dazzling opening title number, which Cosby choreographs.
“The opening number, you meet everybody from the neighborhood … not just Latinos, but Africans in Washington Heights, Asians in Washington Heights, all of that culture melted into this one pot,” Cosby said. “‘96,000,’ we hip-hop cultured that to the gods. I really wanted that to be based and rooted in hip-hop, that’s a great, great, great number. But there’s also ‘Carnival del Barrio,’ a great number — festive, bright, beautiful, energetic.”
It’s the latest production by CenterStage Academy for the Arts, which was founded by Cosby’s mother, Sherion, as CenterStage Management in 1991 before opening a brick-and-mortar location in Clinton, Maryland, in 2018.
“My mom is a producer-writer-director, went to school, got a film degree, so music, theatre and arts have always been in my home,” Cosby said. “I started performing and dancing when I was 7, I started professionally when I was 12, and I started my own dance company when I was 15. I’m from PG (Prince George’s) County, Allentown Road, that area. I went to Suitland School for the Performing Arts as a dance major. … This is a lifetime of this journey.”
If you’d like to join the journey, there are really no age limits.
“CenterStage Academy for the Arts is a training ground for ages 7 to — our oldest student is 85,” Cosby said.
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the D.C. Black Film Fest (Part 1) Filmmakers of color are getting a chance to shine this week on Barracks Row in Southeast D.C.
The eighth annual D.C. Black Film Festival returns to the historic Miracle Theatre on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, followed by a virtual festival extension from Aug. 18 to Aug. 25.
“It’s just been awesome to see how the competition [has grown] in terms of the films, oh my goodness, every year it just gets stronger and stronger,” founder and festival director Kevin Sampson told WTOP.
“We’ve definitely had submissions from all over the globe. The only stipulation of submitting to the festival is that one or more of the above-the-line crew is of African descent, so that helps us to be more inclusive, it’s not exclusive.”
The festival kicks off Thursday, Aug. 15 with the narrative feature “Money Game” directed by Julian Lowenthal.
“It’s set during the COVID-19 pandemic where a young widowed father of two struggles to navigate a broken financial system while fighting to give his daughters the life his late wife promised him,” Sampson said.
“It’s a really good, moving feature. It’s interesting because we know that films are going to show us what we lived during the pandemic and the different struggles of it, so it’s a really good film that I think people will really like.”
The festival continues Friday, Aug. 16 with Ilana Trachtman’s feature documentary “Ain’t No Back to the Merri-Go-Round,” narrated by Jeffrey Wright to chronicle a troubling true story at Glen Echo Amusement Park in Maryland in 1960.
“This is really dealing with five Howard University students that sat on a Maryland carousel in the 1960s — that arrest made headlines,” Sampson said. “It’s dealing with segregation, integration and the 1961 Freedom Riders. … It’s information that is not necessarily hidden but maybe it’s just something that you’ve never heard of before.”
Friday also includes the narrative feature “The Novelist” by prolific D.C.-area filmmaker Harold Jackson III.
“Listen, this one is our Friday night feature film and it has everything you want in a film,” Sampson said.
“It’s a thriller, it’s also a dark comedy, it’s a kind of mystery, so you want to find out what’s going to happen to certain characters. Basically it’s about a woman who steals a manuscript from someone else, then out of nowhere his estranged son comes to seek compensation. It’s just a fun ride and I think people will be talking to the screen.”
Saturday, Aug. 17 brings “A Time to Yell: More Than a Statue” by Eric Newman and Daniel Levin about the infamous “Unite the Right” rally around the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, seven years ago.
“We all remember Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017, but one thing you don’t know about what kicked that off is there was a certain catalyst to kind of start those events and ‘A Time to Yell’ really covers that,” Sampson said.
Saturday also brings “Running Our Way: The Story of Chocolate City Relay” directed by Jason Taylor.
“It’s a 60-plus-mile relay crafted to go deep into each of D.C.’s wards,” Sampson said. “This is looking at a group of Black women runners who come together — running brings them together — but they’re also running through the District, so you’ll definitely see some spots that you’ve seen all the time and also some people you might know.”
It all wraps up on Saturday with the closing-night film “ToxiCITY” by filmmaker Felix Wayne Jordan.
“That is about an up-and-coming app developer who really struggles with his past, trying to break free from childhood trauma and trying to balance family, work and love,” Sampson said. “It’s a beautifully shot film.”
Attendees can use the promo code “WTOP” for 20% off individual tickets.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the heist comedy 'The Instigators' (Part 1) “Affleck & Damon” has been a Hollywood brand since their Oscar-winning script for “Good Will Hunting” (1997). That was back when Matt Damon first showed main-character energy and Casey Affleck was still breaking in his baseball glove in a supporting role. While older brother Ben Affleck got to bask in the Best Picture glory of “Argo” (2012), Casey’s Best Actor win for “Manchester by the Sea” (2016) was overshadowed by past allegations.
Casey has laid pretty low since, returning with Damon for supporting roles in last year’s blockbuster Best Picture “Oppenheimer” (2023). Now, they share a double bill in the two-hander botched heist comedy “The Instigators,” ready to address his awkward history in the film’s opening act: “You the ex-con?” “Yeah, I did time, but you don’t gotta cast aspersions at me, guy.” “He’s a standup guy, he kept his mouth shut.” “I’m a professional f*ckin’ apologist.”
Set on the mean streets of Boston, the film follows suicidal divorced ex-Marine Rory (Damon), who needs exactly $32,480 to pay for child support. So, he joins drunken crook Cobby (Affleck) in a rag-tag scheme to infiltrate an election-night party at The Wharf to steal campaign cash from the corrupt mayor (Ron Perlman). When the mayor loses reelection and the robbery backfires, Rory and Cobby must go on the run with Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau).
Part of the fun of “The Instigators” is watching the slew of familiar faces popping up along the way. In addition to Chau (“The Whale”) and Perlman (“Sons of Anarchy), we get Paul Walter Hauser (“The Afterparty”), Ving Rhames (“Pulp Fiction”), Michael Stuhlbarg (“Dopesick”), Alfred Molina (“An Education”), Toby Jones (“Frost/Nixon”) and Baltimore’s André de Shields (“The Wiz”), not to mention rapper Jack Harlow and football star Rob Gronkowski.
Still, this movie belongs to Affleck and Damon, who are barely slicker than the Wet Bandits in “Home Alone” (1990) by leaving behind gas leaks that ignite action-movie fireballs behind them as they walk away flinching. These aren’t a pair of smart criminals; quite the contrary, their botched heist snowballs into an exponential series of blunders that might be unrealistic but are also a rollicking romp if you buy into the film’s irreverent wavelength.
Not everyone will be able to, especially critics with lingering animosity toward Affleck or the desire to knock Damon down a peg. Written by Affleck with Chuck Maclean, the script relies heavily on f-bombs, trafficking in South Boston profanity between otherwise snappy dialogue. Less is more like a wounded Affleck flopping on a couch, a bullet still inside of him, sarcastically joking about sipping warm Miller Lite while casually bleeding out.
In its best moments, the buddy-comedy banter recalls Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969) as Affleck says, “I guess I’ll go down to Bolivia all by myself.” I hesitate to even make that comparison because William Goldman’s script is one of the Top 10 ever written, while “The Instigators” is an Apple TV movie of the week. I guess a better comp is “Swingers” (1996) with the same “money” director Doug Liman.
Liman has quietly made a name for himself as one of the most underrated filmmakers of the 21st century with under-the-radar gems like “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014) and “American Made” (2017), not to mention “The Bourne Identity” (2002) before Paul Greengrass took over the sequels. Several scenes in “The Instigators” make us wish that Damon would go full Jason Bourne on his rivals, but it’s funnier to watch a hapless Damon bungle things.
Damon’s deadpan reaction to Affleck’s verbal diarrhea actually made me laugh out loud a few times, especially a scene of them worrying that their getaway truck has a John Wayne stowaway. While the plot is ridiculous, you could do a lot worse on a Friday night than firing up Apple TV+ to stream a crazy caper like “The Instigators.”
It’s also simultaneously playing in movie theaters, you know, to qualify for award season, but this ain’t an actual contender like “The Tender Bar” (2021). No, this theatrical run is to rake in a little extra cash, say, $32,480. Save your moviegoing money and stream it at home, but only after you’ve seen “Thelma,” the year’s best comedy.
As for “The Instigators,” the film sums itself up best during a high-speed car chase:
“You think that’s funny?”
“It’s not not funny.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Simone Biles: Rising' & 'Sprint' on Netflix (Part 1) Are you bummed that we’re heading into the last weekend of the Summer Olympics in Paris?
Don’t worry, you can still get your fix by streaming a pair of Olympic docuseries on Netflix.
“Simone Biles: Rising” is currently a two-episode documentary chronicling American gymnast icon Simone Biles, establishing her “G.O.A.T.” status with an unrivaled 30 World Championship medals and 11 Olympic medals. I mean, the sport has actually named multiple moves after her, such as The Biles 1 and The Biles 2.
We mostly see her bounce back from her mental health crisis at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, quitting the contest due to the “twisties,” the gymnastics’ version of the “yips.” The filmmakers smartly provide point of view shots of her practice jumps at the gym, allowing viewers to experience her dizzying heights and understand her fear of injury.
We also explore various explanations for her anxiety. Details emerge about Biles’ uncertain childhood before being adopted and the horrific trauma from the USA Gymnastics sexual abuse scandal.
Audiences also live through the relentless expectations for her to compete injured — just as Kerri Strug did in 1996 — and ongoing stress from COVID-19 protocols that kept her distanced from her supportive parents, new husband and loving fans in sparse arenas that suddenly lacked the motivational roar of the crowd.
Along the way, Olympic gold medalist Dominique Dawes provides historical context of Black gymnasts shattering glass ceilings. However, the most fascinating interviews come from Biles herself, describing her therapy sessions and personal coping mechanisms like disabling comments on her Instagram. Indeed, being a public figure in 2024 can be hell for a 27-year-old: “People love to watch the come-up, but as soon as you win, ‘God, I hate her!'”
Meanwhile, Netflix also has the six-episode docuseries “Sprint” showing the backstories of acclaimed American sprinters like Noah Lyles of Alexandria, Virginia, who has become a hometown hero for WTOP listeners.
While the Biles documentary featured insightful interviews with Dawes, the “Sprint” docuseries features cool commentary by four-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson. The icon used to smoke his competition in gold track shoes and now has plenty of wisdom to give a new generation of the fastest people on earth.
One of the most tangible throughlines of the series is the rivalry between the U.S. and Jamaica. We’re reminded of America’s dominance in the days of Carl Lewis before a new era of Jamaican speedsters revolutionized the sport with record-breaking races by eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, who is interviewed in the film.
This rivalry is perhaps most apparent on the women’s side of track and field as the docuseries compares it to the MLB’s Yankees vs. Red Sox and the NFL’s Dallas vs. Washington (another local, if outdated, plug to “fight for old D.C.”).
Ironically, U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson hails from Cowboys country in Dallas, Texas, craving the spotlight with confidence to rival D.C.-area native Lyles on the men’s side. Neither ever met a camera they didn’t like.
“It takes a different mindset to be a track athlete,” Lyles says. “If you don’t have main character energy, track and field ain’t for you.”
Speaking of which, the one flaw of the docuseries is that there are too many main characters, jumping around between protagonists. Even so, it’s an inspiring behind-the-scenes look at the athletes pre-Paris.
Netflix has already announced plans to drop a second batch of episodes for both “Simone Biles: Rising” and “Sprint” later this year so the filmmakers can include the still-breaking results of the Paris Olympics.
Until then, cherish what’s left of the actual Summer Games as Team U.S.A. goes for the gold in its final weekend in Paris.
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It’s a bittersweet Throwback Thursday with your very last chance to see a legendary act in the D.C. area.
Bill Medley brings The Righteous Brothers’ farewell tour to Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, on Aug. 15.
“I hate to call it a ‘farewell tour,’ I hate to feel that I’m leaving, I’ll still do some work and I’ll probably take a couple years to wind this thing down, but I’m 83 now and the traveling seems to be a problem,” Medley told WTOP. “I hate it because I actually love being on stage. We do a residency show in Vegas, so I’ll probably keep doing that because it’s close to home … but I hate that I won’t be able to go out on the road and see everybody.”
The legendary Medley will be joined by Bucky Heard, his crooning stage partner since 2017 when he took over for the late Bobby Hatfield, who died in 2003 — the same year that the duo entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“We’ve become best friends,” Medley said. “I had a lot of people asking me to keep The Righteous Brothers music alive. I really didn’t want to replace Bobby Hatfield or even try, but I went in to see Bucky doing a couple of Journey songs and I said, ‘Well, if you can do Steve Perry, you can probably do Bobby Hatfield,’ so we sat at the piano, sang a few songs and it was pretty magical — like working with Bobby the first time we sang together.”
Born in Santa Ana, California, in 1940, Medley spent his teenage years listening to Little Richard and Ray Charles. He began singing himself with a rock ‘n’ roll group called The Paramours, while Hatfield performed with a similar group called The Variations. The two eventually combined forces to form The Righteous Brothers in 1962.
“We had known each other for about a year before that,” Medley said. “My guitar player was also Bobby’s guitar player and he would say, ‘Boy, you’ve got to hear this kid sing,’ and he would tell Bobby the same thing. … It was just magical singing with Bobby Hatfield. We were two different guys, but it was like one voice.”
In 1964, the duo recorded its first No. 1 hit with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” an R&B classic that later reached a new generation when Tom Cruise sang it to Kelly McGillis at the bar in the movie “Top Gun” (1986).
“It was meant to be kind of like a Four Tops song like ‘I’ll Be There,’ but when they started teaching it to us, I couldn’t get up to the real high note in the key that they wanted to do it in,” Medley said. “Every time we lowered the key, Phil Spector would slow it down, and by the time we got to ‘you never close your eyes’ down where I belong, it was a lot slower. … Thank God that Phil slowed it down, and thank God I couldn’t hit that high note.”
The duo cracked the Top 10 again with “Just Once In My Life” (1965), penned by Carole King and Gerry Goffin during a friendly competition with rival songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who were struggling to finish writing what would become The Righteous Brothers’ second No. 1 hit “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration” (1966).
“They’re just the greatest songwriters in the world,” Medley said. “Barry and Cynthia obviously wrote “Lovin’ Feelin’ and we were sent to New York to work on the next single and started teaching us ‘Soul & Inspiration,’ but Phil and Barry got into a disagreement, so Phil sent us back to California to work with Carole King, who was just this young, sweet, little girl. We used to tell her, ‘Why don’t you sing these songs? You sound great!'”
Around that time, Medley began arranging and producing the duo’s records himself, including “Unchained Melody,” which peaked at No. 4 in 1965. The timeless tune gained steam over the years as the duo’s most eternal hit when it was featured in the romantic movie “Ghost” (1990) starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.
“Bobby Hatfield just killed it,” Medley said. “It was a very, very cool movie and that song was absolutely perfect for the movie. It was just a great combination, so I was very moved. I was very touched watching that movie and hearing our song in it. … A lot of kids were going home to their moms and dads going, ‘Boy, you’ve gotta hear this new group The Righteous Brothers,’ and they were like, ‘You’re here because of The Righteous Brothers!'”
Medley’s most acclaimed film soundtrack was “Dirty Dancing” (1987) as his Jennifer Warnes duet “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” won the Oscar for Best Original Song and the Grammy for Best Pop Duo Performance.
“Who knew that movie was gonna do what it did? Jennifer and I really sang the song mainly just to work together,” Medley said. “My wife and I went to the theater to see the movie and I told my wife, ‘I think they cut the song out of the movie,’ then finally at the end they played it. It was the perfect place in the movie for that song to be because the kids walked out of the movie and bought the single. It was a monster.”
The most important question remains: Has he ever attempted the “Dirty Dancing” lift?
“Yeah, my grandson, who’s 13 months old,” Medley said. “That’s as good as I could get.”
Who needs “Dirty Dancing” when you have dirty diapers?
Find ticket information to Strathmore here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews The Righteous Brothers at Strathmore (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with local musician Emily Woodhull (Part 1) Born and raised on Capitol Hill, Emily Woodhull grew up watching her dad’s garage band, The NativeMakers, perform at popular local bars from Trusty’s to Mr. Henry’s along Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast D.C.
“I grew up right off Eastern Market near North Carolina Avenue and East Capitol Street, right on 9th Street,” Woodhull said. “I come from a big family. I have five siblings and a twin brother, we’re fraternal, he plays guitar. He doesn’t really like to perform a whole lot, he likes to do it more at home like a hobby rather than perform for other people. … My dad has a band, so we would open for his band and play in between breaks.”
Now, the 23-year-old is taking her own crack at a music career, cutting her teeth at local music clubs, including a breakout show in March at Pearl Street Warehouse on The Wharf in Southwest D.C.
“It’s a smaller venue, which is really cool because you can talk to the crowd,” Woodhull said. “I had a great opportunity to open for Bryan Martin in June at Pearl Street Warehouse. That was all original songs because I had an opportunity to go to Nashville last year to write eight songs, one is called ‘Running with the Devil.'”
This Saturday, she’ll perform at Death Punch Bar in Adams Morgan in Northwest D.C.
“This is actually going to be my first time playing in Adams Morgan, so I’m super excited,” Woodhull said. “I’m gonna have my full band with me, which is always so much fun. There will be some original songs, but mostly covers like Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton, Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan — just a whole bunch of different country artists and some alt-rock as well. I’ll throw in a couple of surprise songs just to get the crowd going.”
This Sunday, Woodhull will play at Billikens Smokehouse in Fredericksburg, Virginia from 1 to 5 p.m.
“Amazing BBQ, great outdoor setup with shade as well, so hopefully it won’t get too hot,” Woodhull said.
After that, it’s Rai’s Rendezvous in Ashburn, Virginia, on Aug. 15, Whelan’s Bar & Grill in Potomac, Maryland, on Aug. 16, and then the FXBG PorchFest in Fredericksburg on Aug. 17.
“It’s basically a tiny little music festival in the neighborhoods and you’re playing on people’s front porches,” Woodhull said. “They shut down the block, I think it’s two or three blocks, they shut down the street, you pay $5 to get in and you can just enjoy the whole day of different bands.”
Find her full schedule here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Indigo Girls at Wolf Trap (Part 1) Margot Robbie cruised to their music last summer in the box-office blockbuster “Barbie.”
Now, the folk-rock duo Indigo Girls plays Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, on Aug. 24 and Aug. 25, sharing a bill with Melissa Etheridge by swapping who will open and close each night.
“It’s a true co-bill, so the first night Melissa will close the night and the second night Indigo Girls will close the night,” Indigo Girls co-founder Emily Saliers told WTOP. “We’re super excited for this tour. We’ve never done a tour with her before like this, and we’re gonna be out with a full band and of course Wolf Trap is one of my favorite venues in the country, so I’m just super excited to come back.”
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1963, Saliers’ family moved to Decatur, Georgia, when she was 10 years old, meeting future Indigo Girls co-founder Amy Ray at Laurel Ridge Elementary School. In high school, they began performing at talent shows and bars. Both initially went to separate colleges but reunited when they transferred to Emory University in Georgia, where they officially formed Indigo Girls in 1985.
“We went by Saliers and Ray, which bored us, then we were called The B Band for a while,” Saliers said. “I was a camp counselor in north Georgia and Amy called me and said, ‘What do you think of the name Indigo?’ I remember this really clearly, just standing there in the kitchen, and I was like, ‘Oh, I like that!’ … If we rethought it now looking at it at our age and history, the ‘Girls’ doesn’t make sense, but it’s just become synonymous with our band.”
After independently releasing their breakthrough album “Strange Fire” (1987), they signed with Epic Records for their second album “Indigo Girls” (1989), which went double platinum thanks to the hit song “Closer to Fine.”
“I remember where I was — my family stayed at this cabin in Vermont and I was sitting on the porch thinking about all the sources that I sought to get my answers in life,” Saliers said. “It was a little bit of a talk down for me, like, ‘It’s gonna be OK, you can get from this source, you can get from this source and it’s all gonna work out, you’ll be closer to fine, so just live, do your thing and seek the sources you have to seek, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
The album won Best Contemporary Folk Performance at the Grammys, while earning the duo a nomination for Best New Artist. They lost the latter to Milli Vanilli, who soon vacated the award in a lip-syncing controversy.
“I actually felt sorry for those guys because now you think of all the people that lip-sync,” Saliers said. “We did hear later on from inside sources, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but we were second in line for that award, but at the time just winning a Grammy for anything was just so exciting. It was a very head-spinning time for me and Amy, we were just not used to that, we were a bar band from Georgia, so to win a Grammy was otherworldly.”
Their next album, “Nomads, Indians, Saints” (1990), was certified gold, followed by the platinum-selling fourth album “Rites of Passage” (1992). It features the songs “Romeo & Juliet” (featuring Mark Knopfler of the band Dire Straits) and the cosmic tune “Galileo,” written by Saliers in another moment of transcendent pondering.
“I was in Georgia in my house,” Saliers said. “My friend and I, she’s passed on, we were drinking some beers and talking about reincarnation. The next day I got up inspired and intrigued by that conversation and I just started thinking about Galileo and reincarnation and all kinds of things and I wrote that song. Mary Chapin Carpenter taught me guitar tuning where you drop the low E to a D and the high E to a C, so I wrote ‘Galileo’ with that tuning.”
Indigo Girls went platinum again with the fifth album “Swamp Ophelia” (1994), followed by their sixth effort “Shaming of the Sun” (1997). It would be their highest-charting album in the U.S. at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, thanks to the leadoff track “Shame on You,” written by Ray as a response to anti-immigration policies.
“She lives in north Georgia and there’s a big poultry industry up in that neck of the woods,” Saliers said. “There were a lot of Hispanic people who came and worked their asses off, but there were a lot of crackdowns on immigration, even though they were doing the work to put food on our tables, so Amy was like, ‘That’s a shame.’ Steve Earle joined us on that song, he’s playing harmonica and singing background vocals, and I love that song.”
Beyond their 15 total studio albums, Indigo Girls have become political queer icons. In 2013, Saliers married Tristin Chapman, together adopting their daughter Cleo. She also donated money back to Emory University to help fund a music room named for her parents, Don and Jane Saliers, where Don was a theology professor. He joined Emily to cowrite the book “A Song to Sing, a Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice” (2005).
Now, the band’s full story is chronicled in the Netflix documentary “It’s Only Life After All” (2023), dropping around the same time as their soundtrack for the movie “Glitter & Doom” (2024).
And, of course, the band’s gotten even more attention with the inclusion of “Closer to Fine” in the “Barbie” blockbuster phenomenon last summer.
“Somewhere in the world at some point Greta Gerwig was listening to it and she chose it for the ‘Barbie’ movie, so thank God,” Saliers said. “We have definitely gotten a boost. We’ve seen a spike in younger, particularly younger women, coming to our shows.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Dance Moms: A New Era' on Hulu (Part 1) A mother and daughter from Fairfax, Virginia, are about to dance their way into TV stardom.
Corinne Bolno and her 12-year-old daughter Lily are featured as main cast members on Lifetime’s new reality series “Dance Moms: A New Era,” which drops all 10 episodes Wednesday on Hulu.
“I’m very excited to watch it,” Lily told WTOP. “I just think it’s going to be so cool to see us on TV.”
“We’re gonna be watching just with our immediate family, then tonight we’re having a big watch party with our friends,” Corinne told WTOP. “We’re excited, but we’re also scared because we haven’t seen it yet, so we don’t know what’s going to be on it. We don’t know what’s going to be included because we shot 40 hours a week.”
Corinne grew up in Fairfax where her mother was a teacher at Barbara Sheppard Academy of Dance.“She had three studios throughout the ’80s and ’90s here in Fairfax, so it was a big presence here,” Corinne said.
After Lily was born in 2012, she began dancing at age 3 and competitively dancing at age 8, training at Buffa’s in Fairfax and Powerworx in Chantilly before winning the Nexstar National Dance Competition in Sandusky, Ohio.
“I just got really interested in it during COVID and decided I just wanted to work really, really hard and I just enjoyed it,” Lily said. “I usually train in jazz, lyrical, tap, hip-hop, contemporary, ballet, afro, all sorts of styles.”
The original “Dance Moms” show aired on Lifetime for eight seasons from 2011-2019.
“I watched a lot of the episodes and I actually really enjoyed the show,” Lily said. “I’m a big fan. I obviously love the dancing and I loved all the characters. It was really inspiring to me to see those girls and how hard they worked all those years and I wanted to be just like them.”
Lily’s chance would arrive when she enrolled last year at the Studio Bleu Dance Center in Ashburn, Virginia, run by Gloria “Glo” Hampton, the esteemed Teacher of the Year who was previously featured on “Dance Moms.”
“Shortly after we switched to Studio Bleu, the owner approached us about auditioning for the show,” Corinne said. “Gloria Hampton had been on the show previously with her daughter Kaeli Ware as Abby [Lee Miller]’s replacement. … Now we have this full-circle moment where Glo is the new choreographer and the new coach, while Kaeli, her daughter, is now a professional ballerina who comes back and helps with the choreography.”
The 10-episodes were filmed over four months at various dance competitions across the country.
“Every week is a different competition,” Corinne said. “Every Friday, we would get on a bus and travel to a different competition in a different state. At the end was our nationals down in Miami, Florida — and that’s the finale.”
What was Lily’s favorite part of filming the series?
“For me, the most fun part was obviously learning a new dance every week, I just thought it was a really good challenge and it was a lot of fun,” Lily said. “Also, getting to be with my friends because we were all close before, but definitely as the 10 weeks went on, we definitely grew closer.”
What was the most challenging part?
“We had to learn a different dance every single week,” Lily said. “We would learn one or two dances in two days then competed on a Saturday. There are kids who have known their dances for a full year and they’re competing against us, but we only learned it in like two days, and that would happen every single week.”
In her spare time, Lily is an ambassador for Dance Hope Cure fighting childhood cancer.
“Lily and I became involved with Dance Hope Cure, which is an arm of the Arms Wide Open Childhood Cancer Foundation,” Corinne said. “They spread awareness for childhood cancer, raise funds to help fund grants to fund cures for childhood cancer, as well as participate in CureFest, which is actually coming up in September, it’s the annual childhood cancer event on the National Mall.”
After the world binge watches the new “Dance Moms,” the sky is the limit for Lily’s career.
“I do want to become a professional dancer someday,” Lily said. “I would also love to be in other TV shows, other acting jobs and I would also love to be in movies.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Dogstar at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) You’ve seen Keanu Reeves play action movie heroes in “Speed,” “The Matrix” and “John Wick.”
This Friday, Reeves will play the bass guitar as his alternative-rock trio Dogstar performs live at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia.
WTOP caught up with drummer Rob Mailhouse, who attended American University and Catholic University.
“I love D.C., I went to school there, I’m from there back and forth, my parents lived there, it’s just an important place for me and the band,” Mailhouse told WTOP. “Charles Town is [named after] George Washington’s brother, Charles Washington! … It’s so close, Harper’s Ferry, I used to bum around that area when I was in college, but that whole area, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, that part of the country is so important and so much fun.”
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Mailhouse discovered D.C. when his mom remarried and moved to Georgetown. In fact, his mom was the artist who sculpted the bust of Francis Scott Key at the memorial near the Key Bridge.
“She was like, ‘You’ve gotta come here, it’s a great place,'” Mailhouse said. “I was young at the time, I was still in high school, so I visited quite a bit and that’s when I started to get into the music scene down there. … All these different post-punky sounds, then the whole New Wave thing was happening at the time, Howard Stern was still there, it was a real thriving music scene and I got to go to all of the clubs like 9:30 Club and Howard Theatre.”
After briefly attending American University to perfect his piano skills, Mailhouse earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Catholic University. He next moved to Los Angeles to act in soap operas (“Days of Our Lives”) and sitcoms (“Seinfeld”), meeting fellow rising actor and musician Reeves in a serendipitous stop at the supermarket.
“I met Keanu when I lived in Beachwood Canyon,” Mailhouse said. “I was just going grocery shopping, I had a hockey jersey on, he was there buying a banana or something, and he came up to me like, ‘Do you play hockey?’ I was like, ‘I do.’ And he goes, ‘I’m a goalie!’ So, we ended up playing hockey together every Tuesday and Thursday in Burbank. I went to his house and he had all of this neat gear set up like drums, bass and guitar in his garage.”
In 1991, the same year that Reeves starred in “Point Break” and “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” he formed Dogstar with Mailhouse and vocalist Gregg Miller. In 1994, the same year that Mailhouse and Reeves acted together in “Speed” (1994), Dogstar added guitarist Bret Domrose, who would soon replace Miller on lead vocals a year later.
“We shot that scene on the elevator together, I’ll never forget that, but Dogstar has been a very healthy, not a hobby, it’s more intense than that,” Mailhouse said. “We work so hard and put in so many hours. Other bands are like, ‘You rehearse way more than we do.’ My friends in The Strokes are like, ‘You guys play way more than we do!'”
Together, the multitalented trio busted loose from garage rehearsals to actually release its first album “Our Little Visionary” (1996) on the label of Zoo Entertainment. Their second album “Happy Ending” (2000) dropped on the label of Ultimatum Music and would be the last original music that Dogstar would release for over two decades.
“We took such a long break and the band is so different now, we try to rehearse those older songs and we’re like, ‘Who is that band?’ It’s like going to a high-school reunion like, ‘I don’t remember you!'” Mailhouse said. “Keanu is very involved in writing the verses and melodies, he’s such a good bass player. Bret’s adjusted, he’s different, he’s filling in his sonic guitar sounds around Keanu’s melodies and bass hooks. It’s just a different sound.”
After a 23-year hiatus, Dogstar fans were thrilled to see the band finally release its long overdue third album “Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees” for Dillon Street Records last October.
“We have this new record that’s out, then we have 12 new songs,” Mailhouse said. “We were gonna record them really soon because we’re ready to do the next record, but Keanu was like, ‘It’s summer! I wanna go play more!’ … Keanu’s been on a tear, he’s just been coming up with all these crazy bass hooks like Peter Hook of Joy Division. … I just sort of hang out [on drums]. He’ll say, ‘I follow you,’ and I’ll go, ‘I follow you,’ and we’re like, ‘What the hell?'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Drill at Dusk at National Harbor (Part 1) Are you looking for a patriotic way to honor your country while relaxing outdoors after work?
Head to National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Maryland, to watch the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard Drill Team perform “Drill at Dusk” every Wednesday around 7 p.m. through Sept. 4.
“This will be an annual thing,” U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Andrew Paquin told WTOP.
“The main purpose of it is community engagement and kind of letting people around the area know what our mission is, spreading public awareness about the Air Force mission and the Honor Guard mission alike, and just showing people a bit of what kind of discipline goes into the precision of our team and the rest of the Honor Guard.”
The drill includes a choreographed sequence of thrilling weapon maneuvers, precise tosses, complex weapon exchanges and a walk-through the gauntlet of spinning weapons for a spectacular display of skill and precision.
“The performance will entail a 7-minute drill routine with M1 Garand rifles with a sharpened bayonet at the end of it, as well as having a commander walk through those sharpened bayonets as they are being maneuvered,” U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Eyan Smith told WTOP. “We’ll be throwing those rifles around and also exchanging them.”
Don’t try this at home — these are trained military professionals doing the daring stunts.
“We definitely have it down to an art with a lot of the training that we do, but you definitely will be breathtaken from the performance — it’s very awe-inspiring that you get to see that,” Smith said. “It’s definitely dangerous … but I think it’ll be very fun for the community to come out and see.”
The event brings a variety of families, couples on date nights and even military veterans.
“I saw a lot of Air Force veterans that were familiar with the drill team and were prior service members, so they have an appreciation for what we do and the training that goes into it,” Paquin said. “A lot of training hours and man-hours go into what we do, so it’s nice to have that nice crowd because they appreciate it in different ways.”
It’s all set against the beautiful backdrop of the Potomac River at National Harbor.
“This is National Harbor, so you’ve got the Ferris wheel. You’ve got the view of the river, it’s right at dusk, obviously at sunset, so a beautiful backdrop, you can see D.C. in the background, a very patriotic scene,” Paquin said.
“People from all over D.C., Maryland, Virginia and the whole area are attending with families, there are people going out. A lot of people don’t even know about the performance when they’re showing up, so it’s kind of a nice surprise.”
Paquin and Smith are both currently stationed at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Southwest D.C.
“We’re just focused on readiness and just protecting the country,” Paquin said. “That’s what we do everyday and the attention to detail that we breed here in the Honor Guard is exceptional. That’s our job, so that’s what we do.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Mamma Mia!' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) In 1999, it launched at London’s West End as a groundbreaking ABBA jukebox musical before earning five Tony Award nominations on Broadway and becoming a blockbuster movie musical starring Meryl Streep in 2008.
Now, “Mamma Mia!” celebrates its 25 anniversary at the Kennedy Center in D.C. from Aug. 13 to Sept. 1.
“I did actually discover the Broadway musical first,” Actress Carly Sakolove told WTOP. “I had heard of ABBA and I guess I had heard a couple of songs, ‘Mamma Mia’ and ‘Take a Chance on Me,’ the big ones, but I didn’t really know what it was all about until I got an audition for ‘Mamma Mia!’ back in 2012, so that’s when I went and saw the show on Broadway. … This is the 25th anniversary, and we believe that the country has been craving this again.”
Written by playwright Catherine Johnson, the zany, feel-good story follows 20-year-old Sophie Sheridan on the eve of her big wedding. Seeking to find the father she’s never known, she secretly invites her mother Donna’s three ex-boyfriends, Sam, Harry and Bill, back to the sunny Greek island that they last visited decades ago.
“She finds her mom’s diary, reads the diary and finds out that she has three possible dads,” Sakolove said. “She wants to find out who her father is, so she invites all three men to come to her wedding under the guise of her mother. They think the mother has invited them, but she has invited them unbeknown to her mother. So you can imagine how Donna feels when it’s the weekend of her daughter’s wedding and all of her ex-boyfriends show up.”
Visually, you’ll be transported to the sunny and stony atmosphere of a Mediterranean island paradise.
“Everyone has either been to Greece or seen pictures of Greece and seen how visually stunning it is with all of the blue and white,” Sakolove said. “Our set is a very simple set, two white walls that rotate around and a lot of set decorating. But honestly, the star of the show is the lighting. The light brings everything to life. It is absolutely stunning. … The ensemble and incredible costumes really complement the simplicity of the stark white set.”
Best of all, you’ll hear all of your favorite ABBA hits written by Benny Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus.
“You’ve got ‘Dancing Queen,’ which is one of their biggest hits everybody knows. ‘Friday night and the lights are low!'” Sakolove said. “We’ve got ‘Take a Chance on Me,’ which is the first ABBA song that I ever heard and is actually my song in the show. … Everyone has to make sure they stick around at the end after the bows because there’s a big mega mix with a lot of amazing costumes and amazing dancing and some of the best songs in there.”
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He gained fame as the frontman of the alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies from 1988 to 2009.
Now, Steven Page brings his talents to Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland, on Monday, Aug. 12.
“I’ve actually played that venue two or three times now,” Page told WTOP.
“It’s a great place to play, I love doing shows there and for some reason, I have this weird thing where if I have dreams about having a gig, in my mind I’m imagining playing the Rams Head in Annapolis. I have no idea why. I imagine walking down the street to that gig, then going into their weird backstage area, then going out on stage and playing.”
Born in 1970 in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, he grew up listening to a variety of bands.
“I’m still Beatle-obsessed, I have been since I was probably 7 years old,” Page said. “But as a teenager, I was really into The Smiths, Violent Femmes, Billy Bragg, anything with Paul Weller, so The Jam and The Style Council, they were huge to me as well.”
But his personal hero was Duran Duran founder Stephen Duffy.
“He was my absolute favorite and still is,” Page said.
In 1988, he and his former elementary school schoolmate Ed Robertson would officially form the band Barenaked Ladies. They independently released a cassette tape in 1991.
“We had this five-song cassette that we were distributing ourselves and it became oddly huge in Canada, it went gold, which had never happened,” Page said.
“Record stores started asking for copies of it and it went nuts, so people started talking about our band. We had been turned down by every label in Canada, but a couple people played our tape for Seymour Stein at Sire Records … they came to us and offered to sign us.”
Their debut studio album “Gordon” (1992) topped the Canadian charts thanks to hits like “If I Had $1,000,000” and the Beach Boys tribute “Brian Wilson,” while their second album “Maybe You Should Drive” (1994) started making some inroads on the American charts with songs like “Jane” and “Alternative Girlfriend.”
Still, it was their third album “Born on a Pirate Ship” (1996) that delivered Barenaked Ladies their first U.S. hit single with “The Old Apartment.” By singing, “This is where we used to live,” Page made us think he was regretting a breakup, only to flip our expectations at the end of the song.
“I had been in this apartment in Toronto, it was a third-floor walk-up, and it wasn’t a great place, but you realize when you move out of it into maybe a better place and you’ve stepped up somehow in life,” Page said.
“But you look back at these times, even though they may be difficult times, they are still important memories. I had gotten calls from my old landlord that they had mail for me that was showing up and I thought, ‘I don’t know if I even wanna go and pick it up, there will be someone else’s furniture and I’ll have to see the very vague remnants left of my imprint there and somebody else’s.”
Their fourth album “Stunt” (1998) would prove the biggest of the band’s career, thanks to the No. 1 hit single “One Week” with rapid-fire lyrics delivering pop-culture references and clever turns of phrases: “Like Harrison Ford, I’m getting ‘Frantic.'”
“We didn’t expect as we were putting it together for it to be a huge No. 1 hit single,” Page said.
“We thought it was a fun album track palette cleanser rooted in what we would do in our live show. … I suggested, ‘Why don’t you go home tonight and just improv a bunch of raps?’ [Ed] did that and came back the next day with all of these hilarious improv raps. … I still hear it and think, ‘That’s a weird track.’ I love it.”
The same album also featured the hit song “It’s All Been Done,” which went No. 1 in Canada.
“Initially that was the one that we thought was going to be the first single, then ‘One Week’ became kind of the dark horse,” Page said.
“I think what happened is that Canadians are super judgmental of their own people and they get suspicious of anyone who makes it in the U.S. I think they were taken by surprise by our success because we had built up these pockets of die-hard audiences in the U.S. … so I think they were trying to play catch up by the time ‘It’s All Been Done’ came out.”
Their fifth studio album “Maroon” (2000) featured “Pinch Me” with slower verses between rapid choruses.
“It was a song that had similar elements that people were used to from ‘One Week’ and it had some jokes in it that I think were pretty good jokes, but it was really about depression,” Page said.
“That to me, that kind of sucker punch, is my favorite kind of way to work, where you have these songs about dark things and you can somehow make them feel light in a way or make them perhaps fool you into thinking they’re something different.”
After experimenting with side projects like “The Vanity Project” (2005) and “A Singer Must Die” (2010), Page left Barenaked Ladies to pursue a solo career with the album “Page One” (2010), followed by the two-parter “Heal Thyself: Instinct” (2016) and “Heal Thyself: Discipline” (2018) and most recently “Excelsior” (2022).
“It was 20 years in the same group,” Page said.
“When you start a group when you’re 18 with the same guys and then you’re now all of a sudden almost 40, you’re different people and you have different goals. It just wasn’t really working for us anymore, which was painful. I thought I was going to be in that group forever, and when I wasn’t, it too me a while to figure out who I was and what my goals were, but it’s been 15 years since I left now, so now I’m at a point where I can look back with great memories but happy where I’ve taken my career.”
Today, Page’s music has transcended the radio to television where he sang “Get in Line” on the “King of the Hill” soundtrack and theme song to “The Big Bang Theory” — Bazinga!
“There’s absolutely people who probably didn’t even know who we were except for that one song, so that’s been huge for us,” Page said.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Nine' at the Kennedy Center (Part 1) In 1963, Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini directed his Oscar-winning masterpiece “8 1/2,” reuniting with actor Marcello Mastroianni (“La Dolce Vita”) as an on-screen proxy for his own creative and personal insecurities.
Two decades later, the film was creatively adapted for Broadway, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1982 and Best Revival of a Musical in 2003, which inspired a 2009 movie musical starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
“I started watching on an international flight then said, ‘I’ll have to watch this another time when I can focus on it.’ It’s really something to study and dig into because it’s really fascinating,” Tony nominee Elizabeth Stanley told WTOP. “Maury Yeston set it to this incredible score, which I think makes it so much more accessible.”
This Friday, “Nine” hits the Kennedy Center from Aug. 2 to Aug. 11 as part of its Broadway Center Stage series.
“This is just special for the Kennedy Center,” Stanley said. “They have this new series produced by Jeffrey Finn called Broadway Center Stage, where they put together this extraordinary group of people and throw together a show. We work really, really hard to do it so quickly and the Kennedy Center is such a special place to be. It’s such an honor to get to be on the stages here, so I think everybody says ‘yes’ because it’s just pretty awesome.”
Adapted for the stage by playwright Arthur Kopit and composer Maury Yeston, the story follows famed filmmaker Guido Contini (Steven Pasquale), who suffers from “director’s block” during production of his latest film. He also struggles with a strained marriage to his neglected wife Luisa (Stanley) as he retreats into his own mind, where women from his past and present bombard his senses and throw reality into question.
“Guido is approaching mid-life, he’s this brilliant filmmaker but he can’t come up with his next script and in recent years he’s not been doing great, so he’s going through this creative struggle of, ‘Do I not have it anymore? Have I lost it? Am I done with?'” Stanley said. “He’s a little bit of a mess in his personal life because he’s emotionally stunted. I play his wife, but he has a mistress, then he has a muse — there are all these other women in his life.”
The hallucinations inspire a unique visual presentation directed and choreographed by three-time Tony winner Andy Blankenbuehler, who follows in the Tony-winning footsteps of the show’s original director Tommy Tune.
“It’s pretty minimal,” Stanley said. “The set is black-and-white, there aren’t a ton of props or scenery, but he uses the bodies on stage to create new spaces and mental visualizations,” Stanley said. “There’s an incredible ensemble of artists who are extraordinary dancers, so they’re doing a lot of storytelling through their movement. Also, the lighting does a lot of storytelling … so, visually, it will be very satisfying for people who are fans of the film.”
Unlike the film, the stage version delivers an array of dazzling musical numbers.
“‘A Call From the Vatican’ is iconic,” Stanley said. “‘Unusual Way’ is so stunning and sounds so beautiful. Shereen Ahmed is singing it and the orchestra here is just fabulous. Lesli Margherita is doing ‘Be Italian,’ which I also think is amazing — those are the Top 3 for me. I’m singing ‘My Husband Makes Movies,’ which is also really fabulous.”
Stanley is herself a Tony nominee, having been nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for the Alanis Morissette rock musical “Jagged Little Pill” (2020), losing to Virginia native Adrienne Warren as Tina Turner in “Tina.”
“It was awesome,” Stanley said. “Diablo Cody wrote this fabulous book that connected the songs of ‘Jagged Little Pill’ and also had a few other iconic Alanis tunes in there, so it was great. In the way that only Diablo can do and Alanis can do, it was a great acting role, there was so much meat there, there was so much stuff going on for the character, so it was dramatic but it was also quite funny, then to get to sing those songs, it was pretty wonderful.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews The Doobie Brothers at Jiffy Lube Live (Part 1) Happy Throwback Thursday! Are you craving some nostalgic classic-rock tunes heading into the weekend?
The Doobie Brothers bring countless hits to Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia, on Sunday night, featuring both powerful lead singers Tom Johnston and Michael McDonald for their own version of an “Eras Tour.”
“It’s the ‘Coalition Collection,’ that’s what I call it,” Johnston told WTOP. “We’ve got Mike with us, he does his songs that he was famous for when he was in the group. I do the ones that I did when I was in the group. Then we do a couple together, and Pat (Simmons) of course does his songs. … Here we all are and we’re playing everything from basically all eras of the band and people have been loving the show. It’s been going really great.”
Born in 1948 in Visalia, California, Johnston formed The Doobie Brothers in 1970 in San Jose, California.
“Everything just sort of happened,” Johnston said. “I was going to college at San Jose State. I think Pat was taking some classes there as well. John Hartman came out because he wanted to meet anybody from Moby Grape. … We started playing in all different formats. We had horns, we did hard rock. Then we went and listened to Pat at The Gaslight Theatre in Cupertino and dug what he was doing with the finger picking.”
Signed by Warner Bros., The Doobie Brothers released a self-titled debut album in 1971. Next came “Toulouse Street” (1972) with “Jesus is Just Alright” and “Listen to the Music,” with the lyrics, “What the people need is a way to make ‘em smile, it ain’t so hard to do if you know how, gotta get a message, get it on through.”
“I just wrote whatever I was thinking,” Johnston said. “It was influenced by the times, the Vietnam War. I was still going to college when I wrote that. … I got drafted and all that stuff came into play. But it was that time in the United States — it was that era all that was going on. My whole idea was that if the world leaders could get together and do their conversing and interacting with music instead of harsh rhetoric, we’d all be better off.”
Their third album “The Captain and Me” (1973) was even bigger with hits like “Long Train Runnin’,” featuring a complex guitar style of strumming and playing accent rhythm at the same time on the same instrument.
“I was into doing that percussive kind of strumming early on,” Johnston said. “It was a jam initially. … We’d been playing that since 1970 and I’d change the words every night, so finally I sat down and wrote the words at the studio in L.A. and it became something. … The percussive rhythm and the whole idea of being without love, etc., ‘where would you be by now,’ kind of resonated with people I guess and it took off.”
The same album featured arguably the biggest song of their career in “China Grove.”
“I started on an acoustic. Then I grabbed John Hartman and we went down to the basement and I said, ‘We’ve gotta make this electric,’ so we did at probably 2 in the morning driving everyone around us nuts,” Johnston said. “As far as the words, they’re kind of nonsensical, off the top of your head stuff, and the title, there actually is a China Grove, Texas. … We had been on tour driving by China Grove on our way to San Antonio.”
Their fourth album “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits” (1974) delivered the classic singalong tune “Black Water,” written by Simmons, who delivered lead vocals and created the catchy breakdown epilogue.
“It’s his baby,” Johnston said. “All I did was sing some scat stuff at the end. Most of that was recorded without me in the room. It was all acoustic, a lot of finger picking and a lot of the answer, call and response thing in there, you know, ‘Take me by the hand, pretty mama.’ It was all created right there in the studio and Pat had already kind of finished it up. He did a really good job, it was a really good song.”
By that point, Johnston was suffering through a painful stomach ulcer and temporarily left the band. This allowed Steely Dan alum Michael McDonald to take over lead vocals on the Doobie Brothers’ sixth album “Takin’ It to the Streets” (1976), featuring a smash title track, as well as other hits like “It Keeps You Runnin’.”
“I had a bad stomach ulcer. It was bleeding and I had to come off the road — and it’s a good thing I did, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now,” Johnston said. “I was out about a year getting over that. They brought Mike in just to fill in vocals, they didn’t know he had songs written like ‘Takin’ it to the Streets’ and that’s when they started going in that direction musically. Why not? The guy is talented, he had some great songs. It makes sense.”
Without Johnston, the band dropped its eighth album “Minute by Minute” (1978) with hits like “What a Fool Believes” as the band embraced techno sounds as the ’70s evolved into the ’80s
“It went from the rocking and finger picking and whatever from the earlier version of the band and then transferred over to Mike’s style of music,” Johnston said.
Since then, their music has been featured in countless movies, from Kevin Costner driving to “China Grove” in “Field of Dreams” (1989) to Tom Hanks running to “It Keeps You Running” in “Forrest Gump” (1994).
“The one that I noticed most was ‘Field of Dreams,'” Johnston said. “It was pretty cool.”
In 2004, The Doobie Brothers entered the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, followed by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020.
“The way I look at it is: everybody that I listened to growing up and was influenced by heavily musically are all in there from Little Richard to Bo Diddley to Cream,” Johnston said. “A lot of people that I grew up listening to and fashioned my music after and influenced how I played are in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, so I think it’s a big deal. That’s why I look at it as an honor.”
When it’s all said and done, how does he want the band to be remembered in rock ‘n roll history?
“I would hope that people look at this band as having said some things that mattered in, say, ‘Listen to the Music,’ but also just a good-time band,” Johnston said. “We try to interact with the audience as much as possible because we want everybody to have a good time. The more the fans are enjoying what you’re doing, singing back at you and enjoying the song, the better the show gets. That’s pretty much what it’s all about.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Tom Papa at Maryland Hall in Annapolis (Part 1) Are you tired of Bay Bridge traffic? Need a few laughs along the Chesapeake?
Comedian Tom Papa cracks up Maryland Hall in Annapolis, Maryland, on Friday!
“My act is kind of this special place where I spend a lot of time making sure that you’re gonna laugh every 10 seconds for an hour and a half,” Papa told WTOP. “It’s evergreen, you want stuff that will last and that people can go on and tell this joke to their friends for the next five or 10 years. Something that happens [in the news], that’s for Colbert or Kimmel and those places, those are daily shows, that’s where that stuff belongs.”
Since he mostly stays away from politics, his standup act mostly delves into everyday life.
“I talk a lot about family, I talk a lot about mental health, I talk a lot about the pets that are ruining my life, I talk about how my family is always changing and evolving, how my parents came and had an insurrection in my house for two weeks,” Papa said.
Born in New Jersey in 1968, Papa will never forget first discovering the possibility of a career in standup comedy.
“When I was a kid, the first comedy albums that I ever heard were George Carlin and Steve Martin,” Papa said. “I was in like seventh grade and I heard ‘Class Clown’ and ‘Let’s Get Small’ in one week. My friends’ older brothers had these albums and it seemed mysterious and we went in and heard these albums. I was always funny as a kid, but it dawned on me that week, ‘Oh my God, there’s a job out there for grown-ups to continue being funny?'”
He launched his stand-up career in New York City in 1993, where he met Jerry Seinfeld at the Comedy Cellar.
“That was after his (television) show when he came back to the clubs and he saw me on stage and thought I was funny,” Papa said. “I just grabbed onto his coattails and didn’t let go.”
In 2005, Papa released his debut comedy album “Calm, Cool, & Collected,” followed by a pair of TV specials “Live in New York City” and “Freaked Out” directed by Rob Zombie, best known for rock concerts and horror movies.
“People don’t realize he’s a lot nerdier than you think and I’m a lot cooler than you think,” Papa said.
Papa followed up with another TV special “Human Mule” (2016), followed by the Netflix pandemic release “You’re Doing Great” (2020) and his most recent Netflix special “What a Day!” (2022).
“I like them all for different reasons, but ‘You’re Doing Great’ had a resonance because it came out right before the pandemic,” Papa said. “It had a very hopeful message and people really connected with it. I hear to this day that it got a lot of people through COVID, so that one had a little special meaning to it that helped people in a hard time.”
On screen, he’s acted alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“The New Adventures of Old Christine”), Clive Owen (“The Knick”), Matt Damon (“The Informant”), Robert DeNiro (“Analyze That”) and Michael Douglas (“Behind the Candelabra”). You’ll also recognize him from VH1’s “I Love the ‘70s,” “I Love the ’80s” and “I Love the ‘90s,” not to mention hosting the Food Network’s “Baked” and NBC’s “The Marriage Ref.”
“Any place that you can go and be funny, you wanna try and take a shot at it,” Papa said. “They’re all cool, but standup, just purely on a guttural level, standup is the most fun. It’s cool to tell people you have (movies and TV shows) coming out, but it’s not as much fun doing it. There’s no audience. It’s cool and amazing that you get to be with all those people, but just on a physical, emotional level, nothing beats standup.”
In his spared time, he’s penned three books: “Your Dad Stole My Rake: And Other Family Dilemmas,” “You’re Doing Great! And Other Reasons to Stay Alive,” and “We’re All In This Together … So Make Some Room.” He also hosts a weekly podcast “Breaking Bread with Tom Papa,” following his satellite radio shows “What a Joke with Papa and Fortune,” “Come to Papa Live” and “Live From Here with Chris Thile” (formerly titled “A Prairie Home Companion”).
“This week we have Joel McHale coming up, then we’ve got Jimmy Kimmel,” Papa said.
Don’t miss your chance to see him live on stage this weekend. To paraphrase Papa’s catchphrase, Annapolis audiences will finally be able to say, “Have you ever see Tom Papa live? I have!”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews August entertainment in the DC area (Part 1) The summer weather won’t be the only thing heating up in August!
The calendar of entertainment events is on fire in the D.C. area:
August Entertainment Guide
Aug. 1: The Struts at The Anthem
Aug. 1: Missy Elliott at CFG Bank Arena
Aug. 1-4: “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
Aug. 1-11: “Back to the Future: The Musical” at Kennedy Center
Aug. 1-18: “The Colored Museum” at Studio Theatre
Aug. 1-25: “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” at Olney Theatre
Aug. 1-Sept. 1: “Jersey Boys” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Aug. 1-Sept. 1: “Noises Off” at Keegan Theatre
Aug. 2: Cake at Wolf Trap
Aug. 2: Earth Wind & Fire with Chicago at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 2: M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap” opens in movie theaters
Aug. 2: Tom Papa at Maryland Hall in Annapolis
Aug. 2: Deana Carter at Rams Head Annapolis
Aug. 2-4: African Diaspora International Film Festival at GWU
Aug. 2-11: “Nine” at Kennedy Center
Aug. 2-Oct. 5: James Baldwin Centennial Series at Strathmore
Aug. 3: Hootie & the Blowfish at Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 3: Dan + Shay at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 3: Jordan Klepper at Kennedy Center
Aug. 3: Taylor Swift Dance Party at 9:30 Club
Aug. 3: Marilyn Manson at The Fillmore Silver Spring
Aug. 3-4: WWE “SummerSlam” on Peacock
Aug. 4: Corinne Bailey Rae at MGM National Harbor
Aug. 4: The Doobie Brothers at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 4: 311 at Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 4: Marshall Tucker Band at Rams Head Annapolis
Aug. 5: WWE “Monday Night Raw” at CFG Bank Arena
Aug. 6: Train & REO Speedwagon at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 6: “House of the Dragon” Season 2 finale on HBO
Aug. 6-Sept. 15: “Soft Power” at Signature Theatre
Aug. 7: Black Eyed Peas at The Anthem
Aug. 7-Sept. 4: “Drill at Dusk” at National Harbor
Aug. 8: Missy Elliott at Capital One Arena
Aug. 8: Dierks Bentley at Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 8-11: Tony Rock at DC Improv
Aug. 8: Straight No Chaser at Strathmore
Aug. 9: The LOX at Howard Theatre
Aug. 9: Teddy Swims at Nats Park
Aug. 9: Lyle Lovett at Wolf Trap
Aug. 9: Fred Armisen at Capital Turnaround
Aug. 9: Sam Nelson of X Ambassadors at Kennedy Center
Aug. 9: Fantasia at Pier Six Pavilion
Aug. 9: Slipknot at CFG Bank Arena
Aug. 9: Ben Affleck & Matt Damon’s “The Instigators” premieres on Apple TV+
Aug. 9: Dogstar with Keanu Reeves at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Aug. 10: Fortune Feimster at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Aug. 10: Juvenile at Howard Theatre
Aug. 10: Taking Back Sunday at Rams Head Baltimore
Aug. 11: Rachel Bloom at Lincoln Theatre
Aug. 12: Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies at Rams Head Annapolis
Aug. 13: UB40 at 9:30 Club
Aug. 19: Andra Day at Howard Theatre
Aug. 13: Five for Fighting at Lincoln Theatre
Aug. 13-Sept. 1: “Mamma Mia!” at Kennedy Center
Aug. 13-Sept. 8: “MJ: The Musical” at National Theatre
Aug. 14: Suzy Bogguss at Rams Head Annapolis
Aug. 14: “Daughters” documentary on Netflix
Aug. 14: Primus and Coheed & Cambria at The Anthem
Aug. 15: Thirty Seconds to Mars at Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 15: The Righteous Brothers at Strathmore
Aug. 15: Wynton Marsalis at Wolf Trap
Aug. 15-17: D.C. Black Film Festival
Aug. 16: Ben Schwartz & Friends at The Anthem
Aug. 16: Iliza Shlesinger at The Hallam Live! Casio & Hotel Maryland
Aug. 16: “The Sound of Music” Sing-Along at Wolf Trap
Aug. 16: New Kids on the Block at Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 16: “Alien: Romulus” opens in movie theaters
Aug. 16: “Jackpot” premieres on Amazon Prime
Aug. 17: District of Comedy at The Atlantis
Aug. 17: Hootie & the Blowfish at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 17-18: Boyz II Men at Wolf Trap
Aug. 19: New Found Glory at The Fillmore Silver Spring
Aug. 19: “Homicide: Life on the Street” finally streaming on Peacock
Aug. 19-20: Jerry Seinfeld at Wolf Trap
Aug. 20: Otis Redding Tribute at Blues Alley
Aug. 20-21: Usher at Capital One Arena
Aug. 20-21: Jerrod Carmichael at DC Improv
Aug. 21: Pitbull at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 21: Tedeschi Trucks Band at Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 22: Imagine Dragons at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 22: Something Corporate at 9:30 Club
Aug. 23: Imagine Dragons at Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 23: Tony! Toni! Tone! at Bethesda Theater
Aug. 22: The War & Treaty at The Hamilton
Aug. 23: Oh He Dead at The Atlantis
Aug. 23: Blues Traveler at Wolf Trap
Aug. 23: Ms. Lauryn Hill & The Fugees at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 23: “Lady in the Lake” finale on Apple TV+
Aug. 23: WWE “Smackdown” at Capital One Arena
Aug. 23: Brett Young at The Hall at Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland
Aug. 22-24: Usher at CFG Bank Arena
Aug. 24: “Opera in the Outfield” at Nationals Park
Aug. 24: Marcus Miller at Rams Head Annapolis
Aug. 24: Randy Rodgers Band at 9:30 Club
Aug. 24: Local Theater Festival at Kennedy Center
Aug. 24-25: War at Bethesda Theater
Aug. 24-25: Indigo Girls with Melissa Etheridge at Wolf Trap
Aug. 25: Lynda Carter honored at Kennedy Center
Aug. 25: “Impractical Jokers” at The Hall at Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland
Aug. 27: “Only Murders in the Building” Season 4 premieres on Hulu
Aug. 29: “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Season 2 on Prime
Aug. 29: Childish Gambino at Capital One Arena
Aug. 28: Sublime with Rome at The Hall at Live! Hotel & Casino Maryland
Aug. 28-Sept. 1: D.C. Jazz Festival
Aug. 29: Jordin Sparks at The Atlantis
Aug. 30: Jason Aldean at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 30: Old Crow Medicine Show with Molly Tuttle at Wolf Trap
Aug. 31: AP Live Concert Series at Anacostia Playhouse
Aug. 31: Avril Lavigne at Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 31: The Roots at Wolf Trap
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the James Baldwin Centennial Series (Part 1) This Friday marks what would have been the 100th birthday of author and activist James Baldwin.
To celebrate, Strathmore is partnering with the AFI Silver Theatre and Eaton D.C. to host a special James Baldwin Centennial Series that runs from Aug. 2 through Oct. 5.
“Aug. 2 is a really important date,” Strathmore Vice President of Education & Community Engagement Lauren Campbell told WTOP. “It is the 100th anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth. It is also the day that an album drops by an incredible musician named Meshell Ndegeocello. she’s dropping an album based on Baldwin’s seminal work ‘The Fire Next Time,’ so all on that day we are launching our in-depth James Baldwin series of events.”
It kicks off Aug. 2 with “The Price of the Ticket” (1989) at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland.
“This is a screening of the documentary ‘The Price of the Ticket,’ which was produced and directed by Karen Thorsen,” Strathmore Community Engagement & Education Manager Pablo de Oliveira told WTOP. “We are having George Mason University professor Dr. Keith Clark have a conversation with producer-director Karen Thorsen, so we’ll do a screening of the movie then after that there’s going to be a Q&A and conversation.”
Aug. 15 brings a “Creative Writing Workshop: The Evidence of Things Not Seen” at Strathmore.
“We have this incredible writer, Derrick Weston Brown, who has a master’s degree in writing from American University,” Campbell said. “He is going to be leading this and it’s a hybrid workshop of in-person at Strathmore or you can also join on Zoom. It’ll be a poetry workshop that draws inspiration from James Baldwin’s work and really relies on the senses, the five senses, to create powerful poetry, so it’ll be a really fun community experience.”
Sept. 7 brings “Dramatic Excerpts: Go the Way Your Blood Beats” at Strathmore.
“We have a youth arts group called DIALECT of Prince George’s County led by Patrick T. Washington,” de Oliveira said. “He’s been doing a series of workshops with high schoolers and they’re gonna do a youth poetry reading. … Directly following that, we have Dr. Khalid Long, a professor at Howard University’s theater department, bringing students to do select readings from plays that Baldwin created: ‘The Amen Corner’ and ‘Blues for Mister Charlie.'”
Sept. 26 moves over to Eaton D.C. for a special lecture called “James Baldwin at the Crossroads.”
“We’re doing ‘The Devil Finds Work’ with E. Ethelbert Miller,” de Oliveira said. “That’s a really exciting partnership with Eaton House, which is part of Eaton Hotel, and we’re going to do a book reading there and a talk about that.”
Finally, the series wraps Oct. 5 with 11-time Grammy-nominated neo-soul artist Meshell Ndegeocello performing “No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin” at Strathmore with a Q&A between the Smithsonian’s Timothy Anne Burnside and New York Times music critic Marcus Moore, who happens to be a former WTOP colleague.
“They will preview what the audience will get to hear on stage that night and dive into the musical side of Meshell’s artistry,” Campbell said. “The reason that we built this whole series is because of Meshell Ndegeocello. She’s on our stage and we took inspiration from her work called ‘No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin.’ That is the album that is dropping Aug. 2 and it will be performed with other works on our stage on Oct. 5.”
The series is a full-circle moment for Baldwin, whose mother was born in Deale Island, Maryland, and whose groundbreaking words continue to inspire with prophetic warnings, advice and hope for American equality.
“Baldwin is one of the most important writers, intellectuals, activists of the 20th century,” Campbell said. “He did not have a straightforward sexuality … he was constantly writing about how America needs to face its tragic racial past … and he had really beautiful ways of encouraging Americans about being honest with ourselves about where we came from so we can build a better world. … It’s so important to keep learning from James Baldwin.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Hootie & The Blowfish at Merriweather Post Pavilion (Part 1) Hootie & The Blowfish is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its smash album “Cracked Rear View” (1994).
You can celebrate with the band this Saturday at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, not far from where lead guitarist Mark Bryan grew up listening to WTOP.
“I recognize those call letters from my childhood actually,” Bryan told WTOP. “I grew up in Bethesda and Gaithersburg, Maryland, so WTOP sounds like home. … Thirty years is a good time to honor what has been a really important part of our lives, so the set leans heavily on ‘Cracked Rear View.'”
Bryan and his future Hootie bass player Dean Felber both graduated from Seneca Valley High School in Germantown, Maryland, before meeting lead singer Darius Rucker at the University of South Carolina.
“When I got down to South Carolina, I was on the fifth floor of what was called Moore Dormitory and Darius lived down the hall and then Dean was on the sixth floor,” Bryan said.
“By spring of our freshman year, Darius and I were doing a bunch of acoustic shows as The Wolf Brothers and we decided to turn it into a band and come up with the goofiest name of all time with Hootie & The Blowfish. … We were kind of living the dream from (age) 18 or 19 on.”
Their breakthrough album “Cracked Rear View” featured the upbeat leadoff single “Hold My Hand.”
“It was doing very moderately well on the radio, so it was just plugging along for a new band that not a lot of people had heard of yet, people liked the song, but charting very low,” Bryan said.
“When Dave Letterman heard it and had us on the show and held the CD up and said, ‘If you don’t own this, something’s wrong with you,’ we went from selling 4,000 copies a week to 17,000 that week and it just kept going up from there — and radio, too.”
They followed up with the Grammy-winning tragedy “Let Her Cry.”
“[Darius] was like, ‘I want to write (The Black Crowes’) ‘She Talks to Angels’ for Bonnie Raitt,'” Bryan said.
“He was drunk at the time, but he was in love with those two artists in that moment and that became his muse I guess and he wrote that song late at night. … The next day we had a show at the brewery in Raleigh and he was playing it at soundcheck and we were like, ‘Hey, man, play that again,’ and we all started playing along. It was magic.”
The album’s most mature, thoughtful and daresay transcendent song was “Time.”
“It was us at a young age sort of thinking big — and I was all for that,” Bryan said. “I stayed out of any lyrics on that, I think Dean did too. Sony kind of brought in the concept and we let Darius do his thing with it. It’s a fine piece of music too, man, it’s fun to play, it’s a well-crafted song, a great arrangement, just everything feels right.”
Of course, the album’s biggest hit was “Only Wanna Be With You,” making Miami Dolphins fans cry.
“I just remember slapping a capo on my guitar after being around Dillon Fence,” Bryan said.
“I remember trying to make it like ‘Pinball Wizard’ and you get like 1/16s or whatever you call it. I remember Darius hearing it and saying it reminded him of a Dillon Fence song, so he added that lyric, ‘Put on a little Dylan sitting on a Fence.’ He was talking about singing a Bob Dylan song, but he gave Dillon Fence a little props there, which I thought was cool.”
They next recorded a cover of “I Go Blind” by the Canadian band 54-50 for the soundtrack of TV’s “Friends.”
“Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry came to see Hootie at The Greek Theatre in L.A., came backstage, shook hands,” Bryan said.
“Months later, we got this note, ‘Hey, ‘Friends’ wants to do this episode about going to see you.’ … We also met Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox at a party in L.A. My baby girl Marley was 3 months old, her pacifier fell out of her mouth into Aniston’s wine. Aniston picks it up, sticks it back into her mouth and says, ‘Nap time!'”
Hootie’s second studio album “Fairweather Johnson” (1996) could have never reached the heights of “Cracked Rear View,” but the sophomore effort still included underrated tunes like “Tuckerstown” and “Old Man and Me.”
“That’s us trying to take a step and experimenting musically and lyrically,” Bryan said.
“We didn’t want to make ‘Cracked Rear View’ again, we were in a different place, we were older, times had changed, the world had changed, life had changed and we were trying to adapt. You can hear that on there, I obviously don’t think it had the broad mass appeal that ‘Cracked Rear View’ had, but we didn’t know that was gonna happen with ‘Cracked Rear View.'”
He promises to sprinkle in some deep cuts and even a few songs from Rucker’s solo country career.
“We’ve been doing ‘Alright’ and then of course ‘Wagon Wheel,’ which is of course a cover but from Darius’ world,” Bryan said. “I’ve gotta give D-Ruck a lot of credit, man, every night when we start that song he yells at the top of his lungs, ‘The Old Crow Medicine Show!’ while we’re kicking it in, so he knows how to give credit where it’s due.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the African Diaspora International Film Fest in D.C. (Part 1) The African Diaspora International Film Festival has been going strong for over three decades in New York City.
It’s also celebrating nearly two decades in D.C. with this year’s festival running Friday, Saturday and Sunday at George Washington University as part of its Africana Studies program.
“The African Diaspora International Film Festival is a festival that appeals to film lovers of all colors, age and sexual orientation and those who are interested in the richness and diversity of the human experience of people of color all over the world,” co-founder Diarah N’Daw-Spech told WTOP. “It was born in New York in 1993 and we now have editions in Chicago, Washington D.C. and Paris, France, so in Washington, D.C. it’s the 17th edition.”
The festival kicks off Friday with “Breaking Boundaries,” perfectly timed with the Paris Olympics.
“It’s the story of Nastasya Generalova, the daughter of a Russian mother and an African-American father who is part of Team U.S.A. for rhythmic gymnastics,” N’Daw-Spech said. “The filmmaker takes us by the hand for us to discover her life as she prepares to compete for the 2020 Olympics. We see the difficulties, the challenges and what it means for her to be the first Black athlete in her sport to compete for the Olympics — and she’ll be there.”
Saturday brings the documentary “Judging Juries” by acclaimed filmmaker Abby Ginzberg, who previously directed the Oscar-nominated short documentary “The Barber of Birmingham” (2011) and later won a Peabody for her film “Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa” (2014).
“There has been a noticeable lack of African American and Latino jurors,” Ginzberg said. “The film reveals the problem with juror pay. In California, a potential juror gets paid $15 a day, so right there you see the financial hardship. … It costs more than $15 to park, it costs more than $15 to commute, it’s insane, so that led me to look at the questions of what are the issues keeping people from serving on juries and what can we do about it?”
Sunday wraps with the timely closing-night film “One Person, One Vote?”
“It talks about the Electoral College,” N’Daw-Spech said. “We have the director there to explore what the Electoral College is and its roots in the history of slavery in this country. … Some people want it gone, others don’t.”
See the full festival lineup here.
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In order to view the video you must disable your ad blocker.'Harold and the Purple Crayon' interview with Zachary Levi and Zooey Deschanel toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Zachary Levi & Zooey Deschanel at the Library of Congress (Part 1) The new family-friendly flick “Harold and the Purple Crayon” opens in movie theaters this Friday, Aug. 2.
People in the D.C. area can get a sneak peek as the film’s movie stars Zachary Levi and Zooey Deschanel visit the Library of Congress for a special event on Tuesday, July 30.
“We’re coming there soon!” Levi told WTOP. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to the Library of Congress.”
“One of the coolest places ever,” Deschanel told WTOP. “I got to go last year and it was incredible.”
Based on the beloved 1955 children’s picture book by Crockett Johnson, the adventurous Harold (Levi) can make anything come to life simply by drawing it.
After he grows up and draws himself off the book’s pages and into the physical world alongside his sidekicks Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds), widowed single mom Terri (Deschanel) and her son Mel (Benjamin Bottani) help him realize that he has a lot to learn.
“There is a bit of a Venn-diagram overlap with ‘Elf,'” Levi said. “In fact, when we went to Zooey to see if she wanted to play the role, I was afraid that she was gonna be like, ‘This is a little too much like ‘Elf,’ But fortunately she didn’t think that.”
“Will (Ferrell) in ‘Elf’ and me as Harold both have this unbounded optimism and joy because we’re both from a world that is not the real world,” Levi added. “To have this fish out of water … to miss all of those social cues and think that people honking at you in traffic are really just saying hi, there’s something that’s really fun to dive into.”
The event starts at 5 p.m. by screening of an advanced clip from the movie, followed by an in-person Q&A with Levi and Deschanel in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium. After that, visitors are invited to view a display of Library collections featuring original drawings and books from the series from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
“I definitely read it as a kid, but what I really mostly remember is reading it to my kids because they are seven and eight years old now, so they were like three and four then — and it was just a great book,” Deschanel said.
“It’s so fun to read. It’s the type of book you can kind of read over and over again. It’s really a magical book and it’s one of those where it’s fun for parents to read. … I think the movie takes that and expands on that and makes it cinematic.”
Free tickets can be obtained online at the Library of Congress website.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Zachary Levi & Zooey Deschanel at the Library of Congress (Part 2) Hear the full interview, including memories of “New Girl” and “(500) Days of Summer,” on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Broccoli City Fest at Audi Field (Part 1) Broccoli City Fest returns to the nation’s capital this weekend for two huge days of music.
This year marks the very first time the festival will be held at Audi Field in Southwest D.C.
“It’s really exciting to be at this new venue,” festival co-founder Jermon Williams told WTOP. “You think of the growth over the years from when we started at The Bullpen then over to St. Elizabeth then over to RFK (Stadium) and FedEx (Field), then back to RFK the last two years. So moving over to Audi Field has really been about enhancing the fan experience. We wanted to revolutionize and redefine what it meant to experience a festival.”
While he remains grateful to Events DC for the recent years spent on the RFK Stadium’s grounds in Northeast, Audi Field offers the festival plenty of new opportunities from both a production and amenities standpoint.
“Audi Field is state of the art and we’re actually able to utilize the stadium and the perimeter around the stadium,” Williams said. “The Jumbotron, those big screens, being able to set up the festival so the experience is comparable to an award show where you’re seeing the interaction of the talent backstage. … Also just the facilities, providing our patrons with air-conditioned bathrooms and seating — I don’t think we’ve had a seating option in 11 years.”
It kicks off with a pre-party on Friday at Echostage hosted by nine-time Emmy nominee Issa Rae.
“She’s hosting and we’re super excited about that,” Williams said. “Anybody can go.”
The official two-day music festival arrives on Saturday with three-time Grammy winner Megan Thee Stallion headlining a star-studded lineup of Party Next Door, Lil Yachty & The Concrete Family, Fridayy and Teezo Touchdown, all hosted by Desi Banks, Funny Marco, Bryson Tiller, Trapsoul Karaoke and introductions by Rae.
As if that wasn’t enough, Sunday brings a second day of music headlined by four-time Grammy nominated rapper Gunna and this year’s Best New Artist Grammy winner Victoria Monét on a stacked bill with rising stars like Sexyy Red, Key Glock and many more, all hosted by Joe Kay of Soulection Radio.
How does Broccoli City always have a knack for finding “the next big thing” of artists?
“It starts with us just being fans of music culture in general,” Williams said of his fellow co-founders Marcus Allen and Brandon McEachern. “When you’re a fan there’s that natural desire to discover new music for me. I think also having a great team that shares in that passion, a younger great team, because now we’re able to get real-time advice and insight on new artists. Beyond your headlining acts it’s always about how you’re filling out your lineup.”
As a result, attendance has grown along with the festival’s reputation over the past decade.
“I would go back to the precursor to Broccoli City Fest, which was an Earth Day block party we did in L.A. called Global Cooling which had Kendrick Lamar as an opening act, we did 500 or 600 people there,” Williams said. “Fast forward to B.C. Fest, the first iteration in 2013 we ended up doing 5,000, then 2016 jumped to about 13,000, then in 2018 to about 30,000. … This year we’re looking at 25,000 each day, so 50,000 total, so we’re super excited.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Broccoli City Fest at Audi Field (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Jeff Jarrett at the Frederick Keys ballpark (Part 1) He’s one of the most decorated champions and promoters in professional wrestling history, launching entire companies behind the scenes, then strutting to the ring, talking trash and smashing guitars over opponents’ heads.
WWE Hall of Famer and current AEW star Jeff Jarrett visits Nymeo Field at Harry Grove Stadium in Frederick, Maryland, this Friday for a different sort of Friday Night Smackdown.
“I’m looking for somebody who needs a guitar shot,” Jarrett told WTOP. “I’m looking forward to coming up to Frederick, Maryland. We’ve got a (Frederick) Keys ballgame down at the ballpark and I’m excited about that. It’s that time of year, it’s the dog days of summer and baseball goes hand in hand. I get to take a break from my AEW schedule and the wacky world of professional wrestling, I’m part owner of a baseball team over in Springfield, Illinois, so baseball is true and blue to my heart.”
Jarrett will host a meet and greet and autograph session on the concourse from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. before the Frederick Keys take on the Mahoning Valley Scrappers in MLB Draft League action, all capped off by fireworks.
“When I show up at ballparks, you never know what’s going to happen because you have all the in-game activities,” Jarrett said. “You have a little pregame, they give you a ball to maybe throw out the first pitch, so I hope everybody behind the backstop has their own gloves because you never know where a ‘Double J’ ball may end up. I’m looking forward to seeing the fans, there’s going to be a very cool autograph session and it’s fireworks night. Pretty cool.”
Wrestling royaltyThey say that “wrestling has more than one royal family,” and Jarrett is living proof.
Born near Nashville, Tennessee, in 1967, Jarrett is a third-generation professional wrestler as the grandson of National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) star Eddie Marlin and the son of the legendary promoter Jerry Jarrett, who founded the Continental Wrestling Association (CWA) in 1977. That merged with World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) to form the United States Wrestling Association (USWA) from 1989 to 1997.
“My dad was business partners with Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler,” Jarrett said. “The two guys I really watched as a young child who were my idols were ‘Fabulous’ Jackie Fargo, Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler. I’m one of five kids and the only one who continued in the business. … Back in those days, before cable television, North America was split into 22 regional territories. My father’s was the very last one that stood still promoting even into the late 90s.”
In 1986, Jeff started in CWA and became a 10-time USWA champ, dropping the belt to Lawler in 1993 to join the WWF. Adopting a country music gimmick as the heel “Double J,” Jarrett’s first pay-per-view was “Royal Rumble 1994,” eliminated by Randy Savage. The next year, at “Royal Rumble 1995,” Jarrett beat Razor Ramon to become Intercontinental Champion, sparking a rematch at “WrestleMania XI” before losing the title to Shawn Michaels.
“A match that I had against Shawn Michaels, an ‘In Your House’ pay-per-view in July of 1995, in a lot of ways has stood the test of time; it’s one of my favorites,” Jarrett said. “I’m asked that question quite often, ‘Give me some favorite matches,’ but I always like to say the series of matches that I had with Shawn Michaels or Razor Ramon.”
After briefly joining World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1996, Jarrett returned to the WWF in 1997 for an NWA invasion with Jim Cornette, lost a hair match to X-Pac at “SummerSlam 1998” and had European and Intercontinental bouts against Val Venis, Ken Shamrock, The Godfather, Big Bossman, Edge and D’Lo Brown. Jarrett also formed a memorable tag team with Owen Hart, who tragically died by falling from the rafters in 1999.
“It was less than a year that we got to tag together, but it was a special time,” Jarrett said. “Getting the opportunity to actually be a tag partner with one of your best friends is always special and unique. We were both sons of promoters, that was our original common bond, then we grew to become great friends, loved each other and got tight. The tragedy, for many years, just overshadowed it because it was a such a tragic and sudden passing.”
New beginningsAfter his WWF contract expired in 1999, he dropped his Intercontinental title to Chyna on his way out the door in a shrewd business decision to rejoin WCW. The move paid off, at least in the short term. As “The Chosen One,” Jarrett became the WCW heavyweight champion four times, twice in matches against Diamond Dallas Page (mixing it up with Eric Bischoff and David Arquette), once against Kevin Nash and another time against Ric Flair.
“Every contract set of circumstances throughout my career always comes down to two things: obviously the money, that’s what pays the bills, but it’s also about the next stage of your career. Where do you see yourself growing?” Jarrett said. “To finally fulfill that goal of (winning) the big gold belt, as they say in WCW, it was definitely a lifelong goal, so I put my mind on that and it became a reality.”
Sadly, backstage politics and the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger came to a head at WCW’s “Bash at the Beach 2000” with Jarrett lying down in the ring for an easy victory by Hulk Hogan, who left town with the belt. Head writer Vince Russo made an unscripted appearance in the ring to trash Hogan and announce the real title match would happen later that night between Jarrett and Booker T, who pinned Jarrett to become champ.
“Like any business, wrestling isn’t immune to it, the politics became so involved,” Jarrett said. “Literally, we don’t have enough time to go into that. It has been covered from multiple different angles, but the ‘Bash at the Beach’ was a microcosm of how WCW management was run.”
Ted Turner’s former pride and joy of WCW was bought by then-WWF chairman Vince McMahon in 2001, putting an end to the highly rated “Monday Night Wars” between WWF “Raw” and WCW “Nitro,” where one in 10 Americans regularly watched wrestling on Monday nights. This forced Jarrett to team with his father to form their own wrestling company, NWA: Total Nonstop Action (TNA), in 2002.
“Television executives didn’t understand the DNA. They knew ‘Nitro’ and ‘Thunder’ were Top 5 programs in the Turner networks, but they canceled the show,” Jarrett said. “Without a No. 1, there’s no such thing as a No. 2, and vice versa, a huge void in the marketplace. So we launched TNA. They just celebrated another ‘Slammiversary.’ It’s still going today, hats off to those guys. It was a company that was near and dear to my heart from 2002 to 2013.”
His decade-plus run in TNA was his longest and most consistent tenure, becoming the NWA World Heavyweight Champion six times with a string of stellar matches with memorable opponents across the board.
“I really think a young AJ Styles, there’s some real hidden Easter eggs, if you will, in those early days of TNA between me and AJ,” Jarrett said. “Then, of course, my series of matches in 2010 and 2011 with Kurt Angle. At that stage in my career, me and Kurt, it was super competitive and very, very physical in so many ways, but it’s a series of matches that I’m very proud of as well.”
After exiting TNA in 2013 when the company was bought by Dixie Carter, Jarrett was inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame in 2015, followed by a surprise induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2018. While his body of work deserved it, Jarrett was visibly emotional when he got the call from WWE after so many years in rival companies.
“It was shocking,” Jarrett said. “I had come out of a very dark period of my life at the end of 2017, and 2018 started off early January, I got that call and I was humbled. It was a very surprising move, but also a very humbling move.”
In 2022, Jarrett signed with AEW, becoming the director of business development behind the scenes and aligning with Jay Lethal on screen in a feud with Darby Allin.
You could say that Jarrett’s launching of TNA to rival WWE paved the way for Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks to do the same with Ring of Honor’s “All In” pay-per-view in 2018, after which Shahid and Tony Khan officially trademarked and formed AEW as the chief rival of WWE.
“It’s two entirely different sets of circumstances,” Jarrett said. “It fundamentally changed the business in a very positive way. For so long, the opportunity to have a challenger brand was difficult, but when you are on two hours of TBS every Wednesday night, two hours Saturday night on TNT, and now Friday nights … it changes so many things about the business.”
Nowadays, the self-proclaimed “King of the Mountain” is still going strong on AEW television, as well as his podcast, “My World with Jeff Jarrett.” He insists the state of the business has never been stronger.
And that’s the bottom line, not because Stone Cold said so, nor because you smell what The Rock is cooking, but because you heard it straight from the signature “slap” lips of “J-E-Double-F, J-A-Double-R, E-Double-T!”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Jeff Jarrett at the Frederick Keys ballpark (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Ghostbusters' with the NSO at Wolf Trap (Part 1) When there’s something orchestral in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? “Ghostbusters!”
The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man stomps into Wolf Trap this Friday for a special screening of the 1984 spooky-comedy flick to celebrate its 40th anniversary with live accompaniment by the National Symphony Orchestra.
“For one thing, you get the greatest sound system in the world with the National Symphony Orchestra playing these scores,” Guest Conductor Emil de Cou told WTOP. “You have screens facing the lawn and above the orchestra bigger than any IMAX screen, it’s absolutely massive. You’re able to hear the music only the way the composer imagined it in their head and how they heard it in the studio when they recorded it.”
Directed by Ivan Reitman, the film features iconic performances by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson as the ghostbusting crew of Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore, alongside Sigourney Weaver as Dana Barrett a.k.a. Zuul and Rick Moranis as Louis Tully a.k.a. The Keymaster.
“It’s a great film, an iconic film now, but at the time it was kind of a quirky film,” de Cou said. “I think they had trouble even getting it up and running because it was first supposed to be down with John Belushi, but he passed away sadly, so they got a bunch of ‘SNL’ people, just getting the casting right and everything, but it’s kind of an unusual genre of a spooky horror science-fiction comedy, which I don’t know that anyone had ever made before.”
The NSO will perform the instrumental score by Elmer Bernstein, who delivered sweeping scores for “The Ten Commandments” (1956), “The Magnificent Seven” (1960), “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) and “The Great Escape” (1963) before surprisingly shifting to comedy with “Animal House” (1978), “Meatballs” (1979), “Airplane!” (1980), “The Blues Brothers” (1980), “Stripes” (1981), “Trading Places” (1983) and “Ghostbusters” (1984).
“He writes this score, which I think he said it was the most difficult score he had ever written because it has to go in between the comic stuff, the goofy stuff,” de Cou said. “You have a honky-tonk piano with a tube at the bottom that sounds kind of like Dixieland you’d hear in New Orleans or something, then you get these spooky, atonal, hazy chords that kind of inform something that’s evil like a ghost or something in the museum or library coming alive.”
In addition to Bernstein’s instrumental score, you’ll also hear Ray Parker Jr.’s iconic “Ghostbusters” song, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks and stayed on the charts for a total of 21 weeks.
“At the end, of course, is the famous tune, which I think the audience will probably sing along,” de Cou said. “They added the orchestra on top of the song, so we play with it like an orchestration that you would do with a pop performer. I think originally it was just with the band, but we accompany it, so it’ll be fun. I’ve never done that.”
Feel free to dress up as your favorite characters, just don’t cross the streams!
“Everyone in the D.C. area, come to Wolf Trap,” de Cou said. “It’s the best place to hear music and have a great time. Bring a snack, bring wine, bring your friends and enjoy movies the way they’re meant to be seen and heard.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Ghostbusters' with the NSO at Wolf Trap (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Presumed Innocent' on Apple TV+ (Part 1) In 1990, Harrison Ford had just wrapped his original trilogy as the heroic Indiana Jones when he decided to shift into a more duplicitous character in the twisty legal thriller “Presumed Innocent,” a smash hit directed by the great Alan J. Pakula who bridged Ford’s evolution of tangled husbands from “Frantic” (1988) to “The Fugitive” (1993).
Now, a quarter century later, “Presumed Innocent” is the No. 1 show on Apple TV+, having premiered the first two of its eight episodes back on June 12, keeping us guessing with cliffhangers in weekly installments, and now dropping its thrilling finale this Wednesday, providing fresh plot twists to the classic courtroom drama.
Based on the 1987 novel by Scott Turow, the story follows the slick but shady Chicago prosecutor Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal), who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve), who was also his mistress. Now, he must profess his criminal innocence and atone for his moral betrayal of his wife Barbara (Ruth Negga) and their two teenage kids Jaden (Chase Infiniti) and Kyle (Kingston Rumi Southwick).
It’s a tricky proposition to convince audiences to spend seven straight weeks rooting for such an unlikable, ethically dubious protagonist like Rusty. Even if you think he’s innocent of the crime of murder, his sins against his family are a lot to overcome as the show’s core thematic question walks the line of legal vs. moral corruption.
Beyond that, it’s also a lot to ask audiences (TV’s jurors) to spend seven weeks watching a series where we think we already know where it’s headed. Ultimately, your investment in the series will likely depend on whether or not you’ve seen the 1990 film (which I have), so let’s break down this comparison in three categories in order to render a verdict on whether the series is guilty or not guilty of the cinematic crime of a crude carbon copy:
What the movie did better
It’s hard to top a viewer’s first experience with material. That’s when the memorable characters, compounding conflicts and killer twists were first introduced and thus felt the most original. If you saw the movie back in the ’90s, you’ve seen a lot of this same stuff before and feel like you know roughly where it’s all heading — or do you?
The twist was so shocking that producer Sydney Pollack instantly bought the book rights between legal thrillers of his own like “Absence of Malice” (1981) and “The Firm” (1993). Pakula was the perfect pick to direct “Presumed Innocent,” bringing a similar tone as his masterful paranoia trilogy of “Klute” (1971), “The Parallax View” (1974) and “All the President’s Men” (1976) before his twilight years of legal thrillers like “The Pelican Brief” (1993).
Revisiting the film today wistfully recalls a lost era of moviegoing that I mourn, back when adult legal thrillers regularly became blockbusters. “Presumed Innocent” was water-cooler conversion after nearly cracking the box office Top 10 of 1990, ranking No. 11 domestically at $86.3 million, the equivalent of $207.5 million today, more than “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”
Where the TV series rivals the movie
If you’re a fan of the movie, you’ll be glad to know that Jake Gyllenhaal easily rivals Harrison Ford as the antihero with the tortured eyes of a guilty conscience. It’s impossible to tell if Jake is tricking us or not because he brings with him both sides of the criminal coin in our cinematic muscle memory, hunting serial killers in “Zodiac” (2007) and “Prisoners” (2013) but pushing the legal limits in “Donnie Darko” (2001) and “Nightcrawler” (2014).
The flashback portrayal of the deceased mistress is also equally strong, if not more developed this time around. While Greta Scacchi (“The Player”) was shown seducing Ford, her sudden dismissal of him feels rushed if you watch the film today. Conversely, Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) is given more ammunition in the TV series, allowing us to see her gradual discomfort with Rusty’s growing obsession.
The rest of the supporting cast is just as deep, namely Bill Camp, who remains one of the finest character actors working today from “The Night Of” to “The Queen’s Gambit.” He is a worthy fill-in for the late Brian Dennehy as District Attorney Raymond Horgan, who is no longer shady like the film but rather a sympathetic moral compass alongside wife Lorraine (played by Camp’s wife Elizabeth Marvel, celebrating 20 years of marriage this year).
What the TV series does better
Despite my initial skepticism, I was surprised to find areas where the TV series actually surpasses the film.
Showrunner David E. Kelley (who last year celebrated 30 years of marriage to Michelle Pfeiffer) finds new legal maneuvers to ratchet up the courtroom tension like Rusty providing his own defense. Call it contrived, but his closing statement is undeniably powerful, showing Kelley’s roots as a writer on “L.A. Law” before creating legal series like “The Practice,” “Ally McBeal,” “Boston Public,” “Boston Legal,” “Big Little Lies” and “The Lincoln Lawyer.”
Peter Sarsgaard (“Shattered Glass,” “Dopesick”) provides a much more layered performance as the prosecutor Tommy Molto, who was flatly played by Joe Grifasi as an emotionless caricature never cracking a smile in the film. Sarsgaard’s jealous quest to nail Gyllenhaal makes him far more compelling, boosting his closing argument and completing his character arc when he can finally cheer a Chicago Bears game, having moved on from the case.
Most importantly, Ruth Negga (“Loving,” “Passing”) is a major improvement as the heartbroken wife, given multiple scenes of justifiable anger at her husband’s infidelity — even payback by flirting with a bartender. This feels more realistic than Bonnie Bedelia barely batting an eye, standing by her man by telling Ford, “What did you expect?” Plot twists aside, Bedelia’s anger over his cheating should have been shown in the film, not to mention the kids.
The verdict: Not guilty
Your honor, we the jury find the TV series not guilty of the cinematic crime of a crude carbon copy. Sure, it’s apples and oranges to compare an eight-hour miniseries to a two-hour film because it has four times as long to tell its complex story, but there are enough new plot twists to make it an entirely different experience down the stretch.
Whether you’ll enjoy it or not is a matter of taste, all depending on your preconceived notions. If you liked the 1990 film, the 2024 miniseries seems to drag in its middle section, inventing new reasons to stretch out the plot. However, once the culprit is revealed, dare I say it might even reward on repeat viewings, though I highly doubt I’ll rewatch it. Viewers are already being called to jury duty again with critics seated as judges as another case awaits.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the DMV Made Festival (Part 1) Get ready to celebrate local music, dance, art and culture with a free daylong event on the National Mall.
Words Beats & Life hosts the DMV Made Festival on Saturday from 1 to 7:30 p.m. with free performances, workshops and activities on 14th Street and Jefferson Drive in Southwest D.C.
“This is an inaugural festival,” Words Beats & Life Executive Director Mazi Mutafa told WTOP. “We are part of a national initiative called Arts for Everybody. There’s going to be 18 activations all across the country, including Hawaii, so we’re organizing the D.C. activation. … There are activations happening literally from California to Rhode Island, from Florida to Texas.”
The creative idea was launched during the pandemic, inspired by an initiative during the Great Depression.
“This idea was developed by a set of artists during the pandemic because art was deemed nonessential,” Mutafa said. “This was the vision by artists to center art as something that is valuable for the health and wellness of the country. … This was inspired by something that happened during the Great Depression when the federal government funded theater productions in 18 cities across the country on a single day, so that’s the blueprint.”
Here’s the full lineup for all five stages on the National Mall this Saturday:
Main Stage (1 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.)1:30 — 1:50 p.m.: Cryptid Summer2:10 — 2:35 p.m.: Substantial
2:55 — 3:35 p.m.: Be’la Dona
3:45 — 4:15 p.m.: DuPont Brass Band
4:35 — 5:15 p.m.: Sweet Honey in the Rock
5:35 — 6:15 p.m.: Chuck Brown Band
6:35 — 7:30 p.m.: The Blackbyrds
Concert Stage (1:50 p.m. to 4:35 p.m.)1:50 — 2:10 p.m.: Jay Mills
2:35 — 2:55 p.m.: Flex Mathews & Band
3:25 — 3:45 p.m.: East of the River Steelband
4:15 — 4:35 p.m.: Batalá Washington
Storytelling & Poetry Pavillion (1 p.m. to 4:35 p.m.)
1 — 1:30 p.m.: The Artist Network hosted by Stephanie Coleman
1:50 — 2:10 p.m.: Dialect of Prince George’s hosted by Project MC
2:35 — 2:55 p.m.: Liberated Muse hosted by Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman
3:25 — 3:45 p.m.: Spit Dat hosted by Drew Anderson
4:15 — 4:35 p.m.: Story District hosted by Amy Saidman
Family Stage (1 p.m. to 4:35 p.m.)
1 — 1:30 p.m.: Capital City Summer Mass Marching Band Program of Washington, D.C.
1:50 — 2:10 p.m.: Ebony Sunshine Inc (Puppet show)
2:35 — 2:55 p.m.: African Drum Circle with Drumlady (Kristen Arant)
3:25 — 3:45 p.m.: Juggling Performance and Workshop
4:15 — 4:35 p.m.: Juggling Performance and Workshop
Dance Stage by One Take Studios (1 p.m. to 4:35 p.m.)
1 — 1:30 p.m.: Open Dance Floor
1:50 — 2:10 p.m.: Step Afrika! (Stepping)
2:35 — 2:55 p.m.: Miss Chief Rocka (hoop dancing, powwow dancing)
3:25 — 3:45 p.m.: The Lion’s Den (Hip-Hop Dance)
4:15 — 4:35 p.m.: National Hand Dance Association
“Looking forward to seeing you Saturday at what will be an amazing festival blending arts, culture, health and wellness,” Mutafa said. “Come learn what folks are doing in your community and how you can get involved.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the DMV Made Festival (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Cow Week' on Maryland Public Television (Part 1) Who needs “Shark Week” on Discovery when you have “Cow Week” on Maryland Public Television?
The series runs this week through Sunday, including a special episode of “Maryland Farm & Harvest” airing Tuesday at 7 p.m.
“Cows are just amazing creatures and you’ve got ‘Shark Week,’ so why not ‘Cow Week?'” producer Jay McDonald told WTOP. “They do kill more people per year. On average, cows kill 22 people per year, where shark-attack deaths are only seven people, so you should be more worried on the farm and on land than you are in the water. We also have a behind-the-scenes video of us trying to put a shark fin on the back of a cow.”
Tuesday’s 30-minute special includes four segments, starting with “Cattle Breeds” filmed in Carroll, Frederick and Harford counties.
“You’re going to see the different types of breeds that Maryland farmers are raising,” McDonald said. “More than 65% of U.S. cattle breeds are bred Angus … but many Maryland farmers have chosen to fill their farms with other breeds, so we’re going to visit some family operations in Havre de Grace, Frederick and Keysville and discover the breeds they’re raising out there like Belted Galloways and White Parks and how they are choosing those breeds.”
The second segment is called “Caring for Calves” filmed in Carroll County.
“We visit Maryland Delight Beef in Westminster,” McDonald said. “We go through how you care for a cow from being born all the way up to when it’s an adult, and how the names change. Cows are calves, they’re young, then you’ve got heifers, which have not yet given birth, then you move into cows. Then, of course, you’ve got your bulls and steers — who are bulls without working parts — so we learn how to care for those animals at different ages.”
The third segment is called “Dairy Struggles” filmed in Carroll and Frederick counties.
“Even among farmers, milking cows is recognized as one of the most difficult ways of making a living because the prices are constantly being pushed and changed,” McDonald said. “We delve into the Haines family of Locust-Ayr Farm in Taneytown and the Grossnickle family of Ellerton View Farm in Myersville and … their fears of keeping their multigenerational farms running within a diary business that has been declining in Maryland.”
The final segment is called “The Local Buy: Misty Meadows Creamery” filmed in Washington County.
“Al [Spoler] went and visited the Misty Meadows Farm Creamery in Smithsburg,” McDonald said. “You get to see the Maryland Ice Cream Trail. Hopefully, it’ll direct people on these really hot days to get out there and hit some of these farm creameries and get some ice cream to support the dairy industry in Maryland. … Cows bring you more than just milk; if you’re cooling down at night with a little ice cream, you can thank a cow.”
He hopes the inaugural “Cow Week” is successful enough to become an annual tradition.
“If folks like it, hopefully we can bring ‘Cow Week’ back,” McDonald said. “To paraphrase Christopher Walken: if you watch ‘Cow Week’ and you have a fever, MPT has a cure: and it’s more ‘Cow Week.'”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Cow Week' on Maryland Public Television (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Kids World at DC's Franklin Park (Part 1) Are you looking for something fun to take the kids to this weekend in the nation’s capital?
Kids World returns to Franklin Park in Northwest D.C. this Saturday and Sunday from noon to 7 p.m. after last year’s inaugural event drew over 7,000 people over three days.
WTOP caught up with the DowntownDC Business Improvement District to preview the festivities.
“It is a free, free, free, free, two-day immersive experience for children of all ages,” Director of Marketing and Communications Ebony Walton told WTOP.
“We’ve got more than 30 activations for kids. … We launched this last year and this will be our second year bringing Kids World back. … We got our thinking caps on saying, ‘What if we do something exclusive for the kids, knowing their parents come with them?’ It really is a family-friendly event.”
The central hub of the event will be exciting performances on the Main Stage.
“The Main Stage really is all-kids talent,” Walton said.
“We’ve got talented kids’ bands, we’ve got poets, we’ve got entertainers. We’ve even got a kids’ DJ, so DJ Princess Christiona, she is going to be on the ones and twos spinning those tunes for the kids. There’s a brother and sister [Kalu and Marrkan] that are going to be hosting, we’ve even got a kids’ roving reporter and we’re going to be doing giveaways from this stage all throughout the day.”
You can also engage children’s imaginations with a special area called Storyland.
“Storyland is the ultimate story experience,” Walton said.
“There will be live storytellers along with characters from Dr. Seuss. There’s also going to be a super-huge screen where the story is going to be visual with graphics, while the person is reading. Some of our favorite stories like ‘Cat in the Hat,’ ‘Corduroy Bear,’ ‘Curious George’ and ‘The Lorax’ will come to life, along with a pop-up bookstore turning the page with more than 3,000 books for kids.”
Meanwhile, kids can also enjoy hands-on activities in the Creativity & Discovery Corner.
“There are going to be hands-on activities where kids can let their imaginations soar with engaging learning sessions,” Walton said.
“There will be a painting-palooza, a beading bizarre where kids can come and make different sorts of jewelry with beads, a coloring corner and even face-painting! This Creativity & Discovery Corner is really going to be good, especially if you like getting your hands dirty and being active.”
After that, kids and parents can get active by exercising with a Super Workout.
“We’re going to have Wonder Woman on hand, the Black Panther, Spider-Man and Supergirl for action-packed workouts,” Walton said.
“They’re gonna lead workouts from the stage, get kids up moving and grooving, having a good time with the music. We’re going to have double Dutch and rope jumpers. … We can get Wonder Woman to do the jump rope with her lasso and Black Panther doing ‘Wakanda Forever’ while he’s jump-roping.”
You also don’t want to miss the hilariously-named Teddy Bear Social.
“We’re gonna have teddy bear characters, everybody from Paddington Bear to the Care Bears, the Berenstain Bears, I think we’ve even got the Charmin Bear,” Walton said.
“There’s going to be a teddy bear parade with giant teddy-bear giveaways, but the star of the show is Francis and his baby sister Francesca. Francis launched last year, he’s a 16-foot bear, and Francesca is about 12-foot, she’s making her debut.”
Don’t forget to stop by the Bubble Garden — just follow the bubbles to find it.
“Listen, I did this last year and it was so much fun, my inner kid came alive, it was just bubbles everywhere,” Walton said.
“This year, we’re adding a secret bubble maze so you and go through the maze while there’s bubbles. In addition to these giant bubbles and giant animal topiaries, we’ve got a beekeeper coming to do a demonstration. … It’s not just for the kids, parents can come and act like they don’t have a care in the world.”
Other activities include trackless train rides, video games, outdoor games like giant Jenga and Connect Four, a Hero’s Hangout where kids can climb into real police cruisers, fire engines and ambulances and the Little Bites Boulevard with tasty treats from food trucks offering everything from cheeseburgers to healthy smoothies.
“You are trying to figure out what to do with your kids, [so] I want you to transport yourself to the ultimate getaway for kids,” Walton said.
“This park is just over five acres and we are completely taking it over. When we say it is a Kids World, it is a Kids World! All family-friendly events, all free, all day long on both days … more than 30 activations. You’ve never seen anything like it. … You’ve got to come. You don’t want to have ‘F.O.M.O.'”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Kids World at DC's Franklin Park (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews As I Lay Dying at The Fillmore in Silver Spring (Part 1) What’s heavier than heavy metal? Check out the screaming and growling of “metalcore!”
Arguably the genre’s biggest act, As I Lay Dying, joined WTOP as it prepares to rock The Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland, this Friday night.
“We’ve done some incredible shows in the D.C. area,” frontman Tim Lambesis told WTOP. “Us being from the West Coast, our first time there we thought, ‘Nobody’s going to care,’ so when we got there we felt the love, so now we always look forward to coming back. … We generally will start with our Top 10 (hits), then we’ll add what’s missing. We try to represent at least two or three songs from each album and we’re playing a new song on this tour because we’re beginning to roll out for a new album later this year.”
Born in San Diego in 1980, Lambesis grew up listening to the metal bands of the ’80s and ’90s.
“Before the era of being able to discover bands on the internet, I would hear metal bands on the radio like Metallica,” Lambesis said. “The heaviest band I ever heard on the radio was Pantera, then as a kid, you’d sneak off to the record store to buy a metal record, because parents at that time frowned on metal, especially the album artwork. … It looked like something I wanted to sound like, with bands like Iron Maiden with Eddie on the cover.”
As I Lay Dying formed in 2000, named after William Faulkner’s famous 1930 novel.
“We had been tossing around different name ideas for a long time and couldn’t find anything,” Lambesis said. “Our guitar player at the time was going to college and had some literature assignment for his English class and don’t you remember those things called CliffsNotes? … He said, ‘I’ve never read the book, I don’t think the band should be tied into the book per se, but it’s a really cool title.'”
Equipped with a catchy name, they released their debut album “Beneath the Encasing of Ashes” (2001).
“I’m proud of it because foundationally it’s what got the band started,” Lambesis said. “Sometimes people talk about doing music forever and then they never actually do it, so I think anything that actually gets the gears in motion and gives you a chance to progress, for that reason, I’m proud of it. Also as a guitar player, I’d only been playing guitar for only a year and a half when I wrote all of that material, so it’s very simple in that regard.”
He says you can see his guitar skills progress on the following albums “Frail Words Collapse” (2003) and “Shadows Are Security” (2005), earning the first of three straight Artist of the Year titles at the San Diego Music Awards.
“I was the primary songwriter in the early days, but the band naturally evolved when Phil (Sgrosso) joined the band, so ‘Frail Words Collapse’ is an example of where you have an album with a very talented guitar player but not the primary songwriter,” Lambesis said. “Then when ‘Shadows Are Security’ came around, that’s the first time Phil and I had a chance to collaborate and we cowrote that album together.”
Everything fell into place for their fourth album, “An Ocean Between Us” (2007), their biggest success yet, including the hit song “Nothing Left,” which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance.
“‘An Ocean Between Us’ was a really monumental point where we had the formula figured out,” Lambesis said. “Historically, the Grammys had only taken recognizable names, they weren’t really promoting any of the younger bands, so we were pretty blown away that we got nominated. … You have all these people who don’t listen to this genre and they didn’t recognize anybody except Slayer, so they were like, ‘Oh, we’ll just give Slayer the award.'”
They kept things rolling with the albums “The Powerless Rise” (2010) and “Awakened” (2012).
“We had a choice to follow the trend of our peers, who’d seen the genre grow, taking it toward a more melodic direction to see if they could get some radio crossover … but we buckled down and said we’re going to make our heaviest record yet (with ‘The Powerless Rise’),” Lambesis said. “[‘Awakened’] pulled in a different producer outside of our genre to shake it up. … We weren’t really sure what was next regardless of the hiatus.”
The “hiatus” was caused by some serious legal trouble as Lambesis was sentenced to prison for solicitation of murder after attempting to hire a hit man (actually an undercover detective) in a failed plot against his first wife.
“I can’t talk about that transitionary period of my life without expressing the gratitude of having the opportunity to play music again,” Lambesis said. “Somebody can go down a dark path and make a terrible decision, but that doesn’t have to define the entirety of their life.”
Lambesis was released on parole in December of 2016, allowing the band to eventually reunite for its most recent album, “Shaped by Fire” (2019).
“It was really good timing creatively,” Lambesis said. “While I was gone, Phil and the rest of the guys had tried to pursue their band Wovenwar, but Phil had lost interest and left that band,” Lambesis said. “Coincidentally, it was the time that I wanted to start making music again.”
Their next album arrives this fall, including the newly single “Burden,” which you’ll hear Friday in Silver Spring.
“I personally love playing the new song ‘Burden,'” Lambesis said. “It’s like a breath of fresh air for me to have a new era of the band and to be working toward a new goal. We’re probably a couple weeks away from being able to announce [the album title]. All I can promise is that it will be out before the end of this year. If I had to make my best guess, the full album will be out closer to November will a handful of singles coming out throughout the year.”
Just don’t expect the set list to include music from his various side projects, from his Christian metal band Point of Recognition to his Arnold Schwarzenegger tribute band Austrian Death Machine.
“There’s no crossover,” Lambesis said. “I’ve had people in the audience hold up signs like ‘Get to the chopper,’ and I appreciate that, but the creative process and defining line of As I Lay Dying is the collaborative experience, so if it’s songs I’ve written solo, it doesn’t feel [right]. … I eventually need to do more Austrian Death Machine tours because I did one in Europe a few months ago and it actually surprised myself and my promoters how well it did.”
In other words, “he’ll be back.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews As I Lay Dying at The Fillmore in Silver Spring (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Back to the Future: The Musical' (Part 1) The 1985 blockbuster movie remains one of the most beloved sci-fi family comedies of all time.
Now, the Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical version arrives in D.C. as “Back to the Future: The Musical” hits the Kennedy Center from July 23 to Aug. 11.
“I love it and I think everybody loves it,” actor Don Stephenson told WTOP.
“You could argue this is the greatest time-travel story ever made and I think there’s a good case to be made for that. … It has all of the special effects, the sci-fi and the time travel, but the main thing that it has is heart. The way you learn to appreciate and love your parents and the relationship and mentorship between Doc and Marty is very heartfelt.”
Adapted from screen to stage by Bob Gale, who cowrote the film with director Robert Zemeckis, the story follows Marty McFly, who is transported back to 1955 in a DeLorean time machine built by the eccentric scientist Doc Brown.
There’s one catch: he accidentally alters the course of his family history and find himself in a race against time to make his parents fall back in love, while simultaneously trying to send himself … back to the future.
“Bob Gale, the co-creator of it who’s been with us every day in rehearsals and on the road with us, he tells this great story of flipping through his father’s high school yearbook and he sees a picture of his dad and he’s like, ‘Huh, I wonder what he was like then?,’ which we’ve all done,” Stephenson said.
“With that kernel of an idea, Bob created this entire journey that we’ve all gotten to go on all of these years.”
Stephenson said he loves playing the mad-scientist role of Dr. Emmett Brown, made famous on screen by Christopher Lloyd alongside Michael J. Fox’s lovable ’80s kid Marty McFly, now played on stage by Caden Brauch.
“He and I are having a wonderful time together,” Stephenson said.
“The part of Doc is so much fun to play because Doc has always maintained his childlike wonder about everything. Doc is wide-eyed and there’s an innocence about Doc even though he’s really smart. Everything is an emergency and everything is on the edge of having a crisis with Doc. I told Bob in rehearsals that at the end of every line is an exclamation point: ‘Great Scott!'”
Visually, the crew has the wonderful challenge of bringing the iconic time-travel special effects to life on stage.
“The other co-star of the show is the DeLorean, which we have on stage,” Stephenson said.
“You will not believe what you are seeing before your eyes. Your head will expand in ways you never thought possible and you really will be taken on a ride that’s unbelievable. … It’s stunning and you really want to take your hats off to all of the designers, the director and the choreographer. They have done such a magnificent job. … I can’t believe it.”
Of course, the stage musical features plenty of new Broadway show tunes written by Alan Silvestri (music) and Glen Ballard (lyrics), along with several standout songs from the movie’s soundtrack.
“In many ways, the movie was leaning in the direction of being a musical because there was so much music in it,” Stephenson said.
“Obviously the Huey Lewis songs [‘Power of Love’ and ‘Back in Time’] were huge and we have all of that. … ‘Johnny B. Goode’ is in there when Marty plays that at the dance. … Marty plays his famous guitar solo that doesn’t quite sound like 1955 and everybody’s like, ‘What is that?’ As we know, ‘Your kids are gonna love it.'”
Audiences are encouraged to dress up and have a good time for a family-friendly evening.
“It’s such great fun,” Stephenson said.
“There was a father who came dressed as Doc and he had his 9-year-old son who was dressed as Marty, so it just goes to show you that it’s for everybody. I even saw a woman in the audience dressed as Doc! Everybody loves ‘Back to the Future,’ they identify with the characters and it’s really great fun for the whole family. You’ll experience the story in a brand new way whether you’ve seen the movie or not.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Back to the Future: The Musical' (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Joey Fatone & AJ McLean at MGM National Harbor (Part 1) Important question for all you ’90s kids: Were you more of an NSYNC fan or a Backstreet Boys fan?
Did you do the “Bye Bye Bye” dance or belt “I Want It That Way” at the top of your lungs?
These days, you don’t have to choose as Joey Fatone of NSYNC teams with AJ McLean of The Backstreet Boys for a special boy-band mashup live at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland this Saturday night.
“To see NSYNC and Backstreet Boys fans in the same place, they’re not beating each other up, it’s not like the Jets and Sharks from ‘West Side Story,’ so we’re good,” Fatone told WTOP. “We had the same management team, so when Backstreet signed with Burger King, we signed with McDonald’s. When Backstreet did Pepsi, we did Coke, so it was that friendly competition. … The only beef anybody had was Chris (Kirkpatrick) and AJ when they dated the same girl.”
Rather than simply taking turns on stage, Fatone and McLean combine to mix it up on duets.
“We do it all together,” Fatone said. “Some we do together, some we do individual, some I’m doing Backstreet, some he’s doing NSYNC, so it’s a combination of everything actually, believe it or not. We even go through a whole medley of a bunch of different slow jams that NSYNC and Backstreet sang and what it would sound like if AJ were to sing the NSYNC song and I were to sing the Backstreet songs.”
Imagine a medley of NYSNC slow jams like “God Must Have Spent” or “This I Promise You” with Backstreet slow jams like “As Long As You Love Me” or “All I Have to Give.” Of course, the best possible mashup would be combining the “heart” songs: NSYNC’s “Tearin’ Up My Heart” and Backstreet’s “Quit Playing Games with My Heart.”
“True, true, that’s a possibility,” Fatone said. “We started doing a whole bunch of weird mashups. Every time we do one, something will happen and we’re like, ‘Oh, let’s do this!’ We’re always changing and mixing things up. … I gotta try to learn the chair dance [from] ‘Quit Playing Games with My Heart,’ there’s a chair dance, I gotta learn it.”
Speaking of dancing, NSYNC’s marionette choreography from the “No Strings Attached” album on songs like “Bye Bye Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me” is eerily similar to the macabre hand movements of Backstreet’s “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).” Seriously, go pull up the music videos to compare and I dare you not to dance.
“The little hand wrist motion!” Fatone said. “We do ‘Bye Bye Bye,’ a couple little dance movements from there, a little bit of ‘Everybody,’ it’s a free-for-all. We’ve had people come up on stage and they know the choreography full out. Sometimes we just sit there in awe and they’ll be dancing the whole choreography. It’s amazing.”
You’ll also hear fun covers of classic songs from other artists chosen entirely at random on the spot.
“We throw a die, one of these big blowup dice, out into the audience and it rolls around like a big hot potato when the music stops,” Fatone said. “The person in the audience holds up the dice and whatever number from 1 to 6 [we sing]. It’s random songs like ‘Sweet Transvestite’ from ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ we have a swing version of ‘Little Mermaid,’ ‘Part of Your World,’ it’s just random stuff, it’s hysterical, it’s really funny, it’s great.”
It’s fitting that they throw a dice because Fatone has become a staple of the game-show arena, not only providing the announcer’s voice of “Family Feud” but also hosting “The Singing Bee” and “Common Knowledge.”
“They’re a lot of fun,” Fatone said. “I never thought it’s (A) something I could do and (B) be good at it. … When somebody approaches me with stuff like that, it’s nice that I’m able to pick and choose what I want to do. I’m like, ‘That sounds fun,’ or ‘Nah, I don’t want to waste my time.’ It sounds funny but I’m pretty financially secure, not like millions and millions of dollars, but I’m comfortable where I don’t have to go crazy working 24/7.”
We ended our interview with some rapid-fire compliments about all of his NSYNC bandmates:
J.C. Chasez: “For our group and for pretty much anybody out there, probably the best voice in the world, amazing vocalist, better than Justin, we all say it.”
Chris Kirkpatrick: “Crazy MF, love him to death, spontaneity, he’s very spontaneous.”
Lance Bass: “Gay! I love him. He’s awesome. Very business savvy. He’s awesome, just a sweetheart, he’s a guy’s guy, he knows more about sports than I do, he’s always into football and I’m like, ‘I’m into musicals.'”
Justin Timberlake: “Hard worker man, he’s a hard worker, he’s a hustler, man. He’s one of the main guys that really has a passion for music honestly. He’s a big writer, same thing with J.C. I’m not a big writer obviously and if I was I would be doing music, so that’s not the route that I took, so for me it’s a little bit different, but for him, he’s a hard worker, he’s a go-getter. [Regarding his recent legal trouble]: It’s all good, things happen, things happen.”
Himself (Joey Fatone): “I’m just crazy, happy-go-lucky, always looking on the bright side of stuff, I’m always someone who’s optimistic. … It’s fun to be able to reinvent and keep the boy band dream alive!”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Joey Fatone & AJ McLean at MGM National Harbor (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Haley Bennett about 'Widow Clicquot' (Part 1) In the 2017 mystery-thriller “The Girl on the Train,” her character’s murder was avenged by Emily Blunt jabbing a wine-bottle corkscrew into the killer’s neck.
Call that foreshadowing as Haley Bennett now plays a wine industry pioneer in “Widow Clicquot,” an artful indie biopic that premiered last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival and finally opens in movie theaters nationwide this Friday.
“Widow Clicquot is known as the Grande Dame of Champagne,” Bennett told WTOP. “She is the woman behind the iconic yellow label that is a household name, but not many people know that ‘Veuve’ means ‘Widow.’ Bringing the Widow Clicquot’s story to life was a mighty effort, it was not easy, we made the film independently, there were many forces against us just like the Widow Clicquot herself, which may be why her story has been bottled for so long.”
Set during the Napoleonic Wars in Reims, Champagne in the former Kingdom of France, the film explores the life of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot (1777-1866), who took over her husband François Clicquot’s wine business when she was widowed at age 27, building Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin into an iconic luxury champagne brand.
“I’m so proud of this gift of a story that we got to bring to the screen,” Bennett said. “After 240 years, the Widow Clicquot is finally being recognized as a character in flesh and blood like so many men in history with great achievements just like hers, so in some ways it feels like we’ve liberated her from the bottle.”
As an actress, Bennett found it to be a juicy character to play, juggling grief and romance as she mourns her husband, then falls in love with her wine distributor, but has to legally be a widow in order to run the company. At one point, she describes grapes as a metaphor for herself: “They need to struggle so they can find their strength.”
Not only does she star, Bennett also co-produces, striving to tell the tale of one of the world’s first female entrepreneurs who not only outsmarted Napoleon (who forbid women to own companies), but also innovated techniques like “riddling,” turning bottles upside-down at a 35-degree angle to combat yeast and sediments.
“The film is every bit of female empowerment as it is about creativity, ingenuity and resiliency, all things I admire,” Bennett said. “She had a unique talent and vision that was incredibly rare — and her innovations have stood the test of time. For anyone regardless of gender, but especially for females, we have to lay down our lives and be brave to do anything worthwhile. That was a story that resonated with me as an actor and producer.”
Bennett co-produces with Christina Weiss Lurie (part owner of the Philadelphia Eagles) and Joe Wright (acclaimed director of “Pride & Prejudice,” “Atonement” and “Darkest Hour”), who recently executive produced Bennett’s psychological thriller “Swallow” (2019) and directed her in the musical romance “Cyrano” (2021).
“It really is a small miracle that we could make the film at all,” Bennett said. “It was such a bumpy road getting it made. Christina Lurie, my producing partner, had the rights for eight years before we even intersected.”
Now, Wright’s former assistant director Thomas Napper (BAFTA nominee “Jawbone”) directs “Widow Clicquot,” collaborating with music composer Bryce Dessner of the band The National for a dreamlike atmosphere.
“The film is so atmospheric and really draws you in with the musical tones and it has a very tactile feel to it, which is really enhanced by Bryce’s score I think,” Bennett said. “Working with Thomas was very fortunate. He has a shorthand with Joe as producer. … Working with Thomas, he’s so friendly, he really embraced this woman’s story, he jumped on fairly late in production and we were so lucky to have a man with such a sensitive point of view.”
Based on Tilar J. Mazzeo’s book “The Widow Clicquot,” the screenplay is adapted by Christopher Monger (“Liz & Dick”) and Erin Dignam (former professional tennis player who qualified at Wimbledon). The script doesn’t follow a straightforward narrative structure, instead jumping between flashbacks and present day to simultaneously show her interacting with her then-living husband and then grappling with his death, all deliriously intercut.
“It probably would have made a fantastic miniseries,” Bennett said. “It started with a script that was incredibly ambitious. We really wanted to boil it down to it’s essence, we had to become inventive, we made the production smaller, it was scrappy and we had to embrace some of the challenges that go along with making a film right now, especially a historical period drama starring a woman all set on location in France made independently.”
It’s the latest role for Bennett after co-starring with Denzel Washington in Antoine Fuqua’s “The Equalizer” (2014) and Fuqua’s remake of “The Magnificent Seven” (2016), as well as her aforementioned role with Emily Blunt in Tate Taylor’s “The Girl on the Train” (2016) and Danielle Deadwyler in Chinonye Chukwu’s “Till” (2022).
Of course, the film that everyone is talking about this week is Ron Howard’s “Hillbilly Elegy” (2020), in which she played the sister of author J.D. Vance, who just accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination on a ticket with former President Donald Trump. Bennett didn’t share her thoughts on Vance’s political record, but rather commented on an astonishing turn of events that neither she, nor her co-stars Glenn Close and Amy Adams could have predicted.
“It’s been wild,” Bennett said. “I’ve received a lot of calls from family and friends. It’s a wild revelation.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Haley Bennett about 'Widow Clicquot' (Part 2) Hear our full conversation in the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Microphone Check' at E Street Cinema (Part 1) Hip-hop recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, but who really created the genre?
The new documentary “Microphone Check: The Hidden History of Hip-Hop” makes its D.C. premiere at the Landmark E Street Cinema downtown from July 19 through July 26.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions about hip-hop,” Director Tariq Nasheed told WTOP. “One of the biggest misconceptions is that we got hip-hop culture from Caribbean culture and all of these other different cultures. It came from the foundation of Black American culture in America cultivated in the Bronx.”
However, it wasn’t just birthed in a geographical place, it was birthed by the actual people living there.
“When people talk about hip-hop being born in the Bronx, they don’t humanize it,” Nasheed said. “They make it seem like it just fell out of a building and came up out of the concrete and slithered up out of the sewer. No, it came from people — so who were the people? We wanted to get into who the people were.”
The filmmaker interviews unsung heroes that influenced the culture, including breakdancers.
“Nobody ever gets into the first breakdancer, a gentleman by the name of Trixie, who’s in the movie,” Nasheed said. “His mother was an African ballet dancer and he wanted to be a tap dancer, but he didn’t have any money, so he created his own dances. We have another gentleman featured in the film who was an early breakdancer named Sasa. He was double jointed and would do these weird moves. That’s how a lot of these breakdance moves came.”
The documentary also explores the influence of graffiti artists on hip-hop culture.
“Modern graffiti was started in the 1960s by a brother named Cornbread out of Philadelphia,” Nasheed said. “He was the first person to use a whole city landscape as his canvas, and then that caught on in New York, so we’re telling everybody’s stories, he’s in the film by the way, so that’s what we wanted to talk about, those stories.”
Of course, the film interviews the pioneering emcees from Melle Mel to Grandmaster Caz.
“We have one of the first people to host a hip-hop party and rhyme at a hip-hop party, that’s Coke La Rock, he’s the first hip-hop emcee,” Nasheed outlined. “We have the first female hip-hop emcee, a sister by the name of Sha-Rock, so we’ve got a lot of the pioneers in the story to tell their story firsthand. No one was before these pioneers.”
He said it was important to flesh out the entire history of the ’70s rather than jumping ahead.
“A lot of times when people do hip-hop documentaries, they’ll touch on Kool Herc’s party in 1973, then they’ll skip all the way to the ’90s to Biggie and Tupac,” Nasheed said. “We wanted to focus on the ’70s. … Somebody who’s overlooked all the time is DJ Hollywood. … Many people consider him a disco rapper DJ, but he influenced the Melle Mels and The Sugarhill Gang — Big Bank Hank basically was a carbon copy of DJ Hollywood.”
Still, when it comes to actual recording, the first official hip-hop record is pretty unanimous.
“The first technical hip-hop record would be The Sugarhill Gang ‘Rapper’s Delight’ record [in 1979],” Nasheed said. “Now, there were records where people were rapping going back all the way to the 1960s. There was a record by a gentleman by the name of Pigmeat Markham, he was a comedian and did a record called ‘Here Comes the Judge.’ He was rapping over a funk beat in 1968 and many other rappers were influenced by that particular record.”
Nasheed wanted to make the documentary’s filmmaking style itself as hip-hop as possible.
“I was real meticulous about the way we shot the film,” Nasheed said. “We have a lot of very cool graphics, we have a lot of stock footage, a lot of unseen footage. We really made everything fast, everything is hitting you very quickly. The movie is two hours and 20 minutes, but it goes by so fast, you’re getting hit with so much stuff that you don’t even notice it. Everything is shot in 4K, 5K, so we made sure the visuals are extremely crisp.”
The film also draws parallels between today’s Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake battle and the first rap beef ever between Busy Bee vs. Kool Moe Dee. Between past and present, who does Nasheed consider to be the genre’s G. O. A. T.?
“I would say Rakim,” Nasheed said. “Rakim changed the whole trajectory of hip hop, changed everybody’s style, made everybody step their pen game up, made everybody change their cadence, made everybody change their flow. That brother embodied every element of hip hop, phenomenal, phenomenal guy. I don’t think anybody has impacted modern rap and hip hop the way that Rakim did with his cadence and style. He really changed the game.”
“Microphone Check” is just the latest creative effort by Nasheed, who has become something of a Renaissance man across multiple disciplines, working as a fashion designer, penning The New York Times bestseller “The Art of Mackin’,” and even producing narrative feature films like Spike Lee’s “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” (2014).
“I try to mix it up,” Nasheed. “You’ve got to these days!”
Find specific showtimes here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Microphone Check' at E Street Cinema (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews The Pointer Sisters at MGM National Harbor (Part 1) D.C. music fans are so excited — and we just can’t hide it — for a triple dose of nostalgia next week.
The Pointer Sisters will join The Commodores and The Spinners for a trio of legendary groups at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on July 26.
“This is the first time I’ve worked with both groups at the same time,” Ruth Pointer told WTOP. “The Commodores were special because from what I understand they were all college friends, Lionel Richie was dominant in the group and, of course, we went on to do Lionel’s first solo tour with him, which was probably the best tour we ever did. … The Spinners have so many (hits), they’ve always been one of my favorites, ‘I’ll Be Around,’ that’s one of my favorites.”
Pointer is the last surviving founding member, now performing with her daughter Issa and granddaughter Sedako.
“I’m singing with my daughter and my granddaughter on stage now. I’ve lost all of my sisters,” Pointer said. “I have to say we have some of the greatest fans in the world that are such loyalists that I’m in awe when I walk on stage and see people sitting in the audience and I’m like, ‘Wow, they still come. They still come.'”
Born in Oakland, California, in 1946, Ruth grew up constantly singing with her sisters June, Bonnie and Anita.
“We would sing so much that people would get annoyed,” Pointer said. “We would sing cartoon songs, we would sing commercials. I remember one time, all of us were in the car together and we probably had a friend with us and we were singing along with some stupid commercial on the radio and they were like, ‘Geez, damn, do you guys just sing everything?” And I’m like, ‘Well, we just enjoy music, so we just sing along.'”
The Pointer Sisters initially launched as a duo, then a trio, before Ruth joined in 1972 to complete the quartet.
“We started as a quartet singing in my dad’s church in the very beginning,” Pointer said. “Life comes in and takes us in our separate directions. I was married and had a couple kids, Anita got married and had one child, so Bonnie and June formed the two of them together in the 60s, Anita joined them after that and then I came in last.”
In 1973, the four sisters released their self-titled debut album, while their second album “That’s a Plenty” (1974) delivered the country crossover hit “Fairytale,” which won the Grammy for best country vocal performance.
“Trust me, it was as much a surprise to us as it was to everybody else,” Pointer said. “We’ve always had country roots because my parents are from Arkansas in the South and my grandparents were from Tennessee, so we’ve always been sort of drawn to country music and never really wanted to differentiate between what’s country and what’s not or whatever. If it’s a cute song, it’s a cute song!”
In 1976, they earned two more Grammy nominations for “How Long (Betcha’ Got a Chick on the Side)” and “Live Your Life Before You Die,” while their 1978 album “Energy” spit hits like “Fire” and “Happiness.” Their seventh studio album “Special Things” (1980) earned their fourth Grammy nomination for the song “He’s So Shy.”
Their eighth studio album “Black & White” (1981) earned two more Grammy nods, including best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocal for the album itself, then best pop performance by a duo or group with vocal for the song “Slow Hand,” which was covered the following year by country legend Conway Twitty.
“Being a girl, me and my sisters talked about that because we had been in some relationships that seemed to just take off and go really fast,” Pointer said. “Let’s just slow it down, OK? That’s how that song spoke to us. We were like, ‘Hey, let’s just slow it down, let’s have a slow hand, just slow, slow. Slow is better.'”
Their ninth album “So Excited!” (1982) was their most iconic, thanks to a high-energy title track with a Grammy-nominated music video. It’s since been referenced all over pop culture from Elizabeth Berkley quoting it in a scary moment of “Saved by the Bell” to Eddie Murphy dancing to it in a workout montage in “The Nutty Professor.”
“Me and my sisters wrote that along with Trevor Lawrence,” Pointer said. “We had a lot of energy and were so excited about our new journey in the music industry. He said, ‘What would you think if you were planning to go out on a weekend? How would you describe your feeling?’ We said we’d say, ‘I’m so excited!’ That’s what everybody says, so we thought ‘a phrase people use all the time and when they use it, they’ll think of The Pointer Sisters!'”
Their 10th studio album “Break Out” (1983) delivered two Grammy-winning hits with “Jump (For My Love)” and “Automatic,” not to mention the chart-climbing hit “Neutron Dance” for the “Beverly Hills Cop” movie (1984) soundtrack. They followed up with yet another Grammy nomination for their 11th studio album “Contact” (1985).
In 1994, The Pointer Sisters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, followed by their induction into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2005.
Sadly, June Pointer died in 2006, Bonnie Pointer died in 2020 and Anita Pointer died in 2022, leaving Ruth to compete alone in the sixth season of “The Masked Singer” dressed up as a cupcake.
“It was bittersweet for me because Anita and I were supposed to do it together, we were supposed to be two cupcakes and do a different song, ‘It Takes Two,'” Pointer said. “We had just come from a fitting for our costumes. … She went to the phone for a message from her doctor who told her she had Stage IV lung cancer and that changed everything. … I said, ‘Look Anita, I can either not do this … or I can go ahead.’ … She said, ‘Please do it.'”
Now, the legacy continues with Ruth’s daughter and granddaughter, cementing the group’s legacy.
“I don’t even count the hits, I just know we’ve been in this business for 50 years and we have made a major contribution to television as well as music,” Pointer said. “I’m very proud of our legacy and if they accept us in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, yay; but if they don’t, I know what I’ve done and I’m very proud of what I’ve done.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Patton Oswalt at The Lyric in Baltimore (Part 1) Virginia-native comedian Patton Oswalt returns home to perform live at The Lyric in Baltimore, Maryland, on Friday.
He admits that it’s a tricky time to craft standup material after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
“I’m sure I’ll be talking about it,” Oswalt told WTOP. “I don’t how I’ll talk about it yet, but you can’t not. I feel like at this point if you don’t talk about it you look like you’re insane. … I don’t have anything in my head yet, but I have until Friday to get my head together on it, so I’m sure I’ll have an angle on it by then. We’ll see.”
Aside from the chaotic political elephant in the room, what else will Oswalt be talking about in his routine?
“I hate to sound too general, but just life as I’m living it in a very crazed, accelerationist world, how I’m trying to stay funny and sane, which I think most people are trying to do, I just happen to be funnier because I’ve been doing this for so long,” Oswalt said.
It’s OK if he sounds too “general” because he was named after one of the most famous American generals ever. Born the son of a U.S. Marine Corps officer in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1969, Oswalt was named after World War II General George Patton, a year before Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning movie script for “Patton” (1970).
“I think he was writing when I was being born, oh my goodness, I think he was writing that script — it’s all coming together!” Oswalt said. “My birth manifested the Oscar that (actor George C. Scott) turned down — think about that! ‘You beautiful bastard, I read your book!’ — and a baby is born.”
As a military brat, Oswalt moved with his family from Ohio to California before finally settling back in Sterling, Virginia. He graduated from Broad Run High School in Ashburn in 1987 before earning a B.A. in English from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, which gave him an honorary doctorate last year.
His early standup acts roasted legendary NBC Washington and WJLA movie critic (and my great friend) Arch Campbell.
“I have since met him and love him,” Oswalt said. “There is a very grudging affection for him.”
Oswalt said he remembers Campbell trashing Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and “The Road Warrior.”
“He gave me something to rebel against,” Oswalt said. “He was so himself that he gave me something to be like, ‘No, this guy is wrong!’ Tell him that I am happy that he was a worthy foe when you go on his podcast. I love Arch.”
Soon, Oswalt made his way west to San Francisco, California, to take his standup career to the next level.
“The comedy scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s on the East Coast was starting to collapse a little bit,” Oswalt said. “The boom was over and I needed to go to a city where I could live cheap and get a lot of sets to get good.”
In the early 90s, Oswalt said he lived cheap in San Francisco, eating 75-cent burritos: “A couple of those would keep you alive, and then you would just go do sets every night, it was great.”
Upon moving to L.A., he made his acting debut in “The Couch” episode of “Seinfeld” (1994), playing a video store clerk as George Costanza (Jason Alexander) tried to rent “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” instead of reading the book.
“It was my first ever television acting gig and I was so nervous. [Alexander] could see how nervous I was and right before they said, ‘Action!,’ he leaned into me and said, ‘It’s not too late to be fired, Patton,’ and it made me laugh so hard that it got rid of all of my tension,” Oswalt said. “I kind of owe a big leap in my career to that guy. He was very nice and very instinctive as a fellow actor.”
After that, Oswalt began writing for the hit sketch-comedy series “MADtv” before joining the sitcom cast of “The King of Queens” (1998-2007), playing Kevin James’ nerdy friend Spence Olchin.
“He was really fun,” Oswalt said. “I got to do a lot of stuff with Jerry Stiller. I got to do a lot of plots where I fall in love with a mascot at an amusement park, or I date a gay guy to try to boost my confidence — I just want him to hit on me so I can turn him down, but he never hits on me, then I start pursuing him.”
The show allowed an outlet for him to act in “edgier stories,” he said.
“It was a very good nine years where I basically got paid to learn how to act better,” Oswalt said.
He next narrated “The Goldbergs” (2013-2023) similar to Daniel Stern’s voiceover on “The Wonder Years.”
“I had been doing so much narration and voiceover at that point that I just decided to make it my own voice,” Oswalt said. “They started the show focused on the kids, then they realized the parents were crazier. … Wendi McLendon-Covey and her whole overprotective Philly helicopter mom in the ’80s was truly amazing. Getting to watch that show while I narrated it was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is a nice gig. I’m not complaining about this.'”
Still, his voice is best known as the hero of Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated film “Ratatouille” (2007), voicing the aspiring rat chef Remy, who has to please a snobby food critic voiced by Peter O’Toole (“Lawrence of Arabia”).
“I remember I was at Pixar one day and they had just recorded Peter O’Toole,” Oswalt said. “They got his audio in and the animators were listening to it, they hadn’t animated it yet, and they were rubbing their hands together like, ‘These are the Glengarry leads of animation.’ … It’s a fantastic film right up there with ‘Up,’ saying something about life, creativity and how to live with both. It’s very entertaining but way deeper than you think it is.”
Along the way, Oswalt has of course cranked out tons of standup comedy, from his 1996 HBO special to his third comedy album recorded at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium to air on Comedy Central.
So far, seven of his comedy albums have been nominated for Grammys: “My Weakness is Strong” (2010), “Finest Hour” (2012), “Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time” (2015), “Talking for Clapping” (2017), “Annihilation” (2019), “I Love Everything” (2021) and “We All Scream” (2023). He won for “Talking for Clapping” on Netflix.
“The one that I think is my strongest is ‘Annihilation,'” Oswalt said. “‘Talking But Clapping’ was a weird time doing that. My wife had just passed away, the whole year was very, very strange, it was a surreal time, but if you’re talking about where did I dig the deepest but still got laughs, I would say ‘Annihilation’ is the one I’m most proud of.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews week 2 of the Capital Fringe Fest (Part 1) The Capital Fringe Festival is back in action across D.C. giving area artists a chance to shine.
If you’re looking for some fun events, what are some of the best things to do in week 2?
“Capital Fringe is 19 years old this year — this is our last teenage year,” festival director Julianne Brienza told WTOP.
“It is one of the only opportunities we have in the nation’s capital for anybody to do a show about anything that they want, with no gatekeeping. You can apply to do a show at the Fringe Festival; the caveat is that it needs to be between 50 to 75 minutes. … It’s not curated, it’s not juried, it’s freedom for the artists to do what they want.”
This year’s festival features 36 productions with 134 individual performances, including 59 in its second week.
This year’s theme is “happiness,” with three new theaters called “Laughter,” “Bliss” and “Delirium,” respectively transformed out of vacant T-Mobile, Talbots and Gap stores near Dupont Circle and Farragut Square.
“We’ve been exploring what it’s like to be happy in the nation’s capital,” Brienza said.
“It’s a hard time to be a human on the planet. There was recently that survey that came out that D.C. was one of the loneliness cities in the United States of America. D.C. gets a bad rap all the time in the press for some legitimate reasons and some not-so-legitimate reasons, so I said, ‘Let’s explore if people are happy here.'”
For starters, check out the magic show “Seven Wonders” at the Laughter venue.
“If you’re just looking for a good time and you don’t want to think, it sounds like you might want to go to a magic show,” Brienza said. “The artist’s name is Ryan Phillips. They have shows running through the closing day of the festival, but it’s a small theater, so if you’re into it, he actually already has a sold-out show, so get on that one.”
You can also break out your detective skills for “Who Did It?” at Theater J.
“An improvised murder mystery … another feel-good time, maybe using your brain a little bit,” Brienza said. “That space has 236 seats and this group was in the festival last year and they did sell out, so get on it if you want to.”
Fans of classic plays can see new performance of “Medea” at the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center (EDCJCC).
“If you’re looking for something a little more intellectual or thinking about our time, we do have a showing of ‘Medea’ by Songs of the Goat,” Brienza said. “‘Madea’ is an ancient Greek play by Euripides. It has a really solid cast and it should be a great show if you’re into that. There’s a lot of murder, so take that with a grain of salt.”
Last but not least, dance enthusiasts don’t want to miss Flamencodanza at the EDCJCC.
“If you’re into flamenco dancing, we have an entire show from a group from Spain that is just here for the Capital Fringe Festival,” Brienza said. “They’re the only show in the festival that has ‘flamenco’ in their name, so look that up if you’re into flamenco dancing. If you’re into it, it’s going to be a real treat for you, and if you’re not, it’s going to be something different for you.”
Artists receive 70% of the ticket revenue. Brienza said the festival has given back $2.5 million to creatives since its inception.
“D.C. is a town that is known for theater,” Brienza said.
“Eighty-three percent of our participants live right here in the DMV and they’re theater artists and this is their outlet to do their shows at a low cost in a venue that sort of makes sense for them. We have lost so many black box theaters, so having this type of opportunity only enriches the full ecosystem, not just of the theater community but of the entire arts community here in the nation’s capital.”
See the full Fringe Fest lineup here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews PBS Short Film Fest (Part 1) Get ready for a collection of the best short films from PBS member stations all across the country.
The PBS Short Film Festival kicks off on Monday and runs through July 26 on all digital platforms.
“We started back in 2012 as an effort to celebrate and highlight independent filmmakers and independent filmmaking,” PBS Director of Editorial and Brand Engagement Taryn Jackson told WTOP. “We at PBS have always done a great job of amplifying the voices of filmmakers, especially independent filmmakers, but we didn’t do it in a festival. … I think we were onto something because now we are in year 13.”
This year’s overarching theme is “Story Time” with 15 films divided into four categories.
“We wanted to take it back and just celebrate the art of short-form storytelling,” Jackson said. “It is very different than other types of storytelling to tell a complete and impactful story between eight and 12 minutes. There’s an art form to that, so we wanted to celebrate that this year.”
The “Environment” category features the standout film “Boca Chica” by Reel South.
“It’s talking about unrestricted access to beaches and how that’s a public right in Texas, but for the little-known, magical and untamed stretch of beach called Boca Chica that is curtailed when SpaceX takes flight,” Jackson said. “This film uncovers the mesmerizing beauty of this fragile coastline.”
The “Family” category includes “The Ballad of Mae Rose” by Louisiana Public Broadcasting.
“This is our first ever musical that is going to be presented in the PBS Short Film Festival,” Jackson said. “I’m so excited to see what viewers think about this film, because it’s a creative musical but it portrays a serious story in a new way. After Edwin Gray loses his first wife, he finds himself at the funeral of his child, Rose Mae, who despite suspicion, falls prey to a plague, so it’s a really interesting kind of whodunnit type of musical.”
The “Heroes” category includes “Saving Super Man” by Illinois Public Media.
“This is our first time presenting a ‘Heroes’ category, so I’m really excited,” Jackson said. “This is about a man living in Chicago, he’s 57 years old, he is on the Autism spectrum and his actual living quarters and his living situation is being threatened, so this story talks about how the town comes together as a community to help save where he lives. This story just really tugs at the heart strings and I think people are really going to enjoy it.”
Finally, the “Society” category includes “Underground” by the Independent Television Service.
“This film covers what happens a lot of times in the New York City subways,” Jackson said. “This is about a heavy topic of harassment and assault. There’s not a lot of space and everyone’s public space is invaded when you are on a subway system, so this is about how so many crimes can take place in broad daylight right in the eyes of so many people, but they don’t even notice it because everyone is so crammed into a subway train.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews PBS Short Film Fest (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley enjoys 'Destination Domino' at the National Building Museum (Part 1) Her domino designs were featured in the acclaimed documentary “Lily Topples the World” (2021) and her personal YouTube channel Hevesh5 has over 1.8 billion views and four million subscribers.
This week, Lily Hevesh hosts “Destination Domino” at the National Building Museum in D.C. now through Saturday.
“I started building dominoes when I was nine years old and at this point it’s been 15 years,” Hevesh told WTOP. “It’s really a great partnership because we’re all about building, designing and toppling, and the museum is literally called the National Building Museum.”
The Boston native arrived in D.C. a week ago, bringing with her 130,000 dominoes in color-coded plastic cases. She prefers to use her own brand of dominoes called H5, which she said are perfect for building objects and designing topple sequences.
“Typical dominoes usually have dots and they’re more rounded, so they’re not good for the building of structures,” Hevesh said.
“H5 domino creations are more precise, so they’re perfect 2-by-1 ratios and every single domino is alike, so you can build them super tall, they come in all different colors, no dots, and we have a special surface texture so when they topple over they’re not gonna slide out like a lot of game dominoes will.”
For the past week, she and her team of fellow YouTube domino wizards have been gradually building elaborate designs on a special dance-floor material to keep them steady.
“We need somewhat of a hard, flat surface,” Hevesh said. “Carpet isn’t good for building dominoes, it needs to be really hard, so underneath we have these tiles, they’re hard surfaces like puzzle pieces, then we lay out the dance-floor surface on top and let it sit for a couple of days so the air bubbles can go away and we can really flatten it.”
On one side of the museum is a giant floor design that will topple on Saturday at 5 p.m.
“We’re doing 100,000 pieces,” Hevesh said.
“In the center we’re going to make a giant spiral that is going to go outwards in a whole bunch of colors, we have the D.C. skyline, we have the National Building Museum built in dominoes. … You’ll see a giant mosaic of the Mona Lisa, it’s gonna all come crashing down. There’s a row of dominoes on the top that will trigger each line, so it’ll all just crumble like cascading waves, mostly at once.”
On the other side of the museum is a tall domino tower hoping to break the world record.
“The National Building Museum is the perfect place to build this tower because no other building is high enough,” Hevesh said.
“This one will be about 8,000 dominoes and roughly 34 feet if we can break the record. We’re up on scissor lifts and it’s a little difficult because you don’t know if the dominoes are going to be leaning or if there’s airflow in here that can knock it down by accident, but we do have time to rebuild it multiple times if needed.”
Meanwhile, kids are encouraged to try their hand at their own domino creations.
Philadelphia resident Gregory Wikoff brought his domino-obsessed son, Charles.
“It was on his list of things to do, so we combined it with an Orioles game last night and a trip to the National Building Museum today,” Wikoff said.
“He’s never been all that interested in sports. … He’s kind of a domino-obsessed kid plus a budding entrepreneur. He’s always building stuff around our house in our dining room, crazy things, videotapes them, he’s got a YouTube channel, so he’s in his element here. … I’ve never seen him this happy.”
Young Charles said it was Hevesh who inspired him to pursue dominoes in the first place.
“She’s what got me into dominoes,” Charles said. “Someday, I’m gonna be working on something like the amazing thing they’re working on back there.”
Northern Virginia residents Mechelle and Ricky Allen brought their grandkids down from New Jersey.
“I run in the annual Cherry Blossom 10-miler and this is where we come to pick up our packets, so I knew this was here and I knew my grandson loves to build stuff, so I figured, why not take them here?” Ricky said. “I love building, so coming here, yeah, it’s for the kids, but I wanted to come myself. I wanted to be here myself. I love architecture.”
“All of the colors and the different pieces that the kids can manipulate,” Mechelle said. “They see something already made and they find it fascinating, so they run over to their dominoes or Legos and said, ‘I can do that!'”
Turns out, they also happen to be huge fans of WTOP.
“WTOP is our favorite station, it’s the place you want to be for Traffic and Weather on the 8’s,” Mechelle said.
“You find a lane and you stick with it,'” Ricky said, quoting the WTOP Traffic Center.
Together, we invented a brand new catchphrase.
“Traffic, Weather and Dominoes on the 8’s!” they joked.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Dandelion' (Part 1) It was an Audience Award nominee at the South by Southwest Film Festival back in March.
This Friday, the IFC indie music drama “Dandelion” opens in select theaters in the D.C. area.
The film follows a struggling singer/songwriter named Theresa (a.k.a. Dandelion), who leaves Cincinnati to play a music gig at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. There, she falls in love with a charming musician named Casey (Thomas Doherty), writing songs together in the hopes of finding romantic and creative fulfillment.
We’ve known that KiKi Layne could sing since “If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018), Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to his Best Picture masterpiece “Moonlight” (2016). However, when Dandelion bursts into song to Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy” in the opening scene, you’ll say, “I didn’t know KiKi could sing like that!”
Layne also creates romantic sparks with Doherty (“Gossip Girl”), writing lyrics on each other’s arms and walking through a field with their hands tenderly touching, and conflict with Melanie Nicholls-King (“The Wire”), who plays her ailing mother sitting around watching soap operas all day ready to argue with her starving-artist daughter.
“I sing every day,” Dandelion defiantly says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s at a hotel or if it’s at a bar, I’m singing!”
“There’s nothing cute about a 40-something Cincinnati troubadour,” her mom says. “Why not enjoy your life?”
“I’m never going to enjoy life because I am wasting it away taking care of you,” she replies.
It’s one of the more powerful dialogue exchanges in a script by writer/director Nicole Riegel (“Holler”), but other lines feel forced (I doubt anyone would actually say, “Unless insurance is gonna cover the gig economy”). No matter, this is a film that leans less on its screenplay and more on its impressive music sequences, composed by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the band The National (their best rhymes come in “The Ghost of Cincinnati”).
With framing and sound design, Riegel smartly shows Dandelion’s frustration on the hotel-bar stage, hearing people talking and laughing in the background, paving the way for a callback comeuppance later. The evolution recalls Diane Keaton in “Annie Hall” (1977), singing “It Had to Be You” with dishes crashing, phones ringing and the camera obscured by a pillar, compared to her polished performance of “Seems Like Old Times” later in the film.
Working with cinematographer Lauren Guiteras, Riegel puts together beautiful compositions in extreme wideshots of the massive natural beauty of the Badlands, making Dandelion look like a tiny speck. They also deliver a wonderful montage of images around the city of Cincinnati, several montages driving cross country with her car silhouetted against landscapes, even rapid-fire memories flashing in her head as she strums faster and faster to forget them.
Again, the visuals are more inventive than the plot, but you could say the same about Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider” (1969). This is a similar meditation of freedom, love and creativity out on the road. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s worth checking out if you enjoyed John Carney’s “Once” (2007) and Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” (2020). In the end, it’s a flowery film that celebrates artistry: “Chasing dreams is hard. … It’s hard to quit, too.”
“Dandelion” is now playing in D.C. (Regal Gallery Place Stadium 14), Maryland (AMC Rio Cinemas 18 in Gaithersburg, Regal Majestic 20 in Silver Spring, Regal Royale 14 in Hyattsville, Regal Valley Mall 16 in Hagerstown) and Virginia (AMC Hoffman 22 in Alexandria, Regal Fredericksburg 15, Regal Manassas 14 and AMC Potomac Mills 18 in Woodbridge).
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Star Wars' at Wolf Trap (Part 1) Nothing beats watching a classic movie outdoors with live accompaniment by the National Symphony Orchestra.
This Saturday night, the NSO dazzles Wolf Trap with “Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope,” George Lucas’ original brainchild that brought us more iconic characters than any single film with Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2 and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“These films were never meant to be a multibillion-dollar franchise,” conductor Emil de Cou told WTOP. “Before it had the ‘New Hope’ title, it was just supposed to be a one-off film. If you look at it, it has a beginning, middle and end. They conquer the bad guys and the finish could be the end of the whole thing, then of course it went on to great sequels and everything. But when you watch it, just try to imagine that this is separate, this is by itself.”
Before the performance, join National Air and Space Museum curator Margaret A. Weitekamp on the Farmhouse Lawn (to the left of the main gate) at 7 p.m. for a preshow talk about the franchise’s wide-ranging influence.
“In a beautiful national park like Wolf Trap, you’re there with the trees and the birds and the smells; you can bring wine, you can bring snacks,” de Cou said. “People are always so excited about ‘Star Wars,’ you always see people dressed in costumes from the show and there’s always Stormtroopers, it’s like a real event.”
At 8 p.m., audiences will head into the Filene Center to watch the classic feature film projected in high-definition on giant screens both in-house and on the lawn, all accompanied by the music of a live symphony orchestra.
“You get the greatest sound system in the world with the National Symphony Orchestra,” de Cou said. “You have screens facing the lawn and above the orchestra, bigger than any IMAX screen, it’s absolutely massive. You are able to hear the music the way that John Williams imagined it in his head and how he heard it in the studio when they recorded it … to hear the first ‘Star Wars’ film with an 85-piece orchestra playing all out.”
The music won composer John Williams his third of five career Oscars for Best Original Score.
“An amazing, totally inspired score, one of the greatest things ever put on paper,” de Cou said. “John Williams writes this like a Wagner opera. … This was the height of a genre of space operas where it’s a story told on such a huge canvas, that has violence, love and all these epic things that you’d find in any great opera of the 19th century, but it’s turned into a science-fiction opera. John Williams is the first composer to treat the music that way.”
It starts with the title bursting on screen to kick off the scrolling prologue text.
“It starts and you get the Fox fanfare with the famous logo and everything, then you get a pause … then that one chord in B-flat-major, the way he scores it, everybody knows what it is, it’s the opening of ‘Star Wars,'” de Cou said. “You get these words on the screen as big as can be and the audience always erupts and goes insane. It’s so thrilling. You couldn’t have a better opening to a concert than the audience screaming to the opening chord.”
You’ll also hear the wailing Jedi theme as Luke Skywalker gazes out at a double sunset.
“That is a great scene because he’s with his uncle and aunt, who have raised him,” de Cou said. “He doesn’t want to be a farmer like his uncle … but he really has this burning desire to go out for an adventure. He goes out and looks at this double (sun) in this bleak, but beautiful, planet and you hear the very first iterations of ‘Theme of the Force’ or ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Theme.’ It’s a minor key and it’s very mournful sounding, but it’s also very inspiring.”
One of the most underrated pieces remains the ethereal “Princess Leia’s Theme.”
“This theme presents Princess Leia as a character because in the other two films, it becomes both her theme and a love theme between her and Han Solo,” de Cou said. “It’s usually high woodwinds like flute, oboe or clarinet playing in a very tender, quiet way. He’ll bring it back later during the fight scenes when she’s doing something heroic, you’ll hear her theme thrown into this big wash of tumult, then it goes back to something else.”
Ironically, the “Imperial March” didn’t arrive until the sequel “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980).
“Darth Vader doesn’t have a theme yet, but it’s always a unison note in a menacing, minor key,” de Cou said. “You get Darth Vader’s theme in the next film, (but here) you get the same marshal rhythm that’s very sinister and evil.”
Add it all up and you get the greatest movie score ever written, according to the American Film Institute.
“I’ve conducted this several times and I’ve spent maybe 50 hours just in the past two months with this movie — the score is very marked up with ink everywhere — and when I get to the end, I’m just in awe,” de Cou said. “Sometimes the hair on my arms goes up. … It never loses the initial power that he wrote in 1977. It just gets better.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the 25th anniversary of 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' (Part 1) It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” premiered on American TV in 1999.
Hosted by the late great Regis Philbin, the game show’s music and catchphrases instantly entered our pop culture lexicon, from Oscar-winning movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008) to acclaimed TV miniseries like “Quiz” (2020) starring Matthew Macfadyen (“Succession”) about the real-life cheating scandal from the British version.
Now, after years of daytime syndication hosted by Meredith Vieira, Cedric the Entertainer, Terry Crews and Chris Harrison, the beloved game show finally returns to primetime television this Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC and Hulu. Jimmy Kimmel returns to host the 25th anniversary just like he did the 20th anniversary back in 2020.
“We’ve got two celebrity contestants in the hot seat working to win big money for charity,” Kimmel says in the trailer. “It’s the most dramatic hour of three people sitting on stools in the history of American television.”
That’s right, this season’s contestants will be celebrity pairs teaming up to raise money for their charity of choice, including Wednesday’s episode with Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell (“All That,” “Kenan & Kel,” “Good Burger”).
“We make a good team because we’ve known each other for a long time,” Mitchell said.
“(We’ve teamed) all our lives,” Thompson said. “It feels like a comfortable shoe.”
“Don’t say the ‘f’ word, which is ‘final answer,'” Mitchell said.
The second celebrity pairing on Wednesday’s premiere will be John Mulaney and Nick Kroll.
“I’m nervous that I’ll look stupid on national television,” Kroll said.
“We both know what we don’t know,” Mulaney said.
Here’s the full list of celebrity pairings this season:
- Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell
- John Mulaney and Nick Kroll
- Rosie O’Donnell and Lisa Ann Walter
- John Stamos and Dave Coulier
- Ray Romano and Brad Garrett
- Zach Braff and Donald Faison
- Lil Dicky and GaTa
- Kelly Osbourne and Jack Osbourne
- Ike Barinholtz and Alan Barinholtz
- Sebastian Maniscalco and Omar J. Dorsey
- Nicole Byer and Sasheer Zamata
- Sophia Bush and Alex Edelman
- Gillian Jacobs and Danny Pudi
- Natasha Leggero and Jason Ritter
- Ron Funches and Reggie Watts
- Jeff Ross and “Cousin Sal” Iacono
Which lifelines might we see this season? Phone a friend? 50/50? Poll the audience? During the pandemic, a new lifeline was created called “Ask the Host” when crowds weren’t allowed indoors, but who knows if it’ll stick.
Either way, we’ll never forget the first $1 million winner confidently calling his father to brag.
“Uh, hi, Dad, uh, I don’t really need your help, I just wanted to let you know that I’m gonna win the million dollars,” John Carpenter said.
“Well,” Regis replied. “My gosh, what can I say except … this is the final answer heard all around the world: he’s won a million dollars!”
“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC and streaming on Hulu.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Sam Hunt at Jiffy Lube Live (Part 1) Few country music stars have crossed over in recent years more successfully than Sam Hunt.
This Friday, Hunt brings his “Locked Up Tour” to Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia, for a blend of new radio hits like “Outskirts” and career-defining tunes like “Body Like a Back Road.”
“There’ll be some new songs and some songs that have been out for a while, a ‘Montevallo’-heavy set, I would say,” Hunt told WTOP. “We’re really still working out the set. We’ve only played three shows so far this summer with the set, so we’re still tweaking and changing, but we’ll kind of do that as we go. … I think it’s coming together.”
Born in Georgia in 1984, Hunt grew up wanting to be a professional football player as a Wendy’s High School Heisman nominee who played quarterback at Middle Tennessee State, then transferred to the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He even tried out for the Kansas City Chiefs before shifting gears to a music career.
“I was dabbling with the guitar in college, just tinkering around like a lot of college kids do, and I really fell in love with the writing side of it,” Hunt said. “I was using it as an outlet to express whatever feelings I was feeling and tell some stories and it was sort of like a musical journal I guess, but a few years passed, I graduated from college, the real world was coming on fast and I wanted to go to Nashville and see what Music City was all about.”
Arriving in Nashville in 2008, Hunt made a living writing songs for established stars like Kenny Chesney (“Come Over”), Keith Urban (“Cop Car”), Billy Currington (“We Are Tonight”) and Reba McEntire (“Love Somebody”).
“I fell in with some talented folks and we all kind of came up together,” Hunt said. “We were all struggling songwriters and we signed these publishing deals that allowed us not to have another job, even though it didn’t pay very much, but allowed us to pay the rent and groceries and keep our time free to write as much as we could, so that’s what I did for about two and a half years and got better … and finally started catching some traction.”
In 2014, Hunt signed with MCA Nashville for his breakthrough album “Montevallo.” It delivered a string of No. 1 hits with “Leave the Night On,” “House Party” and “Take Your Time,” featuring a unique style of spoken lyrics (“I didn’t mean to bother you but …”) before shifting into melodic singing (“I couldn’t just walk by and not say hi”).
“I was just experimenting and picking on the guitar and sort of stream-of-conscious trying to talk the lyrics and just speak what the lyrics should be instead of singing over a melody and it just came out in sort of this rhythmic way,” Hunt said. “At first, I didn’t necessarily think it had any potential, I was just trying to flesh out the idea of the verse … but I started doing it in front of a couple of my writing buddies and they were like, ‘Just do that.'”
The album also featured other radio hits like “Break Up in a Small Town” and “Make You Miss Me,” earning a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album, as well as an overall Grammy nomination for Best New Artist.
“It was very special to be included in that whole deal,” Hunt said. “I’ve been around long enough to know how prestigious the Grammy Awards are in a world of lots of different award shows, so I just felt fulfilled. That first record I spent a lot of time not cutting corners, dialing in every lyric and every sound … so I was glad that somebody at the Recording Academy and those folks heard that hard work hopefully and recognized it.”
In 2017, Hunt followed up with his biggest hit “Body Like a Back Road,” earning two more Grammy nominations and winning Single Record of the Year by the Academy of Country Music. On the radio, it broke the record of Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” by spending a whopping 34 weeks atop the Hot Country Songs chart. It even crossed over onto the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 6 to rival “Despacito” as the song of the summer.
“The timing of it was just right,” Hunt said. “I think the character and the lingo and the lyric, it was a cultural moment where that fit right into where things were moving. In country, you don’t necessarily hear a song like that, a flirty song with that type of lyric and personality, so I think it was just unique and that helped it stand out.”
Three years later, “Body Like a Back Road” would eventually appear on his second studio album “Southside” (2020) with additional hits like “Kinfolks” and “Hard to Forget.” This paved the way for his 2023 Grammy nomination for Best Country Duo/Group Performance with the talented singer/songwriter Ingrid Andress on “Wishful Drinking.”
“I’m really grateful to Ingrid for making that happen,” Hunt said. “She made it really easy on me, she had the song, sent it to me and had already put her vocal on it. I happened to be at a writing retreat down in Florida so I had my producer right there with me, so when we got it and decided to be on it, it took me about an hour and 30 or 40 minutes to sing a vocal, send it back and they did the rest. Next thing you know, it was on the radio doing well.”
Now, his tour is named after his latest album and title song, “Locked Up,” in which he tries to make amends for mistakes in his personal life, including a DUI arrest in 2019 and 2021 conviction that saw him spend 48 hours in jail. This was publicly followed by a near divorce in 2022 before reconciling with his wife to become parents.
“I have been locked up before, so I was able to draw from personal experience, but I didn’t want to tell my story, I wanted to write in a way that was general and could be a metaphor for the night I messed up and did whatever stupid thing that nearly lost me my lady,” Hunt said. “You really don’t know how much your woman loves you until you put her into a position to make it hard to stay, then when she does, you know how much she cares about you.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Sugar Bear in Virginia and Maryland (Part 1) A D.C. music legend is celebrating 50 years of his beloved go-go group Experience Unlimited.
Sugar Bear brings EU to Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia this Friday, July 12, followed by a pair of shows at Bethesda Theater in Bethesda, Maryland on July 26 and 27.
“Let’s have a party, reminisce, bring your cell phones, we’ll take pictures after the show, we’re selling EU gear, some shirts, so come on and have a good time,” Sugar Bear said. “It’s a little rock ‘n roll, of course a majority go-go music, we always throw in a couple (covers), but mainly it’s all EU from the beginning to now.”
Born in North Carolina, Gregory Elliott moved with his parents to D.C. when he was just 2 years old, settling on Dix Street in Northeast D.C. before moving to Valley Green Public Housing in Congress Heights in Southeast.
“That’s where Sugar Bear was born,” Sugar Bear said. “I came up with R&B, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, James Brown, Mandrill, but when I got to Ballou High School, I was a rock head with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath. It was a whole new era of Grand Funk Railroad, Aerosmith, you name it. … I just love rock ‘n roll.”
In 1974, he formed Experience Unlimited with his classmates at Ballou High School in Southeast D.C.
“We won the talent show and got to open up for Chuck Brown,” Sugar Bear said. “Every band wanted to play The Panorama Room. … We got in but didn’t do too good; we were playing rock music and they wanted to hear party music. … Chuck pulled me aside and said, ‘Son, you’ve got talent, but you’ve gotta play what people want to hear.’ That’s all I needed, that was my light switch. That was a Friday night and the next Monday we were playing go-go.”
In 1988, EU blew up on the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s sophomore film “School Daze” (1988) as the Grammy-nominated single “Da Butt” topped the R&B charts and reached No. 35 on the overall Billboard Hot 100.
“That came from Spike Lee’s vision and Marcus Miller, one of the greatest bass players I’ve ever seen in my life,” Sugar Bear said. “I sung my little hooks like, ‘Shirley got a big old butt, Irene got a big old butt,’ stuff like that, and I even played a little bass on it. … Ever since ‘Bustin’ Loose,’ there was nothing people knew about go-go music, so when ‘Da Butt’ came out it was like, ‘Wow, this stuff is hot!’ It opened up the floodgates for our culture.”
After “Da Butt,” EU signed with Virgin Records for the album “Livin’ Large” (1989), featuring a pair of Top 10 hits on the R&B charts with “Buck Wild” and “Taste of Your Love.” They also recorded a hit collab with Salt-N-Pepa on “Shake Your Thang,” sampling both The Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing” and James Brown’s “Funky President.”
“We were blessed with that and it kept EU’s name getting bigger and bigger around the globe,” Sugar Bear said.
In 2021, “Da Butt” gained new life when actress Glenn Close danced to it live on the Oscars telecast.
“I was watching the Lakers (and) my phone started ringing back to back, all these texts: ‘Turn to Channel 7, the Oscars, Glenn Close is performing ‘Da Butt!’ I said, ‘What?’ So I did and caught it in time, amazing,” Sugar Bear said. “We were coming out of the corona pandemic. … Everybody was going through mental breakdowns, all the deaths. I think (‘Da Butt’ at the Oscars) was a bright moment in our history because it made everybody feel good again.”
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In order to view the video you must disable your ad blocker.Take a summer tiki cruise with DC views aboard Whitlow’s on WaterWhitlow’s on Wilson was known for late-night dance parties and Bloody Mary brunches the next morning.
However, owner Jon Williams was forced to close the beloved bar in Clarendon, Virginia, during the pandemic in 2021, before opening a new D.C. location in Shaw on U Street NW in 2023.
Along the way, he kept the business afloat by launching the cruise line Whitlow’s on Water earlier this year.
“A lot of the stuff that’s hanging up and the decorations (on the boat) are from the rooftop in Arlington,” Williams said, pointing to various surfboards and cocktail signs. “When the one in Arlington closed, the ‘Jacks’ approached me about capturing the tiki vibe from the rooftop there on a boat and I thought it was a wonderful idea.”
The aforementioned “Jacks” are drinking buddies turned business partners, Jack Maher and Jack Walten, who have been friends since preschool in Arlington, Virginia, before growing up to cofound Sea Suite Cruises.
“The Skipjacks, that’s us!” Maher said.
“It’s more like Captain Jack Sparrow,” Walten said.
Together, they cofounded Sea Suite Cruises in 2018 as an extension of the Potomac Paddle Club, before adding more boats in new waterfront cities. Today, Whitlow’s on Water is the crown jewel of their fleet of 17 boats that are docked across Annapolis and Baltimore in Maryland, Richmond, Virginia and, of course, D.C.
“It was a drunk idea that we had,” Maher said.
“We actually emailed it to ourselves a little north of midnight to make sure we didn’t forget. … As we started building out more boats, more locations, we had just gotten a tiki boat at the same time that Whitlow’s was closing. Jack and I, being Whitlow’s guys, we were pretty distraught on a personal level that it was closing, so we wanted to bring that to life on the water.”
“Jack and I literally went to every single mug night on the Whitlow’s tiki rooftop, which is where the idea kind of evolved from,” Walten said. “We always called our boat ‘The Beach Inside the Beltway’ and the Whitlow’s rooftop had a very similar concept, so we thought why don’t we bring our concepts together?”
Docked in Georgetown on the weekdays and Navy Yard on weekends, the boat travels the Anacostia and Potomac rivers, serving up to 500 people per day and an estimated total of 40,000 people by the end of this year.
“We actually launched right around St. Patrick’s Day this year for the cherry blossoms,” Walten said.
“Since then, the bookings have exploded, we’ve done very well on the weekends, and now even our weekdays are filling up with corporate teams, birthday parties. … This boat is also somewhat of a floating sports bar. We have TVs on here, so we’ve had a lot of watch parties, we had a good turnout for the Masters, as well as the NBA Finals, NHL Playoffs.”
Baseball fans can even get dropped off at Nats Park, turning tailgating into “sail-gating.”
“You can see Nats Park from the water, which is super cool, especially when there’s a game going on, you’ll hear the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd,” Maher said.
“A lot of times when you’re in Nats Park, you kind of forget that the river is right behind you, so it’s cool seeing the flip side. … For select Nats games, we do ‘Nats Sail-gate’ where you tailgate your way from Georgetown and get dropped off by the ballpark right before game time.”
The 50-foot Whitlow’s on Water can be booked for both group cruises and individual ticketing for guests. (Courtesy Sea Suite Cruises) Courtesy Sea Suite Cruises Whitlow’s on Water floats along the Potomac River near Georgetown. (Courtesy Sea Suite Cruises) Courtesy Sea Suite Cruises Whitlow’s on Water.(WTOP/Jason Fraley) WTOP/Jason Fraley Thanks to a partnership with Sea Suite Cruises, Whitlow’s has taken to the water.(Courtesy Sea Suite Cruises) Courtesy Sea Suite Cruises (1/4) Share This Gallery: * Share This:
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Best of all, you get to travel around D.C. without having to sit in traffic, looking up at the frustrated commuters trapped in their cars on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge as the boat casually cruises underneath.
“A lot of people don’t view the city from the river, but it’s a completely different perspective,” Williams said. “You’re going down the river and you see the people stuck in traffic. I, myself, have been driving home and looked over and have seen the boat cruises. It’s such a cool experience, it’s so laid back, you’ve got reggae music playing, you can sit at the bar, have a drink.”
The boat holds up to 47 passengers for individual tickets or private events for groups of 25 or more.
Guests can choose an all-inclusive voyage with alcohol included in the price or a standard pay-as-you-go approach with a menu that includes tiki rum punch, orange crushes, High Noon vodka hard seltzers and even their own original beer, Sea Suite Cruises Lager, brewed locally at Fair Winds Brewing Company in Lorton, Virginia.
“Everybody loves a waterfront bar, right?” Maher said.
“Being physically on the water, cruising past the monuments, particularly at golden hour with everything just shimmering, it’s really quite serene. … We might not be running the government or solving the world’s issues in different industries or what not, but we’re an outlet for people who do, to decompress and unwind. It’s a low-cost way to get on a really nice boat that’s not pretentious.”
“We really strive to provide great brews with monumental views,” Walten said. “The views from the water are just spectacular. Jack and I grew up here and I never really got on the water as a kid, but when we started the boat business, it was seeing the city from a whole new perspective with a beer in your hand. What’s better than that?”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Library of Congress' 'Summer Movies on the Lawn' (Part 1) The Library of Congress’ annual “Summer Movies on the Lawn” series returns to the nation’s capital this week.
The weekly outdoor movie series will screen classic films from the Library’s National Film Registry on Thursday evenings at sundown on the southeast lawn of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.
“We’ve been doing this since 2017,” Chief Communications Officer Roswell Encina told WTOP. “When Dr. Hayden became Librarian of Congress, she really wanted to make the Library more accessible and relatable. We have a beautiful lawn outside our Thomas Jefferson Building where you can see the sunset with a nice view of the Capitol building. … It’s been very popular, not only among Hill staffers, but folks in the community.”
The series kicks off this Thursday, July 11 with Judy Garland in the classic MGM musical fantasy “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), which was inducted into the National Film Registry during the inaugural class of 1989.
“It’s a big year for ‘The Wizard of Oz’ because it turns 85 years old this summer,” Encina said. “Also, with the release of ‘Wicked’ later this year, I think there is a lot of hype going back to this original story of ‘Oz.’ … Every time we try to show this movie, it gets so much enthusiasm whether it’s from the older generation or new folks discovering the film. People are singing along, some are even dressing up, so it’s definitely become a classic.”
July 18 brings the classic Gene Kelly musical “An American in Paris” (1951), which joined the Registry in 1993.
“It’s our kind of tribute to the (Paris) Olympics,” Encina said. “We’re hoping you can get the best of both worlds and enjoy Paris on the lawn, but also enjoy this American classic. It’s not only remembered for the actors who performed in it, but because of the music. This is classic George Gershwin. The Library of Congress is the home of George and Ira Gershwin’s papers, so many of the songs in this movie resonate. … It’s Hollywood at its best.”
July 25 delivers Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “Love and Basketball” (2000), which just joined the Registry last year.
“It’s one of the newer ones that was inducted,” Encina said. “It’s almost a quarter century old and everybody remembers this movie with Omar Epps. I think with the popularity of not only men’s basketball but women’s basketball, the popularity of Caitlin Clark right now, this is one of those few movies back in the day that really featured a female athlete. … With the backdrop of the love story, it was very unique for the time and to this day.”
Aug. 1 brings the beloved boxing classic “Rocky” (1976), which joined the National Film Registry in 2006.
“We’re sticking with the sports theme because of the Olympics,” Encina said. “It’s become so iconic, everything about this movie has become iconic, whether it’s the theme song or Sylvester Stallone screaming, ‘Adrian!’ or climbing up those steps in Philadelphia. … We’re also hoping, because we have our own iconic steps to the front door of the Library of Congress, that people will run the steps, play the theme song and have some fun with it.”
Finally, Aug. 8 brings Disney’s animated “Lady and the Tramp” (1955), which was just inducted last year.
“The iconic scene between the Lady and the Tramp with that spaghetti, people have been reenacting that since this movie came out,” Encina said. “It’s hard to believe that this movie came out in 1955. Again, just going with the whole Olympic and Paris theme, we’re keeping everyone romanticizing a time in Europe.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Comedians with Disabilities Act (Part 1) Laughter is truly the best medicine when you’re a comedian or a standup comedy fan living with disabilities.
The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Disability Services Department, which has served individuals with disabilities in Prince George’s County since 1974.
To mark the occasion, it will host the Los Angeles-based comedy group Comedians with Disabilities Act for a special comedy event at the Bowie Center for the Performing Arts in Bowie, Maryland, on Friday, July 12 at 7 p.m.
“We are celebrating 50 years of service to the disability community in Prince George’s County,” therapeutic recreation specialist Genevieve Jennai told WTOP.
“We were including individuals with disabilities before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed in 1990. We started off with our Special Populations Division, which has grown into our Disability Services Team. What’s the point of having programs without everybody included?”
Communications and marketing manager Alex Brown added, “The biggest thing is just making sure that all of our communities have access to the necessary resources and supports that are available to them and just making sure we’re advocates as well as highlighting the different events and opportunities that are available.”
Formed in 2010, the Comedians with Disabilities Act has been touring the country for over a decade.
“This group of 17 comedians are coming over on Friday and they’re just gonna put their show on and hopefully will hit not just the disability community but everybody else who likes comedy or wants to learn,” Jennai said.
The event will feature San Francisco comedian Mean Dave, who is in his 10th year of addiction recovery and has opened for the likes of Jay Mohr. Michael Beers, who won Funny Fest in Calgary and opened for the late Gilbert Gottfried, will also perform.
You’ll also see Nia G, who overcame a stutter and dyslexia to release her 2023 comedy album “Stutterer Interrupted,” which debuted at No. 1 in the comedy category on both iTunes and Amazon.
“I’ve seen them perform a couple of times,” Jennai said.
“I recommended bringing them in for this event because they do have disabilities and can speak specifically to the disability community, as well as give some kind of background and open up the conversation about people with disabilities with some humor attached to it for people who don’t really understand them. They just want to be more inclusive of people with disabilities.”
Tickets cost $19 for balcony seats, $22 for orchestra seats or $24 for front-of-orchestra seats. You can also purchase VIP tickets for $30, including a meet-and-greet with the comedians after the show in the black-box theater with light refreshments served, as well as beer and wine available for purchase at the cash bar.
“It’s very much directed toward living with a disability, their personal experiences and what they’ve come across in their lifetimes,” Jennai said.
“Being able to relate their stories so poignantly to what they’ve experienced in life and share humor instead of the negative side of interacting with individuals who don’t have disabilities — they have a very positive experience on something that a lot of people look at as a negative experience.”
“At the end of the day, we’re just all regular people,” program director Nyjel Green told WTOP. “It’s an entertaining piece but also an informative piece to show that regardless of disability or non-disability, we’re everyday people with the ability to live, learn and prosper.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F' (Part 1) After rescuing “SNL” and sharing the big screen with Nick Nolte in “48 Hrs.” (1982) and Dan Aykroyd in “Trading Places” (1983), Eddie Murphy became a blockbuster leading man as the fast-talking Axel Foley in “Beverly Hills Cop” (1984). Directed by Martin Brest, the fish-out-of-water comedy was the year’s top grosser at No. 1 for 13 straight weeks, inventing a new genre for “Lethal Weapon” (1987), “Rush Hour” (1998) and “Blue Streak” (1999).
Audiences couldn’t wait for the action-comedy sequel “Beverly Hills Cop II” (1987), which again became the year’s top grosser thanks to the reliably funny Murphy and slick direction by Tony Scott as his follow up to “Top Gun” (1986). Ironically, the villain was played by Brigitte Nielsen (“Rocky IV”) the same year that she divorced Sylvester Stallone, who turned down “Beverly Hills Cop” to star in “Cobra” (1986).
It was only a matter of time before Hollywood gave us “Beverly Hills Cop III” (1994), a major disappointment widely panned by critics and audiences for its lame theme-park setting at Wonder World and a surprisingly unfunny script. Director John Landis (“Animal House”) complained that a depressed Murphy insisted on making Axel too serious at every turn.
Now, 40 years after the first film and 30 years after the last, we finally get the fourth installment this Wednesday on Netflix. No, it’s not called “Beverly Hills Cop 4,” it’s called “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” named after the iconic techno theme song. The opening credits display the words “Axel F” prominently with “Beverly Hills Cop” in tiny letters, attempting to have a stand-alone title for its aging hero like “Rocky Balboa” (2006) or “Logan” (2017).
Once again, Axel Foley is back on the police force in his hometown of Detroit, preventing robberies and putting the “wise” in wise cracking. He is forced to return to Beverly Hills when he learns of a threat to his estranged daughter, Jane Saunders (Taylour Paige, “Zola”), who grew up to be a defense attorney in Los Angeles. That’s right, she defends the very types of criminals that her father puts away, calling it the “cherry on top” of her daddy issues.
It’s a welcome treat seeing Murphy back in the role of Axel, who is now the character that he’s played the most, twice as many times as he’s played Reggie Hammond, Prince Akeem, Professor Klump and Dr. Doolittle, but tied with his four turns as Donkey in the “Shrek” franchise (he even quotes the ogre by calling Luis Guzmán “layered like a glittery onion”). The mileage barely shows, bringing back the comedic timing that we loved in his prime.
Like the original, this new movie opens with Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On,” while the first action sequence features Bob Seger’s “Shakedown” from Part 2. Murphy also wears his same Detroit Lions letterman jacket and runs into plenty of old friends, including Paul Reiser as his Detroit police chief Jeffrey Friedman, Judge Reinhold and John Ashton as his L.A. partners Billy Rosewood and John Taggart, even Bronson Pinchot as the art collector turned weapons dealer Serge.
Still, a lot has changed since 1994. Frey is dead, Seger is 79 years old, and the name “Foley” makes millennials think of Matt or Mick. As Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s new cop says, “The world has changed a bit. You can’t sit across a desk from another male and say something to threaten my manhood and think I’m gonna get flustered with insecurity.” His sickest burn comes flipping through Foley’s police file: “’94, not your finest hour.”
It’s one of the strongest dialogue exchanges by screenwriters Will Beall, Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, who open with funny banter on racial relations at a Detroit Red Wings hockey game. The best scenes come between father and daughter, driving and bickering in their convertible. We also get a slick new crooked cop villain played by Kevin Bacon, who was doing “Footloose” during “Beverly Hills Cop” (Gordon-Levitt was 3 years old back then).
Australian filmmaker Mark Molloy makes his feature directorial debut after acclaimed shorts and Super Bowl commercials. He deftly helms several action sequences, namely a helicopter chase (“Pull over! I mean, land!”) that at worst recalls Kobe Bryant’s demise and at best delivers a clever cameo on a golf course. It’s almost as meta as Reinhold wearing a Guns N Roses T-shirt, repping Axel Rose as he helps Axel Foley during the final shootout.
As Gordon-Levitt shouts, “They shot off our rotor!” about the malfunctioning chopper, the script mostly stays on its axels down the stretch, even if it sticks around a little too long. At 115 minutes, “Axel F” is the longest film in the franchise compared to 105 minutes, 103 minutes and 104 minutes. Why make the longest installment at a time of society’s shortest attention spans? 100 minutes is perfect for an action comedy.
Nitpicking aside, “Axel F” mostly marks a comedic return to form for the franchise. When film history is written, the 1984 original will be the one that everyone remembers for its belly laughs and genre influence, while the 1987 sequel remains enjoyable for riding the same cultural zeitgeist. Thankfully, Part 4 is a huge step up from Part 3, washing the bad taste out of our mouth with a palate cleanser, and for that, “Axel F” is a solid win in my book.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Chris Kattan in Maryland (Part 1) He needs more cowbell, with his head still bobbing from The Roxbury all the way to Baltimore.
Comedian Chris Kattan brings his live standup comedy tour to Magooby’s Joke House in Timonium, Maryland, this Friday, July 5, and Saturday, July 6.
“We’ve been touring throughout the country,” Kattan told WTOP. “I’ve been touring for the last eight or nine years, so it’s relatively new material and a mix of old material. … I steer clear of politics. I like more self-deprecating humor and things that just make me laugh and hopefully make the audience laugh. … I’m gonna go out with my fiancee a day or two early prior to the standup date because we’re gonna spend the Fourth of July out there.”
Born in the Culver City neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1970, Kattan mostly grew up with his mother in Washington state. He eventually moved back to L.A. to join the iconic comedy troupe The Groundlings, which was cofounded in 1975 by his father, Kip King, who was also multiple voices on “The Smurfs” (1981-1989).
“He used to take me to the rehearsals, classes and of course the actual shows,” Kattan said. “That was really special … to see him perform with Paul Reubens creating Pee-wee Herman, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz. … That’s why I came up wanting to be a Groundling. … Our group was quite a few people: Mike McDonald from MADtv who played that character Stuart; Cheri Oteri, Will Ferrell and Jennifer Coolidge were the main people in our group.”
Soon, Kattan moved to New York City to audition for “Saturday Night Live,” joining the cast from 1996 to 2003.
“I had never been to New York in my life, so the first time I ever set foot on the ground of New York was the day that I auditioned for ‘Saturday Night Live,'” Kattan said. “I did do Mr. Peepers with a boombox and narrated what I was doing, so I crouched on a stool and I ate an apple and spit it out and did the whole thing. I did a few other characters … then I did an impression of Christian Slater interviewing a vampire from ‘Interview with a Vampire.'”
Kattan also created the flamboyant role of Mango, inspired by Marlene Dietrich in “The Blue Angel” (1930).
“Mango was based on a stripper that would mesmerize people that would come visit him and make people crazy with his incredible powers that he had as a dancer,” Kattan said. “That was part of the magic of Mango. It was a really silly character, but people seemed to like it, so it became reoccurring. … All sexes and all different types of people loved Mango, they fell in love with Mango and no one could understand why.”
His most famous role was one half of the Butabi Brothers with Will Ferrell, bobbing their heads to Haddaway’s “What is Love?” Not only did Jim Carrey join them for an episode of “SNL,” it actually became a big-screen movie with “A Night at the Roxbury” (1998), though Kattan insists that he doesn’t have any residual neck damage.
“It’s not in a permanent bob, it’s fine, I could still bob my head if need be, if you were to request for me to do it at a kid’s birthday party or try to get attention at a wedding or something,” Kattan said. “I’d rather not do it, that would cause a lot of attention, so I steer clear of it. I try to avoid places that play (the song). Sometimes, I’ll go to a restaurant and they’ll start playing the music, and I just know some waiter or some staff decided to play that song.”
Still, his most iconic sketch remains “More Cowbell,” spoofing Blue Öyster Cult alongside Chris Parnell, Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz and Will Ferrell, who was told repeatedly by Christopher Walken, “I need more cowbell.”
“We had no idea,” Kattan said. “We were just in the moment doing what we should be doing and that is performing in a sketch and just doing our roles as scripted. We were just doing the scene and had no sense of foreshadowing. We’re not fortunetellers that this is gonna be a big hit, there’s no way to do that. We just found out way later that it became so popular. I heard that Christopher Walken isn’t very fond of being told to say, ‘More cowbell.'”
After leaving “SNL” in 1993, Kattan starred in 56 episodes of the ABC sitcom “The Middle” (2009-2014), played a prime minister in “Sharknado 5” (2017) and voiced an alligator in Adam Sandler’s animated flick “Leo” (2023). Through it all, he really enjoys his standup comedy tours, often bringing audience members up on stage.
“It should be a great weekend,” Kattan said. “Everybody who needs something to do this weekend, it’s Fourth of July weekend, so treat it like a vacation and go out, have some fun, have some drinks, bring a date or bring your wife or bring a friend or whatever. You’ll have a blast, so please do come to the show, you’ll have a great time.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews UB40 at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) Are you looking to extend your Fourth of July holiday into a long four-day weekend of partying?
UB40 brings summer reggae vibes to the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races on Saturday.
“We pride ourselves on sending people home a lot happier than when they came to the show,” Drummer Jimmy Brown told WTOP. “We hope to uplift the audience, which the music does. Reggae music by nature is an uplifting style of music, so yeah, it’s party time. We want everybody to dance and we expect everyone to sing along, too.”
Born in 1957, Brown formed the band in Birmingham, England in 1978 with brothers Robin and Ali Campbell, Earl Falconer and Brian Travers. The original five members met each other growing up at the Moseley School of Art.
“We’ve all known each other since we were 11 years old and we’re from a multicultural melting pot of inner-city Birmingham,” Brown said. “We all were friends at school, we left school and then thought, ‘Hey, let’s make a band,’ and that’s exactly what we did. Because we lived in the inner city, we were surrounded by people from the Caribbean, mostly from Jamaica, so we were exposed to reggae music, so that’s the genre we chose to play.”
The catchy name “UB40” actually came from a British government form for unemployment benefits.
“‘UB’ stands for ‘unemployment benefits’ and it was Form 40,” Brown said. “You gave them this form, they signed it, and you picked up your check. I thoroughly believe in generous benefits because you never know what people are going to do with the time that they’ve got. It certainly gave us an opportunity to develop the band and learn to play without having to have a job, so it really worked well for us and I believe in generous benefits.”
Their big break came when they were discovered one night by Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders.
“We’d done about 30 shows in local pubs and were making some noise, selling out really quickly with people left outside that couldn’t get in,” Brown said. “We did a show in a tiny toilet venue called The Rock Garden in London. … She came to see us and came backstage afterward. … She had a No. 1 single at the time with ‘Brass in Pocket’ and she said, ‘Do you guys wanna come on our tour that’s already sold out? We want you to come open for us.'”
In 1980, UB40’s breakthrough double-sided record was “King” / “Food For Thought,” an ultra-liberal critique on both the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how runaway capitalism commercialized Christmas.
“‘King’ isn’t really a celebration of Martin Luther King; it’s more of a case of, yeah, what you did was great, but what difference did it make? The line is: where are all your people now? Passive resistance, I can’t say that works,” Brown said. “‘Food For Thought’ is about the indulgences of the West and uneven distribution of wealth. A lot of our subjects are really about class war, how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. How can you celebrate Christmas when there are fellow humans suffering in other parts of the world? We’re party poopers for sure.”
In 1983, they temporarily tabled the social commentary and learned how to party with their chart-topping cover of Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine,” a hit that was so catchy that UB40’s take is now the definitive version.
“We had no idea that it was Neil Diamond who had written it; we knew it as a very popular reggae tune from the early ’70s … when we came to do ‘Labour of Love,’ which was a celebration of the songs that turned us onto the genre of reggae in the first place. … It was such a phenomenal success for us around the world and eventually in America, which was five years after we released it, it went No. 1 in the States. We were very proud of that.”
In 1985, the band returned the favor to Hynde by collaborating on a cover of Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe.”
“We remained friends with Chrissie forever,” Brown said. “She claims that she had the idea, our ex-singer Ali at the time claimed that it was his idea, but whatever, it was such a successful record for us. I suppose it was kind of audacious for us to be using such a famous song, and we wouldn’t claim for a minute that we do a better version than Sonny & Cher’s original, which is one of my favorite songs ever, but it was just a big, big, big success for us.”
In 1993, they topped the charts again with a cover of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” which was originally intended for the movie “Honeymoon in Vegas” before the movie producers chose Bono’s version of the same song. Instead, UB40’s take wound up on the soundtrack of the film “Slither” — and the song went to No. 1.
“I can’t say that I was a big Elvis fan, I’m too young really … and I didn’t really respect him much when he became that bloated Vegas caricature of himself, but he really was a trailblazer in the beginning,” Brown said. “That was massive for us as well. We seem to do well when we do cover versions, but it’s only a small part of our repertoire.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'A Capitol Fourth' with Alfonso Ribeiro (Part 1) He’s known for “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “Dancing with the Stars.”
This Fourth of July, Alfonso Ribeiro returns for a second year to host the annual music and fireworks show “A Capitol Fourth” from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol that’s airing nationwide on PBS starting at 8 p.m.
“I had to come back,” Ribeiro told WTOP. “It went fantastic (last year), I just enjoyed every minute of it and had such a blast. It was a wonderful show, the show was put together incredibly and I just enjoyed every moment. It was funny, when the show ended, there was a little after-event that we went to and the producers were like, ‘Hey, we’d love to offer you to do it again next year,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely, we’ll see you again,’ so it was a win-win.”
This year’s event features hit talent like Smokey Robinson, Fantasia, Darren Criss, Sheila E., Fitz & Noelle from Fitz & The Tantrums, Chloe Flower, Sister Sledge featuring Sledgendary, Loren Allred, Shawn Johnson East and Britt Stewart.
You’ll also see the National Symphony Orchestra, Choral Arts Society of Washington, Ministers of Music, U.S. Army Band, U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, U.S. Army Presidential Salute Battery and Military District of Washington.
“We’ve got a full show,” Ribeiro said. “We’ve got the greatest fireworks in all of the land, so it’s going to be an incredible evening. … We’re going to kick the show off with me singing and doing a little dancing with Britt Stewart from ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ so we’re gonna kick it off, we’re gonna have some fun (and) have such a great night.”
You’ll notice that neither Tom Jones nor The Sugarhill Gang are on the lineup, so don’t expect Ribeiro to bust out “The Carlton Dance” or the “Jump On It” dance from his iconic TV sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” (1990-1996).
“There is a likelihood that you will not see either; I try to not do those whenever possible,” Ribeiro said.
“I was fans and friends (of DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith), we had hung out before ever doing the show. … We actually went to Disneyland together, a group of us, and I met them when they were performing at an Endless Summer Jam here in Los Angeles and became friends with them. I was a big fan of their music, so it was cool getting to work with them.”
Since 2015, he has hosted the good, clean, family fun of ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
“I love the fact that I get to do that show,” Robeiro said.
“I truly, truly enjoy it. I’m honored that I got to follow in the footsteps of Tom Bergeron and Bob Saget. … It’s making people from all ages have a great time and laugh and enjoy themselves on a Sunday night before getting ready to start a busy week, being able to sit down and enjoy something together. Family entertainment doesn’t really exist much anymore — we’re one of the last.”
Ribeiro also currently hosts ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” after winning Season 19 as a contestant.
“I’m creating my own new path from being a contestant on the show to being a co-host to now being one of the hosts with Julianne Hough,” Robeiro said.
“It’s a great show, I love the show, I wanted to be on the show from the very beginning. It took them 19 seasons to let me on, I don’t know what that was, it took forever, but I finally got on and was lucky enough to win. … I can’t wait to find out who we’ve got this year, I’m sure it’ll be a great group.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Donnell Rawlings at The Birchmere (Part 1) He made us laugh on “Chappelle’s Show” thanks to his signature sign-off line, “I’m rich, b*tch!”
This Saturday, comedian Donnell Rawlings comes home to The Birchmere in his hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, fresh off his debut stand-up special “A New Day,” which was produced by D.C. native Dave Chappelle for Netflix earlier this year.
“You won’t see any of those jokes, I’ve got a whole new routine,” Rawlings told WTOP. “The Birchmere is a special place for me because I grew up between Washington D.C. and Alexandria, Virginia. … Whenever I come, it’s a very challenging show because I’m gonna be in front of people I went to high school with. It’s like a class reunion. I’ll probably have somebody that used to heckle me in high school try to heckle me, but I will destroy them.”
He graduated from T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, made famous by the film “Remember the Titans” (2000) starring Denzel Washington as Coach Herman Boone, who was still a gym teacher for Rawlings.
“T.C. Titans are what? Red hot! How you spell it now? R-E-D, red! H-O-T, hot! R-E-D H-O-T, red hot, red hot, red hot!” Rawlings said. “Everybody thinks I was in that movie, but I’m not that old! … I wasn’t really good in sports, I just wanted to make the team to get free sneakers. As a manager for the T.C. Williams Titans basketball team, any time we won a game, we got free pizza. … I was too busy being class clown and roasting people in the cafeteria.”
After high school, Rawlings joined the U.S. Air Force, at one point stationed at Bolling Air Force Base in D.C.
“I had just got out of my four-year enlistment and I started standup in a place called Comedy Connection in Greenbelt, (Maryland),” Rawlings said. “They gave so many opportunities for a lot of local comics to get stage time when you couldn’t get it. I was a military police officer waiting to be a D.C. police officer. In the interim of that, I went to a comedy club with some co-workers, I fell in love with it. I was a heckler turned professional standup.”
Along the way, he met fellow D.C. native Chappelle, who cast him on Comedy Central’s “Chappelle’s Show.”
“We met in New York, but we knew of each other being D.C. comics,” Rawlings said. “He moved on to New York a lot sooner than I did. … We really connected once I moved to New York and became a part of ‘Chappelle’s Show.’ … To be honest, me and Dave became closer after the show than when we were actually doing the show. … I looked at it more like we were co-workers. All I wanted was for him to say, ‘Action!’ and let the camera speak for itself.”
Rawlings appeared in hilarious “Chappelle’s Show” sketches like “WackArnolds,” “When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong” and “Reparations for Oppression,” splurging on a new truck and cigarettes with the line, “I’m rich, b*tch!”
“Dave loved that phrase so much,” Rawlings said. “One of the reasons why it resonates with people so much is because it was at the end of every episode and every time it would come on he would just die laughing. … For more than 25 years, we’ve maintained a brotherhood and friendship that’s gonna be forever. … Now we’re like neighbors because I’ve moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, so we run into each other in the local grocery store.”
To this day, his favorite sketch remains “The Playa Haters’ Ball” with his Jheri-curl character Beautiful.
“That character didn’t exist on paper … I had to create that character, the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he walked, even his name literally 24 hours before we shot that,” Rawlings said. “My favorite to watch was the Wayne Brady sketch. … I’ve never seen a sketch that was so dark with so many comedic twists and undertones. It took us so long to get him to say (profanity), because he’s a straight-laced guy. … The legend of Wayne Brady was born.”
Beyond comedy, Rawlings also showed his dramatic acting chops by playing Bread in HBO’s “The Corner” and Day-Day in HBO’s “The Wire,” both created by David Simon and both set nearby in Baltimore, Maryland.
“A lot of people don’t that the role of Omar came down to me and Mike Williams,” Rawlings said. “If you really watch that series, you’ll understand that it went from The Towers, then the storyline changed to the docks. … My character was about to blow up, but the Baltimore Tourism Board was upset with the production like, ‘Why is it always a depleted city with addicts?’ so they had to change the storyline and my character got lost.”
Either way, Rawlings’ legacy is forever intact when it comes to television history.
“Entertainment Weekly or one of those magazines did a Top 100 TV Shows in the history of television and both ‘Chappelle’s Show’ and ‘The Wire’ ranked in the Top 50 … I can say I was part of two historic shows,” Rawlings said. “Whether I get another acting gig on the small or big screen, the fact that I can come to The Birchmere or D.C. Improv and go across the country, put my name on a marquee and make an honest living doing it, that’s the thing I’m most appreciative of.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews July entertainment in DC area (Part 1) Summer is upon us and that means it’s the hottest time of the year for events.
Are you looking for outdoor fun in the sun or indoor options to beat the heat?
Either way, we’ve got you covered with our July Entertainment Guide:
July Entertainment Guide
July 1-7: “Hair” at Signature Theatre
July 1-14: “Funny Girl” at Kennedy Center
July 1-14: Step Afrika!’s “The Migration” at Arena Stage
July 1-14: “Is God Is” at Constellation Theatre
July 1-Aug. 18: “Knuffle Bunny” at Adventure Theatre
July 1-Sept. 1: “Jersey Boys” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
July 2: Killer Queen at Capital One Hall
July 2-3: Chris Brown at Capital One Arena
July 2-3: Black Ballet Showcase at Kennedy Center
July 3: Clint Black at Wolf Trap
July 3: Justin Timberlake at CFG Bank Arena
July 3: Three Dog Night at The Birchmere
July 3: Rare Essence and EU with Sugar Bear at The Hamilton
July 3: “Celebrate America” at Kennedy Center
July 3-Aug. 11: “The Colored Museum” at Studio Theatre
July 3-Aug. 25: “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” at Olney Theatre
July 4: “A Capitol Fourth” on PBS
July 5: TLC and En Vogue with Jody Watley at Wolf Trap
July 5: GoGo Symphony’s Independence Day Bounce at Howard Theatre
July 5-6: Chris Kattan at Magooby’s Joke House
July 6: Donnell Rawlings at The Birchmere
July 6: Burt Bacharach Tribute at Blues Alley
July 6: UB40 at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
July 9: Pat Benatar and Neil Geraldo at Warner Theatre
July 9: The Used at Rams Head Baltimore
July 10: Los Lobos at The Birchmere
July 10: Judy Collins with Oakland Rain at Rams Head Annapolis
July 10-Aug. 21: “Live from the Lawn” at Strathmore
July 11: Justin Hayward and Christopher Cross at Warner Theatre
July 11: Amy Helm at Kennedy Center
July 11-12: Nina Simone Tribute at Blues Alley
July 11-20: “Destination Domino” at National Building Museum
July 11-21: Capital Fringe Festival
July 11-Aug. 8: Library of Congress screens Movies on the Lawn
July 12: Janet Jackson with Nelly at Capital One Arena
July 12: Sam Hunt at Jiffy Lube Live
July 12: “Dandelion” in movie theaters
July 12: EU with Sugar Bear at Capital One Hall
July 12: NSO plays Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Wolf Trap
July 12-13: Patty Griffin at The Birchmere
July 13: Dave Matthews Band at Jiffy Lube Live
July 13: Paula Cole at Kennedy Center
July 13: Janet Jackson at CFG Bank Arena
July 13: Jamey Johnson at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
July 13: NSO presents “Star Wars” at Wolf Trap
July 13: Eric Roberson at Baltimore Soundstage
July 13-14: Nimesh Patel at D.C. Improv
July 14: Totally Tubular Festival at The Anthem
July 16-Aug. 4: “ha ha ha ha ha ha ha” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
July 17-18: Charley Crockett at 9:30 Club
July 17-27: “Summer Reps” at Shakespeare Theatre Company
July 18: Brian McKnight at Warner Theatre
July 19: Patton Oswalt at The Lyric Baltimore
July 19: Carly Rae Jepsen at Nationals Park
July 19: Wolf Trap Opera’s “La Bohème” at Wolf Trap
July 19: Third Eye Blind and Yellowcard at Merriweather Post Pavilion
July 19: Dionne Warwick at Warner Theatre
July 19-20: The Bacon Brothers at The Birchmere
July 20: Olivia Rodrigo at Capital One Arena
July 20: Joey Fatone and AJ McLean at MGM National Harbor
July 20: Sammy Hagar at Jiffy Lube Live
July 20-21: The Pretenders at Warner Theatre
July 21: Nas at Wolf Trap
July 23-Aug. 4: “Summertime” at Signature Theatre
July 23-Aug. 11: “Back to the Future” musical at Kennedy Center
July 24: NSO presents “Harry Potter” at Wolf Trap
July 24: Styx and Foreigner at Jiffy Lube Live
July 24: John Berry at Rams Head Annapolis
July 25: Daryl Hall and Elvis Costello at Wolf Trap
July 25: ScHoolboy Q at The Fillmore
July 25-27: Lil Rel Howery at Magooby’s Joke House
July 26: As I Lay Dying at The Fillmore
July 26: Steve Earle at Baltimore Soundstage
July 26: BeBe Winans at Kennedy Center
July 26: Creed at Jiffy Lube Live
July 26: NSO presents “Ghostbusters” at Wolf Trap
July 26-27: Sugar Bear’s Birthday Bash at Bethesda Theater
July 26: Pointer Sisters, Commodores and Spinners at MGM National Harbor
July 27: Beck at Wolf Trap
July 27: Blink-182 at Capital One Arena
July 27: O.A.R. with Fitz and the Tantrums at Merriweather Post Pavilion
July 27-28: Broccoli City Festival at Audi Field
July 27-28: Fantasia at MGM National Harbor
July 28: Limp Bizkit at Jiffy Lube Live
July 28: Regina Spektor at The Lyric Baltimore
July 28: Be’la Dona at Bethesda Theater
July 30: Il Divo at Warner Theatre
July 30: Ice Spice at The Anthem
July 30: Bill Withers Tribute at Blues Alley
July 30: Ellen DeGeneres at DAR Constitution Hall
July 31: Deana Carter at Tally Ho Theater
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews July entertainment in DC area (Part 2) Source
He created the critically acclaimed 1998 rock musical “Hedwig And The Angry Inch,” which earned him a Tony Award. Now, he’s joining the National Symphony Orchestra at D.C.’s Kennedy Center for a tribute concert for the late, great David Bowie.
John Cameron Mitchell will be a guest artist performing at the “Blackstar: The Music of David Bowie” tribute concert Saturday, June 29.
WTOP’s Jason Fraley caught up with him before he caught a flight into Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
Mitchell’s family has roots in the D.C. area and said they’ll be attending the show.
“I used to live right near Dulles in Arlington as a kid. … My dad grew up there,” he said.
Alongside artistic director Donny McCaslin, who worked on Bowie’s last album, Mitchell will be singing multiple arrangements of Bowie’s work and the “Blackstar” album front-to-back on Saturday night.
“It’s nonstop fun,” Mitchell told WTOP.
He recalled a time when Bowie had attended a showing of “Hedwig,” which he said was “very much” inspired by Bowie’s music.
“He came over and was like, ‘John, you got it right.’ … I could have just died. And he ended up investing in our L.A. production of ‘Hedwig,’ and lost all his money,” Mitchell joked.
Mitchell got his start in theater in Chicago before getting on Broadway in New York in the 1980s. He then moved to Los Angeles, before going back to New York and creating “Hedwig And The Angry Inch.”
“I came back in ’90 — I realized I was a New York boy — and then started writing my own piece,” he said.
He notes Bowie as one of his largest inspirations for the LGBTQ references in “Hedwig.”
“(Bowie) did that famous performance on Saturday Night Live with Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias where he does ‘Boys Keep Swinging,’ and does drag, and he wears this crazy Thierry Mugler outfit. And it blew me away. It was ’79 for the ‘Lodger’ album, and that really set me on my path to becoming the weirdo, queerdo, filmmaker, theater maker performer that I am,” Mitchell said.
The concert is at 8 p.m. on Saturday night. Tickets are available online starting at $67.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews Season 3 of 'The Bear' (Part 1) If you round the corner of your kitchen into your living room, you should probably shout, “Corner!” so you don’t crash into your family members as you head to the couch to watch TV’s most critically acclaimed show.
In just two seasons, FX’s “The Bear” has racked up 10 Primetime Emmys, including Outstanding Comedy Series, in a blatant case of “genre gerrymandering.” By competing in comedy categories, it has effectively stolen awards from actual sitcoms like “Abbott Elementary,” which cleverly roasted “The Bear” this season.
Now, Hulu has dropped all 10 episodes of Season 3, and after watching the first few episodes overnight, it’s clear that the writers have doubled down on the dramatic ingredients without much comedic spice for an overcooked third serving of stress.
Created by Christopher Storer, Season 1 introduced us to grieving ex-Manhattan chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), who inherited a Chicago sandwich shop after his brother Michael’s suicide. We watched him use fine-dining skills to transform the gritty joint into a success, including a hectic 18-minute tracking shot in the penultimate episode “Review,” followed by symbolic pasta-sauce cans in the background of the finale “Braciole.”
Season 2 renovated the restaurant as Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) gained more responsibilities as the talented sous-chef. The “Fishes” episode showed Carmy’s dysfunctional family with his manic mother (Jamie Lee Curtis), while “Forks” impressively showed character growth for cocky “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who finally developed some humility. Still, it ended with Carmy trapped in the fridge, offending his love interest Claire (Molly Gordon).
Now, Season 3 picks up where we left off with the upgraded restaurant reopening as The Bear, which might as well describe the moping Carmy, who can be quite a bear to his family, friends, coworkers and, yes, even TV viewers.
The first episode (“Tomorrow”) is a largely-silent montage of flashbacks showing Carmy as a New York chef just before his brother’s suicide. We actually see Richie knocking on Michael’s door to no response, Carmy receiving the news and flashes of the funeral. It’s all intercut with present-day action and important images from previous seasons set to brooding, atmospheric music. The filmmaking craft is sharp as always, but it’s so depressing.
The second episode (“Next”) at least opens with a few laughs of potty humor as Sydney and her dad (Robert Townsend) fight over the bathroom, followed by Carmy turning down a smoke break: “Are you thinking about your health?” “No, I’m thinking about the five minutes it’s gonna take me.” For a brief second, there is a glimmer of hope that Season 3 might break new ground before devolving into another shouting match between Carmy and Richie.
“Chef Carmen uses power phrases because he’s a baby replicant who’s not self-actualized, which is maybe why he repeatedly referred to me as a loser,” Richie says, teeing up Carmy’s character arc before jabbing him with a reminder of his Season 2 mistake. “Also, I respect your honesty and bravery from inside a locked vault.”
Score one for Richie, but eventually, I felt like Sydney, “Can you both shut the f*ck up, please?” If you’ve ever worked in the restaurant industry, you don’t want to be reminded of such chaos, and beyond that, the conflict is becoming too repetitive from previous seasons. As Richie says later in this same scene, “Seen it once, you’ve seen it a thousand times.” Where’s the comedy that Edebiri brought last year to “Theater Camp” and “Bottoms?”
I threw my napkin on the table after the third episode (“Doors”), which opens with another funeral and even plays the theme from “Raging Bull” (1980), which was actually funnier. That’s all I could stomach for one night, as a three-course meal was filling enough for one sitting. I will definitely keep watching and hoping that the next seven episodes offer something new, but I can’t stand such relentless heat, so maybe it’s time to get out of the kitchen.
If you crave comedy, head to the movies to watch June Squibb in “Thelma,” the hardest I’ve laughed all year.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Black ballet at the Kennedy Center (Part 1) The nation’s capital is shining an overdue spotlight on Black ballet dancers and choreographers.
Next week, the Kennedy Center will host “Pathways to Performance: Exercises in Reframing the Narrative” on Tuesday, July 2, and Wednesday, July 3.
“The title points out that sometimes people who are marginalized aren’t actually writing their own story,” artistic director Theresa Ruth Howard told WTOP. “The story that gets written about us: the lack of Blacks in ballet or that maybe we don’t like ballet, we don’t understand it or we don’t want to do it, is incorrect. We need to take the moment and have the agency to scribe our own story, so that’s what we are doing.”
This is the second “Reframing the Narrative” event at the Kennedy Center after the first in 2022.
“The idea was curating a week that would celebrate Blacks in ballet,” Howard said. “The concept was to bring the three Black ballet companies that exist in the U.S. — Dance Theatre of Harlem, Collage Dance Collective and Ballethnic — along with this idea to curate 10 to 12 Black-identifying ballet dancers from professional companies to come together and work with choreographer Donald Byrd on an original composition.”
This year’s program will feature the return of Donald Byrd’s “From Other Suns” and Portia Adams’ “Faintly Seen,” as well as a trio of world premieres, including “Pas de Deux” by Kiyon Ross, “Home” by Jennifer Archibald and “Where They Meet” by Meredith Rainey.
“I wanted to bring back Donald Byrd’s ‘From Other Suns’ because it was such a success,” Howard said. “We have Jennifer Archibald, the first Black female to be a resident choreographer. … Kiyon Ross, associate artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet, has choreographed a neoclassical pas-de-deux. … Meredith Rainey is bringing ‘Where They Meet,’ a beautiful, poetic work about community and different types of love. … Portia Adams has choreographed ‘Faintly Seen,’ only six minutes long for four dancers and it’s quite lovely.”
The Kennedy Center showcase is the latest step in Howard’s lifelong mission to level the playing field of ballet across racial barriers. She grew up attending the Philadelphia School of Dance, founded by ballet legend Joan Myers Brown, before her supportive father enrolled her in the prestigious Pennsylvania Ballet.
“I had a ballet father, not a ballet mother,” Howard said. “You know ‘dance moms,’ but I had a ‘dance dad’ who learned not only how to advocate for me and protect me as one of the only Black students in the school, but also learned technique, terminology, he learned dance history and really supported me to every degree.”
In 2015, Howard founded MoBBallet, which stands for Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet, initially as a website providing a digital archive for the key contributions of Black people in ballet throughout a rarely-told history.
“People don’t know that Blacks have been in ballet since it began,” Howard said. “We have a digital timeline that starts in 1946 with George Washington Smith, who was a mixed-race dancer who premiered ‘Giselle’ in Boston. I wanted to show that, yes, Blacks have been in ballet since the beginning, you might not know their names because, historically, the contributions of people of color are muted. I wanted to illuminate and give visibility to all the beautiful artists that have come before us and are presently making what will be history.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Part 1) The Smithsonian Folklife Festival has been an annual tradition in the nation’s capital since the late 1960s.
This year, it will be held at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian from June 26 to July 1.
“The Folklife Festival started in 1967, it was meant to be a two-day event, one and done, and we’ve been here ever since,” Festival Director Sabrina Lynn Motley told WTOP. “It’s gone through changes, it’s been bigger and smaller, but each festival has really been grounded in that person-to-person exchange, that celebration of creativity and culture. … This year we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the National Museum of the American Indian.”
The name “folklife” is not easily defined because it spans a wide range of traditions.
“‘Folklife’ means a lot of things to a lot of different people,” Motley said. “For us, ‘folklife’ is really about the ways in which people live, eat, dance, make stories and share stories. It really is about the everyday, the ceremonial, the symbolic, the things that fuel life both in terms of being an individual and in terms of community. Folklore and folklife looks at our past, it’s grounded very much in our present, and it really signals hope for future generations.”
Folks who attend can enjoy free live music and dance performances.
“We have all kinds of music, everything from hip-hop to more traditional sounds,” Motley said. “We have bird singers of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians from my home state of California, we have the Git Hoan Dancers coming to us from Alaska, we have Sons of Membertou coming to us from Canada, we have a beautiful singer-songwriter Nadia Larcher from Argentina and she’s representing indigenous communities there.”
You can also attend mouth-watering cooking demonstrations from native chefs.
“We have great chefs,” Motley said. “Many people know Sean Sherman, an award-winning chef and author of ‘The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen.’ … We have Elena Terry (who) focuses on the healing power of seed to table (and) was recently featured on ‘Top Chef.’ … We’ve got Cherokee chef Nico Albert Williams, and I’ve got to mention Bricia (Lopez), her family owns a restaurant called Guelaguetza, a James Beard Award-winning restaurant.”
After you grab a bite to eat, you can exercise with hands-on workshops.
“We have activities for families and for children,” Motley said. “We’re celebrating lacrosse and the origin stories of lacrosse. It is one of the oldest sports in North America and it’s growing like mad today as a lot of young people are interested. … You can come and play and learn how lacrosse is played in the Americas. … We’re welcoming Imilla Skate from Bolivia, a group of Quechua-speaking women who use skateboarding as a form of empowerment.”
Finally, you can engage your brain with insightful discussion sessions.
“The festival every year has what we call our ‘Narrative Stages’ for knowledge keepers and the next generation of artists to come together and have exchanges about issues that are of importance to communities,” Motley said. “Those sessions will be going on throughout the festival, touching on everything from … indigenous women who have been missing and murdered, then things that are much more celebratory. It really is a wide range of topics.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes Burt Ward's pet rescue mission (Part 1) Burt Ward famously played the Robin to Adam West’s Batman in the classic 1960s TV series “Batman.”
Now, Ward is being honored for rescuing more than just Gotham City.
“I was a ‘caped crusader’ and now I’m the canine and cat and kitten crusader,” Ward told WTOP. “Thirty years ago when my wife and I moved to the Inland Empire an hour east of Los Angeles, we got a beautiful Great Dane. … We started rescuing Great Danes in August 1994, and by the end of the month, we had 102 in our house! … We’ve been saving not just Great Danes, but St. Bernards, Chihuahuas, Yorkies, 45 different breeds, more than 15,500 saved.”
This spring, Ward received the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award in a letter from President Joe Biden reading, “I congratulate you on taking it upon yourself to contribute to the public good, and I’m proud to present you with the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of your 4,016 hours of service to this great nation.”
The special ceremony was hosted by the Royal Society of Saint George in Santa Monica, California on April 28. Not only was Ward presented the prize from the White House, he and his wife, Tracy, also received the United Nations Association of the United States of America’s (UNA-USA) Humanitarian Award for their animal rescue work.
“It is wonderful, but we never expected it,” Ward said. “My wife Tracy and I, our plans is: we want to leave this planet better off than when we found it. Everything that we can do to make a better world for all of us to live in.”
Along the way, the Wards have created their own charity brand (similar to the late Paul Newman) called Gentle Giants natural non-GMO ingredients pet foods, available through Chewy, Petco, Tractor Supply and PetSmart.
“We realized these dogs don’t have a very long life span,” Ward said. “Large dogs live under 10 years of age; the smaller ones, rarely do you see them go 13, 14 or 15. We decided that if we could find a way, we would help all dogs and cats live longer. We spent a tremendous amount of time and money to create a food that is different from every other pet food. We take no salary from it, this is not about money, this is our life’s work and charity.”
Ward insists that pets need more organic ingredients in their daily food intake.
“The key is there is no genetically-modified organisms in our food,” Ward said. “More than 90% of the human and animal food supply in our country has been genetically modified. … When they genetically modify the DNA of the plant, you can spray pesticides and it doesn’t kill the plant, but the problem is that it absorbs the pesticides. When your dog or cat eats (those) pesticides, they come down with cancer, the No. 1 killer of dogs and cats in America.”
Not only does he suggest his Gentle Giants Pet Food, he insists that his Gentle Giants Pet Care Program can help pets live up to 30 years with a better quality of life with free methods outlined on their charity’s website.
“We created a special way to feed dogs and cats,” Ward said. “We feed our dogs five times a day, smaller more frequent meals. We elevate their food and water dishes. … There’s a specific height for every dog. Why? Think of all that wasted energy if it has to lean down to get food. … If we can help you and everyone else keep their dog or cat an extra 10 or 15 years longer, not only is it great for the animal but what does it do for your life?”
Saving pets is a fitting superhero legacy for the Boy Wonder who once donned that iconic red and green outfit with a yellow cape and black eye mask. Thanks to reruns, multiple generations have grown up watching the tongue-in-cheek 60s series with its iconic theme song and kitschy “POW” graphics during fight sequences against the Joker (Caesar Romero), Penguin (Burgess Meredith) and Catwoman (Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt).
WTOP’s Jason Fraley not only dressed up as Robin for Halloween, he feared for Robin’s life when the Riddler (Frank Gorshin) strapped him to a table saw for a cliffhanger telling us to tune in next week: “Same bat time, same bat channel.”
“In that episode with the Riddler, Batman breaks through a subway wall to rescue me,” Ward said. “The studio forgot to build a breakaway wall, so when they set the charge of magnesium … the building didn’t blow open because it was real wood. (Instead,) the special effects guys used two half sticks of dynamite. … When I was tied on that table with my arms at my side, a 2×4 fell from above and landed on the bridge of my nose and broke my nose!”
Today, not even falling buildings can stop Ward from saving pets.
“As we said on ‘Batman’ — to the Batmobile!” Ward said.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Funny Girl' at the Kennedy Center (Part 1) Theater people who need other theater people are the luckiest people in the world.
That’s because they don’t rain on your parade when all you want to do is belt a showtune.
The national tour of the iconic musical “Funny Girl” sings into the Kennedy Center now through July 14.
“It was on Broadway in the ’60s, the movie came out in ’68, and there really hasn’t been a first-class production since then — our revival on Broadway in 2022 was the first revival,” Actor Stephen Mark Lukas told WTOP. “Folks may know the music, they may know the songs, they may have seen the movie, but our production touring is the first chance that a lot of folks have had to see the musical, so it’s more than just a show, it’s a theatrical event.”
Written for the stage in 1964 by Isobel Lennart (book), Jule Styne (music) and Bob Merrill (lyrics), the show follows the life of Broadway legend Fanny Brice, who rises the ranks of showbiz despite a tumultuous relationship with gambler Nicky Arnstein. The semi-autobiographical show was produced by Brice’s son-in-law Ray Stark.
“Fanny Brice was a huge star in the early 20th century,” Lukas said. “She was an enormous star of ‘The Ziegfeld Follies’ on Broadway, she was a radio star, she toured with vaudeville, so she was a huge trailblazer for women in comedy. She was one of the first, if not the first, female comedy stars as a comedian, so the show tracks her rise to stardom from her humble beginnings in Brooklyn to becoming a star on Broadway and then even beyond.”
Rising star Katerina McCrimmon stars as Brice, a role that earned Barbra Streisand a Tony nomination on stage in 1964 and catapulted her recording career with chart-topping tunes before winning her an Oscar in the 1968 movie (a rare Best Actress tie with Katharine Hepburn for “The Lion in Winter”). Imagine if Lady Gaga had won for “A Star is Born” (2018) — that’s how stunning it was for Streisand to win the Oscar for her debut film role!
“Our Fanny Brice is the brilliant Katerina McCrimmon, who I believe is in her 20s, she’s very young and she is phenomenal,” Lukas said. “Her voice is spectacular, she is incredibly funny and audiences are in for a treat to get to see her version of Fanny Brice in particular. … Doing it with Katerina is such a joy, she’s such a wonderful scene partner to be able to tell this story of this relationship that was such a big part of her life.”
Lukas plays the suave entrepreneur turned gambling addict and con man Nicky Arnstein, a role originated by Charlie Chaplin’s son Sydney on stage and then made famous on screen by the great Omar Sharif, who was at the height of his handsome popularity after David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) and “Doctor Zhivago” (1965).
“My very first voice teacher in college told me in one of my first lessons, ‘You’re gonna play Nick Arnstein one day,’ and I had no idea what that meant,” Lukas said. “Understudying Nick (on Broadway) was really my first experience of getting to know ‘Funny Girl.’ … He’s a fascinating character. He’s this well-put-together man about town in the first act, then in the second act he really struggles and unravels, so it’s a fascinating journey to take every night.”
While William Wyler’s film version lost the Best Picture Oscar to another musical in Carol Reed’s “Oliver!” (1968), the soundtrack was voted one of the American Film Institute’s Top 25 Movie Musicals of All Time. Meanwhile, the Original Broadway Cast recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004, while a new generation discovered the songs thanks to the Broadway revival starring Beanie Feldstein, followed by Lea Michele (“Glee”).
“Folks will know ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade,’ which is the big Act 1 closer when Fanny decides that she’s going to go after Nick Arnstein,” Lukas said. “‘People’ is another song in the first act. … ‘I’m the Greatest Star’ is another one folks may know; ‘You Are Woman, I Am Man;’ in the second act you have ‘The Music Makes Me Dance’ … a lot of songs that people will know and hopefully come home humming as they leave the theater.”
If you fancy yourself a fan of Broadway musicals, this is one production you don’t want to miss.
“It is a great, big, old-fashioned Broadway show with terrific tap-dancing and a beautiful score, so it really is a love letter to the theater,” Lukas said. “Audiences will be in for a treat in both the eyes and the ears.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Clint Black at Wolf Trap (Part 1) It’s only a week away, but country music fans will be anxiously “killin’ time” to see Clint Black.
The country legend performs live at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, on Wednesday, July 3, in a tour that marks the 35th anniversary of his breakthrough album “Killin’ Time” (1989).
“We’re going to be doing the entire ‘Killin’ Time’ album from top to bottom in order of sequence, but we’ll be doing a bunch of the other hits too,” Black told WTOP.
“Jake, my bass player of over 35 years, had that idea, and then my managers got wind of it, they said, ‘Oh, you’ve got to do this.’ I just wasn’t sure anybody wanted to hear the whole album, but it’s been going really well. We’ve been doing it and it’s been great.”
Born in New Jersey in 1962, Black mostly grew up near Houston, Texas, before making his way to Nashville. Upon signing with RCA, he joined Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt and Alan Jackson as the esteemed “Class of ’89,” but it was Black who won the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award, crowning him as the next big thing.
“I never thought about it that way,” Black said.
“I was overwhelmed by it all and it could have been any one of us. I think I was out in front of everyone, so I maybe had a leg up because I had already had those No. 1 and No. 2 singles or maybe the fourth or fifth single off that album had gone No. 1 by then, so I had a little lead on them, but to me, I was decidedly noncompetitive. I thought, ‘I’ll leave that to the record companies and managers and I’ll just be an artist.’ I tried not to think of it that way, I just tried to compete with myself to keep getting better.”
His debut album “Killin’ Time” (1989) featured hit after hit: “A Better Man,” “Nothing’s News,” “Nobody’s Home,” “Walking Away” and an iconic title track, voted on Country Music Television’s Top 100 Country Songs of All Time.
“‘A Better Man’ was the first single, that hit No. 1, which was, I think, very rare for a debut single, so that kind of kicked open the door,” Black said.
“Then, when ‘Killin’ Time’ came out, it was kind of teed up, so together they became the No. 1 and No. 2 song of the year on Billboard, so that just solidified like, ‘I’m in!'” Black said. “When I talk to people about that album, especially people who were in their teens at the time, that song ‘Killin’ Time’ is the one they talk about. I still love singing it.”
Countless hits followed throughout the early 90s, including “We Tell Ourselves” (1992), “When My Ship Comes In” (1993), “No Time to Kill” (1993), “State of Mind” (1993), ”A Good Run of Bad Luck” (1994), a killer cover of Eagles’ “Desperado” (1996), but it’s hard to top “Like the Rain” (1996), using a thunderstorm as an analogy for love.
“The first place I lived when I got to Nashville was too far out of town, so just to get back into the neighborhood I rented a studio apartment in a high rise,” Black said.
“I was on the fifth floor and Lisa (Hartman) and I were looking out the big window watching it just pour, just a deluge of rain. She always loved it when it rained. … I picked up my guitar and started playing some chords that felt like rain chords, the sky is darkening and I just started writing on that theme: ‘I never liked the rain until I walked through it with you.'”
In the late 90s, Black delivered “Something That We Do” (1997), “The Shoes You’re Wearing” (1998) and “Nothin’ But the Taillights” (1998), which brilliantly used visual storytelling to describe a woman leaving him stranded on the side of the road: “That’s about as lonely as a highway’s ever been, back here with my thumb out in the wind.”
“It’s a beautiful tragedy,” Black said.
“That’s one of my fastest hits. It became a hit quicker maybe than anything. I wrote it with Steve Wariner, I went over to his house late one evening after dinner. He had parts of the idea and we cranked up the coffee pot and started putting the puzzle together. … This was the first album where I played most of the electric guitar. … That lick at the top of the song comes from something he taught me that night.”
Along the way, he delivered some classic country duets, joining Wynonna Judd for “A Bad Goodbye” (1993) and Martina McBride for “Still Holding On” (1997). Still, his greatest collaboration was with his own wife, singer and actress Lisa Hartman Black (“Knots Landing”), for the beautiful wedding song “When I Said I Do” (1999).
“The biggest influence on my life now is my best friend, Lisa,” Black said.
“I’m standing around the kitchen, she’s making soup and I start writing the song, but I don’t tell her. … I just start teaching her this song and she starts singing harmonies with me and I wrote it for two days around the kitchen and told her she had to record it with me. She was reluctant and it almost didn’t happen. Finally, she agreed four days before my deadline. … I didn’t tell the record company who was singing on it, they guessed everybody but Lisa.”
They’ve now been married for 23 years, thanks to a little tip from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
“Roy found out we were getting married and said, ‘I’ll give you one piece of advice: don’t ever go to bed angry,'” Black said.
“That’s really simple advice, but so critical. Get your things worked out. Don’t leave them for another day because it’ll be too blurry by then. I think the real key is you’ve got to figure out all the little things that annoy, embarrass, frustrate and confuse. That’s what we did, then I just stopped doing them. Communication is the real key. You have to understand that you’re not going to see eye to eye on everything, but you just have to talk about it and grow closer together.”
In marriage and in life, time is precious, a recurring theme from “Killin’ Time” to “Spend My Time” (2004), featuring the lyric: “No matter how much time we buy, we can never spend it all.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Killer Queen at Capital One Hall (Part 1) It’s the last week of Pride Month and lifelong fans of Freddie Mercury are ready to rock.
The Queen tribute band Killer Queen hits Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia on July 2.
WTOP caught up with Patrick Myers, who projects the iconic voice of the late frontman.
“He had an extraordinary voice,” Myers told WTOP. “Freddie as a performer and as a singer, very much lived in the moment. He was such an artist. … He was so creative and so alive in the moment. … It’s always rich and passionate in different varieties of tone and style. He’s always a delight to listen to, so yes it’s a challenge, but it’s a glorious challenge. If you’re gonna try and copy people and make a tribute to them, you might as well choose the best.”
The tribute band has been rocking for 30 years. The band was formed in 1993, just two years after Mercury died in 1991.
“While Freddie was still alive, we were a college band at London University,” Myers said. “Queen had just released the album ‘Innuendo,’ which was brilliant. … When we got the news that Freddie had died, we were all in collective grief together, so we started singing and playing the songs to each other. … There weren’t any other tributes at that point, so we thought let’s trailblaze a little bit, let’s do the costumes, make it look and sound like Queen.”
The show features all of Queen’s trademark performance elements from Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in 1985.
“It’s totally exhilarating being on stage doing Killer Queen,” Myers said. “The songs are so amazing and the audience reaction to the songs is so powerful and passionate, it’s just a delight to do. The songs are so beautifully received by the audience, they join in and they throw their arms in the air and they do call-and-response, all of the things that you’d want from a classic-rock gig, Queen audiences do, because the songs are built for them.”
Along the way, you’ll hear all of your favorite Queen hits from 1973 to 1995.
“There’s so many great songs — there’s big anthems like ‘We Will Rock You,’ ‘We Are the Champions,’ there’s extraordinary songs like ‘Somebody to Love,’ beautiful, unique songs like ‘You’re My Best Friend,’ ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’ ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love,’ ‘Under Pressure,'” Myers said. “‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ goes without saying. … Of course we do ‘Fat Bottomed Girls,’ ‘Killer Queen,’ ‘Bicycle Race,’ we really pack them in.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley interviews Renee Fleming on new book and Kennedy Center Honor (Part 1) She was among the most recent class celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors this past December.
Now, five-time Grammy-winning opera legend Renée Fleming has published a new book, “Music & Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health & Wellness.”
“It’s a beautiful testament to the power of the arts for health and wellness,” Fleming told WTOP.
“I feel like the advocate or chief cheerleader, so I wanted to share the work with the public. I thought an anthology would be a good way to do it, to call on 41 different people to share their work as either researchers, creative arts therapists or artists, as well as major institutions like the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and National Institutes of Health.”
Fleming has launched the first ongoing collaboration between America’s national cultural center, the Kennedy Center, and the nation’s largest health research institute, the National Institutes of Health, to find the intersection between the arts, health and neuroscience. The foreword is written by Dr. Francis Collins, former director of NIH.
“We have a couple of different institutes from NIH, one — integrated medicine — which is really key to this,” Fleming said.
“People can pick and choose their topics: childhood development and education, various therapeutic uses, the future, we’ve got amazing futuristic chapters about what this is gonna look like down the road. … Most of it’s music, because that’s really where I live, but you’ve also got architecture, theater and visual arts as well.”
She has also created a touring program by the same name, Music and the Mind, which she has presented in more than 50 cities around the world, earning Research!America’s Rosenfeld Award for Impact on Public Opinion. In 2020, Fleming launched Music and Mind LIVE, a weekly web show with 700,000 views from 70 countries.
She is now also an adviser for major initiatives in the field, including the Sound Health Network at the University of California San Francisco and the NeuroArts Blueprint at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
“[The arts help] mental health, pain, movement disorders like Parkinson’s and MS, but also traumatic brain injury and stroke,” Fleming said.
“If kids are engaged, they do better in school and their brains change after just two years. … One thing that has changed is technology. We can all measure this now. I had an FMRI experiment at NIH myself, so there will be enough proof and rigorous research to make a case for embedding this in health care.”
Few artists have more credibility on the subject of the arts. In Hollywood, Fleming has recorded songs for the soundtracks of two Oscar Best Picture winners, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003) and “The Shape of Water” (2017). While on Broadway, she has earned a Tony nomination for “Carousel” (2018).
In 2012, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. In 2014, she became the first classical artist ever to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
Along the way, she’s performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and the Diamond Jubilee for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. More recently, the World Health Organization appointed her as a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health in 2023.
Last year, her Grammy-winning album “Voice of Nature: the Anthropocene,” inspired the National Geographic climate change film, which she has been touring and screening in a recital.
In March, she portrayed Pat Nixon in a new production of “Nixon in China” at the Opéra de Part. This past May, she performed at the Metropolitan Opera by reprising her role in “The Hours” based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Oscar-winning movie.
Of all of her accolades, it’s hard to top the 2023 Kennedy Center Honors, sitting in the balcony alongside her fellow recipients Billy Crystal, Queen Latifah, Dionne Warwick and Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees.
“It was unbelievable, really not to be matched,” Fleming said.
“To be up there was intimidating and fantastic. … Billy Crystal was overwhelmed by the experience, he was low key the entire weekend; Queen Latifah was amazing, I fell in love with her family too, they were all fabulous people. Dionne Warwick was an idol, I was excited to talk to her. … I was stunned by my tribute having Sigourney Weaver, Christine Baranski and Titus Burgess. It was amazing.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Disney in Concert' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) It’s time to put on your Mickey Mouse ears and head to the nation’s capital this weekend!
The renowned National Symphony Orchestra will perform “Disney in Concert: The Sound of Magic” at the prestigious Kennedy Center Concert Hall in D.C. on Saturday, June 22, and Sunday, June 23.
The event celebrates 100 years of The Walt Disney Company, which was founded on Oct. 16, 1923.
“This concert celebrates Disney’s 100 years of animation,” conductor Christopher Dragon told WTOP. “It’s incredible to think of the legacy this company has on everybody’s lives. Even grandparents today have grown up listening to Disney’s music, so it’s a company we’ve all grown up with and I’m thrilled to be performing the music.”
Audiences will see a montage of animation on a giant screen as the NSO performs scores from 26 films.
“Nothing can compare to hearing an 80- or 90-piece orchestra play the music live,” Dragon said. “Experiencing the musicians playing this music and feeling the vibrations hit your skin … there is nothing that can recreate it. … To experience it live really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, especially for any kids that haven’t been to a symphony concert before. This is a perfect way of introducing them to what an orchestra actually is.”
The prolific set list draws from the archetypal princess classics of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937), “Cinderella” (1950) and “Sleeping Beauty” (1959), as well as other masterpieces of early Disney cel animation, including “Pinocchio” (1940), “Fantasia” (1940), “Dumbo” (1941) and “Bambi” (1942).
You’ll also hear songs from the mid-20th century, including “You Can Fly” from “Peter Pan” (1953) and “The Bare Necessities” from “The Jungle Book” (1967), which was the last film Walt Disney worked on before his death.
Millennials will enjoy tunes from the Disney Renaissance era that saved Disney Animation from bankruptcy with “The Little Mermaid” (1989), “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992) and “The Lion King” (1994).
“I’m a kid from the ’90s, so this to me is the Golden Age of Disney, this was basically my childhood,” Dragon said, before naming a few favorites. “Of course from ‘Aladdin’ we have ‘A Whole New World,’ a song that has stood the test of time.”
Finally, Gen Z kids and parents will sing along to “Frozen” (2013), “Moana” (2016) and “Encanto” (2021).
“I don’t think it would be possible to do this concert without music from ‘Frozen,'” Dragon said. “All parents are going to know this movie because of their kids.”
Tickets range from $39 to $99.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Out & About Festival at Wolf Trap (Part 1) The second annual Out & About Festival returns to Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, this weekend.
It’s a double meaning for celebrating Pride Month and nature at Wolf Trap National Park.
“We had our first Out & About Festival last year and we had a lot of fun, so we thought, ‘Let’s do it again,'” Wolf Trap President and CEO Arvind Manocha told WTOP. “We’re going to be using all three of our stages. … We’re celebrating music, nature and pride. Of course it’s in Pride Month, then the nature part of it is really getting people out into the park and exploring parts of Wolf Trap they might not already be familiar with.”
The festival kicks off at 3 p.m. on Saturday with five artists alternating between two outdoor stages on the vast grounds of the national park. This is your chance to watch D.C. musician Be Steadwell (Meadow Stage), as well as Quinn Christopherson (Wood Stage), Okan (Meadow Stage), Tiny Habits (Wood Stage) and Lawrence (Meadow Stage).
“Behind the Filene Center and over to the left we have a beautiful meadow (with) what we call our Meadow Stage, an open-air stage with beautiful grass in front,” Manocha said. “If you walk even further behind the Filene Center, there’s almost 100 acres of forest back there, including hiking trails and a big pond, a really magical spot. In a little clearing in the forest, we’ll have our Wood Stage … that’s what we use for our children’s theater in the summer.”
After a short break at 6:30 p.m., the festival moves into the Filene Center around 7 p.m. for the headlining acts, including Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley and Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes.
“We have been fans of all of these artists for a long time,” Manocha said. “In thinking about these three women headlining the main stage on the Filene Center stage, I feel like we’ve got indie-rock royalty, indie-rock darlings and Brittany Howard, who is just such a powerhouse, and all three making their debuts at Wolf Trap this summer. For us, having them making their debuts on a festival like this just makes it all that more special.”
Not only will you see plenty of rainbow flags and colors, you’ll see park rangers in their nature garb.
“The Out & About Festival is about music, nature and pride,” Manocha said. “Clearly, it’s during Pride Month with a whole host of queer and queer-ally artists, but it’s also about getting ‘out and about’ into nature, coming into the park and not just going to the Filene Center but taking the day to explore all the different areas of the park.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Home Rule Music Festival (Part 1) Get ready to dance with some jazz and go-go tunes for the perfect kickoff to summer.
The third annual Home Rule Music Festival returns to D.C. this weekend, its title a double meaning for homegrown music and the lack of D.C. statehood (“taxation without representation”).
“It’s really us celebrating D.C.’s rich musical legacy and culture,” Executive Director Charvis Campbell told WTOP. “It’s also about us letting folks know: don’t forget that we don’t have the support that we need and deserve. It’s a little bit of both, that kind of militant side, but also truly an expression of our love of jazz and D.C. music.”
The three-day festival kicks off Friday at The Black Cat on 14th Street, Northwest.
“Opening night we have the amazing JoGo Project led by Elijah Jamal Balbed, a funky jazz go-go band,” Campbell said. “Then we have our headliner, the spiritual jazz artist Doug Carn, featuring Vanessa Rubin. Doug Carn is bringing his sextet and the amazing Vanessa Rubin is going to lend her voice for a beautiful, spiritual evening.”
The second day of the festival moves outdoors to The Parks at Walter Reed on Saturday.
“On Saturday, at our festival outdoors, we have Gary Bartz, we have Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids, we have Rare Essence, Black Alley, Malcom X Drummers and Dancers, Dupont Brass and then Vanessa Rubin is going to come on back and perform with her own band. We also have a record fair, a live mural painting and a kid zone, which is going to be anchored by the Washington Nationals and Washington Commanders, they’re gonna be out there.”
After that, you can recharge your batteries with a monthlong break before the festival gloriously returns for day three on Saturday, July 20, in Alethia Tanner Park in the Eckington neighborhood of Northeast, D.C.
“We’re really excited about this partnership with NoMa BID,” Campbell said. “We’re going to start with the Loop Sessions, our music producer workshop, we’re gonna have young men and women who love to make beats, they’re gonna do a display. Then we have a high school go-go band, The Soul of SEED from The SEED School in Southeast. … We then have Be’la Dona, the all-female band, then The Experience Band & Show, so it’s really a true celebration.”
Tickets for opening night at The Black Cat are $40 in advance or $50 at the door.
The two outdoor dates are free.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley explores the renovated Folger Shakespeare Library (Part 1) This page contains a video which is being blocked by your ad blocker.
In order to view the video you must disable your ad blocker.Folger Shakespeare Library reopens after $81.5 million renovationThe newly renovated Folger Shakespeare Library will host a ribbon cutting this Friday near Capitol Hill.
WTOP got a special sneak peek of the new digs that were remarkably built underneath the historic building.
“We first dreamed this project up 11 years ago (and) about seven years ago, we started to design this renovation,” Folger Shakespeare Library director Michael Witmore told WTOP. “It was an $81.5 million renovation that created a new 12,000-square-foot pavilion that is inserted under our historic building and created beautiful public gardens. It was designed to allow us to display our most valuable artifacts and to welcome people to a destination.”
The library was the brainchild of Standard Oil President Henry Folger and his wife Emily, who lived in Brooklyn, New York, but decided to donate their priceless collection to Washington, D.C. so that the nation’s capital would have an expansive library research facility to accompany the first permanent Elizabethan theater in the United States.
“They were creating that collection in Brooklyn and looking where to put it,” Witmore said. “They spotted this land next to the Library of Congress and the future Supreme Court. … Mr. Folger called the Librarian of Congress and said, ‘I have a collection of inestimable value that I want to make available to Washington.’ … So, it was actually an Act of Congress that preserved this plot so the Folgers could create their rare book and manuscript library.”
The library opened in 1932, housing 22,000 linear feet of English Renaissance material from 1530-1700.
“The Folger Shakespeare Library was created in 1932 as a living memorial … and 90 years later, we needed to add this public space in a way that complemented the historic building,” Witmore said. “We had to hold this building up temporarily while we demolished the foundations underneath, poured newer and deeper ones, then inserted this new public pavilion that includes over 5,000 square feet of gallery space for us to engage the public.”
The new renovation also includes a pair of beautiful outdoor gardens inviting you into the building.
“You’re going to first be greeted by beautiful gardens that create two meadow-like spaces on either side of our building (with) a poem by Poet Laureate Rita Dove that welcomes you and tells you to leave that official world behind,” Witmore said. “Come down the garden path and enter a forest of books. As you come into the new pavilion, you are greeted by two new exhibition halls, which contain fabulous rare books and manuscripts.”
This includes 82 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio, a 900-page book printed in 1623, providing the only source of 18 of his plays, as well as the first printed versions of “Macbeth,” “Twelfth Night,” “The Winter’s Tale” among others.
“Shakespeare wrote 38 plays and during his lifetime only 18 were printed,” director of education Peggy O’Brien said. “Shakespeare died in 1616, and seven years later, two actors thought they should print all of his plays in one book. … These books were printed in 1623 and Folger has 82 copies of the First Folio. … Thirty-seven plays were printed in the First Folio … and this was the first time that anybody divided them into comedies, histories and tragedies.”
The collection also includes other paperback prints, including the first copy of “Romeo and Juliet” from 1597.
“In that time, books were only printed if the plays had already been on stage and they were a big hit, so the fact that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was printed, this tells us that it was a big hit,” O’Brien said.
The newly renovated Folger Shakespeare Library from the view of the West Entrance off 2nd Street.(Alan Karchmer/Folger Shakespeare Library) Alan Karchmer/Folger Shakespeare Library The newly renovated gardens built around the Folger Shakespeare Library.(Alan Karchmer/Folger Shakespeare Library) Alan Karchmer/Folger Shakespeare Library The newly renovated exhibition halls include first folios, fantasy map, light press, gardens, a Puck statue, interactive displays and a gift shop.(Alan Karchmer/Folger Shakespeare Library) Alan Karchmer/Folger Shakespeare Library This retrofitted printing press was built to accurately portray how books and plays were printed during William Shakespeare’s lifetime.(Lloyd Wolf/Folger Shakespeare Library) Lloyd Wolf/Folger Shakespeare Library Folger Shakespeare Library community opening will include a peek at the new Rose Exhibition Hall.(Lloyd Wolf/Folger Shakespeare Library) Lloyd Wolf/Folger Shakespeare Library (1/5) Share This Gallery: * Share This:
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O’Brien is also excited for visitors to see live demonstrations of a working retro printing-press.
“This printing press was made specially for the Folger according to directions that were included in the first printing manual printed in English in 1683 that we have in our collection,” O’Brien said. “A man named Alan May in England took those directions from our collection and created this press for us, so that people could get a sense of how Shakespeare’s plays were printed — and other things that were printed around that time.”
Another vault showcases early prints of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe,” Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz,” J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” and Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
After exploring these two new exhibition halls, visitors can enjoy a bite at a brand new cafe called Quill & Crumb, then take in a show at the prestigious Folger Theatre, which is currently staging a play called “Metamorphosis.”
“We used to get around 60,000 visits a year,” Witmore said. “Our neighbors at the Library of Congress and the Capitol Visitors Center get many millions, so we believe that we’ve got the ability to attract many, many more.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley explores the renovated Folger Shakespeare Library (Part 2) Listen to my full chat with Michael Witmore here.
Listen to my full chat with Dr. Peggy O’Brien here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Kathleen Madigan at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) Comedian Ron White heaped praise on her, saying, “There’s nobody better than Maddy. She’s smart and just crushes it every time. She’s not just one of the best ‘female’ comics, she’s one of the best comics, period.”
See for yourself as Kathleen Madigan cracks up the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia on Saturday night for her “Boxed Wine and Tiny Banjos” comedy tour.
“I can’t wait to get there, it’s a beautiful drive, I’ve done it many times, it’s a wonderful reason to get out of the city,” Madigan told WTOP. “(The tour name) is a joke about being at a bar with a snobby wine friend of mine. He was like, ‘Do they have a wine list?’ I’m like, ‘Lewis, we’re at a dive bar. They have boxed wine and there’s three colors. You should know that because if you look on the wall there’s a squirrel stuffed playing a tiny banjo.'”
Performing 250 nights a year, she has seen it all with no shortage of material from her family and friends.
“Lately I’ve been talking a lot about aging parents,” Madigan said. “I said to my friend Robert, ‘I don’t think my parents had a plan for old age.’ He said, ‘Oh no, they had a plan. The plan is us, Kathleen.’ Should you take their keys away? I followed my parents home from a casino, they had not drank at all and I don’t know how they didn’t get pulled over 18 times, he looked hammered, that car was jumping medians and that’s just their normal driving.”
Born near St. Louis, Missouri in 1965, Madigan didn’t listen to much comedy growing up, instead rocking out to the great bands of the ’60s and ’70s. She earned a journalism degree in 1988 and began working newspaper gigs before discovering stand-up comedy as a side hustle, preferring the late-night hours over early rises.
“I’m just not a morning person,” Madigan said. “[My friend and I] accidentally went to an open-mic night as a goof-off thing because we were bartending to make extra money, me and him did it for fun, then I just kept doing it.”
After successful appearances on HBO and Comedy Central, Madigan was named “Funniest Female Stand-Up Comic” at the American Comedy Awards in 1996, cementing her status as one of the great comics of our time.
“I never had big thing like a sitcom like Ray Romano, Roseanne [Barr] or Brett Butler,” Madigan said. “Sitcoms were all the rage for people of that age, but by the time they got to me, they were kind of over giving a standup a sitcom. For people my age, there wasn’t a thing like that, it was just a slow train, the little train that could, just going and going, and the only reason that you know you get there is that you don’t have to worry about your rent.”
After a couple comedy CDs with “Kathleen Madigan” (1998) and “Shallow Happy Thoughts for the Soul” (2002), she released DVDs with “In Other Words” (2006), “Gone Madigan” (2011) and “Madigan Again” (2013) before dominating the streaming world with Netflix’s “Bothering Jesus” (2016) and Amazon’s “Hunting Bigfoot” (2023).
“It was fun to work with Netflix, same goes for Amazon,” Madigan said. “They don’t really edit you. I showed them what I was going to do, sent them a tape from a theater like, ‘This is what I’m planning.’ They were like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool. Send it to us when you’re done and we’ll post it.’ Back in the day, if you had HBO and Showtime, you had to get on the phone with lawyers. When people say we’re so politically correct now, oh no, we were way worse.”
Along the way, she hosted the Sirius XM satellite radio show “Blue Collar Comedy,” paving the way for her weekly podcast “Madigan’s Pubcast,” which has racked up over 5 million downloads since it launched during the pandemic.
“It’s actually been a lot of fun,” Madigan said. “I thought it would be a chore that I would begrudge doing every week. I was going to stop after COVID, but I still wanted to do it. A lot of young people like podcasts. They didn’t even know I was a comedian. They found me through the podcast and then it’s like, ‘Oh wow, you do this other thing for a living?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, you’re young, so I won’t be offended that I’ve been doing this for 150 years.”
She even has a tie to Maryland as her best friend is comedian Lewis Black, who grew up in Silver Spring.
“I had to send him the announcement that Stevie Nicks wrote the (Fleetwood Mac) song ‘Silver Springs’ — I know it’s Silver Spring, she didn’t read the sign right. She just made it a bunch of ‘springs,'” Madigan said. “I sent it to Lewis and said, ‘How come you never told me this about Steve Nicks? I find this to be a failure on your part. You should know that Stevie wrote one of her greatest songs about your hometown and you don’t even know that.'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes 'Hair' at Signature Theatre (Part 1) It first intoxicated Broadway in 1968, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical.
Now, you can enjoy Signature Theatre’s production of “Hair,” running through July 7 in Arlington, Virginia.
“I was in high school and I didn’t quite understand what it was about when I first saw it, I thought it was just a bunch of people partying and having a good time,” actor Mason Reeves told WTOP. “I didn’t quite get all of the intense themes of anti-war and free love. … At first, audiences get a little confused like, ‘What’s happening?’ Then it’s fun to watch them slowly drop into what this style of storytelling is. It’s really emotional.”
Written off-Broadway in 1967, the story follows a company of long-haired bohemian hippies on the cusp of adulthood as they champion freedom, pacifism and joy in the late 1960s, while confronting a world thrown into chaos when one of their own, Claude, receives a draft notice for the Vietnam War.
“It’s about the counterculture that was happening at that moment,” Reeves said. “Everybody’s heard of the ‘Summer of Love,’ which was a time when everybody went to San Francisco and they were all out on the streets loving on each other and it was all about free love and peace. This is not set in San Francisco, but it’s a similar idea about a group of people saying, ‘Man, I’m tired of all this war, the draft, all this new technology.'”
Reeves plays the pivotal role of Berger, who becomes a magnetic leader of the group.
“He’s sort of a talisman,” Reeves said. “He brings a lot of people together. He is very energetic, very joyous and very anti-anything that is going to keep him from being him, as free as possible at any time, so a lot of people really gravitate toward him in the group. He’s sort of the unifying factor, he brings everyone into this amazing, joyous, loving space, while still being 18, he’s still in high school, so still a very flawed human being.”
The stage version is more free-flowing than the 1979 movie adaptation, directed by Miloš Forman halfway between his two Best Picture winners of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) and “Amadeus” (1984).
“The movie is very different,” Reeves said. “We’ve had a lot of people come see the musical that have been like, ‘Oh, this is so different from the movie.’ In the movie, they add more of a central plot, whereas the musical is a lot more like you’re on a trip. We bounce from thing to thing and you follow an emotional through line, but the movie is very clear about what’s happening, whereas the musical is not handing you the plot.”
Visually, you’ll still see all of the hypnotic, psychedelic colors of the free-spirited 1960s.
“When you first come in, you’re greeted by this big screen projecting American propaganda about the Vietnam War, being a man, going off and fighting, it’s very dark and gray, then all of a sudden, the set opens up into this beautiful, vibrant, colorful explosion,” Reeves said. “It’s definitely a spectacle for the eyes — talk about trippin’! It really makes you feel like ‘I’m on this roller coaster, so buckle in.’ It’s very exciting.”
Likewise, the songbook still features your favorite chart-topping hits by Galt MacDermot (music) and Gerome Ragni and James Rado (lyrics), including “Aquarius” and “Let the Sunshine In.”
“We’ve got ‘Aquarius’ of course … everybody loves that one,” Reeves said. “‘Let the Sunshine In’ and ‘Flesh Failures,’ that’s another one people really like to sing along with. … One of my favorite songs in the show is ‘Electric Blues’ about the onset of technology in the 1960s … being mind-numbed and brainwashed by our devices — and that’s only gotten even more prevalent in our time.”
Indeed, the themes remain timeless, bursting with social commentary on relevant issues today.
“We didn’t have to change anything for it to still be relevant,” Reeves said. “We’re still dealing with all the same stuff. This show has a lot about African American rights. At the time it was very different, they were dealing with segregation and more overt racism, but we’re still dealing with police brutality. … We’re definitely still dealing with LGBT things, being able to be prideful and represent yourself however you want.”
Beyond the shows at Signature Theatre, the cast will also showcase items at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in D.C. this Thursday from 12 to 2 p.m., along with a live performance and panel discussion with the original Broadway cast. The event is free, but you must register in advance.
Listen to our full conversation here.
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Growing up in Alexandria, Virginia, Sasha DiGiulian was destined to scale to great heights.
“I went to my brother’s birthday party in the late ’90s at a climbing gym called Sportrock,” DiGiulian told WTOP.
“I was 6 years old … I fell in love with it, I started going about twice a week for their junior team program. Fast forward a year later, I was 7 and the gym was holding a youth regional championship, so I walked into the gym and literally stumbled upon the competitive side of this sport that had just become my hobby.”
Now, the 31-year-old is the inspiring star of the new HBO Sports documentary “Here to Climb,” which premieres this Tuesday at 9 p.m. on HBO when it will also be available to stream on Max.
Directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, the documentary follows DiGiulian’s journey starting as a child prodigy at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, which she attended from kindergarten to 12th grade.
“I was one of the very few kids who knew what rock-climbing was,” DiGiulian said.
“Climbing became such a big part of my life from 7 or 8 onwards. I started competing at youth regional, divisional and national championships. I won my first continental championship at 11 years old in Mexico City and came in second at the U.S. Adult National Championships in Canada when I was 12. Around then is when I signed my first endorsement deal.”
Upon becoming a professional climber, she won the Female Overall World Champion title, went undefeated as a Pan-American Champion over a 10-year span and became a three-time U.S. National Champion.
During this time, she traveled around the world to different indoor facilities to scale artificial walls, gripping onto plastic holds that were designed in different patterns to create challenging routes like a vertical obstacle course.
“I felt very satisfied in what I had achieved in indoor climbing,” DiGiulian said.
“There are three different disciplines: bouldering, speed climbing and leap climbing. It is an Olympic sport now. I worked with the International Federation of Sport Climbing to rally with the International Olympic Committee to have climbing have its inauguration into the Tokyo Olympics. Paris will be the second time that climbing has been a sport.”
At age 24, DiGiulian essentially retired from indoor competitive climbing, shifting solely to outdoor challenges. Unlike free-soloing, she always climbs with a safety rope attached, allowing her to travel to over 50 countries from Indonesia to Madagascar, while accomplishing over a dozen first ascents and over 30 female-first ascents.
“Outdoor climbing I started when I was 9 at the New River Gorge in West Virginia,” DiGiulian said.
“I really made a pivot to outdoor climbing after winning the overall world championship when I was 18. I went to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky [and] set this record of climbing the hardest climb achieved by a North American woman. … I do big-wall free climbing, going around the world to climbs that may or may not have ever been done before.”
The cliffs aren’t the only challenge. The film shows her confronting major mental and physical obstacles.
“I was diagnosed with double hip dysplasia in 2020,” DiGiulian said.
“I go in for five surgeries where they break my pelvic bone in four places on both sides, cut my abdominal muscles out of my body and sew together my connective tissue that I’ve shredded through because my femur was popping out of its socket. It was two 10-hour open-hip surgeries, along with three other surgeries over 18 months, so it was a lot of building back.”
Along the way, the filmmakers interview Sasha’s mother Andrea DiGiulian and Sasha’s husband Erik Osterholm, with whom she lives in Boulder, Colorado.
We also hear from other climbers, including Cedar Wright, Angela VanWiemeersch, Vian Charbonneau and Alex Honnold, who chimes in with his cinematographer Pablo Durant from the Oscar-winning film “Free Solo.” Most importantly, we see trailblazing female climbing icon Lynn Hill.
“Part of this film is me partnering with one of my childhood heroes who turned into a mentor and friend, Lynn Hill, who was the first woman and also the first human to free climb this iconic feature on El Capitan in Yosemite called The Nose,” DiGiulian said.
“I grew up with a poster of her on my wall and always looked at women like her … as these examples of following what you’re passionate about and finding out what you’re capable of achieving.”
Find more information about “Here to Climb” here.
Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Tower of Power at Bethesda Theater (Part 1) The sound of classic R&B tunes will echo along Wisconsin Avenue this weekend.
The beloved group Tower of Power rocks the Bethesda Theater this Friday, June 21.
WTOP caught up with founding saxophonist and songwriter Emilio Castillo.
“I am extremely honored to be on WTOP as the band leader of T.O.P.,” Castillo told WTOP.
“Fans get an up close and personal view of the band. It’s a very powerful thing to hear it that close. We do all kinds of gigs, big festivals, small venues, we go overseas, we’re getting ready to go to Japan and Europe later in the year, we do all kinds of stuff, but I expect the Bethesda Theater to do great, I think I’ve been there before and I’m looking forward to it.”
Born in Detroit in 1950, Castillo mostly grew up in the Bay Area of California.
“That’s when the Motown-thing got popular and I was missing all of my friends in Detroit, so I listened to the radio and the radio became my friend,” Castillo said.
“I listened to Smokey Robinson and The Four Tops and The Temptations and Martha & The Vandellas, I loved all that kind of music growing up. … My mother said, ‘If you’re gonna have a soul band, you should call yourself The Motowns because you guys are from Detroit.”
The band eventually changed its name from The Motowns to Tower of Power.
“People that played The Fillmore were psychedelic bands: The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & The Holding Company, bands with weird names,” Castillo said.
“We were doing a recording at this little studio in Hayward, California. I was on a break, sitting at the owner’s desk and here’s this list of all these weird names, thinking, ‘None of these are gonna work,’ then I saw the name Tower of Power. I was like, ‘Guys, what about this?'”
After Tower of Power’s debut album “East Bay Grease” (1970), the band followed up with the successful sophomore effort “Bump City” (1972) and hits like “You’re Still a Young Man.”
“That’s the first song that Doc [Kupka] and I ever wrote,” Castillo said. “Right out of the box, it was a big hit.”
Their self-titled third album “Tower of Power” (1973) was their biggest success, featuring hits like “This Time It’s Real,” “What is Hip?” (played often at this year’s NBA Finals) and their signature song, “So Very Hard to Go.”
“I knew it was a hit the moment I wrote it, to be honest,” Castillo said.
“We had a house up in the hills in Berkeley, California, and we sit down in the bedroom, me and Doc, writing the song. When it’s finished, I said, ‘Man, I think that’s a hit.’ He said, ‘Yeah, me too.’ We called our manager and said, ‘Ron, we wrote a hit.’ He laughed, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m serious!’ I played it for him over the phone and he goes, ‘Man, I think you might be right!'”
By now, Tower of Power was a household name, making way for their fourth album “Back to Oakland” (1974) with even more R&B hits from “Time Will Tell” to “Don’t Change Horses (In the Middle of a Stream).”
“By that time, Lenny Williams had been our singer for over a year,” Castillo said.
“He was a clever writer and he used to hang out with this guy named Johnny ‘Guitar’ Walker, who used to come up to our house in Oakland at Berkeley Hills and he would sit at the piano and write. They wrote this song ‘Don’t Change Horses (In the Middle of a Stream)’ and as soon as we heard it, we knew it was going to be a cool song for Tower of Power.”
Still, Castillo’s personal favorite album remains their fifth effort “Urban Renewal” (1975).
“I’m very proud of all the records that we have made, I worked really hard on them because I produced those records, but I still have always said my whole career that album called ‘Urban Renewal,’ I thought we were firing on all 10 cylinders when we made that record,” Castillo said.
Since then, the band has cranked out 15 more studio albums, not to mention numerous live albums and compilation albums.
They also played on hits by Santana (“Everything, Everything”), Elton John (“The Bitch is Back”), Little Feat (“Spanish Moon”), Rod Stewart (“Big Bayou”), Jefferson Starship (“Jane”), Heart (“Even It Up”) and Bonnie Raitt (“Tangled and Dark”).
When it’s all said and done, what does he want the band’s legacy to be?
“I would say high musicality,” Castillo said. “We’ve often been tagged as the musician’s musician band over the years and I want that to be our moniker — that we have high musicality in the band Tower of Power.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes local Tony winners and nominees (Part 1) New York City honored Broadway’s best last night at the 77th annual Tony Awards.
Wouldn’t you know it? A bunch of D.C. area artists had a big night in the Big Apple!
Best Musical went to “The Outsiders,” starring a pair of Virginia alumni with Shenandoah University’s Brody Grant as Pony Boy and VCU’s Joshua Boone as Dally. They sang about “staying gold” and can now at least say they lost their acting categories to superstars like Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe for “Merrily We Roll Along.”
“The Outsiders” also featured the Music Direction of D.C. native Mark G. Meadows, who has joined WTOP many times for his work around town, namely Signature Theatre in Shirlington, Virginia. Likewise, his “Outsiders” colleague Brian MacDevitt, professor at the University of Maryland, won for Best Lighting Design of a Musical, defeating Frederick, Maryland native David Bengali who was nominated for the musical “Water for Elephants.”
By winning the top prize, “The Outsiders” upset the Alicia Keys musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” which entered the night with a leading 13 nominations, co-produced by D.C. native Marjuan Canady and starring Brandon Victor Dixon from Gaithersburg, Maryland. Still, its stars Maleah Joi Moon and Kecia Lewis both won for their performances, the latter beating Howard University alum Amber Iman for “Lempicka” for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
D.C. native Justin Peck won Best Choreography for the musical “Illinoise,” Leigh Silverman of Rockville, Maryland was nominated for Best Director for the women’s suffrage musical “Suffs,” and Talking Heads alum David Byrne, who grew up near Baltimore, shared a Best Original Score nomination with Fatboy Slim for “Here Lies Love.”
On the non-musical side, “Stereophonic” won Best Play, defeating “Mother Play” by D.C. playwright Paula Vogel and starring Jessica Lange as a mother moving her children into a D.C. apartment in 1962. University of Maryland professor Amith Chandrashaker was nominated for Best Lighting Design for “A Prayer for the French Republic.”
Last but not least, the Excellence in Theatre Education Award went to Baltimore’s own CJay Philip, Artistic Director of Dance & Bmore, inspiring the next generation of theater stars dreaming of Broadway nights like this.
See the full list of winners here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the Season 2 premiere of 'House of the Dragon' (Part 1) In 2019, “Game of Thrones” wrapped its phenomenal eight-season run on HBO, winning 59 Emmys, including the top prize of Best TV Drama four times. The final season left many of us disappointed, but the series finale was still watched by 19.3 million viewers, a personal record for the epic fantasy series.
Winter came and went, but a franchise that was left for dead found fresh fire on the backs of new dragons with the much-anticipated prequel “House of the Dragon” (2022), set 172 years before the events of “Game of Thrones,” during House Targaryen’s war of succession.
Nearly 10 million viewers watched the premiere and 9.3 million viewers tuned in across all platforms to watch the Season 1 finale, which beat the drums of impending war.
Now, “House of the Dragon” is finally back, having aired its Season 2 premiere on Sunday night on HBO/Max. If your excitement was met by confusion, you’re not alone — two years is a long time to wait in between seasons. No doubt it was due to last year’s Writers and Actors’ strikes.
But while we can forgive the creators for this unforeseen delay, it doesn’t make it any easier for viewers desperately trying to remember who everyone is.
In case you didn’t read George R.R. Martin’s 2018 novel “Fire & Blood” and you need more of a refresher than HBO’s “Previously On” introduction, below is my attempt to remind you where we left off, as well as my initial thoughts on the Season 2 premiere that we all just watched before going to bed with nightmares.
Team Black vs. Team GreenThe main key to knowing what’s going on this season is that there are two warring factions, which fans are calling Team Black vs. Team Green. They are led by a pair of former childhood best friends, who once laid heads on each other’s laps, only for one to marry the other’s father.
This led to future betrayals, as jarring time jumps showed them all grown up (played by new adult actresses) becoming rival queens with competing claims to the crown.
Team Black (outcast at Dragonstone) is led by the blonde-haired Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), daughter of the late King Viserys, who publicly named her his heir only to have it stolen from her. She’s now plotting a comeback with her uncle turned lover, Prince Daemon (Matt Smith).
While incest was common in medieval times, such a sin is best reserved for villains (i.e. Jaime and Cersei Lannister). Sick fans were actually rooting for Rhaenyra and Daemon to get together — you realize that’s like Simba sleeping with Scar, right?
Team Green (based at King’s Landing) is conversely led by the brunette Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), who claimed that her dying husband, King Viesrys, changed his mind on his deathbed and no longer wanted Rhaenyra Targaryen to be his heir. Instead, he “changed” it to their son, King Aegon, a blonde immature doofus who makes Joffrey look well behaved.
Season 2 shows him on the Iron Throne way in over his head, having to be told by Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) that he can’t give farmers their sheep back because the dragons need food.
“A Son for a Son”The other key to understanding what’s going on is the Season 2 premiere’s telling title: “A Son for a Son.” It refers to Rhaenyra Targaryen grieving the death of her son, Lucerys, along with his dragon, Arrax. Both were killed last season by King Aegon’s younger brother, Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) riding his dragon, Vhagar.
This deadly combo is now “the single greatest power in the realm,” said the wise but conniving Otto Hightower in Season 2.
Aemond now wears an eye patch, which is helpful for us to distinguish his character from the rest, but it also serves a story purpose. Remember, he lost his eye during a childhood fight with Lucerys, causing him to strike back with outsized revenge. You take my eye? I’ll kill you. And your dragon.
So much for “an eye for an eye.”
Hence, the meaning of the Season 2 premiere title “A Son for a Son.”
In Sunday night’s episode, Rhaenyra Targaryen masochistically visits the landing site where her son’s body fell from the sky, collecting his remains along with a piece of his dead dragon’s wing washed up on a beach. After this, she returns to Dragonstone to not only nestle with Daemon but also tell her war council: “I want Aemond Targaryen,” as in I want him dead.
I won’t spoil whether she gets Aemond or not, but let’s just say there’s a chilling climax where Team Black sends a pair of torch-carrying goons into the castle to give Queen Alicent Hightower a little payback. This ending might be triggering for some viewers, especially if you’ve ever loved a dog (it didn’t need to be kicked!) or lost a child (Happy Father’s Day, everyone!).
Hey, HBO, it’s kind of B.S. to drop that ending on this particular holiday.
Alas, “Game of Thrones” fans love their television twisted, so writer Ryan Condal and director Alan Taylor needed to end on a controversial note. If you want blood, you got it. At least its off screen. Bloodthirsty fans will be left craving more violence, bored by such a slow-burning opener, but not me; I actually prefer the castle politics.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see this season open with the Night’s Watch, a refreshing setting compared to the dark corridors of the castles that mostly made up last season.
The duty of the men on The Wall is admirable, though the line about a 700-foot ice wall “keeping out Death” lacks stakes because we all know how the Night King battle ends (although we couldn’t see much of it with that dimly-lit cinematography at the end of “G.O.T.”).
OK, now I’m rehashing old complaints. Clearly, I’m still not over Daenerys Targaryen’s abrupt heel turn in 2019, but let’s instead be grateful. Overall, this franchise has brought us countless moments of joy, shock and awe with memorable characters for the ages.
It’s hard to believe we are now in Westeros for our tenth season — and an 11th is pretty much guaranteed as HBO renewed “Dragon” for a third season before the second season even aired.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Clotilda: The Return Home' (Part 1) Just in time for Juneteenth, a new documentary highlights an untold story of African-American history.
The National Geographic documentary “Clotilda: The Return Home” premieres on Disney+ and Hulu on Monday, June 17. It chronicles a full-circle journey for the descendants of the last known American slave ship, the Clotilda, which infamously brought 110 African slaves to Mobile, Alabama, in 1860.
“In 1808, the slave trade had been made illegal, so nobody was supposed to be bringing ships across the Atlantic,” Nat Geo Explorer Tara Roberts told WTOP. “A gentleman in Alabama who was a plantation owner and shipbuilder got word that one of the kings in Benin, the king of the Dahomey, was selling captive Africans, so he made a bet that he could build a ship and sail illegally over to Benin, buy Africans and bring them back without being caught.”
To cover up his tracks, the shipbuilder unloaded the slaves, burned the vessel and sank it in the Mobile River.
“The people on the ship survived … people actually remember being captured and they passed those stories down to their descendants,” Roberts said. “They were freed in 1865 during the Civil War. They decided to pool their earnings together (and) started working as sharecroppers. There were 32 of them, it took them nine years and they managed to save up $300, bought 57 acres of land and turned that into a community called Africatown.”
Legend grew about the ship’s whereabouts, only for the wreckage to finally be discovered in 2019.
“It’s the only slave shipwreck that’s been found relatively intact,” Roberts said. “Most of these ships are splinters on the ocean floor because they were made out of wood 200 or 300 years ago, so when they wrecked, the ocean reclaimed them. But with the Clotilda, because they sank it in the Mobile River, which is a very muddy river, the mud preserved the wreck, so it is a scientific marvel that everybody is super excited about.”
While the Netflix documentary “Descendant” (2022) explored the lives of the descendants in Alabama, Nat Geo’s “Clotilda: The Return Home” shows these relatives traveling back to their ancestral home of Benin, Africa.
“It does feel like to get the full story, it’s great to watch them both,” Roberts said. “The ‘Descendant’ story focuses on what’s happening in the community there in Africatown. But ‘Clotilda: The Return Home’ is about the descendants, specifically of Cudjoe Lewis and Gumpa Lee, who were two of the Africans on the Clotilda, and it’s about their descendants actually tracing the route that they took to come to the Americas.”
Tracing the exact route was a historical challenge, considering that 1.8 million slaves died crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the Middle Passage, alone, not to mention the countless deaths that occurred during slavery in the U.S.
“Cudjo Lewis actually drew a map back in 1860 that detailed his route from his village in the north of Benin, all the way to the U.S.,” Roberts said. “He drew that map and then gave it to his descendants who passed it down from generation to generation — and we followed that route home, and it was amazing.”
The Nat Geo cameras capture the raw emotions of the American descendants as they greet the people of Benin.
“They didn’t take the remains, but they took soil from the grave sites of their ancestors, Cudjoe Lewis and Gumpa Lee,” Roberts said. “The descendants of Cudjoe Lewis — Garry, Altevese and Cassandra — said their ancestor, Cudjoe, always said that he wanted to go home. Always. This was 150 years ago that he said, ‘I want to go back home,’ and he was never able to do it, so for them fulfilling that dream of their ancestor just meant everything.”
Roberts accompanied them on their journey, at one point saying, “I’m crying and it’s not even my story,” to which one of the descendants says, “It is your story,” acknowledging a shared universal truth for African Americans.
“What made it so special for me is that most African Americans cannot trace their ancestry back to a specific place in Africa,” Roberts said. “There’s this thing that genealogists call the ‘1870s Brick Wall’ (because) before 1870, the U.S. Census did not trace identifying details of enslaved people. So most of us get stuck in the mid-1800s, but to be able to actually trace back to a specific village in Africa is astounding.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Clotilda: The Return Home' (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Chuck Brown Band at Watkins Regional Park (Part 1) It’s time to “bust loose” and ring in both Father’s Day and Juneteenth with some go-go music!
This Saturday, the Chuck Brown Band headlines a free concert at Watkins Regional Park in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on a lineup that includes Trouble Funk, the Luther Relives Tribute and the Brencore All Stars, along with an array of art exhibits, food trucks and activities.
WTOP caught up with Wiley Brown, who took over as lead singer for his late father, “The Godfather of Go-Go.”
“We’re definitely looking forward to having a good old time outside in the sun and getting our party on for sure,” Brown told WTOP. “This will be my first time performing at Watkins Park with the band. I know my father probably did it years ago plenty of times, but this will be my first time. … We’re definitely looking forward to bringing the people some good summertime vibes. … There’s no better way than with the Chuck Brown Band!”
Born in North Carolina in 1936, Chuck Brown moved to D.C. at age six. By age 15, he was living in the streets before spending time in prison for a deadly beating incident that he always claimed to be self-defense. After paying his debt to society, Brown would go on to pioneer go-go music to create the city’s signature sound.
“He was always singing with my grandmother in the church since he was 7,” Brown said. “The pivotal moment for him was when he was 24, during the time he was incarcerated, he learned how to play the guitar. Once he got out, there was no looking back. He began performing in people’s backyards, then he was able to perform in clubs. … After being with the Earls of Rhythm and Los Latinos, he had the insight and the drive to create his own band.”
That band was, of course, The Soul Searchers, whose first album “We the People” (1972) had a hit title track. They followed up with the successful second album “Salt of the Earth” (1974) with hits like “Blow Your Whistle” and “Ashley’s Roachclip,” which has been sampled by Eric B. & Rakim, Slick Rick, Run-DMC, Milli Vanilli and EMF.
Still, it was their third album “Bustin’ Loose” (1979) that became iconic with its catchy title track that topped the R&B charts for over a dozen weeks and has since been sampled by the likes of Nelly in “Hot in Herre.”
“When he put it out, he knew that he had something, but he didn’t know that it would take off the way it did; it took off all over the world,” Brown said. “To this day, we have people in Japan still contacting my manager and family letting us know how much they love the music. When ‘Bustin’ Loose’ hit, that really set the tone for go-go music and plenty of bands ended up popping up all over the city following my father’s foundation that he laid.”
In 1984, they dropped another hit “We Need Some Money,” sampled by Kid ‘n Play and Wreckx-n-Effect.
“He wrote it in less than 10 minutes because he needed some money; it’s the fastest song he ever wrote,” Brown said. “A lot of music artists have these moments when you’re feeling something, you’ve gotta hurry up and get it out because there’s nothing like capturing something in the moment. … There’s a chant when we perform it where he said, ‘Masterclass, Visa, American Express, I ain’t got nothin’ against no credit cards, but the cash is the best.'”
Shortly after, Wiley was born in 1989, admitting it was unique growing up watching strangers praise his dad.
“It took me until about 6 years old to understand what type of impact my father had,” Brown said. “We’d get stopped at a red light, people yelling out the car: ‘Hey, Chuck!’ … He’d get out of the car and the next thing you know, there’s a whole mob of people, honking horns. … He remembered a point in time that the only people wanting to take a picture of him were the police and he said, ‘Now the police want to take a picture with me!'”
While he began rapping at his father’s concerts at a young age, Wiley’s dream was to become a professional football player, proving to be a standout at Thomas Stone High School in Waldorf, Maryland, before playing at Duquesne and Virginia Tech.
While Wiley was balling out on the gridiron, his father was delivering late-in-life hits like “Block Party” (featuring DJ Kool) in 2007 and “LOVE” (featuring Jill Scott and Marcus Miller) in 2010.
After Chuck Brown sadly died in 2012, Wiley joined the Chuck Brown Band full-time in 2016.
“Being in the band started with Chuck Brown Mondays when I might come in and do a song or two, but then my dad came to me one day in a dream saying, ‘What you gonna do, son? If you gonna do something, don’t play around with it, go full force,'” Brown said. “It’s funny for some (bandmates) who have seen me grow up over the years like, ‘Man, I remember when you were a little shorty, a little guy coming to band rehearsals and look at you now!'”
Today, his father’s name still graces signs reading “Chuck Brown Way” along 7th Street between T Street and Florida Avenue in Northwest D.C. If you live in that general area, head just over the D.C.-Maryland border to Prince George’s County to enjoy this weekend’s concert at Watkins Regional Park.
Just as his father’s fans chanted, “Wind me up, Chuck,” today’s fans have a similar request:
Wind us up, Wiley!
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Bridgerton' (Part 1) Dearest Gentle Reader,
One month ago, I had not seen a single episode of Netflix’s beloved costume drama “Bridgerton.”
Now, I have seen every episode of “Bridgerton” after binge-watching the entire series with my wife (her second time through) in order to catch up in time for the final batch of Season 4 to drop on Netflix this Thursday.
I hereby declare that I am officially hooked on this delicious confection of palace intrigue, steamy romances, family squabbles and royal scandals, wondering why I ever resisted the genre in the first place, despite enjoying many of its greatest works on the big screen, particularly those magnificent Merchant-Ivory Productions.
(Right now, you’re probably reading this in Julie Andrews’ voice, even though someone else is actually penning these words, just like the secret identity of the kingdom’s mysterious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown)
Based on the novels by American author Julia Quinn, showrunner Chris Van Dusen and executive producer Shonda Rhimes have delivered a brilliant premise of alternative history, imagining racial equality in the London Regency Era of the early 1800s. This time, King George III has married a woman of African heritage, Queen Charlotte, enabling other people of color to rise into the same levels of nobility as their traditional Anglo peers.
The first season wonderfully introduced the romance between the jaded Duke of Hastings, Simon Bassett (Regé-Jean Page) and the innocent Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor), deemed the “diamond” debutante. The writers deftly created conflict by juxtaposing Daphne’s desire to raise a family with Simon’s back story, his cruel father mocking his childhood stutter, causing an adult Simon to vow on his father’s deathbed to never produce an heir.
Sadly, the Simon-Daphne story vanished when Page refused to return for season two, but that didn’t stop us from exploring the Bridgerton family. This time, Daphne’s oldest brother Lord Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) worked out his childhood trauma of losing his father to a bee sting. He carried this grief into a love triangle between the new “diamond” prospect, Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran) and her older half-sister Kathani (Simone Ashley), who was love at first sight in the forest as the heated frenemies became forbidden lovers.
The third installment “Queen Charlotte” (2023) was technically a spinoff but arguably the best season yet. Not only did we get the back story of Lady Danbury (Arsema Thomas and Adjoa Andoh), we learned the complex roots of Queen Charlotte. India Amarteifio was perfectly cast as a younger version of actress Golda Rosheuvel, who we’ve grown to love for her cold quips and elaborate hairdos. She showed a softer side by caring for King George (Corey Mylchreest and James Fleet), battling mental illness by adorably crawling under the bed together.
Finally, the fourth installment dropped last month (technically labeled Season 3, but we all know it’s the fourth). While a subplot involves the Bridgerton matriarch Violet (Ruth Gemmell) returning to romance as a widow, the main storyline involves Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) manifesting her childhood crush for neighbor Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), a roaming womanizer who is finally ready to settle down with Penelope.
Can their romance survive the revelation that Penelope is indeed Lady Whistledown, a twist that we gentle viewers learned at the end of the first season but the news of which still eludes Colin? Like everyone, I was shocked at the reveal, though the clues were there all along (Penelope Featherington is literally “pen” and “feather”). I didn’t initially buy the young wallflower as some wise esteemed writer, but it’s grown on me since.
Either way, the news is stunning to the few characters who know, namely Penelope’s former best friend Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie a.k.a. Zooey Deschanel’s clone), who has recently befriended that nasty meddler Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen). I won’t spoil what happens in this new batch of episodes, but twists and turns await after that midseason cliffhanger of Colin and Pen romping in the carriage (that chauffeur deserves a raise).
In such moments, the show will prove to be too risqué for some viewers with graphic brothel interludes to rival “Game of Thrones.” However, when it comes to the main characters, it’s often tastefully done with a romantic “will they, won’t they” storyline that builds to a big payoff. If you turn on the subtitles, the “moaning” descriptions can be hilarious; the text also helps us play “name that tune” as modern pop music gently plays on ballroom violins.
I sincerely hope you enjoy this new batch of episodes. Surely, many of you will binge them all Thursday night and have nothing left to watch this weekend (good luck transitioning to Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” in theaters Friday).
Might I suggest revisiting Brontë flicks like William Wyler’s “Wuthering Heights” (1939) or Cary Fukunaga’s “Jane Eyre” (2011); Jane Austen in Ang Lee’s “Sense & Sensibility” (1995) and Joe Wright’s “Pride & Prejudice” (2005); the great Merchant-Ivory productions of “A Room with a View” (1985) and “The Remains of the Day” (1993); and auteur gems like Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” (1993) or Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” (2019).
There, that should keep you busy until the fifth installment of “Bridgerton” arrives in 2026 following Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson). Fortunately for fans, there are eight official novels to adapt, not to mention various epilogues, compilations and anthologies for an endless amount of material just waiting to arrive on screen.
Now run along, dearest gentle reader, I must put down this pen to record your daily radio address.
Yours Truly,
Lord Whistledown
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Don't Tell Seth!' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) You might recognize him from the Sonic “Two Guys” commercials or as a frequent host of “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” But did you know he wrote for many years on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” who was also the best man in his wedding?
Now, Peter Grosz brings “Don’t Tell Seth! An Evening with the Seth Meyers Writers” to the Kennedy Center for a pair of comedy shows this Friday and Saturday night.
“We decided to put this show together to bring our hidden talents out from behind the shadows and into the public eye,” Grosz told WTOP. “The idea behind it was just a chance to perform live. A lot of other shows have done stuff like this, ‘The Daily Show’ writers have done it, Conan O’Brien’s writers have done it. … We wanted to put together a more polished show with written material that didn’t make it to the air for Seth’s show.”
Grosz will join other former and current writers from late-night show, including John Lutz, Matt Goldich, Jenny Hagel, Jeff Wright, Allison Hord, Ben Warheit and Ian Morgan — many hailing from the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy group.
“It’s like a variety show,” Grosz said. “I co-host with John Lutz, so we come out and introduce the concept of the show. … We have a couple people doing standup, we have some structured improv. … People can see monologue jokes like Seth would tell in the show written live on stage in front of them based on suggestions from the audience, then sketches of people either playing characters or themselves that are pre-written.”
Born in New York City in 1974, Grosz befriended Meyers in college at Northwestern University in Illinois before performing together at the ImprovOlympic in Chicago and the Boom Chicago in Amsterdam.
“I’ve known him for over 30 years,” Grosz said. “He’s a very good friend, he was the best man in my wedding. … I don’t know if those jokes would have played anywhere else. He would not tell jokes about the mustache I had when I got married on the air, but he did have some choice material for me at my wedding.”
Upon moving to New York, Grosz wrote for Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” from 2007 to 2010, while Meyers was the head writer for NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and also hosting the “Weekend Update” segments.
“It was great, it was really fun,” Grosz said. “We had a bunch of other friends from Chicago who were also writing from ‘SNL,’ John Lutz wrote for them at the time. … It was just kind of a nice, really wonderful time where we all happened to be successful and in the same city, which is very rare, and to all be working at the same time on the same types of shows, it was lovely, it was great.”
After taping their respective shows, they would compare proverbial notes out on the town in Manhattan.
“I went to a lot of ‘SNL’ tapings just because that’s a fun chance for a bunch of friends to see a particularly fun show and then go out; those ‘SNL’ after-parties last until the sun comes up,” Grosz said. “‘The Colbert Report’ was on every day, so it wasn’t a special event when that was on, but it was more just hanging around, I had a kid at the time and I lived blocks away from Seth, so he met my kid and played in a park in the West Village.”
When “Late Night with Seth Meyers” launched on NBC in 2014, Meyers hired his old pal Grosz as a writer.
“When he was doing ‘The Colbert Report,’ Colbert was playing a character … sort of this Bill O’Reilly blowhard pundit, so writing for that character was very different than writing for Seth,” Grosz said. “They’re both very generous bosses and fun to work for. Stephen was more performative, he could sing and dance and wanted to do big spectacle things, but Seth, that’s not his style, he focuses more on the joke, wording and timing.”
Today, the entire business model of late-night TV has changed with viral videos on social media.
“It’s entirely different,” Grosz said. “Nobody watches these shows live anymore. I watch them more when I’m traveling on the road or on vacation. … I can’t say it’s a change for the worse necessarily because the shows are still on, they’re still popular, they still hold some cultural currency and sway, the work that’s being done is really high, so I can’t say that late-night overall is worse or anything, it’s just a different packaging.”
You might even recognize Grosz’s face, having played Sidney Purcell in 12 episodes of HBO’s “Veep.”
“‘Veep’ was fantastic,” Grosz said. “I was very fortunate to be in the first season when they were establishing a lot of the world outside of her immediate staff. … I got in early enough that they found there was a lot of utility in this scummy, oil lobbyist being used as a foil or as an example of the darker side of D.C.”
Now, he can perform in front of those very same lobbyists (and regular folks) at the Kennedy Center.
“If any of them want to pay money to come see us, they’re more than welcome,” Grosz said.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Don't Tell Seth!' at Kennedy Center (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley celebrates 25 years of Montgomery Gentry (Part 1) Tragedy struck Montgomery Gentry when one half of the country-music duo was silenced.
Troy Gentry was killed in a helicopter crash in 2017, and last week, Eddie Montgomery joined Gentry’s widow Angie at a special CMA Fest ceremony in Nashville, Tennessee, to mark the band’s 25th anniversary. There, the Recording Industry Association of America surprised them with three plaques declaring their song “Something to Be Proud Of” as certified platinum, while “My Town” and “Hell Yeah” were both certified gold.
“It was unbelievable because they surprised me with it at the fan club party,” Montgomery told WTOP. “There’s no better way to celebrate it than with all our friends. They’re the reason we got the plaques. … We don’t call anybody fans, we call them friends. Me and T-Roy have been blessed that we’ve got a lot of friends around the world, so it’s been unbelievable.”
Born in Kentucky in 1963, Montgomery grew up in a musical family traveling between honky tonks.
“My mom was a drummer, my dad was a guitar player and the bartenders were our babysitters,” Montgomery said. “By the time we were 8, we were roadies. … When you walked in the door, they asked if you had a gun; if you didn’t, they’d give you one. When you’d come into our house, we didn’t have living room furniture, you’d sit on a guitar amp or a drum throne. … Me and my brother never understood why kids in school weren’t allowed to come over.”
That younger brother was John Michael Montgomery, who burst onto the country music scene first in 1992 with a string of massive hits, including “Life’s a Dance,” “I Love the Way You Love Me,” “I Swear,” “I Can Love You Like That,” “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident),” “Be My Baby Tonight” and “The Little Girl.”
“Me and T-Roy and John Boy actually started the band together in Lexington, Kentucky, pretty much out of high school,” Montgomery said. “We were pushing John Boy, so Troy went to work for his dad and left the band. … I went on the road with John Boy for a while until a guy come up to me and said, ‘Are you John Michael’s brother, the drummer?’ That’s when I told my brother, ‘I’m not gonna play the drums anymore.'”
Instead, Eddie and Troy were back home playing in Gentry’s father’s bar when Sony representatives happened to pop in to listen. They liked what they heard, signing the duo to the label in 1997 as Montgomery Gentry dropped their debut album “Tattoos & Scars” (1999), featuring the hit single “Lonely and Gone.”
“Dave Gibson and Blue Miller wrote that song, they played with [Bob Seger’s] Silver Bullet Band,” Montgomery said. “We kept going all over Nashville hunting for songs and of course nobody knew who we were at the time and didn’t know what style we were. At the time it was John Boy and all the love songs coming out … I knew we wanted to be a little more rocking, so we were like, ‘That’s not us, we’re more Skynyrd, Merle Haggard, stuff like that.'”
Their second album “Carrying On” (2001) delivered another hit with “She Couldn’t Change Me.”
“That’s what we were about,” Montgomery said. “We used to hear stories all the time when people would come into the bars and they might be celebrating a new promotion or celebrating because they got fired or they might be celebrating because they got married or they might be celebrating because they got divorced — you never knew. So we decided that everybody that came in or people we’d run into, we were gonna write songs about.”
Their third album “My Town” (2002), featured a title track about their small-town roots.
“Our little small town that we grew up in, well, if you’d blink, you’d miss it. But everybody knew everybody and everybody had each other’s backs,” Montgomery said. “It was awesome growing up and, I tell ya what, that’s why I never moved to Nashville. I’m the last holdout, me and my brother are. We still live in our same little small town up here in Kentucky and we either have the bus pick us up or we drive down to Nashville to meet it.”
The same album also featured the infinitely singable “Speed” and the raucous bar anthem “Hell Yeah.”
“We took (‘Speed’) into Sony and they were like, ‘Nah, you’re not gonna cut that song’ … but we fought for that song and it was a big hit,” Montgomery said. “They were like, ‘Ain’t no radio station ever gonna play ‘Hell Yeah.’ Well, look how big it ends up being, it’s one of our biggest hits. … We sang about the good, the bad, the ugly and the party on the weekend. When you’re making ends meet every day, sometimes you gotta let go of that stress.”
Montgomery Gentry’s fourth album “You Do Your Thing” (2004) kept the hits coming with “If You Ever Stop Loving Me,” “Gone” and the aforementioned platinum hit “Something To Be Proud Of,” which salutes military veterans.
“This is the greatest country in the world,” Montgomery said. “We can say and be and dream as big as we want to in this great country. We just don’t give it up enough for all of our great American heroes. I’m named after my uncle, Edward Montgomery, who was a fifth Marine that got killed on Iwo Jima. We forget our freedoms, especially when you go around to all the other countries, you see why people are dying to get into America, not get out of it.”
Their 2005 “Greatest Hits” compilation included the brand new bonus track “She Don’t Tell Me To,” which was a smash hit ironically as the inverse of “She Couldn’t Change Me.” This time, it was a love song about respecting your wife, not because she tells you to, but because it’s simply the right thing to do.
“I always told the label and T-Roy, ‘Boys, I ain’t singing no damn love song,’ and of course, I ended up writing one about my wife, so there you go,” Montgomery said.
Their fifth album “Some People Change” (2006) had a powerful title track saying, “His old man was a rebel yeller, bad boy to the bone, he’d say: ‘Can’t trust that other fella,’ he’d judge ’em by the tone of their skin. He was raised to think like his Dad, narrow mind full of hate, on the road to nowhere fast, till the grace of God got in the way, then he saw the light and hit his knees, cried and said a prayer, rose up a brand new man, left the old one right there.”
“America is going to work itself out,” Montgomery said. “It’s too free and too great not to be.”
The same album also featured hits like “What Da Ya Think About That” and my favorite “Lucky Man.”
“It’s unreal, that song (‘Lucky Man’),” Montgomery said. “We don’t slow it down much, but when we do, we feel like we’ve got something to say. One of my great buddies wrote that song, and when I heard it, I was like, ‘Man, I gotta cut that song.’ It’s as country as dirt, boy, and I love it. I sing it every day when I get on stage. … I can be at Walmart and people come up and go like, ‘Hell yeah, turn it up,’ or go, ‘I’m a lucky man,’ or ‘This is my town!'”
Their sixth album “Back When I Knew it All” (2008) featured another hit title track, as well the catchy tune “Roll with Me,” while their seventh album “Rebels on the Run” (2011) tore up the radio with “Where I Come From.”
Unfortunately, their eighth album “Folks Like Us” (2015) would be the duo’s last together before Gentry’s untimely death, after which Montgomery paid tribute to his lifelong buddy with “Here’s to You” (2018).
“There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think of him,” Montgomery said. “He was full of life, he loved living life and he loved people. … He was such a big practical joker and he actually had this gigantic wooden spoon on the bus because he liked stirring stuff up! Of course, I know everybody out there, they don’t have to tell me, he was the pretty one, I get it. … As soon as he’d show that big, beautiful smile of his, everything was fine.”
Today, he vows to carry on Montgomery Gentry’s legacy between occasional gigs with his brother, John Michael.
“Me and T-Roy made a promise … if one of us goes down, we want the other one to keep going,” he said. “When everything is said and done, here’s how we’ll know we done anything at all: If you walk over to a jukebox, you’re gonna see a Merle Haggard song, a Waylon and Willie song, a Bob Seger song, a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, a Charlie Daniels song. If we’re in between them somewhere, we can look at each other and go, ‘We’ve done something.'”
Or, as they sang in their platinum hit: “If all you ever really do is the best you can, well, you did it, man.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews The Washington Roast performing at the DC Improv The 2024 election is one of the most intense and unprecedented races in American history.
If you need a laugh to lighten the mood and relieve some of the tension, The Washington Roast cracks up the D.C. Improv with a hilarious night of political satire on Thursday, June 13.
“We call it a blend of standup, sketch and improv comedy,” founder Tim Kardashian told WTOP. “We started it in 2019 to create a place for people to disconnect and get offline from the hyper-polarized world that we all live in here in the D.C. area. … We kind of ebb and flow with the headlines and where the winds are blowing.”
That means you can definitely expect some zingers at the expense of the former president.
“We of course have Donald Trump, but this time we have Stormy Daniels for the first time at the D.C. Improv,” Kardashian said. “This show is the first performance in D.C. since Donald Trump has been convicted of felonies. It’s also the very first one to happen after Mexico has agreed to pay for all four walls that he’s going to be looking at.”
You’ll also see an array of other famous political figures.
“About everyone who’s put on the American-flag pin has gotten the treatment from The Washington Roast,” Kardashian said. “We’ll have RFK Jr., of course Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, perennial newsmaker and headline-maker Marjorie Taylor Greene will be featured, Nikki Haley will be a Republican sidekick on this one.”
The show starts with a live audience town hall, so bring your funniest political questions.
“Members of our crowd submit questions to ask our candidates,” Kardashian said. “Before the show begins, they submit it using a QR code through a form online, then we call them up by name. You have to remember your question … then we will have them stand up and ask their question of the candidate when they come up on stage, the candidate will answer their question live. … The questions are totally unhinged, off-the-wall and unfiltered.”
After that, the candidates duke it out in a roast battle tournament in a three-round bracket.
“Once the town hall is over for the two candidates or politicos on stage, they then face off in a roast battle with whoever they’re matched up that week,” Kardashian said. “Then, the audience votes live afterward based on the noise and audience applause and we decide a winner of the matchup and they move on to the next round of the tournament. There’s eight comedians on every show and we end up with one at the end that’s the champion.”
Kardashian joins a group of local comedian colleagues, including Dee Ahmed, Bria Beddoe, Todd Fleming, Elizabeth Booker Houstin, Kylie Lowe, Vito Prime, Rashee Raj, Brock Snder, Rose Vineshank and Jon Yeager.
“We have comedians cosplaying them, imitating their voices, their cadences, their walk,” Kardashian said. “Jon Yeager [does] a fantastic version of Trump’s signature dance move and struggling to drink water. … We have Joe Biden waving to the wrong side of the stage. … We just had Kamala Harris win our show in Annapolis, Maryland, a few weeks ago. Back in May, we were off-Broadway in New York and Donald Trump actually won the election.”
Unlike real life, the comedian winners promise to accept the election results and don’t claim the contest to be rigged. Proceeds will go to the nonprofit Hilarity for Charity founded by Seth Rogen and his wife Lauren.
“We’ve raised almost $13,000 for charity over the last five years by performing these shows,” Kardashian said.
Not only is it for a good cause, it’s a darn good time skewering both Republicans and Democrats.
“I jokingly refer to it as ‘America’s one and only First Amendment fight club,'” Kardashian said. “This city needs this outlet and a place to laugh and blow off steam. The jokes go both ways, so everyone’s getting it. … There’s jokes coming at Biden and there’s jokes going back at Trump. Everyone gets it in our show.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the DC/DOX Film Festival (Part 1) Get ready to watch the best documentaries in the world right here in the nation’s capital.
The DC/DOX Film Festival returns this Thursday, June 13 through Sunday, June 16.
“DC/DOX is really filling the void of SILVERDOCS, which evolved into AFI DOCs, returning a major documentary platform to this city,” Festival Director Sky Sitney told WTOP. “We’re very excited to be embarking on our second edition. We have 100 films precisely, representing 17 countries behind the camera and many dozens on screen. We are welcoming every single filmmaker to town, including a wonderful group of D.C.-based filmmakers.”
The festival kicks off Thursday with the opening-night screening of “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” followed by a special Q&A discussion with his surviving daughter Alexandra Reeve Givens.
“This film premiered at Sundance to tremendous acclaim,” Sitney said. “It follows the extraordinary story of Christopher Reeve, who most people know for his iconic portrayal of Superman, Clark Kent. … Yet many of us know the extraordinary tragedy he endured when a near-fatal horse-riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, becoming a quadriplegic. … Reeve brought such resilience, hope and advocacy to this new position.”
Friday brings the music documentary “Luther: Never Too Much” about the late great Luther Vandross.
“This is an incredible film made by an incredible filmmaker, Dawn Porter, who can do no wrong,” Sitney said. “It follows the incredibly talented Luther Vandross and his work sustained over many decades. He was the opposite of an overnight success, it took many years. … This film literally sold out within a few hours of putting it up and opening up tickets to the point where we needed to create an encore screening, so dear audiences, fret not.”
Saturday brings the centerpiece film “Look Into My Eyes” by filmmaker Lana Wilson, who previously directed the Taylor Swift documentary “Miss Americana” and the Brooke Shields documentary “Pretty Baby.”
“This is such a fascinating film where you get a birds-eye-view on intimate interactions between psychics and the people who they are reading,” Sitney said. “They are giving readings of people whether they’re looking to connect with lost loved ones, even lost pets or to forecast the future. The film really moves us through a significant series of intimate readings with a variety of psychics, some questionable, others mind-blowing who are engaging in this extraordinary experience of trying to bring this other-worldly understanding to our very grounded lives.”
It all culminates Sunday with the closing-night screening of “Every Little Thing.”
“It’s an Australian filmmaker, but it’s actually based in Los Angeles,” Sitney said. “One particular woman, Terry Maeser, who will be joining us at the festival, is taking it upon herself to care for and rehabilitate nearly every injured hummingbird in this big city of Los Angeles. She has become an expert in hummingbird care. Many people who encounter injured hummingbirds who might fly into a glass skyscraper or be attacked by a pigeon or coyote, know now to bring them to Terry, who treats these birds like her own children and nurses them back to health.”
Screenings will mostly be held at the Landmark E Street Cinema, the Burke Theater and the U.S. Navy Memorial and the Eaton Cinema at the Eaton Workshop Hotel. There will also be additional events held at the National Archives, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, among other prestigious venues.
“We are so thrilled and proud of the venues that we take place in,” Sitney said. “We’re largely located in the Downtown, National Mall, Gallery Place and Penn Quarter [areas] deliberately to keep an easy footprint so that people can literally run from one theater to another with ease and see a maximum number of films a day.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Angélique Kidjo at Kennedy Center (Part 1) She’s a true legend of world music, winning five Grammy Awards over her prolific career.
This Wednesday, Angélique Kidjo performs live with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.
“It has been a program we have been talking about for a while now,” Kidjo told WTOP. “The thing that was important for me was to come and pay tribute to the music that has inspired my music from the 60s (Miriam Makeba, Fela Kuti and Youssou N’Dour) all the way down to today with the music of Burna Boy, Rema and all the young kids that grew up listening to my music. Music has informed me about the diversity of our shared humanity.”
Born in Ouidah, French Dahomey (now Benin) in 1960, Kidjo was an inquisitive child who grew up listening to James Brown before becoming a singer herself. Soon, she was touring West Africa with her debut record “Pretty” (1981) before seeking political refuge in Paris, France, in 1983.
“At 12 years old, the power goes to the military and becomes a dictatorship and then you start realizing that the freedom that you enjoy and take for granted can be taken from you so fast,” Kidjo said. “My dad and mom said, ‘Don’t say anything, we’ll do everything we can for you to leave this country.’ … My father had to drive me to the airport. … My last image of my dad is weeping behind the steering wheel asking himself is it the right decision.”
After her breakthrough international album “Parakou” (1989), Kidjo teamed with Branford Marsalis and Miami Sound Machine drummer Joe Galdo for the album “Logozo” (1991). She earned her first Grammy nomination working with David Z at Prince’s Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis on her album “Ayé” (1994).
“Talking about it, I’m having flashbacks because my daughter was just born,” Kidjo said. “Ten days after my child was born, I was already in the studio, so I had to find a babysitter, and the babysitter was David Z.”
Kidjo won her first Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album with “Djin Djin” (2007).
“‘Djin Djin’ was an album that was really interesting to do because I was working with Tony Visconti,” Kidjo said. “It was as fun as fun can be. I brought the percussion player from Benin … and the smile on the face of Tony Visconti, who was already a Grammy winner, he had so much fun doing that album. People would come and go, here comes Alicia Keys coming to sing and Josh Groban and everybody, just like, ‘OK!’ — oh, and Peter Gabriel!”
She won her second Grammy for Best World Music Album with “Eve” (2014).
“‘Eve’ was during the trip with UNICEF in Kenya,” Kidjo said. “We were addressing the issue of stunting, which is malnutrition in a newborn baby and it has an impact economically. … When I left one village and I’d get to a second village, the women were following the program with UNICEF and they started singing (an African song) and I’d jump in and film it with my iPhone — and that was the beginning of ‘Eve.'”
She won her third Grammy for “Sings” (2015) with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra.
“It started with Philip Glass and the artistic director of the London Philharmonic that saw me singing in New York and said, ‘Man, I don’t know your voice, but this is crazy. Have you ever thought of singing with an orchestra?’ and I’m looking at the guy like, ‘Man, what carpet have you been smoking?'” Kidjo said. “We met at Philip’s house, we ring the door, Philip opened the door … and he was like, ‘Your tea is up there, Angélique, do you want coffee?'”
She won her fourth Grammy for Best World Music Album with her “Celia” (2019) tribute to Cuban icon Celia Cruz.
“(Growing up,) I went back to school and told my friend, ‘There is a woman coming to sing salsa,’ and they looked at me like I was stupid,” Kidjo said. “They said, ‘What? A woman singing salsa? You don’t know it’s a male-dominated art?’ I said, ‘Yeah! She’s the queen of salsa!’ … From that moment on, she unlocked something in me, she made me feel, she gave me authorization that day to finally embrace my gender and do whatever I wanted to do.”
Her fifth and most recent Grammy came for Best Global Music Album with “Mother Nature” (2021).
“I said to myself, ‘How can we use this pandemic to reach out to the young generation of musicians and also the pioneers who have been talking about climate change like Sting?'” Kidjo said. “I met Sting when we did something together during the pandemic in studio for his song ‘One World (Not Three).’ … I said, ‘I’m writing a song called ‘Mother Nature.’ You were the first one talking to us about rainforests. I need your voice on this.'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Long Way Down' at Olney Theatre (Part 1) It can be a long way down if you’re taking a haunted elevator on a journey through a cycle of gun violence.
That’s the premise of “Long Way Down,” which makes its world premiere at Olney Theatre now through June 23.
“It’s easy to think that it’s a play about gun violence, but in reality it’s a play about this young Black man navigating his journey of grief,” Director Ken-Matt Martin told WTOP. “Also, this community that we often think of as just perpetrators or victims of gun violence are these nameless people, and yet they are actual people who lived. … It focuses on humanizing those folks instead of just looking at them as just numbers on a page or TV screen.”
Based on the Newbery Award-winning novel by D.C. native Jason Reynolds, the groundbreaking musical follows a young man named Will (Tyrese Shawn Avery), who loses his brother Shawn (Victor Musoni) to gun violence.
“There are three rules in his community: you don’t cry, you don’t snitch, and if someone you love is killed, you avenge their death,” Martin said. “After Will’s brother is killed, he gets on the elevator with the intent to follow that third rule with his brother’s gun. … On his way down to the first floor, he encounters the ghosts of people who he’s lost in his life to gun violence, both people that he actually knew and people from his community.”
Martin teams with Musoni to choreograph the dance numbers with some pretty high-tech visuals.
“We have an actual elevator, which lights up, smokes and moves on hydraulics, goes up and down, all these fun things that we’ve choreographed dance numbers to,” Martin said. “It all takes place on the elevator, but the way that the musical works, there are some flashbacks to memories that the ghosts use to try to influence or empower him to do one thing or another, so there are moments that we come out of the elevator.”
The music and lyrics are by Dahlak Brathwaite, who also co-writes the dialogue with Khiyon Hursey.
“It is a full-blown musical, there are 20 songs,” Martin said. “‘You’ve Got It In You’ is pretty descriptive of ghosts taunting him about whether he has it in him or not to do this deed. ‘The Cry’ is an incredible song which [the mom] sings to show a manifestation of her grief. … Then there’s another song ‘Play It Out,’ which includes the whole cast where the ghost of Will’s uncle comes to visit; he was a filmmaker, so it’s influenced by Cali-hip-hop swag.”
While there may be some California flavor, there is plenty of DMV inspiration from source author Reynolds, who was born in D.C., grew up in Oxon Hill, Maryland and graduated from the University of Maryland in College Park.
“He’s been really wonderful and supportive,” Martin said. “He’s just a good guy who cares deeply about young people reading and even more importantly about young Black boys and Black men being able to have a full range of emotions and knowing that it’s OK for us to experience them and show them. That’s really what the play is about.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Roger Daltrey at Wolf Trap (Part 1) Northern Virginia is about to be invaded by a true rock legend of the 1960s British Invasion!
Roger Daltrey, lead singer of The Who, performs live at Wolf Trap on Wednesday, June 12, with a touring band that includes Pete Townshend’s younger brother Simon Townshend.
“It’s just a different instrumentation,” Daltrey told WTOP. “I do some Who songs, a lot of the classics, but I do them differently. Now with the instrumentation I’ve got in this band, it’s just fresher. I suddenly realize that what people want in the moment with so much bad news out there everywhere in the world … people want to go out and have a good night out.”
Born in 1944, Daltrey grew up in postwar London, making his own instruments from nearby objects and attending grammar school with future Who guitarist Pete Townshend and future Who bassist John Entwistle.
“They were at the same school, but they were a year younger,” Daltrey said.
“You couldn’t miss them. Pete was like a nose on a stick and John had a kind of John Wayne gait when he walked. … Pete, because he did look extraordinary when he was younger, I’m sure he was bullied as much as I was. I was very small, so I got bullied. I don’t know if John did, but John had trauma in his life when his mother and father got divorced very young.”
Their band, The Detours, later added drummer Keith Moon to form The Who in 1964.
“He heard we were looking for a drummer and we gave him a chance to play with us,” Daltrey said.
“You have to remember, the lead singer of a band doesn’t see them ever, they’re always behind him, he’s standing out in front in the middle of the stage … but you feel the vibe, you feel the micro-syncopations between musicians. When Keith Moon joined, it was like alchemy. Someone had added something to the mercury and turned it into gold.”
Their first album “My Generation” (1965) delivered a hit title track that defined a generation at Woodstock.
“We hit a nerve,” Daltrey said. “There’s a certain amount of luck, there’s a certain amount of talent, and there’s a certain amount of being in the right place at the right time — and we just seemed to get lucky.”
After a string of catchy hits like “I Can See For Miles” (1967) and “Magic Bus” (1968), The Who delivered an epic fourth project with “Tommy” (1969), a pioneering concept album telling the tale of fictional Tommy Walker becoming a spiritual leader. The tune “Pinball Wizard” echoed in arcades with the line “sure plays a mean pinball.”
“It wasn’t really a rock opera — we were kind of tongue-in-cheek having a dig at grand opera, but having played ‘Tommy’ live and with orchestras around the world, it’s my conclusion that I think ‘Tommy’ is the best opera ever written,” Daltrey said.
“It’s certainly got the best lyrics because we’ve at least got some lyrics. You needn’t know about grand opera to know about the lack of lyrics.”
Their fifth album “Who’s Next?” (1971) may have been their most famous, including the hit opening track “Baba O’Riley,” with its iconic synthesizer, shredding guitar and recurring vocal refrain of “teenage wasteland.”
“You never know where [Pete] gets those titles from,” Daltrey said. “He actually wrote the song basically reflecting on the garbage and the rubbish left by the audience at Woodstock!”
The album also included “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” which arrived during the Vietnam War and just before Watergate.
“We were commenting on politics, it’s never any different, they’re all full of sh*t,” Daltrey said. “That song will never date. The lyrics of that song will never, ever date. They’re always promising more than they can deliver.”
It also included the quotably melancholic “Behind Blue Eyes,” later covered by Limp Bizkit.
“You’ll have to really talk to Pete because he wrote those songs. I only know that my inspiration singing it was that it was a very sad time for me because my dog had just been run over,” Daltrey said.
In 1973, The Who returned to the concept album with Townshend penning the acclaimed “Quadrophenia.”
“I’ve always been a little frustrated that he never shared his vision of what that album was going to be,” Daltrey said.
“I’ve always felt that it’s probably three or four songs short of being a really, really good, I don’t know if you’d call it an opera, but something very new and driving. A musical as such. A good work on a bigger stage than just rock. It’s hard to get a dramatic drive on ‘Quadrophenia’ because, in some ways, it keeps shooting itself in the foot.”
Sadly, the band’s eighth album “Who Are You?” (1978) would be their final one with Moon, who died that same year. While its title track later became the TV theme for “CSI,” it mostly brings back sad memories for Daltrey.
“It was a really difficult album to make because of the state of Keith’s health at the time,” Daltrey said. “It was very difficult, so it’s not a happy memory, that one. That doesn’t make it a bad album, but it was just difficult.”
The band continued without Moon on their ninth album “Face Dances” (1981) with the hit “You Better You Bet.”
“We’d lost a huge piece of chemistry from the band in the way Keith played, and we were trying desperately to see what was left,” Daltrey said.
“There was some good stuff on that album, but it wasn’t The Who. … I think ‘You Better You Bet’ was a great song, but generally a lot of those songs weren’t The Who that the public wanted. Keith had left a bigger hole than just losing a drummer. We were broken at the time we made that album.”
In 1990, The Who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but Daltrey doesn’t spend time comparing his band’s legacy to The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin on the Mount Rushmore of the British Invasion.
“I don’t give a fck, that’s not important to me at all, who gives a sht?” Daltrey said. “I think what we did, more than anyone else, is that we changed it from being ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ to begin just ‘rock.’ The Stones were a rock ‘n’ roll band, ‘rock ‘n’ roll, rock ‘n’ roll,’ but we were just rock: ‘rock, rock, rock, rock.'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Hit Man' (Part 1) Richard Linklater remains one of my favorite filmmakers. He made us laugh in mainstream efforts like “Dazed and Confused” (1993) and “School of Rock” (2004), while making us think and feel in acclaimed longitudinal studies like “Boyhood” (2014), filmed in short installments over 12 years, and his trilogy of “Before Sunrise” (1995), “Before Sunset” (2004) and “Before Midnight” (2013), charting a love story in nine-year increments.
Now, his latest dark comedy “Hit Man” has received rave reviews from critics since it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and was acquired by Netflix for $20 million at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, including The New York Times recently ranking it on its list of the Best Movies of 2024, So Far.
However, now that the film is dropping this Friday on Netflix, I have a feeling that at-home viewers will find it amusing for its comedic phoniness in the first half but disappointing for its phony seriousness in the second half.
Based on the 2001 Texas Monthly magazine article by Skip Hollandsworth, the film follows Gary Johnson, a college psychology professor who moonlights for the New Orleans Police Department as a tech surveillance guy. When his colleague calls out sick, Gary fills in as a fake hit man, recording a murder-for-hire scheme before the cops rush in to make an arrest. Turns out, Gary’s great at the gig, but is it entrapment or great detective work?
After playing John Glenn in “Hidden Figures” (2016), Glen Powell has become all the rage across Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2021) and Sydney Sweeney in “Anyone But You” (2023). In “Hit Man,” he cowrites with Linklater, crafting a role that allows himself to show his range by playing various alter egos as he fantasizes fresh identities as fake hit men. He’s a charismatic screen presence for sure, boasting a Ryan Gosling-style charisma.
His funniest moments come bantering with his surveillance-van partners, played by Retta (“Parks & Rec”), Sanjay Rao (“The Flight Attendant”) and Austin Amelio (“The Walking Dead”) during stakeouts like “The Conversation” (1974). He pivots from comedy to sexual tension when he falls for one of his criminal targets, Maddy Masters (Adria Arjona, “True Detective”), who finds his “body count” sexy as he convinces her to not whack her husband.
Linklater is clearly going for a neo-noir erotic thriller like “Basic Instinct” (1992), but if this were truly a noir, the femme fatale would drag him down with her like “Double Indemnity” (1944), leave him broken like “Chinatown” (1974) or doom him to jail while she escapes like “Body Heat” (1981). It feels forced for them both to live happily ever after — to me, “Gone Girl” (2014) was the rare film to pull this off because it was “miserably after ever.”
In this way, the opening comedy section works far better than the middle section where the script starts spinning its wheels as it becomes Fifty Shades of “Gary.” This isn’t a prudish critique — my wife and I are binge-watching “Bridgerton!” — but this “Hit Man” gets screwed more than Bret Hart in Montreal. Their steamy romance could have been handled in one erotic scene or even a montage, leaving more room for actual character development.
As is, we barely know anything about Maddy, let alone her supposedly abusive ex-husband Ray (Evan Holtzman) or Gary’s supposedly critical ex-wife Alisha (Molly Bernard). I say “supposedly” because the script does little to show their alleged flaws. The female characters are frustratingly one dimensional, which is disappointing considering Linklater did such a thorough job fleshing out Patrica Arquette’s Oscar-winning role as a single mom in “Boyhood.”
Ultimately, “Hit Man” isn’t “sh*t, man,” it just could have been so much better. Just as Gary lectures students at the chalkboard of his classroom, great films should contain the proper amounts of “id,” “ego” and “superego.” I suppose Linklater’s idea was to open with the protagonist’s “ego” (logical sense of self as perceived by others), fall victim to his “id” in the middle (animalistic desires), then finish with his “superego” (finding a balance between the two).
However, this equilibrium is never achieved in the final act, or at least it does not feel earned. It’s basically “id, id, id” all the way home to the end credits, which reveal that the story was based on a real guy who posed as a hit man to make dozens of arrests. Linklater winks at the audience by saying, “He didn’t kill people, we made that part up,” but I wonder how the guy’s family feels about taking such liberties? Alas, the ending feels as fake as its hit man.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Bye Bye Birdie' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) He won a pair of Tony Awards for “Peter and the Starcatcher” and “Something Rotten!” among his five total nominations for Broadway’s “Legally Blonde,” “Falsettos” and “Some Like It Hot,” not to mention playing the hilarious Not Dead Fred in “Monty Python’s Spamalot” and Willy Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Now, actor Christian Borle stars in “Bye Bye Birdie” at the Kennedy Center from June 7 to 15 as part of its Broadway Center Stage series. This is no national tour, folks; it’s a one-off production only playing here in D.C.
“We throw these things up in like 10 days, so we’ve all been working very, very hard on it,” Borle told WTOP. “(‘Bye Bye Birdie’) captured a moment in musical theater history where rock ‘n roll was starting to be introduced into the genre. They posited what would happen if you told the story of Elvis going into the Army and how that would make the entire teenage generation panic — and how that would make his manager, played by me, panic even more.”
Based on the 1960 Broadway musical and 1963 film, the story follows an Elvis-style rock ‘n roll singer named Conrad Birdie, who visits a small Ohio town to make his “farewell” TV performance before he is drafted.
“(My character Albert Peterson) is torn between his duty to Conrad Bertie and the love of his life, Rose Alvarez … who is hoping to get him away from the music-managing business to settle down and be a humble English teacher,” Borle explained. “They concoct a plan, right before Conrad goes into the Army, they pick a random member of his fan club, Kim MacAfee … and on live television, they’re gonna bestow his biggest fan with one last kiss.”
While Borle plays the Dick Van Dyke role of Albert Peterson, Krysta Rodriguez plays the Janet Leigh role of Rose Alvarez and Ashlyn Maddox plays the Ann-Margaret role of Kim MacAfee. Rounding out the cast are Tony nominee Ephraim Sykes as Conrad Birdie, SAG Award winner Caroline Aaron as Mae Peterson, Tony nominee Richard Kind as Harry MacAfee and Tony nominee Jennifer Laura Thompson as Doris MacAfee.
“Dick Van Dyke, those are big shoes to fill,” Borle said. “This is the second Dick Van Dyke character I have stepped into, I played Bert in ‘Mary Poppins’ as well, and I won’t be doing it justice, but I will do my best. … Our Rose is played by the amazing Krysta Rodriguez, with whom I did a season of that TV show ‘Smash,’ so we’re crossing paths again. … A lovely young actress named Ashlyn is just killing it, she’s got a voice as pure as driven snow.”
Together, they’ll sing all of your favorite songs by Charles Strouse (music) and Lee Adams (lyrics).
“There’s songs that everybody recognizes,” Borle said. “There’s ‘We Love You Conrad,’ which is an earworm you’ll be singing leaving the theater and the next two weeks, so apologies in advance. There’s the fabulous ‘Put on a Happy Face.’ … The song ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ that was in the movie was not originally in the show. It was written for the movie, but it may or may not be making an appearance during the bows of our show. It’s so darn catchy.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Bye Bye Birdie' at Kennedy Center (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the final season of Netflix's 'Sweet Tooth' (Part 1) In June of 2021 — two months before the Food and Drug Administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine — Netflix dropped the popular fantasy drama series “Sweet Tooth” about a mysterious global virus called The Sick.
The second season arrived in April of 2023 — just a month before the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared an end to the global public health emergency.
This Thursday, “Sweet Tooth” returns for its third and final season, providing an exciting and touching conclusion to a binge-worthy series that has provided catharsis for viewers as society coped with a real-world pandemic.
Adapted by Jim Mickle and Beth Schwartz from the Canadian comic books by Jeff Lemire, the series follows a half-human, half-deer kid named Gus (nicknamed “Sweet Tooth”), who embarks on a journey to find his mother after the death of his father in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s a perilous journey as his fellow hybrids are being hunted by humans known as the Last Men, who blame the hybrids for unleashing the deadly H5G9 virus known as The Sick.
Born in Los Angeles but raised in Vancouver, child star Christian Convery has grown up before our very eyes. It seems like yesterday that he was just a little kid growing up off the grid in Yellowstone, sheltered from the outside world by his single father Pubba (Will Forte) before befriending other hybrids at the Preserve. Now, a year after his role in “Cocaine Bear” (2023), Convery is the true hero and driving force of the action in season three.
His trusty guardian remains Tommy Jepperd a.k.a. Big Man (Nonso Anozie, “Game of Thrones”), alongside his half-pig pal Wendy (Naledi Murray) and the brave Becky “Bear” Walker (Stefania LaVie Owen), the leader of the Animal Army saving hybrids. Amy Seimetz also has a bigger role this season as Gus’ “mother” Birdie, who lives in Alaska with the indigenous single mom Siana (Cara Gee) and her arctic-wolf hybrid daughter Luka (Ayazhan Dalabayeva).
With Season 2 villain General Abbot dead and gone, the main villain is now the evil warlord Mrs. Helen Zhang (Rosalind Chao), wearing a fur coat like Cruella de Vil in her quest to kill all hybrids and return the world to only humans. She prays that her pregnant daughter Ginger (Louise Jiang) gives birth to a human, while shunning the kids of her other daughter Rosie (Kelly Marie Tran) for being a pack of hybrid wolf boys raised to be rabid killers.
Not only must our heroes evade these monsters, they must also survive avalanches as they travel by foot over the Rocky Mountains, then waves as they board a boat toward the polar night of Alaska. The final destination is an arctic cave containing “the blood of the earth,” which could hold the cure for The Sick. This intrigues Dr. Aditya Singh (Adeel Akhtar), who previously sacrificed hybrids to use their immune blood to keep his infected wife alive.
If you read between the lines of the surface-level action and adventure, the thick social commentary is ripe for comparisons to our current state of the world as bombastic U.S. politicians echo Hitler’s language about the “blood of America being poisoned” by immigrants. In this light, the hybrids of “Sweet Tooth” symbolize future generations of interracial Americans, only in this show, they don’t face segregation — they face extermination.
Thus, the final season hypothesizes that maybe humans are the disease and The Sick is the cure. Maybe Mother Nature is self correcting by having flowers bloom out of dead humans to reset the Earth and give a new hybrid species a chance to roam because humans had their chance and blew it. Hopefully, this TV series forces humanity to look in the mirror amid real challenges of pollution, deforestation, climate change and nuclear war.
It’s rare for such heavy themes to go down so smoothly in such an entertaining piece of pop-culture viewing, but that’s the bread and butter of “Sweet Tooth.” The series finale offers some thought-provoking narration by Josh Brolin, while the falling action is heartwarming for devoted viewers (yes, we even get Bobby, who was introduced in season two as an all-CGI creature rather than a hybrid — a choice I still don’t quite understand, but I digress).
As the final credits roll and you reach for your TV remote, don’t panic if your pinkie finger starts twitching. It’s not a sign of The Sick; you’re probably just tired from staying up all night binge-watching the last of “Sweet Tooth.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the final season of Netflix's 'Sweet Tooth' (Part 2) Source
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Judge Reinhold (Part 1) Judge Reinhold reunites with Eddie Murphy next month in the fourth installment of “Beverly Hills Cop.”
He joined WTOP to discuss his life and career with local ties as a native of Wilmington, Delaware, who mostly grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia, overlooking the Rappahannock River.
“I was pretty much raised in the ‘Burg, yeah,” Reinhold told WTOP. “I went to Mary Washington College, really I was just hanging out at the drama department. At that time, it was just a girls college and they didn’t have any guys, so that was the extent of my involvement with Mary Washington. I was just in place there, they needed guys and I had a (college) freshman girlfriend. I was still in high school, it was a pretty cool time.”
His first big break was a small part alongside Bill Murray in Ivan Reitman’s military comedy “Stripes” (1981).
“What an incredible school that was to be around John Candy, Bill (Murray) and Harold (Ramis),” Reinhold said.
“That was ‘Cheech & Chong Go to the Army’ but they couldn’t make a deal. … Warner Bros. still wanted to do the movie, Ivan Reitman came in. … The stuff that would come out of Bill’s mouth, Candy would put his head down to hide, I’d put my hands in my pockets and squeeze my thighs so hard (to stop laughing) that I would have a bruise.”
Still, his major breakthrough was “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982), written by Cameron Crowe (“Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Almost Famous”) based on his own 1981 book “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
“A lot of the dialogue was transcribed from real students when Cameron Crowe masqueraded as a senior in a Long Beach high school,” Reinhold said.
“Cameron looked very, very young for his age, so when he was in his 20s, he still looked like he was 17 or 18, so he pretended to be a senior. Nobody knew, I think maybe the principal knew, even the teachers didn’t know, but he was writing an expose for ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine, then he turned it into a book.”
Crowe’s script was directed by Amy Heckerling, who went on to direct another teen classic, “Clueless” (1995).
“I got spoiled so quickly so early in the game; Amy was fantastic,” Reinhold said.
“I was too young to realize what an anomaly it was to be working with a woman. Also, she was a friend of mine, so we had a great shorthand. People wonder: How does a really good movie happen? It’s usually a marriage of sensibilities between the writer and the director — and in this case, the producer, Art Linson. … The three of these people really came together and pow!”
Reinhold memorably played the brother of Jennifer Jason Leigh in a young cast of future Oscar winners, including Forest Whitaker, Nicolas Cage and, most memorably, Sean Penn as the ultimate stoner burnout Jeff Spicoli.
“We have three Oscar winners in that cast — it’s crazy,” Reinhold said.
“Nobody knew who Sean was. … I thought this guy was a comic who only had one shtick of playing a stoner. … I had no idea until the last few days when we shot the Mi-T-Mart scene when he started to drop that and became this incredibly sophisticated, insightful guy and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy is brilliant!'”
The soundtrack is just as big of a character, from The Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat” during the opening shopping mall sequence to Jackson Browne’s “Somebody’s Baby” during a little ball field lovemaking.
Such moments provide a time capsule of the 1980s just like “American Graffiti” (1973) provided for the 1960s and “Dazed and Confused” (1993) provided for the 1970s — only in this case it wasn’t just nostalgia; it was all captured in real time.
“Kids have after-school jobs because they need money and they’re interested in sex — that’s pretty universal,” Reinhold said.
“Universal started to get cold feet because of the nudity. … Art Linson, being the brilliant producer that he is, ran to Irving Azoff, who was running Universal MCA and was also manager of The Eagles. He said, ‘Irving, do you want to be a movie producer? … I need this artist, that artist,’ and that’s how we got our soundtrack.”
He followed “Fast Times” by co-starring with red-hot Eddie Murphy in the action comedy “Beverly Hills Cop” (1984), which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
“Eddie was 19 and pulled ‘Saturday Night Live’ out of a ratings quagmire just by himself with James Brown’s Hot Tub, Gumby and Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood, so he was already a big star,” Reinhold said.
“‘Beverly Hills Cop’ was originally an action vehicle for Sylvester Stallone. I was cast before Eddie was. Stallone was supposed to play Axel, but Stallone decided to make ‘Cobra’ instead. … Suddenly, I was in an Eddie Murphy movie, but it wasn’t a comedy, so we had write ourselves through it (with jokes). … We got fresh pages every morning and had to improv.”
This year also marks the 30th anniversary of “The Santa Clause” (1994) where Reinhold played the straight man Dr. Neal Miller who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, portrayed by Tim Allen at the peak of “Home Improvement.”
“Tim had made so much money for ABC and Disney that he brought ‘The Santa Clause’ to them, but they weren’t that crazy about it, they thought it was too far-fetched,” Reinhold said.
“That movie was made for a budget price, then it went on to (success). We won the People’s Choice Award, it was very exciting. Tim was another person who I had to put my hands in the pockets for. … Between Eddie, Tim and Bill, I’ve had a lot of bruises on my thigh.”
His sole career Emmy nomination came as “the close talker” in NBC’s “Seinfeld” (1994).
“I was the instigator of that, so somebody else had to put their hands in their pockets,” Reinhold said.
“The crew, when I got to Jerry, they were laughing a little too hard. I said, ‘What’s so funny?’ They said, ‘Jerry has a terrible spatial thing, so we’re just laughing because it’s so uncomfortable for him,’ so I just got closer. By the time we got to camera, I was almost touching his nose. … That might have been Larry David’s way to get at (Jerry).”
NOTE: At the time of this interview, Judge Reinhold was planning to attend a screening of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” this Saturday at D.C.’s Warner Theatre, but that event has since been canceled due to a scheduling conflict.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley covers the One Loudoun Summer Concert Series (Part 1) Are you looking for a relaxing way to unwind after you get off work on Wednesday evening?
The One Loudoun Summer Concert Series returns to One Loudoun in Ashburn, Virginia.
WTOP’s Jason Fraley attended the kickoff event to rock out with the Frederick, Maryland, cover band Crash the Limo on May 22, then spoke with the series organizer for a preview of the remaining shows this summer.
“We were very happy with the turnout,” property marketing and specialty leasing coordinator Kelsey Smith told WTOP. “We put on these events so the community has a place to come and gather and get together, so it was a great turnout for us. I would say from start to finish, coming and going, we saw maybe 150 to 200 people.”
The band members of Crash the Limo had a blast performing in such a vibrant outdoor venue.
“It’s a whole lot of fun,” lead singer Jason Perry told WTOP. “Everybody can come out to these things, so it’s fun. You’ve got little kids dancing, you’ve got dogs dancing. … It’s a blast.”
“The best part was seeing the kids run around and have fun,” lead guitarist Kevin Holmes added.
The concert series was set to continue Wednesday, June 5 with the band Firekite, but it has been postponed due to thunderstorms. Officials say it will be rescheduled for Wednesday, June 12.
“I think they’re a ’90s rock band, so if you’re in the area, come on by, it’s going to be a great time,” Smith said.
After that, the “Full House” inspired band “Uncle Jesse” arrives on Wednesday, July 17.
“All of the bands are kind of within that genre of 90s and 80s,” Smith said.
The penultimate show is with Scott Kurt on Wednesday, Aug. 14, from 7 to 9 p.m.
“Scott Kurt has actually played at many of our other summer concert series and our other events here, so the locals know him and they get pretty excited for him,” Smith said.
It all culminates with Fantasm on Wednesday, Sept. 11, from 7 to 9 p.m.
“(You know they’re fantastic) just by their name,” Smith said.
This event is free and open to all ages. Pets are allowed — and encouraged to dance.
“On the plaza, we have tables and chairs set up, so people can come, you don’t necessarily have to bring your own chairs, they are already there, you can just come and relax with your family and listen to some music,” Smith said. “Around the property, we have shops that they can go shop at beforehand. … All the parking here is free, so we offer street parking and then we have four garage parking (decks) as well. It’s free all day every day.”
You can also bring food from one of the local restaurants, but alcohol is strictly prohibited.
“There are plenty of restaurants if they want to come get dinner before and then head to the plaza and enjoy music,” Smith said. “We have Uncle Julio’s, Matchbox, The Lost Fox, City Tap, Sense of Thai, Nando’s (Peri-Peri), Bar Louie. … If you want to make a whole evening at Alamo (Cinema Drafthouse), they serve food, so you can get dinner and a movie, then come to the plaza and enjoy music. … It’s a great way to just have a chill, relaxed night.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Mosaic Theater's 'Mexodus' (Part 1) Many Americans know about the Underground Railroad of slaves escaping the South to find freedom in the North.
However, what about the American slaves who managed to escape southward over the Mexican border?
That’s the premise of the new musical “Mexodus” at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Northeast D.C., running now through June 15 in a special co-production between Baltimore Center Stage and Mosaic Theater in D.C.
“‘Mexodus’ is the undertold story of the Underground Railroad that went south to Mexico,” co-creator and co-star Nygel D. Robinson told WTOP. “An estimated 4,000 to 10,000 slaves escaped from southern Texas and Louisiana and crossed the Rio Grande to get to Mexico, because Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829, so it’s like 30 or 40 years before the United States did. They were welcoming people and quickly turning fugitive slaves into citizens.”
Robinson co-creates the production with Brian Quijada, who began researching the little-known subject.
“Brian had found an article like two years before we met called ‘The Undertold Story of the Underground Railroad That Went South,'” Robinson said. “There was a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas in Austin and they were doing a dissertation on it. There’s been more information subsequently, but when we started working on it there wasn’t a whole lot, so the story that we are telling is made up but based on the few facts that we do have.”
Robinson and Quijada respectively play a runaway slave named Henry and a Mexican man named Carlos.
“Henry, who I play, is an enslaved person,” Robinson said. “The show starts on this plantation, but he has an altercation with the slave master’s son … so he has to run away. There’s a folk tale about someone crossing the Rio Grande on a bale of cotton because cotton has some buoyancy … so he floats across the Rio Grande, there’s a storm, he washes up on shore and is found by a man, Carlos, who Brian plays, who nurses him back to health.”
Not only does the title echo the Biblical story of Moses in “Exodus,” the story reveals deeper themes exploring why Mexico may have been quicker to abolish slavery than the U.S., which waited until after the Civil War in 1865.
“Not only is it the right thing to do morally and ethically, it’s also this monster we’re feeding and if I feed this monster it’s going to eat more of what I have,” Reinhold said. “When you are dealing with a group of people who are people of color under the same kind of colonial and imperial rule, of course they would try to get away from that as quickly as they can. It’s like they got their independence and said, ‘We’re not doing this thing anymore.'”
Such themes are reflected in the musical numbers, performed with live looping in real time on stage.
“Live looping is the future,” Robinson said. “Looping is layered music making. Les Paul created it pretty much, he had a single pedal and a guitar, so he would hit the pedal, play a loop, that would go on forever and he could noodle over it. … We use hip-hop in the show to pay homage to our forefathers who created this thing together, these Black and Brown people up in The Bronx. … We all eat rice, beans and chicken, we just season it in different ways.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Mosaic Theater's 'Mexodus' (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the LightReel Film Fest (Part 1) In 2000, D.C. resident Tim Gordon launched the Black Reel Awards here in the nation’s capital.
Now, he has expanded it into the fifth annual LightReel Film Festival at the Angelika Pop-Up at Union Market in Northeast D.C. this Wednesday, June 5 through Saturday, June 8.
“This is our first festival in person since our first festival because we’ve been hybrid and virtual from years two through four because of the pandemic,” Gordon told WTOP. “We’ve grown from the first year. In 2019, we had 48 films in the festival. This year we have 72. We used to be in Columbia, so we moved it over to Union Market now.”
The lineup kicks off Wednesday night with a 40th anniversary screening of Prince’s “Purple Rain” (1984).
“We’re opening up the doors and doing our sing-along film,” Gordon said. “We had this film in our festival for its 35th anniversary back in 2019 and I’m going to announce breaking news for you, it will become the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ of our festival. We’re going to show it every year at our festival because we want people to come out dressed in purple. People who love Prince and love this movie will come, sing along, dance in the back.”
The new slate of movies starts Thursday with the D.C. premiere of “Dandelion,” which debuted at South by Southwest. It stars KiKi Layne from “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
“It is an outstanding story about a young woman trying to find her voice, a musician,” Gordon said.
Friday brings the first two episodes of the four-part A&E series “James Brown: Say It Loud.”
“Normally, when you go to film festivals, they usually show you like the first episode then you have to wait, but we’re going to give you a bonus episode. I insisted on that. I was like, ‘If we’re going to do this, I want to show at least half of this miniseries,’ and it’s really, really strong.”
Saturday brings “Freedom Hair,” directed by D.C. native and Oscar nominee Dianne Houston, as well as the western multiverse flick “Quantum Cowboy,” starring Lily Gladstone. It all culminates with the comedy “Thelma,” starring June Squibb (“Nebraska”) and the late Richard Roundtree (“Shaft”) for a hilarious closing night.
“I saw this movie at Sundance,” Gordon said. “The story is about June Squibb, who is bilked out of $10,000. She borrows her friend’s scooter — played by Richard Roundtree — and the two of them go around and investigate how to get her money back. It’s like a geriatric action film that’s really, really funny to watch … and it’s the final screen performance of Richard Roundtree, which is why I wanted it in the festival. He is brilliant in this film.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews June entertainment around D.C. area. (Part 1) It’s the first Monday of a new month, and it’s time to plan some fun summer outings.
We’re rounding up all the fun events around the D.C. area in our June Entertainment Guide below:
June Entertainment Guide:
June 3-15: “Mexodus” by Mosaic Theater at Atlas Performing Arts Center
June 3-16: “Problems Between Sisters” at Studio Theatre
June 3-16: “The Matchbox Magic Flute” at Shakespeare Theatre
June 3-23: “Long Way Down” at Olney Theatre Center
June 3-23: “Topdog/Underdog” at Round House Theatre
June 3-23: “The Elephant in the Room” at Keegan Theatre
June 3-23: “Metamorphoses” at Folger Theatre
June 3-July 7: “Hair” at Signature Theatre
June 4: X Ambassadors at 9:30 Club
June 4-6: John Legend at Wolf Trap
June 5-8: LightReel Film Festival
June 5-23: “Rose: You Are Who You Eat” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
June 6: Bryson Tiller at The Anthem
June 6: “Sweet Tooth” Season 3 on Netflix
June 7: Chris Stapleton at Jiffy Lube Live
June 7: Flo Rida at Nationals Park
June 7: Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” on Netflix
June 7: The Broccoli Ball at Howard Theatre
June 7: Strathmore Children’s Chorus at Strathmore
June 7-9: Capital Jazz Fest at Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 7 and 9: Noseda conducts Verdi’s “Otello” at Kennedy Center
June 7-15: “Bye Bye Birdie” at Kennedy Center
June 7-July 14: Step Afrika! at Arena Stage
June 8: Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle at Wolf Trap
June 8: One Direction’s Niall Horan at Jiffy Lube Live
June 8: Tay Tay Dance Party at Capital One Hall
June 8: Judge Reinhold screens “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” at Warner Theatre
June 8: Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes at The Birchmere
June 9: Gary Clark Jr. at Wolf Trap
June 9: John Fogerty at Jiffy Lube Live
June 11: John Hiatt at Rams Head Annapolis
June 11: The Turtles at The Birchmere
June 12: Roger Daltrey of The Who at Wolf Trap
June 12: Angélique Kidjo at Kennedy Center
June 12 and 26: Kaiyla Gross at AMP by Strathmore
June 13: The Washington Roast at DC Improv
June 13: Marc Cohn at The Birchmere
June 13: Brooks and Dunn at Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 13: “Bridgerton” Season 3: Part 2 on Netflix
June 13-16: DC/DOX Film Festival
June 13-July 14: “Is God Is” at Constellation Theatre
June 14: Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” in movie theaters
June 14: Pixies & Modest Mouse at Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 14: Hasan Minhaj at Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland
June 14: Ben Folds presents BANKS and Julien Baker at Kennedy Center
June 14: Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers at The Anthem
June 14: Asleep at the Wheel at The Birchmere
June 14: Haley Reinhart at Lincoln Theatre
June 14: Little Feat at Pier Six Pavilion
June 14-15: “Don’t Tell Seth! An Evening with Seth Meyers’ Writers” at Kennedy Center
June 15: Ace Frehley at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
June 15: Tom Papa at Warner Theatre
June 15: Trombone Shorty at Wolf Trap
June 15: WWE “Clash at the Castle” on Peacock
June 16: Gipsy Kings at Wolf Trap
June 16: Maggie Rogers at Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 16: Father’s Day with Heatwave & Blue Magic at Bethesda Theater
June 16: Tony Awards on CBS
June 16: “House of the Dragon” Season 2 on HBO/Max
June 17: Steve Earle at The Birchmere
June 18: Corinne Bailey Rae at Maryland Hall in Annapolis
June 18-19: Robert Plant and Allison Krauss at Wolf Trap
June 18-23: “10,000 Dreams: A Celebration of Asian Choreography” at Kennedy Center
June 19: AEW “Dynamite” and “Rampage” at EagleBank Arena
June 20: Santana and Counting Crows at Jiffy Lube Live
June 20: Wilco at Wolf Trap
June 20: Feid at Capital One Arena
June 20-22: Luenell at DC Improv
June 21: Tim McGraw at CFG Bank Arena
June 21: Elle King at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
June 21: Judy Collins at Rams Head Annapolis
June 21: Tower of Power at Bethesda Theater
June 21: Nikki Glaser at Warner Theatre
June 21: Bert Kreischer at Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 21: Frank Turner at Rams Head Baltimore
June 21: “Thelma” in movie theaters
June 21: “The Bikeriders” in movie theaters
June 21-Aug. 18: “Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical” at Adventure Theatre
June 22: Out & About Festival at Wolf Trap
June 22: Luke Bryan at Jiffy Lube Live
June 22: Paula Poundstone at Rams Head Annapolis
June 22: Kathleen Madigan at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
June 22: Judy Collins at The Birchmere
June 22-23: NSO performs “Disney in Concert” at Kennedy Center
June 23: Ben Platt at Wolf Trap
June 23: Keyshia Cole and Trey Songz at EagleBank Arena
June 24-25: The Wallflowers at The Birchmere
June 25: T-Pain at Pier Six Pavilion
June 25: “I Am: Celine Dion” on Prime
June 25-30: “The Kite Runner” at Kennedy Center
June 25-July 14: “Funny Girl” at Kennedy Center
June 27: “The Bear” Season 3 on Hulu
June 27: Sarah McLachlan at Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 27: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram at The Fillmore Silver Spring
June 27-29: Darren Fleet at D.C. Comedy Loft
June 27-July 7: “A Night of One Acts” by The Arlington Players
June 28: Hardy at Jiffy Lube Live
June 28: Phil Vassar at Rams Head Annapolis
June 28: “Horizon: An America Saga: Chapter 1” in movie theaters
June 28-29: NSO performs “Music of David Bowie” at Kennedy Center
June 29: “Broadway in the Park” at Wolf Trap
June 29: Quinn Sullivan at The Hamilton
June 29: Pete Davidson at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
June 29-30: Alanis Morissette at Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 30: Chris Brown at CFG Bank Arena
June 30: Shaquille O’Neal at Camden Yards
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews June entertainment around D.C. area. (Part 2) Source
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews X Ambassadors at 9:30 Club (Part 1) The alt-rock band X Ambassadors rocks the 9:30 Club in D.C. on Tuesday, June 4. WTOP caught up with lead singer and co-founder Sam Harris to get hyped.
“We’ve played the 9:30 Club so many times, I’ve eaten so many of those delicious cupcakes, I can’t wait to come back and have some more,” Harris told WTOP. “We’re definitely sprinkling the songs in, but we’re playing a healthy amount of new stuff in the show. I’d say we’re probably doing about seven new songs every night, but the set is like almost two hours every night, so it’s got a healthy amount of the old favorites in there.”
Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1988, he mostly grew up in Ithaca, New York, where he fell in love with music alongside his brother, Casey Harris, who learned to play the keyboard despite being born blind.
“Casey started playing piano when he was 7,” Sam Harris said. “Around the same time, I started playing saxophone, but I was mostly just playing it in school. I wasn’t taking it as seriously as Casey’s piano lessons. I started singing as a kid, our mom was a singer, she was a jazz cabaret lounge singer for many years, so when we were little we used to sing a lot in the house. Every once in a while, she’d bring us on stage for one of her shows as a cute little gimmick.”
The brothers formed their first band in high school before moving to Brooklyn. Casey worked as a piano tuner on the Upper West Side, while Sam met drummer Adam Levin at The New School to form X Ambassadors.
“We had a gig coming up and we didn’t have a name,” Sam Harris said. “We were in our rehearsal space … looking at objects: Can we name our band Carpet? Can we name our band Light Bulb? Adam uses Coated Ambassador drum heads on his drum kit and said, ‘What about Ambassadors?'”
He said he then started using Photoshop and adding letters and words to “Ambassadors,” and randomly typed X Ambassadors and it stuck.
After signing with Interscope Records in 2013, the band’s first full-length album, “VHS,” (2015) went platinum with the hit song “Unsteady,” which was featured on the soundtrack of the romantic movie “Me Before You” that came out the next year.
“‘Unsteady’ at first was a hook,” Sam Harris said. “I had heard that Zedd was looking for new songs for his record and I was like, ‘Maybe I can write an EDM song,’ so I sat down and wrote this hook and it felt really, really special and I was like, ‘I think maybe I’ll keep this in my back pocket for now.'”
The album also had “Renegades,” which has since combined with “Unsteady” for 1.3 billion streams on Spotify.
“I kind of got tricked into writing ‘Renegades’,” Sam Harris said, referring to the fact his producer asked him to write a song called Renegades and that he mentioned an opportunity for a commercial with Jeep.
“I was like, ‘I wonder what car they’re trying to promote,’ so I go online and it’s a Jeep Renegade! It was the funniest thing: I wrote this very heartfelt song and it was a jingle for a car company,” Sam Harris said.
The band’s second album, “ORION,” (2019) included music videos for “Hold You Down,” which showed footage of the brothers as kids, and “Boom,” which flashed the song title in Braille.
“The way that we operate, with my brother being visually impaired, I always felt like that set us apart. We just operate differently as a band, we’re much closer and more tight-knit,” Sam Harris said. “My brother’s been blind his whole life and it’s something we both grew up with — obviously in different ways. I grew up with such an acute emotional baggage of: there is something that I have that is so fundamental for most of us that my brother doesn’t and it forces him to navigate the world in a completely different way and I should never take this thing I have for granted.”
Their third album, “The Beautiful Liar,” (2021) was a concept album inspired by the radio dramas that the brothers listened to growing up as kids to create “theater of the mind” for Casey.
“My brother has had such a huge impact on my life, and I can safely say, mine on his too. We really are so inseparable at this point, for better or worse,” Sam Harris said. “I think that’s the case with a lot of siblings, one of whom has a disability. That’s part of the beauty and the source of tension in our relationship and in our life, but I think it’s really made this musical journey and this band what it is. It’s our dynamic.”
Their newest album is called “Townie,” which just dropped in April, hence this “Townie” Tour.
“We’re playing songs like ‘No Strings,’ ‘Smoke on the Highway,’ ‘Sunoco,’ ‘Half-Life’ and ‘Follow the Sound of My Voice,’ songs that really paint a picture of what the album feels like,” Sam Harris said. “It’s been really awesome to get the reaction from the fans and see how these songs are resonating with people in a really tangible way, not just numbers on a screen or comments.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews outdoor films at Kennedy Center's REACH (Part 1) The D.C. area hosts plenty of outdoor movie series, but very few take place on such hallowed grounds.
Starting this Friday, the Kennedy Center hosts free outdoor film screenings on the REACH Video Wall with movies starting at sundown or around 8:30 p.m.
The series kicks off this Friday, May 31, with “Jurassic Park” (1993), a summer blockbuster 65 million years in the making. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the stunning dinosaur flick marked the transition between stop-motion puppetry into a new era of computer graphics, joining “King Kong” (1933) as arguably the two most important creature features ever made.
It continues next Friday, June 7, with “Dreamgirls” (2006), which famously transformed Jennifer Hudson from “American Idol” contestant to an Academy Award-winning actress belting powerful musical numbers alongside Beyoncé, Jamie Foxx, Anika Noni Rose, Danny Glover and Eddie Murphy. The film joined “Moulin Rouge!” (2001) and “Chicago” (2002) in revitalizing the Hollywood musical for the 21st century.
Friday, June 14, brings “10,000 Dreams: A Festival of Asian Choreography,” featuring a series of short films, narrative features and dance documentaries that were directed, choreographed or starring Asian creatives.
Parents should circle their calendars for a pair of family-friendly animated gems as Friday, June 21, brings Pixar’s “Elemental” (2023), which is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated movies from last year, while Friday, June 28, brings “Ratatouille” (2007), which deservedly won the Oscar for Best Animated Film.
Friday, July 5, brings the big-screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical breakthrough “In the Heights” (2021), which was one of the biggest summer blockbusters of the year but sadly got overshadowed by Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story” (2021) during that award season.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see the indie darling “The Peanut Butter Falcon” (2019) on the lineup for Friday, July 12, as it’s one of the most adorable, inspiring independent films of the last five years starring Zach Gottsagen as a man with Down syndrome dreaming of becoming a professional wrestler.
Friday, July 19, brings “A River Runs Through It” (1992), a wonderful adaptation of Norman Laclean’s 1976 coming-of-age novella about two brothers (Brad Pitt and Craig Sheffer) growing up fly fishing in rural Montana. The film cemented Robert Redford’s directorial prowess in between his Best Picture debut “Ordinary People” (1980) and his ultimate masterpiece “Quiz Show” (1994).
Friday, July 26, brings Richard Linklater’s “School of Rock” (2003), which remains Jack Black’s greatest performance as a bum who becomes a private-school music teacher, turning his pupils into a classic-rock band. I promise you’ll head home singing AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n Roll).”
Friday, Aug. 2, brings “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” (2012) with a voice cast featuring Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Betty White and Danny DeVito, who voices the title role. Say it with me, folks: “I speak for the trees!”
Friday, Aug. 9, brings one of my all-time favorite films in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” (1954), arguably the greatest mystery-suspense film ever made. The prolific Jimmy Stewart plays a wheelchair-bound photographer who thinks he witnesses a neighbor’s murder out the rear window of his Greenwich Village apartment, only to realize that he already has everything he ever wanted next to him in Grace Kelly.
Friday, Aug. 16, brings National Geographic’s Oscar-winning rock climbing documentary “Free Solo” (2018), chronicling Alex Honnald’s death-defying climb up El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without a rope.
The penultimate screening is Friday, Aug. 23, with Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012), which earned Daniel Day-Lewis his third Academy Award for Best Actor for his uncanny portrayal of Abraham Lincoln urging Congress to pass the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery during the Civil War. The quiet film remains one of Spielberg’s most underrated, so lean in and listen close as the film has plenty of Euclid lessons left to teach.
Finally, the free summer series wraps on Friday, Aug. 30, with the sweet romance of “Chocolat” (2000), starring Juliette Binoche as a single mother who opens a small chocolaterie in a fictional French village while falling in love with Johnny Depp’s self-proclaimed “river rat.” The film earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Binoche and Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench.
Find more info on the REACH film series here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the Netflix miniseries 'Eric' (Part 1) Could Mr. Snuffleupagus help you find your missing child before he gets snuffed out on the street?
That’s roughly the premise of the new British miniseries “Eric,” which premieres Thursday on Netflix for six episodes brought to you by the letter “B” for “bizarre.”
The series follows Vincent, the puppeteer of the children’s television show “Good Day Sunshine” whose life falls apart when his 9-year-old son, Edgar, goes missing in 1980s New York City. Should he have allowed Edgar to walk to school alone? Is he an irresponsible father? And is Edgar’s idea for a new puppet named Eric the key to finding him?
Benedict Cumberbatch is arguably one of the finest actors we have going today, becoming a household name in TV’s “Sherlock” and Marvel’s “Dr. Strange,” while earning Oscar nominations for “The Imitation Game” and “The Power of the Dog.” Likewise, Gaby Hoffmann has grown up from her child performance in “Field of Dreams” (“There’s a man out there on your lawn”) to earn three Emmy nods for “Girls” and “Transparent.”
Together, Cumberbatch and Hoffmann give emotional — if unlikable — performances as the deeply flawed parents worried about their son’s whereabouts. They chew the scenery as the bickering parents blaming each other’s indiscretions for their son’s disappearance, recalling the great cinematic arguments of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt” and Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight” as they hurl accusation after accusation.
This provides plenty of red herrings for showrunner Abi Morgan (“Shame”), who cleverly unravels the missing-child mystery plot, bolstered by dynamic visual compositions by BAFTA-nominated director Lucy Forbes (“This Is Going to Hurt”). Unfortunately, the engrossing psychological-thriller tone is constantly at odds with the quirkier fantasy elements as Vincent talks to his 7-foot-tall imaginary friend named Eric.
It’s odd to have such lighthearted hallucinations juxtaposed with gritty shots of kids in danger. It would be like Big Bird appearing in the middle of “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), Oscar the Grouch at the climax of “Zodiac” (2007) or Cookie Monster at the end of “Prisoners” (2013). It instantly shatters the tension and takes us out of the suspense every time Eric appears to crack a lame joke about this serious case.
I’m assuming the filmmakers are trying to channel “Birdman” (2014) where Michael Keaton spoke to his superhero alter-ego, but there wasn’t a child-abduction plot there. It only worked because the entire movie was about Keaton creating a Broadway play to shed his Hollywood past. It would work if it were a Marvel superhero following Cumberbatch with taunts about the genre, but when it’s not Dr. Strange, it’s just strange.
In the end, the filmmakers deserve credit for tackling a timely topic, from the Elmo scandal of 2012 to the Nickelodeon scandal of 2024. They also deserve credit for deftly crafting a final episode that ties everything together from small-time criminals to citywide conspiracies. Still, no matter how hard they try, they’re working with a tone that is constantly at war with itself. It’s a show that can’t decide what it wants to be.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Ace Frehley at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) He shredded legendary rock riffs as the iconic lead guitarist of the classic metal band KISS.
Now, Ace Frehley bring his solo tour to Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races on Saturday, June 15.
“I’m not slowing down at all — if anything, I’m accelerating my career at this juncture in my life,” Frehley told WTOP. “Of course, I’ve got to do songs like ‘New York Groove.’ … You will hear me perform ‘Rock & Roll All Nite,’ you’ll hear me perform ‘Cold Gin,’ ‘Shock Me,’ ‘Rip It Out,’ all of the classic KISS songs, plus we’ll be doing ‘10,000 Volts’ off of the new album and ‘Cherry Medicine’ off of the new album.”
His latest album “10,000 Volts” (2024), released back in February, includes such out-of-the-world song titles as “Walkin’ On The Moon,” “Up In The Sky” and the instrumental final track “Stratosphere.”
“The reaction to this new album has been phenomenal,” Frehley said. “[‘10,000 Volts’] I wrote with Steve Brown. … On most of these songs, Steve brought me the music, I’d end up doing a guitar solo, doing the lead vocals and writing most of the lyrics. He engineered the whole record with me and it’s just a pleasure working with this guy. … [‘Up in the Sky’], if you listen to the lyrics, it’s so obvious I’m talking about UFOs. … I’ve seen three in my lifetime.”
These extraterrestrial references reflect his lifelong passion for science-fiction, which he’s enjoyed since he was a kid growing up in the Bronx in the ’50s. Frehley got his first guitar as a Christmas present at the age of 13.
“I never went to college, I never took a guitar lesson, it just manifested,” Frehley said. “I grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx and used to be in a street gang called ‘The Ducky Boys.’ … What were the odds of me becoming one of the most famous guitar players in the world? Probably one in 100 million? But it happened.”
In 1973, he formed KISS with Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Peter Criss, becoming famous for high-energy shows with the band wearing costumes and face paint. Frehley not only designed the band logo with double lightning bolts, he also created his own “Spaceman” persona (a.k.a. Space Ace) with silver stars over his eyes.
“We used to play at this club on Long Island called ‘The Daisy’ when we were formulating the makeup designs,” Frehley said. “We were experimenting. One night, I had come out with my whole face silver, I think Paul’s face was all red, but Gene pretty much started that demon thing. All the makeup has evolved over the years. When you look at my makeup on the first album cover, everything is just silver around my eyes, then I started doing dark around my eyes, then when I got the cape outfit with the mirrors on it, I decided to put blue eye shadow around my eyes.”
Two years later, the band delivered its most famous hit “Rock & Roll All Nite” (1975).
“I’m actually performing it again live, it’s in my set,” Frehley said. “You will hear me play ‘Rock & Roll All Nite,’ a new addition. I was speaking to some friends of mine; in fact, it actually may have been Steve Brown, who coproduced the record, and he recommended it, he said, ‘You know, Ace, ‘Rock & Roll All Nite’ is one of the most popular songs on Spotify as far as KISS songs go, it has one of the highest downloads.'”
Another one of his most famous riffs comes on “Detroit Rock City” (1976).
“I love that solo that me and Paul used to do, the harmony, but I don’t believe in taking credit for anybody else’s ideas — that was Bob Ezrin’s idea, that melody,” Frehley said. “He told us exactly what to play and told Paul what the harmony was. Things happened very spontaneously those days.”
Ironically, he does not like performing “I Was Made for Loving You” (1979), even though it was a huge hit at the time and was recently featured in the movie “The Fall Guy” (2024) starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
“‘I Was Made For Loving You’ is one of my least favorite songs to perform because my wrist cramps up,” Frehley said. “I know it’s one of our biggest hits, but I didn’t like the fact that it was disco rock. I’m really more hard core, I’m a blues-based rock guitar player and I like heavy metal. I would have never written a song like that and I don’t believe Gene would have either. … It’s not a bad song, I just don’t think it fits with KISS, just like ‘Beth’ didn’t.”
After his debut solo album “Ace Frehley” (1978) went platinum, he officially left KISS in 1982 to record two albums with a new band, the cleverly-titled “Frehley’s Comet,” before cranking out a dozen solo albums since.
Known for his array of “special effects,” including guitars shooting smoke, flashing lights and spinning pyrotechnics, Frehley was recently ranked in the Top 15 of Guitar World’s “100 Greatest Heavy Metal Guitarists of All Time,” while his solo on “Shock Me” (1977) was included in Guitar World’s list of the “50 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time.”
Still, his favorite accolades come from fellow guitarists, from Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine) calling Frehley his “first guitar hero,” to the late Dimebag Darrell (Pantera) getting a tattoo of Frehley on his chest.
“My peers like John 5 or Slash, who’s a dear friend of mine, or Mike McCready from Pearl Jam, those guitar players come up to me and say that I influenced them,” Frehley said. “For almost every band that was younger than me when KISS came out, broke and became one of the biggest bands in the world, that album ‘Alive’ is like their Bible of learning how to play rock guitar, at least that’s what I’ve been told. … If I’m influencing somebody, that’s great.”
This year also marks the 10th anniversary of KISS being inducted into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. The legendary band just went on its farewell tour last year, but at age 73, Frehley is still playing his face off with solo tours.
“Now, on top of influencing guitar players, I’m also influencing people to get sober because I’ve been sober over 17 years,” Frehley said. “When I do meet-and-greets backstage, a lot of them will show me their [Alcoholics Anonymous] coin and say, ‘Hey, I got sober because of you. I figured if Ace Frehley could get sober, I could.'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews free opera at the Lincoln Memorial (Part 1) Are you looking for something fun and cultured to do this weekend around the National Mall?
Stop by the Reflecting Pool as “Opera Italiana is in the Air” presents a free outdoor concert from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. set against the backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial.
Last year, the concert coincided with the International Day of Peace, Italian Maestro Alvise Casellati told WTOP, pointing to the monument’s connection to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.
“It’s a symbol of freedom and dignity of the people and I could not think of a more appropriate place to do this … to disseminate love, peace and beauty,” Casellati said.
This year, the soaring arias of Puccini, Verdi and Rossini will arrive on the eve of the Italian National Day, on June 2.
“Puccini is one of the most famous and performed composers around the world,” Casellati said. “His operas are the most performed, along with Verdi and Rossini. … Music speaks a universal language and every musician around the world reads music the same way. Also music, because of the emotion that it creates inside of us, builds bridges between nations beyond borders, regardless of nationality and sex, so the idea is really to embrace everyone.”
Casellati will conduct the Washington National Opera along with an array of world-class opera singers, including American soprano Ewa Plonka, Italian tenor Antonio Poli and D.C. native bass-baritone Anthony D. Anderson.
“The singers are national stars, along with the young generation that is up and coming,” Casellati said. “Anthony Anderson is an amazing baritone, very young, so we put the young people with the very established ones so that young people will see that opera is their thing.”
He insists that opera is not an antiquated, highbrow art form, but rather popular entertainment for the masses.
“Today, opera is perceived not to be pop music but the music for the elite,” Casellati said. “With this project, we want to prove that opera is popular music. It used to be for 500 years, but certainly in the last 20 to 30 years there is this misconception. … You don’t need to have a degree to understand. When you hear the amazing voice with the technique of opera, the power of this voice … everyone, everyone, everyone will become an opera lover.”
In this populist spirit, the event is open to the public with no tickets required, so just bring a picnic blanket or lawn chair to sit next to the Reflecting Pool — or sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial if you want to be up close.
“We don’t want money to be an issue,” Casellati said. “We want everybody to enjoy an experience that is as close to the high-level experience that they would get in theaters.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Keb' Mo' at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) Blues music is a uniquely American tradition — and if any one knows its history, it’s Keb’ Mo’.
WTOP caught up with the five-time Grammy winner on his way to perform at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia on Saturday.
“Blues is the technology of the soul,” Keb’ Mo’ told WTOP. “It’s got history, it’s American music formed here in America and it’s just in the soil, so you can’t kill it. You know how you have weeds and you try to get the weeds out of your yard? You can’t kill them, they just keep coming up. … It managed to seep into the heart and soul of America in a way that nothing else did. When you hear the blues, you’re listening to the dirt, man.”
The concert will feature songs from his career, including his latest album “Good to Be” (2022), which connected his hometown of Compton, California, with his new home of Nashville, where he’s lived for over a decade now.
“It’s going to be an overview of stuff from all of my albums,” Keb’ Mo’ said. “My newest album called ‘Good to Be’ is not that new anymore. That was a pandemic record. … It was a nod to familiar life, the life you grew up with and to hold on to that. Those [roots] are very precious, they shape your whole future, those growing up years.”
Born on Oct. 3, 1951, in Los Angeles, he grew up listening to Motown, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis and Mongo Santamaría before picking up his own instruments to forge a career in music.
“I did a brief stint on the trumpet and let’s just say I wasn’t trumpet material, but that started me out,” Keb’ Mo’ said. “Then I moved to steel drums and then to guitar and I played all of those. Then in high school I got on the French horn and I just rode that out, went back to guitar, then after that guitar became my main instrument.”
At age 21, he gained experience when his band Zulu began touring with Jefferson Airplane violinist Papa John Creech. After releasing his first album “Rainmaker” (1980) under his birth name Kevin Moore, he quickly changed his name to Keb’ Mo’ for the catchier self-titled album “Keb’ Mo'” (1994).
“It was kind of an accident,” Keb’ Mo’ said. “I was called Keb’ Mo’ and I put that on my demo tape: ‘Kevin Moore a.k.a. Keb’ Mo’ — and no one paid much attention to Kevin Moore anymore after that first record, so I guess I changed my name and put my past behind me and started over.”
His next album “Just Like You” (1996) won his first Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
“It was shocking,” Keb’ Mo’ said. “When I got nominated, I put my suit on and went to the Grammys and I got to go up there.”
He won his second Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album for “Slow Down” (1998).
“It was challenging because I worked with a new engineer,” he said. “I was a co-producer on that along with John Lewis Parker, but we got it done and it came out OK. We were still running tape back then, two-inch tape … big reels of tape, carrying it around and I was living in New Orleans at the time we made that record, so I came out to California and did the record out there and it was great. You’re jogging my memory!”
Two more nominations followed for “The Door” (2000) and “Big Wide Grin” (2001) before winning his third Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album with “Keep it Simple” (2004).
“It was just keeping it simple,” Keb’ Mo’ said. “‘Shave Your Legs’ was on that record, ‘Prosperity Blues,’ there’s an overlooked gem: ‘I can’t even crack a frown since the blues slipped outta town.'”
After an album of 60s-style peace anthems called “Peace … Back By Popular Demand” (2004), he racked up more nominations for his albums “Suitcase” (2006), “The Reflection” (2011) and “BLUES Americana” (2014).
Eventually, he won his fourth Grammy collaborating with blues legend Taj Mahal on “TajMo” (2017).
“That’s called a legend and a hanger on-er — you know which one is which,” Keb’ Mo’ said. “Taj Mahal is a giant and to be working on that record, I’m kicking myself and I thought after that experience I didn’t really want to do any more TajMo records because it was too much on my heart to be in the studio working with him right up close. We won the Grammy and I said, ‘It can’t get any better than this. Let’s leave that alone.'”
From there, he stretched genres by winning the Grammy for Best Americana Album for “Oklahoma” (2019), a year before saluting country legend Garth Brooks by singing “The River” at D.C.’s DAR Constitution Hall during the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2020.
“That was shocking to say the least,” Keb’ Mo’ said. “I wasn’t expecting to win let alone get nominated, I just wanted to do something different in another genre, then bam, here we are, winning an Americana Grammy.”
What’s next for Keb’ Mo’? Turns out, he’s reunited with Taj Mahal, who he ranks on his Mount Rushmore of blues legends along with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King.
“We’re mixing it now and it comes out in February,” Keb’ Mo’ said. “This one is really cool and it has a whole different feel to the record. We’ve got some cool songs and I won’t reveal the title of it yet, but I’m really excited about it. It might stand up to the first one.”
My suggestion: Flip the title of “TajMo” around to “MoTaj” — as in More Taj.
“You’re having way too much fun on your job, man,” he joked.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Keb' Mo' at Hollywood Casino (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Let's Go Music Fest (Part 1) The Let’s Go! Music Festival is returning to Annapolis, Maryland, at the Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds.
The fourth annual event features three straight days of music with Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional and Motion City Soundtrack on Friday, May 31; The Revivalists, Coin and The Band Camino on Saturday, June 1; and Our Lady Peace, Daughtry and Bush on Sunday, June 2.
Co-founder Liz Rawlings said she always hears a lot of great feedback from festival-goers.
“People that come to the festival, we get to talk to them … and they’re, like, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you for bringing this, who can you bring next year? This is so exciting, it’s right in our backyard,'” co-founder Liz Rawlings told WTOP. “The one that really trips us up is: ‘When did you start having this? We’ve never heard of it!'”
Rawlings founded the festival with her brother, Chris Hartman, to escape the pandemic in 2021.
“Coming out of COVID, we were missing live music. Chris and I are great music lovers and we were just missing live music and it spawned an idea that maybe we could have something at the fairgrounds,” Rawlings said. “We were fortunate enough that Smash Mouth and Gin Blossoms came that first year and it’s just grown ever since.”
The first year drew 2,500 people to see performances from Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth and Gin Blossoms. The second year drew nearly 7,000 people to see Lynyrd Skynyrd, Goo Goo Dolls and Better Than Ezra, and last year drew nearly 10,000 people to see Live, 311, Lit, Collective Soul, Chris Young and Kip Moore.
The Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds is located in Crownsville, Maryland, just a mile outside of Annapolis.
There’s plenty of space and free parking, Rawlings said.
“We can put up these large stages there and we transform the fairgrounds to a cozy, boutique-type festival where folks can get a great view of the stage from any angle of the field. We bring in food trucks, multiple bars. It’s just a great venue for us.”
Guests are encouraged to bring a blanket and lawn chairs, but strollers and umbrellas are prohibited. You can also purchase food from local food trucks and alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks from concession stands.
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Let's Go Music Fest (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Movies on the Pitch' at Audi Field (Part 1) When you hear cheers erupting at Audi Field, it’s usually soccer fans cheering for D.C. United.
This summer, the sound will be coming from movie fans cheering during their favorite blockbusters.
The Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District presents the third annual “Movies on the Pitch” on Thursday evenings at the stadium in Southwest D.C.
“Our vision for Audi Field has always been for it to become a gathering place for the community, whether that’s supporting D.C. United, or attending other sporting and entertainment events,” D.C. United President of Business Operations Danita Johnson said.
“We’re excited to continue our partnership with the Capitol Riverfront BID to bring outdoor movies to Audi Field, showcasing yet another amazing reason for people to consider living in or visiting our vibrant neighborhood.”
The movie series will once again transform Audi Field into an outdoor cinema with five showings of current blockbuster films on the stadium’s jumbotron screen — with the lineup chosen by a recent fan poll.
“The Capitol Riverfront BID is thrilled to host a third year of free outdoor movies for residents and visitors throughout the local region to experience,” Capitol Riverfront BID President Emeka Moneme said. “The community has voted on a chart-topping lineup that will offer summer evenings for all ages to gather at a dynamic venue in Buzzard Point.”
Here are the family-friendly selections as voted on by the public:
- May 30 — “The Little Mermaid” (2023)
- June 6 — “Barbie” (2023)
- June 20 — “Mean Girls” (2024)
- June 27 — “The Marvels” (2023)
- July 18 — “Wonka” (2023)
Gates open at 6:30 p.m. with the screenings starting at 7:30 p.m.
Audi Field will have concessions available for purchase.
No outside food or alcohol is permitted.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the National Memorial Day Concert with Gary Sinise (Part 1) The National Memorial Day Concert returns to the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol on Sunday.
Actor Gary Sinise will once again co-host with Joe Mantegna as the telecast airs live on PBS.
“I started in 2005,” Sinise told WTOP. “Joe started in 2002 and called to ask if I would be interested in coming to do a segment on the 2005 show and bringing my band to play. They were going to highlight the USO, and I was doing a lot of USO shows, so they asked me to come. … They asked me to not only play but narrate a few other segments, so I did that. Then they asked me to come back the following year and co-host — and I’ve been doing that since 2006.”
This year’s lineup includes Bryan Cranston, Cynthia Erivo, Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts, Jena Malone, BD Wong, Patina Miller, Ruthie Ann Miles and Mary McCormack. It also includes Jamey Johnson, whose hit country song “In Color” is perfect for Memorial Day, describing black-and-white photographs of serving in World War II:
“If it looks like we were scared to death, like a couple of kids just tryna save each other, you should’ve seen it in color.”
“I hope he’s doing that one,” Sinise said. “It’s a great, great, great, song.”
This year also marks the 30th anniversary of Sinise’s Oscar-nominated role as double-amputee Vietnam War veteran Lt. Dan Taylor in “Forrest Gump” (1994), which not only was the year’s No. 2 grossing blockbuster but also won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Zemeckis) and Best Actor (Tom Hanks).
“It was all magic tricks done in the computer except for when I was actually sitting in the wheelchair,” Sinise said. “We had a specially-designed wheelchair that had a little sunken area where I could bend my legs … but the other times when I’m falling out of the wheelchair, get lifted up out of the hospital bed or jump off the boat and swim out, that was all done with the computer. It wasn’t green screen, but I had blue-screen socks … then in post production they would go in and remove all that blue color … and then paint in the [floor and furniture].”
He says “Forrest Gump” contrasts with other war masterpieces of his generation like “The Deer Hunter” (1978), “Apocalypse Now” (1979), “Platoon” (1986) and “Full Metal Jacket” (1987) because it was the first to actually provide hope for wounded veterans rather than leaving them wallowing in tragic anguish and depression.
“The story of Lt. Dan resonates with so many of our veterans, of course with our wounded veterans, because it is a very positive story,” Sinise said. “He wrestles with his demons and he overcomes and he’s standing up again at the end of the movie. That’s the story we want for everybody who’s facing a challenge because of military service. We want them to be OK and moving on with their lives — and that’s the power of the Lt. Dan story.”
Indeed, his final scene shows him walking on “magic legs” at Forrest and Jenny’s wedding, tapping his titanium-alloy rods as “the stuff they use on the space shuttle,” foreshadowing his reunion with Hanks in “Apollo 13” (1995).
“He may have known he was going to go off and do that movie next, but I didn’t until a while later when all of a sudden I had the opportunity to audition for it,” Sinise said.
Of all of his great roles, from “Of Mice and Men” to “The Green Mile” to “CSI: NY,” none are as important as his annual role at the National Memorial Day Concert. In fact, his Lt. Dan Band just performed for wounded vets on Thursday night at Fort Belvoir in Virginia as part of the Invincible Spirit Festival for the Gary Sinise Foundation.
“It’s a beautiful way to remember,” Sinise said. “That’s what Memorial Day is about: remembrance. We remember our fallen, we remember the sacrifices that have been made to keep us free, we remember those that are buried in military cemeteries all across the country and around the world, we remember the families who have lost those loved ones and we honor them. It’s our national tribute to those who defend us.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the National Memorial Day Concert with Gary Sinise (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'High Noon' at the Smithsonian (Part 1) The clock is ticking as you have exactly one week until a must-see event for movie buffs in D.C.
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History is hosting a special free screening of the classic western “High Noon” (1952) on Thursday, May 30 at 7:30 p.m. — a film that won Gary Cooper his second Oscar for Best Actor.
Before the screening, Cooper’s daughter, Maria Cooper Janis, will sign copies of her book “Gary Cooper Off Camera: A Daughter Remembers.” After the screening, she’ll join a Q&A with Dr. Amanda Foreman, daughter of screenwriter Carl Foreman, and Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Frankel, author of “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and The Making of an American Classic,” moderated by Ryan Lintelman of the Smithsonian.
“We’re kind of calling ourselves The Legacy Family,” Cooper Janis told WTOP. “My very close friend at the time was Pia Lindström, the daughter of Ingrid Bergman. … We were having a sleepover and I remember sitting in my room on my bed watching the television of the Oscars. … When my father’s name was announced, I got so excited that I yelled, ‘Whoopie!’ and flung my arms out and hit Pia in the face! I was afraid I knocked her teeth out. … The moment my father was getting the award I was completely distraught that I had injured my best friend.”
Based on John W. Cunningham’s magazine short story “The Tin Star,” the film follows small-town Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper), who leaves town on his honeymoon with his Quaker pacifist bride (Grace Kelly) only to turn back to face a violent outlaw who is arriving on the noon train to seek revenge on the town. The brave lawman sadly finds that his fellow citizens lack the courage to defend themselves, so he must take one final stand alone.“The writing was wonderful, the writing was minimal,” Cooper Janis said. “The story ideas were critical in what Foreman chose to tell. His daughter Amanda, who is a wonderful major writer herself, was telling us that one of the ideas was taken from a short story of Mark Twain. There’s a town in the short story … and this town looks on the surface like a perfect little, quiet, upright, upstanding community but underneath it what crawls out from under the rock is cowardice, greed, violence, etc.”
The unflinching role of Marshal Will Kane was voted by the American Film Institute as the No. 5 greatest movie hero of all time, behind only Atticus Finch, Indiana Jones, James Bond and Rick Blaine, while the film itself was voted by the AFI as the second greatest western of all time behind only John Ford’s “The Searchers” (1956).
“He asked Duke Wayne to accept the award because my father was on location in Mexico doing a film,” Cooper Janis said. “He called Wayne and asked him to accept it for him, which was kind of ironic because … Wayne was very, very, very angry and opposed to my father doing the film because the wonderful writer Carl Foreman was having to cope with the Hollywood Blacklist. … You’ve probably seen the newsreel footage of Wayne very graciously accepting the award, then saying, ‘Well, blank, blank, blank, why didn’t my agent offer me this part?'”
The story is an allegory for taking a stand against McCarthyism, written by Foreman who was blacklisted for his progressive political views after testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). While his “High Noon” script earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, Foreman fled to the UK to secretly write the Oscar-winning script for “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957), but he had to keep his contributions private.
“It is so relevant in the message that a major producer has bought the rights and they’re working on bringing ‘High Noon’ to Broadway because they feel that the time is right to tell the story of one man who has moral principles and integrity and stands up for what is right — even to the point of facing his own death,” Cooper Janis said.
Visually, “High Noon” was groundbreaking for its use of real-time storytelling as director Fred Zinnemann constantly cuts to the clock to build the tension with the Oscar-winning editing of Elmo Williams and Harry Gerstad. While Zinnemann went on to win the Oscar for Best Director the following year for “From Here to Eternity” (1953), film scholars widely agree that his greatest directorial work remains “High Noon.”
“I don’t know if you could amputate any one element, what made it work,” Cooper Janis said.
The film also won two Oscars for its unforgettable music, including best original score for composer Dimitri Tiomkin and best original song for Tiomkin (music) and Ned Washington (lyrics) for the iconic tune “High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’),” performed by singing cowboy Tex Ritter, father of actor John Ritter.
“When I married my husband, Byron Janis, the great concert pianist, the best man of our wedding was … a wonderful Russian painter named Boris Chaliapin, the son of great Russian singer [Feodor] Chaliapin,” Cooper Janis said. “Byron was explaining to Boris about ‘High Noon,’ this great music that Dimitri Tiomkin had written. … Boris said, ‘No, no, this is old Russian folk song.’ … Tiomkin was Ukrainian! It may have been totally subconscious.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Brandon Victor Dixon Awards (Part 1) Earlier this week, the Helen Hayes Awards honored the best professional theaters in the D.C. area.
This weekend, the Brandon Victor Dixon Awards will honor the best local high school musicals in a third annual ceremony at the National Theatre in D.C. on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Eligible high schools must be located within a 25-mile radius of National Theatre and submit an application for consideration, after which judges are sent to each school to evaluate and provide constructive feedback.
This year’s finalists for Best Musical include Fairfax Academy for Communication and the Arts’ “Cry-Baby,” Gonzaga College High School’s “Mary Poppins,” Oakton High School’s “Pippin,” Our Lady of Good Counsel High School’s “Tuck Everlasting,” South County High School’s “Singin’ In the Rain,” South Lakes High School’s “Big Fish: School Edition,” and Washington-Liberty High School’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
Best Actress finalists include Meera Ayyar of Oakton High School’s “Pippin,” Shiri Cohen of Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School’s “Into the Woods,” Celeste Collins of Washington-Liberty High School’s “Sweeney Todd,” Itsuko Scoville of South Lakes High School’s “Big Fish: School Edition,” and Kaylee William of Fairfax High School’s “Anastasia: The Musical.”
Best Actor finalists include Colt Craddock of Oakton High School’s “Pippin,” August Rivers of South Lakes High School’s “Big Fish,” Ryan Robbins of Walt Whitman High School’s “Cabaret,” Nate Smith of Fairfax High School’s “Anastasia: The Musical,” and Jonah Uffelman of Fairfax Academy for Communication and the Arts’ “Cry-Baby.”
Finally, Outstanding Achievement in Technical Theatre finalists include Andrew Beasley and Leah Lewis of South County High School; Cecilia Cantarilho, Taylor Kim and Jamie Chung of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School; Sarah Finke of Winston Churchill High School; Colin Frankel and Anisa Sanders of Walt Whitman High School; Henry Green of W.T. Woodson High School; Noah Kennedy, Anna Leo and August Rivers of South Lakes High School; Hayden Palmer of The Field School; and Erika Sjetnan-Day of Washington-Liberty High School.
The regional competition determines which local performers will move on to the 15th annual National High School Musical Theatre Awards, also known as The Jimmy Awards, which will be held at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre in New York City on June 24.
The awards are named after Gaithersburg, Maryland-native Brandon Victor Dixon, who starred in the Tony-winning revival of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” (2014) and the Emmy and Grammy-nominated telecast of “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert” on NBC. He has also earned Tony nominations for “The Color Purple” (2006), “Shuffle Along” (2016) and “Hell’s Kitchen” (2024), meaning he’ll compete at this year’s Tony Awards on June 16.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Maggie Rose at Rams Head & The Birchmere (Part 1) Growing up in Montgomery County, Maryland, she hoped that one day she would perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, but she couldn’t have predicted that she would play the iconic venue over 100 times.
This weekend, country music singer/songwriter Maggie Rose returns home to perform live at the Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland on Friday, followed by The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia on Sunday.
“I love those venues,” Rose told WTOP. “It’s also just nice to come home. My whole family is still up there and I feel like I’ve had a really great fan base that’s stuck with me since I moved to Nashville 16 years ago and it just keeps growing, so we’re ready to come back with the new tour.”
Born in Potomac, Maryland in 1988, she attended Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in D.C. before joining a Bruce Springsteen cover act called The B-Street Band. She moved to Nashville at age 19 where she signed with the record label Universal Republic to release a cover of “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon.
Upon moving to R&J Records’ subsidiary Emrose/Stroudavarious Records, she released her first EP “Maybe Tonight” (2011) under her name Margaret Durante before rebranding to Maggie Rose for her breakthrough album “Cut to Impress” (2013), which landed a few hits on country radio, including “Better” and “I Ain’t Your Mama.”
“I was more focused on my independence,” Rose said. “It’s less of a statement on men, I don’t think they’re incompetent or anything, but I think in that point in a relationship you want to find someone who wants to have a good partner and not someone who’s gonna take care of you. I just thought it was funny and sassy, I liked the sort of funky sonic element to it compared to what I was hearing on the radio from women a lot at the time.”
She has since followed up with three more albums, “Change the Whole Thing” (2018), “Have a Seat” (2019) and her newest album “No One Gets Out Alive” (2014), produced by Ben Tanner of Alabama Shakes and featuring talented musicians from Jason Isbell’s band with guitarist Sadler Vaden and drummer Chad Gamble.
“One of the benefits of being in this town for so long is I’ve accumulated some really talented friends,” Rose said.
She promises to perform songs from the new album in Annapolis and Alexandria, including “Mad Love,” “Fake Flowers” and the title track “No One Gets Out Alive,” co-written with Natalie Hemby of The Highwomen.
“‘No One Gets Out Alive’ on its own without context sounds ominous and dark, but it’s about the urgency and preciousness of life, the finite amount of time we have,” Rose said. “I had a 64-piece orchestra (on ‘Mad Love’), this big, anthemic, cinematic piece that maybe would be worthy of a Tarantino soundtrack. … ‘Fake Flowers’ I love, it’s our single right now, it’s one of the songs I really look forward to singing. … It’s a little reckless and messy.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Maggie Rose at Rams Head & The Birchmere (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Season 11 finale of 'The Masked Singer' (Part 1) “The Masked Singer” airs its Season 11 finale this Wednesday night on Fox.
Do you think you can guess the mystery voices of the final two contestants?
This season has already unmasked and eliminated the likes of Kevin Hart, Clay Aiken, Ruben Studdard, DeMarcus Ware, Corey Feldman and Sisqo.
Wednesday’s finale will be a battle between two mystery singers: Gumball and Goldfish.
Goldfish kicked off the season performing Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire,” while Gumball sang a mashup of “If I Only Had a Heart” from “The Wizard of Oz” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Heartbeat Song.”
Last week’s semifinals saw Gumball sing “I Lived” by OneRepublic.
Meanwhile, Goldfish sang “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette.
Tune in Wednesday night as both identities are revealed and a winner is crowned.
Past winners include T-Pain, Wayne Brady, Kandi Burruss, LeAnn Rimes, Nick Lachey, Jewel, Teyana Taylor, Amber Riley, Bishop Briggs and Ne-Yo.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley breaks down the Helen Hayes Awards (Part 1) Broadway may have the Tony Awards, but D.C. has the prestigious Helen Hayes Awards.
The 40th edition honored the best local theater in a ceremony on Monday night at The Anthem.
Judges considered 44 musicals and 107 plays, including 36 world premieres, from 151 eligible productions. The 41 categories were divided into “Helen” — non-equity casts that are majority nonunion — and “Hayes” — equity casts that are majority union.
On the union side, Outstanding Musical (Equity) went to Olney Theatre and Round House Theatre’s co-production of “Fela!” — a salute to Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti — defeating “Swept Away” by Arena Stage, “Monty Python’s Spamalot” at the Kennedy Center, “Shout Sister Shout!” by Ford’s Theatre and “Ragtime” at Signature Theatre.
Outstanding Play (Equity) went to “My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion” by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, defeating “Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches” by Arena Stage, “Fat Ham” by Studio Theatre, “Here There Are Blueberries” by Shakespeare Theatre Company and “King of the Yees” by Signature Theatre.
On the non-union side, Outstanding Musical (Non-Equity) went to “Seussical” by Keegan Theatre, defeating “In the Heights” by NextStop Theatre Company, “Ride the Cyclone” by NextStop Theatre Company, “Something Rotten” by Toby’s Dinner Theatre and “Spring Awakening” by Monumental Theatre Company.
Outstanding Play (Non-Equity) went to “La Salpêtrière” by Taffety Punk Theatre Company, defeating “Agreste (Drylands)” at Spooky Action Theater, “How the Light Gets In” at 1st Stage, “The Honey Trap” at Solas Nua, “The Tell-Tale Heart” at Synetic Theater and “The Last Match” at 1st Stage.
Overall, Keegan Theatre won the most total awards with six (all for “Seussical”), tied with the six wins by Arena Stage (three for “Swept Away,” two for “Angels in America: Part One” and one for “Exclusion”). Olney Theatre Center won the second most with five (all for “Fela!”).
Arena Stage entered the evening with the most total nominations with 32, followed by Signature Theatre with 20.
The ceremony also presented the Helen Hayes Tribute Award to longtime Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks, who recently stepped down after serving in the role for 21 years.
Named for the iconic D.C. native actress, the Helen Hayes Awards has honored excellence in professional theater throughout our region for four decades.
See all the winners here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Uncle Kracker at Commanders Field (Part 1) In 2004, Uncle Kracker collaborated with Kenny Chesney on the tropical country hit “When the Sun Goes Down.”
This Saturday, they celebrate the song’s 20th anniversary with the “Sun Goes Down” Tour at Commanders Field in Landover, Maryland, alongside the Zac Brown Band and Megan Maroney for a day of tailgating fun and music.
“Absolutely nothing like it,” Kracker told WTOP. “Aside from him being one of the greatest entertainers I’ve ever seen, I can’t put my thumb on it. Aside from him being awesome, he’s just a ball of energy. I don’t know anybody who can run around for two straight hours like he can, but it’s just nonstop from probably 9 a.m. These people are out in the parking lot drinking until the show is done. It’s insane. … Everybody’s working for the weekend.”
Born in Michigan in 1974, Kracker grew up listening to B.J. Thomas and James Taylor. He broke into the music business when his older brother squared off against Kid Rock in a DJ battle in the Detroit area.
“There was a bar outside of Detroit that turned into a teen club on Sunday nights,” Kracker said.
“The Electrifying Mojo used to be a disc jockey on WJLB in Detroit, he used to hold these DJ battles on Sundays and they were a big thing. My brother went up against Kid Rock in one of these battle competitions. Kid Rock showed up, he didn’t even bring his turntables, he paid my brother $100 to use his turntables then smoked him on his own tables.”
From there, he joined Kid Rock’s backing band Twisted Brown Trucker alongside the late Joe C. and others. Kracker was featured on Kid Rock’s debut album “Early Mornin’ Stoned Pimp” (1996) and his smash sophomore album “Devil without a Cause” (1998), featuring the hits “Bawitdaba,” “Cowboy” and “Only God Knows Why.”
“Man, we had a lot of fun, that’s for sure,” Kracker said. “I wrote a lot of them with him and a lot of the backup vocals are me on there. I DJ’d live, but Kid Rock did all of the scratching and stuff on the albums himself because he’s better than I am, but definitely fun, it was definitely a time to be alive, that’s for sure.”
Their next album, “The History of Rock” (2000), featured “American Badass,” which was not only used by the WWF’s Undertaker but also declared the group’s genre-defying intentions: “I like AC-DC and ZZ Top, Bocephus, Beasties and the Kings of Rock, Skynyrd, Seger, Limp, Korn, the Stones, David Allen Coe and No Show Jones.”
“I remember the record label hating us for [crossing genres],” Kracker said. “We turned in ‘Only God Knows Why,’ and I talked to the A&R guy like, ‘Did you listen to ‘Only God Knows Why?’ and he’s like, ‘That country song? What the f**k are we gonna do with that?’ Back then, it was so different, too. We were all so young and we loved music so much. It was the camaraderie that was special. You’d write something like, ‘Listen to this!’ It was a competition.”
While Kid Rock was busy recording “Cocky” (2001) with the Sheryl Crow duet “Picture,” Kracker finally got a chance to release his first solo album “Double Wide” (2000), smashing the pop charts with the single “Follow Me.”
“I wrote that thing in my bedroom one night,” Kracker said. “[Kid Rock] just started straying from the rap stuff at one point and I was like, ‘Man, I can do that, let’s try that,’ so I hummed this ‘Follow Me’ thing and he was like, ‘Man, that sounds like some really dark James Taylor sh*t.’ The melody and lyrics were much cooler than the version that got put out [on the radio]. It was all finger snaps and melody, mainly to pay homage to the old Motown stuff.”
Kracker again went retro on his second solo album “No Stranger to Shame” (2002), featuring a hit cover of the golden oldie “Drift Away,” even inviting original singer Dobie Gray to appear on the song and music video.
“When ‘Follow Me’ started taking off, I would have to go to these radio stations in the morning and do like an acoustic thing,” Kracker said.
“They’d want like three songs acoustic in the middle of the morning show interview, but I didn’t have anything else on the record that sounded like ‘Follow Me,’ so Kid Rock suggested I do ‘Drift Away’ acoustically for all these promo things — and that’s how I ended up cutting ‘Drift Away’ for the second album.”
His third solo album “Happy Hour” (2009) delivered another hit single with “Smile,” but by then Kracker was already touring with Chesney after their successful country music duet “When the Sun Goes Down” (2004).
“Kenny had reached out to me,” Kracker said. “He calls Kid Rock and says, ‘Do you think Uncle Kracker would come out and do a couple with me for an encore scenario?’ Of course, Kid Rock’s like, ‘I dunno, call him yourself,’ so I get this call like, ‘Hey this is Kenny Chesney,’ and I’m like, ‘Who?’ I had no clue who he was! … It’s been 20 years since ‘Sun Goes Down’ for us. It’s crazy to think that much time has passed and I’m still doing this.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Uncle Kracker at Commanders Field (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Sugar' on Apple TV+ (Part 1) Critics recently took a bite out of Apple for its tone-deaf iPad commercial crushing centuries of culture in a vice, followed by a proposed streaming bundle with Netflix and Peacock that gives cord cutters another option but could be a slippery slope to the very cable monopolies that streaming was supposed to shatter.
Even if you are critical of both of those corporate moves in Silicon Valley, there’s no denying that Apple TV+ has a sweet batting average for its TV content. That’s especially the case for the neo-noir “Sugar,” which drops its eighth and final episode on Friday. If you haven’t seen it yet there’s still plenty of time to catch up as the first episode is the only one clocking in at 50 minutes — the rest are roughly a half hour for a riveting binge.
Created by Mark Protosevich, the series unfolds in modern-day Los Angeles where cinephile turned private detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) investigates the disappearance of Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), who happens to be the granddaughter of legendary Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel (James Crowell).
Farrell is perfectly cast, sipping whiskey beneath mysterious eyes while delivering hard-boiled dialogue in voice-over narration. It’s a return to his breakthrough role in “Minority Report” (2002), which I maintain is a neo-noir placed in a futuristic setting. Since then, the Irish actor has won a Golden Globe for “In Bruges” (2008), another nomination for “The Lobster” (2015) and landed an Oscar nod for “The Banshees of Inisherin” (2022).
His private eye isn’t so much a gritty gumshoe but rather a swanky man of skills, driving fancy cars with slick hair and a fancy suit. As uncovers clues, Sugar leans on techie sidekick Ruby (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) and love interest Melanie Mackintosh (a fitting name for an Apple show), played by the always great Amy Ryan (“The Wire,” “The Office,” “Only Murders in the Building”), who starts out as a potential one-night stand but becomes so much more.
Surrounding them are three generations of Hollywood royalty. Cromwell (“Babe”) carries gravitas as the Golden Age producer grandfather screening his classic pictures at film festivals, while Dennis Boutsikaris (“Better Call Saul”) plays his Boomer son, the famous Hollywood director Bernie Siegel, while Nate Corddry (“Barry”) plays the nepo-baby actor grandson David Siegel, who is enabled by his wine o’clock mom (Anna Gunn, “Breaking Bad”).
Classic Hollywood is a recurring theme as directors Fernando Meirelles (“City of God”) and Adam Arkin (son of Alan Arkin) flash old film clips between the action, including “Double Indemnity” (1944), “The Big Sleep” (1946), “Gilda” (1946), “The Third Man” (1949), “The Big Heat” (1953) and “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955). At one point, a violent scene is intercut with Robert Mitchum’s iconic LOVE vs. HATE speech from “The Night of the Hunter” (1955).
For viewers, it’s a cinephile “sugar” rush because this is exactly how we see the world — with images of our favorite movies flashing before our eyes. It’s how we process the world around us, for better and for worse, imitating our screen heroes. You’ll shout at the screen as Farrell says, “What was the name of that movie with Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger? Oh yeah, ‘L.A. Confidential.'” You’ll smile as it immediately cuts to Cromwell.
As show runner, Protosevich clearly loves old movies, having adapted “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972) for Wolfgang Petersen’s remake “Poseidon” (2006) and adapting the South Korean thriller “Oldboy” (2003) for Spike Lee’s remake of the same name in 2013. He also wrote the original screenplays for Tarsem Singh’s “The Cell” (2000) and Francis Lawrence’s “I Am Legend” (2007), proving he’s not afraid of trying more fantastical genres.
“Sugar” continues to show Protosevich’s genre fluidity with film-noir themes that are straight out of “Chinatown” (1974), similarly starting with a detective exploring family drama to eventually expose a larger conspiracy in the seedy underbelly of L.A. for a damning social commentary. I wouldn’t dare spoil the ultimate reveal here, but let’s just say that there’s no way you’ll predict it. In fact, you’ll be left jaw dropped somewhere around Episode 6.
After last week’s Episode 7 cliffhanger, I can’t wait for the Episode 8 finale to drop on Friday.
This type of show is exactly my cup of tea — or should I say Cupertino.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews BrewWorks (Part 1) How would you like to sip local craft beer while cheering on artists battling on competing easels?
Head to BrewWorks at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Virginia, this Saturday from 12 to 5 p.m.
“BrewWorks is a long-running event for the Workhouse and it brings all kinds of people out on our quad to taste good beers and ciders,” interim president and CEO Rachel Kizielewicz told WTOP. “It’s a wonderful event that will be happening outside that is family friendly as well, we’ll have a wonderful mix of art in there with a live art battle, and then our 60 different studio artists will all have their studios open so attendees can peruse and enjoy.”
The art battle will feature eight local artists, including Abigail Horton, Simone Agoussoye, John Hartt, HKS181, Rodrigo Pradel, Edith Lopez Estrada, Serina Chowdhury and Emely Ramos.
“Each of the artists is invited to essentially use whatever canvas-based medium they want,” Kizielewicz said. “We anticipate that many will be painting with acrylics or perhaps watercolors, but we may see some charcoal pencils and other things. Artists are able to bring whatever they want and create on a designated-sized canvas.”
Each round will last about an hour. The first round will be held from 12:30 p.m. to 1:15 p.m., the second round will be held from 1:35 p.m. to 2:20 p.m. and the final round will be held from 2:40 p.m. to 3:35 p.m.
Jason Bowers of JAB ART in D.C. will judge each round, determining which artists will advance through the bracket. The winner will receive a monetary prize, while the crowd will crown an Audience Award winner.
Visitors can also take home the artwork created during the battle in a raffle from 3:45 p.m. to 4:50 p.m.
All the while, you can taste local craft beer from Bunnyman Brewing, Port City Brewing, Fair Winds Brewing Company, Ono Brewing Company, Lost Boy Cider, Barley Naked Brewing Company, Old Bust Head Brewing Company, Väsen Brewing Company, Heritage Brewing Company, Caboose Brewing Company, Buskey Hard Cider, Lost Rhino Brewing Company, Aslin Beer Company, Trouvaille Brewing Company and Mustang Sally Brewing.
“One of the big ones for us is Bunnyman, our brand new neighbors on campus,” Kizielewicz said. “They are going to be opening a facility at the Workhouse, planning for a Memorial Day opening, so this event will allow us to start to kick off what will be a long and fun partnership.”
Attendees can also enjoy food trucks, lawn games and a DJ spinning live music.
General Admission is $50, including a souvenir tasting glass and admission to the art battle.
VIP tickets are $90, including food and snacks provided by Glory Days.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reports on the closing of AMP (Part 1) Montgomery County is losing one of its classiest listening rooms for local music fans.
The North Bethesda retail and dining complex Pike & Rose is pulling the plug on the AMP, the little sibling of the Strathmore Music Center located just a short drive away on Rockville Pike.
“We’ve held a lease at AMP at Pike & Rose since 2015,” Strathmore President and CEO Monica Jeffries Hazangeles told WTOP. “It really was an inventive and creative space and partnership with Federal Realty. We were notified recently that our space that we occupy with AMP, our lease on that space would not be renewed because a commercial tenant is in need of the space, they are moving their headquarters there.”
She says the AMP will be missed as a unique space to cultivate artists like Allison Miller before they can pack the larger Strathmore Music Hall, not to mention guest artists like Christian McBride looking for a more intimate vibe.
“It’s been a wonderful listening room, a space where audiences could really be up close and connected with the artists on stage. It’s really intimate,” Jeffries Hazangeles said. “It has also been a great place for Strathmore to nourish artists, help them develop new work, and help them build new audiences. It allowed us to take some risks that we can’t regularly take in a hall the size of the Concert Hall on our main campus.”
Remaining shows include roots rocker Ariel Posen (May 16), Artist in Residence Sneshesh Nag (May 22), bluegrass group Tray Wellington Band (June 4), R&B artist Kyshona (June 7), Artist in Residence Kaiyla Gross (June 12), tap dancer Michela Marino Lerman (June 13), indie rock family The Sidleys (June 14), the Arts & Social Justice Fellowship Student Showcase (June 22) and Veronneau’s tribute to Jodi Mitchell and Carole King (June 23).
Gross returns for the final show on June 26, while the venue officially closes on June 30.
After that, artists can either play the small music room at the Strathmore mansion or the large music hall.
“We are very aware of the role a venue like AMP plays in the ecosystem of the arts,” Jeffries Hazangeles said. “We are going to move some of those artists, like our Artists in Residence, back to the mansion and expand how we accommodate artists in the mansion through enhanced amenities with seating, lighting and sound. There are some artists getting to the level where they’re able to get beyond shows at AMP and we’ll work with them to build an audience and present them in the concert hall.”
A week after AMP closes, the Strathmore Music Hall welcomes Grammy-winning trumpeter Chris Botti on May 31, followed by the Live From the Lawn series of outdoor concerts on the main campus in July.
See the final list of AMP shows here.
Find more info on Strathmore here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reports on the closing of AMP (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Ruth Moody of The Wailin' Jennys (Part 1) She lent her voice to some of the sweetest folk and bluegrass harmonies in her group The Wailin’ Jennys.
This month, Ruth Moody brings her solo tour to the Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland, on Tuesday, May 21, followed by a show at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 23.
“I release my record ‘Wanderer’ on May 17, so the show at Rams Head will be my first show of the tour,” Moody told WTOP. “I’ll be playing music from the new record, probably some old stuff too, but I’ll be focusing on the new songs. The Birchmere is a couple of nights later. It’ll be my first time [solo] at both venues. The Jennys have played The Birchmere many times, it’s one of our favorite venues, so I’m very excited to be there with my own band.”
Born in Australia, Moody mostly grew up in Manitoba, Canada where her first band was hilariously called “Scruj MacDuhk” after the animated Disney character.
“I discovered folk music largely through the Winnipeg Folk Festival, a really great music festival that happens every summer in Winnipeg, and also through Celtic music,” Moody said. “My voice teacher agreed that I didn’t have an operatic voice and started exposing me to traditional Irish and Scottish songs. I really took to them and discovered that I had a real affinity for that kind of music, so I started building up a repertoire of traditional songs.”
In 2002, she joined Nicky Mehta and Cara Luft to form The Wailin’ Jennys for the self-titled debut album “The Wailin’ Jennys” — a nod to country music legend Waylon Jennings, who coincidentally had just died.
“It was a bittersweet accident,” Moody said. “We became a band three weeks before he died, so we actually had people thinking that we were a tribute band and wanting us to do his music. We actually had people coming to shows thinking they were coming to see Waylon Jennings. It was an interesting first couple of years. … We’ve actually talked about covering a Waylon Jennings song, we’ve just never done it, but you’ve re-instilled that in my mind.”
Luft left the group after their next album “40 Days” (2004), allowing Annabelle Chvostek to join for “Firecracker” (2006), featuring an awesome rendition of the timeless traditional folk song “Long Time Traveler.”
“That’s a special song,” Moody said. “I actually used to sing that song with Scruj MacDuhk and it just always stayed with me. Then when The Jennys formed, I brought it to the band and we rearranged it. That was in the second incarnation of The Jennys, we recorded that on ‘Firecracker,’ it’s just a very beautiful, simple, hymn-like song. It was actually in the TV show ‘The English’ recently, so a lot of people have discovered it, it’s had a resurgence.”
In 2007, Heather Masse joined the group for the albums “Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House” (2009), “Bright Morning Stars” (2011) and “Fifteen” (2017), featuring a transcendent cover of Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers.”
“We have always loved that song and we arranged it in 2014,” Moody said. “Actually, I remember very vividly the first time we ever played it was at The Birchmere and it got a great response and we just kept it as part of our live shows. We went on hiatus for me to have my son, but we really wanted to put a new record out and fans had been asking for that song, so that’s what inspired us to make an album of covers.”
Along the way, Moody has released a string of solo albums, including “Blue Muse” (2002), “The Garden” (2010), “These Wilder Things” (2013) and most recently “Wanderer,” including the nostalgic heartbreak song “Seventeen.”
“I was living on Mayne Island in the Gulf Islands of Canada during the pandemic, just sort of thinking about the past,” Moody said. “It just came from thinking a lot about life and thinking about the past, and trying to figure out why certain things happened and what gets us on the path that we’re on. That song sort of came out of those musings and also I was in a very beautiful place in the world and just so inspired to write there.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews BoDeans in the DC area (Part 1) Their smash hit “Closer to Free” remains one of the most iconic songs of the 1990s.
This week, BoDeans perform for three nights at three different venues in the D.C. area, starting with Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland, on Wednesday, May 15, followed by The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 17 and the Tally Ho Theater in Leesburg, Virginia, on May 19.
“I have many great memories of touring that area of the country, going all the way back to the late ’80s and ’90s and 2000s,” Founder Kurt Neumann told WTOP. “I tell people when I go and play shows these days that I’m going to play six decades of music for them because I do some cover songs from the ’70s. It’s a lot of music, it’s a lot of years on the road, it’s a lot of shows played, so we have lots of memories with fans from the area for many years.”
Born in Milwaukee in 1961, Neumann formed BoDeans in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1983.
“For me, BoDeans is kind of a combination of Bo Diddley and James Dean, who were two very cool figures in the ’50s,” Neumann said. “When rock ‘n roll was first coming up and forming, you had these iconic characters of rebellion and cool rock ‘n roll music, so that’s what the name always meant for me. … When you’re 20 years old and you’re starting a band, you’re definitely a ‘Rebel Without a Cause.'”
Their first album “Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams” (1986) was produced by T Bone Burnett. It was such a catchy breakthrough that readers of Rolling Stone magazine voted them the Best New American Band in 1987.
“We got a lot of airplay and a lot of news articles and stuff about us, so I think a lot of people were curious,” Neumann said. “People really dug what we were doing, it was very different from the music going on at the time, which was very much the glam, hard, heavy rock, MTV video bands or new wave, then all of a sudden we were playing this raw Americana music. It was really new for the time and it really caught people the right way.”
They experimented with different producers after that. Their second album “Outside Looking In” (1987) was produced by Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, their third album “Home” (1989) was produced by Jim Scott and their fourth album “Black and White” (1991) was produced by Prince cohort David Z at Paisley Park Studios.
“The second record you have all of this critical acclaim but the record company wants to get you on the radio, which is a whole ‘nother ballgame, and Jerry Harrison was from our hometown of Milwaukee,” Neumann said. “We worked with Jim Scott [on the third album], another really fun record. When we got to the fourth album, the record company loved us but were frustrated. They wanted us to break to a bigger audience, so they thought if we worked with David Z, who had more of a pop radio mentality, that maybe we’d get more traction.”
They returned to their raw American roots for their fifth album “Go Slow Down” (1993), reuniting with T Bone Burnett as executive producer. The album featured the hit song “Idaho,” but the opening track “Closer to Free” didn’t really blow up until it became the theme song of the coming-of-age TV show “Party of Five” (1994-2000).
“It was just a fun, uptempo rock song from the beginning,” Neumann said. “It had great energy and was a lot of fun. For us, for BoDeans, that’s just our sound and style, uptempo rock songs like that. … ‘Closer to Free’ didn’t really get played, but years later when they were testing it for the TV show theme, all of a sudden the TV companies put a lot of money behind making it something — and then it got played everywhere.”
Today, the band has a permanent installation at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
“There’s an installation about Midwestern rock bands and we’re one of those bands that are in the installation,” Neumann said. “As a band, music artist, whatever, it’s flattering that you’d ever get anything in the Hall of Fame. You go there and you look at Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones and all this stuff, and you’re like, ‘Wow, somebody heard my music and put a guitar of mine and some lyrics up as well?’ That’s quite a big compliment.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Jesus Christ Superstar' at National Theatre (Part 1) He understudied the role of Jesus in his Woodson High School production of “Godspell.”
Now, a Fairfax, Virginia, native comes home for “Jesus Christ Superstar” at National Theatre this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“I grew up going to shows at the National all the time, so I’m really, really excited to be able to do a show there and to have so many teachers, friends, colleagues and family come to see it,” Jack Hopewell told WTOP.
“People who aren’t as familiar with it would assume that it’s just a retelling of the New Testament, and to some extent it is, but the best way you could describe the plot is the last days of Jesus Christ as told through the eyes of Judas Iscariot.”
The show was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, who couldn’t get funding for a stage musical, so they released it as a concept album in 1970 voiced by Ian Gillan of the band Deep Purple.
When it topped the Billboard charts ahead of Carole King’s “Tapestry,” the show was quickly turned into a 1971 Broadway musical starring Jeff Fenholt and Ben Vereen and a 1973 Hollywood movie starring Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson.
“My mom would play the 1971 brown album all the time in the car,” Hopewell said. “I remember being sat down when I was like six or seven to watch the movie.
My mom was raised on it, as was I, so I’ve always been listening to those artists that came before me. … The first thing our director Tim Sheader said was, ‘Forget anything that came before you. … Imagine if you were a rock star going through this story of fame and then dismissal by the crowd.”
Likewise, you’ll hear all of your favorite rock-opera numbers belted to the rafters at the National Theatre.
“[‘What’s the Buzz’] right out of the gate, that’s great,” Hopewell said. “There’s ‘Heaven on Their Minds,’ one of my favorites with that guitar riff. There’s ‘Superstar,’ that’s the one that even if you were living in a shoe box you’d know what ‘Superstar’ is.
There’s ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ that was covered by a couple of famous artists back in the ’80s, that is the Mary Magdalene song. … It is just such a fantastic soundtrack from start to finish.”
The rock music isn’t the only anachronistic element — don’t expect the period wardrobe of biblical times.
“People coming in with the idea that they’re going to be transported 2,000 years ago to Jerusalem and Jesus is going to walk out in a long, flowing robe — it’s not that kind of production,” Hopewell said.
“This is staged much more like a rock concert. … You’re gonna see more streetwear, leather and modern clothing. In terms of staging, it’s somewhat minimalist but industrial. … Everybody is dancing their hearts out and it is absolutely mesmerizing.”
He said the powerful themes are universal despite its iconoclastic presentation.
“The show brings something to people of all faiths,” Hopewell said. “My girlfriend is Jewish and has no idea about the New Testament … but was absolutely immersed in the story.
People who are Christian and really strong in their faith, I think they can take away something really beautiful. … I don’t think it’s blasphemous to portray Jesus as a somewhat flawed human, because I think that just adds to the concept of somebody sacrificing themselves.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'The Fall Guy' (Part 1) Hopes were high for “The Fall Guy” as Hollywood combined two blockbuster stars from last summer’s “Barbenheimer” phenomenon with “Barbie” alum Ryan Gosling teaming with “Oppenheimer” alum Emily Blunt.
All week long, box-office pundits have been quick to point out that “The Fall Guy” underwhelmed in its opening weekend, earning just $28.5 million domestically and $65.4 million globally compared to its ballooning $130 million budget.
Don’t worry, it’s still the No. 1 movie in America right now, and for all its action set pieces and complicated plotting, my wife and I had a blast of a date night watching two blockbuster fan favorites of our modern era who are charming as hell together on screen (if you missed them on “Saturday Night Live,” fire it up on Peacock now).
Loosely based on the 1980s TV series starring Lee Majors, the film follows Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers (Gosling), who falls in love with camera operator Jody Moreno (Blunt). Years later after rehabbing back from injury, Colt lands a comeback job on the set of an alien action flick, which just happens to be Jody’s directorial debut. Can they rekindle their romance amidst the real-life danger of serial attacks against stuntmen?
Who knew that the kid from “Remember the Titans” (2000) would become such a MOVIE STAR in “The Notebook” (2004)? His kiss in the rain has Nicholas-Sparked 20 years of gems: “Half Nelson” (2006), “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007), “Blue Valentine” (2010), “Crazy Stupid Love” (2011), “The Ides of March” (2011), “The Big Short” (2015), “The Nice Guys” (2016), “La La Land” (2016), “Blade Runner 2049” (2017), “First Man” (2018) and “Barbie” (2023).
Now, Gosling returns to the role of a Hollywood stunt driver like the arthouse action flick “Drive” (2011), but this time he’s not silent but deadly. In fact, he’s anything but quiet, cracking zingers at every turn as he expertly rolls cars, rappels down buildings and catapults into rocks for multiple takes, proving it’s not “his destiny to live and die a life of blonde fragility.” Colt finds that his bruised and battered body is easier to mend than his broken heart.
Enter Blunt, who has become a fan favorite in “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), “Looper” (2012), “Sicario” (2015), “The Girl on the Train” (2016), “Mary Poppins Returns” (2018) and “Jungle Cruise” (2021). Her best banter remains with Tom Cruise in the “Live, Die, Repeat” premise of “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014), while her best work remains her intensely silent bathtub childbirth in her husband John Krasinski’s brilliant horror flick “A Quiet Place” (2018).
Together, Blunt and Gosling mine magnetic chemistry with wonderful little moments like Gosling tightening the drawstring of Blunt’s hat under her chin, or Blunt asking Gosling to roll down his truck window as he wistfully blares Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well.” These may seem like small jokes in a movie filled with bombastic action sequences, but they are the ones that we remember long after our popcorn has been blown to bits by explosions.
Surrounding the lovebirds is a stellar supporting cast of Hannah Waddingham (“Ted Lasso”) as controlling producer Gail Meyer; Winston Duke (“Black Panther”) as Colt’s stunt coordinator Dan Tucker; Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Nocturnal Animals”) as jealous action star Tom Ryder; Teresa Palmer (“Warm Bodies”) as Tom’s girlfriend Iggy Starr; and Stephanie Hsu (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”) as Tom’s assistant Alma Milan.
Hsu’s sword fight proves the enduring action chops of “John Wick” director David Leitch, who reunites with “Hobbs & Shaw” screenwriter Drew Pearce. His greatest directorial flourish is a split-screen phone call with hilariously symmetrical compositions punctuated by jokes waiting just off screen. Leitch even redeems himself from the dead dog of “John Wick” by having a four-legged friend join in the fun — Action Dog to the rescue!
While the script provides plenty of laugh-out-loud lines, the romantic subplot is easier to follow than the murder-mystery plot (the B-Story often overshadows the A-story). While Jody is a strong female character in a rare position of power, her role in the director’s chair inherently leaves her passive on the sidelines. It all builds to an action climax that lingers a little too long — after the bad guy is exposed, there’s no need for a helicopter chase.
Either way, the end credits are a long overdue tribute to Hollywood stuntmen as if campaigning to create a new Oscar category. Granted, it’s not the first movie to deal with the topic: Peter O’Toole starred in the cinephile cult classic “The Stunt Man” (1980), while Quentin Tarantino cast Kurt Russell as a killer stunt driver in “Death Proof” (2007), then directed Brad Pitt to an Oscar as a stuntman in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019).
I doubt Gosling or Blunt will earn Oscar nominations for “The Fall Guy,” which only underscores how rare it was for them to both earn nods for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” It’s impossible for Hollywood to recreate a phenomenon so organic as “Barbenheimer.” Plucking two stars from those movies doesn’t mean that audiences will automatically go see it. Was the I.P. too outdated? Did the title’s double meaning fly over people’s heads?
Who knows why it’s underperforming at the box office, especially after such a marketing blitz, but don’t let that stop you from going to see it. It’s still the No. 1 movie in America right now and I guarantee you’ll have a blast watching such explosive stunt casting. Good luck getting Kiss’ “I Was Made for Loving You” out of your brain.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previes Broadway in Bethesda with Brian Stokes Mitchell (Part 1) The New York Times dubbed him “the last leading man” for his Tony-winning career on Broadway.
This Saturday, Brian Stokes Mitchell headlines “Broadway in Bethesda” at Round House Theatre.
“A lot of people know me from Broadway, so I like to give people what they want and what they came to hear, so I try to give them a lot of Broadway tunes, but I was actually raised on all kinds of music,” Mitchell told WTOP. “I was raised on standards, I was raised on jazz … so I like to mix my set up a lot and give people a really beautiful experience. … When you leave the theater, you should feel better than when you walked in.”
Born in Seattle in 1957, Mitchell moved around a lot as a kid because his father was in the U.S. Navy. He spent most of his time growing up in Guam and the Philippines before settling in San Diego at the age of 14.
He got his breakthrough TV role in the “MAS*H” spinoff sitcom “Trapper John, M.D.” (1979-1986) before landing his first Broadway role in a show called “Mail” (1988). He followed up with other stage roles in “Oh, Kay!” (1990) and “Jelly’s Last Jam” (1992) before teaming with playwright Terrence McNally on “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1993) and “Ragtime” (1998), which earned Mitchell his first Tony Award nomination.
“Terrence was a spectacular human being, just really, really smart, one of the best playwrights I’ve ever met,” Mitchell said. “[He] just had a way of connecting what was happening on stage with that human part of us.”
He won his first Tony the following year for the Broadway revival of “Kiss Me, Kate” (1999) before two more Tony nominations for “King Hedley II” (2001) and “Man of La Macha” (2002). That same year he played the title role in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” at the Kennedy Center in the nation’s capital.
“One of the things that I love about the theater is that it’s unique, it’s about live performance, you’re experiencing something that is happening in front of you, for you, only ever that one time in all of time in all of space,” Mitchell said. “If you go to a movie, you’re watching the same movie on the screen all the time … but in a live performance … the performer on stage, me in this case, is working from the energy of the audience.”
During COVID, he went viral belting tunes out of the window of his New York City apartment.
“I was actually one of the first people that I knew that contracted COVID,” Mitchell said. “I just started spontaneously singing ‘The Impossible Dream’ out my window. Everybody looked up and said, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ … The next day there were more people, a neighbor taped it, it went viral and it got to the point where 1,000 people on the street came to hear me sing. … I never thought a virus would cause me to go viral.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previes Broadway in Bethesda with Brian Stokes Mitchell (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on the podcast below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews National Harbor's Movies on the Potomac (Part 1) How would you like to watch your favorite movies outdoors under the stars with a picturesque view of the nation’s capital from across the Potomac River?
National Harbor is bringing back its popular Movies on the Potomac series, running now through Sept. 29, including free date-night movies on Thursdays at 7 p.m. and free family flicks on Sundays at 6 p.m.
“We are so excited about our movie lineup this year,” National Harbor marketing assistant vice president Jackie Saunders said. “We have some really big blockbusters along with popular classics. ‘Movies on the Potomac’ has become the perfect destination for families on Sundays and date night or friend gatherings on Thursdays. We recommend attendees bring a blanket and carryout food from one of our many restaurants.”
The next date night is this Thursday, May 9, with James Cameron’s Oscar-winning blockbuster “Titanic” (1997), which fittingly coincides with the Titanic Exhibit at National Harbor through May 12.
The next Sunday family night features Disney’s “Moana,” which was rescheduled after last weekend’s rain out.
Other upcoming Thursday date nights include:
- “Champions”
- “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”
- “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
- “Mean Girls”
- “The Fabelmans”
- “Gran Turismo”
- “American-ish”
- “A League of their Own”
- “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”
- “Arthur the King”
- “Elvis”
- “The Boys in the Boat”
- “Race”
- “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”
- “Love and Basketball”
- “The Peanut Butter Falcon”
- “Now You See Me”
- “Top Gun”
- “Top Gun Maverick”
- “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3”
Other upcoming Sunday family nights include:
- “Wish”
- “Lilo & Stitch”
- “Akeelah and the Bee”
- “Bee Movie”
- “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”
- “Elemental”
- “The Little Mermaid”
- “Trolls Band Together”
- “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie”
- “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”
- “Wonka”
- “The Rookie”
- “Soul Surfer”
- “I Am Bolt”
- “Migration”
- “Finding Nemo”
- “The Parent Trap”
- “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem”
- “Dora and the Lost City of Gold”
- “A Million Miles Away”
- “Inside Out 2″
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews National Harbor's Movies on the Potomac (Part 2) Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews BSO's 'Blockbuster Film Classics' (Part 1) You know his acting work from “Whiplash,” “La La Land,” “Bates Motel,” “Criminal Minds,” “Black Lightning” and “The Big Door Prize,” but did you know that Damon Gupton is also a respected orchestra conductor?
This week, he’ll guest conduct the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for “Blockbuster Film Classics” at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland on Thursday night, followed by Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore on Saturday and Sunday.
“This is a wall of epic sound,” Gupton told WTOP. “We’re going to do the incredible, lush orchestrations of a lot of the old film classics mostly spent on the first half, then the second half we’ll do some of the later things. So, we’ve got Old Hollywood to begin, then in the second half we bring out some newer things and maybe even a surprise or two. It’s really, really wonderful to be able to come hear an orchestra play film scores live.”
The set list includes John Williams’ iconic theme from Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982).
“Brilliant,” Gupton said. “That music is so magical and spectacular. Sometimes John Williams says he can’t pick one of his favorite scores, but I’ve heard him say on record that he’s really, really proud of ‘E.T.’ and, boy, should he be. Williams had written all this music, Spielberg heard it and said, ‘I’m gonna recut the end of the film to match it.’ That lasting image of Elliott looking up into the sky with French horns screaming, it gets me every time.”
It also includes Williams’ adventurous theme for Spielberg’s dino blockbuster “Jurassic Park” (1993).
“We have the full grandeur statement of trumpets, trombones, horns and percussion, even glockenspiel with the big theme on the entrance to the park,” Gupton said. “Then, when we get a little more reflective, we have some quieter moments of reflections in violins, violas and cellos. The soundtrack spoiled us because at the very end of the film he uses the piano, so we aren’t paying that particular passage, but there is a piano in there for sure.”
Film buffs will appreciate Maurice Jarre’s epic theme for David Lean’s masterpiece “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962).
“It certainly ranks very high on the AFI’s list,” Gupton said. “When you think about sweep of film, you have to try to match that in orchestra, often with strings, harps. As a matter of fact, he doubled some percussion to deal with the Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif characters. Maurice Jarre wasn’t the first choice, he was relatively unknown at that time, so for him to come in and create this massive orchestra palette, it’s just fantastic, it’s an epic score.”
My personal favorite remains Bernard Herrmann’s hypnotic theme for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958).
“I love Herrmann,” Gupton said. “He tapped Richard Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde.’ There’s all this push and pull in the music, meaning crescendo to diminuendo. Things are falling, crescendoing, growing, spinning. The ‘Scene d’Amour’ is just gorgeous, it’s stunning, it’s a beautiful piece of music that holds up not just as a pops concert for films, but on a standard classical concert. I think it’s one of the greatest pieces of film music we’ve ever had.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley kicks off Live Nation's Concert Week (Part 1) This year marks the 10th anniversary of Live Nation’s annual Concert Week promotion.
Starting at 10 a.m. Wednesday, U.S. music and comedy fans can once again purchase $25 tickets through May 14, gaining access to over 5,000 shows that take place throughout the year.
This is also the first year that the discount deal will be expanded beyond North America, to over 20 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East.
Live Nation’s limited-time ticket offer features shows spanning a variety of genres, including pop, rock, hip-hop, country, R&B, Latin, metal, electronic, comedy and more.
The 900 available artists include 21 Savage, Alanis Morissette, Cage The Elephant, Celeste Barber, Dan + Shay, Dierks Bentley, Feid, Janet Jackson, Meghan Trainor, New Kids On The Block, Peso Pluma, Sean Paul, Thirty Seconds to Mars and beyond.
This includes select shows at Baltimore Soundstage, Capital One Arena, CFG Bank Arena, Jiffy Lube Live, Pier Six Pavilion, The Fillmore Silver Spring, MGM National Harbor and Warner Theatre.
The $25 deal includes all fees upfront, though taxes may be added at checkout.
See the full list of participating events here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'The Veil' so far (Part 1) Were you a fan of “Homeland?” Are you now looking for a new spy thriller to stream early in your workweek?
You might try FX’s “The Veil.” The third episode drops on Hulu this Tuesday after premiering its first two episodes last week.
Set in the modern-day Middle East on the border of Syria and Turkey, the six-episode miniseries follows the cat-and-mouse relationship between two women who travel from Istanbul to Paris to London. One of them possesses a secret that the other needs to expose before hundreds of lives are lost in a potential terrorist attack just days away.
By now, Elisabeth Moss is worth watching in anything she does, having proven her chops as Peggy Olson in “Mad Men,” June Osborne in “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Cecilia Kass in “The Invisible Man.” This time, it’s odd hearing an American actress doing a British accent as veteran MI6 agent Imogen Salter. However, she does most of the acting with her eyes, questioning the validity of everything she’s told by the Turkish/Syrian refugee she’s transporting.
Enter Lebanese actress Yumna Marwan (“Little Birds”) as Adilah El Idrissi, who may or may not be ISIS leader Sabaine Al Kubaisi. Sporting a busted lip and scars on her face, she is battle-tested from abuse in the refugee camp and her hardened performance is quite convincing. You’ll lean forward to listen carefully to her dialogue, talking about her daughter and her former modeling career, while cringing at Imogen’s use of the word “radicalized.”
All six episodes are written by acclaimed British filmmaker Steven Knight, who earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations for writing the screenplay of Stephen Frears’ “Dirty Pretty Things” (2002). He also earned BAFTA nominations for writing David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” (2007) and, my favorite, “Locke” (2013), which Knight directed himself the same year that he created the hit BBC series “Peaky Blinders” (2013-2022).
Just as “Locke” was a single-location ride set entirely in a car with Tom Hardy talking out the plot on speaker phone, the best scenes of “The Veil” come as Moss and Marwan ride in the car, staring out of the windshield with occasional skeptical glances to each other as shotgun riders. As they share personal anecdotes, they try to decipher what is true and what is not about each other’s back stories, ranging from family members to love lives.
Knight’s script is mostly an exercise in parallel action, cutting back and forth between the A-story of the women in the car and the B-story of the men at spy headquarters. American CIA Agent Max Peterson (Josh Charles) clashes with French DGSE Agent Malik Amar (Dali Benssalah), who had a past sexual relationship with Imogen. All the while, Malik’s French DGSE superior Magritte (Thibault de Montalembert) tries to keep them from bickering.
All six episodes are directed by Australian filmmaker Daina Reid, who earned an Emmy nomination for directing the “Holly” episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It’s probably best to have a woman directing “The Veil,” tackling the subject of belly dancing without a typical “male gaze,” then unleashing action sequences where both women question how the other is so skilled at kicking butt. Was it fighting for survival or espionage/terrorist training?
The latest cliffhanger involves Adilah’s favorite childhood book, “Kitab al-Bulhan” (translated “Book of Wonders” from the late 14th century A.D.), which describes a different demon king for each day of the week, including a shapeshifter. Is this a hint that Adilah El Idrissi could somehow be supernatural? I hope that it doesn’t go in this direction because the series has been so grounded so far and it would feel like a stretch to insert such magic.
After just two episodes, it’s still way too early to render a verdict on “The Veil.” I’ll have a better idea after reaching the halfway point with Episode 3, which I’ll probably watch after work tonight. I say “probably” because the miniseries isn’t riveting enough so far to rush to watch it the second it drops. It’s more of a show to catch up with after you finish watching your other favorite shows and need something else to watch while doing dishes.
I know, I know — that’s not a ringing endorsement. Granted, it could certainly become one after I reach the end of all six episodes on May 28. But, like the main characters staring at each other on a long drive, I remain skeptical.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Marlon Wayans at MGM National Harbor (Part 1) His movies have grossed over $1 billion in global box office, including the “Scary Movie” franchise.
This Saturday, Marlon Wayans performs live at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
“I always talk about me,” Wayans told WTOP. “My first special, which I did in D.C. at the National Harbor theater, I spoke mostly about the world, racism, politics, then the last 20 minutes I talked about my life. What I found was my best material was in the last 20 minutes. … Anybody can talk about politics, race, state of the world. The greatest thing you can talk about is yourself and discover your pain, then go, ‘What’s funny about that?’”
Wayans promises the D.C. show will be all different material from his upcoming standup special “Good Grief,” which premieres on Amazon Prime Video on June 4. The special was filmed in his late parents’ home NYC neighborhood of Harlem, specifically at the iconic Apollo Theatre, where his mom actually won amateur night three times.
“I lost 58 people, including my parents, in the last three years,” Wayans said. “[‘Good Grief’] is strong, I think it’s my best set. … I’m a beast. I’m trying to be special. I don’t want to be that guy that has the same act for 15 years. I want to be that guy that gives you a new special every year and a half and you go, ‘Wow, he keeps turning over new material.’ I’m my only writer, I don’t have any writers, I write my own stuff, me and God, that’s my co-writer.”
Fittingly, his previous standup special was called “God Loves Me,” which is still streaming on HBO/Max.
“That was all about the Will Smith Oscar stuff, but really my journey with Will, Jada [Pinkett Smith] and Chris [Rock],” Wayans said. “The slap was the inciting incident. He slapped Chris so hard that I felt it. I was like, ‘Wait, I got memories!’ The whole hour was on that. I think that was, up until ‘Good Grief’ … my best one to date.”
Beyond his standup career, Wayans is busy filming the new psychological horror flick “Goat,” directed by Justin Tipping for Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. In fact, he called WTOP from set in New Mexico.
“Tipping is a visionary, he did a movie called ‘Kicks,’ I think he won a [bronze] Oscar for his student film [‘Nani’], he’s just a brilliant young director and I’m lucky to be in the movie,” Wayans said. “It’s basically the greatest quarterback ever, which I play, and he’s retiring, but he has to have a new quarterback come in to take over the franchise. He puts the quarterback through absolute hell … and part of him doesn’t want to leave his position.”
It’s a more dramatic horror role than his genre spoof “Scary Movie” (2000), which sparked a franchise.
“They keep trying to resuscitate, rubricate, reconstruct the movie, but at the end of the day, it was the point of view of three [Wayans Brothers] that’s been a part of comedy for 150 years between us,” Wayans said. “They can do ‘Scary Movies,’ they can do 100 of them, but until we do the next ‘Scary Movie,’ it’s not gonna be good. … If they want the next great ‘Scary Movie,’ you’ll let the Wayans Brothers do what we do. Until then, good luck.”
His most recently played Michael Jordan’s Olympic basketball coach in Ben Affleck’s “Air” starring Matt Damon.
“Great cast, we had a great time,” Wayans said. “Working with Ben was great. Matt was really great, too. I hope to do more projects with them in the future. They’re just great guys and visionaries, man. At this point in my career, I just want to do my best work with the best people. Ben and Matt were great and Viola [Davis] was amazing. I didn’t get to work with her, but just being in a movie with her, I can say, ‘Yo, I was in a movie with Viola Davis!'”
If you still doubt his dramatic acting chops, I urge you to check out Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), which may have gotten more folks to quit drugs than any D.A.R.E. program.
“I put my weed down and I called my mama,” Wayans said. “The work I’m doing right now dramatically is gonna make a lot of people cry, like ‘Goat,’ and I just did two or three episodes of ‘Bel-Air’ and it was super dramatic. I’m still doing my comedy, but these are my Robin Williams years where I’ve been doing it so long, I can do it all. I want to make you laugh and cry in the same sentence.”
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This year marks the 20th anniversary of I.M.P. Concerts taking over the operation of Merriweather Post Pavilion.
WTOP got a behind-the-scenes tour of new renovations to the iconic amphitheater in Columbia, Maryland.
“Twenty years ago, we got the opportunity to operate this gem,” I.M.P. Communications Director Audrey Fix Schaefer told WTOP. “The 9:30 Club was the only venue that we ran then, so Howard County took a chance on us and we took a chance on them. We are a rare breed in that we are independently owned and operated.”
When I.M.P. took over in 2004, Merriweather was certainly rich in history, but wasn’t in the best condition.
“It was old when we got it,” Schaefer said. “It needed a lot of updating to bring it into the next century of entertainment. Our owner Seth Hurwitz saw it as an incredible opportunity to bring more live entertainment to Maryland and others all around. As it turns out, people come from all 50 states every year to see shows here. We’ve invested $65 million in renovations to make it not just state of the art for fans, but also for artists, too.”
Visitors will notice the festival grounds covered in art, including a mural of headliners through the decades, as well as unique sculptures of Willie Nelson, Miles Davis, Robert Plant and Dolly Parton by French artist Bernard Pras.
“We tell him that we would like a sculpture of a particular artist that has meant a lot to Merriweather in its history, then he goes and finds all sorts of materials that have nothing to do with normal sculptures and creates that artist,” Schaefer said. “Also what we’ve done is (a mural) by the decade featuring artists that were important for the amphitheater. It’s a place where I see people coming and pointing and saying, ‘Oh, I was at that show!'”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley tours Merriweather Post Pavilion (Part 1) You’ll also notice plenty of new food options, and a brand new bar called the 9:32 Club.
“We know that sometimes people want a break or a different place to have a beverage, so we created something that has got a bit of an homage to the 9:30 Club,” Schaeffer said. “We’ve added brand new concessions around the venue. We wanted to expand what we offer, everything from the traditional hot dogs, nachos and chicken tenders, to steak frites, falafel, grilled chicken sandwiches or wraps. We have a 70% faster ability to serve people now.”
The renovations include seating upgrades from the lawn to the covered pavilion and beyond.
“There are all new chairs, they’re comfortable, they’re wider, they’ve got cupholders,” Schaefer said. “Another thing we’ve done is to regrade the lawn, so it is now pitched in such a fashion that you can see into the pavilion so much better. (The Skylawn) elevates an area that anybody who bought a lawn ticket can go to. It allows them to be many stories up and look down at the stage. It’s just a really cool, fun freebie that you can opt to go to.”
Of course, the performance stage itself is updated from the roof to the rotating floor.
“We raised the roof on the stage by several stories,” Schaefer said. “For us to lure bands to come play here, we’ve got to have a really monster-sized stage. On the stage floor is a circle that looks kind of like a record turntable. It’s mechanized so that we can turn it 360 degrees. When we have a festival, when one band is done, all we have to do is turn it and the next band is ready to go.”
The artists rave about the backstage experience, from the dressing rooms to the swimming pool.
“The artist dressing rooms are really five-star locations; they don’t want to leave here and go on to the next location because they’re so comfortable,” Schaefer said. “We also put in a pool for the artists, a backstage pool. It had never been done before. We are competing for artists to come play with us instead of other amphitheaters, so we thought, ‘What will make them remember us?’ They think of Merriweather, ‘Oh, that’s the place with the pool.'”
Today, I.M.P. operates a handful of venues in the area, all building in capacity to the biggest at Merriweather.
“It was really trying to figure out how to get the right sized venues for artists at each stage of their career,” Schaefer said. “Our latest venue, The Atlantis, is our smallest at 450 capacity. That’s important for us to get in with artists at the very beginning to help them grow so that maybe one day they will develop and play at the 9:30, which is a 1,200 capacity, then at The Anthem, which is 6,000, then one day at Merriweather at 18,000.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews George Lopez at Kennedy Center (Part 1) He’s one of the most prolific comedians of the past 30 years.
This week, George Lopez performs live at the Kennedy Center on Friday and Saturday with his “ALLLRIIIIGHHTTT!” Comedy Tour.
“I started saying ‘ALLLRIIIIGHHTTT’ in conversation … If someone is boring or you want to move on and you gotta get out of there, I would always say, ‘ALLLRIIIIGHHTTT’ and then I would leave,” Lopez told WTOP.
“I did my last HBO special at the Kennedy Center in 2018, and it’s a hallowed, hallowed place. I was there for Eddie Murphy’s Mark Twain award, and somebody who I admired growing up, Freddie Prinze, the last time he ever performed was at Jimmy Carter’s inauguration [gala] at the Kennedy Center.”
At age 63, Lopez crafts many of his jokes about maturing in a rapidly changing world.
“It’s funny, you get trapped in TV [syndication vs. primetime], so in the morning I could be 42, and at night I could be 62,” Lopez said.
“There’s a lot of age stuff. There’s always been mortality in there — there’s a lot with the kids, as always. … It’s a fast world, man. I’ve been trying to have people explain generational trauma to me. I still don’t know what it is, but whenever we were overwhelmed, we went outside. These kids can’t go outside!”
Lopez said it’s a tricky time to be a parent, much less a comedian commenting on parenting.
“When there were less kids you could generally say, ‘You kids don’t listen.’ But a lot of kids do listen. But also, you have kids on the spectrum,” Lopez said.
“Before they would say, ‘Boys over here and girls over here.’ Even that’s gone. So it’s much more complex. … There’s no one line that can define children or marriage. … Everything I would take for granted growing up, you can’t take for granted anymore — and that’s where I think comedy thrives.”
Between his first comedy album, “Alien Nation” (1996), and his most recent “The Wall” (2017), Lopez has earned three Grammy nominations. They include Best Comedy Album with “Team Leader” (2003), which was released straight to CD, “America’s Mexican” (2007) and “Tall, Dark & Chicano” (2009) — both were recorded during live HBO specials.
“‘America’s Mexican,’ great title, was done in Phoenix live on HBO, that’s where I told Erik Estrada to go ‘f’ himself … Schwarzenegger was proposing an English-only bill, and I said, ‘He doesn’t speak English,'” Lopez said.
“‘Tall, Dark & Chicano’ was in San Antonio in front of almost 17,000 people live. … I remember I mentioned a political figure and that office called me and the guy goes, ‘I’m with you, man. I’m not against you. Why you making fun of me?'”
Beyond standup, he became a household name on the ABC sitcom “George Lopez” (2002-2007).
“At that point, Ray Romano was on, Kevin [James] was on, Bernie Mac, Damon Wayans, I saw a lot of guys succeed, I also saw more of them not succeed, so when I finally got my shot I wanted to make sure I was gonna last,” Lopez said.
“I was very fortunate that Drew Carey was very popular at that time, and the creator of his show helped me create our show. So the fact that the first show was a success — that allows you to lay down your foundation.”
He followed up with the TV Land sitcom “Lopez” (2016-2017) and, most recently, NBC’s “Lopez vs. Lopez” (2022-present), playing a bankrupt guy who moves in with his estranged daughter, played by his real-life daughter.
“It’s a little like ‘Sanford & Son’: they’re the voice of reason, and I’m just this guy living there telling them how to live their life when I don’t have two nickels to rub together,” Lopez said.
“It’s funny, but also it has a lot of … heart and feeling — serious one minute, then everyone’s laughing the next. … This one is extra special because Mayan, my only daughter, is really great in this show. And you get to see the dynamic between her and I, which is fun.”
Meanwhile, he also hosted the late-night talk show “Lopez Tonight” (2009-2011) on TBS.
“I got to interview Prince, man!” Lopez said.
“I interviewed Janet Jackson, Nicolas Cage — I remember Nicolas Cage was very, very, very serious. … We almost had like a wrestling entrance. … He came out, that dude danced, spun, I think he tried to do the splits, he got overwhelmed by the amount of energy and electricity showered upon him. When he sat down and we went to commercial, he said, ‘Man, you didn’t tell me it was going to be like that!'”
He said one of his greatest honors was reciting a poem at “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial” in January of 2009 alongside Denzel Washington, Garth Brooks, Stevie Wonder, U2 and Beyoncé.
“I was getting ready to rehearse and I look to my right and Bruce Springsteen was standing there, he was rehearsing [‘The Rising’] next to me, it was really, really wild,” Lopez said.
“It was also a wild time in our country at that time. That whole [Lincoln] Memorial where Martin Luther King did his thing [in 1963] was almost like a carbon copy of what was going on there [in 2009]. There was like maybe a million people out there.”
Similarly, Lopez remains the preeminent Latino comic of our time, pioneering the space for others.
“I don’t know if I looked at it as pioneering when I was starting, but I also knew that there wasn’t anybody that looked like me that was doing it,” Lopez said.
“I’m not a secret to anybody, but if nobody’s ever seen me before, now would be the right time to come and see me because I’m not sure after this special — that I’m gonna shoot in September that will air in December — how much standup I’ll do beyond that.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Unfrosted' (Part 1) In the past year alone, we’ve seen films about the “making of” countless products, including the BlackBerry, Tetris, Air Jordans, Beanie Babies and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
Now, Jerry Seinfeld spoofs that entire concept in “Unfrosted: The Pop Tart Story,” streaming on Netflix starting this Friday.
Set in the aptly-named Battle Creek, Michigan in 1963, the film follows the ridiculously untrue story of cereal company Kellogg’s competing with rival company Post to create a hit breakfast pastry for American toasters.
After reuniting with his “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David last month on the series finale of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Jerry Seinfeld stars as Bob Cabana, the fictional inventor of Pop-Tarts. In reality, Doc Thompson of Kellogg’s brought them to shelves to preempt William Post’s not-ready-for-market product Country Squares.
This isn’t one of those “the names are made up but the events are real” presentations. Quite the contrary, these events are intentionally ridiculous — and the film gets away with it by using a framing device of Seinfeld talking to a little kid at a diner as if he was Forrest Gump recounting his crazy life story. His tall tale offers ample room to embellish.
Not only does Seinfeld star in the film, he directs himself in his feature directorial debut, complete with “Vertigo” effects where the camera dollies and zooms in opposing directions to make the image appear like it’s detaching from itself. This usually occurs at moments of important decisions or turning points in the story. Beyond that, there’s no sense in analyzing this for Wellesian symbolic imagery. It’s a Pop-Tart spoof, for crying out loud!
Jerry also co-writes the screenplay with his “Bee Movie” colleague Barry Marder and fellow “Seinfeld” alumni Spike Feresten, who penned the episodes “The Soup Nazi” and “The Little Kicks,” and Andy Robin, who wrote the episodes “The Fatigues” and “The Junior Mint.” That means we have this group to thank for Elaine Benes’ dance, Frank Costanza’s outbursts and quotable lines like “No soup for you!” and “They’re very refreshing!”
While “Seinfeld” remains my all-time favorite sitcom, “Unfrosted” is obviously not their best work. Granted, it’s hard to quantify quality when this movie humors itself as a Mel Brooks-style spoof in the vein of “Spaceballs.” Like “History of the World: Part 1,” there’s even a reference to Pop-Tarts being the greatest rectangles since Moses’ Ten Commandments, recalling the episode where Jerry accused Bryan Cranston of converting to Judaism purely for the jokes. “And that offends you as a Jewish person?” “No, it offends me as a comedian!”
In “Unfrosted,” Jerry banters with a deep bench of supporting stars, but I won’t spoil them here. Nearly every scene features another famous face in a cameo. I’ll settle for listing the big time celebrities shown in the trailer: Amy Schumer as Marjorie Post, Jim Gaffigan as Edsel Kellogg III and Melissa McCarthy as Donna Stankowski, a NASA scientist who joins Kellogg’s with a crew recalling the Mercury 7 astronauts in a space-race spoof.
Also in the trailer is Hugh Grant as Thurl Ravenscroft (“You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”), the booming voice of Frosted Flakes for over five decades. Grant comically wears a Tony the Tiger suit alongside other mascots from Toucan Sam to the Corn Flakes rooster. Kyle Mooney, Mikey Day and Drew Tarver show up as Snap, Crackle and Pop, and while many of their scenes fall flat, their ceremonial flag-folding at a funeral made me laugh out loud.
It all builds to a climatic Jan. 6 spoof that looks like a riot at a cosplay convention with Tony the Tiger dressed like the QAnon Shaman (I refuse the say the guy’s real name because he’s going to jail for storming the U.S. Capitol). Here, Fred Armisen plays Mike Puntz trying to “certify” the pastry deal just like former Vice President Mike Pence certifying the results of 2020 election. It would be funny if it weren’t still so dangerous of a threat to happen again.
Such a finale might confuse extreme-right and extreme-left viewers who heard Seinfeld’s recent statement about political correctness ruining comedy. They’ll ask, “How can an anti-woke comedian also criticize Jan. 6? Aren’t all of our public figures supposed to follow a specific set of ideals in lockstep with one liberal or conservative agenda?” Sigh, in real life, people are nuanced with varying beliefs — and we should treat each other as such.
I have a feeling Jerry’s recent statements will tank this film’s Rotten Tomatoes score by critics looking to punish him. The film isn’t as bad as the low rating it’s about to receive, but it’s also not a comedy classic. Check it out if you want to stay home and watch a silly sendup of product-based movies. The only problem is that “Barbie” did it best last summer, so you might want to instead go see Ryan Gosling in “The Fall Guy.” I can’t wait to see it tonight.
In the end, “Unfrosted” might leave you hungry for more substance, just like Kenny Bania arguing that soup isn’t a meal (depends if there’s crackers). This comedy feast isn’t a big salad. Some jokes as yummy like Kenny Rogers’ Roasters; others taste like they were prepared in Kramer’s shower, swirling down a garbage-disposal drain. Might as well make the origin story of Rusty’s Beefarino. All I can say is these Pop-Tarts are making me thirsty!
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley explores the new King Tut exhibition in D.C. (Part 1) This page contains a video which is being blocked by your ad blocker.
In order to view the video you must disable your ad blocker.A glimpse into King Tut's treasures at this D.C. exhibitHe became Pharaoh of Egypt in 1332 B.C. at the young age of nine before dying at age 18.
Now, King Tut is the subject of the new pop-up exhibition “Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures” at Rhode Island Center on Brentwood Road in Northeast D.C. from May 2 to July 31.
“It’s actually been touring Europe for the last 10 years, seven million people have seen it, and this is the first time that it’s in Washington D.C.,” curator Melinda Hartwig told WTOP. “It is the most comprehensive exhibition of replicas that has been done. The beauty of it is that you get the idea of context. You become an explorer as you go through the exhibition and you see things through the eyes of [Howard] Carter, the excavator.”
British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt on Nov. 4, 1922.
“Carter searched for many, many years,” Hartwig said. “The tomb of Tut was hidden because the tomb of Ramesses VI, roughly 200 years later, completely buried it underneath a lot of debris. Tut was considered to be an ephemeral king by the Egyptians, so we know that his tomb was robbed twice, but both robberies were interrupted so they didn’t get away with a lot of merchandise and that is why it’s so incredibly well preserved.”
The exhibition includes a replica of King Tut’s chariot, crafted with a mixture of bent wood and gold foil.
“This is the Chariot of State,” Hartwig said. “Think of this as Tut’s Maserati, where he would go amongst the people and show himself as [what he believed to be] a semi-divine king.”
Visitors will also see replicas of Tut’s thrones, which increase in size to show him aging into adolescence.
“You have a throne here made of ebony and ivory,” Hartwig said. “You see how small it is? This is where Tut’s bottom would have sat when he was a young boy being groomed to become a pharaoh. Progressively, we see the thrones get larger as we move along.”
Egyptians went to great lengths to protect King Tut’s remains. Tut’s mummified body was placed inside a solid-gold coffin, which was nested inside two larger gold coffins. That stack of coffins was then placed inside a large stone sarcophagus, which itself went inside of four giant gold shrines of increasing sizes.
“The important thing was to protect the body of the king, because when the king died, he became divine,” Hartwig said. “[In order to] join the cycle of the sun, the important thing was that he would be intact to do so. If he couldn’t, and anything happened to the body, Egypt could sink into chaos, so everything is an insurance policy.”
The grand finale is the famous golden mask placed over his mummified head.
“The most iconic object is the gold mask of Tut,” Hartwig said. “The beauty of replicas is that they are here to educate. To the untrained eye, it is impossible to find mistakes, these are almost near perfect. These were done by modern Egyptian craftsman in fine-art Cairo. They started, first of all, with a model in plaster, then covered it in resin, and then they would add glass applicants or some kind of alloy to create what you see here.”
From start to finish, the exhibition continues to fascinate historians centuries later.
“The tomb of Tutankhamun simply captured the world’s imagination,” Hartwig said. “It is one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time. … I love anything having to do with Ancient Egypt. You never know enough, there’s always something more to be learned and it’s part of our cultural heritage, it’s part of our humanity, so to understand Ancient Egypt is to understand the past.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Baby Reindeer' on Netflix (Part 1) It currently ranks as the No. 1 show on Netflix with 22 million views this past week alone.
If you’re not watching the stalker thriller miniseries “Baby Reindeer,” remedy that immediately. It’s so compelling that I binged all seven episodes in less than 24 hours.
Inspired by the true trauma of creator and star Richard Gadd, the series follows Donny Dunn, an aspiring comedian who bartends in London. One fateful day, cackling ex-lawyer Martha Scott sits at his bar to order a Diet Coke, beginning a horrific stalking case that causes Donny to look within himself at his own insecurities.
Jessica Gunning deserves Emmy consideration for her chilling antagonist, who instantly joins the list of all-time creepy stalkers from Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction” (1987) to Kathy Bates in “Misery” (1990). Rather than an adulterer’s scorned mistress or an author’s obsessed fan, she’s a total stranger who is wildly delusional about the extent of their meet-cute. To steal a few phrases, she’s a cockadoodie presence that’s not going to be ignored, Don.
I don’t know what’s creepier: that she relentlessly messages him around the clock or that she types “Sent from my iPhone” when she’s not even using an iPhone. As her misspelled messages appear on screen, we experience a stream-of-consciousness that feels like a realistic portrayal of mental illness. Gunning even finds a nurturing humanity underneath, calling him “Baby Reindeer” before peering into his soul to ask, “Who hurt you?”
This question becomes the thematic core of the show. The central goal is to explore Donny’s hurt, which is also Gadd’s hurt considering he not only plays the lead actor but also writes the entire series based on his one-man stage show. This semi-autobiographical protagonist is at once a victim and also a willing participant, hesitating to go to the police or seek a restraining order because he bizarrely likes the attention due to his own insecurities.
As the episodes unfold, we realize that this show is about so much more than a stalker, doing a deep dive into Donny’s drug addiction and sexual orientation. To call it “Requiem for a Dream” meets “The Crying Game” would be reductive. Instead, it’s a brave act of self-purgation, detailing his chicken-and-egg confusion over which came first: did his #MeToo predator spark his bisexuality or were these feelings of same-sex attraction always there?
In this light, the most powerful scene is a subway embrace with Teri (Nava Mau), who he met on a trans dating site, but to whom he is scared to show public displays of affection. He peers over her shoulder at the judgmental eyes of fellow passengers before stepping backward off the train car, the doors closing on the love of his life.
Trigger warning aside, “Baby Reindeer” is the rare pop-culture phenomenon that actually deserves to be the show that everyone’s talking about because it’s so well made. Like Netflix’s “Beef” last year, “Baby Reindeer” will likely clean up the Limited Series categories next award season. It may give you nightmares, but you’ll never forget it.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews May entertainment in the DC area (Part 1) To paraphrase Justin Timberlake, “Guess what? It’s gonna be May.” In fact, it’s here!
The weather is warming up, so it’s time to get out and enjoy some fun activities.
We’re rounding up fun events around the D.C. area in our May Entertainment Guide:
May Entertainment Guide:
May 1-5: “Unknown Soldier” at Arena Stage
May 1-5: “A Jumping Off Point” at Round House Theatre
May 1-5: Ralph Fiennes in “Macbeth” at Shakespeare Theatre
May 1-12: “Amm (i) gone” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
May 1-18: “Little Shop of Horrors” at Ford’s Theatre
May 1-July 7: “Hair” at Signature Theatre
May 2: Belle & Sebastian at The Anthem
May 2: Cheryl Strayed at Weinberg Center
May 2: Ra Ra Riot at 9:30 Club
May 2-5: Maryland Film Festival
May 3: Lewis Black at Kennedy Center
May 3: Leslie Odom Jr. at Strathmore
May 3: “The Fall Guy” in movie theaters
May 3: “Unfrosted” on Netflix
May 3: Everclear at Tally Ho Theatre
May 3: Big Tony & Trouble Funk at Bethesda Theater
May 3: Little River Band at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
May 4: Dave Attell at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
May 4: WWE “Backlash” on Peacock
May 4-5: M3 Rock Fest at Merriweather
May 5: Godsmack at MGM National Harbor
May 5: Linda Eder at Wolf Trap
May 7-June 16: “Metamorphoses” at Folger Theatre
May 8: “Dark Matter” premieres on Apple TV+
May 8-June 16: “Problems Between Sisters” at Studio Theatre
May 9: BSO’s “Blockbuster Film Classics” at Strathmore
May 9-June 9: “Mummy in the Closet: Evita’s Return” at GALA Hispanic Theatre
May 10: “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” in movie theaters
May 10: 10,000 Maniacs at The Birchmere
May 10-11: George Lopez at Kennedy Center
May 10-11: Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at Kennedy Center
May 11: Marlon Wayans at MGM National Harbor
May 11: Neil Young’s Crazy Horse at Jiffy Lube Live
May 11: Indigo Girls at Capital One Hall
May 11: Charlie Wilson at Pier Six Pavilion
May 10-12: Chocolate City Records at Lincoln Theatre
May 11: Broadway in Bethesda with Brian Stokes Mitchell at Round House Theatre
May 11-25: Washington National Operas “Turandot” at Kennedy Center
May 12: Mother’s Day Brunch with Eric Byrd Trio at The Hamilton
May 12: PJ Morton and MAJOR.! Mother’s Day Celebration at Kennedy Center
May 13: Heart at CFG Bank Arena
May 14: Helmet at The Atlantis
May 14: Cypress Hill at Lincoln Theatre
May 14: Todd Rundgren at Warner Theatre
May 15: BoDeans at Rams Head Annapolis
May 16: Rob Schneider at Lincoln Theatre
May 16-25: “Expecting” at Keegan Theatre
May 16-June 15: “Mexodus” at Mosaic Theater
May 17: “Franklin” finale on Apple TV+
May 17: Amy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” in movie theaters
May 17: Patti LuPone at Kennedy Center
May 17: Amos Lee at Warner Theatre
May 17: Hozier at Merriweather
May 17: BoDeans at The Birchmere
May 17-18: Jack Harlow headlines Preakness Live
May 17-19: “Jesus Christ Superstar” at National Theatre
May 17-25: “Cirque du Soleil: Corteo” at EagleBank Arena
May 18: Howie Day at The Hamilton
May 18: Hank Williams Jr. at Jiffy Lube Live
May 18-19: The Fabulous Thunderbirds at Blues Alley
May 19: Judas Priest at MGM National Harbor
May 19: BoDeans at Tally Ho Theatre
May 19: George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic at 9:30 Club
May 20: Helen Hayes Awards at The Anthem
May 20: John Hiatt at Rams Head Annapolis
May 21: Ruth Moody of The Wailin’ Jennys at Rams Head Annapolis
May 21: Killer Mike & The Mighty Midnight Revival at Kennedy Center
May 21: “The Veil” finale on Hulu
May 21: John Hiatt at Weinberg Center
May 21-June 16: “The Matchbox Magic Flute” at Shakespeare Theatre
May 21-July 7: “Where the Mountain Meets the Sea” at Signature Theatre
May 22: “Trying” Season 4 on Apple TV+
May 22: Pun DMV at DC Improv
May 22-26: The Washington Ballet’s “Beyond Boundaries” at Kennedy Center
May 22-June 23: “Long Way Down” at Olney Theatre
May 23: Ruth Moody of The Wailin’ Jennys at The Birchmere
May 23-25: Willie Marc at DC Comedy Loft
May 24: “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” in movie theaters
May 25: Kenny Chesney at Commanders Field
May 25-26: Aventura at Capital One Arena
May 26: Rare Essence & Be’la Dona at Howard Theatre
May 26: “The Jinx: Part 2” finale on HBO/Max
May 26: National Memorial Day Concert on West Lawn of U.S. Capitol
May 26: National Memorial Day Choral Festival at Kennedy Center
May 26: Maggie Rose at The Birchmere
May 27: Tyler Childers at CFG Bank Arena
May 27: Andy Grammer at Camden Yards
May 28: Megan Thee Stallion at CFG Bank Arena
May 28: Orchestral Rendition of Dr. Dre’s ‘Chronic 2001’ at The Fillmore
May 29-June 23: “Topdog/Underdog” at Round House Theatre
May 30: Jeff Goldblum at Lincoln Theatre
May 30-31: Louis Hayes Quintet at Blues Alley
May 31: Dwight Yoakam at The Anthem
May 31: Bonnie Raitt at Warner Theatre
May 31: Chris Botti at Strathmore
May 31: Randy Houser at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
May 31-June 2: Taking Back Sunday & Dashboard Confessional at Let’s Go Music Festival
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Lewis Black at the Kennedy Center (Part 1) He grew up in the D.C. area before finding fame on “The Daily Show” and Pixar’s “Inside Out.”
This Friday, Lewis Black comes home to the Kennedy Center for his “Goodbye Yeller Brick Road, The Final Tour,” which he insists isn’t his retirement but rather his last national tour.
“I’m not ‘retiring retiring’ … I’m just not going to do 120 to 150 shows a year, I’m not going to be wandering around the country the way I did before,” Black told WTOP. “I will occasionally do a show, I might do a ‘Rant Cast’ that I do live, I might open for someone. … I want to write a little, I want to write either a book or a play and just have a life. … I’ll still be on ‘The Daily Show,’ that’s rolling along. I’m not going to retire from shooting my mouth off.”
Like “The Daily Show,” there’s no shortage of pressing political topics to rant about on stage.
“How do you satirize what’s already satiric?” Black said. “My work is done, the newspaper is reading like [fiction]. … Banning books is beyond belief. They want to take these kids’ books out of the library — where’s the best place to hide a book from a kid? You put it in a library! Then you’ve got the people who are banning the books, a group called Moms For Liberty. How am I supposed to make that funnier? That’s like out of [Kurt] Vonnegut!”
Born in D.C. in 1948, Black graduated from Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. After a year at the University of Maryland in College Park, he transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study playwriting, followed by his Master of Fine Arts at the School of Drama at Yale University in 1977.
“I worked for what essentially became the Round House Theatre, I was their playwright in residence for a year, they’re out in Bethesda now,” Black said. “I really spent time in New York, I ran a space out with some friends and we did one-act plays below a restaurant, we had a bar and a stage downstairs with essentially 100 seats and we’d do shows, we’d do two one-acts a week. It was as much fun and as fulfilling as it is being a standup.”
After dabbling in standup at the West Bank Cafe in New York City, he shifted to comedy full time around age 40.
“I was always kind of doing standup for fun because it interested me,” Black said. “It was a way I could write something and get it out there, because otherwise you send it to a theater and you could wait two years to get an answer. I was fascinated by it. … I got more relaxed on stage, I finally found the persona that I wanted on stage and people seemed to enjoy it and there was more of a response to my comedy than there was to my playwriting.”
He’s best known for his “Back in Black” segments on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central.
“Being on ‘The Daily Show’ was like having an advertisement for yourself each week,” Black said. “I’d do the ‘Daily Show’ then get on a plane, fly across the country to a comedy club and they’d just seen me the night before on television. … It was huge. Comedy Central ended up putting me and Dave Attell as the face of Comedy Central and it really established both Dave and I, got us out there, got us names and we ended up touring together.”
Now, another generation knows him solely as the voice of Anger in Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated gem “Inside Out” (2015). He’ll soon return for the sequel “Inside Out 2” alongside Amy Poehler on June 14.
“The visuals are extraordinary because it’s Pixar; they just get better and better,” Black said. “The script itself, they’ve added characters that are phenomenal, the new Envy and Anxiety are exceptional as the new emotions, then you’ve got the oldies and goodies. … It’s another step forward in terms of helping kids understand what emotions are. When I was a kid I had no clue! Nobody cared about your emotions; ‘just sit on them and shut up!'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Daddying Film Festival (Part 1) Every year, Hollywood movie stars battle to win Oscars, but if you’re a filmmaker who appreciates fatherhood, you can compete to win an Atticus, named after iconic father figure Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962).
Winners receive $500 and an award called an “Atticus.” It’s two mockingbirds on a pedestal in a nod to the character from the classic book and movie, who Festival Director Allan Shedlin of Chevy Chase, Maryland, said “is still considered the best representation of a positively involved dad in his children’s lives.”
Finalists receive $250.
The third annual Daddying Film Festival & Forum returns May 17 and May 18 in Philadelphia.
“There are 3,000 international film festivals annually around the world, but there are none that are focused on the importance of father involvement,” Shedlin said. “Kids from first grade through undergraduate college are encouraged to send in films and short videos … and other children get to judge them. That was the first year, then the second year we also opened it up to independent filmmakers from around the world.”
That includes a screening of this year’s Sundance Film Festival Audience Award winner “Daughters,” offering a sneak peek at the acclaimed film before it eventually streams on Netflix.
“Daughters” is a documentary about a “daddy-daughter” dance filmed at the D.C. Jail.
“It’s what happens with the children and with the dads when they are involved in each other’s lives through a dance at the prison,” Shedlin said.
The co-director Angela Patton will hold a Q&A and will be introduced by her father, Shedlin said.
D.C. folks can enjoy a free virtual festival from May 2 to May 9.
“That’s where the audience from around the world gets to vote on each film in each of the different categories,” Shedlin said. “The winners of the films created by kids, all of the finalists receive $250 hopefully to be spent on some activity with their father or father figure. It’s not only fathers, grandfathers, uncles, big brothers, stepfathers, but it’s people who play a fatherly role — it could be a coach, a minister, a teacher.”
The name of the festival is intentional with an important distinction.
“We call it the Daddying Film Festival rather than the Fathering or Fatherhood Film Festival because we make a distinction between the term ‘daddy’ and the term ‘father,'” Shedlin said. “Fathering is a one-time biological act requiring zero commitment at all, just a shot of DNA. Daddying is a lifelong process that requires lifelong dedication, so that is the distinction we make and that’s what it’s about.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Grammys on the Hill (Part 1) The Hamilton in D.C. hosts the annual Grammys on the Hill event on Tuesday night.
This year, all they wanna do is have some fun with this year’s musical honoree Sheryl Crow.
“She’s won a bunch of Grammys, but she has also been very active around fighting for the rights of music people and music creators for the last 25 years,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. told WTOP.
Crow is one of the most successful singer/songwriters of our time with a string of hits: “All I Wanna Do,” “Strong Enough,” “A Change Will Do You Good,” “My Favorite Mistake,” “The First Cut is the Deepest,” “Every Day is a Winding Road,” “If It Makes You Happy,” “Soak Up the Sun,” “Anything But Down” and “Picture.”
“Any record about having fun is gonna be my favorite, so that was a big one, we sang along to that record … driving in my car with my friends,” Mason Jr. said.
“‘If It Makes You Happy’ is definitely a favorite. I sang that one too many times to mention. Sheryl Crow has cool songs, they’ve got such a vibe to them, when you sing them, you just feel good. … You can’t help but sing along to a Sheryl Crow hit.”
In addition to honoring Crow, this year’s congressional honorees are Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas for their bipartisan music legislation.
“They’ve just been champions for us and music people over the years,” Mason Jr. said. “Most recently during COVID, they really oversaw some great legislation called Save Our Stages, which provided $16 billion in assistance to the stages and clubs and venues that were being closed and being affected by COVID.”
After Tuesday night’s ceremony, the artists will hold a day of advocacy on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
“AI is going to be a big topic of conversation,” Mason Jr. said.
“In the House, we’re talking to members of Congress about something we’re calling the No AI Fraud Act. In the Senate, it’s called the No Fakes Act. It’s making sure there’s some regulation around protecting human creativity.”
Mason said “we obviously know AI is a big part of our society in the future … but we want to make sure there are guardrails. … [Also], the Fans First Act, we really have to get into how fans are able to purchase tickets to attend live concerts, there’s things that have gotten out of control.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore (Part 1) Happy 25th birthday to the Maryland Film Festival celebrating a quarter century of cinema in Baltimore.
The festival returns to the recently restored SNF Parkway Theatre on West North Avenue from May 2 through May 5.
“It’s such a Baltimore institution and has really grown and become one of the biggest up-and-coming festivals in the country and certainly the preeminent festival here in the Mid-Atlantic,” Director of Programming KJ Mohr told WTOP. “It’s a festival of discovery of emerging filmmakers where a lot of filmmakers come in the beginning of their careers. … Greta Gerwig has been a big part of the festival in the past, Barry Jenkins, there are so many.”
Opening night kicks off Thursday, May 2 with the Luther Vandross documentary “Luther: Never Too Much.”
“One of my very favorite things at Sundance this year, but this will be our regional premiere,” Mohr said. “Luther Vandross’ family was looking for the right person to direct this film, they looked for years and finally decided to hand it over to Dawn Porter … to create this beautiful portrait. It’s such a lovely story. … It will be an all-out Luther Vandross party with The Jonathan Gilmore Project performing tributes to Luther Vandross afterwards.”
Friday, May 3 brings the local music documentary “More Than Hype” directed by Larry “Whaddup” Caudle.
“It’s a documentary about Baltimore club music,” Mohr said. “It focuses around The Paradox, which was the biggest club in Baltimore until 2017 when it closed. The energy in this film is pumping throughout. It’s such a great history of Baltimore club music and the Baltimore music scene in general, talking to all of the great figures. Wayne Davis, who ran The Paradox, is creating a one-night-only ‘One Night at the Docks,’ a big afterparty after the screening.”
Saturday, May 4 brings the LGBTQ+ short-film series “Trans Shorts Under the Stars” presented by Lilly Wachowski (“The Matrix”) and Mickey R. Mahoney (“Disclosure”).
“It’s just a program of shorts, most of them world premieres, that Lilly and Mickey have found from all over the country,” Mohr said. “They will be with us for the duration of the festival and they’re doing a screening outside under the stars at the Current Space Gallery in Mount Vernon. They will be introducing the films and most of the directors will be there, so that’s going to be a really exciting one.”
It all culminates Sunday, May 5 with the documentary “Divine Trash” directed by Steve Yaeger.
“It’s a film that showed in our very first festival in 1999,” Mohr said. “Skizz Cyzyk, who is the former program director of the festival and is still involved in our screening committee, will be presenting ‘Divine Trash,’ which is a film about Divine and John Waters’ crew. It’s just such an important part of the festival history and part of Baltimore history and Steve Yeager is just a filmmaker who we really want to give him his flowers.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Nathan Lane's Sondheim Award at The Anthem (Part 1) He made us laugh on stage and screen from “The Lion King” to “The Birdcage” to “The Producers.”
The prolific Nathan Lane will receive Signature Theatre’s Sondheim Award at The Anthem on Monday, April 29.
“You start to feel really old, you start to think that this was the kind of thing they gave Angela Lansbury,” Lane told WTOP. “[Stephen Sondheim] was a hero to me and I was very lucky over the years to work with him many, many times, so it has a real significance on a personal level too, just to be getting this. Somewhere Steve is laughing, but yeah, it’s a lovely honor and I’m happy to be coming to Washington.”
Lane won his first Tony Award for the 1996 revival of Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” They teamed up again on a 2004 adaptation of “The Frogs,” in which Lane starred and revised the book.
“He was drawn to really interesting and surprising subjects,” Lane said. “He’s sort of known for being brainy, an intellectual and sophisticated, but I think he writes about what people are going through: the longing and the loneliness. He writes about the human condition. … He was extraordinary in his musicianship, his lyric writing was extraordinary as well, and it has made him the person who has truly changed the face of musical theater.”
Lane will enjoy tributes from past co-stars, including Faith Prince, who won a Tony across Lane in the Broadway revival of “Guys & Dolls” (1992); Krysta Rodriguez, who starred with Lane in Broadway’s “The Addams Family” (2010); James Caverly, who played his son in Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” which won Lane an Emmy; and Susan Stroman, who directed Lane to his second Tony win for Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” (2001) on Broadway.
“‘The Producers’ was just that once in a lifetime phenomenon,” Lane said. “It was a zeitgeist hit. For some reason that’s what the audience really wanted. It was a throwback to old-fashioned musical comedy with an emphasis on comedy. … Whenever we did it, people just went crazy.”
This year also marks the 30th anniversary of Disney’s “The Lion King” (1994), in which Lane sang “Hakuna Matata” as the meerkat Timon to Ernie Sabella’s warthog Pumbaa, one of the great comic-relief duos in animated history.
“In May, we’re doing this Elton John and Hans Zimmer [event], it’s a ‘Lion King’ 30th anniversary concert at the Hollywood Bowl, so Ernie and I will be singing ‘Hakuna Matata,'” Lane said.
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If you want to see some of the best college a cappella singers in the world, look no further than College Park, Maryland.
The University of Maryland’s DaCadence A Cappella group will compete in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) Finals this Saturday in New York City after winning the Mid-Atlantic Semifinals.
It’s their second straight trip to the big dance, best known for its portrayal in the “Pitch Perfect” movies, as the Top 10 international college a-cappella teams battle in a sing-off. The finals will be held at The Town Hall venue at 123 West 43rd Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue near Times Square in Midtown Manhattan.
“We have two more rehearsals, then Friday morning the team will take a bus up to New York City,” Christina Williams, the team president, told WTOP. “We’ve already got hotels to stay in New York. We’re gonna spend the first night exploring, we’re a group of friends, so we’re really excited to just hang out and goof off in the city, but then the next day is when we’re really going to lock in. We’ll be in the competition from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. It’s a long day.”
The 10-minute set list includes “Dance the Night Away” by Dua Lipa, “Misunderstood” by Banks and “First Light” by Hozier, all connected by a choir song called “Partita Allemande” by Caroline Shaw and a Roomful of Teeth.
“(A cappella is) making music without any instruments,” Choreographer Nicholas Orellana said. “Anything you hear in an EDM song, we have a beat boxer that does it, we have sopranos that make violin noises.”
Williams and Orellana lead a team of Tania Ghandour, Matthew Humphries, James Woodward, Sara Saidel, Kian Mostoufi, Vanshika Shah, Brigid Sax, Anish Bandaru, Jason Wang, Kasey Donaldson, Willa Foster, Sai Mandhan, Farrah Panzarella and Josh Qiu. They hail from Maryland, New York, Boston and other hometowns.
“I think we are the youngest co-ed a cappella team on the Maryland campus,” Williams said. “It was founded in 2010, I think it was just a group of people who wanted to sing together. That’s kind of what it still is, just a group of friends who enjoy making music together. … None of us in the group are actually music majors. All of us are various (disciplines), a lot of STEM kids, we’ve got comp-sci. Personally I’m an art and business major, I’m a double major.”
Orellana, who’s a marketing and analytics major, says the key is to juggle classwork and singing practice.
“It’s definitely a lot,” Orellana said. “It’s a pretty big time commitment. For example, for semifinals we dedicate our entire spring break just for rehearsals, just for prioritizing the set, so it just goes to show how much work it takes.”
The team has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help cover travel expenses, including food, gas, and housing. Any surplus funds will support the group’s future endeavors, including music videos, albums and merchandise.
“It’s a competition, yes, but we’re really going to have fun as a group,” Williams said. “We joined the group in the first place to make music together. When I joined, we weren’t even a competing team, we just decided in more recent years to compete, but we really just want to put something that we’re proud of on that stage and portray a message to the audience. Every audience we get to perform in front of is a gift.”
If you’d like to see them perform their acclaimed set locally, they will be performing it soon on campus at the Hoff Theater in the Stamp Student Union on May 9 at 7 p.m.
“As a senior, this is my last year in the group, so getting to connect with all of my best friends on a New York City Broadway stage is just indescribable,” Williams said. “Even if we don’t place, that literally doesn’t matter to me at all. I’m just so excited to perform this set, we’ve been working all semester on this, so it’s crazy that we’ve made it this far again.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Dave Attell at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) Amy Schumer named her son after him. Bert Kreischer called him the “GOAT.”
Next week, acclaimed comedian Dave Attell cracks up the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in Charles Town, West Virginia, on Saturday, May 4.
“When someone says you’re the ‘GOAT’ and you kind of look goatish, like I do have a goat quality, I am a Capricorn, that is our sign, the goat,” Attell said before sharing his personal list of the greatest standup comedians of all time.
“There’s a lot of great ones: [Dave] Chappelle, [Bill] Burr, there’s never been so many giants walking the earth,” he said. “Mitch [Hedberg] was Mount Rushmore for joke writing. … Richard Jeni … Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks. … My Mount Rushmore is more of a Supreme Court, I’m gonna take seven or eight: Greg Giraldo and Patrice [O’Neal], there’s a big bench, Gilbert [Gottfried], Bob Saget.”
You’ll get a taste of his all-time standup comedy greatness if you show up next week to Hollywood Casino.
“I’m working on new stuff all the time,” Attell said. “Most of my stuff is just quick one-liners, I’m not a storyteller … it’s really about the jokes for me and always has been. The whole idea of like two or three jokes a minutes is kind of out of style, but that’s how I wanted to roll with it, I wanted to hit them and keep hitting them hard. Topics wise, it runs the gamut, I’m not very political, I’m not very confessional … I’m just classic, I’m just trying to do jokes.”
You can also watch his new Netflix special “Hot Cross Buns,” which premiered in March.
“Fans out there, thank you for watching, it was kind of a cool thing to be back on Netflix, great feedback,” Attell said. “These comedy specials are usually about an hour, so I wanted mine short. Everyone’s attention span is pretty small now with TikTok, so I definitely wanted to keep it on the shorter side, so that’s why it’s 40 minutes. … Even I, as a comic, have trouble watching specials. I usually have to take a pee break in the middle, maybe get a sandwich.”
The title comes from him playing “Hot Cross Buns” on a recorder, like in grade school.
“It was actually too short, I had it at 37 minutes and Netflix said you’ve got to bring it up a couple minutes to 40,” Attell said. “The special was done in San Francisco, so we went down to Fisherman’s Wharf and I played the recorder and there were seals there, we thought it would just be kind of a fun goof, but it turns out that was the biggest thing that people loved in the special. … When I don’t play the recorder, I play the cigarette.”
Born in Queens, New York, in 1965, Attell grew up on Long Island and started doing open-mic nights after graduating from New York University. His big break was VH1’s “Stand-Up Spotlight” in 1988, followed by an appearance on “The Late Show with David Letterman” in 1993, and working on “Saturday Night Live” from 1993 to 1994.
After a series of successful HBO specials, Attell became a household name by hosting “Insomniac” on Comedy Central from 2001 to 2004 where he would hilariously interview folks at bars around various nightclubs.
“We never really knew what was going to happen,” Attell said. “We would plan on going to a place and that might be closed or we might hope to be part of an event and that was rained out, so it always kept me thinking, kept me loose and kept me on my feet. … When you watch reality TV, a lot of it is scripted, but this was not scripted. … It was toward the beginning of the travel show phenomenon because there were a lot of travel shows after that.”
I guess you could say that his travel-show stardom is ironic because his seminal comedy album “Skanks for the Memories” (2003) saw him admit, “I hate traveling, mostly because my dad used to beat me with a globe.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews Season 2 of 'The Big Door Prize' (Part 1) Imagine if a magical machine showed up in town promising to reveal your true life potential. Would you change your career to pursue your supposed destiny? Or would you cherish the life that you’ve already built?
That’s the fascinating high-concept premise of the existential dramedy “The Big Door Prize,” which drops the first three episodes of Season 2 this Wednesday on Apple TV+.
If you need a refresher, the story is set in the fictional small town of Deerfield, where a mysterious device called the Morpho Machine appears in a convenience store with a haunting blue glow. Curious citizens scan their fingerprints, allowing the machine to spit out cryptic blue cards reading their “Life Potential.” Will the town residents upend their daily lives to pursue their alternative paths or remain content?
Chris O’Dowd, who played the cop love interest in “Bridesmaids” (2011) and won an Emmy for the British series “State of the Union” (2019), is perfectly cast as the mopey high school history teacher Dusty, who turned 40 in the pilot and received a Theremin as a gift. When he drew a Morpho card that read “Teacher/Whistler,” he initially thought that he was already on the right path, but Season 2 now has him questioning the freedom of a skiing trip.
His wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis, “A Black Lady Sketch Show”) drew the card “Royalty,” wondering if she settled for small-town life when she could have been a queen. Her performance is outwardly energetic but inwardly chaotic, never feeling good enough for her overbearing mother Izzy (Crystal R. Fox), a knickknack store owner who is also the town mayor. Their mother-daughter drama only intensifies in Season 2 with violent visions in the Morpho.
Still, the main change in Season 2 is Dusty and Cass deciding to separate for six weeks, insisting they’re not divorced while living in the same house — a bizarre experiment they dub a “self-ploration.” As you might expect, this opens the sliding door to a new potential love interest (Justine Lupe, “Succession”), but ironically not Giorgio (Josh Segarra), who constantly hit on Cass in Season 1 but who is now madly in love with Nat (Mary Holland).
Dusty and Cass’ dual midlife crisis creates confusion for their daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara), who is now out in the open with her feelings for Jacob (Sammy Fourlas) after spending last season sneaking around with the brother of her late ex in a small-town scandal. They both continue to grieve the death of Kolton Kovac, the town basketball star who died in a freak car accident and now appears in a flashback trying to buy booze underage in Season 2.
Rounding out the cast is Jacob’s broken father Beau (Aaron Roman Weiner), who turned his garage into a whiskey bar with a mechanical punching bag last season; Father Reuben (Damon Gupton), who converted into a minister based on his Morpho card; and local bartender Hana (Ally Maki), a drifter who showed up around the same time that the Morpho machine arrived in the convenience store owned by the quirky Mr. Johnson (Patrick Kerr).
Season 2 picks right up where Season 1 left off after the two-part finale called “Deerfest,” using a blackout at the annual town carnival for visual metaphors like a symbolic albino deer and Izzy building a hay-bale maze higher and higher like her own emotional walls. If you forgot all of this, don’t worry; Season 2 peppers us with reminders that are almost tongue-in-cheek in their heavy-handed exposition. Ahh yes, the challenge of episodic storytelling!
So far, Apple has only dropped the first three episodes of Season 2, but there remain more questions than answers. Showrunner David West Read (“Schitt’s Creek”) is reluctant to reveal the origin of the Morpho Machine, instead dropping clues of blue dots for us to connect. The device is a proverbial “MacGuffin” like the Zoltar machine in “Big” (1988), a supernatural way for the writers to explore larger existential themes of fate vs. free will.
Season 1 ended with the machine asking if we were ready for the next stage, which apparently means watching a video game rendering that symbolizes your future. I suppose that’s an upgrade over reading a short word on a card, but I’m skeptical about how much further the writers can take this concept. I guess we’ll find out over the full 10 episodes between now and June 19, hoping for a “big door prize” but likely getting a cliffhanger for Season 3.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews New Kids on the Block at Merriweather (Part 1) New Kids on the Block fans have been “hangin’ tough” for decades and now they’ll get a “magic summer.”
Starting Wednesday, the group is offering a special ticket offer for their Magic Summer Tour, which also features Paula Abdul and DJ Jazzy Jeff at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, on Aug. 16. The deal includes a four pack of tickets for $89, commemorating the 1989 designation of April 24 as “NKOTB Day” in the group’s home state of Massachusetts.
“The cool thing about this tour is that we haven’t been outside under the stars in a long time,” Founding member Joey McIntyre told WTOP. “We’ve been in arenas, so it feels like a throwback to do these what they call ‘sheds,’ these outdoor arenas. Merriweather Post, that venue is beautiful and we are excited, we have a new album coming out on May 17 and of course you play all the hits from back in the day, so it’s a good mix of then and now.”
Born in Boston in 1972, McIntyre was the youngest member of the group, including brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight, who met Donnie Wahlberg and Danny Wood in elementary school. Former New Edition producer Maurice Starr suggested they add McIntyre as a “little brother” figure similar to Michael Jackson in The Jackson Five.
“Donnie was the first guy in there and met Maurice,” McIntyre said. “He finally said, ‘I gotta get more guys,’ so he just went back to his buddies that he grew up with in school, knowing Jordan and John sang in the choir, Danny was breakdancing and just put it together like any teenage band. I was doing theater a couple neighborhoods over. At the time, I was like 12, which is a big difference between 12 and 16, so they wanted that little, little guy.”
After their first album “New Kids on the Block” (1986), their second album “Hangin’ Tough” (1988) was their big breakthrough, going multi-platinum with a title track that became a smash hit and pop-culture staple.
“Timing is everything,” McIntyre said. “It was our fourth single off that album. ‘Please Don’t Go, Girl’ was Top 10, ‘Right Stuff’ was No. 3, ‘I’ll Be Loving You Forever’ was No. 1, then ‘Hangin’ Tough’ came, so it was good timing to have that party record and it had that sports theme to it because originally Donnie, Jordan and Danny wrote that with Maurice and they wanted an anthem for the Boston Celtics and it ended up being an anthem for us.”
Their next album “Step by Step” (1990) featured another hit title track where each of the guys memorably sang a different portion of the song: Danny Wood sang “Step 1,” Donnie Wahlberg sang “Step 2,” Jordan Knight sang “Step 3,” Joey McIntyre sang “Step 4,” and Jonathan Knight closed it out by singing “Step 5.”
“That was a song from a Boston group that Maurice wrote it for [called] The Superiors,” McIntyre said. “When we blew up, it was basically a cover song and we grabbed it. One of the things that was different though was the steps: Step 1, Step 2. … Donnie pitched the idea of going through the steps the way that we did.”
Fans were dismayed when the group disbanded in 1994, but they eventually reunited in 2008.
“We certainly didn’t break up thinking we were gonna get back together in 15 years,” McIntyre said. “We were ready to do things as individuals, we were super young, we wanted to have some freedom after four or five years of nonstop hysteria. It was a lot of fun, but we just wanted some space. … By the time 2008 came around … we finally were ready as a group. … You gotta be at a certain part in your life to look at nostalgia with an open heart.”
Likewise, their doll-collecting, poster-hanging fans have also grown up — now with their own kids.
“It’s the first generation of parents that did anything for their kids, they would drive all over the place, they would buy the tickets, they would wait outside — their parents didn’t do that for them, but our fans’ parents were unbelievable,” McIntyre said. “Now we have three generations in the audience: you’ve got the older mothers who are grandmothers, then you’ve got the moms, then you’ve got the kids. … The idea is to make music that lasts.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley donates DVD collection to Hyattsville Library (Part 1). WTOP loves bringing you the news, but we also love giving back to the local community.
So, after decades of staring at my shelves of DVDs and Blu-rays (arranged in chronological order, of course), I decided to donate my entire collection to the recently-renovated Hyattsville branch of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System.
I’ll admit that I got a tear in my eye handing over four giant totes of movies to PGCMLS West Area Director Heather Jackson, who not only supervises the Hyattsville branch, but also the Bladensburg, New Carrollton, Mount Rainier and County Correctional Center branches.
“We reopened the rebuilt-from-the-ground-up Hyattsville library at 6530 Adelphi Road, which is the same lot it was on before, but we are in a much nicer, more modern building,” Jackson told WTOP. “If you are heading down Adelphi Road toward East-West Highway, you can’t miss us, you will see the giant flying saucer on the right. … The new library is beautiful, folks are always welcome to visit us, ask for me and I will happily show you the collection.”
WTOP Film Critic Jason Fraley stands outside the Hyattsville branch of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library on Adelphi Road in Hyattsville, Maryland. (Ashley Marie Fraley)Why did I choose this location? When I lived on Adelphi Road during my first year at the University of Maryland in College Park, I would regularly visit this library to rent all of the classics with printed best lists by the American Film Institute. I would then go home with a pen and a pad to take copious notes trying to figure out what made the great movies great, using film-theory concepts taught by Professor Joseph Miller at Susquehanna Hall on campus.
“The Hyattsville branch used to be our flagship for our audio-visual collection,” Jackson said. “As you remember, we had a whole area downstairs that was completely devoted to A-V materials … so it felt like a really perfect home for your collection. … It’s been an embarrassment of riches for us because we wouldn’t have access. Some of these have long been out of our collection, so having them back has been really nice, because they are classics.”
The movies will used for programs like “Coffee and a Classic” in Hyattsville, Bladensburg and New Carrollton.
“Primarily we’re getting senior citizens and retirees at these programs, but we have a mix of everybody,” Jackson said. “We serve light snacks, coffee, everyone watches the film together, then a librarian leads a discussion on the film. … We had a very good turnout for ’12 Angry Men.’ … We did a couple of your Hitchcocks at New Carrollton, so it’s been a really nice, robust program, we’ve had good attendance and folks keeping coming back.”
They’ll also be screened for adults with developmental disabilities in Hyattsville every Monday starting May 6.
“We’re working with several organizations to bring clients out, including the Arc of Prince George’s County and HealthTech, which runs group homes for adults not living independently,” Jackson said. “We’ll screen the film, we’ll also have a hands-on art station related to the film in the back of the room … then we’re going to try a discussion. … Many are absolutely entranced with film. We’ve got a couple of resident movie buffs in these groups already!”
The library will also host family-friendly screenings, particularly where English is spoken as a second language.
“We are a location where families can come while school is out and still receive school lunches for their kids,” Jacksons aid. “Many of our families that attend that are Spanish-speaking at home and we are planning to offer some of the family-friendly films in the collection. … It’s important for people to get the sound of English in their ears. … You have the scaffolding of the images, so even if you’re not tracking every word, you still get the emotion.”
While many of the donated movies are now available on streaming, the library says that its physical media collection benefits low-income folks who don’t have high-speed internet or can’t afford streaming subscriptions.
“I think of public libraries as the great equalizer,” Jackson said. “It’s one of the few community spaces that is completely free. You don’t have to have any kind of qualifications to enter a public library and make use of our resources. You don’t have to have any money. You can be anyone. So, having physical media is really important to us because we know the digital divide is large and very hard to cross unless you have means. … It’s an issue of access and equity, so it’s really important to be able to have a classic collection like this available to everybody.”
Below is a chronological list of the over 300 donated movies, if you want to watch a flick for free at the library. You’ll notice that it starts to tail off around 2011 when I became the WTOP film critic and began receiving disposable awards screeners each year, but it’s a starting point for anyone who wants to study film history:
- The Birth of a Nation (1915)
- Intolerance (1916)
- The General (1926)
- Sunrise (1927)
- Frankenstein (1931)
- City Lights (1931)
- M (1931)
- Little Caesar (1931)
- Scarface: Shame of a Nation (1932)
- King Kong (1933)
- Duck Soup (1933)
- 42nd Street (1933)
- Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
- Footlight Parade (1933)
- It Happened One Night (1934)
- A Night at the Opera (1935)
- Top Hat (1935)
- Swing Time (1936)
- Modern Times (1936)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
- The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
- Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)
- Bringing Up Baby (1938)
- Stagecoach (1939)
- Gone With the Wind (1939)
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)
- The Rules of the Game (1939)
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
- The Philadelphia Story (1940)
- His Girl Friday (1940)
- The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
- Rebecca (1940)
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
- Casablanca (1942)
- Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
- The Palm Beach Story (1942)
- Woman of the Year (1942)
- Double Indemnity (1944)
- Laura (1944)
- To Have and Have Not (1944)
- Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
- Notorious (1946)
- The Big Sleep (1946)
- The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
- It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
- Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
- Out of the Past (1947)
- Rope (1948)
- Red River (1948)
- Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
- The Red Shoes (1948)
- The Third Man (1949)
- Adam’s Rib (1949)
- White Heat (1949)
- The Heiress (1949)
- All About Eve (1950)
- Sunset Boulevard (1950)
- A Place in the Sun (1951)
- An American in Paris (1951)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
- The African Queen (1951)
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
- A Christmas Carol (1951)
- Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
- High Noon (1952)
- Tokyo Story (1953)
- The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
- From Here to Eternity (1953)
- The Naked Spur (1953)
- Shane (1953)
- The Band Wagon (1953)
- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
- Rear Window (1954)
- Dial M for Murder (1954)
- A Star is Born (1954)
- The Seven Samurai (1954)
- On the Waterfront (1954)
- East of Eden (1955)
- Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
- Diabolique (1955)
- Guys and Dolls (1955)
- Night and Fog (1956)
- The Searchers (1956)
- Giant (1956)
- Written on the Wind (1956)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
- 12 Angry Men (1957)
- Paths of Glory (1957)
- The Seventh Seal (1957)
- Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
- An Affair to Remember (1957)
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
- Houseboat (1958)
- Touch of Evil (1958)
- Vertigo (1958)
- North By Northwest (1959)
- Imitation of Life (1959)
- Ben-Hur (1959)
- Rio Bravo (1959)
- The 400 Blows (1959)
- Some Like it Hot (1959)
- The Apartment (1960)
- Psycho (1960)
- La Dolce Vita (1960)
- Breathless (1960)
- Spartacus (1960)
- The Alamo (1960)
- West Side Story (1961)
- The Hustler (1961)
- Jules and Jim (1962)
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
- The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
- The Great Escape (1963)
- 8 1/2 (1963)
- My Fair Lady (1964)
- Goldfinger (1964)
- Dr. Strangelove (1964)
- Mary Poppins (1964)
- The Sound of Music (1965)
- Doctor Zhivago (1965)
- The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
- The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (1966)
- Closely Watched Trains (1966)
- The Jungle Book (1967)
- Cool Hand Luke (1967)
- Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
- The Graduate (1967)
- In the Heat of the Night (1967)
- Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
- Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
- Targets (1968)
- The Producers (1968)
- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
- Planet of the Apes (1968)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
- Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (1969)
- The Wild Bunch (1969)
- Easy Rider (1969)
- Midnight Cowboy (1969)
- Love Story (1970)
- Five Easy Pieces (1970)
- Patton (1970)
- MAS*H (1970)
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
- The French Connection (1971)
- Dirty Harry (1971)
- Harold and Maude (1971)
- A Clockwork Orange (1971)
- The Last Picture Show (1971)
- Cabaret (1972)
- Frenzy (1972)
- The Godfather (1972)
- Deliverance (1972)
- The Exorcist (1973)
- The Sting (1973)
- The Way We Were (1973)
- Mean Streets (1973)
- Robin Hood (1973)
- Don’t Look Now (1973)
- American Graffiti (1973)
- The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
- Young Frankenstein (1974)
- Blazing Saddles (1974)
- Chinatown (1974)
- Nashville (1975)
- Jaws (1975)
- Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
- Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975)
- Rocky (1976)
- Taxi Driver (1976)
- Network (1976)
- All the President’s Men (1976)
- Carrie (1976)
- The Omen (1976)
- The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
- Annie Hall (1977)
- Star Wars (1977-1983)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
- Suspiria (1977)
- New York New York (1977)
- Grease (1978)
- The Deer Hunter (1978)
- Halloween (1978)
- Animal House (1978)
- The Jerk (1979)
- Manhattan (1979)
- Alien (1979)
- Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
- All That Jazz (1979)
- Being There (1979)
- Mad Max (1979)
- Apocalypse Now (1979)
- Raging Bull (1980)
- The Shining (1980)
- Airplane! (1980)
- Caddyshack (1980)
- Friday the 13th (1980)
- Ordinary People (1980)
- The Evil Dead (1981)
- On Golden Pond (1981)
- Body Heat (1981)
- An American Werewolf in London (1981)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981-1989)
- The Thing (1982)
- Tootsie (1982)
- Diner (1982)
- Annie (1982)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- Poltergeist (1982)
- E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
- Sophie’s Choice (1982)
- The Verdict (1982)
- A Christmas Story (1983)
- Scarface (1983)
- Sudden Impact (1983)
- This is Spinal Tap! (1984)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
- Ghostbusters (1984)
- Amadeus (1984)
- Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
- Pale Rider (1985)
- Back to the Future (1985)
- The Goonies (1985)
- The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
- Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
- The Fly (1986)
- Blue Velvet (1986)
- Top Gun (1986)
- Hoosiers (1986)
- Stand By Me (1986)
- Platoon (1986)
- Wall Street (1987)
- Fatal Attraction (1987)
- Full Metal Jacket (1987)
- Evil Dead 2 (1987)
- Broadcast News (1987)
- Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
- Rain Man (1988)
- Die Hard (1988)
- The Naked Gun (1988)
- Dead Ringers (1988)
- Cinema Paradiso (1988)
- Bull Durham (1988)
- Field of Dreams (1989)
- Major League (1989)
- Batman (1989)
- Do the Right Thing (1989)
- Sex, Lies & Videotape (1989)
- Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
- National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
- When Harry Met Sally (1989)
- Say Anything (1989)
- Dances with Wolves (1990)
- Goodfellas (1990)
- Total Recall (1990)
- Ghost (1990)
- Home Alone (1990)
- Father of the Bride (1991)
- Boyz in the Hood (1991)
- Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
- Thelma and Louise (1991)
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
- Jacob’s Ladder (1991)
- A Few Good Men (1992)
- Unforgiven (1992)
- Visions of Light (1992)
- The Fugitive (1993)
- Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
- Rudy (1993)
- The Sandlot (1993)
- Dazed and Confused (1993)
- Menace II Society (1993)
- Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
- Groundhog Day (1993)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Schindler’s List (1993)
- Philadelphia (1993)
- Three Colors Trilogy (1993-1994)
- Forrest Gump (1994)
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Quiz Show (1994)
- Clerks (1994)
- Dumb and Dumber (1994)
- The Lion King (1994)
- Toy Story (1995)
- Apollo 13 (1995)
- Braveheart (1995)
- Before Sunrise (1995)
- Se7en (1995)
- Billy Madison (1995)
- Happy Gilmore (1996)
- Scream (1996)
- Fargo (1996)
- Secrets and Lies (1996)
- Jerry Maguire (1996)
- Titanic (1997)
- L.A. Confidential (1997)
- Good Will Hunting (1997)
- Boogie Nights (1997)
- Austin Powers (1997-2002)
- After Life (1998)
- Saving Private Ryan (1998)
- Shakespeare in Love (1998)
- The Big Lebowski (1998)
- There’s Something About Mary (1998)
- American Beauty (1999)
- Fight Club (1999)
- The Matrix (1999)
- The Sixth Sense (1999)
- The Green Mile (1999)
- The Hurricane (1999)
- Magnolia (1999)
- Office Space (1999)
- Erin Brockovich (2000)
- Memento (2000)
- Gladiator (2000)
- The Patriot (2000)
- Meet the Parents (2000)
- Requiem for a Dream (2000)
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
- Remember the Titans (2000)
- Training Day (2001)
- Mulholland Drive (2001)
- The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
- Amelie (2001)
- Spirited Away (2001)
- The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)
- Road to Perdition (2002)
- Minority Report (2002)
- Anchorman (2002)
- Elf (2003)
- Lost in Translation (2003)
- Million Dollar Baby (2004)
- Friday Night Lights (2004)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
- Before Sunset (2004)
- Saw (2004)
- The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)
- Wedding Crashers (2005)
- Cinderella Man (2005)
- Crash (2005)
- Dreamgirls (2006)
- The Departed (2006)
- Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
- Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
- Casino Royale (2006)
- There Will Be Blood (2007)
- No Country For Old Men (2007)
- Let the Right One in (2008)
- The Dark Knight (2008)
- Synecdoche New York (2008)
- The Wrestler (2008)
- The Hangover (2009)
- Black Swan (2010)
- The Social Network (2010)
- The Tree of Life (2011)
- Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
- Captain Phillips (2013)
- 12 Years a Slave (2013)
- Gravity (2013)
- 42 (2013)
- Mud (2013)
- Ida (2013)
- Boyhood (2014)
- Birdman (2014)
- Trainwreck (2015)
- Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
- Deadpool (2016)
- Zootopia (2016)
- La La Land (2016)
- Moonlight (2016)
- Get Out (2017)
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley donates DVD collection to Hyattsville Library (Part 2). Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Terence Blanchard at Strathmore (Part 1) He composed the music for some of Spike Lee’s greatest movie masterpieces.
This Friday, Terence Blanchard visits Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, to perform selections from his Grammy-winning opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which made him the first Black composer to stage an opera at New York’s Metropolitan Opera back in 2021.
“We have a concert version of it,” Blanchard told WTOP. “We won’t have the production sets and wardrobe, but it’s a very beautiful concert. To hear the arias done in that setting is a totally different type of experience. … when you experience this concert, you get a broad sense musically of what you would experience if you saw the opera live.”
Based on the best-selling 2014 memoir of New York Times journalist Charles M. Blow, the opera explores Blow’s struggles to overcome a cycle of violence. It features a libretto by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, who worked with Blanchard on the coming-of-age thriller “Eve’s Bayou” (1997) and the Harriet Tubman biopic “Harriet” (2019).
“I called her in to do this libretto and she did a fantastic and amazing job,” Blanchard said.
Born in New Orleans in 1962, Blanchard grew up with Wynton and Branford Marsalis before studying at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and later Rutgers University. He began touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before forming the Terence Blanchard / Donald Harrison Quintet and eventually going solo in 1990. The collective result was a whopping 16 Grammy nominations and six wins.
“Whenever you’re acknowledged in that way, it’s a blessing and an honor. And I don’t take it lightly because there’s a lot of great musicians out there doing great work,” Blanchard said.
While his music career flourished, he also began working on movies with Spike Lee, playing as a session musician on “Do the Right Thing” (1989), which featured an original score by Lee’s late father, composer Bill Lee.
“It was hard to tell back then because Spike had such a unique cinematic style, we were learning it just as much as anyone else,” Blanchard said. “We knew it was really compelling because we were seeing ourselves and our culture on screen, but to see what it’s meant to people over the years is still something that you couldn’t have foreseen.”
Blanchard began composing original pieces of music for “Mo’ Better Blues” (1990) before getting his own first sole composer credit on “Jungle Fever” (1991). Arguably their greatest collaboration remains the biopic “Malcolm X” (1992), starring Denzel Washington. Blanchard even made a cameo as a trumpet player in Billie Holiday’s band.
“When you hear the opening of ‘Malcolm X,’ that’s my experience of hearing [Malcolm’s X’s ‘revolution is bloody’] speech for the first time,” Blanchard said. “That big crash at the beginning is like a shock of what I was hearing, the heartbeat is the bass drum that you hear, the melody of the trumpet is kind of like Malcolm himself, then the cello as a reaction to it is kind of like me, then it just kind of builds and builds and builds until the end.”
Their collaboration continued on “Crooklyn” (1994), “Clockers” (1995), “4 Little Girls” (1997), “Summer of Sam” (1999), “Bamboozled” (2000), “25th Hour” (2002), “Inside Man” (2006), “When the Levees Broke” (2006), “Miracle at St. Anna” (2008) and “Chi-Raq” (2015) before Blanchard finally received a pair of overdue Oscar nominations for Best Original Score for “BlackKKlansman” (2018) and “Da 5 Bloods” (2020).
“Each project had its own signature sound,” Blanchard said. “That was the beautiful thing about working with Spike because he would always challenge me in that regard, he would always say things like, ‘So what haven’t you done yet in a score?’ That would cause me to think about new ideas, so when we got to ‘BlackKKlansman,’ we wound up using my electronic band as the foundation for the score and featured the guitar of my man Charles Altura.”
Blanchard also composed scores for Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” (2009), Regina King’s “One Night in Miami” (2020) and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “Love & Basketball” (2000) and “The Woman King” (2022).
“When Gina brought me in to view a cut of [‘The Woman King’], I was an emotional wreck watching it,” Blanchard said. “I was literally honored to be a part of it. When we got a chance to do the music, man, I brought in some of the singers from my opera career. I asked a good friend of mine, Dianne Reeves, to sing on top of it. We both said that it felt like everything we experienced in our musical careers led to us to that moment of making that film.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews MPT's Chesapeake Bay Week (Part 1). Maryland Public Television kicks off Chesapeake Bay Week this week, airing now through Saturday.
The series features 30 documentaries and other programs about the Chesapeake Bay, highlighting the beauty, importance and fragility of the nation’s largest estuary.
“This is the 20th anniversary of Chesapeake Bay Week,” Senior Producer Sarah Sampson told WTOP. “This is a week of programming we put on where we’re celebrating the Bay. It always coincides with Earth Week. … This is really a great week for programming, a great week for celebrating the Chesapeake Bay, and for MPT, it’s great because it’s been 20 years putting on this programming. Our viewers have been responding to it for the past two decades.”
The series includes eight premieres that viewers will see for the very first time:
“Racing Rivals: Log Canoes of Chesapeake Bay” — Monday, April 22 at 8 p.m.
Elegant, agile and propelled by outsized sails offset by nimble crew serving as human ballast, the iconic racing fleet of Chesapeake Bay log canoes embodies tradition, speed and grace. On breezy summer weekends along the Eastern Shore, those who restore, race and revere them are out to win, but not at the expense of preserving these unique vessels and the heritage they represent.
“Eroding History” — Monday, April 22 at 9:30 p.m.
“Eroding History” tells the story of two Black communities on the Deal Island Peninsula in Somerset County that are losing their land and their history due to the intersection of historical racism and modern climate changes. Meet the passionate people working to save these communities while exploring the challenges they face.
“The Chesapeake Bay Summit 2024: Course Correction” — Tuesday, April 23 at 8 p.m.
With a major restoration deadline looming, some of the world’s foremost experts on the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed join esteemed journalist and host Frank Sesno to discuss complex questions about the best course of action to clean and protect our nation’s largest estuary. Panelists grapple with why progress has been slower than expected, what new approaches are needed, and what a healthier bay of tomorrow will look like — all in front of an MPT studio audience.
“A River Called Home” — Wednesday, April 24 at 7 p.m.
Follow the journey of four women who launch at the headwaters of the James River in Virginia and paddle to the Chesapeake Bay. Along the way, the team conducts a water quality study to help assess how our waterways are being protected and what more we have left to do.
“A Passion for Oysters” — Wednesday, April 24 at 7:30 p.m.
The oyster presents challenges for protection and restoration that are unique among bay seafood. “A Passion for Oysters” explores these issues and more, evoking the history, culture, art and science surrounding the Chesapeake Bay oyster, with an eye to explaining the roots of the never-ending conflict it inspires.
“Salted Earth” — Wednesday, April 24 at 8:30 p.m.
Through interviews with scientists, farmers and community leaders, “Salted Earth” provides a sobering yet inspiring look at the very real and present challenge of sea-level rise. It asks a question that affects us all: Can our strategy against the rising sea succeed, or are we fighting an unwinnable war?
“Rob and the Litter Bug” — Wednesday, April 24 at 8:50 p.m.
Maryland filmmaker Rob Simmons set out on a 15-mile bike ride along Caroline County backroads to pick up trash along the way and see just how much litter there is out there. With the help of family, friends and even strangers, Rob collected far more litter than he had initially imagined.
“Reviving the Forgotten River” — Friday, April 26 at 7:30 p.m.
The Anacostia River, nicknamed “D.C.’s forgotten river,” is an infamously polluted tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. But after years of work by local activists, progress toward the river’s restoration is being made — so much so that the Anacostia may soon be swimmable for the first time in over half a century.
“When this all got started, the idea behind it was: What is something that brings Marylanders together?” Sampson said. “One thing that all of us have in common is that we’re all impacted in some way by the Chesapeake Bay: Whether it’s a place we go swimming, we go fishing, whether it’s the economic engine that it is impacting the state as a whole, the Chesapeake Bay is really something that ties Marylanders together.”
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In order to view the video you must disable your ad blocker.‘DWTS’ champ Derek Hough returns to DCIn December, Derek Hough joined WTOP before he and his wife Hayley Erbert performed at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland. At the end of the show, his wife became disoriented and was taken to the hospital for an emergency craniotomy, to treat a cranial hematoma that resulted from a burst blood vessel.
“That show definitely became a moment in our lives that we’ll never forget,” Hough told WTOP.
“We are so thankful for MedStar Washington Hospital and the city itself, the beauty of it and the people, the people who came up to us in the streets and the coffee shops just wishing their best for us and wishing Hayley her health. It was a crazy experience. … Dr. Jeffrey Mai (is a) great man. We’ll never forget this guy. He’s on our cellphone. We call him regularly — always checking in.”
This Wednesday, Hough brings “Symphony of Dance” back to the D.C. area at Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia.
“Going back to that area is so special to us,” Hough said. “I really wanted our doctor at the hospital who performed both of Hayley’s surgeries to come see a show just to thank him and all of the nurses and the staff, but also just the city, the people — to come to a show so we could actually give our hearts to them as they did for us.”
He insists that “Symphony of Dance” is the most dazzling production that he’s ever taken on the road.
“There’s a lot of care and a lot of thought into this show,” Hough said.
“The pacing, the dynamics, the journey, the choreography. I have amazing choreographers. Collaborating with them — the dancers, their ability, their athleticism, their artistry — is just at a top tier. It’s really, really, really incredible and just the genres of [live] music from big band to old Hollywood to rock ‘n roll to Latin music and ballroom dancing; there’s so much variety.”
Born in Salt Lake City in 1985, Hough grew up with four sisters, including future star Julianne Hough. When his parents got divorced, they sent him and Julianne to London to study dance with competitive ballroom dancers Corky and Shirley Ballas, leading him to eventually win the WDSF World Latin Championship in 2002.
“My sis, Julianne, she’s full out always 100% of the time, even in rehearsals,” Hough said.
“She’s fearless, she really is, she’s an absolute fearless dancer. She’ll try anything, she goes for anything, a lot of energy, a lot of impact. I don’t know what she would say about me, but she is just absolutely fearless and incredible. It’s awesome having her back as a host on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ it’s like having the whole family back together. It’s amazing.”
Indeed, Derek became a household name as a professional dancer on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” from 2007 to 2016, winning a record six times with his celebrity partners Brooke Burke, Nicole Scherzinger, Jennifer Grey, Kellie Pickler, Amber Riley and Bindi Irwin. The show also earned him 11 Emmy nominations, including three wins.
“I feel like my freestyle with Kellie Pickler was very special because we never got through that dance ever until that one night, the night it mattered, we would fall out of lifts or our tricks wouldn’t work, whatever, so that was an amazing moment,” Hough said.
“Obviously, dancing with Bindi Irwin was super special because I was such a fan of her father, Steve Irwin. It was a privilege and an honor to guide his daughter through this journey.”
From 2017 to 2020, he became a judge on NBC’s “World of Dance” alongside Jennifer Lopez and Ne-Yo before returning to ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” as a judge starting in Season 29 in 2020. He also starred in the West End premiere of “Footloose: The Musical,” the TV series “Nashville” and NBC’s “Hairspray: Live!”
He married Hayley last August, just four months before her medical emergency.
“We just got married and went on tour when this all happened, it’s just wild, it’s been an absolute roller coaster,” Hough said.
“You would think that we might have a negative association to that experience and to that place, but the contrary is that we have a very positive association to that area, because it was really a special place for healing and just care, so we’re excited to go back in a different way and to just give our love, man.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'The Jinx: Part 2' (Radio #1) If Errol Morris’ “The Thin Blue Line” (1988) is the greatest true-crime documentary film for getting a wrongfully-convicted man off death row, Andrew Jarecki’s “The Jinx” (2015) is the greatest true-crime docuseries I’ve ever seen, capturing Robert Durst’s confession on a hot mic: “There it is, you’re caught. … Killed them all, of course.”
Now, “The Jinx: Part 2” premieres this Sunday night on HBO Max for another six episodes that are must-watch television for fans of the true-crime genre. Granted, I’ve only seen the first four episodes (that’s all the advanced screeners that HBO gave us critics), but I can’t wait for the final two chapters to air in May.
In case you forgot, Part 1 explored the wild-eyed real-estate heir’s involvement in the 1982 disappearance of his wife Kathie in New York, the 2000 murder of his writer friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles, and the 2001 death and dismemberment of his neighbor, Morris Black, in Galveston, Texas. Durst agreed to be interviewed after admiring Jarecki’s Hollywood flick “All Good Things” (2010) starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst.
Now, Part 2 picks up right where Part 1 left off, showing the legal aftermath of bringing Durst to justice.
Episode 1 (“Why Are You Still Here?”) shows Durst regretting his hubris, admitting that it may have been a mistake to participate in “The Jinx.” It’s a joy to see the victims’ families watching the finale of Part 1 as we live vicariously through their stunned reactions to his hot-mic confession. We also see Durst’s failed fugitive attempt, including a mask he planned to wear on a speedboat to Cuba, as well as security cameras enabling his arrest at a Florida hotel.
Episode 2 (“Friendships Die Hard”) shows investigators calling Durst’s various friends. The rudest is Doug Oliver, who says he won’t fly on a commercial flight if subpoenaed; the sneakiest is Susie Giordano, who you can tell is lying; and there’s longtime friend Nick Chavin, who is torn: “What do you do when your best friend kills your other best friend? I mean, loyalty is due to Susan, but it’s also due to Bob.” The cliffhanger finds one of them redialing the FBI.
Episode 3 (“Saving My Tears Until It’s Official”) reveals that one of the victims may not have been so innocent, making a remorseless phone call to a gossipy shock jock to run different cover-up scenarios to see what’s most plausible to help Durst. The manipulative lack of grief is chilling: “I’m saving my tears until it’s official.”
Episode 4 (“The Unluckiest Man in the World”) is named after a tongue-in-cheek line about the mounting evidence against Durst. It focuses on his connection with a lawyer and his wife, who breaks down at the trial and makes a major mistake on the witness stand. This causes Durst’s defense team to shift gears by admitting that Durst wrote the “cadaver” note (famously misspelling “BEVERLEY”), but trying to argue that he did not pull the trigger.
In the end, there’s no way that Part 2 can match Part 1. I mean, how do you top a filmmaker capturing a killer’s confession in real time?
Still, even though we know the outcome of Durst’s 2021 conviction and 2022 death at age 78, it’s still a fascinating coda to my favorite true-crime docuseries, just ahead of Netflix’s “The Keepers.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Chuck D at the Weinberg Center in Frederick, Maryland (Part 1) He’s arguably the greatest emcee from arguably the greatest hip-hop group of all time. Now, Chuck D is about to “bum rush the show” at the historic Weinberg Center in Frederick, Maryland, Thursday night.
It’s part of the Frederick Speaker Series, a perfect forum for a rapper whose lyrics have always been political and whose songs often open with speeches by influential Black leaders. In other words, it’s a natural extension of what he has always done.
“I’ve been on speaker series since 1991,” Chuck D told WTOP. “I make sure that I’m able to get across to people who want to check out arts and culture, the importance of arts and culture. … It brings people together for our similarities and knocks aside our differences. What governments like to do is divide people, separate people, categorize people, but the arts and culture brings them all together, and that’s what I speak about.”
Which social or political topics might we hear him talk about on stage in Frederick?
“Rap, race, reality and technology have always been my strong points,” Chuck D said. “Technology is one of those things that we as human beings have to learn how to manage before it masters us. You’ve got things like AI coming. … I’m not a political conversationalist, however, it’s in our waters, so if people think I’m pro or con anything, I’m like, “Nah, I’m just about people being equal,’ especially where I come from, as Black folks, to be in a land that says everybody’s equal based on their character instead of their characteristics like Dr. King said.”
As we continue to wake up from Dr. King’s dream, Chuck D said, he hates how the phrase “woke” has become co-opted as a catchall term to describe anything that makes people uncomfortable when really it just means being “awake.”
“The term ‘woke’ is just the opposite of being asleep, walking around asleep, not being aware, not paying attention, you know what I’m saying?” Chuck D said. “Woke is just being able to be aware and paying attention to your surroundings, challenging information like I said in ‘Don’t Believe the Hype.’ Don’t just say, ‘I believe it because my emotion says it’ … factors have to be researched, examined, talked left or right about it, looked into it until it’s pretty much undebatable, but that takes work and effort. It doesn’t take much effort to walk around asleep.”
He said socially conscious hip-hop began as “the invisible TV station that Black America never had.”
“Especially in the ’80s, anytime you saw Black folks if it wasn’t sports or entertainment, you didn’t see or hear us at all unless there was trouble or a problem in our community, which there always happened to be,” Chuck D said. “That’s the only thing would become front-page news and national news, so hip-hop and rap talked about a lot of those different intricate details and dynamics — and I just thought you could feel where we were coming from.”
Born on Long Island, New York in 1960, Chuck D grew up in a decade that saw the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, not to mention the Vietnam War.
“All those things were all happening in one snowball,” Chuck D said. “I have ‘Negro’ on my birth certificate, then we became ‘colored,’ then all of a sudden by the end of the ’60s, Black was beautiful.”
He met Flava Flav at Adelphi University on Long Island. At the time, DJ Chuckie D recorded a radio promo called “Public Enemy No. 1” that caught the ear of Rick Rubin, who signed Public Enemy to Def Jam for their first album “Yo! Bum Rush the Show” (1987). Fans loved their signature look of wearing clocks around their necks.
“It was a style that Long Island kids wore in 1986,” Chuck D said. “In the beginning of Public Enemy, he and I wore clocks to let people know what time it is, as opposed to wearing gold chains and things that kids couldn’t afford. … That’s how the clock thing started. I took my clocks off a couple of years later and Flav kept his clocks.”
They blew up mainstream with their second album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” (1988), featuring hits like “Bring the Noise,” “Rebel without a Pause” and “Don’t Believe the Hype.”
“A call to justice, a call to alarm, let’s ‘Bring the Noise,'” Chuck D said. “‘Rebel Without a Pause’ is just like we’re not going to stop; we’re going to keep on going until the break of dawn. … (‘Don’t Believe the Hype’) was journalists kind of looked at all hip-hop as noise and made their assessment on it, and I was telling people to challenge information and don’t just take it at word value coming at you and accept it just because it’s coming to a screen.”
Speaking of the screen, Public Enemy recorded their iconic anthem “Fight the Power” for the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s cinematic masterpiece “Do the Right Thing” (1989), about race clashes at Sal’s Pizzeria in Brooklyn.
“Spike Lee through film … was able to make a statement and he was looking for a soundtrack for that statement,” Chuck D said. “The theme of the movie was how a community restaurant that was in the community serving the people food didn’t reflect that on the wall. … The ‘Fight the Power’ Elvis and John Wayne point was like, OK, this answers the people not on the wall, ‘most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamp’ nor are they on Sal’s wall.”
The third album “Fear of a Black Planet” (1990) was the first without Professor Griff, who was dismissed from the group for antisemitic comments, but the group still delivered hits like “9-1-1 is a Joke,” where Flava Flav took the lead on the mic, critiquing first responders in the inner city a year before the 1991 Los Angeles Police Department beating of Rodney King.
“That was great that Flava Flav took the mic,” Chuck D said. “When he did ‘911 is a Joke,’ we were making ‘Fear of a Black Planet’ and I gave him a year to write a song. I said, ‘Listen, you’ve gotta write this song about how the services when they come to save us in our community, they’re always late or they don’t come at all.’ Flav took it, wrote it for a year, came back and I was shocked and said, ‘This is the single right here.’ He did a masterful job.”
Their fourth album “Apocalypse 91 … The Enemy Strikes Back” (1991) featured the hard but catchy hit “Shut ‘Em Down,” criticizing corporations, such as Nike, for making huge profits off of the Black community but not opening businesses in Black areas.
“If you’re going to sell to the community, you’ve gotta be aware,” Chuck D said. “You at least have to be concerned with the conditions of the people that this thing has come up out of. Yes, it’s a party thing. Yes, it’s a beat thing where you can nod your head in the car, but have some kind of concern. Those people that checked out Public Enemy, they did. Some of it was uneasy, but this is some of the things that make people come together. You gotta sometimes break the ice. … We went after systems, we went after ‘isms,’ we went after structures.”
For all this, Public Enemy was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, just the fourth hip-hop group after Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Run-D. M. C. and The Beastie Boys for a Mount Rushmore of hip-hop pioneers. He solidified his rap-to-rock crossover by fusing genres from 2016-2020 with the supergroup Prophets of Rage, combining members of Public Enemy, Rage Against the Machine, Audio Slave and Cypress Hill.
“Hip-hop and rap music comes out of the understanding, the use and knowledge of the shoulders that we all stand on,” Chuck D said. “Hip-hop is a total combination of all those aspects of music, you see Beyoncé come out with [the country album] ‘Cowboy Carter,’ it shows just how it’s all music. People used to say, ‘Public Enemy is not rock,’ but I’d say, ‘Yeah, but rap is a roll, baby.'”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Wammies (Part 1). For over three decades, D.C. musicians have gained exposure from a local version of the Grammys.
The 36th annual Wammies will be held Saturday night at Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia.
The public event is hosted by the nonprofit organization The MusicianShip, which took over the ceremony from the Washington Area Music Association in 2018 and held it last year at the Capital Turnaround in Southeast D.C.
“We are really excited this year to move to a different venue,” executive director and CEO Eric Liley told WTOP. “We kind of outgrew the space we had last year and had 1,000 people that came through, so we waitlisted another 200 or 300 additional tickets. … This year, we are moving to the Capital One Hall. … We are looking forward to it, the venue itself is beautiful and we welcome anyone who is a music enthusiast.”
Local music fans submitted nominations online to help the judges determine the finalists.
“The nominations process is open to the public,” Liley said. “This year, I think we broke records, we had about 20,000 votes for about 1,000 nominees. … Those nominees go to an industry committee that consists of 40 or 50 judges. … Ultimately, there’s 51 awards representing all genres of music, everything from bluegrass to country, R&B and hip-hop, jazz, classical, techno, best music venue, best music video.”Honorary awards will go to Paul Reed Smith, founder of PRS Guitars, which serves musicians Carlos Santana and John Mayer; Dr. Natalie Hopkinson of Don’t Mute D.C. movement; Sandra M. Granobles, DCPS Music Teacher of the Year; Dan Spears, vice president of licensing for BMI; Stephen Parker, head of the National International Venue Association; and the late Sandra Butler-Truesdale, who passed in October after a life of mentoring D.C. musicians.
Beyond the awards, Saturday’s event will feature 10 live performances for a “Hitmakers Ball.”
“We’re going to have some big local names that are performing live,” Liley said. “Everyone from The Future Band in D.C.; Alex Hamburger, a jazz singer; Samia, who’s this emerging rock performer; Eightlock Band, which is the band of Paul Reed Smith … this great funk band; and the featured performance of the evening is Red, Gold & Green, a band out of Virginia who have actually performed with Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters.”
It’s all a way to highlight the D.C. music scene from its rich historical past to its vibrant present.
“The DMV has a history of great musicians whether it be Marvin Gaye, Emmylou Harris, Dave Grohl, Ruth Brown, Chuck Brown, Johnny Gill, Duke Ellington … Joan Jett, the list goes on,” Liley said. “There are probably 40 Hall of Fame honorees that have spent a great deal of their musical lives in and around the DMV. … We’re trying to honor the region, the culture, the musicians, the music and the sound to unify this whole scene.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Lebowski Experience' (Part 1) Last year, they banded together to mark 25 years of the Coen Brothers movie “The Big Lebowski” (1998).
This Saturday, “The Lebowski Experience” celebrates its own fifth anniversary as the live concert tribute to the film’s music returns to Pearl Street Warehouse in D.C., fittingly on 4/20.
Chris Boesen plays The Dude, an L.A. slacker mistaken for a millionaire as he seeks restitution for a rug peed on by debt collectors, all while trying to find the millionaire’s missing wife between frames of bowling. The Dude has become an alternate persona for Boesen, officiating weddings as a “Dudist” priest practicing Dudeism.
“When we started this, it was just a fun little project among friends. We thought it would be a laugh. Nobody would get the joke,” Boesen told WTOP. “It turns out there’s such a huge community of folks that really love the movie and love the characters and created a religion around it that it just turns into this festival-like atmosphere with people in costumes. It’s just sort of strange and exciting to be in the center of all that as The Dude.”
Jackie Treehorn is portrayed by Louis Bayard, an author of such historical fiction as the 2006 novel “The Pale Blue Eye,” a mystery riff on Edgar Allan Poe that became a 2022 film starring Christian Bale and Gillian Anderson.
“The thing about ‘Lebowski,’ it was tough for me at first because it was a noir that doesn’t want to solve itself, it’s a mystery that won’t get solved,” Bayard told WTOP. “It took me a while to warm to it, but I think they were ahead of time in some ways with that movie. Now, people are still catching up to it and it definitely has a huge cult out there, but it is a cult, there are people who aren’t ever going to warm to this movie because it’s just so weird!”
The set list includes favorites from the movie soundtrack, including Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me,” Kenny Rogers & The First Edition’s “Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was In)” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through the Jungle,” as well as The Gypsy Kings’ cover of “Hotel California” by The Eagles.
“Obviously the songs that everybody knows, Bob Dylan, Kenny & First Edition for the dream sequence, but there’s other stuff that’s not quite rock ‘n’ roll,” Boesen said. “There’s proto-punk with The Monks, then you get some jazzy stuff with Nina Simone and ’50s exotica with Yma Sumac, it’s a huge variety of music. The stuff that people know and sing along with is Creedence. … We also do some Eagles, which is difficult for me because ‘I hate The Eagles, man.'”
Of course, the audience is encouraged to dress up just like the band members on stage.
“The whole cast, everybody’s in costume but also in character. So while we’re playing the music, we’re also doing bits from the film,” Boesen said. “The highlight is usually the costume contest because I bet a third or half of the people come to the show in costume. … Last year I think the costume contest was won by a guy dressed as a rug.”
“He tied the room together,” Bayard joked. “This is some of the best musicians in the DMV area. These are extraordinary players, so even if you don’t want to dress up and do the cosplay, you can come enjoy a really great show.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Alicia Keys musical 'Hell's Kitchen' on Broadway (Part 1) Last fall, her nonprofit Canady Foundation for the Arts teamed with National Theatre’s “Teens Behind the Scenes” program to bring hundreds of D.C. students to see the national tour of her revival of “The Wiz.”
“We brought about 300 D.C. youth to see the show,” co-producer Marjuan Canady told WTOP. “They came for a talkback and just got to learn more about the process of making the show, so that was a really exciting experience and now ‘The Wiz’ is headed to Broadway for a run through the summer.”
While “The Wiz” opens on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre this Wednesday, Canady isn’t stopping there. She’s also co-producing the new Alicia Keys musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” which premieres Saturday at the Shubert Theatre. That’s right, a D.C. native is launching two Broadway shows in the same week!
“Alicia has actually been working on this show for 13 years, so this is really very much her baby,” Canady said. “It’s been many years in development. She actually just finished the off-Broadway run of it at the Public [Theater] last season. It was a sold-out run there and immediately transferred to Broadway, so it’s many years in the making.”
Written by Kristoffer Diaz (book) and Alicia Keys (music and lyrics), the semi-autobiographical tale tells the coming-of-age story of a girl growing up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in the 1990s.
“It’s not autobiographical of Alicia’s story, but it’s inspired by many of her experiences — I mean, the main character’s name is Ali,” Canady said. “She’s 17 years old, it’s coming-of-age, and she’s dealing with balancing her dreams, new love, her first love. It’s a story about passion and following your dreams and navigating both love and a relationship with her mother, so for that aspect of the story, it very much is Alicia’s story.”
The cast stars Maleah Joi Moon as Ali and Shoshana Bean as Jersey, as well as Gaithersburg, Maryland-native Brandon Victor Dixon as Davis and Richmond, Virginia-native Crystal Monee Hall as Crystal.
“The cast is incredible,” Canady said. “Maleah Joi Moon, her voice is just incredible, she’s really embodying the spirit of Alicia and also creating a new character as well. I think there can be a lot of pressure to live up to, but I think she is such a dynamic performer and I’m excited to see what she does for the rest of the run.”
Directed by Michael Greif and choreographed by Camille A. Brown, the jukebox musical features all of your favorite Keys songs, including “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’,” “If I Ain’t Got You,” “No One” and “Empire State of Mind.”
“There’s so many great songs,” Canady said. “It’s so awesome because it’s rearranged in a way that fits the story. It’s not just ‘this is just the pop or R&B hit,’ it’s going to make sense the way the story unfolds. Adam Blackstone is our music supervisor, so the way that Alicia and Adam worked in recreating the music is incredible and a lot of people who don’t traditionally come to see musical theater, Alicia has said that this musical speaks to those folks.”
While “Empire State of Mind” sang about a concrete jungle where dreams are made of, Canady continues to bless New York City with her own D.C. state of mind, bringing a theatrical taste of the District to the Big Apple.
“I spent many years developing my craft here in D.C.,” Canady said. “I went to Duke Ellington School of the Arts many years ago and went off to New York and L.A. and have been working in the industry in theater and film, as well as developing my own work here in D.C. I have a production company, Sepia Works, and a nonprofit, the Canady Foundation for the Arts, where we serve predominantly youth of color with arts education experiences. … It’s exciting to still continue to serve the DMV community as well as work on Broadway in the larger industry.”
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R&B superstar Aloe Blacc will perform "Songs for Hope" at the Kennedy Center on Monday, Sept. 18, alongside Ariana DeBose and others.
National Dance Day will be returning this Saturday at the Kennedy Center in D.C. to celebrate 50 years of hip-hop.
The festival kicks off with Michelle Branch live at Maryland Hall in Annapolis on Thursday. The Annapolis Songwriters Festival returns to the Maryland capital this Thursday through Sunday.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Rocky' in concert at Merriweather (Part 1) In 1976, “Rocky” became the rare movie to win both the box-office crown and the Best Picture Oscar, a feat that looks even more impressive with each passing year. Can you imagine that happening today? It remains the most influential film of the franchise, inspiring nine installments with Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago and Adonis Creed.
This Wednesday night, the groundbreaking movie screens at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, featuring live accompaniment by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra playing Bill Conti’s iconic score.
The wailing horns and chilling strings of “Philadelphia Morning” contain the underdog secret to life: wake up early to outwork the competition. Don’t chug raw eggs, but make sure you stretch before heading to Merriweather.
“Gonna Fly Now” paved the way for every movie training montage, sending Sylvester Stallone soaring up the steps with one of the very first Steadicam shots tracking beside him, then circling behind him for that iconic pose. You might just be inspired to run the stairs of Merriweather Post Pavilion and strike the pose atop the lawn!
Before it was sampled by Puff Daddy and the Notorious B.I.G., “Going the Distance” got us jacked for the thrilling in-ring action as Rocky Balboa pounded Apollo Creed for a shocking underdog performance that almost upset the champ. Don’t be surprised if you see folks standing and cheering in their seats at Merriweather during the climax.
It all culminates with “The Final Bell” as Rocky and Adrian embrace, reminding us that this isn’t just a sports movie but a gritty romance, freeing each other from their metaphorical pet-shop cages early in the film. As the credits roll, the sound of the ring announcer fades to the background as we can barely hear him declare Creed the winner. Instead, we hear Rocky and Adrian shout, “I love you!” — the perfect time to kiss your date at Merriwether.
Find more information on the “Rocky” concert here.
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Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Everclear at The Fillmore (Part 1) They defined ’90s rock with “Santa Monica,” “Father of Mine,” “I Will Buy You a New Life” and “Wonderful.”
This Wednesday night, Everclear rocks The Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland, sharing a bill with The Ataris (“Boys of Summer”) just a few days after the release of Everclear’s new album “Live at The Whiskey a Go Go.”
“I’ve never played The Fillmore at Silver Spring, so I’m excited,” Frontman Art Alexakis told WTOP. “‘Live at The Whiskey a Go Go’ is our first real live album. We recorded it Dec. 1, the last show of our 30th anniversary tour last year. It’s 15 live tracks, fan favorites, all the hits, it sounds great, it sounds like us live. … We’ve also got two new songs on the album, studio tracks, a song called ‘Year of the Tiger’ and ‘Sing Away,’ which no one’s heard yet.”
Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1962, Alexakis got bit by the music bug at age 4 when he saw The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1966. He eventually made his way north to Portland, Oregon, to form Everclear.
“I moved to San Francisco because L.A. had become … pay to play; you basically had to sell tickets to play a gig, so us and a lot of bands moved to San Francisco where they had a club system that was old school,” Alexakis said. “I met a girl from Portland, Oregon, she moved down to San Francisco and lived with me for about a year. She got pregnant, so we moved to Portland in late ’91, had our baby in June of ’92, I started Everclear in April of ’92.”
After recording its debut album, “World of Noise” (1993), on a shoestring budget of $400, the band found breakthrough success with its second album, “Sparkle and Fade” (1995). It went platinum thanks to songs like “Heroin Girl,” based on his brother dying of an overdose, and “Santa Monica,” which opens with the lyric, “I’m stilling living with your ghost,” sparking false rumors about his girlfriend’s suicide off Santa Monica Pier.
“The stuff about ‘Santa Monica’ is absolutely not true,” Alexakis said. “About a third of our songs are autobiographical … then about 30% of our songs are [where] I take things from my life and create characters like ‘Heroin Girl.’ My brother died of an overdose, I almost died three times of an overdose, I had my heart defibrillated, I was a drug addict, I was a junkie, blackout drunk, got sober in 1989, so 34 years now.”
Everclear’s third album, “So Much for the Afterglow” (1997), delivered hits like “Everything to Everyone,” which topped the alternative chart, and “I Will Buy You a New Life,” which hit No. 3 on the alternative chart.
“Before we got signed, me and my second wife, then girlfriend, and our baby were pretty poor,” Alexakis said. “We lived in a place where the neighborhood was called Felony Flats in Portland. … We’d drive up to the West Hills … look at those houses and fantasize about being in them. Two years later, after the success of Everclear, I bought a house up there. It was interesting: a different perspective inside looking out vs. outside looking in.”
The album’s biggest hit was the autobiographical “Father of Mine,” which reached No. 4 on the alternative chart and landed No. 23 on the Adult Top 40. It was based on the pain of his father leaving him when he was 5 years old.
“One night after putting my daughter to bed, she was probably 4 or 5 years old … I remember watching her sleep and just going, ‘Man, seriously, how does a man do that?'” Alexakis said. “I don’t understand how you do that when you see that, and you realize that’s a part of your life and you’re responsible for that. … My wife went to bed, I went to my little studio office, sat down with my guitar and notepad and wrote ‘Father of Mine.'”
The next album, “Songs from an American Movie” (2000), featured the upbeat divorce lament of “Wonderful,” which reached No. 3 on the alternative chart, No. 3 on the Adult Top 40 and No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“I was a child of divorce and then in ’99 I got divorced from my child’s mother,” Alexakis said. “Watching the pain in my daughter going through that reminded me of the pain in me. … That was an amalgam of a bunch of different things that I put in and created that character from the perspective of … a child being in that live wire of emotions.”
Today, he says he’s just trying to be the best man that he can be.
“My eldest daughter went through that and she’s still got issues with me about it, she’s in her 30s, but my youngest daughter, me and her mom have been together for almost 19 years,” Alexakis said. “We’ve got a better relationship than when we met, so she’s blessed to have that strength and know that her parents love her and that she’s safe and secure. Kids just want to be safe. We all just want to be safe. Everybody just wants to be safe.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Everclear at The Fillmore (Part 2) Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley highlights 1310 Kitchen + Bar (Part 1) In 2002, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” became one of the biggest surprise indie hits of all time, grossing $369 million on just a $5 million budget. It shocked Hollywood as a Top 5 grosser of the year, behind only “Spider-Man,” “Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones,” “Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets” and “Signs.”
This Friday, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” opens in movie theaters — and a D.C. chef can’t wait to see it.
“I remember my whole family watching it when it first came out in 2002,” Chef Jenn Crovato told WTOP. “I’m Italian, so it was very relatable, from when she brought her lunch to school and the kids made fun of it, to the whole family being involved in your whole life — my grandmother is very much involved in my daughter’s life still. It was just very relatable, I watched it I don’t know how many times, but very much looking forward to the third.”
After the movie, moviegoers can celebrate with Crovato’s Mediterranean cuisine at 1310 Kitchen & Bar, which opened in 2019 on Wisconsin Avenue between Dumbarton and N Streets, Northwest in Georgetown.
“Everybody is welcome if you want to go to Georgetown, go down to the waterfront, watch the movie, come up the street and come up to us: 1310 is both the name and the address,” Crovato said. “One of the things we’ve been making is moussaka. It’s frozen, so if you want to take it home and eat it at your house, you can do that, but we’ll also feature it on the menu this week if people want to go and watch the movie in Georgetown then come up.”
The menu includes all kinds of delicious Mediterranean favorites.
“Greek salad we’ve always had on there, it’s sort of a staple here,” Crovato said. “We also have the grilled calamari. It’s done sort of the same way in Southern Italy as they do in Greece where it’s just black Kalamata olives, potatoes, we put Chimichurri on top, which is just a light vinaigrette with parsley, chalets, garlic, peperoncini and then we squeeze fresh lemon on top. Most places have fried calamari, but we do not fry it, we grill it and I love.”
If you’re looking for even more seafood, check out the shrimp with a tangy lemon and basil orzo.
“We do have grilled shrimp tacos on the menu,” Crovato said. “We also use the Chimichurri on that as well. I just think it’s the best. We put it on our grilled steaks, we kind of put it on everything. It’s the best addition and we have a lot of people who come here and just get their own jar of Chimichurri to take home so they can have it and put it on their own food when they cook at home.”
Speaking of cooking at home, Crovato penned a cookbook about a decade ago called “Olive Oil, Sea Salt and Pepper.” Her approach was honed growing up in Silver Spring in a big Italian family, who taught her to cook at age 16, along with her Greek best friend, before studying at the Culinary Institute of American in New York City.
“The whole idea is method cooking using only those three ingredients [olive oil, sea salt and pepper],” Crovato said. “You only need those three ingredients in your pantry. If you only have those three, you can cook anything. It’s not about seeking out a laundry list of ingredients so you can cook. … It has that whole Mediterranean flair to the food. It’s just taking the freshest products you can find and doing as little to it as possible.”
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Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Jo Dee Messina at The Frederick Fair (Part 1) She was one of the biggest country artists of the ’90s thanks to hits like “Heads Carolina, Tails California.”
On Sept. 22, Jo Dee Messina performs at The Great Frederick Fair in Frederick, Maryland, as part of her “Heads Carolina, Tails California Tour,” which fittingly kicked off in North Carolina and will end in California.
“We had never toured under the banner ‘Heads Carolina, Tails California,’ so we thought: what the heck?” Messina told WTOP.
“We might string it on until next year because we’ve had such a great outpouring of fans and people coming to the concerts and they’ve been asking for more shows. … Coming to see you is a huge part for me. I’ve got a lot of friends up there and love the Maryland area. We’re gonna get some crab cakes!”
Born in Massachusetts in 1970, Messina performed with her siblings before moving to Nashville at age 19.
“I’m an East Coaster and went to school where a bunch of kids from all over the country went, but I heard country music and I thought, ‘Wow, this tells the story of my life,’ and that’s how I got into it,” Messina said.
“From there, I started writing songs and performing country songs. Then, right after high school, I moved down to Nashville and tried to get a record deal and paid my dues and did my time here.”
She broke through with her self-titled first album, “Jo Dee Messina” (1996), fittingly featuring the leadoff track “You’re Not in Kansas Anymore” and the aforementioned “Heads Carolina, Tails California.”
“My first album was done and one of the writers called me like, ‘Hey Jo Dee, I’ve got this song,'” Messina said. “I listened to it and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is really cool,’ so I brought it to my producers. They were like, ‘Man, we gotta put this on the record.’ So we went back into the studio and recorded it as an afterthought, it wasn’t something we had scripted for the album. It was the very last minute and the very first single!”
In 1998, she won the Academy of Country Music Award for Top New Female Vocalist thanks to her second album “I’m Alright” (1998), which featured a smash title track, as well as other songs like “Stand Beside Me,” “Lesson in Leavin'” and “Bye Bye” that spoke to a resilient heart surviving some rough relationships.
“I think that’s just kind of what I was going through at that point in life,” Messina said. “I wasn’t married, I was trying to find a decent guy while I was having a career, and I was running into a bunch of bums, so there was plenty of songs to go around!”
In 2000, she won the Horizon Award at the Country Music Association Awards. That same year she released her third album, “Burn” (2000), featuring a hit title song with candle imagery, as well as two Grammy nominations for “That’s the Way” and “Bring on the Rain,” the latter with Tim McGraw on background vocals.
“That song, geez, I just heard a guitar demo by Helen Darling, she was one of the writers,” Messina said. “I loved how empowering the song was. McGraw loved it and was like, ‘Hey, man, do you mind if I sing on it?’ He was producing my records at the time, so he was in the studio hearing the song over and over and was like, ‘Man, I’d love to throw something on that,’ so that’s how that came about.”
After her “Greatest Hits” (2003), Messina proved she could keep the hitmaker magic going with her fourth album, “Delicious Surprise” (2005), which featured the catchy throwback tune “My Give a Damn’s Busted.”
“That was a point where we were kind of at a standstill really,” Messina said. “We were like, ‘Where do we go?’ Everybody kind of got interested in other things, so we decided to come back with ‘My Give a Damn’s Busted,’ and I remember people going, ‘Oh my gosh, you reinvented yourself,’ and I was like, ‘No, I actually just went back to who I was before all the glamour and what not.’ That was originally cut by Joe Diffie, he wrote it.”
In 2010, she released a trilogy of EP’s with “Unmistakable: Love,” “Unmistakable: Drive” and “Unmistakable: Inspiration,” including the song “Heaven Was Needing a Hero,” which is still played at funerals everywhere.
“That song was written when the first female soldier was lost at war over in Iraq,” Messina said. “I saw her brother on the news, they were asking him a bunch of questions, and he was like, ‘I don’t know how to answer your questions, I just know that my sister will always be a hero to me,’ and I was just like, ‘Man.’ I remember watching the TV screen going, ‘Heaven must have been needing a hero,’ so that’s where that song came from.”
After leaving Curb Records, she released the crowdfunded album “Me” (2014), but her big resurgence came in 2022 when Cole Swindell paid homage in his No. 1 country hit “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” nominated for Musical Event of the Year at the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards.
Today, her music has generated a billion streams across Pandora, Spotify and Apple Music with over four million streams per week.
“We’ve noticed that in the last five years there’s just a huge swell of young listeners and I’m guessing that’s a lot of streaming,” Messina said. “You’ll see when you go to the show that it isn’t just ‘Heads Carolina,’ you’ll see people, like real young people, like 8 years old, singing all the words to ‘Lesson in Leavin’,’ ‘Stand Beside Me’ or ‘Bring on the Rain.’ … There’s no old and new anymore, it’s just current, whatever they hear.”
Her latest single “Just To Be Loved” was released on July 7.
“‘Just To Be Loved’ was inspired by my 14-year-old son, back when he was 13, he was getting text messages from 12- and 13-year-old girls that were really just heartbreaking. What kids think they have to do, or be to be loved and accepted is wrong,” Messina said. “‘Just To Be Loved’ is a song I wrote so that I could say, ‘You were created by a perfect God who loves you perfectly. You don’t have to sell out for a like or a check mark.'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Monumental Travesties' by Mosaic Theater (Part 1) Since 1876, the Emancipation Memorial has stood in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill in Northeast D.C.
This Thursday, a new play highlights the statue’s controversial design as Mosaic Theater stages “Monumental Travesties” at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street, Northeast, running now through Oct. 1.
“The statue depicts Abraham Lincoln standing over top a kneeling Black man in a loin cloth,” playwright Psalmayene 24 (a.k.a. Gregory Morrison) told WTOP.
“It’s supposed to be a statue that commemorates Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, but it’s controversial for many reasons. It’s really about the representation of the Black man in the statue and the subservient pose that he’s in.”
While the statue may have been built with good intentions to commemorate a slain, pivotal president a decade after his assassination in the aftermath of the Civil War, critics of the statue say the 19th century designers didn’t put enough thought into the depiction of the Black man and what it would mean to 21st century visitors.
“The monument is about celebrating freedom, that was the intent behind it, but I think the people who commissioned it and the artist got it wrong because that’s not what this monument is communicating,” Psalmayene 24 said.
“It’s communicating something quite different: a Black man in a denigrated position, it doesn’t show him in a way that celebrates his agency. … Lincoln is seen as this paternalistic figure bestowing freedom on high.”
The Brooklyn native first saw the statue decades ago as a student at Howard University.
“I’ve been troubled by it ever since I saw it,” Psalmayene 24 said.
“I saw it sometime in the mid-90s when I was a student at Howard. It just seemed so obviously anachronistic and outdated. I was shocked that something like this existed right here in Washington D.C. … My whole vision of art is creating elevated representations of Black folks. This piece represents the exact type of representations that my art aims to dismantle.”
As such, he’s using the power of the pen to create a provocative new play that follows a Black D.C. performance artist named Chance, who removes the head from the statue of President Abraham Lincoln, takes it home and throws it into the yard of his neighbor, a white liberal professor named Adam.
“Chance runs home to his wife and an absurdist chain of events happens from there,” Psalmayene 24 said.
“It’s important to say that the piece is a comedy. I thought that was a pretty crucial piece to telling this story and holding it, because it’s such a heavy topic and I didn’t want people to feel weighed down. I wanted to bring some levity to the storytelling experience, so I thought comedy was the perfect genre to hold this story.”
The play stars Louis Davis as Chance, Renee Elizabeth Wilson as Chance’s wife Brenda and Jonathan Feuer as the neighbor. “These actors are just acting their faces off,” Psalmayene 24 said of the rehearsals thus far.
The play is directed by Reginald Douglas, whom Psalmayene 24 called “a really deft director, particularly when it comes to comedy. He really has a good eye for all things directorial, whether it’s costume design, lighting design, scenic design. The director has to hold all these things in their mind simultaneously. It’s a new play and he’s a great new play director also. He has a great dramaturgical mind, so he’s an ideal person to be directing this.”
He hopes that the play will inspire D.C. audiences to rethink the statue’s design. “The freed man should absolutely be standing up; I think he should be wearing clothes,” Psalmayene 24 said.
“Frederick Douglas spoke at the unveiling of the monument and was critical of it. … Douglas said what he would love to see before he dies is a statue of the Black man standing up on his feet like a man, not couching on his knees like a four-footed animal. He pretty much distilled exactly how I feel about the monument back in 1876.”
He said there’s recent precedent of another major city removing such a statue.
“There used to be a replica of this exact monument in Boston, but in 2020, after the great justice movement that was sparked in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, the city of Boston removed that monument, they took it down,” Psalmayene 24 said.
“My question is why is it still up here in Washington D.C.? I have some ideas: this is the town where Lincoln once lived, he was in the Oval Office here, he was killed here, and this is federal property.”
What does he ultimately hope happens to it?
“I think relocating it is a great idea,” Psalmayene 24 said.
“I think it needs to be re-contextualized for the public. … I do think there needs to be a deeper, iconographic analysis of the monument, so putting it in a museum makes a lot of sense to me. There could also be a reinvention of it where you add pieces around it. I don’t know how that would be done, but I’m just brainstorming right now. I also wouldn’t be mad if it was melted down.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews Season 2 of 'The Afterparty' (Part 1) If Kenneth Branagh’s remake of “Murder on the Orient Express” (2017) failed to galvanize a new generation, Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” (2019) undoubtedly revived the comedic whodunnit for a “Glass Onion” sequel.
Streaming platforms followed suit, including Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” (2021-present), created by Steve Martin, and Apple’s “The Afterparty” (2022-present), created by Christopher Miller (“The Lego Movie”).
This Wednesday, the Season 2 finale of “The Afterparty” drops on Apple TV+, revealing the killer after 10 episodes where the shifting styles of each chapter are just as fun — if not more fun — than the mystery plot itself.
You’ll recall that last season Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) investigated the death of pop star Xavier (Dave Franco), who fell to his death at his swanky mansion the night of his 15-year high school reunion. Danner interviewed Xavier’s former classmates, who woke up the next morning as hungover murder suspects, including Aniq Adjaye (Sam Richardson), who reunited with high school crush Zoë Zhu (Zoë Chao), both of whom were cleared of murder charges.
This season, Aniq and Zoë are dating as they attend the wedding of Zoë’s sister Grace (Poppy Liu) and her fiance Edgar (Zach Woods), who turns up dead. Suspects include Edgar’s mother Isabel (Elizabeth Perkins), his sister Hannah (Anna Konkle), his ex-business partner Sebastian (Jack Whitehall), Grace’s parents Feng (Ken Jeong) and Vivian (Vivian Wu), her eccentric uncle Ulysses (John Cho) and her ex-boyfriend Travis (Paul Walter Hauser).
Like the first season, the best part of “The Afterparty” is that each episode is filmed in a different style or genre, so if you don’t like one episode, just wait 30 minutes until the next chapter to see if that’s more your cup of tea.
Episode 1 is titled “Aniq 2: The Sequel,” exploring Aniq’s perspective in the style of a romantic comedy sequel in which the gang gets back together but is placed in new situations for fresh high jinks. You’ll initially think they scrapped the shifting styles approach because the tone is the closest to reality, except for a few self-aware jokes by Aniq and Danner. Honestly, I wish the filmmakers pushed harder to reference other specific rom coms.
Episode 2 is told from the perspective of the bride, Grace, and is shot in the style of a regency period piece like Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice.” Here, the period costumes are lavish and the romance is sophisticated, albeit with plenty of red herrings. If you like this style, check out the Merchant-Ivory costume dramas like “A Room with a View” (1985), “Howard’s End” (1992) or my personal favorite of the genre, “Remains of the Day” (1993).
Episode 3 is the funniest, shot like a black-and-white Raymond Chandler film noir. Last season, Ben Schwartz stole the show in a musical Episode 3; this year, Hauser shines as Travis, wearing suspenders and a fedora to spit hard-boiled monologues like Philip Marlowe, only with comedy like “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” (1982). Hauser shows he can do it all, from a comedy doofus in “I, Tonya” (2017) to a creepy serial killer in “Blackbird” (2022).
Episode 4 is told from Hannah’s perspective and shot in the twee dollhouse style of Wes Anderson, one of our most recognizable auteurs, particularly the bright paint of the bathroom walls. Hannah most recalls Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001), my personal favorite Anderson movie, while her outdoor tent recalls “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012). This episode might contain the biggest twists, so buckle up.
Episode 5 is told in the style of a caper flick, specifically a modern slick heist flick like Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s 11” (2001), not a throwback con job like George Roy Hill’s “The Sting” (1973). It’s told from the perspective of Sebastian, revealing secret business deals with the groom that would provide one heck of a motive. It’s probably the most forgettable of the episodes, because I’m having a hard time remembering the details!
Episode 6 is told from Danner’s perspective in the style of a 1990s erotic thriller like “Basic Instinct” (1992), featuring a blue tint and venetian blind shadows painted across the wall. While Haddish has a few funny lines, this episode feels the most like it’s spinning its wheels plot-wise. We really don’t care why Danner got canned from the police force. In fact, it distracts from the murder mystery at hand. You could pluck it out and not miss much.
The plot of Episode 7 is much more consequential, though its genre is harder to recognize, told from the perspective of the “funcle” Ulysses and shot in the style of an epic romance like “Legends of the Fall” (1994). It’s amusing to watch John Cho of “Harold & Kumar” fancy himself as an adventurous swashbuckler — no longer going to White Castle for a burger, but rather riding in on a white horse to save his princess at the castle gates of a wedding.
Episode 8 follows the father of the bride, Feng, with a juicy performance by Ken Jeong, who desperately tries to pitch his idea of Taiwanese shaved ice. We feel really bad for him, but it’s nice to see him as sympathetic after his zany character Mr. Chow. It’s told in the style of the found footage genre, which is mostly associated with horror like “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) and “Paranormal Activity” (2007), but here it’s mostly just voyeuristic.
Episode 9 is told from Isabel’s perspective in the style of Alfred Hitchcock suspense, namely his masterpiece “Vertigo” (1958). The filmmaker paints with neon green light, Perkins is entranced like Madeline/Judy, the camera does dolly/zoom “Vertigo Effect” and hypnotic music recalls Bernard Herrmann. Still, it’s mostly a superficial understanding of Hitchcock, lacking the layers of “Vertigo,” which has the most symbolic direction I’ve ever seen.
Finally, Episode 10 is called “Zoë and Vivian,” cramming two perspectives into one episode, thus exploring two genres — a campy horror movie for Zoë and a 1980s soap opera for Vivian. It’s too much to have dual genres, leaving audiences wishing they explored each genre fully, but let’s face it: This is mostly a capper episode for Danner and Aniq to lay out their case for who they think did it — right as the police officers arrive with handcuffs.
In the end, Season 2 doesn’t feel as fresh or rewarding as Season 1, but it’s still an enjoyable ride where I guarantee you won’t guess the ending (the reveal is too layered with twists and turns to predict). I don’t know how many more seasons Apple can do. After all, how many more events will need afterparties? However, I’m sure I will continue to watch, especially if the writers can continue to find unique film genres and auteur styles to explore.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Lisa Ann Walter at Bethesda Theater (Part 1) ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” was supposed to return for a third season this month, but was delayed by the ongoing Hollywood writers and actors’ strikes.
In the meantime, one of that show’s stars, Lisa Ann Walter, returns home to Bethesda Theater for two standup shows on Sunday, Sept. 17.
“When my publicist said you’re going to talk to WTOP, which is a radio station in D.C., I was like I know!” Walter told WTOP. “We’ll do a recap of what’s happening if the (football) game is still going. I’m a big Commanders fan — or whatever they’re gonna be called by the time I come do the show, could be anything! … When you tell people out here (in Hollywood) like ‘Who’s your team?’, for years it was pretty shamefaced, but now we have hope.”
Her standup gigs come just a few months after grand marshaling D.C.’s National Cherry Blossom Parade.
“I really felt like a returning hero,” Walter said. “I’m literally doing what I saw people do at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade my entire life. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I had such a good time and everybody was so welcoming.
“It’s beautiful, man. I love coming home. There’s really no place like it in the world. It’s a beautiful city, the people are incredible. I’m so excited to come do standup. I’ve got a lot of people from high school coming.”
Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1963, Walter grew up with her father, who worked for NASA. Her mother was a teacher, which foreshadowed her future role as a blue-collar educator on “Abbott Elementary.”
“Before she did substitute teaching in Montgomery County, she was a regular teacher in Downtown D.C., so I got the bona fides of the Melissa Schemmenti character from my mom,” Walter said.
“Her first job was a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. … They let them stay home during the harvest, like it was country. Then she totally swung the other direction in D.C. and was the only white teacher in the school. It was very similar to the Schemmenti experience.”
Her mom eventually taught at Takoma Park Junior High, where Lisa Ann attended before graduating from Montgomery Blair High School in 1979. In fact, Blair’s old school building on Wayne Avenue had the area’s largest proscenium stage until the Kennedy Center was built. There, she performed in many of the school’s theatrical productions.
“Go Blazers!” Walter said. “My first year, I did the musical, which was ‘The Music Man,’ … then I did their nonmusical play ’10 Nights in a Barroom.’ … Then I didn’t do ‘My Fair Lady’ because I had mono. … Then my junior year we did ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and I played Yente and brought the house down. I got a standing ovation.
On her experience with ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ she said “I think that’s the show that made me say, ‘I want to do this my whole life. I want to make people feel, laugh and cry.'”
After high school, Walter went on to earn her theater degree from Catholic University in D.C. in 1983.
“Catholic I went to purposely because they had such a prestigious theater department, one of the best in the country that’s not actually a theater school, like Juilliard,” Walter said. “I went down by myself on the brand new subway to visit. It was a beautiful spring day, I’m walking past (The Basilica) on the way to the drama department and I chose (to attend).”
“I paid for it myself,” she added. “Waited tables five days a week at the Bethesda Country Club.”
While at Catholic, she met a young Ed Norton, whose grandfather James Rouse designed Columbia, Maryland. They reminisced years later when she auditioned for Norton’s directorial debut “Keeping the Faith” (2000).
“He looked at my resume and he goes, ‘Oh, you went to Catholic,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah.’ … He goes, ‘I did a play there when I was a kid, you probably never heard of it.’ I looked at him and I went, ‘Wait a minute. Was it a play they were trying out at Catholic and brought to Broadway called ‘Werewolf?’ He goes, ‘Oh my God, how did you know that?’ I go, ‘You were the little kid in it! I ran sound my freshman year and I actually drove you home to Columbia twice!'”
After receiving “the best reviews” of her life in Arena Stage’s summer production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Walter moved to New York City and found a knack for standup comedy. Her career skyrocketed.
“I was the only person as young as we were having made a baby,” Walter said. “I went on stage and started talking about being a mother and being married. It was a very usual experience for a standup, and I got really popular really quickly. I started headlining within about a year and a half. Within six months of starting standup, I was doing it on TV on ‘It’s Showtime at The Apollo’ and killing. I did that for seven years actually.”
Moving to Hollywood, she starred in TV shows like Fox’s “My Wildest Dreams” and ABC’s “Life’s Work.” On the big screen, she played Whoopi Goldberg sidekick in “Eddie” (1996) and Lindsay Lohan’s nanny in “The Parent Trap” (1998). She also shined in reality shows, creating Oxygen’s “Dance Your Ass Off,” judging ABC’s “The Next Best Thing: Who is the Greatest Celebrity Impersonator?” and winning a celebrity edition of NBC’s “The Weakest Link.”
Of course, her life changed when she landed a part on “Abbott Elementary,” created by Quinta Brunson.
“She created a show that generations can watch together,” Walter said. “People come up and tell us, ‘I watch with my parents, I watch with my grandparents, my kids and I watch together.’ It was her absolute intention to do that. She saw that there was not a show that grown-ups could watch and not feel like it’s a corny kids’ show but kids loved it, too. Having it start in September was a throwback to the old TV season and you couldn’t wait to watch.”
Their team of Sheryl Lee Ralph, Janelle James, Tyler Williams James, Chris Perfetti and the rest of the cast won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
“It is an incredibly deep bench of talent,” Walter said. “The American public had never heard of Janelle, she was a comic that Quinta knew. …
On the ongoing Hollywood strikes, she said, “we all cannot wait to get back to work. I miss Sheryl so much. She is truly one of my best friends. … We don’t get to see each other! What’s it like when you don’t get to check in with your best friend every day? It hurts. Let’s get this strike settled so I can go back to see my friends. That’s what I want to do.”
The series’ third season was supposed to have started production months ago, but it’s been sidelined by the continuing WGA and SAG strikes. Walter said it’s important to support what the strike is trying to accomplish — even if it disrupts the industry in the short-term.
“Quinta really is a stalwart supporter of the union,” Walter said. “Whenever (the writers) clear their strike up, it’ll be two months until we (actors) get started. … It’s just about getting a little share of these enormous, record, billion-dollar profits of the streaming services. … It would be easy to solve. People in charge of the corporations have to be willing to give up a fraction. … If you do the math, less than 1% of their revenue could end all of this.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Fairfax Restaurant Week (Part 1) Are you bummed that D.C. Restaurant Week is over? Turn that frown and fork upside-down.
Fairfax City Restaurant Week returns to Northern Virginia now through Sunday, Sept. 10.
“Restaurant Week in Fairfax City is a great way to showcase the many cuisines represented by talented restaurateurs both locally grown and from around the world,” Fairfax City Mayor Catherine Read said. “It’s an invitation to sample and dine in the company of friends, inside or outside, in every corner of our city. It’s one of my favorite weeks of the year.”
This year marks the sixth overall event and just the second time it’s been held in the summer.
“It was just so popular that the restaurant community asked us to do it again in the summer,” director of Economic Development Christopher Bruno told WTOP. “When we started the program, we had 14 restaurants in the mix. … Now we have 33 restaurants participating this season and many of them are Fairfax City’s finest eating destinations, which has really helped us establish Fairfax City as a regional dining destination in the area.”
First-time participants this summer include Commonwealth Brewing Company, Mackenzie’s Tunes & Tonics, My Empanadas, Ned’s New England Deck and Old Dominion Pizza Company, which Bruno said he “highly recommends.”
Returning participants include Audacious Ale Works, Baku Delicious, Bellissimo, Bollywood Bistro, Cameron’s Coffee & Chocolates, Capital Ale House, Coyote Grille, Curry Mantra, Draper’s Steak & Seafood, Dolce Vita, El Pollo Rico, Hamrock’s, Jas & Fam Caribbean Flavor, Kim’s Pho Kitchen & Bar, Marco’s Pizza, Marumen, Meokja Meokja, Merkado Mexican Grill & Bar, ONE Bar & Grill, Ornery Beer Company Public House, Patriots Pub and Grill, PJ Skidoos, Red Hot & Blue, Roots Natural Kitchen, The Auld Shebeen, The Wine House and Vivi Bubble Tea.
“Baku Delicious is one of the only Azerbaijani establishments in the region,” Bruno said. “One of my personal favorites is The Wine House, highly recommend the braised short rib. We also have Fairfax traditions: PJ Skidoos, Patriots Pub and Grill. … Some of the best chicken in our region is at El Pollo Rico, some of the best Italian food is at Dolce Vita, there’s great Indian food at Bollywood Bistro and you can’t miss the steak and seafood at Draper’s.”
Participating restaurants will offer prix fixe menu experiences serving several courses at set prices of $25 for brunch or lunch and $40 for dinner, while other specialty restaurants will offer a “Two for $10” deal.
“It provides an opportunity for people who are really invested in food, they’re foodies themselves, they’re maybe interested in the Instagrammable moments, but it’s also just a good opportunity for residents of the city to go out and have a good meal,” Bruno said. “I would really invite anyone to come into Fairfax City and connect with new restaurants that they’ve never even heard of and I can almost guarantee that they will be coming back for more.”
From the restaurants’ perspective, it means a nice late-summer boom for business.
“The reason our restaurants love this program is because they notice a significant uptick in visitors,” Bruno said. “First-time visitors are specifically great because it connects them with new diners, which is very important. As a city, generally speaking, we see upwards of a couple of million dollars of revenue generated. … That really highlights the importance of this type of program in supporting the restaurant and culinary community in our city.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'The Hill' (Part 1) He wrote two of the greatest sports movies of all time in “Hoosiers” (1986) and “Rudy” (1993) before receiving mixed reviews for less successful efforts like “The Game of Their Lives” (2005) and “My All American” (2015).
Now, screenwriter Angelo Pizzo once again returns to his favorite genre with the new baseball biopic “The Hill,” which is the definition of a faith-based, feel-good sports flick, for better and for worse — but mostly for the better if you’re a parent simply looking for teachable moments in a heartwarming family night out at the movies.
Based on a true story, the film follows the incredible true story of Rickey Hill, who was born in Fort Worth, Texas, with a degenerative spinal disease. Wearing leg braces, the resilient kid hits rocks with a stick and dreams of playing baseball, which his baptist preacher father forbids because it supposedly isn’t God’s plan. Defying his dad’s strict Bible thumping, Rickey keeps the faith and hones his God-given talents to shock the world as a power hitter.
The film hinges on the empathetic performances of both Jesse Berry (“Good Trouble”) as Young Rickey and Colin Ford (“We Bought a Zoo”) as Adult Rickey. They show genuine hurt each time Rickey’s baseball dreams are dashed by his father, played with raw emotion by veteran Dennis Quaid, who’s made a career of inspirational sports flicks with “Breaking Away” (1979), “Any Given Sunday” (1999), “The Rookie” (2002) and “The Express” (2008).
Like “Field of Dreams” (1989), this is a father-son tale as Pizzo borrows the “Rudy” theme of the father never watching his son play until the end. Instead, Rickey must lean on his girlfriend (Mila Harris/Siena Bjornerud), his grandmother (Bonnie Bedelia, “Heart Like a Wheel”), a local resident (country singer Randy Houser) and mother (Joelle Carter, “Justified”), who tells her misguided evangelical husband, “How many miracles do you need?”
Cowriting with Scott Marshall Smith (“Men of Honor,” “When the Games Stands Tall”), Pizzo refreshingly devotes most of the movie to Hill’s childhood. It’s not until the midpoint that we finally jump to him as a young adult on the diamond. In fact, the entire first hour is Rickey as a kid in leg braces, inviting comparisons to “Forrest Gump” (1994). Let’s face it, it’s hard to top Young Forrest’s braces flying to pieces as Jenny shouts “Run, Forrest, Run!”
While “Gump” straddled the line of art (Oscar Best Picture) and entertainment (No. 2 grosser of 1994), “The Hill” will divide critics and audiences. Critics may find the nostalgic glow corny and the on-the-nose dialogue unrealistic as characters say exactly what they’re thinking, but families seeking a PG sports flick don’t really care about that. They’re glad to hear a heartwarming message delivered plainly for their kids to absorb the positive life lessons.
Faith-based audiences will particularly enjoy “The Hill,” in movie theaters around the same time that “God. Family. Football.” hits Amazon Freevee. The most powerful sequence comes when Quaid gives Young Rickey an ultimatum to choose between God’s plan or his own plan. The next scene, Young Rickey says he chooses both: that God’s plan is for him to play baseball, quoting a Bible verse and drawing a cross connecting the four bases of a ball diamond.
This would have been more effective if Pizzo waited until the second scene for Young Rickey to quote the Bible verse; as written, Young Rickey quotes scripture in both the ultimatum scene and the decision scene, which slightly undercuts the power of the setup and payoff. Such screenwriter nitpicking is saved by director Jeff Celentano, who dissolves from the ball-diamond sketch to Rickey’s bat drawing a cross in the dirt of the batter’s box.
Thankfully, the movie saves the best for last with the arrival of Scott Glenn, known for “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and “The Right Stuff” (1983), the latter of which also starred Quaid. In “The Hill,” Glenn plays Red Murff, the MLB scout holding tryouts as the final obstacle blocking Rickey’s dreams. “I’m not just looking for guys who play baseball, I’m looking for baseball players,” he says with grit like Burgess Meredith’s Mick in “Rocky” (1976).
The tryout sequence is undeniably fun as Rickey hits dingers over the fence and into an adjacent stadium, landing like bombs next to hotshot players who already made the cut. Hall of Famer John Smoltz even makes a cameo as the stadium announcer for a climax that admirably ends in a unique way from other sports flicks. It’s not a cliche championship game, it’s a scrimmage with Rickey as a double DH. His jersey No. 11 is a nice hint to the finish.
As the stadium lights fade on a reconciled father and son like “Field of Dreams,” you can’t help but smile. Yes, it’s a “perfect” Hollywood ending, but call me a sucker for inspirational sports flicks. Sometimes you have to turn off your academic “film school” brain and tap into your heart. In other words, I can’t watch a movie like this and give it a bad grade because I know how much it will mean to so many people — and how much it actually moved me.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews September entertainment around DC (Part 1) The end of summer and the beginning of fall is a prime time for fun local events.
Behold, your September Entertainment Guide of fun events around the D.C. area.
September Entertainment Guide
Sept. 1: Adam Ferrara at Bethesda Theatre
Sept. 1-2: Sting at Wolf Trap
Sept. 1-2: Raheem DeVaughn at The Birchmere
Sept. 1-3: D.C. Jazz Festival
Sept. 1-3: Tony Rock at DC Improv
Sept. 1-16: “Sweat” at Keegan Theatre
Sept. 1-17: “The Bridges of Madison County” at Signature Theatre
Sept. 1-24: “Moulin Rouge!” at Kennedy Center
Sept. 1-24: “Ink” at Round House Theatre (co-produced by Olney Theatre)
Sept. 1-Oct. 7: “Monumental Travesties” by Mosaic Theatre
Sept. 1-Oct. 22: “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” at Imagination Stage
Sept. 1-Nov. 5: “Sister Act” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Sept. 2: ZZ Top & Lynyrd Skynyrd at Merriweather
Sept. 2: 38 Special at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 2: Oh He Dead at 9:30 Club
Sept. 2: Diplo at Echostage
Sept. 3: Lil Baby at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 3: NSO Free Labor Day Concert outside U.S. Capitol
Sept. 4-10: Fairfax City Restaurant Week
Sept. 5-Oct. 8: “Evita” at Shakespeare Theatre Company
Sept. 6: Corinne Bailey Rae at Lincoln Theatre
Sept. 6: “The Afterparty” Season 2 finale on Apple TV+
Sept. 6-Oct. 22: Cirque du Soleil’s “ECHO” in Tysons
Sept. 7: Arctic Monkeys at Merriweather
Sept. 7-10: James Taylor at Wolf Trap
Sept. 7-Oct. 1: “Bathing in Moonlight” at GALA Hispanic Theatre
Sept. 8: Billy Idol at The Anthem
Sept. 8: Leela James at Warner Theatre
Sept. 8: Joan Jett & The Blackhearts at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 8: “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” in movie theaters
Sept. 8: “Self Reliance” premieres on Hulu
Sept. 8: Ben Folds “DECLASSIFIED” at Kennedy Center
Sept. 8-10: “Grease with a Side of Mumbo Sauce” at Lincoln Theatre
Sept. 8-10: District Improv Festival at Atlas Performing Arts Center
Sept. 9: Bruce Springsteen at Camden Yards
Sept. 9: Robert Glasper at Wolf Trap
Sept. 9: John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band at The Hamilton
Sept. 9: George Thorogood at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 9: Rosslyn Jazz Festival
Sept. 10: Papa Roach at Rams Head Baltimore
Sept. 10: Beck & Phoenix at Merriweather
Sept. 10: The Wailers at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 10: Tommy James & The Shondells at Weinberg Center
Sept. 11: Greta Van Fleet at Capital One Arena
Sept. 11-12: Eddie Izzard at Warner Theatre
Sept. 11-Oct. 8: “My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
Sept. 12: Senses Fail at Baltimore Soundstage
Sept. 12-Oct. 22: “King of the Yees” at Signature Theatre
Sept. 13: Spoon at The Atlantis
Sept. 13: The Walkmen at Lincoln Theatre
Sept. 13: The Wailers at Tally Ho Theatre
Sept. 13: Duran Duran at Capital One Arena
Sept. 13: “Rocky: In Concert” with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Merriweather
Sept. 13: “Espejos: Clean” at Studio Theatre
Sept. 13-17: Anne Arundel County Fair
Sept. 14: The Postal Service & Death Cab for Cutie at Merriweather
Sept. 14: Michelle Branch at Maryland Hall in Annapolis
Sept. 14: Squeeze at Wolf Trap
Sept. 14-15: Spoon at 9:30 Club
Sept. 14-14: Miguel Zenon at Blues Alley
Sept. 14-17: American Songwriters Festival in Annapolis
Sept. 15: Everclear & The Ataris at The Fillmore
Sept. 15: Blondie at Annapolis City Dock
Sept. 15: Pantera at Jiffy Lube Live
Sept. 15: Colin Jost & Michael Che at DAR Constitution Hall
Sept. 15: Gin Blossoms, Sugar Ray, Tonic & Fastball at The Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 15: Brett Young at Camden Yards
Sept. 15: Joe Gatto at Capital One Hall
Sept. 15-16: Joshua Bell with NSO at Kennedy Center
Sept. 15-17: Kevin Nealon at DC Comedy Loft
Sept. 15-23: The Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 16: Village at Leesburg’s Pet Festival
Sept. 16: H Street Festival
Sept. 16: Marty Stuart at Maryland Hall in Annapolis
Sept. 16: Cherry Poppin Daddies at State Theatre
Sept. 16: Patti Smith at The Anthem
Sept. 16: Bobby Bones at Warner Theatre
Sept. 16: National Dance Day at Kennedy Center
Sept. 17: Kix at Merriweather
Sept. 17: Becky G at Capital One Hall
Sept. 17: Lisa Ann Walter at Bethesda Theater
Sept. 17: LeAnn Rimes at Annapolis City Dock
Sept. 17: Patty Griffin at Maryland Hall in Annapolis
Sept. 17: Ray LaMontagne at Wolf Trap
Sept. 17: Billy Idol at The Atlantis
Sept. 17: “Yellowstone” network premiere on CBS
Sept. 18: Ariana DeBose headlines “Songs for Hope” at Kennedy Center
Sept. 18: Patty Griffin at The Birchmere
Sept. 19: The Lemonheads at 9:30 Club
Sept. 19: Macklemore at The Anthem
Sept. 19: 50 Cent at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 19: Saliva & Drowning Pool at Rams Head Baltimore
Sept. 20: The Chicks at Merriweather
Sept. 20: Leslie Jones at Sixth & I
Sept. 20: Peter Gabriel at Capital One Arena
Sept. 20: Judy Collins & Madeline Peyroux at Kennedy Center
Sept. 20-24: D.C. Shorts Film Festival
Sept. 21: Ben Schwartz at The Anthem
Sept. 21: Bastille at The Atlantis
Sept. 21: Ben Folds with NSO at Kennedy Center
Sept. 21: Judy Garland Centennial at Strathmore
Sept. 21: Elle King at The Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 21: Toad the Wet Sprocket at Weinberg Center
Sept. 21-24: Gerald Albright at Blues Alley
Sept. 21-Oct. 8: Theatre Washington presents Theatre Week
Sept. 29-Oct. 29: “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” at Adventure Theatre
Sept. 22: Jay Pharoah at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 22: Jo Dee Messina & Tracy Byrd at The Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 22: Russell Dickerson at The Fillmore
Sept. 22: Patton Oswalt at The Birchmere
Sept. 22: Jonas Brothers at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 22: Rick Ross, Monica, Black Alley & Kenny Burns at The Anthem
Sept. 22-Oct. 8: “Into the Woods” by The Arlington Players
Sept. 22-Oct. 15: “Something Moving” at Ford’s Theatre
Sept. 23: Walker Hayes at The Great Frederick Fair
Sept. 23: The Jonas Brothers at Capital One Arena
Sept. 23: Turnpike Troubadours at The Anthem
Sept. 23: Craig Morgan at Capital One Hall
Sept. 23: Dana Carvey at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Sept. 23: “The Sopranos” cast at Capital Turnaround
Sept. 23: 10,000 Maniacs at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 23-30: “The Wiz” at The Hippodrome
Sept. 24: Lita Ford at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 24-25: Raphael Saadiq at MGM National Harbor
Sept. 24-25: Janelle Monae at The Anthem
Sept. 26: Wu-Tang Clan at Capital One Arena
Sept. 26: Flogging Molly at The Fillmore
Sept. 26: John Hiatt at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 27: Aerosmith at Capital One Arena
Sept. 27-Oct. 29: “The Brothers Paranormal” at Olney Theatre
Sept. 28: Itzhak Perlman at Strathmore
Sept. 28: SZA at CFG Bank Arena
Sept. 28-30: Martin Sheen & Melissa Fitzgerald’s “Love Letters” at Kennedy Center
Sept. 29: “Fireside Chat with DJ Kool Herc & Cindy Campbell” at Kennedy Center
Sept. 29: “Back to the Yards” at The Yards D.C.
Sept. 29: Bruce Springsteen at Nats Park
Sept. 29: Maggie Rogers at The Atlantis
Sept. 29-30: The Whispers at The Birchmere
Sept. 29-30: “The Price is Right: Live” at MGM National Harbor
Sept. 29-Oct. 1: Oceans Calling Music Festival in Ocean City
Sept. 29-Nov. 5: “The Tell-Tale Heart” at Synetic Theater
Sept. 30: “Opera in the Outfied” at Nats Park
Sept. 30: Marshall Crenshaw at Rams Head Annapolis
Sept. 10: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” concert at National Theatre
Sept. 30-Oct. 1: “All Things Go” Music Festival at Merriweather
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews September entertainment around DC (Part 2) Source
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'God. Family. Football' on Amazon Freevee (Part 1) A cool breeze brushes across your helmet and shoulder pads, sending a chill down your spine.
Fall leaves crunch under your cleats as you approach glowing Friday night lights in the distance.
A marching band echoes across the bleachers as family and friends root for their community.
There’s truly nothing like high school football, which is officially back this week across the D.C. area!
If you want to binge a TV streaming series to get you jacked up for this weekend, the new six-episode documentary series “God. Family. Football.” premieres this Friday, Sept. 1, on Amazon Freevee.
Executive produced by Russell Wilson, the series follows Evangel Christian Academy in Shreveport, Louisiana, a team that’s won 14 state championships and one national title before plummeting to a winless 0-9 season in 2020.
The main character is faith-driven head coach Denny Duron, a former pro player turned legendary high school coach, who comes out of retirement at 70 to lead the team he founded at a school built by his parents, Rodney and Frances Duron. His optimism is refreshing, his life lessons are admirable and his enthusiasm is contagious, showing up with a coffee thermos at midnight to watch construction crews pour concrete for his stadium’s new turf field.
The turf helps his offense’s aerial attack by the Fulghum brothers, Peyton (quarterback) and Parker (receiver), who struggle in the mud. They’re raised by their dance-instructor mom because their dad, NFL quarterback Josh Booty, has been absent. They rebuke his recent appearances, saying they could have used his help 10 years ago, earning sympathy from audiences to counter barbershop chirping that the QB favors throwing to his brother.
Most interesting is backup quarterback Rodrigo “Ro” Ballesteros from Cancun, Mexico, who joins the team on a one-year foreign-exchange program. Nicknamed the “Cancun Cannon,” Ro performs under pressure and bonds with Peyton during a fishing trip, lamenting that he has to go back to Mexico after the season and insisting that they’ll remain friends for life. You’ll tear up when Ro hugs his parents, who shake Peyton’s hand on the sidelines.
These bonds are underscored by Black assistant coach Fabian Carter, who says racism melts away when you’re in a football huddle; it’s just you and your brothers protecting each other’s backs. However, his day job reminds him of the prejudices of the outside world when he takes his food truck to Florida, choking up as he describes having “the talk” with his kids that they might be treated differently because of their skin tone.
Off the field, we learn about the lives of the various teenagers. Evangel’s defensive star takes his cheerleader girlfriend on a romantic picnic in a cornfield, but they worry what’s going to happen when she goes off to college. Meanwhile, an offensive lineman goes on a blind date disguised as a fishing trip but fills the tackle box with candy and an invite to the homecoming dance, which crowns all the guys and girls as homecoming kings and queens.
The drama of their personal lives is enough to keep you watching even if you don’t like football, though the series won’t win any converts for those who already think the sport is too violent. Injuries play a major role, particularly concussions, as multiple players are carted off the field after “getting their bell rung.” In a scary moment, one kid even collapses on the field during the closing prayer. The message for parents is clear: play at your own risk.
Either way, the action is exciting as filmmaker Aaron Benward shows actual game footage with the scoreboard flashing up on the screen. He also makes the unique choice of intercutting sit-down interviews with coaches and players, who clearly know the results of the game but try to speak in the present tense about the action we’re watching. Mostly, this makes for an immersive experience, but at times, it feels forced, telegraphing the outcome.
It’s a shame the camera crew didn’t randomly select a better season to cover. The sixth and final episode builds to the last game of the regular season before cramming the playoffs into a closing montage. It’s an anti-climactic conclusion for an otherwise compelling series, though I’d absolutely watch a second season if it comes back, because I now care about these players and am fully invested to see how this team does going forward.
In the end, that’s all that really matters, and on that front, “God. Family. Football.” crosses the goal line.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Bridges of Madison County' at Signature Theatre (Part 1) Clint Eastwood was known for Oscar-worthy Western films when he directed himself across from Meryl Streep in the tragic romance “The Bridges of Madison County” (1995), based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Robert James Waller and adapted by Richard LaGravenese, future screenwriter of “The Notebook” (2004).
In 2014, musical theater genius Jason Robert Brown adapted the story into a Broadway musical, which is currently being staged at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, running now through Sept. 17.
“The show didn’t run very long on Broadway, but because of the score and the cast, it almost has this iconic reputation; people are like, ‘Ah! ‘The Bridges of Madison County!'” actor Mark Evans told WTOP.
“There are people coming to see our show who know nothing about the story and fall in love with it. There are also people coming to the show who have very high levels of expectations and, fortunately, we don’t disappoint.”
The story follows Francesca Johnson, a lonely housewife in 1960s Madison County, Iowa. When her husband and kids leave town to attend the state fair for the weekend, she strikes up a forbidden romance with Robert Kincaid, a traveling National Geographic photographer taking pictures of the area’s covered bridges.
“Francesca (played by Erin Davie) is an Italian woman who moved to Iowa,” Evans said.
“My character … has been assigned to go to their county and take pictures of the famous covered bridges and he can’t find the seventh of the seven bridges, so he stops by the farm to ask for directions. Long story short, they have this profound, illustrious love affair that changes the course of each of their lives quite dramatically.”
The drama of the novel and film might seem like a challenge to convert into a musical, but the Broadway show boasted a book by Pulitzer Prize playwright Marsha Norman (“The Color Purple,” “The Secret Garden”). The result earned four Tony nods, starring Kelli O’Hara (“The King & I”) and Steven Pasquale (“Rescue Me”).
“I remember seeing the original Broadway production 10 years ago and was blown away,” Evans said.
“Brown wrote the show as a vehicle for Kelli O’Hara, for her beautiful soprano voice. I was actually watching it signed off of another show on medical vocal rest for a week, so to see something that had such a profound effect on me, I was like, ‘This is the kind of storytelling I want to do.’ … It’s a thrill to be able to sing this score.”
The show features Tony Award-winning music by Brown, who previously won the Tony Award for Best Original Score for “Parade” (1999) and two Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics for “The Last Five Years” (2002), which cleverly moved forward and backward at the same time.
“There’s so much you can do to establish tone with the decision of what instrument is used,” Evans said.
“There’s a lot of cello that has this haunting, painful sound. … The music never goes where you expect it to go, so it keeps you invested. When you have these beautiful orchestrations supporting the most profound lyrics … he’s the modern-day Stephen Sondheim in my opinion. It’s one of the greatest scores of the last decade.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Bridges of Madison County' at Signature Theatre (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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Sting will rock Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, on Friday, Sept. 1 and Saturday, Sept. 2.
The Black Broadway production company that previously staged “The Giz” at Lincoln Theatre now brings a D.C.-based spin on the musical “Grease” from Sept. 8-10.
Get ready for five toe-tapping days with 120 concerts in over 12 venues in the nation's capital. The 19th annual D.C. Jazz Festival returns this Wednesday, Aug. 30,
The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington kicks off D.C. Restaurant Week on Monday. That means the José Andrés Group is breaking out plenty of deals and dishes for your enjoyment.
The local nonprofit "Story Tapestries" is ramping up efforts to inspire kids' creativity for the first day of school.
Gal Gadot doesn't need the lasso and gold bracelets to kick butt thanks to the Netflix original film "Heart of Stone," an action flick that doesn't really do anything new, but provides a roller coaster two hours, if you can follow the complicated plot.
Visitors are enjoying six interactive art installations across the National Mall now through Sept. 18.
The Whoopi Goldberg comedy flick was one of the Top 3 highest grossing movies of 1992. The stage version comes to Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia, Maryland, Aug. 25 through Nov. 5.
"I absolutely love playing in D.C." Renowned Grammy winner Corinne Bailey Rae returns to the nation's capital for a live show on Sept. 6 to play songs from her new album.
Season 1 of "Good Omens" was refreshingly original with Michael Sheen as cheery angel Aziraphale and David Tennant as devious demon Crowley.
For decades, they've made audiences laugh on the improv comedy TV series "Whose Line is it Anyway?" This Saturday, Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood are “Scared Scriptless” at Strathmore in Bethesda.
Get to know new Symphony Orchestra of Northern Virginia music director Ethan Lolley at a meet-and-greet at Lost Boy Cider in Alexandria, Virginia, on Tuesday.
He made us laugh on TV's "In Living Color" and in movies like Spike Lee's "Bamboozled." This Thursday night, Tommy Davidson comes home to Bethesda Theater, formerly dubbed Bethesda Blues & Jazz.
Tickets go on sale this Friday for "WrestleMania 40" next spring in Philadelphia, so folks in the D.C. area can start planning a fun road trip that will take less than two hours to drive 100 miles from Baltimore to Philly!
On Thursday, staffers sliced onions, shucked corn, cooked shrimp and even sang behind the scenes at the third annual Family Reunion, a four-day food festival at the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg, Virginia.
He wrote and sang dozens of iconic classic-rock hits with his band Creedence Clearwater Revival. This weekend, the legendary singer-songwriter John Fogerty rocks Wolf Trap on Saturday, Aug. 19.
Aaron Sorkin's Broadway adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird" visits the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. now through Aug. 27.
Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.” You know her as the self-proclaimed psychic…
This month marks the 50th anniversary of hip hop. You can celebrate with the "Masters of the Mic: Hip Hop 50 Tour" at Wolf Trap in Virginia on Thursday.
The D.C. nonprofit Food & Friends will host the 30th anniversary of its signature dinner and auction fundraiser Chef’s Best at the Marriott Marquis on Massachusetts Avenue on Monday, Aug. 21.
"Full Circle," a six-episode miniseries streaming only on Max explores the botched kidnapping of a wealthy couple's son, uncovering long-held secrets that connect multiple characters in present-day New York City.
Movies will screen in person this Friday, Aug. 18, and Saturday, Aug. 19, then stream virtually through Aug. 30.
'The Beanie Bubble' documents Ty Warner and his founding of the company behind Beanie Babies. WTOP's Jason Fraley has a review.
All generations are invited to Jethro Tull's "Seven Decades Tour" at Wolf Trap in Virginia on Aug. 24.
The acclaimed stage version of "Moulin Rouge" arrives at the Kennedy Center now through Sept. 24.
Last year's inaugural Hip-Hop Block Party with DJ Spinderella was such a success that it's returning for round two this weekend in D.C. The free event is sold out, but you can watch the livestream at home.
The delightful Hulu comedy series "Only Murders in the Building" returns for Season 3 on Tuesday with the first two episodes dropping together before moving to weekly installments through Oct. 3 in time for Halloween.
The founder of D.C.'s Drive-In at Union Market hopes that people's reignited passion for movie theaters will spill over to a classic form of moviegoing.
Rapper 50 Cent takes the stage at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia, as his farewell jaunt "The Final Lap Tour" ceremoniously marks the 20th anniversary of his seminal hip-hop album "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" (2003).
"The Play That Goes Wrong" enters its final week at the Kennedy Center now through Aug. 13.
This Saturday night, Russell Peters cracks up MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" hopes to bring families to movie theaters.
"Heartstopper" (Netflix) returns for its second season this Thursday. The first season earned high marks as one of the most believable coming-of-age romances that you'll ever see.
Beyoncé performed at the Super Bowl Halftime Show ten years ago. This Saturday and Sunday, she brings her "Renaissance Tour" to FedEx Field.
"Barbie" is now the third-highest grossing movie of the year in global box office. It's now chasing two mega blockbusters that finally drop on streaming this week.
One of the biggest rock bands of the 1990s and 2000s is about to "slide" right into Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia this Friday night.
The summer is heating up with plenty to do around the nation's capital. Here's a list of them on WTOP's August entertainment guide.
He was a teen idol who became a hit musician and TV personality with his family and on his own. But did you know that he also takes credit for launching "Star Wars," Britney Spears and Beyonce?
The Chicks will be rocking live at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, on Wednesday.
Netflix's new movie called "They Cloned Tyrone" is about three people investigating a government cloning conspiracy.
It earned a whopping 12 Tony Award nominations on Broadway, winning five including Best Musical of 2015, before going on tour. Now, D.C. gets another chance to witness it as Studio Theatre stages "Fun Home."
Elle King is ready to entertain fans in Solomons, Maryland and Charles Town, West Virginia.
Amazon Prime recently dropped all seven episodes of "I'm a Virgo," proving that Boots Riley is one of the wildest, most creative filmmakers today when it comes to dynamic visuals and searing social commentary.
This Wednesday night, the legendary Carlos Santana rocks MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland. First, he discusses his Grammy-winning career on "Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley."
Wootton High School graduate Myles Frost comes home to perform with the National Symphony Orchestra for the symphonic world premiere of "RENT in Concert" at D.C.'s Kennedy Center Wednesday through Friday.
"Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" are both open in movie theaters as moviegoers nationwide now face a cinematic conundrum affectionately known as "Barbenheimer."
The inaugural D.C. South Asian Music Festival launches this weekend with three nights this Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Broadway star and two-time Tony nominee Laura Osnes will be performing a special cabaret concert called "A Little Bit of Broadway and All That Jazz" at Maryland Hall on Saturday, July 29.
Steven Spielberg's iconic blockbuster "Jurassic Park" (1993) celebrates its 30th anniversary this summer. This Saturday, the National Symphony Orchestra performs the score live for a screening at Wolf Trap.
NFL great Vernon Davis is releasing his debut rap album “Showtime" under the stage name Vern, in collaboration with fellow D.C. native and multiplatinum music producer Tone P for District Funk Records.
D.C. actor Ed Gero, who's known for starring in Netflix's "House of Cards" and AMC's "Turn," joined WTOP to explain why his Screen Actors Guild is on strike.
They've been making their home turf of Montgomery County, Maryland, proud for the past 30 years.
You've read his words on the page, now you'll see them on the stage. Dr. Seuss' rhymes come to life in "Seussical: The Musical" at Keegan Theatre in D.C. now through July 22.
Olney Theatre Center is screening weekly outdoor movies at the Root Family Stage on Sundays at 8:30 p.m.
The festival has hosted hip-hop and R&B megastars before they exploded — names like Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Lil Wayne, Erykah Badu, Teyana Taylor, Anderson. Paak, Lil Baby, H.E.R., Migos and the late Nipsey Hussle.
British rockers The Struts return to D.C. for a sold-out show at 9:30 Club on Sunday, followed by another sold-out show on July 23 at The Atlantis.
Since launching in 2019, Apple TV+ has become a source of comedy with "Ted Lasso," "Trying," "Shrinking" and "Platonic."
The D.C. Asian Pacific Film Festival returns for its 23rd year this Thursday through Sunday.
In 2015, she founded Shakespeare Opera Theatre to combine her dual passions of opera and Shakespeare, but no one initially understood her vision.
Former "American Idol" champ Taylor Hicks is back with his first new music in 14 years. His newest single is called “Teach Me to Dance” off his upcoming album “Porch Swing."
The 12th annual PBS Short Film Festival returns to the nation's capital for your enlightenment and enjoyment.
In "Meet the Parents," Ben Stiller hilariously discovered that future father-in-law Robert De Niro was an ex-CIA agent. This weekend, the in-laws turn out to be nefarious bank robbers in the Netflix original comedy flick "The Out-Laws."
Loosely based on the life and career of NBA champion Kevin Durant, Apple TV's "Swagger" follows Jace Carson, a 14-year-old phenom from the D.C. region playing AAU hoops while navigating growing up and budding relationships.
Based on Hugh Howey's self-published "Wool" novels (2011-2013), the series is set in a dystopian future after a cataclysmic event apparently ruined Earth's atmosphere.
If you're "motorin'" around the Beltway and whine down your car window, you might hear the sound of power ballads echoing across Tysons. Night Ranger will rock on Friday night as part of the band's 40th anniversary tour.
Screenings will be held Thursdays at sundown starting July 6 with the Marvel superhero blockbuster "Iron Man" (2008), which just entered the National Film Registry in 2022.
The Fourth of July is in the rear view, but there's still plenty to do in D.C. this summer. Here's WTOP's July entertainment guide.
Are you hoping to make this a four-day weekend to celebrate the Fourth of July? Check out the musical revival of "1776" at the Kennedy Center now through July 16.
Prolific singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant will be performing a pair of concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center Opera House this Friday and Saturday.
This Fourth of July, Alfonso Ribeiro hosts “A Capitol Fourth”; the concert and fireworks start at 8 p.m. on PBS.
"It's always special to be in the capital of our country, and we're raring to go." Five for Fighting cross-checks The Anthem at The Wharf in D.C. on Wednesday, July 5.
Are you looking for a new show to watch now that “Succession,” “Barry" and “Ted Lasso" are over? Every day this week, WTOP's Jason Fraley is counting down the best new TV series in 2023 so far.
She had a prolific run teaching theater arts at Oakton High School, and on Monday night, Vanessa Lock Gelinas will receive the Inspiring Teacher Award at The Jimmy Awards in New York City.
Season 2 of "The Bear" dropped all 10 episodes on Hulu on Thursday, and while you are free to binge the entire 10-course meal, I prefer to savor these episodes in multiple sittings because I respected Season 1 so much.
Jason Mraz's new album, "Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride," arrives on Friday before he returns for an upcoming concert at Wolf Trap in Virginia on Aug. 6.
"All of the venues are within walking distance, so we've centered the festival in historic downtown Frederick." The seventh annual Frederick Jazz Festival returns this Saturday and Sunday.
It's time to blow out your flip-flop! Jimmy Buffett's "Escape to Margaritaville" is now at Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia, Maryland, through Aug. 20.
She memorably sang “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” on the iconic soundtrack of “Footloose” (1984). This Saturday, Deniece Williams performs live in Maryland.
Brandi Carlile will headline the Out & About Festival in Vienna, Virginia this Saturday and Sunday, June 24 and 25.
This Thursday, Talking Heads guitarist Jerry Harrison plays the Lincoln Theatre in D.C. alongside Adrian Belew of King Crimson for the “Remain in Light” tour.
Are you spending your Juneteenth holiday looking for a late Father's Day gift for your own Mufasa?
Renowned a cappella group Straight No Chaser is about to have a banner week in Northern Virginia. The group performs live at Wolf Trap this Wednesday just days before dropping its new album on Friday.
In 2015, Pixar's "Inside Out" helped kids understand such emotions as Joy, Sadness and Fear. This Friday, Pixar's "Elemental" mines a social commentary from natural elements like Fire, Water, Land and Air.
The film co-stars Sasha Calle ("The Young and the Restless"), who makes history as the first Latina to play Supergirl, a.k.a. Kara Zor-El, the powerful Kryptonian who possesses similar superpowers as her cousin Superman.
It’s not every day that a kid from Fairfax, Virginia, gets to hang out with Spider-Man, but 8-year-old Thomas Parobek…
Ziggy Marley is among the performers taking the stage at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, this Saturday and Sunday.
Awesome Con is celebrating 10 years at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, and this year's lineup of celebrity guests includes fun for fans of "The Lord of the Rings."
Bacon Brothers Michael and Kevin return to Rams Head in Annapolis for four shows this Friday and Saturday.
This Thursday, Bert Kreischer brings his "Fully Loaded" comedy tour to the new CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore, Maryland, featuring Dave Attell, Tiffany Haddish, Big Jay Oakerson, Dan Soder, Rich Vos and Tammy Pescatelli.
The inaugural DC/DOX Film Festival launches this week in the District with viewings of over 60 critically acclaimed documentaries from around the world.
Wolf Trap is hosting its third annual "Broadway in the Park" concert this Friday, June 16 at 8 p.m. in Virginia.
"Flamin' Hot" takes a few liberties with the creation of Flamin' Hot Cheetos but still provides an inspiring underdog story. It hits streaming this Friday on Hulu and Disney+.
"The album for me represents these past five years of me trying to learn how to become a better man overall — a better husband, a better father, a better brother, a better son, a better friend."
Get ready for a star-studded lineup of performers singing for LGBTQ+ freedom this Sunday, June 11 at the Capital Pride Concert on three different stages.
The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's Black Classical Acting Ensemble will be performing Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth" outdoors in Ellicott City, Maryland, from June 16 to July 23.
Are you looking for a new comedy to watch now that "Ted Lasso" is over? You might try the new series "Platonic," which drops Episode 5 this Wednesday on Apple TV+.
Watch out for bloody barber shears — the worst pies in London are coming to Shirlington, Virginia!
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the LightReel Film Fest (Part 1) The D.C.-based Black Reel Awards have gained national attention for 23 years, so its founder Tim Gordon is lending its brand to launch the LightReel Film Festival from June 8-10.
“My plan was always to use the credibility and all the contacts that we’ve accrued over two decades of establishing a lot of relationships, (which) will pay off in this film festival,” Gordon told WTOP. “The Black Reel Awards’ mission is saluting African Americans above and below the line, as well as those in the African diaspora, but the LightReel Film Festival is a little different because it’s a BIPOC film festival, so Black, Indigenous, people of color … expanding the tent for others.”
The fourth annual festival spent three years as the Lakefront Film Festival in Columbia, Maryland, but the event is now moving to Northeast D.C. at the Angelika Pop-Up at Union Market.
“Columbia is a beautiful place to live,” Gordon said. “live out here, but I thought the festival needed a larger stage, it needed to be in a larger city — we’re talking about the nation’s capital,” Gordon said. “Coming to partner with the Angelika in Union Market seems to be a great fit. We’re a burgeoning festival, it’s an area that’s been revitalized, it’s very cool and hip. You’ve got a nice base of culture, great food. Us aligning with them is going to really be good for us.”
The lineup kicks off Thursday, June 8, with the horror comedy “The Blackening” at Landmark E Street Cinema.
“‘The Blackening’ is a satire on the myth of whenever you watch horror films from studios that the Black actor is always the first to die, so what do you do when the entire cast is Black?” Gordon said. “It becomes this cute little game about whoever’s the Blackest is the first to go. The audience really responded well when I saw it in person, so I think it’s the type of film that will really play well for audiences. It’s a good film to kick the festival off with.”
The impressive slate continues Friday, June 9, with a special 20th anniversary screening of the crime masterpiece “City of God,” which opened in Brazil in 2002 but made its limited release in the United States in 2003.
“One of my favorites,” Gordon said. “I remember seeing this movie back in 2003 at a theater that no longer exists on Wisconsin Avenue and I was blown away by this multi-generational story that’s based on a true story. … Set in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, you’ve got a story based around two characters, these two kids who grow up, one called Little Z grows up to be this gangster, and the other character grows up to be a photojournalist.”
Friday also brings the Emmy-winning virtual reality experience “The Messy Truth” hosted by Van Jones.
“Less than 10 film festivals in the country have a consistent virtual-reality programming in their festival,” Gordon said. “I connected with a programmer Adrian Rashad Driscoll, the co-founder of Collimation, a VR company. … We’re setting up an area in the lobby of the Angelika that we’re now renaming the VR Lounge. … Part 1 stars Winston Duke, who plays M’Baku in ‘Black Panther,’ then another MCU star, Brie Larson, is the star of Part 2.”
The festival wraps Saturday with the exciting new western “Surrounded,” which premieres nationwide on-demand on June 20, but you can see it at the LightReel Film Festival 10 days early to close out the festival in D.C.
“I watched it yesterday and I think people are going to pleasantly surprised by Letitia Wright, who plays Shuri in ‘Black Panther,’ in this western playing Mo Washington, a woman disguised as a man in the Old West and the journey she goes on co-starring Jamie Bell,” Gordon said. “It is wonderfully shot, it has great production values, it’s directed by Anthony Mandler, and it’s going to be the closing night film in person. I am really excited.”
The festival also has a hybrid option if you’d like to stream 35 other independent films online.
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the LightReel Film Fest (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Hadestown' at National Theatre (Part 1) It earned 14 Tony Award nominations and won eight, including Best Musical on Broadway.
On Tuesday, the acclaimed musical “Hadestown” hits National Theatre in D.C. from June 6 to June 18.
“You all have to check out what truly is a myth in the living flesh, Hadestown,” actress Hannah Whitley told WTOP. “We’ll be here for two weeks and I expect you all to be here. Come see how the world can be! That’s the slogan of the show, but it’s so true. Honestly, I think Hadestown does a beautiful job reflecting what the world could be and what the world is now. Most of the show has that paradox on repeat.”
The story intertwines two mythic tales: King Hades and his wife Persephone, and the young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice (Whitley), taking audiences on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back.
“The story really tells the tale of their two love stories and how they intertwine, how the lovers can learn from each other and ultimately how you can go to hell and back,” Whitley said. “It’s a really fun story based on Greek mythology but absolutely a complete reinvention of the tale. Although it’s a story that’s been told for centuries, it’s also very much about the world we live in today and basically how we can survive 2023 right now.”
The dazzling musical features beguiling melodies by songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, who won the Tony for Best Original Score thanks to numbers like “Road to Hell,” “Way Down Hadestown,” “Chant” and “Wait for Me.”
“I love [‘Road to Hell’], the opening of the show, it’s so much fun and it brings you into the world every night, it’s such a fun start to the show,” Whitley said. “”Wedding Song’ is a bop. ‘When the Chips are Down,’ honestly, walk on the treadmill to that song. I work on the show eight days a week and I’m still listening to it when I work out. … You gotta love ‘Wait for Me,’ I love watching it every night. It’s truly eye candy and the staging on that never gets old.”
Tony-winning director Rachel Chavkin (“Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812”) was born in D.C. and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, but now plunges audiences into depths of the underworld in “Hadestown.”“It looks like an old bar or an old jazz hub,” Whitley said. “It’s actually inspired by Preservation Hall in New Orleans. It’s rustic, homey, mysterious. … It starts off dark and there’s smoke in the air and you’re like, ‘Where are we? Are we at a bar?’ But then as soon as the musicians and actors come on, that stage and that set is filled with life, so even though it’s one central set piece, it makes you feel like you’re in so many different locations.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Hadestown' at National Theatre (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes the winners of the Brandon Victor Dixon Awards (Part 1) It may be Tonys week on Broadway in New York City, but here in the nation’s capital local high school theater got the spotlight at the Brandon Victor Dixon Awards, held Saturday night at National Theatre in D.C.
The ceremony honored local musical theater productions at public, private and charter high schools located within a 25-mile radius of National Theatre.
South Lakes High School in Reston, Va., won for their production of “Bright Star.” (National Theatre)Best Musical went to the South Lakes High School production of the Steve Martin and Edie Brickell penned “Bright Star” in Reston, Virginia.
Best Actor went to Ian Rubin in Roald Dahl’s “Matilda: The Musical” performed by Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland.
Best Actress went to Abby Lyons in the ABBA lovefest that is “Mamma Mia!” performed by the Flint Hill School in Oakton, Virginia.
Abby Lyons (L) of Flint Hill School in Oakton, Virginia, and Ian Rubin (R) of Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, won for Best Actress and Actor, respectively. (National Theatre)The ceremony also handed out three awards for Outstanding Achievement in Technical Theater, awarding Best Costumes to Fairfax High School’s production of “Sister Act,” Best Scenery to Hayfield Secondary School’s production of “Anything Goes,” and Best Choreography to South Lakes High School’s production of “Bright Star.”
Here are all of the nominees for the 2023 Brandon Victor Dixon Awards:
Nominees for Best Actor
- Jonah Uffelman, Fairfax Academy for Communication and the Arts, “Legally Blonde”
- Logan Baker, Fairfax High School, “Sister Act”
- J.P. Howard, Gonzaga College High School, “The Addams Family”
- Aquilles Alius, Hayfield Secondary School, “Anything Goes”
- Carter Elliff, Hayfield Secondary School, “Anything Goes”
- John Poncy, Oakton High School, “Mean Girls”
- James Williams, Our Lady of Good Counsel High School, “Once on This Island”
- August Rivers, South Lakes High School, “Bright Star”
- Noah Tajudeen, W.T. Woodson High School, “Little Shop of Horrors”
- Antonio Amaral, West Potomac High School, “Legally Blonde”
- Ian Rubin, Winston Churchill High School, “Matilda the Musical”
Nominees for Best Actress
- Shiri Cohen, Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, “Hello Dolly”
- Katie Wood, Fairfax Academy for Communication and the Arts, “Legally Blonde”
- Isabella Jackson, Fairfax High School, “Sister Act”
- Abby Lyons, Flint Hill School, “Mamma Mia”
- Helena Williams, Gongaza College High School, “The Addams Family”
- Tess Jannery-Barney, Langley High School, “Urinetown”
- Valeria Morales, Our Lady of Good Counsel, “Once on This Island”
- Abigail Jamison, South Lakes High School, “Bright Star”
Nominees for Outstanding Achievement in Technical Theatre
- Fairfax High School, “Sister Act”
- Hayfield Secondary School, “Anything Goes”
- Our Lady of Good Counsel High School, “Once on This Island”
- South Lakes High School, “Bright Star”
- W.T. Woodson High School, “Little Shop of Horrors”
Nominees for Best Musical
- Fairfax High School, “Sister Act”
- Flint Hill School, “Mamma Mia”
- Our Lady of Good Counsel High School, “Once on This Island”
- South Lakes High School, “Bright Star”
- Winston Churchill High School, “Matilda the Musical”
About the AwardsThe local awards are named after Brandon Victor Dixon of Gaithersburg, Maryland, who earned a Tony nomination for Broadway’s “The Color Purple” (2006), won for “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” (2014) and earned another nomination for “Shuffle Along” (2016).
Dixon also originated the role of Berry Gordy in “Motown: The Musical (2013) and played Judas in NBC’s “Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert” (2018), earning both Emmy and Grammy nominations.
The Brandon Victor Dixon Awards are regional partners with the National High School Musical Theatre Awards, also known as The Jimmy Awards, which will crown the national winners in a June 26 ceremony hosted by Corbin Bleu (“High School Musical”) at the Minskoff Theatre in New York City.
The national ceremony will also honor Vanessa Lock Gelinas of Oakton High School in Oakton, Virginia, with the Inspiring Teacher Award. Gelinas, one of two nationwide teachers to receive the prize this year, directed Oakton High School’s musical production of “The Addams Family” in 2022, which won Best Musical and Best Actor at the Brandon Victor Dixon Awards. Stay tuned for our interview with this inspiring local teacher on WTOP.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Radio Golf' at Round House Theatre (Part 1) The late August Wilson’s “Century Cycle” famously featured 10 plays that tackled 10 different decades of African American life in 20th century Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The collective works include “Gem of the Ocean” (1900s), “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” (1910s), “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (1920s), “The Piano Lesson” (1930s), “Seven Guitars” (1940s), “Fences” (1950s), “Two Trains Running” (1960s), “Jitney” (1970s) and “King Hedley II” (1980s).
His final play “Radio Golf” (1990s) premiered the same year that Wilson died in 2005, but its timely social commentary lives on in a new production at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, from June 7 to July 2.
“It’s been really fun to go back in time to 1997 … and follow these characters as they go for big dreams of being mayor and more,” director Reginald Douglas told WTOP. “It’s a really exciting play that lets us look back but also reflect on this moment we’re in right now politically and socially, and it does it with the signature Wilson humor, signature love of lush, poetic language and rhythms … and really nuanced, rich characters that actors can eat up.”
Set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1997, the story follows Harmond Wilks (JaBen Early), who inherits a realty company from his upper-middle class family. Not only is he running for mayor, he also joins his wife Mame Wilks (Renee Elizabeth Wilson) and best friend Roosevelt Hicks (Ro Boddie) to create the Bedford Hills Redevelopment Project to redevelop the neighborhood by bringing in chains like Whole Foods, Starbucks and Barnes & Noble.
“They want to get rid of the Hill District and start fresh,” Douglas said. “The question that comes next is: what about the people who are still there? The play follows that give and take, push and pull between redevelopment, gentrification and change, but also history, legacy and the people who call this community their home, even if it may look blighted to others. At the core is a moral and ethical question that is very timely for us here in D.C.”
Right now you might be thinking, “Wait, if this is a story about real estate development, why is the title ‘Radio Golf?'” Turns out, Wilson weaves a subplot fitting for the era of both Rush Limbaugh and Tiger Woods.
“Harmond and Roosevelt love golf, Tiger Woods, they have his poster on the wall, he is the king for these guys, and Roosevelt does want to acquire a radio station,” Douglas said. “Back in the ’90s, radio was everything, the ultimate way to communicate with your audience, so I think Wilson is giving a nod to the power of media, the power of communication and who gets to tell what stories. Why can’t these two Black men tell the story of golf?”
Visually, the story largely takes place in one location inside the Bedford Hills Redevelopment office, just as “Fences” (1983) largely took place in Troy Maxson’s backyard with an unfinished fence and a baseball hanging from a tree.
“It’s a storefront, a small kind of mom-and-pop shop that they rent or buy to make their office but also want to be campaign headquarters potentially,” Douglas said. “This family says we’re gonna take what used to be a cleaners’ or hardware store and make this the home of our redevelopment office. It’s a beautifully designed office by [set designer] Meghan Raham. You get the Pittsburgh brick, the tile floor, the desk, the moving boxes. It’s an office that is in progress.”
The show runs for two hours and 15 minutes with one intermission.
“This play is hilarious; it’s really a comedy until it’s not,” said Douglas. “It’s full of laughter, it’s full of joy. They are a community, there’s a lot of history for these characters and the language shows that. It’s rich, it’s poetic, but it’s also conversational. That’s the magical thing Wilson does better than anybody. He’s able to give us poetic prose said naturally. … Wilson is also known for the sacred or spiritual entering the world and in this play it does show up.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Radio Golf' at Round House Theatre (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Shooting Stars' Merely mentioning LeBron James’ name triggers instant debate about whether or not he is the greatest basketball player of all time. This does a disservice to us all with a food fight of statistics vs. intangibles between die-hard legions of Michael Jordan or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson or Larry Bird, Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain. Too often, we forget that James was once just a kid shooting hoops with his best friends like the rest of us.
That’s the underlying charm of the nostalgic, albeit somewhat unnecessary coming-of-age basketball biopic “Shooting Stars,” which premieres Friday on Peacock. What could have been a vanity project about LeBron with idolatry of the once and future King is instead a selfless celebration of his childhood best friends, feeling less like a ball hog and more like teamwork passing the ball around to take the open shot, which doesn’t swish but rattles in.
Based on James’ eponymous memoir co-written by Buzz Bissinger in 2009, the film opens with Young LeBron James and his AAU teammates on the Northeast Ohio Shooting Stars in Akron, Ohio. They called themselves the Fab Four (later the Fab Five). No, they’ve never heard of The Beatles as the original “Fab Four.” Their heroes were the University of Michigan’s “Fab Five” of Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson.
Together, the tight-knit group goes on to win three state titles and one national championship for their Catholic high school, the St. Vincent-St. Mary Fighting Irish. However, fame has a price as James is singled out as the breakout star on the cover of Sports Illustrated and ESPN broadcasts of their high school games. Will the publicity go to James’ head? Will his teammates feel left behind? Or can they all put aside jealousy to remain friends?
Playing teenage LeBron is Marquis “Mookie” Cook, a real-life 5-star recruit who signed a letter of intent to play for the University of Oregon in the fall. Not only does Mookie look like young LeBron, he’s got the muscles to flex and the dunking skills to prove it. Likewise, NBA G League baller and upcoming NBA Draft prospect Sterling “Scoot” Henderson plays teammate Romeo Travis, who went on to become an assistant coach at St. Vincent-St. Mary.
Surrounding these real-life talents is a trio of actors: Avery S. Wills Jr. (“Swagger”) as Willie McGee, who became athletic director at St. Vincent-St. Mary before joining the LeBron James Family Foundation; Khalil Everage (“Beats”) as Sian Cotton, who is currently the defensive-line coach for the St. Vincent-St. Mary football team; and Caleb McLaughlin (“Stranger Things”) as Lil Dru Joyce III, who went on to set records at the University of Akron.
Wood Harris (“The Wire”) plays Joyce’s father, Coach Dru Joyce II, a local legend who won seven state titles. Harris is no stranger to inspirational sports movies after “Remember the Titans” (2000) and “Creed” (2015). This time, his acting feels uncharacteristically forced at first before growing more realistic. Dermot Mulroney is perfectly cast as hardass coach Keith Dambrot, while Katlyn Nichol shines as LeBron’s future wife Savannah.
It’s all helmed by Baltimore, Maryland, filmmaker Chris Robinson, who earned an NAACP Image Award nomination for “The New Edition Story” (2017) and shared an Emmy nomination for the Kennedy Center’s “Mark Twain Prize for Dave Chappelle” (2019). He also directed TV episodes of “black-ish” (2020-2021) and “Woke” (2022) and co-directed ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary “The Greatest Mixtape Ever” about the And1 Mixtape.
You can feel this same sensibility in “Shooting Stars” with a dynamite soundtrack of late ’90s and early 2000s hip-hop. You’ll want to throw on your warm-up jersey as you hear Black Rob’s “Whoa,” Nas’ “Made You Look,” Onyx’s “Slam,” Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day,” and Archie Eversole’s “We Ready” featuring Bubba Sparxxx. In between, the instrumental moments are scored by Oscar-nominated composer Mark Isham (“A River Runs Through It”).
Robinson also crafts admirably realistic on-court action, which is more than most basketball flicks can say. He gets ultra flashy with drone shots soaring above the court, occasionally turning upside-down. Sometimes it’s too much with the camera appearing hooked to the actors’ bodies like the apparatus Darren Aronofksy used in “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), which worked for trippy drug sequences but makes the players movements feel unnatural here.
The script isn’t the most polished with title cards that appear at random. The first one is fine, “How it Began,” but we wait far too long before the next one. Down the stretch, these titles appear faster with “Junior Year,” “Senior Year,” “Payback’s a B*tch” and “How it Ended.” The title-card structure feels sloppy, pulling us out of the immersive experience each time they pop up. It would have been better to space them out equally or not use them at all.
In the end, this isn’t the type of movie that wins Oscars, nor is it a blockbuster that dominates the box office. After all, it’s dropping straight to Peacock, though today’s made-for-streaming films have more caché than old made-for-TV movies. This is a good one to play if you’re a high school teacher on a rainy day or a parent looking to inspire your kids with an after-school special. Try pairing it with the documentary “More than a Game” (2009).
Then, when your kids get old enough for R-rated comedy, remind them that LeBron is a pretty good movie star himself. No, I don’t mean “Space Jam: A New Legacy” (2021), I mean one of the best rom-coms of the past decade in Judd Apatow’s “Trainwreck” (2015) starring Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Colin Quinn, John Cena and James.
Until then, I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane — even if it’s someone else’s childhood memories. Only James can afford the luxury of having a movie made about his five youth-league teammates, but it’s a worthwhile effort that makes us reflect fondly on our own youth basketball teammates. Our jerseys didn’t read James, Joyce, Cotton, Travis and McGee. Mine read Fraley, Fennington, McMurry, Hood and Trout. How about you?
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Rosslyn Cinema returns to Gateway Park every Friday. (Rosslyn BID)(Rosslyn BID) Rosslyn Cinema returns to Gateway Park every Friday. (Rosslyn BID)(Rosslyn BID) toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Rosslyn Cinema (Part 1) An outdoor summer movie favorite returns to Northern Virginia on Friday with Rosslyn Cinema.Free screenings will be held at Gateway Park starting at 5 p.m. with films starting at sunset around 8:45 p.m.
“It’s a long-standing tradition,” senior events manager Allison Doherty told WTOP.
“We’ve had families grow up and meet up in Rosslyn for our movie nights in the summer. Last year, we had our March Movie Madness, which was like a college basketball bracket and we let our fans vote on the top four movies to be screened and we did that again this year. We had a list of 16 movies in four genres: musicals, summer-themed, animated and adventure.”
The series kicks off this Friday, June 2, with “Jumanji” (1995), which won the adventure bracket.
“[It’s] the throwback original with Robin Williams,” Doherty said. “I think a lot of people are into that nostalgia factor this year. We have a couple of nostalgia picks, and based on the bracket winners, the people are really interested in that 1995 hit. We’ll have our purple ambassadors, our staff, on site, they’ll be wearing safari hats.”
The series continues next Friday, June 9, with “Shrek” (2001), which won the animated bracket.
“It’s a fan favorite of all ages,” Doherty said. “It really appeals to the adults and the kids. We will have kid activities, including face painters, lawn games, cornhole, giant Jenga, so it should be a fun evening.”
After that, you can test your singing chops Friday, June 16, with “Moana” (2016), which won the musical bracket.
“Last year, we had a fan-favorite ‘Mamma Mia!’ and there was a huge singalong that happened, so we thought this would be of that same beat,” Doherty said. “Honestly, ‘Moana’ was a flyaway winner with our polling in March, so it should be a lot of fun. We will have face painters and balloon artists on June 16, so it should be great.”
The series wraps Friday, June 23, with “The Parent Trap” (1998), which won the summer-themed bracket.
“It’s the 1990s [version] with Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid and the late Natasha Richardson,” Doherty said. “It was like that summer camp vibe and a fan favorite for sure. [Director Nancy Meyers’] aesthetic is flawless.”
Feel free to bring takeout from any area Rosslyn restaurant or grab a bite to eat from the on-site food trucks serving kettle corn, grilled cheese and ice pops. There will also be a pop-up “Pub in the Park” serving beer, wine and sangria and beer flights from One Family Brewing Company in Lovettsville, Virginia.
Find more information on their website.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Chuck & Eva' (Part 1) Few artists are bigger D.C.-area music legends than the late Chuck Brown and Eva Cassidy, with Brown dubbed “The Godfather of Go-Go” in D.C. and Cassidy the pride of Prince George’s County, Maryland for her jazz chops.
This month, the area performing arts group INseries Opera performs “Chuck & Eva,” a special tribute performance of Brown and Cassidy’s beloved duet album “The Other Side” (1992) for three nights in D.C. and Baltimore.
“Chuck Brown and Eva Cassidy met in 1986,” Artistic Director Tim Nelson told WTOP.
“She was an unknown singer with her own band. … Her bass player played a recording for Chuck Brown, who instantly fell in love with her voice. They became unlikely friends, he was 29 years older. … Together they put together this collaboration which has no go-go on it. It’s all American songbook, traditional jazz duets between the two of them.”
Jazz pianist and composer Janelle Gill will lead an “amazing celebration and exultation of D.C. music,” featuring a talented ensemble of area performers, including vocalists Greg Watkins and Melissa Wimbish. Gill is a product of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and previously collaborated with INseries on a Nina Simone tribute.
“Eva Cassidy’s voice and Chuck Brown’s voice and musical prowess are irreplaceable, there’s no way we could recreate the album, so that’s not what we’re doing,” Nelson said.
“What we’re doing is the same songs on the album being reinterpreted by living D.C. jazz artists, some of whom played with Chuck Brown’s band, some who are quite young, but all artists who have been inspired by the legacy of both of these incredible DMV artists.”
The set list includes the entire 14 tracks from the album “The Other Side,” albeit in a slightly different order as INseries hopes to create a unique experience.
“It is a lot of iconic songs, and then it is a lot of jazz standards that are not so standard that people may not know,” Nelson said.
“The one’s people will know — it opens with ‘Let the Good Times Roll,’ ‘Fever,’ everyone knows. When asked what his favorite song on the album was, Chuck Brown said it was ‘God Bless the Child,’ the Billie Holiday song that Eva Cassidy sings, and the one that almost everyone knows from Eva is ‘Over the Rainbow.'”
Concerts will be held Thursday, June 1 and Friday, June 2 at the True Reformer Building on U Street in Northwest D.C., followed by another concert June 24 at the Baltimore Theatre Project on West Preston Street in Baltimore.
“In D.C. it’s significant that we’re doing it at the True Reformer Building because that is one of Black Broadway’s most historic buildings,” Nelson said.
“It was the first Black-designed, owned and financed building in America, but it was also the first building where Duke Ellington performed publicly. … Baltimore Theatre Project is one of the most historic theaters in America. … In the ’60s and ’70s it was America’s most important avant-garde theater.”
Founded 40 years ago, INseries Opera aims to transcend the opera realm to includes all genres of performance.
“We’re an opera company that hates the word ‘opera,'” Nelson said. “We’re disrupting opera, we love to tear it apart, we love to include other musical traditions, we’re hyper local, which is another reason we wanted to do something connected to D.C. music. Whatever people think of when they hear the word ‘opera,’ we’re not that.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the 'Ted Lasso' finale After saying goodbye to “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” last Friday and “Succession” and “Barry” on Sunday night, it’s time to bid farewell to “Ted Lasso” on Wednesday — or should we say, “So Long, Farewell.”
That’s the title of the series finale, which dropped at midnight on Apple TV+, meaning some folks stayed up late to watch it and are dragging tail at work right now, while other fans are savoring it to watch when they get home.
I was among the former crowd, so let’s just say that I have more coffee in my veins right now than popcorn butter. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything for you fine folks, except to say that, for me, it was a “pitch” perfect finale.
I was admittedly worried during the opening scene, fearing that the writers had lazily taken the low-hanging fruit of a subplot that they had smartly avoided all along (it would have ruined the entire series). Thankfully, the writing team was one step ahead of viewers, laughing all the way with us.
The rest was everything you could want from a sitcom finale with character arcs wrapped up in satisfying but unexpected ways. The Nate redemption arc. The Jamie Tartt and Roy Kent bromance. The Rebecca and Keeley friendship. The Rebecca and Ted employer-employee respect. Ted’s fatherly resolution.
The on-field action of the big game between AFC Richmond and West Ham was the exciting culmination of years of soccer sequences. It’s hard to write an underdog sports finish that’s triumphant (“Major League” winning on a bunt) but realistic (“Rocky” going the distance in defeat), yet “Ted Lasso” threads the needle for the best of both worlds. There’s even an American football fan mocking European football, only to feel left out.
It had all of the accoutrements. Just as “Mary Tyler Moore” ended with “It’s A Long Way To Tipperary” and “Seinfeld” gave us Green Day’s “Good Riddance,” “Ted Lasso” delivers Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son,” which is pretty perfect when you think about it. Most importantly, the finale drops several laugh-out-loud lines (I snorted at certain Broadway musical banter). Heck, there’s even a hint of a potential spinoff that I would 100% watch.
Surely, your reaction to the finale will depend on your overall take on the third season. I clearly disagree with critics who have (unfairly) savaged this season. Somehow it became cool for contrarians to hate on Ted on his way out the door, revealing a cynical groupthink that is perhaps a function of binge-watching advanced screeners of the episodes months ago, rather than experiencing it week-to-week like normal humans relishing the escape from life’s problems.
It’s blasphemous that Season 2 has the highest Rotten Tomatoes critics score (98%) compared to Season 1 (92%) and Season 3 (80%). To my eyes, Season 1 was clearly the best of the bunch, boasting a refreshing optimism and a cohesive closure that could have ended right there as a self-contained entity and I would have been fine with it.
While I appreciated the darkly introspective nature of Season 2 with Ted’s panic attacks and therapy sessions — let’s call it the “Empire Strikes Back” of this sitcom saga — it unfortunately got too edgy for its own good with an awkward romantic subplot that fancied itself as progressive when really it was regressive (and a fireable offense), not to mention several standalone tangent episodes that wowed cinephiles but probably alienated audiences.
Many of these same critics who loved the first two seasons destroyed the third season right out of the gate, almost out of spite. I agree that Season 3 spun its wheels for the first five episodes with the contrived arrival of the divine “Soccer God” Zava, who proved to be a distraction to both the team on screen and the writers off screen. However, after the team took a much-needed trip to Amsterdam, I found the final seven episodes to be wonderful.
Episode 6 (“Sunflowers”) gave us Ted’s “Total Football” epiphany and Rebecca’s houseboat meet-cute; Episode 7 (“The Strings That Bind Us”) saw Keeley push back against Jack’s love bombing; Episode 8 (“We’ll Never Have Paris”) proved Keeley’s feminism by not apologizing for a leaked video; and Episode 9 (“La Locker Room Aux Folles”) saw Colin come out of the closet, revealing Isaac wasn’t mad that he was gay, but that he didn’t tell him.
Such social progress is easy for coastal critics to take for granted. If you’re trapped in an insular Twitter bubble writing for prestigious publications in New York or Los Angeles, these social themes don’t seem as progressive because you live with this evolved mindset every day. Good for you, but this show made huge strides for the masses at home who have never seen a show with macho athletes sharing their feelings like Diamond Dogs.
It’s important for average folks to see Rebecca call out Rupert’s “Super League” boys club of old white male money in Episode 10 (“International Break”), stiffing her ex-husband’s advances after a boardroom food fight. Likewise, it’s good for all of us to see Beard offer Nate a second chance in Episode 11 (“Mom City”), revealing that Ted showed him similar grace after stealing his car years ago. Forgiveness isn’t just divine; it’s the Ted Lasso way.
And so, let’s forgive the critics who knock Season 3 and its pitch-perfect conclusion. It’s the closest thing we’ll get to a heartwarming sitcom finale in today’s cynical world. There are plenty of shows with brains (“Succession”) but not enough with heart (“Ted Lasso”), so the courage comes in honoring them equally (yes, that’s a shameless “Wizard of Oz” reference, but Coach Ted loved such homages during his own “no place like home” discovery).
Thank you, “Ted Lasso,” for comforting us during a depressing pandemic. Thank you, “Ted Lasso,” for being the antidote to our jaded society. And thank you “Ted Lasso,” for teaching us all an important lesson: “It’s not about me. It never was.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Operation HEAL*ARIOUS (Part 1) Memorial Day weekend was a somber occasion to remember those brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.
This weekend, Operation HEAL*ARIOUS provides therapeutic laughter as a Virginia comedian competes in the America’s Funniest Veterans & Military Spouses contest on Sunday, June 4, in Tacoma, Washington.
“This is our inaugural tour,” chief executive officer Robin “Phoenix” Johnson told WTOP. “HEAL*ARIOUS is brand new, this is our first year, so it’s a big, big, aggressive thing to do a nine-city tour across the country to find America’s Funniest Veterans & Military Spouses. … Five comics do five minutes [each]. First place gets a chance to go to Hollywood.”
Johnson is a retired Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army herself, having served 26 years in the military, including five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. She launched the therapeutic humor nonprofit HEAL*ARIOUS as a pilot program at a Veterans Affairs center and has since helped over 6,000 veterans with PTSD, depression and anxiety.
“When I got out of the military, I found comedy and humor to be really healing for my own PTSD,” Johnson said. “I decided to figure out a way to do two things: (1) give veterans and their spouses an opportunity to tell their stories through comedy … and (2) how do we use this to heal more people? They say laughter is the best medicine.”
Johnson launched the cross-country competition in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio, followed by a more recent event at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse in Arlington, Virginia, won by U.S. Army spouse Gigi Bledsoe.
“She was so authentic and real,” Johnson said. “She makes it effortless. It’s like you’re having a conversation with her. Her delivery style is so natural. It doesn’t feel forced. It’s like you’re talking with her over drinks or dinner.”
Fellow Virginia comedian Valena Metcalfe was disappointed that she didn’t hear about the Arlington contest in time, so she’s now flying to compete in Tacoma, where her military family was previously stationed. Metcalfe currently lives in Triangle, having moved to the D.C. area 26 years ago when her husband, retired U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Samuel Metcalfe, was stationed at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland.
“I went to submit and they had just closed Arlington and I was like, ‘No, no, no, I still have to do this,'” Metcalfe told WTOP. “I had been performing with Veterans Growing America. I followed their page and they had information on Best Medicine Brigade, which had a HEAL*ARIOUS comedy tour coming up, so I submitted an audition tape. … I was very theatrical [about] just being an army wife, having children and still trying to still fit into clothing.”
After Tacoma, the comedy contest tour will head to:
- San Diego, California;
- San Antonio and Killeen, Texas;
- Charleston, South Carolina;
- Newport News, Virginia; and
- Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The Top 10 finalists will ultimately compete at The Hollywood Post 43 American Legion on Nov. 5 for a grand prize of $2,500.
“I’m super excited to be a local comic representing the DMV with this HEAL*ARIOUS comedy tour,” Metcalfe said. “I’m just over the moon with excitement for this opportunity. … I am just having positive vibes to be able to come back and say, ‘Mom, I’m going to Hollywood’ like ‘American Idol.'”
The timing is perfect, as May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a vital cause for veterans.
“I can’t thank Robin and her team enough for even putting together the HEAL*ARIOUS comedy tour for veterans and military spouses to bring laughter behind the pain, behind the hurt, behind the trauma,” Metcalfe said. “The fact that we can come and bring laughter is just incredible. … Bringing laughter to so many who might not feel like smiling in this day and age is so important. I am prayerful that this tour goes on for years to come.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Operation HEAL*ARIOUS (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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Chris Hartman cofounded the festival with his sister, Liz Rawlings, to escape the pandemic in 2021.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the 'Succession' finale NOTE: The following article does not contain spoilers of either finale, but does include plot details of previous episodes.
It’s the sad end of an era over at HBO — and I don’t mean the odd rebranding of its streaming service to MAX.
I mean the back-to-back series finales of two of its best shows, “Succession” and “Barry,” after four seasons each.
The 13-time Emmy Award-winning drama “Succession” brings the Roy family saga to a close this Sunday at 9 p.m., while the nine-time Emmy Award-winning dramedy “Barry” wraps immediately after that at 10 p.m.
Grab your popcorn and find a comfy spot on the couch — here’s a brief preview of both:
‘Succession’It’s hard to believe Sunday is the last time we’ll hear Nicholas Britell’s all-timer score unfolding over grainy sepia images of the kids growing up at the family estate. Rarely do we get opening credits that we don’t want to skip, savoring every last piano note and transcendent violin as it sets the mood for the cutthroat chaos to come.
Created by Jesse Armstrong, the series weaves a family power struggle like “The Lion in Winter” (1968) or “The Godfather” (1972). Rather than Peter O’Toole or Marlon Brando, we relished Brian Cox as patriarch Logan Roy, commanding his media empire like Rupert Murdoch. Waystar’s ATN stands in for News Corporation’s Fox News, which recently paid Dominion Voting Systems a $787 million settlement for lying about the 2020 election.
Many analysts have also drawn parallels to Donald Trump’s Manhattan “House of Cards,” as Shiv (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Kendall (Jeremy Strong) stand in for Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr., wanting a piece of the “nepo baby” pie but afraid to challenge the old man because he knows where their bodies are buried, too.
The first season immediately hooked us in 2018 with Shakespearean dynasty dynamics. The first episode (“Celebration”) introduced us to Logan on his 80th birthday before collapsing from a hemorrhagic stroke at the end of the pilot. His declining health raised the stakes for his three children needing to position themselves to take over, but their plans suddenly shifted with an intense, Chappaquiddick cliffhanger in the 10th episode (“Nobody is Ever Missing”).
The second season not only matched that high bar, but arguably surpassed it in 2019, brilliantly building to Kendall calling out Logan on live television, earning a slight smile of fatherly pride from dad after goading his son that he wasn’t enough of a “killer” earlier in the 10th episode (“This is Not For Tears”). This is the season that deservedly won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, finally ending the dragon-breath reign of its HBO sibling “Game of Thrones.”
The pandemic delayed the third season until 2021, making the Logan vs. Kendall rivalry feel stale. The storylines felt so repetitive that I bailed for several months before catching up. The eighth episode (“Chiantishire”) drew me back in with Roman’s text scandal, while the ninth episode (“All the Bells Say”) saw Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) tip off Logan about his children’s coup. It won Outstanding Drama Series again, but Apple’s “Severance” was far superior.
Thankfully, the fourth season has redeemed itself big-time with a shocking death in the third episode (“Connor’s Wedding”), one of the best TV episodes ever filmed, followed by an appallingly accurate election farce in the eighth episode (“America Decides”). The funeral fiasco in the penultimate ninth episode (“Church and State”) gave James Cromwell a stinging spotlight as Logan’s brother Ewan and disproved Roman’s concept of pre-grief, erupting in Emmy-worthy tears.
How will this thing end on Sunday? How will the GoJo deal unfold with Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård)? And who will take over the empire? Kendall, Roman or Shiv? Maybe even Connor (Alan Ruck)? I’m still rooting for underdog cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) to somehow luck into the big chair, if only so he can turn the tables and send Tom on a coffee run. The finale is called “With Open Eyes,” so I’m hoping Logan staged his death for a chilling return.
‘Barry’As you mourn the “Succession” finale, be sure to stick around for the “Barry” finale immediately afterward.
Created by Alec Berg and Bill Hader, the series effortlessly straddles the line of comedy and drama with the coolest hit man premise since John Cusack’s high school reunion in “Grosse Pointe Blank” (1997). This time, it’s an ex-Marine turned ruthless hit man who pursues a Hollywood career after stumbling into an L.A. acting class.
The first season hooked us in 2018 with Barry conducting hits between acting classes by teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). The season memorably ended at Gene’s lake house as Barry killed Gene’s girlfriend, Detective Janie Moss, for nearly uncovering his crimes in the eighth episode (“Know Your Truth”). Hader won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor, while Henry Winkler won Outstanding Supporting Actor to complete his “Happy Days” comeback.
In 2019, the second season saw the walls close in on Barry, whose attempt to plant a Chechen pin on Moss’ body unraveled when his scorned mentor Fuches (Stephen Root) whispered the truth in Gene’s ear. The second season also gave us the all-timer fifth episode (“ronny/lily”) as a mob victim’s daughter surprisingly scaled walls and fought back with Taekwondo. Hader really began showing his directing chops, while repeating as Outstanding Lead Actor.
The pandemic delayed the third season for what felt like forever, so when it finally returned in 2022, we needed “previously on” segments for a refresher. The third season showed Hader’s directing chops evolve to new heights, from a thrilling motorcycle chase in the sixth episode (“710N”) to the symbolic shot composition of the eighth episode (“starting now”) as Gene set a well-laid trap for Barry’s arrest with the help of Janice’s dad Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom).
The fourth season has been the darkest yet, scrapping the blaring horn music for silent opening credits. In a gutsy move, the writers flash forward to Barry and Sally raising their son in witness protection as Bill Hader and Sarah Goldberg provide acting master classes of depressed regret. NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) is the only remaining comic relief, but even he is a loose cannon after the demise of his lover, the Bolivian mobster Cristobal (Michael Irby).
Can Barry find redemption or are his sins far too great? The finale is called “Wow” and I suspect that’s exactly what we’ll get. Gene appears to be thawing in his opposition to Hollywood, making a true-crime film about his girlfriend’s murder, so I predict that he caves on one condition: that he and Barry play themselves. This could build to a “life imitates art” climax where Gene whacks Barry as Sally watches in the wings, having betrayed Barry.
That’s just a wild guess, but that’s the fun of TV finales. No matter how it goes down, we’re in for a double dose of farewells on Sunday night. Who knew the final season of “Succession” and “Barry” would be equally dramatic?
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Little Mermaid' (Part 1) It’s really hard to imagine in hindsight, but Disney Animation was sinking fast in 1989, struggling to regain its Golden Age footing after Walt’s untimely death in 1966 with embarrassing flops like “The Black Cauldron” (1985).
Thankfully, “The Little Mermaid” (1989) swam in to save the company just in time, kicking off the proverbial Disney Renaissance of “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992) and “The Lion King” (1994), a Mount Rushmore of animated masterpieces in a five-year span. The fresh idea was to add Broadway-style musical numbers to the animation, tapping Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman to pen Oscar-winning tunes.
This weekend, the new live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” opens in movie theaters nationwide, once again following the angsty teen mermaid Ariel, who wishes to leave her controlling father King Triton and join the human world. Making a deal with the sea witch Ursula, she trades her voice in exchange for a pair of legs, walking ashore to fall in love with Prince Eric for a much happier ending than Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairytale.
So far, much of the social media buzz has centered around the stupid controversy of casting a Black Ariel. Such complaints are ridiculous — she’s a mermaid for crying out loud! It’s not like we’re casting the role of Eleanor Roosevelt here; fictional characters are fair game (yes, even James Bond). I’m rooting for Halle Bailey to succeed, singing her heart out with extra special meaning to the lyric, “Wandering free, wish I could be part of that world.”
She’s surrounded by an equally diverse cast, namely Daveed Diggs (“Hamilton”) as Sebastian the Crab, a lovable sidekick who looks slightly less adorable as a digital crustacean than he did in hand-drawn animation. Awkwafina (“The Farewell”) voices the seabird Scuttle and Jacob Tremblay (“Room”) voices the fish Flounder, while Jonah Hauer-King (“Little Women”) plays Prince Eric and Javier Bardem (“No Country For Old Men”) plays King Triton.
The late Pat Carroll leaves big tentacles to fill as the evil octopus Ursula, who joins Maleficent (“Sleeping Beauty”), Cruella de Vil (“101 Dalmatians”) and Scar (“The Lion King”) as the best Disney villains. Life’s full of tough casting choices, isn’t it? Melissa McCarthy is an inspired pick, showing range from her slapstick comedy of “Bridesmaids” (2011). Even in dimly-lit underwater scenes, the star of “The Boss” (2016) proves that “the boss is on a roll.”
The live-action remake brings back all of your favorite songs, including “Fathoms Below,” “Part of Your World,” “Under the Sea,” “Poor Unfortunate Souls” and “Kiss the Girl.” It also adds a few new ones with Lin-Manuel Miranda (“In the Heights”) teaming with Menken to pen “Wild Uncharted Waters,” “For the First Time” and “The Scuttlebutt.” It’s a valiant effort, but it’s hard to give the remake credit when its biggest songs are retreads.
Ultimately, you can’t top the 1989 original, which holds a special place in my heart as the first Disney movie I ever saw in a movie theater (shoutout to The Druid in Damascus, Maryland). In fact, I was so obsessed with “The Little Mermaid” that I kept a tiny stuffed animal of Sebastian in my bunk bed and sang along to the VHS tape. I was so convinced that mermaids were real that I raised my hand to say as much in kindergarten. The class laughed at me.
Alas, that was 34 years ago and a new generation deserves a chance to feel a part of that world by going with their parents to witness their own brand of Disney magic up on the big screen. A little nostalgia won’t hurt anybody. Besides, the human world is a mess these days. Life under the sea is better than anything they’ve got up there.
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Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Mannie Fresh at Célébrez en Rosé (Part 1) After spitting fire for the past two years at National Harbor near D.C., the Célébrez en Rosé music festival is now changing locations to Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland, this weekend.
This year’s lineup includes Mannie Fresh, Ginuwine and Jacquees for a pink-themed party at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
“Anything could happen with me,” Fresh told WTOP. “With my energy, sometimes I go from a DJ to performing some of my songs, then back to a DJ. The good thing is that I wear a whole bunch of hats, so expect a whole lot.”
That’s right: DJ Fresh will be spinning records like he does with his voice, pronouncing his name like a turn-table scratch: “Fre-e-e-fresh.”
“That was just a play off what Eminem did doing scratches with his mouth,” Fresh said.
Born in New Orleans in 1969, Fresh made hip-hop history by meeting Baby (a.k.a. Birdman) to form the rap duo Big Tymers, who eventually joined forces with the Hot Boys (Juvenile, Lil Wayne, B.G. and Turk) to form the rap supergroup Cash Money Millionaires. They had their own record label Cash Money Records, founded in 1991.
“I met them DJing throughout the city,” Fresh said. “New Orleans was forbidden land, uptown doesn’t get down with downtown and vice versa, but I was a DJ that everybody loved, just by going in their territory, DJing every week and knocking down walls to say, ‘This is silly right now. Let’s all come together.’ They were starting a record company, so me being a DJ transforming into a producer, I was like, ‘Give me a shot and watch what happens.'”
In 1997, Fresh and Birdman released their first Big Tymers album called “How You Luv That” (1997).
“We took the concept a little bit different,” Fresh said. “We wanted to sell something that nobody had done. Our whole persona was to be bigger, better, faster, stronger, Daft Punk, ya heard me? He was the perfect person because he always did talk that kind of talk. That was our lane. We was like, ‘OK, you got storytellers, but you ain’t have nobody who says, ‘Instead of a Cadillac, how about a space shuttle?’ We were thinking on that level.”
In addition to Big Tymers projects, Fresh also produced Juvenile’s album “400 Degreez” (1998), ranking on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums. Its first single “Ha” delivered the chorus, “You a paper chaser, you got your block on fire, remaining a G, until the moment you expire, you know what it is, to make nothing outta something, you handle your biz and don’t be crying and suffering.” Every line of the verses ended with the word “Ha.”
“The way ‘Ha’ happened is we were at a restaurant in Nashville and [Juvenile] was saying that jokingly: ‘You something something something, ha, you da da da da da, ha,’ and I was like, ‘Dude, we need to go do that song,'” Fresh said. “I was beating on the table and when we got back to the studio we recorded it and the rest is history.”
The album’s biggest hit was “Back That Azz Up,” which hit the radio as “Back That Thang Up,” reaching No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remaining Juvenile’s biggest hit until his chart-topping “Slow Motion” in 2004.
“Juve used to do that song … it was big at block parties,” Fresh said. “I was like ‘It would be kinda cool if you did ‘Back That Azz Up,’ but we took a different take on it. What if we put classical music to it, add some 808 drums and had this intro where you could set up before you get to the dance floor?’ A cool song to me always had an intro that gave you time to hurry up, finish your drink and get to the dance floor when the beat dropped.”
While Fresh produced more Juvenile albums like “Tha G-Code” (1999) with hits like “U Understand” and “I Got That Fire,” he also produced the stable’s other solo albums, including B.G.’s “Chopper City in the Ghetto” (1999) with the catchy “Bling Bling” and Lil Wayne’s “Tha Block is Hot” (1999) with the ghetto lament “F*ck the World.”
“B.G. changed the whole structure of what Cash Money was,” Fresh said. “The first generation of Cash Money was a New Orleans bounce-twerk label. Then B.G. came along and changed my production style, just how incredible he was with his rhymes … Wayne on the other hand, I feel like my music with him is like Bible First Testament, then he gets to something else later on, but to see him grow up and evolve into what he is now, that’s just crazy.”
In 2000, the Cash Money group starred in the movie “Baller Blockin'” with a soundtrack of “Rover Truck” (“Let me get the keys to that rover truck!”) and “Baller Blockin'” (“Why you blockin’ us, baller blockin’ us?”).
“‘Baller Blockin’ was the craziest thing,” Fresh said. “There was no script, we were just shooting. For it to turn into something like, ‘Wait, are you for real? It’s platinum? This movie is actually a million sold?’ In that time, your stuff had to be in the theater! Your VHS tape goes platinum on just some kids like, ‘We’re making up a story as we go.’ It really had no storyline to tell the truth, but the world was so in love with what we were doing as entrepreneurs.”
In 2000, the Big Tymers dropped their massive second album “I Got That Work,” featuring the hit single “Get Your Roll On” with staccato lyrics spit in brief spurts of one-syllable words (“Ro-lex, mo-sex”).
“That was me, I always thought simplicity will always sell,” Fresh said. “When we did videos we stuck to Chrysler 300s, then we might give you a Lambo, but we always gave you something that was regular as well, something that just anybody could get. We tried to not just oversell it. We wanted to be like, ‘We got the Lambos, but we also got the cars that the average working man could get and just fix them up a little, something everybody could have.”
That same album also dropped the smash hit “#1 Stunna” (“what a what what”), featuring a chorus of pop-culture action-hero references from Evil Knievel to “James Bond, Jackie Chan and that b*tch MacGyver.”
“That was our heroes growing up, you know what I’m saying?” Fresh said. “We thought that they did the most incredible stunts in the world! You had to actually live in the ’80s to now what Evil Knievel is! Now, the disconnect with culture, they don’t really have no heroes, they don’t look at nobody like action figures as somebody who was almost bigger than life to you … everybody who we named, they was like in their own right a star.”
After producing Juvenile’s “Project English” (2001) with the hit “Mamma Got A** (She Get It From Her Mamma),” Fresh and Birdman delivered their third Big Tymers album “Hood Rich” (2002). It featured the catchy tune “Still Fly” about spending on flashy things no matter your bank account: “Gator boots with the pimped out Gucci suits, ain’t got no job, but I stay sharp. Can’t pay my rent ’cause all my money’s spent, but that’s OK ’cause I’m still fly.”
“When I wrote that, nobody liked that song, they thought I was going too left with it,” Fresh said. “I was like, ‘This is how the world lives. That lyric, the hook of that song is everybody. Everybody can relate to that.’ When I was writing that, I was thinking this is a song that everybody can relate to. It didn’t just go to the hood or whatever, because you got wealthy ladies riding around with a quarter-tank of gas right now in their new E-Class [Benz].”
Fresh next went solo for the albums “The Mind of Mannie Fresh” (2004) and “Return of the Ballin’” (2009).
“It was actually cool,” Fresh said. “‘The Mind of Mannie Fresh’ is a cult album to a lot of people, they just loved the craziness of what I did. So many people tell me, ‘Dude, this is my favorite album.’ It’s gold status, something that usually a producer, they don’t work out too well [solo] … I did a whole bunch of songs because I’m the producer. Nobody was going, ‘Hey, narrow it down to nine,’ so I just went crazy. When I feel it again, I’ll do it again.”
Indeed, rap fans from the city and the suburbs ate up the solo offshoots of famous rap factions, from Cash Money Millionaires to Bone Thugz-N-Harmony, from N.W.A. to The Wu-Tang Clan., from Death Row to Bad Boy. Among such giant groups of hip-hop history, Fresh maintains that Cash Money is criminally underrated.
“Cash Money’s sound changed the way hip-hop is,” Fresh said. “Right now, trap music is really Cash Money’s sound, it’s that era. I don’t think we get enough recognition for changing the world … look at the tree branches that came from it — Juvenile, Mannie Fresh, Lil Wayne, people that’s still active. … Numbers don’t lie. When you do the math on how many records Cash Money sold as a self-contained label, nobody’s done that.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Mannie Fresh at Célébrez en Rosé (Part 2) Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Gary Sinise (Part 1) He earned an Oscar nomination for his role as wounded veteran Lt. Dan in “Forrest Gump” (1994).
This Sunday night, Gary Sinise returns to D.C. to host the annual National Memorial Day Concert, which airs live from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol starting at 8 p.m. on PBS and the American Forces Network.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity to pay tribute to the men and women who have sacrificed for us,” Sinise told WTOP.
“Memorial Day is a special day that the country sets aside to honor those sacrifices that have kept us free. It’s just become a great tradition for me to go and be a part of it and I’m privileged to have been asked all those years ago to come and do it, and once I did it, it just became something I wanted to do every single year.”
This year’s star-studded lineup of performers also includes Joe Mantegna, Mary McCormack, Joe Dee Messina, Yolanda Adams, Trace Adkins, John Slattery, The War and Treaty, Phillip Phillips, Megan Hilty, S. Epatha Merkerson, Dulé Hill, Chosen Jacobs and Jack Everly conducting the National Symphony Orchestra.
You’ll also see The Military District of Washington, The U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, The U.S. Army Chorus, The U.S. Navy Band Sea Chanters, The U.S. Air Force Singing Sergeants and The U.S. Soldiers Chorus of the U.S. Army Field Band.
As always, the ceremony will pay tribute to Gold Star families of fallen soldiers, including Sgt. Anthony O. Magee, who served two tours in Iraq, as well as P.O.W.s like Col. Carlyle “Smitty” Harris, who was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese for eight years. This year will also mark 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War in 1973.
“We have a segment that honors our Vietnam veterans with a special tribute to our P.O.W.s,” Sinise said.
“We will have several P.O.W.s from the Vietnam era on the show with us, so we’re paying tribute and honoring them and their fellow P.O.W.s. It’s also the 70th anniversary of the Korean War, so we have a special segment on that. We always do something special for World War II, so each year it’s a very powerful show, a moving show, uplifting.”
Sinise is a fitting host as his character Lt. Dan lost both of his legs during the Vietnam War in “Forrest Gump.”
“I have Vietnam veterans in my family, my wife’s two brothers served in Vietnam and her sister’s husband was a combat medic in Vietnam, so I have great respect for them,” Sinise said.
“It was an honor to play Lt. Dan in ‘Forrest Gump.’ He’s obviously a disabled veteran, and at the Gary Sinise Foundation we’re constantly serving the needs of the men and women who make these sacrifices for us.”
Next year marks the 30th anniversary of “Gump,” one of the last top-grossers to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
“It’s amazing how that movie resonated with people and how the next generation or two have seen the film because it was so popular back when their parents were younger,” Sinise said.
“It really resonated with a lot of people. It was an entertaining way to look at American history, obviously a bit fantasized through the eyes of Forrest Gump, but my connection to the movie in playing Lt. Dan represented an entire generation of veterans.”
His Lt. Dan Band will also be playing a free Vietnam tribute concert at DAR Constitution Hall on Friday night.
“It’s going to be a busy weekend for me,” Sinise said. “Obviously the Memorial Day concert is the big event that draws me to D.C. every year, but I’m coming in a little bit early so we can do a couple of extra special things.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Brick City' at the National Building Museum (Part 1) The National Building Museum often showcases the grand designs of real-world architects and engineers, but every once in a while, it’s important to examine the fundamental building blocks of our childhood imagination.
This Saturday, the D.C. museum launches an exciting two-year LEGO exhibit fittingly called “Brick City.”
“It’s 300 square feet of LEGO brick extravaganza,” Exhibitions Developer Caitlin Bristol told WTOP. “We always want to inspire curiosity and wonder about the world that we design and build. What better way to do that than with LEGO bricks? They’re a wonderful, multi-generational medium that people have a chance to explore their creativity with design, construction, even a little engineering. All those things come together in this exhibition.”
Visitors will take a world tour across all seven continents, including lively streetscapes from Cartagena, Colombia; Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans; intricate temples from India to Mexico; and imaginative castles from medieval Japan to modern Las Vegas.
“It’s basically your ultimate around-the-world trip in LEGO models,” LEGO Artist Warren Elsmore told WTOP. “We go right ’round every continent in the world and look at different styles of building and architecture, iconic things you could see if you spent years working your way around the world.”
The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum The National Building Museum's two-year "Brick City" exhibit takes visitors on a world tour across all seven continents. (Courtesy National Building Museum) Courtesy National Building Museum (1/10) Share This Gallery: Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter. Share via email. Print. Landmarks include the Empire State Building, the Roman Colosseum, the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the 2012 Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. The magnificent centerpiece is London’s St. Pancras Station, measuring 12-feet-long and 6-feet-wide, built from over 180,000 LEGO bricks, which were shipped here from the UK.
“They really did come in a shipping container,” Elsmore said. “We loaded it back in Edinburgh where we’re based, shipped them over, then I’ve been here the last week helping the museum get set up and ready for our visitors … I will admit that we don’t count every single brick, but we’re definitely over a quarter million bricks in the exhibit.”
Born in the UK, Elsmore has been obsessed with LEGOs ever since he can remember.
“I don’t remember my first LEGO bricks, I have asked my parents, they don’t remember either, they just remember that there were always LEGO bricks around,” Elsmore said. “For me, it was always LEGOs, I never had the DUPLO bricks, the larger ones. Every Christmas, every birthday, all I ever asked for in the first 18 years or so was LEGOs. I did take a break when I was 18 to 22, but otherwise the last 40-odd years LEGO has always been a part of my life.”
After you’ve seen Elsmore’s creations, you can design your own LEGO buildings with interactive activities.
“There’s a room at the end of this gallery where you can try your hand at building some structures of your own,” Bristol said. “We have large map tables that are a map of D.C., so we can inspire some budding engineers and architects to add to the D.C. landscape with LEGO models … one of the prompts is to build a new monument for D.C., one is to build a bridge … we also have a ‘graffiti wall’ where you can use LEGOs as pixelated canvas images.”
Tickets cost $10 for adults, $7 for youth, students and seniors or free for museum members.
Expect timed entry to control crowd sizes.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'FDR' with Doris Kearns Goodwin (Part 1) Last Memorial Day, Doris Kearns Goodwin executive produced the History Channel docuseries “Teddy Roosevelt.”
This Memorial Day, she tackles another Roosevelt with “FDR,” premiering Monday on the History Channel.
“We’ve lived through a difficult economic time these past couple of years through COVID, then at the same time we’re dealing with Ukraine and the largest land war since World War II, so to go back to the Great Depression and World War II and see the leadership of FDR in action … it just should make us feel confident about our own future in that we’ve been through it before and we can do it again,” Pulitzer Prize winner Goodwin told WTOP.
Based on her best-selling FDR biography “Leadership: In Turbulent Times” (2018), the three-part docuseries is co-executive produced by actor Bradley Cooper. It opens with Roosevelt’s formative years before his presidency.
“The documentary starts with his marriage to Eleanor where Teddy Roosevelt is presiding as Eleanor’s uncle and FDR is afraid of Teddy Roosevelt stealing the attention,” Goodwin said. “Then, it talks about the early days of FDR running for state office when Eleanor sees that he’s not a great communicator. Then when he gets confident, she’s afraid he’ll never go off the stage. You watch him developing as a leader, then we see what polio does to him.”
Goodwin says FDR knew what it was like to be paralyzed just like the nation was paralyzed economically. Elected president in 1932, his inaugural speech told the country: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He later launched New Deal programs to get the country back to work, while holding “Fireside Chats” on nightly radio.
“He’s able to give them hope, confidence and optimism that he’ll take action and responsibility, he’ll provide the leadership, and he certainly does in those 100 days to get the country mobilized again,” Goodwin said. “When he took office, one out of four people were out of work, people couldn’t get their money out of banks because the banks didn’t have the currency, starving people were wandering the streets, there was no safety net in that day.”
Roosevelt won reelection in 1936 and an unprecedented third term in 1940 before the attack on Pearl Harbor, calling Dec. 7, 1941 “a date which will live in infamy.” As America entered World War II, FDR forged a bond with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and won reelection for a fourth term before his death in 1945.
“You’ll see the importance of that relationship with Winston Churchill,” Goodwin said. “They said it was fun to be in the same decade with each other. … Most importantly is the factory mobilization that Roosevelt was able to achieve by forming a partnership with the business community to produce what the allies needed: the planes, tanks, weapons, Jeeps to win the war … and mobilize the American people on the homefront to accept rationed supplies.”
In addition to outlining FDR’s achievements, the docuseries also explores unfortunate blemishes on his record.
“Certainly the internment of the Japanese Americans … is a stain on his legacy, as is the failure to bring more Jewish refugees into the country before Hitler closed the door forever,” Goodwin said. “None of these people are perfect, you wish they were, but on the other hand, you have to judge them on the span of what they did. For this leader to have guided us through those two great crises … I think he’ll be remembered for a long time to come.”
She says The New York Times put it best: “People would look 1,000 years from now and put themselves on their knees for having had this man in power at that time.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews The Avetts Brothers at Wolf Trap (Part 1) One of the coolest duos on the Americana folk-rock scene is coming to our backyard in Northern Virginia.
The Avett Brothers play three nights at the rural oasis of Wolf Trap this Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
“We always refer to it as the Red Rocks of the East — the national park, the natural beauty around and the acoustic advantages are all very clear,” co-founder Seth Avett told WTOP. “If you’ve been there, then you know. It’s just a beautiful space. It’s an inspiring space, which is helpful when you’re performing, to be inspired anew, to not just skate along on the inspiration that created the songs themselves, but to be inspired in the moment.”
His older brother Scott Avett was born in 1976 in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but the family relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Seth was born in 1980. They grew up in a musical family listening to all kinds of music.
“A lot of it came from our dad’s side, his mother Martha was a brilliant pianist,” Avett said. “Dad always played guitar, we always sang in church, so we were introduced to harmony. … We listened to a lot of country and pop music from that time: Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, then Michael Jackson, Hall & Oates. Our dad would play us George Strait, George Jones, Randy Travis, then I personally became one of the millions of Kurt Cobain disciples.”
While Scott had a college band, Seth had a high-school band, which they melded together to form the rock band Nemo. “We built this dream that one day we’re going to have a rock band and take over the world,” Avett said. “Very heavy, pretty punk influence … That band broke up and it was kind of like your high-school sweetheart breaking up with you. … I don’t want to have to do that again and trust five dudes on stage. I want to simplify.”
So, they broke off as a duo, The Avett Brothers, emulating the Americana roots music of Charlie Poole, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson of the Piedmont of North Carolina. The Avett Brothers recorded their first independent album “Country Was” (2002), which led to the Ramseur Records release “A Carolina Jubilee” (2003).
“We were finding our voice,” Avett said. “There was all this new, very fresh discovery around songwriting and accepting what was natural to us. There is a moment of acceptance where you’re like, you know what, I’m not part of the British Invasion, like I loved Pink Floyd, but I’m not going to create music from 1972 England, that’s not my DNA. My DNA is the bull tallow, red clay of North Carolina and that’s what’s going to be natural to me.”
They followed up with “Mignonette” (2004), named after the English yacht that sank off the Cape of Good Hope in the 1880s, leaving the crew of four stranded on a lifeboat. The cabin boy, Richard Parker, was killed and eaten by the others, two of whom were later convicted of murder. The event inspired Ang Lee’s film “Life of Pi” (2012).
“Mignonette was the name of the ship,” Avett said. “The survivors had to employ the custom of the sea, which is drawing straws and seeing who will be eaten, who will die, who will be used for the nourishment of the bodies of the survivors. They did survive and there was a question about whether or not they would tell the truth.”
After their fourth album “Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions” (2006), their fifth album “Emotionalism” (2007) finally earned them industry acclaim. It was nominated for Album of the Year at the Americana Music Honors, where The Avett Brothers also won Emerging Artist of the Year and Duo/Group of the Year.
“It was surprising that we were gaining momentum,” Avett said. “We hadn’t plateaued like, man, there’s a couple hundred people coming to every show. … You didn’t think that music with a banjo was something you could make a living at, much less gain any popularity. … Around the ‘Four Thieves’ and ‘Emotionalism’ time, we were firing on all cylinders, completely independent. … ‘Emotionalism’ I think of as the pinnacle of what we could do by ourselves.”
This caught the eye of Rick Rubin, who produced their next album “I and Love and You” (2009), again winning Duo/Group of the Year. They continued with Rubin for “The Carpenter” (2012), which earned their first Grammy nod for Best Americana Album, followed by “Magpie and the Dandelion” (2013) and “True Sadness” (2016), which earned Grammy nods for Best Americana Album and Best Americana Roots Performance for “Ain’t No Man.”
“‘I and Love and You’ was our first experience with Rick and it was a technical boot camp in terms of the recording process,” Avett said. “When we got into making ‘The Carpenter,’ we were in the groove of this second big chapter of our record-making. … Since then it’s been a whole different process where we trust ourselves in a new way, we have more tools, we have more patience and a lot of that can be attributed to Rick’s example in the studio.”
Their latest full-length album was “Closer Than Together” (2019), though they also recently released “The Gleam III” (2020), the third in their EP trilogy with “The Gleam” (2006) and “The Second Gleam” (2008). You’ll almost certainly hear this newer material at Wolf Trap because three nights allows more time to play their repertoire.
“With Wolf Trap being a three-night stand, it’s more likely that we’re going to dig deeper in terms of deeper cuts or songs that we haven’t done in a while, the songs we have to re-learn and then feel nervous when we go out and play them,” Avett said. “‘Closer Than Together’ and the newest ‘Gleam’ both have songs that we haven’t played, so we might have to look at that soon, but you can expect it to be all over the map in terms of our material.”
Find more concert information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley recaps the Helen Hayes Awards (Part 1) The annual Helen Hayes Awards crowned the best of local theater Sunday night at The Anthem in Southwest, D.C.
Over 1,600 theater creators and supporters attended the event, which included performances by Quadry Brown, Carolyn Burke, Drake Leach, Kanysha Williams, Michael Urie, Frenchie Davis and Solomon Parker III.
Judges considered 39 musicals and 97 plays, including 38 world premieres. Winners were divided into “Hayes” for Equity (majority union) casts and “Helen” for non-Equity casts (majority nonunion) to delineate the level of production resources.
On the Equity side, Outstanding Musical went to Signature Theatre’s production of “The Color Purple,” while Outstanding Play went to Studio Theatre’s re-examination of “The Crucible” in “John Proctor is the Villain.”
On the non-Equity side, Outstanding Play went to Synetic Theater’s “Host & Guest,” while Outstanding Musical went to GALA Hispanic Theatre’s “On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio & Gloria Estefan.”
Overall, GALA Hispanic Theatre won the most with 11 total awards, followed by Signature Theatre with six awards (“The Color Purple,” “She Loves Me”), Olney Theatre with five (“The Music Man,” “The Joy That Carries You,” “A.D. 16”) and Round House Theatre with five (“The Tempest,” “We Declare You a Terrorist …”).
Synetic Theater won three awards (“Host & Guest”), The Kennedy Center won three (“Guys and Dolls”), Prologue Theatre won two (“The Revolutionists”), Studio Theatre won two (“John Proctor is the Villain”), Keegan Theatre won two (“The Outsider”), Toby’s Dinner Theatre won two (“Monty Python’s Spamalot,” “The SpongeBob Musical”) and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company won two (“There’s Always the Hudson,” Tony nominee “Ain’t No Mo”).
Single wins went to Imagination Stage (“Naked Mole Rat”), Monumental Theatre (“Tick, Tick … Boom!”), Mosaic Theatre (“The Ballad of Emmett Till”), Perisphere Theater (“Blue Door”), Shakespeare Theatre Company (“The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci”), Theater Alliance (“Poetry for the People”) and Theater J (“Fires in the Mirror”).
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley recaps the Helen Hayes Awards (Part 2) See the full list of winners here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes 75 years of Herndon High School Band (Part 1) The Herndon High School Band is celebrating its 75th anniversary in Fairfax County, Virginia.
You can join The Pride of Herndon for a free concert in the auditorium this Thursday at 7 p.m.
“We would love to have people from all over come celebrate with us,” Band Director Kathleen Jacoby told WTOP.
Teen band members will team with adult alumni to perform the diamond anniversary composition “Like Diamonds, Shine,” written by Andrew Sharrock in a special commission by the Herndon High School Band Parent Association.
“It’s really fun,” Drum Major Jenna Ainge told WTOP. “You can say hi to old friends and it’s especially cool when you meet someone you don’t know. You’re showing them the ropes even though they’re much older than you, but you know the music so you’re teaching them … I grew up in this area and started playing when I was 11. My mother loved the French horn and thought that it would sound pretty. Ever since then I just kept going with it.”
In addition to the free public concert, the walls outside of the auditorium will also display old Herndon band artifacts, news articles and photographs, as the hallways echo with throwback audio clips from classic concerts.
“We’re going to have a big reception for alumni, current community members and family members, anybody who’s been part of the program, before the concert, then we’re going to have a bunch of photographs, sound recordings and we have some great record samples from the ’60s that we’re going to be playing as people come in,” Jacoby said. “Following the concert, we have display cases of every uniform of the band all the way back to 1947.”
Founded in 1947, the band was established by parents and citizens who recruited Vladimir Johnson, a Russian interpreter and part-time music teacher in D.C. At the time of the first rehearsal, most of the students had never seen, let alone played a musical instrument, yet the band’s first performance was a short eight weeks later.
“Marching band was the standard back in the ’40s, coming home from World War II, trying to recover and come up with community function as a way to come together,” Jacoby said. “It started as a Herndon club. There were actually two other high schools in Fairfax that petitioned for music teachers, but Herndon was the first to win a contract with the school board to full-time employ a high-school music teacher. Their charge was to teach band.”
Over the years, the band program has grown from the initial group of 40 musicians and six majorettes to almost 200 students. This year, the band program includes 115 students who participate in Marching Band, Symphonic Band, Symphonic Winds, Wind Ensemble, Percussion Ensemble, Jazz Band, Indoor Drumline and Indoor Guard.
Band directors have included Johnson (1947-1958), Fritz Velke (1958-1964), James Swiney (1964-1968), Larry Willis (1968-1971), George Duman (1971-1978), Richard Bergman (1978-2008) and Jacoby (2008-present).
“The band director I followed, Rich Bergman, had been at Herndon for 30 years, so between us, there have only been three band directors in 50 years,” Jacoby said. “Herndon is a unique community because even though we have the resources of Fairfax County, we have a very small-town feel and a very close-knit community … Our homecoming is on a Saturday instead of a Friday, we have a parade, everyone comes out, the mayor comes out.”
The current band members love it when nostalgic residents ask about their performances.
“Every time I go to my allergist, the lady who signs me in was in the color guard with Bergman, so every time I walk in, she’s like, ‘Jenna, how’s the band?’ and we’ll talk about band,” Ainge said. “It’s a very unique sense of community and it’s really motivating. People really enjoy it and enjoy the marching band, and that’s what keeps us going.”
Find more information on the concert here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes Molly Smith (Part 1) It’s the end of an era in D.C. as Molly Smith is stepping down as artistic director of Arena Stage after 25 years.
On Tuesday night, she will receive the Beth Newburger Schwartz Award at Arena’s Annual Gala event.
“Beth Newburger actually hands out the award,” Smith told WTOP. “People like Arlene Kogod, Ambassador Melanne Verveer, Mayor Muriel Bowser, Nina Totenberg have all received it before, so I am in excellent company. It’s women who have made a real difference in the lives of Washingtonians, so I’m really thrilled to be receiving it.”
The tribute is co-directed by Parker Esse (“Catch Me If You Can”) and Charles Randolph-Wright (“American Prophet”) with music director William Yanesh (“Dave”) along with Kate Baldwin (“South Pacific”), Kurt Boehm (“Carousel”), Will Burton (“My Fair Lady”), E. Faye Butler (“Oklahoma!”), Ed Gero (“The Originalist”), Meg Gillentine (“Cabaret”), Nehal Joshi (“The Music Man”), Brad Oscar (“Damn Yankees”), Kristyn Pope (“Anything Goes”), Maria Rizzo (“Fiddler on the Roof”), Nicholas Rodriguez (“Carousel”) and Kathleen Turner (“Mother Courage”).
“These are all people that I’ve worked with over the past 25 years, so they’ve been an important part of the life of Arena and an important part of my life as a director,” Smith said. “They’re going to be doing songs from some of the great musicals I directed, so you can imagine everything from ‘Oklahoma!’ to ‘Cabaret’ to ‘Damn Yankees.’ … It’s going to be through the whole building, out on the terrace, upstairs in the café, down in the open lobby spaces.”
Born in Yakima, Washington, Smith moved to Juneau, Alaska at age 16. She initially attended the University of Alaska at Fairbanks where it dropped to 65 degrees below zero. She transferred to Catholic University in D.C. and then earned her master’s degree in theater from American University in 1978. While traveling the world, she decided to come home to Juneau and create Perseverance Theatre, which she ran from 1979 to 1998.
“I was traveling in Europe when I was 19 years old with a backpack on for three months and I just decided I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore, I’m going to follow my heart and start a theater in Alaska,” Smith said. “For the next seven years that’s what I did, I learned everything I could from lighting design to box office to creating plays, and when I was 26, we moved back to Alaska with 50 used theater seats and started the theater six months later.”
She’ll never forget getting the call from a headhunter named Greg Kandel about taking over Arena Stage.
“When I was a student in D.C. at Catholic University and American University, I had a mini-subscription to Arena and I watched everything Zelda [Fichandler] did, and [Greg] said, ‘You share the same values,'” Smith said. “I said, ‘I’m in.’ … I knew that Washington D.C. is a crossroads of America, so this would be the perfect theater to lead as artistic director. It’s been the journey of my life. I have adored this audience, which is the smartest in the country.”
When she arrived, countless friends and colleagues urged her to direct musicals, including her partner Suzanne, but she really didn’t think that it was a genre that she wanted to explore. Turns out, she was a natural.
“I hated musicals when I came to Washington D.C.,” Smith said. “The first one that I did was ‘South Pacific’ and I fell in love with it. I woke up the next morning and said, ‘I was born to direct musicals.’ [My favorites] I’d say: ‘South Pacific,’ ‘Oklahoma!,’ because we opened the theater with it, and ‘Anything Goes,’ because it had some of the best tap-dancing in town. … ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ started here at Arena and went around the world. We started it.”
As for non-musicals, her list of acclaimed plays is prolific, including her Power Plays initiative.
“[My favorite] plays: ‘How I Learned to Drive,’ which I directed in the first season and commissioned in Alaska at Perseverance by Paula Vogel and it won the Pulitzer Prize,” Smith said. “‘Sweat’ was another one by Lynn Nottage, a co-production by ourselves and Oregon Shakespeare Festival that also won a Pulitzer. … One this year is ‘Angels in America,’ a landmark production of Tony Kushner’s play. … And we’ve done nine of the 10 August Wilsons.”
Founded in 1950, Arena Stage was one of the first non-profit theaters in America. It was originally located downtown near New York Ave. before moving to an old brewery near the Kennedy Center. It moved to its current location in Southwest D.C. in 1960 and received a massive renovation into a three-theater center in 2010.
“I spent 12 years of my life on the creation of the building, the ideas with architect Bing Thom … and raising the funds,” Smith said. “This center drove all of this development in Southwest Washington. This was the forgotten quadrant. No one wanted to come here. … When we put our spade into the ground, suddenly all of the developers jumped up because they saw opportunity. Now it’s the hottest area in the city — that was driven by Arena Stage.”
After literally remaking the city in physical and ideological ways, she realized that it was time to take a bow.
“This is 25 years, there’s a beauty to that number, and I really felt like I had almost finished everything I wanted to do — and that’s powerful, because I’m a builder, that’s my personality type,” Smith said. “I was turning 70 and I just felt like, ‘OK, what else do I want to do in this one wild, beautiful life I have?’ I want to be vital and physically active, I want to travel a ton … and I’ve gone back to pottery again, which is pretty thrilling to me.”
Find more information on the gala here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Beetlejuice: The Musical' at National Theatre (Part 1) In 2018, “Beetlejuice: The Musical” made its premiere at the National Theatre in D.C., before making its way to Broadway — where it earned an impressive eight Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical.
Now, “it’s showtime” again, as the national tour returns home to the National Theatre from May 16 to May 28.
“I’ve been a fan of the show since I saw it in its first Broadway incarnation,” actress Kate Marilley told WTOP. “What’s really special about coming back to the National Theatre in D.C. is that what audiences saw in 2018 with the pre-Broadway run isn’t exactly what we’re doing currently at the National. Pre-Broadway tryouts are for ironing out kinks and trying out new material. … The Tony Award performance in 2019 really helped it take off.”
Adapted by Anthony King and Scott Brown from the iconic 1988 Tim Burton flick, the supernatural story follows death-obsessed teen Lydia Deetz (Isabella Esler), whose home is haunted by a deceased couple, Adam and Barbara Maitland (Will Burton and Britney Coleman). The degenerate demon Beetlejuice (Justin Collette) offers to scare off Lydia’s insufferable parents, Charlie and Delia Deetz (Jesse Sharp and Kate Marilley).
“In the film version, Beetlejuice, played by Michael Keaton, is only on screen for like 17 minutes,” Marilley said. “In our version, Beetlejuice is on stage 99% of the time, so that’s a huge shift from the film. Also, Lydia Deetz, Winona Ryder in the film, Isabella Esler in our version, she is also on stage about 95% of the time. She is a huge part of this show, she is basically the lead. It’s her journey trying to find her mother on the other side in the Netherworld.”
She says she can’t sing the praises of the two lead actors highly enough, carrying on a tradition that began on stage with the acclaimed Alex Brightman and Sophia Anne Caruso last time at National Theatre.
“Justin is out-of-this-world brilliant in this role, truly making it his own, making his own version of the role, and I think that’s what’s making it really special on tour for fans who both adore Michael Keaton and Alex Brightman as Beetlejuice,” Marilley said. “Our Lydia Deetz is the brilliant Isabella Esler. She is truly a star and I’m so excited for everyone to see her star truly explode on tour. She really brings depth and gravitas to the role of Lydia.”
Marilley and Sharp also have big shoes to fill as Lydia’s parents, played in the 1988 film by Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara. Just as Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis haunted the Deetz parents in the movie, Marilley and Sharp have a blast being possessed by co-stars Burton and Coleman on stage in the national tour.
“I get to play the fun, cooky, wacky role made famous by Catherine O’Hara,” Marilley said. “It’s a dream come true. I hope someday I get to meet her. I will have a ‘Wayne’s World’ moment of dropping to my knees and saying, ‘I’m not worthy!’ She is the pinnacle of comedy and brilliance. The idea that I get to step into her shoes every night is thrilling.”
The versatile songbook is written by Eddie Perfect, who earned a Tony nomination for Best Original Score.
“Literally it spans every genre you can think of,” Marilley said. “It goes from soul, pop rock, contemporary musical theater, Harry Belafonte with calypso, it’s all over the map with really catchy tunes. … Other than Harry Belafonte’s ‘Banana Boat Song: Day-O,’ my main song is called ‘No Reason,’ saying that everything happens for a reason. … Another song is ‘Dead Mom,’ sung by Bella Esler as Lydia, it’s one of the more catchy, famous songs.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be “Beetlejuice” without that signature Tim Burton visual style.
“Of course everything is painted black-and-white stripes: that’s the iconic ‘Beetlejuice’ palette,” Marilley said. “What’s really interesting for any Tim Burton fans out there is that if you’re really paying attention and you really look from the top of the show you will see Easter eggs throughout the entire design of David Korins honoring Tim Burton’s other films. You will see a little bit of ‘Edward Scissorhands,’ a little ‘Nightmare Before Christmas.'”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the remake of 'White Men Can't Jump' Certain sports movies are so perfect that they should never be remade — and filmmaker Ron Shelton made two of them in a span of four years. After the iconic baseball film “Bull Durham” (1988), he directed the basketball flick “White Men Can’t Jump” (1992), which was one of Stanley Kubrick’s Top 10 Favorite Films of All Time. Yes, really.
Alas, the Hollywood machine continues to chew up existing I.P. to spit out carbon copies for the masses to consume. That includes the new remake of “White Men Can’t Jump,” which hits Hulu on Friday with a polished package that can’t compete with the gritty greatness of the cutting-edge original that eased racial tensions after Rodney King. The end credits don’t even cite the right year: “Based on the 1991 motion picture” — come on, man!
The 1992 original follows former college basketball star Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson), who hustles L.A. street ballers who think he’s a talentless white boy before draining shots “in the zone” like Larry Bird. A begrudging friendship evolves with skeptical Black hoopster Sidney Deane (Wesley Snipes) as the two try to win money to pay back mobsters chasing Billy and his wife Gloria (Rosie Perez), who contributes cash by appearing on “Jeopardy.”
Similarly, the 2023 remake follows former Gonzaga University basketball star Jeremy (Jack Harlow), who blew out his knee and now makes money by hustling L.A. hoopsters at the gym. Here, he meets jaded hoopster Kamal Allen (Sinqua Walls), who was destined to be drafted into the NBA until he charged into the stands like Ron Artest to pummel a taunting fan. Together, they compete in a basketball tournament with a grand prize of $500,000.
Not that it should matter, but we need to state the obvious: the star power between the two films isn’t anywhere close. Snipes was fresh off his iconic role as Willie Mays Hayes in “Major League” (1989) and was on a meteoric rise to land the role in “Blade” (1998), while Harrelson was already a household name as bartender Woody Boyd in NBC’s hit sitcom “Cheers” (1982-1993) en route to starring in Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” (1994).
The remake stars two relative newcomers. While Walls has appeared in NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” and MTV’s “Teen Wolf,” Harlow makes his film debut after a successful rap career, earning Grammy nods for “What’s Poppin,” “Churchill Downs,” the Fergie remix “First Class,” and the catchy-as-hell Lil Nas X collaboration “Industry Baby.” Harlow has a charismatic smile, while Walls sheds tears visiting his wheelchair-bound father suffering from MS.
That bittersweet role is played by the late Lance Reddick (“The Wire”), who died back in March before making posthumous appearances in “John Wick 4” and now “White Men Can’t Jump.” Rounding out the supporting cast are rapper Vince Staples as Speedy, Laura Harrier as Jeremy’s ballet dancer girlfriend Tatiana, and Teyana Taylor as Kamala’s hairstylist girlfriend Imani, fresh off her Sundance-winning indie flick “A Thousand and One” (2023).
Penned by “black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, the script is packed with racial references, which would work better sparingly rather than every sentence out of Jeremy’s mouth. At one point, Jeremy hurts his knee in the gym, but the next scene, he’s walking fine. The ending feels forced as Kamal joins the Lakers, which is just as far-fetched as Perez landing her wheelhouse “Jeopardy” category (“Foods That Begin With the Letter Q”), but that was hilarious!
Director Calmatic, who shot the music video for Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” at least peppers the soundtrack with Tag Team’s “Whomp! There it Is,” Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” Sublime’s “Santeria,” Black Rob’s “Whoa,” War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” and Grover Washington Jr.’s “Just the Two of Us.” He also made me laugh out loud at least once, going from slow motion to regular speed as the roaring crowd nearly spills Speedy’s carry-out food.
Clearly, the filmmaker has talent, but the basic setup is fundamentally flawed. It feels odd to start the film inside a gym rather than a blacktop with dudes in street clothes shooting worn basketballs into chain nets. Thankfully, the remake eventually moves to outdoor courts en route to the tournament, but the prize-money court is painted with neon logos as the players dribble a colorful green-and-red basketball like the Harlem Globetrotters at Christmas.
While the gameplay is realistic with all of the benefits of modern filmmaking, the format is less immersive with 5-on-5 basketball. The 2-on-2 tournament was a much better way to show the bond between the two main characters. Billy and Sidney couldn’t rely on three other teammates to bail them out; they had to rely on each other with “give and go” and a game-winning “alley oop.” In the remake, Jeremy is a sixth man off the bench.
I suppose remakes aren’t all bad. Maybe this will inspire a new generation to go back and discover the original. However, if you invite your buddies over to watch it on Friday night, make it a double feature with the original as the main attraction. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time. If you don’t want to tarnish your fond memories of a classic and want to stream something new, I recommend “Air” on Amazon Prime, “Hustle” on Netflix or “Rise” on Disney+.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Exclusion' at Arena Stage (Part 1) May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the United States, and the D.C. theater community fittingly tackles a shocking moment in American history but doing so with the biting humor of a Hollywood satire.
Arena Stage presents the new play “Exclusion” near The Wharf in Southwest D.C. now through June 25.
“I was born and bred here, Arena Stage was the place where I fell in love with it all, so it’s so meaningful to come back and do a show in my hometown at a place that has such a storied history,” actor Josh Stamberg of “WandaVision” told WTOP. “I grew up in Northwest D.C. on the Chevy Chase side. … My mom, who was a New Yorker and exceptional journalist [NPR host Susan Stamberg], dragged me to everything, my parents both did.”
The play follows an award-winning author and historian named Katie (portrayed by the artist simply known as Karoline), who is thrilled when her bestselling book about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is optioned to become a TV miniseries by Hollywood mogul Harry (Stamberg). However, her euphoria turns to disillusionment when she finds herself defending her work’s authenticity in the struggle between what’s true and what sells.
“A young woman from Michigan comes to Hollywood chasing the dream and ultimately achieves it, but the play asks the question: at what cost? How do you hold onto your soul in very turbulent waters?” Stamberg said. “The play is asking big questions about ownership of history, of culture, of story, as this Hollywood guy, me, takes this very meaningful historical story, then figures out how to dramatize it and turn it into a hit TV series.”
For those needing a refresher of a history lesson, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States. It was passed by Congress and into law signed by President Chester A. Arthur in the spring of 1882 as the first significant law restricting immigration into the U.S.
“Chinese people could be completely excluded from society here in the country where they were working and living and be forced out,” Stamberg said. “That went on for a very, very long time up until the 1900s. It was shocking to learn about. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t know anything about it, which is something that’s amazing about this production, shedding light on that in addition to just being hugely entertaining and funny.”
The show is written by accomplished playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lin, who wrote episodes of the Netflix series “House of Cards,” as well as plays like “Kleptocracy” at Arena Stage in 2019.
“[‘Exclusion’] is a very taught 90 minutes,” Stamberg said. “He’s very interested in politics, social power and status. He writes such sharp, smart dialogue. One of things that is most brilliant about the play is how funny he makes the history lessons. He’s not just jamming it at you, preaching about history you should know, he’s doing it by making it hugely entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny so you can get the spoonful of medicine in there.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Lit in Annapolis (Part 1) The Let’s Go Music Festival returns to Annapolis, Maryland on June 2 trough June 4 with Live and Collective Soul.
WTOP caught up with Jeremy Popoff, guitarist of the band Lit, which rocks day two with 311 and Cold War Kids.
“A bunch of great bands on this festival,” Popoff told WTOP. “We’ve done shows with all of them pretty much over the years, so it’s going to be a bunch of good buddies getting together for a good time. Even the country guys, I know all of the guys you mentioned, we live here in Nashville, so I’m sure we’ll run into them the night before.”
Born in 1971 in Orange County, California, Popoff and his brother A. Jay went to an Iron Maiden concert.
“That was the day our life changed forever because that was the first time we saw a rock band on a live stage and just how loud it was, our ears were ringing, and just seeing the guys on stage rocking out. Literally, we woke up the next day and both of us were on the same page like, ‘Yep, that’s what we want to do when we grow up. That’s it.'”
They soon formed a high school band called Razzle, playing the Troubadour on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
“Places like The Troubadour, The Whiskey or Gazzarri’s, all of the Sunset Strip Hollywood places, those were the only places that allowed all ages,” Popoff said.
“In high school, you’d rent a couple of party buses and load up 100 of our friends and that was kind of how we started that. We didn’t realize how legendary those clubs were until years later, that so many people got their start at the Troubadour … But at 15, 16, 17, it was just a place we could play.”
Changing their name to Lit, the band signed with Malicious Vinyl, the independent hip-hop label of Tone Loc and Young MC, to record their first album, “Tripping the Light Fantastic” (1997), mixing punk, grunge and heavy metal.
“That album was a crossroads, very experimental,” Popoff said.”
We were getting influenced by all this great music like ’90s grunge, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Alice In Chains. … We were selling out places as Razzle, a pretty popular local band, but we ditched all of it … then started cold-calling crappy bars [as Lit]. … One sh*tty Tuesday night we played in front of 10 people in San Diego. Two of those 10 turned out to be A&R guys for Delicious Vinyl.”
They next signed with RCA for their second album, “A Place in the Sun” (1999), which went platinum with hits like “Miserable,” “Zip-Lock” and “My Own Worst Enemy,” which topped the Modern Rock chart for 11 weeks.
It’s about a guy who wakes up with regrets after a night of drunken debauchery, asking, “Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk?” and, “Please tell me why my car is the front yard and I’m sleeping with my clothes on.”
“It’s crazy man, that riff is two notes,” Popoff said.
“It was just something I was jamming on one night. … I was really fascinated with songs like ‘Magic Man’ from Heart. … I was really chasing down that simplicity, so I was just writing these really basic riffs to see if I could do that, then A. Jay had a couple of lyrics written down on a scratch pad in his car. That song wrote itself in about 12 minutes. … The song took on a life of its own right out of the gate.”
Their third album “Atomic” (2001) reached No. 36 on the Billboard album charts with the single “Lipstick and Bruises,” but its promotion was derailed when 9/11 happened on the first day of the tour in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
“We had a big crew out with us, a semi-truck, a bunch of cool stuff,” Popoff said.
“My birthday is 9/11, so we had gone out the night before to celebrate in Manhattan. … Just recently a couple of people shared on social media that they still have a ticket stub from that show that never got used. … That record for Lit fans is like Weezer’s ‘Pinkerton’ album, one of those fan-favorite albums that’s a great record that kind of got [overshadowed].”
Their self-titled fourth album “Lit” (2004) holds a bittersweet place in his heart as it was the last album featuring the full original lineup because drummer Allen Shellenberger tragically died of brain cancer in 2009.
“A. Jay and I had small kids, I was going through a divorce, our parents were in an accident, all of these big, huge real-life things were happening during that record and just after,” Popoff said.
“Allen getting sick was completely out of the blue. He was the most healthy and athletic, he never drank before a show, he never smoked a cigarette in his life, he was just a solid dude. … It’s bittersweet because we got through that time and came out stronger.”
Thankfully for fans, the band regrouped to record three more albums with “The View from the Bottom” (2012), “These Are the Days” (2017) and “Tastes Like Gold” (2022), all of which you’ll hear at the Let’s Go Music Festival.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun, a lot of great bands and we’re going to bring it,” Popoff said.
Find more information on the festival here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'The Big Door Prize' on Apple TV+ What would you do if a magical machine revealed your true life potential? Would you suddenly change your career to pursue your supposed destiny? Or would you be content with the life you have already built by chance?
That’s the high-concept premise of the new 10-episode streaming series “The Big Door Prize,” an intriguing existential dramedy that drops the finale of its first season this Wednesday on Apple TV+.
Based on the 2020 book of the same name by M.O. Walsh, the story is set in the small fictional town of Deerfield, where a mysterious machine called The Morpho appears in a convenience store with a haunting blue glow. Curious citizens scan their fingerprints and enter their social security numbers, allowing the machine to spit out blue cards reading their “Life Potential.” Will the town residents upend their daily lives to pursue their supposed destinies?
Chris O’Dowd, who played Kristen Wiig’s cop love interest in “Bridesmaids” (2011) and won an Emmy for the British comedy series “State of the Union” (2019), is perfectly cast as the mopey, middle-aged high-school history teacher Dusty. He turns 40 in the pilot and receives a bunch of gifts that he doesn’t want, including a Theremin, before drawing a Morpho card that reads “Teacher/Whistler,” deciding that he is pretty much on the right path.
The opposite is true for Dusty’s wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis), who draws the card “Royalty,” wondering if she settled for small-town life when she could have been a real-life queen or princess somewhere. Her performance is outwardly energetic, cheering at basketball games and emceeing social events, but inwardly chaotic, never feeling good enough for her overbearing mother Izzy (Crystal R. Fox), a knick-knack store owner who is also the town mayor.
The parents’ mid-life crises are nothing compared to the trauma facing their daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara), who is grieving the death of her high-school boyfriend Kolton Kovac, the town basketball star who died in a freak car accident. Helping her grieve is Kolton’s shy brother Jacob (Sammy Fourlas), whose broken father Beau (Aaron Roman Weiner) turns his garage into a whiskey bar with a mechanical punching bag to let out his anger.
Rounding out the cast are Italian restaurant owner Giorgio (Josh Segarra), who pathetically expresses his love for Cass every three seconds; Father Reuben (Damon Gupton), who converted into a minister based on his Morpho card but clearly has feelings for the local bartender Hana (Ally Maki), a drifter who showed up around the time that the Morpho machine arrived in the convenience store owned by the quirky Mr. Johnson (Patrick Kerr).
Many of these characters get their own namesake episodes (“Dusty,” “Cass,” etc) sketching character studies from their perspective. The only exception is the two-part finale “Deerfest,” which centers on an annual town carnival rife with visual metaphor, such as Izzy building a hay-bale maze higher as she builds her emotional walls higher. There’s even an albino deer like the symbolic coyote in “Collateral” (2004).
Showrunner David West Read previously executive produced “Schitt’s Creek” (2015-2020), but comparisons do a disservice to “The Big Door Prize,” which isn’t nearly as hilarious or socially groundbreaking. More literal viewers may be disappointed that we never learn the exact origins of the Morpho machine.
I’m sure the writers would say that’s not really the point. Like the Zoltar machine that transforms Tom Hanks in Penny Marshall’s “Big” (1988), the Morpho machine is merely a high-concept catalyst to explore larger existential themes of fate vs. free will. It’s a proverbial “MacGuffin” that the characters try to solve but that the writers don’t bother revealing to the audience, save for a few clues as we cut to black in the cliffhanger.
The series has already been renewed for a second season, but who knows when it will drop due to the writers’ strike. Among Apple’s slate, I’d recommend “Ted Lasso,” “Trying” or “Shrinking” first, but if you’ve already knocked those out, give it a shot. Watching “The Big Door Prize” is like drawing a Morpho card — it might not be what you think you’re gonna get, but it might just be what you need to improve your life.
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Ed Sheeran is breathing a sigh of relief after a jury found last week that he did not steal key components of Marvin Gaye’s classic 1973 tune “Let’s Get It On” to create his own Grammy-winning song “Thinking Out Loud” in 2014.
Sheeran joined WTOP’s sister station, The Mix in Chicago, to celebrate with Chris Petlak and Nikki Chuminatto.
“I’m so wiped from all of that,” Sheeran told The Mix. “It’s mad. The outside world is the outside world and my career is releasing albums and doing shows, but when you’re in that courtroom, that is all that you can see and all that matters, so to be out of it now, it feels like such a massive weight has been lifted.”
The verdict is coincidentally timed with his new documentary “Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All” on Disney+.
“This director came to me and said, ‘I don’t want to make a music documentary, I want to make a documentary on you as a person,” Sheeran said. “My record label is so happy about all of the press around this. None of this was planned. We moved the album so it was near the Disney documentary, then suddenly the court case was happening. I thought it would end last week but it dragged on, so it feels like a movie like it’s all falling into place.”
As if that wasn’t serendipitous enough, his fifth studio album “-“ (“Subtract”) just arrived on May 5, continuing his series of math-symbol titles after “+” (2011), “x” (2014), “÷” (2017), “=” (2021) and now “-” (2023).
“Songwriting is kind of like working out,” Sheeran said. “You work out and exercise and it keeps your body fit and healthy, and I find that with songwriting, some of it is just an exercise sometimes and every now and then a good song will come out of that, but I’m constantly writing to keep the wheel turning because I never want to get writer’s block and just stop. I want to just continually be writing, and sometimes that means writing bad songs.”
He says that there’s always stuff to write about because life is “colorful” as a father of two kids.
“I treat it like a 9 to 5,” Sheeran said. “I got it from Eminem when I worked with him in Detroit. He’s very regimented. He goes to work and comes home and that’s his family life. For musicians, our livelihoods are so all over the shop. You finish a gig at 11, then you start a gig at 8, then you might do a promo at 5, but that’s a weird day, so now that I have kids, actually being structured so I have a regular work schedule is good.”
His new tour hits FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland on June 24.
“There’s more bells and whistles, fireworks and flames, it’s a very good tour, I’m really proud of it,” Sheeran said. “The first time I played an arena was 2011, then the first time I played a stadium was 2015, so once you’ve done those, it becomes normal. … Stadiums are an all-inclusive event that people are coming to with their families or friends or large groups, so you have to make it a big communal singalong and play the songs that people know.”
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Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Laura Benanti (Part 1) In 2008, she won the Tony Award for the Broadway revival of the musical “Gypsy.”
This Saturday, Laura Benanti hosts “Broadway in Bethesda” gala at Round House Theatre.
“It’s basically standup comedy and music, so I go between telling funny true stories and anecdotes, then I sing songs from musicals, Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, so it really spans genres,” Benanti told WTOP. “It’s certainly not stuffy. Sometimes the term ‘cabaret’ can feel antiquated, like I’m draped over a piano dressed in sequins — that’s not it at all. I want people to feel like they’re in my living room, we’re telling stories and having a good time.”
The gala is intended as an annual event to raise money for Round House Theatre, located at 4545 East-West Highway in Bethesda, Maryland. Tony winner Audra McDonald hosted in 2019 before the pandemic canceled any plans for 2020 and 2021. The gala returned in 2020 hosted by Tony winner Kelli O’Hara.
“A lot of arts centers and theaters have struggled since the pandemic,” Benanti said. “It certainly hit Broadway, but it hit our local community theaters even harder. I think that theater in our own areas is really important. Not everybody can get to Broadway, and if they can, it’s really expensive, so if you go to an event like this and you are able to pay a little bit more in order to fund everyone being able to come at some point, it’s much appreciated.”
Born in New York City in 1979, Benanti grew up in a small town in New Jersey where there wasn’t much of an arts program. Her science teacher directed the high school musicals. When she was 16, she played Dolly Levi in “Hello Dolly!,” which caught the eye of Paper Mill Playhouse, a professional equity theater that often feeds Broadway.
“I won their very first Rising Star Award,” Benanti said. “After that happened, they recommended that I audition for Liesl in a Broadway revival of ‘The Sound of Music,’ so I auditioned, and at 17 ended up getting cast as the understudy for Maria, which was the Julie Andrews role … when the actress playing Maria left, I took over, so at 18, almost 19, I was starring on Broadway, which was very unusual and I’m so grateful or it.”
In 2000, she earned her first Tony Award nomination for “Swing!,” a jukebox musical created by Paul Kelly featuring famous tunes by Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Benny Goodman from the jazz era of swing.
“I had this really amazing number with a trombone player — we did ‘Cry Me a River,'” Benanti said. “I was 19, I was the youngest adult ever nominated for a Tony Award … I thought it was a joke. My mom called me like, ‘You were nominated for a Tony Award!’ at like 8 in the morning. I was like, ‘Uh, I think you’re wrong,’ said goodbye and hung up … Then I started getting more and more calls and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I just couldn’t believe it.”
In 2002, she earned her second Tony nomination for Stephen Sondheim’s iconic musical “Into the Woods.”
“Fun fact: I actually played Cinderella six years earlier at The Barn Theatre in New Jersey, which is this amazing community theater, so it prepared me to audition for Stephen Sondheim,” Benanti said. “I had a leg up in that area.”
In 2008, she returned to Sondheim again with “Gypsy,” starring opposite Patti LuPone and Boyd Gaines. Not only did she earn her third Tony Award nomination, this time she actually won for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
“That I would say is probably the highlight of my career,” Benanti said. “When they called my name, I’ve never run up to a stage faster in my entire life. My friend Kristin Chenoweth was the one who presented it to me, which meant the world to me. To look out in the audience and see Arthur Laurents … standing at 92 years old, I’ll never forget that moment. I feel like that’s one of the moments that will like flash before me as I’m peacing out.”
In 2011, she earned her fourth Tony Award nomination for “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” a stage adaptation based on Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s groundbreaking 1988 film.
“I’m a big Pedro Almodóvar fan and I just loved that show so much,” Benanti said. “I had one of the greatest songs of all time that David [Yazbek] wrote. It was like a 7-minute song that was absolutely hilarious, and I got to work with Patti LuPone again, so any time I get to work with Patti is just a wonderful time.”
In 2016, she earned her fifth Tony Award nomination for “She Loves Me,” which was a remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940), which was also remade by Nora Ephron as “You’ve Got Mail” (1998).
“I was pregnant with my daughter, Ella,” Benanti said. “I had hyperemesis where you basically have morning sickness all day long for the entire pregnancy. They had to hide garbage cans all over the set for me … they live-streamed it and my husband texted me, ‘Did I just watch you swallow your own vomit?’ I was like, ‘You sure did.'”
More recently, she’s expanded into movies, joining Andrew Garfield in “Tick, Tick… Boom!” and Jennifer Lawrence in “No Hard Feelings,” as well as TV series, including “Law & Order: SVU,” “The Good Wife,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Nashville,” “Gossip Girl,” “The Gilded Age” and “Life & Beth” starring Amy Schumer.
“There’s a different energy to on-camera acting,” Benanti said. “When you are on stage, you have to fill an entire theater, so the energy is going outward, but what I have learned with TV and film is you’re really drawing the audience in. The camera is like a lie detector, it can tell if you’re not completely dropped into or understanding or feeling or believing what you’re feeling. … It’s been an interesting segue into an art form that’s similar to theater.”
Find more information on “Broadway in Bethesda” here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews upcoming music festivals (Part 1) You can’t throw a proverbial rock across the Potomac River without hitting a DMV music festival.
In recent weeks, Maryland hosted the M3 Rock Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion, D.C. hosted Project GLOW Fest at RFK Stadium and Virginia hosted the Something in the Water music festival in Virginia Beach.
If you missed those events, don’t worry, there are plenty of other music festivals coming to the D.C. area this year.
Here’s a roundup if you want to mark your calendar for the upcoming months:
Upcoming Music Festivals in the DMV:
- May 19-Aug. 4: Jazz in the Garden at D.C. Sculpture Garden in D.C.
Martha Redbone Roots Project, Chelsey Green, Dupont Brass, Seldom Scene - May 25-28: DelFest in Cumberland, MarylandDel McCoury, Molly Tuttle, Sam Bush, Trampled by Turtles, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong
- May 28: National Memorial Day Concert in D.C.Joe Mantegna, Gary Sinise, Mary McCormack, National Symphony Orchestra
- May 28: Célébrez en Rosé at Merriweather Park at Symphony WoodsJacquees, Big Freedia, Mannie Fresh, UCB and DJ 5’9
- June 2-4: Let’s Go Music Festival in Annapolis, MarylandCollective Soul, 311, Lit, Cold War Kids, Chris Young, Kip Moore
- June 24: WMZQ Fest at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, VirginiaKane Brown, Gabby Barrett and Restless Road
- June 25: Out & About Festival at Wolf TrapBrandi Carlile, Yola, Lucius, Rufus Wainwright, Brandy Clark
- June 29-July 9: Smithsonian Folklife Festival in D.C.
Pam Setser, Fran “Lady Strings” Grace, Pura Coco, and many more - July 4: A Capitol Fourth on National Mall in D.C.National Symphony Orchestra with celebrity lineup TBD
- July 12-16: Lake Arbor Jazz Festival at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland
Najee, Pieces of a Dream, War, Eric Roberson, Frank McComb, Mike Phillips - July 15-16: Broccoli City Festival at RFK Stadium in D.C.
Lil Uzi Vert, Jazmine Sullivan, City Girls, Brent Faiyaz, Kodak Black, Glorilla - July 28: Outlaw Music Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland
Willie Nelson, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Kurt Vile & The Violators - Aug. 12-13: Moonrise Festival at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, MarylandDillon Francis, Above & Beyond, Bonnie x Clyde, Elephante, Loud Luxury, Slander, Zomboy
- Aug. 30-Sept. 3: D.C. Jazz Festival at The WharfGregory Porter, Kenny Garrett, Charles Lloyd, Samara Joy, Terri Lyne Carrington
- Sept. 2-3: Appaloosa Fest at Skyline Ranch Resort in Front Royal, VirginiaScythian, Blue Highway, TBA, Screaming Orphans, Chatham Rabbits
- Sept. 16: H Street Festival in D.C.
Lineup TBD - Sept. 29-Oct. 1: Oceans Calling Festival in Ocean City, MarylandJack Johnson, Alanis Morissette, John Mayer, Incubus, Sheryl Crow, Lumineers, Weezer
- Sept. 30-Oct.1: All Things Go Music Festival
Maggie Rogers, Carly Rae Jepsen, Mt. Joy, Lana Del Rey, Boy Genius, Muna - Oct. 14: Down in the Reeds in D.C.
Lineup TBD
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Avalon Centennial Gala (Part 1) The District’s Avalon Theatre is celebrating its 100th anniversary this weekend in Chevy Chase.
The nonprofit movie theater will host a special Centennial Gala on Saturday.
“The gala event raises funds that literally keep this theater operating year over year,” Programming Director Andrew Mencher told WTOP. “It’s a crucial part of this theater being a part of this community for so long.”
The theatre tries to organize a gala ever spring, he said.
“We’ve done it for about 10 to 15 years now,” Mencher said. “This year let’s call it a gala on steroids.”
It kicks off with a 5:30 p.m. screening of Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” (1924) about a projectionist who climbs up onto the movie screen to enter the film (think of it as a reverse “Purple Rose of Cairo”). This will be followed by a 7 p.m. gala at Chevy Chase Village Hall, roughly a seven-minute walk from the theater. Bus transportation is also available.
“This movie actually played at The Avalon in 1924,” Mencher said. “We have invited a local composer, Andrew Simpson, who’s a professor at Catholic University, but as his very serious side hobby, as a composer he has gotten involved with scoring silent film. He’s performed all over the world. He’s written dozens of scores that are now featured on DVD and Blu-ray rereleases. He has written a brand new score for the Buster Keaton classic.”
May’s celebration of the 1920s with Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” continues a special monthly series of screening different movies from every decade of The Avalon’s existence. February celebrated the 1960s with Sidney Poitier’s “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), March celebrated the 1940s with Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” (1940) and April celebrated the 2010s with Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” (2016).
June celebrates the 1980s with “Moonstruck” (1987). The Avalon is still deciding on the films for July, August, September, October and November, but they will celebrate the 1930s, 1950s, 1970s, 1990s and 2000s.
Not only does this year mark 100 years of The Avalon, it’s the 20th anniversary of it becoming a nonprofit in 2003.
“It had to very quickly go through significant changes from being built in 1923 as a silent film theater to being wired for sound in 1929, then you had to retrofit air conditioning,” Mencher said. “Many other theaters closed (but) this neighborhood said, ‘Not this one.’ It had this remarkable ability to negotiate it staying a movie theater, then raising an enormous amount of money and the restoration work that went to reopen the theater in 2003.”
Tickets to the Buster Keaton screening are $75. The party is $325 per person.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Styx at the M3 Rock Festival (Part 1) The annual M3 Rock Festival returns to the Merriweather Post Pavilion this weekend in Columbia, Maryland.
Legendary classic-rock band Styx headlines Saturday’s lineup with Extreme, Winger, Slaughter, Lita Ford and Quiet Riot, while local band Kix headlines Sunday’s bill with Warrant, Great White, Firehouse and L.A. Guns.
“These are always fun,” Styx keyboardist and vocalist Lawrence Gowan told WTOP. “It’s a fun atmosphere both backstage and definitely in the audience. A lot of people who are aficionados of the other bands on the bill, this may be their first time seeing Styx and it’s a pretty epic adventure. It’s a great way to initiate those who are maybe on the fringes or have never had the opportunity to see the band before to finally see what a Styx show entails.”
When the original Styx lineup formed in Chicago for its self-titled debut album in 1972, Gowan was just a 16-year-old growing up in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, Ontario, listening to the band as a fan like the rest of us.
“Styx was the first band doing progressive-rock influences that was not British, they were American, so that’s what set them apart,” Gowan said. “Chuck Panozzo and his twin brother John were the rhythm section of drums and bass and [vocalist] Dennis DeYoung formed with guitarist John Curulewski. They got tons of gigs, mostly playing covers, but when James Young joined in 1971, suddenly they started playing more original material.”
Their sophomore album “Styx II” (1973) broke through with their first radio hit, the power ballad “Lady.”
“It’s got a piano intro that is beautiful, so I get to kick off the song in that way, but I love the way that it segues from a piano ballad into a real rock piece of music,” Gowan said. “It’s got that classic Styx trajectory to a song, which starts kind of ballad-like then suddenly transforms into a rock beast. It’s one of the only rock songs I know that uses a bolero style beat as the song reaches its climax, so it’s tons of fun, great harmonies throughout.”
Soon, Tommy Shaw replaced Curulewski for the band’s hottest period. Their seventh album “The Grand Illusion” (1977) featured “Fooling Yourself” and “Come Sail Away,” an epic story that transcends its nautical setup: “I thought that they were angels, but to my surprise, we climbed aboard their starship and headed for the skies.”
“It’s an invitation to a great adventure and people just want to jump aboard,” Gowan said. “It’s got that progressive rock shape to it, which again starts as a piano ballad but opens up and turns into a rock song, then goes through a whole instrumental section that carries the listener into another realm … suddenly we realize that it may not be a sea-going vessel but actually something carrying us through the galaxy and beyond. I love the scope of the song.”
Their next album “Pieces of Eight” (1978) featured “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights),” which grabs listeners immediately with its unique organ instrument and holds them to the end with the lyric, “Give me a job, give me security, give me a chance to survive, I’m just a poor soul in the unemployment line, my God, I’m hardly alive.”
“‘Blue Collar Man’ starts off with a classic Hammond B3 Organ, very heavily distorted,” Gowan said. “Tommy Shaw said he got the idea for that rhythm when he was on a motorboat and the motor kept cutting out. He liked the rhythm of that and he kept that in mind. The real charm of ‘Blue Collar Man’ is that it’s such a relatable lyric, everyone can relate to that, the nobility of work is something that everyone has in there somewhere.”
Their next album “Cornerstone” (1979) boasted the hit ballad “Babe” and arguably their most iconic anthem “Renegade,” featuring the outlaw chorus, “The jig is up, the news is out, they’ve finally found me, the renegade, who had it made, retrieved for a bounty. Never more to go astray, this’ll be the end today, of the wanted man.”
“‘Renegade’ is my favorite Styx song to play,” Gowan said. “It’s usually toward the end of the night … it’s an anthem for a lot of people, that feeling of rebellion that you’re on the run, you’re gonna get away, you’re gonna make it. NFL teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers use it every fourth quarter, it’s been used in so many cultural references. The show ‘Ozark,’ that was the song that kicked off the whole final season. Adam Sandler has used it several times.”
Their tenth album ““Paradise Theatre” (1981) delivered “The Best of Times” and “Too Much Time On My Hands.”
“Tommy sings [‘Too Much Time’] and it’s got a great synth bassline that’s very hooky,” Gowan said. “I asked him about the writing of that song and he said basically he made it up in his head on the way to the studio. He had a couple-hour drive from Michigan to Chicago, but he had that bassline in his head. It was the last song added onto the album, so it was an 11th-hour addition … he thought, ‘I guess I had too much time on my hands all along!'”
They continued to evolve in the 1980s with their 11th studio album “Kilroy Was Here” (1983), featuring hits like “Don’t Let It End,” “High Time” and of course “Mr. Roboto,” capturing the rise of futuristic technology.
“It’s funny, it was considered back then by a number of people as kind of a kitschy song, a very different song for the band to do, but now it’s withstood the test of time,” Gowan said. “It was a very prescient song that really predicted a lot of what our lives have been over the past 40 years where technology pervades everything. It’s a fun song to sing, I sing that one … it was their first foray into techno music, so it’s very sequenced and synthesized.”
In 1984, DeYoung bailed as lead singer before later coming back and then leaving the group once again. Gowan joined on with Styx in 1999 as a keyboardist and vocalist just in time for the album “Cyclorama” (2003).
“I’m in my 25th year in my tenure with Styx, so I’ve been with the band for half its existence,” Gowan said. “There have only been 10 members since the beginning. For a band that’s been around half a century, that’s remarkable … over the past 25 years we’ve continued to be in the Top 50 grossing acts of the year for ticket sales. The faithful keep coming back and wanting more. Last summer’s tour was the biggest-selling tour that we’ve ever done.”
What will it take for Styx to be inducted into the damned Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?
“I have a feeling that it will happen sometime,” Gowan said. “They well deserve it and I would be really happy for everyone if that were to happen, but honestly we’re so busy that we don’t have much time to think about it!”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews May entertainment (Part 1) Forget those April showers, it’s time for May flowers with fun events blossoming.
There are plenty of exciting happenings around the D.C. area this month.
Time for your May entertainment guide:
May Entertainment Guide
May 1: Coheed and Cambria at The Fillmore Silver Spring
May 1: The Wallflowers at The Birchmere
May 2-9: Amy Grant at The Birchmere
May 4: Raheem DeVaughn at The Birchmere
May 1-7: “Jennifer Who is Leaving” at Round House Theatre
May 1-7: “On the Far End” at Round House Theatre
May 1-13: “Shout Sister Shout” at Ford’s Theatre
May 1-14: “La Valentia” at GALA Hispanic Theatre
May 1-14: “‘night Mother” at Anacostia Playhouse
May 1-21: “The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield” at Atlas Performing Arts Center
May 1-28: “The School for Lies” at Constellation Theatre
May 1-June 11: “Grease” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
May 1-June 18: “Passing Strange” at Signature Theatre
May 1-Oct. 1: “Shear Madness” at Kennedy Center
May 2: Broadway announces Tony Award nominations
May 2: NSO at The Anthem: Live Music Trivia
May 3: “AEW Dynamite” at CFG Bank Arena
May 3: Yeah Yeah Yeahs at The Anthem
May 3: YES Epics & Classics Featuring JON ANDERSON And The Band Geeks at Capital One Hall
May 3: Billy Idol at Rams Head Baltimore
May 3: Ministry with Gary Numan at The Fillmore Silver Spring
May 4: “Pun DMV” at DC Improv
May 4: Rachel Baiman at Pearl Street Warehouse
May 4: BSO’s Tchaikovsky Piano Concert at Strathmore
May 4-6: NSO’s “Cirque de la Symphonie” at Kennedy Center
May 4-7: The Washington Ballet’s “Sleeping Beauty” at Kennedy Center
May 5: “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3” in movie theaters
May 5: Big Tony & Trouble Funk at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
May 5-7: Kem, Ledisi & Musiq Soulchild at DAR Constitution Hall
May 5-June 25: “Exclusion” at Arena Stage
May 6: Janet Jackson at Jiffy Lube Live
May 6: KT Tunstall & Martin Sexton at The Birchmere
May 6: M3 Rock Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion
May 6: The Avalon Theatre Centennial Gala
May 6: The War and Treaty at Union Stage
May 6: Sarah Silverman at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
May 7-28: “Here There Are Blueberries” at Shakespeare Theatre Company
May 9: Lizzo at CFG Bank Arena
May 10: Citizen Cope at 9:30 Club
May 10: Seal at The Anthem
May 10: Gojira & Mastodon at Pier Six Pavilion
May 10: Evgeny Kissin & Renée Fleming at Kennedy Center
May 10-June 11: “Good Bones” at Studio Theatre
May 11: BSO Pops: Uptown Nights at Strathmore
May 11: National Philharmonic’s “Cosmic Cycles” at Strathmore
May 11-31: Brittany Schmitt at DC Comedy Loft
May 11-14: Jill Scott at MGM National Harbor
May 11-21: JxJ Jewish Film Festival
May 11-Sept. 24: Movies on the Potomac at National Harbor
May 12: The Manhattans at The Birchmere
May 12: “Queer Eye” drops Season 7 on Netflix
May 12: “The Power” season finale on Amazon Prime
May 12: Monty Python’s “Spamalot” at Kennedy Center
May 12-13: NSO’s “Beethoven & American Masters” at Kennedy Center
May 12-13: A.D. Hodge at DC Comedy Loft
May 13: Boz Scaggs at National Theatre
May 13: Janet Jackson at CFG Bank Arena
May 13: Willie Nile at The Hamilton
May 13: “Girls Gotta Eat: Snack Comedy Tour” at Warner Theatre
May 13: Laura Benanti hosts Broadway in Bethesda Gala at Round House Theatre
May 13-27: Washington National Opera’s “La Boheme” at Kennedy Center
May 14: Tony Woods at DC Improv
May 14: Anita Baker at CFG Bank Arena
May 14: Mother’s Day Jazz Brunch with Eric Byrd Trio at The Hamilton
May 16: Patti LaBelle & Kristin Chenoweth at American Pops Orchestra
May 16: Matt Schofield at Rams Head Annapolis
May 16-28: “Beetlejuice” at National Theatre
May 16-July 9: “Sweeney Todd” at Signature Theatre
May 17: Soulja Boy at Howard Theatre
May 17: “The Big Door Prize” season finale on Apple TV+
May 18: “Mrs. Davis” season finale on Peacock
May 18: The Gibson Brothers at Rams Head Annapolis
May 18-20: Jeff Ross at DC Improv
May 19: “White Men Can’t Jump” reboot on Hulu
May 19: Tom Jones at MGM National Harbor
May 19: Jerry Seinfeld at The Hall at Live! Casino & Hotel
May 19: “All Things Equal: The Life & Trials of RBG” at Lincoln Theatre
May 19-20: NSO’s “Beethoven & American Masters” at Kennedy Center
May 19-July 7: Union Market Drive-In
May 19-Aug. 4: “Jazz in the Garden” at Sculpture Garden
May 20: Bodeans at Rams Head Annapolis
May 20: Chuck Brown Band at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
May 20: Smokey Robinson at MGM National Harbor
May 21: Bodeans at The Birchmere
May 21: Guster at Merriweather Post Pavilion
May 21: Crowded House at The Anthem
May 22: Helen Hayes Awards at The Anthem
May 23: Blink-182 at Capital One Arena
May 23: Bryson Tiller at The Fillmore Silver Spring
May 23: Molly Smith farewell gala at Arena Stage
May 23-24: The National at The Anthem
May 23-26: “The Walkmen” at 9:30 Club
May 23-June 27: Adams Morgan Movie Nights
May 24-28: “The Crucible” ballet at Kennedy Center
May 25: The Flaming Lips at The Anthem
May 25-27: The Avett Brothers at Wolf Trap
May 26: Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” in movie theaters
May 26: “Madagascar: The Musical” at Capital One Hall
May 26: Nick Offerman at MGM National Harbor
May 26: Yasiin Bey & Talib Kweli at Howard Theatre
May 26: Blink-182 at CFG Bank Arena
May 26: Bela Dona at The Birchmere
May 26: Tony Toni Tone at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
May 27: Uncle Kracker at Tally Ho Theatre
May 27: Andy Grammer at Camden Yards
May 27: Rob Schneider at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
May 28: Célébrez en Rosé at Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods
May 28: National Memorial Day Choral Festival at Kennedy Center
May 28: “Blast Off!” with The President’s Own Marine Band at Wolf Trap
May 28: National Memorial Day Concert
May 28: Ugly Kid Joe at Tally Ho Theatre
May 28: “Succession” series finale on HBO
May 29-30: Jon Faddis at Blues Alley
May 29-June 25: “Incendiary” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
May 30: Foo Fighters at The Atlantis
May 31: The Walkmen at The Atlantis
May 31: Pure Prairie League at Rams Head Annapolis
May 31: “Ted Lasso” series finale on Apple TV+
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Tower Road Bus' documentary (Part 1) In 1954, the Supreme Court’s decision — also known as Brown v. Board of Education — ended segregation in U.S. public schools, but Prince George’s County in Maryland delayed implementing it until a federal court in Baltimore forced the issue in 1972.
This seismic social shift is chronicled in the new documentary “The Tower Road Bus,” which recently won Best of the Festival at the Ocean City Film Festival, Best Director at the Chesapeake Film Festival, and Best of the Region at the Alexandria Film Festival. It also recently aired on Howard University’s public television station WHUT.
“In the early 1970s you had a very quick implementation of integration,” filmmaker Michael Streissguth told WTOP. “There was an African-American community near Brandywine, Maryland, along Tower Road. The powers-that-be designated most elementary school children to be bussed into the majority white Crestview Elementary [where] Dotson Burns Jr. became the first African American principal of a majority-white school in the county.”
Suddenly, the trailblazing bus routes to Clinton, Maryland, became key arteries of the civil rights movement.
“By January 1973, 23,000 students were traveling hither and yon across the county to different schools to implement this integration order,” Streissguth said. “It was a chaotic time, it was a confusing time. If this were happening now we probably would slow down and say, ‘Hey, let’s have some workshops … let’s train the faculty members, but that’s not how it happened. People were in one school one day and another school on another day.”
The film also chronicles the backlash from some white parents in the area who ignorantly feared change.
“There’s footage of protests going on in schools in Prince George’s County,” Streissguth said. “One amazing thing is that there was so much opposition to this that on Super Bowl Sunday in 1973, when the Washington football team was in the Super Bowl (George Allen vs. Don Shula). There was a protest at Rosecroft Raceway where thousands of people turned out on Super Bowl Sunday! That’s how strongly people felt about this.”
Streissguth, who graduated from Damascus High School in Montgomery County, actually attended Crestview Elementary School in Clinton, so he remembers it well. He reached out to his former principal, who grew up in the Jim Crow South in Texas during the 1930s and 1940s before moving to the D.C. area in the 1950s.
“My first stop was Mr. Burns,” he said. “I found him living in Fort Washington. I sent a letter and asked if he was indeed the principal of Crestview during the 1970s and he confirmed that. We met and I began to learn about his story and his experiences. He also pointed me to many of the teachers who are still living in that area and many of the students, as well. I had my own contacts with old friends who put me in touch with other students.”
He found it fascinating interviewing his former classmates, including Derek, Lisa and Donna Adams, who lived on Tower Road, and Joey Hoffman, who lived in the Crestview community and is now a retired police officer.
“The film profiles a number of former students who lived on Tower Road and their experiences being on the front lines of integration,” Streissguth said. “I am so happy looking back in retrospect to be raised in an integrated school environment, but I had my integration served to me. … I didn’t have to do anything, but so many African Americans had to be those agents and sacrifice a lot in that process.”
Find more information on the film here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with the cast of 'Ted Lasso' (Part 1) Only five episodes remain in the final season of the hilariously heartfelt Apple TV+ comedy series “Ted Lasso.”
WTOP caught up with two of the most beloved players on the AFC Richmond Greyhounds, the fabulous footballer Dani Rojas (Mexican actor Cristo Fernandez) and team captain Isaac McAdoo (British actor Kola Bokinni).
They’ve thankfully recovered from this week’s episode, “The Strings That Bind Us,” as Coach Ted Lasso tied a string between the players’ genitals, teaching them to delicately move as one for his new strategy of “Total Football.”
“We’re full ‘Method’ on that one, but we’ve recovered,” Bokinni joked.
“Something needs to change because whatever’s been happening isn’t working. We can’t afford to lose any more games, so we need to shake it up a bit. ‘Total Football’ is a modern concept birthed by Johan Cruyff. … I believe that Richmond has the talent, but it just ain’t jelling after Zava [arrived and quickly retired]. Jamie [Tartt] is the one to step up, so hopefully it works.”
Zava was a prophet-like figure who wowed the locker room with his on-field skills and off-field philosophy. Of all the players, Dani Rojas appeared to idolize Zava the most and thus was the most crushed when he retired.
“We all have idols when we grow up,” Fernandez told WTOP. “For Dani Rojas growing up admiring people, he had posters of Zava, the amazing soccer football player legend that he is, just as me, Cristo Fernandez, I admire Guillermo del Toro, I admire Jim Carrey, I admire Benicio Del Toro. … I admire their work. My favorite Jim Carrey movie I think I have to mention ‘Liar Liar.’ I put it on all the time and I just laugh and laugh and laugh.”
Fernandez loves playing Dani Rojas with his upbeat, optimistic mantra, “Football is Life.” In one episode, he says that he doesn’t drink coffee because his mother told him that he was born caffeinated with endless energy.
“Dani might not drink coffee, but Cristo does,” Fernandez said.
“I need my coffee in the morning, especially because we have good coffee in Mexico, so I need it. But no, it’s fun. I’m just happy as a Mexican and a Latino to be able to play someone with this energy and positive vibes that I actually genuinely think represents my culture and where I come from and put it out there on such a great platform like this means a lot to me.”
Isaac’s character arc has also been fascinating to watch evolve, from bullying water boy Nate Shelley to supporting Sam Obisanya’s boycott of Dubai Air by covering the sponsor’s name on his uniform.
Along the way, he donated personal items to a fire barrel to break Dani’s injury curse, served as the team’s unofficial locker-room barber and settled player disputes like where to order dinner during the team’s entertaining trip to Amsterdam.
“Good things in life are not easily achieved,” Bokinni said. “Wherever the character started off is not where he’s going to end. Isaac had all the tools but didn’t have the blueprint, so Roy [Kent] gave him that. He’s a complicated character. He doesn’t talk much. … The bullying of Nate was a representation of where he was in being insecure with self-esteem issues. … It took a dose of Ted Lasso, Roy Kent and lovely teammates to make him realize it.”
Of course, the once-bullied Nate has now become the head coach of rival West Ham United F.C., starting Season 3 as a slimy antagonist but thawing in recent weeks to become more likable as we watch his awkward attempts to court the hard-to-read hostess of the Greek restaurant A Taste of Athens.
As we enter the home stretch of the final five episodes, is AFC Richmond on a collision course with West Ham to finally give Nate some payback?
“That’s not the Ted Lasso way for people to get their comeuppance,” Bokinni said. “It’s not an eye for an eye. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, so basically, everything comes full circle because everyone believes in karma … but people can learn lessons in many different ways rather than I’m going to stab you in the back because you scratched me, I’m going to shoot you because you stabbed me … that’s not the Ted Lasso way.”
The “BELIEVE” sign may be torn in half, but there’s still a glimmer of hope.
The often stoic Trent Crimm of The Independent just giddily ran into the locker room saying, “The Lasso Way. You haven’t switched tactics in a week. You’ve done this over three seasons by slowly but surely building a club-wide culture of trust and support through thousands of imperceptible moments all leading to their inevitable conclusion. Total Football. It’s gonna work!”
Here’s hoping Isaac and Dani can combine for one last “Lasso Special.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' statue at the University of Maryland (Part 1) In between classes, young Terps regularly scroll their phones to read the campus newspaper — The Diamondback — while munching on Panda Express in the Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland in College Park.
This Saturday, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” author Jeff Kinney returns to his alma matter for Maryland Day from 10 to 11:30 a.m., bringing excitement to a generation of college students who grew up reading the book series.
“We’re unveiling a statue of Greg Heffley, the ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ protagonist, my character,” Kinney told WTOP. “It’s going to live in the Student Union forever hopefully. I’m going to get to do the unveiling with (University President Dr. Darryl) Pines and my son, Will, who is actually a sophomore at Maryland now.”
The statue will be located indoors unlike the Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog statue in front of the Student Union.
“He’ll be under the shelter of rain, so if it’s a bad day outside and you don’t want to visit the Jim Henson-Kermit the Frog statue, go inside and maybe rub Greg’s nose for good luck on your next test (like the Testudo turtle statues),” Kinney said. “The first year the Greg Heffley balloon appeared in the Macy’s Day Parade, he was right behind Kermit the Frog, staring into his rear end, so it’s an appropriate place for my statue to be: behind Kermit.”
Born in Fort Washington, Maryland, Kinney graduated from Bishop McNamara High School in 1989 before transferring to the University of Maryland just in time for his sophomore year of undergraduate studies.
“Maryland was really starting to rise in its reputation,” he said. “These days I wouldn’t even be able to get into the college, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to get into a basketball game. So it’s really cool how much that university has grown in stature since I’ve been there.”
While on campus, Kinney created a popular comic strip called “Igdoof,” which ran in The Diamondback, where he also served as the graphics editor, headline writer and production manager above the South Campus Dining Hall. After four-and-a-half years, he graduated in the winter of 1993, but had a hard time finding a job in his dream vocation.
“I pivoted into oblivion,” Kinney said. “I wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist, but it didn’t work out. I tried for about three years to get my comics into newspapers, but nobody liked my work, so eventually I came up with this idea of ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid.’ I worked on it for a really long time, about eight years, and finally brought a sample packet to New York Comic Con and an editor liked what I did and that’s how I got started as a published author.”
His breakthrough novel “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” was published in 2007, following the struggles of Greg Heffley, an awkward middle-schooler who illustrates his daily life in a diary, or as Kinney would insist calling it a journal.
“He is a middle-school weakling, a little like Larry David for kids,” he said. “He’s not a hero, he’s not an anti-hero, he’s just an average kid who makes lots of mistakes, but hopefully people find them funny. I was a lot like Greg. I made lots of mistakes growing up. Everything I did wrong as a kid I amplified, put through the fiction blender, then put onto the page. Without the experiences I had growing up, Greg and his family wouldn’t exist.”
Roughly three weeks after publication, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” debuted on The New York Times bestseller list at No. 7, then slowly slid down the list to No. 8 and No. 9, so he thought his 15 minutes of fame were over.
“It was the most exciting day of my life,” Kinney said. “I was like, ‘At least I’ll have something to talk about at my high school reunion,’ but then it rebounded and got to No. 1. … It’s been on the bestseller list for 800 weeks.”
Today, the book franchise contains 17 official installments, not to mention various spinoffs. It’s also been adapted for the screen with four live-action films on Fox. When Disney bought Fox, the franchise was rebooted for at least three more films on Disney+, which Kinney can stream at his new home in Plainville, Massachusetts.
“It’s changed my life in innumerable ways,” he said. “I’ve gotten to travel all over the world to 29 of the 69 countries where the books are published, I’ve gotten to meet presidents, entertainment and sports figures. … I got to meet the Obamas in the White House with my family, and just last week, we got to meet President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, so this thing that I wrote has been a ticket or a key that has unlocked lots of different doors for me.”
Kinney was even invited to speak at last year’s University of Maryland commencement ceremony.
“It was really exciting to have that opportunity to address the graduating student body,” he said. “I’m not sure that I really deserved to be up there because I was like a 2-point-something G.P.A. student when I was there. … It’s been really nice to be embraced by the university and kind of come home in that way.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Grammys on the Hill (Part 1) Pharrell Williams is a 13-time Grammy winner who’s created some of the catchiest tunes of the past 30 years.
On Wednesday night, he’ll be honored at the Grammys on the Hill event at The Hamilton in Downtown D.C.
“He’s just been a real champion for the music community,” Recording Academy C.E.O. Harvey Mason Jr. told WTOP. “He’s done so much philanthropic work in addition to being an incredible, prolific producer, artist, writer. He’s had a passion for advocacy, for social justice … he’s just generally been somebody who has cared about people and has used his platform and position to make a difference — and those are the people we like to honor.”
Pharrell’s journey is a local success story, having grown up in Virginia Beach where he continues to host the annual Something in the Water music festival, which was founded in 2019 and even visited the National Mall last year.
“He came up as a young producer in Virginia Beach and worked with Teddy Riley for a bit, then started making a name for himself, along with his partner Chad (Hugo), under the name The Neptunes,” Mason Jr said. “They produced pretty much everyone from all of the biggest hip-hop artists across the board to the biggest pop superstars … they started a group N.E.R.D. and began signing artists to Star Trak Records: Clipse and others.”
Indeed, Pharrell has collaborated with everyone that you can imagine: Nelly (“Nellyville”), Justin Timberlake (“Justified”), Gwen Stefani (“Holla Back Girl”), Snoop Dogg (“Drop it Like it’s Hot”), Daft Punk (“Get Lucky”), Robin Thicke (“Blurred Lines”), Beyonce (“Beyonce”) and Kendrick Lamar (“To Pimp a Butterfly”). He’s also delivered “Happy” movie soundtracks with a pair of Oscar nominations for “Despicable Me 2″ and “Hidden Figures.”
“Anything you heard that was hot probably had something to do with Pharrell,” Mason Jr. said. “He’s a multi-hyphenate. He’s also producing film and TV and is now the creative director for Louis Vuitton … Pharrell has been an innovator who’s changed the game, forward-thinking in everything he’s done: music, design, architecture, furniture, fashion. He is a leader and someone who really pushes the envelope in all that he touches.”
The Grammys on the Hill ceremony will also honor Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat) and Senator Bill Cassidy (Republican) for their bipartisan work protecting the rights of musicians and music fans.
“Music is bipartisan,” Mason Jr. said. “Music is for everyone and music serves to get people together and I think right now, maybe more than ever, music can play a role in uniting people and bringing them from one side of the aisle to the center. For this event, we do choose specifically to honor Democrats and Republicans because they are all equally important, they are all usually fans of music and they all know the power of music.”
After recovering from a night of singing and dancing on Wednesday night at The Hamilton, the artists will hit Capitol Hill on Thursday for their annual advocacy day. This year’s legislative priorities include the HITS Act, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, the American Music Fairness Act and reforming live event ticketing.
“The Restoring Artistic Protection Act has to do with First Amendment rights protecting artists by limiting the use of artists’ lyrics as evidence in trials,” Mason Jr said. “The HITS Act makes sure there’s tax credits … the others are live ticketing event reform, you’ve heard in the news about predatory practices around selling and reselling tickets … finally, the American Music Fairness Act, which has to do with AM/FM radio broadcasting royalties.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'An American Tail: The Musical' (Part 1) His 2017 Broadway smash, “The Band’s Visit,” won a whopping 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
On Tuesday night, playwright Itamar Moses staged the world premiere of “An American Tail: The Musical” at Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with dreams of someday bringing it to D.C.
“Especially with a musical based on such a well-known and beloved film, there are certainly ambitions to move beyond Minneapolis to go to other cities, including (D.C.), a major theater city and major city for America’s tradition of politics and immigration — D.C. would be the perfect place to do this show,” Moses said. “Nothing is set in stone yet, but that is certainly our intention to take it everywhere. D.C. is a great theater town. It really is.”
Born in Berkeley, California in 1977, Moses grew up a fan of Don Bluth’s 1986 animated flick.
“I was nine years old when the movie came out, so if that’s not the exact target age for that movie, it’s close,” Moses said. “I remembered the movie from when I was a kid. I probably hadn’t seen it in 30 years, but some of those songs were still in my head — and of course Fievel’s iconic hat — so I was like, ‘Yeah, sign me up.’ They reached out to me and asked if I wanted to do the adaptation, and I jumped at the chance.”
The film arrived as Walt Disney Animation was nearly bankrupted by “The Black Cauldron” (1985), allowing Bluth to compete with “An American Tail” (1986), “The Land Before Time” (1988) and “All Dogs Go to Heaven” (1989). Even as Disney recovered with “The Little Mermaid” (1989), “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992) and “The Lion King” (1994), Bluth cranked out alternative hits from “Thumbelina” (1994) to “Anastasia” (1997).
“Don Bluth was an animator at Disney, but he wanted to do different types of stories that were a little darker or edgier — I mean, they’re cartoons for kids, they’re not Tarantino — but just to go to a darker, artsy place that isn’t quite the Disney brand. So he broke away and started doing his own thing,” Moses said. “There’s a scene (where Fievel) is in the middle of an Irish wake and the mouse who’s dead on the table is a mouse named Mickey.”
Set in 1885 Russia, the story follows the Mousekewitzes, a family of Russian-Jewish mice who flee their village when it’s attacked by cats (i.e. the Cossacks). They flee on an immigrant ship to America, but when young Fievel accidentally falls overboard, he swims to shore to New York City to search for his family, who thinks he’s dead.
“His sidekick, the Artful Dodger to his Oliver, is Tony Toponi, the street-wise Italian mouse; a protest-organizing revolutionary mouse named Bridget, Honest John, who runs the mouse equivalent of Tammany Hall; there’s Warren T. Rat, a shady mafioso-type character who does some underworld dealings; and Henri, a French pigeon who’s building a famous statue that will one day stand on a little island off the coast of Manhattan,” Moses said.
To bring these characters to life, the costume designer creates anthropomorphic animals similar to Broadway’s “The Lion King,” while the scenic designers craft larger-than-life objects to make the actors appear small like mice.
“You can play around a lot with scale,” Moses said. “You just build these human objects at enormous size (like) when Bridget stands on a soapbox, she’s literally standing on a giant box for one bar of soap. … Obviously in a cartoon you can put anything on screen that you can imagine — you just draw it — but you have very different limitations on stage, so it’s a great challenge and opportunity for the designers. The magic of theater is illusion.”
Best of all, the songbook maintains a few key songs from the movie while adding a series of original numbers by songwriting duo Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler, including “Set You Free” for a chorus of cockroaches.
“The movie only has four songs, and the two that people tend to remember are ‘Somewhere Out There’ and ‘No Cats in America,'” Moses said. “Even if we used all four, that’s not really enough for a full stage musical, so we knew right off the bat that we were going to have to write six, seven, eight more songs. In the end, we used three songs from the movie and wrote a bunch of new ones to give it the frequency of song that you need for a stage musical.”
Moses has prior experience adapting films to the stage as “The Band’s Visit” actually began as a 2007 Israeli film by Eran Kolirin, who was skeptical about letting Moses turn it into a musical with new songs by David Yazbek.
“The Israeli filmmaker said ‘no’ the first few times,” Moses said. “He didn’t grant the rights because he didn’t really know anything about musicals. He said something like, ‘You know, I thought it was a bad idea because the only musical I know is ‘Cats’ and I thought, so what, he’s going to dress them as cats?'”
Don’t worry, Fievel, there are no cats in “The Band’s Visit.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Danny Elfman in D.C. (Part 1) He’s best known for scoring Tim Burton movies like “Batman” (1989), “Edward Scissorhands” (1990) and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993), in which he also voiced the stop-motion character Jack Skellington.
Next week, Danny Elfman visits the District for the world premiere of his “Suite for Chamber Orchestra” performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Thursday, May 4 at 8 p.m.
“This is a brand new piece,” Co-Artistic Director & Bassoonist Gina Cuffari told WTOP. “The piece is in four movements, and it’s very typical Elfman. … When I hear ‘Danny Elfman’ I think ‘Edwards Scissorhands,’ ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ kind of that zany, quirky, busy, fun, cartoony music, but ‘Batman’ and a lot of his other film music really shows a wide range of what he can do, the kind of colors, melodies and textures.”
The original piece was commissioned by the Library of Congress, along with additional funding by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, which will host future performances of it.
“What I think is really interesting about this piece is that you’ve got both of those roads, you’ve got a little bit of ‘The Simpsons’ in there, but you’ve also got some really beautiful rhapsodic writing similar to ‘Batman,'” Cuffari said. “It’s scored for strings, so violins, violas, cellos, basses and one of each woodwind, so we’ve got a flute, clarinet, oboe and bassoon, then a few brass instruments, a trumpet, French horn, then percussion and piano.”
Approximately 30 musicians will perform live at the church on Capitol Hill at 3rd and A Street, Southeast.
“A lot of scoring by composers in the orchestra setting sets the brass as the doom and gloom, the sustain, maybe the heroic passages. But Elfman writes very playful brass parts,” Co-Artistic Director & Trumpeter Louis Hanzlik told WTOP. “They’re very alive with lots of notes, not just necessarily playing fanfares, so I really appreciate the spin that he’s put on the brass writing to make us more of an intricate part of the string and woodwind parts.”
After the new Elfman piece, the audience will also hear American violinist Chad Hoopes play Felix Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto in E minor, op. 64,” followed by Jannina Norpoth’s fresh arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” all performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which was founded in New York City in 1972.
“This year is the 50th anniversary or Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which is monumental,” Hanzlik said. “It was founded by a group of chamber musicians who were interested in playing chamber music, such as string quartets, within a larger orchestral setting, which means that the players lead the rehearsals and the performances — not a designated conductor. … Orpheus performs without a conductor and has done so since its founding.”
Tickets are free to the public.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Monte Schulz (Part 1) Monte Schulz wants to set the record straight about his father, the late “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz.
He said that David Michaelis’ 2007 biography “Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography” was largely a work of fiction.
“I don’t know why David Michaelis and Harper Collins decided to portray Dad as this distant person who didn’t have friends and wasn’t involved in his kids’ lives, but it was completely false,” Schulz told WTOP. “He would get up and cook us breakfast, take us to school in the car and pick me up after school. … He was a really fun dad.”
Schulz said that his father actively supported his pursuit as a novelist, a journey that continues today with his sixth prose fiction novel, the epic dystopian war romance “Metropolis,” which is 22 years in the making.
“It’s a love story, it’s an adventure novel, it’s a war novel, it’s a mystery, it’s a philosophical exercise on eugenics, love and the purpose of morality,” Schulz said.
Written in the first person, the story follows a college senior named Julian Brehm, who matriculates against the backdrop of a 60-year eugenics war taking place in a fictional land dubbed The Desolation, which in our reality would be located in Eastern Europe. There, he meets a young revolutionary named Nina Rinaldi, who helps him discover what is actually going on in this republic as they embark on an adventure above and below ground.
“The republic has made a decision 100 years before … to get rid of people they don’t like: the infirm, the feeble minded, the sociopathic, the ignorant, thinking it’s going to improve the society when in fact it drags them down to a morass of dystopian horror,” Schulz said. “The war in the Soviet Union in the ’40s with Nazi Germany was essentially a eugenics war, killing everybody they thought were subhuman to make room for the German people.”
Monte Schulz published his first novel “Down by the River” in 1990 before spending the next decade writing a 1,000-page opus set in the Jazz Age called “Crossing Eden.” He started writing “Metropolis” on June 11, 2001, but stopped after about 50 pages in 2003. He spent the next 16 years writing and editing other books before picking “Metropolis” back up in 2019, after which he followed a disciplined writing schedule to finally complete it.
“My writing schedule was to write at least one page every morning before I’d eat or drink anything,” Schulz said. “I could write whatever in the afternoon after I ate, but I had to write that one page. … That got the 668-page novel written in nine months, minus that [initial] 50 pages, so that’s 620 pages in nine months. No plot outline. … I had to write before I ate and sometimes I was very hungry … with visions of a ham sandwich floating in front of me.”
Dedication to one’s craft is a lesson he learned from his father, who was born in Minneapolis in 1922.
“Dad was a big fan of comic books,” Schulz said. “His nickname Sparky was given to him when he was really young, named after Spark Plug, the horse in the ‘Barney Google’ comic strip, and he died three hours before his last comic strip ran in the newspaper, so his entire life was spanned by the cartoon art, framed by it. Dad loved comic strips, that’s all he ever wanted to do was be a syndicated artist, so he lived the dream.”
After serving in World War II, Charles returned home to the Twin Cities to work as an art instructor. He first became a professional cartoonist on “Li’l Folks,” a weekly panel cartoon in his hometown newspaper The St. Paul Pioneer Press from 1947 to 1950, including early versions of Charlie Brown and a dog that resembled Snoopy.
In 1950, he launched “Peanuts” as a daily comic strip in seven newspapers, including The Minneapolis Star and The Washington Post. Two years later, Monte was born in 1952, growing up playing baseball with his father and watching W.C. Fields comedy flicks together on television. He insists that his father wasn’t really famous yet.
“People ask me what it was like growing up with a famous father, but he was not famous,” Schulz said. “He didn’t become famous until I was in my mid-teens. When I was in sixth grade, one of my classmates told me that he really liked reading ‘Peanuts’ and I was shocked like, ‘Really? You know about that?’ It was just something my dad did.”
Like the rest of us, he loved the various “Peanuts” characters that his father created.
“I liked Linus because of how he could do all of his tricks with the blanket, but as I got older, my favorite character was Charlie Brown because he was the most intuitive,” Schulz said. “They make him out as the lovable loser, but if you read the early books you realize he wasn’t. … I admire him. He’s the most philosophical, he’s the most dedicated, he stands on the pitcher’s mound in the rain waiting to play, it doesn’t matter how often he loses.”
The comic strip was first adapted into TV animation for “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show” before the iconic CBS holiday special “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965), featuring timeless music by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.
“When I first saw it, because of the animation, the drawings are not dad’s, so I thought, ‘Oh, well, that’s not very good, they don’t even look like the characters!’ I thought it was amusing, but I didn’t really love it. The one I loved was the next one, ‘The Great Pumpkin,’ because they had the Red Baron flying around. … I also had already gotten used the idea that the animation was going to be different, it wasn’t going to look exactly like Dad’s.”
As a young adult, Monte read novels by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Ray Bradbury, before graduating to others.
“Dad saw that I had a gift for poetic language so he shifted me straight to Carl Sandburg, Joan Didion, John Steinbeck and Thomas Wolfe,” Schulz said. “I started making that shift from songwriting to poetry then to prose and wanting to write a great American novel, which I think I did with my novel ‘Crossing Eden.’ … I was really close to him, we used to talk on the phone all the time, he really liked when we could finally talk about books.”
His father died in 2000 at age 77, only five years older than Monte is now.
“Now I read [‘Peanuts’] to remind me of being young,” Schulz said. “They remind me that Dad’s gone. It’s really depressing. I’m doing a book signing at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rose on April 30 and it’s a really beautiful museum, but it also feels like the Charles M. Schulz Mausoleum. It just reminds me simply that he’s dead.”
Still, he’ll always have a lifetime of memories shared with his devoted father.
“My Dad took me out of elementary school to take me to see Game 6 of the 1962 World Series, Giants-Yankees at Candlestick [Park],” Schulz said. “I actually saw Roger Maris hit a line-drive home run over the right-field fence. The Giants won that game, but I saw Whitey Ford on the mound and Maris hit a home run. It was really great.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Giz' at Lincoln Theatre (Part 1) Once you’ve paid your debt to society, you deserve a genuine chance to rehabilitate yourself.
Playwright Lovail Long found his creative spark while incarcerated in solitary confinement.
“I wrote this stage-play while I was incarcerated,” Long told WTOP. “I wanted to come back to my community because I had done so much destruction. I wanted to come back and give something positive back to the community. I was in solitary confinement separated from the population, so I got a message from God who said I’m was going to be a playwright. … I woke up the next morning and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was on. That’s when it hit me.”
Just like that, he created the stage production of “The Giz,” à go-go version of “The Wiz” and “The Wizard of Oz” that’s opening this week at Lincoln Theatre on U Street in Northwest D.C. from April 28 through April 30.
“[Imagine] if Bob Marley would have done ‘The Wiz’ in Jamaica,” Long said. “We have six original songs, ‘Chocolate City Records,’ ‘King of the Go-Go Beat,’ but we also have some classic songs. We do the ‘Home’ song in go-go, we mix R&B, we take ’em to church, we’ve got a little James Brown. … No ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ but we do have à go-go version of ‘Brand New Day’ [and] ‘Ease on Down the Road,’ but we make that left on MLK [Avenue].”
In this version, Dorothy isn’t from Kansas but rather North Carolina where a tornado picks up her house and drops it in Landover, Maryland. At the bus stop, she meets a chaperone named WB, played by Joe Jackson, who shows her around town because “where I’m from in this city, Toto wouldn’t last coming through Washington, D.C.”
“I’m guiding Dorothy through the city,” Jackson said. “You need somebody who knows the city to guide people who aren’t from the city throughout the city, so that’s what I do. I guide her and we go through different parts of the city and meet the different characters. … You’re gonna see [Universal] Madness attire, you’re gonna see urban wear, you’re gonna hear lingo that we used back in the ’80s and ’90s, it’s really going to take people back on a ride.”
Together, they travel their own rendition of the Yellow Brick Road, first stopping in Northwest D.C. to meet the Scarecrow, who’s the cousin of former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, then to Northeast D.C. to meet a heartless woman named Tin Ma, then to The Wharf in Southwest D.C. to meet a local version of the Cowardly Lion. Along the way, they encounter the Good Witch of Georgetown and the Wicked Witch of Waldorf.
It all builds to Southeast D.C. in Chocolate City (i.e. Emerald City) to meet The Giz, played by Miles Ross, who admits that he’s never seen Frank Morgan in the 1939 movie or Richard Pryor in the 1978 film. As such, he literally “paid no attention to the man behind the curtain,” allowing him to provide a completely fresh take.
“I’ve never seen ‘The Wiz,’ as strange as that may sound, and people talk about me like a dog, ‘How the hell you ain’t ever seen ‘The Wiz?'” Ross said. “Everything I’m doing with this play is straight off the cuff. Lovail had the confidence in me to play this part. … They just told me that The Giz is bigger than life and I’m bigger than life.”
The Giz kicks off a yearlong residency at Lincoln Theatre for Long’s new production company DC Black Broadway, followed by the first all-Black version of “Grease” called “Grease with a Side of Mumbo Sauce” in September and then either “Chocolate City Records” or “The Go-Go Nutcracker” in December — he still hasn’t decided.
“I went to Lincoln Theatre and there were no Black performances no more — this was in like 2018,” Ross said. “I was really disappointed because U Street was Black Broadway. So, I said, ‘Hey, I want to do a play here,’ and they looked at me like I was crazy. … They didn’t think Black people would return, but once I had my first play there called ‘What Your Man Won’t Do,’ we sold 1,800 seats and God was like, ‘Change your name to Black Broadway.”
It’s an inspiring comeback story for Long, who served time in prison for what he called “conspiracy trafficking cocaine” but is now making a new name for himself as a creative artist in the nation’s capital.
“I tell people that God locked me up to free me,” Long said. “It’s for me to show people that we definitely deserve a second chance. I really don’t like the term ‘second chance’ because everybody knows I’m a kid from Southeast D.C. so I never really had a first chance. … I was born into poverty, I was born into this, I was poor and we had to make a living, so now this is my first chance, I get to come home, I’ve got God on my side, I’ve got the arts.”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Jury Duty' on Amazon Prime Video You’ve heard of “12 Angry Men,” but imagine 11 phony jurors duping one sucker like in “The Joe Schmo Show.”
That’s the premise of Freevee’s “Jury Duty,” which wraps on Amazon Prime Video after premiering the first four episodes on April 7, the fifth and sixth episodes on April 14 and now the final two episodes this weekend. I’ve seen the first six, so I’ll be watching the final two later today with the rest of you, as we all render a verdict.
Created by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, who wrote and produced the American version of “The Office,” this docu-style series follows one unsuspecting man, Ronald Gladden, who thinks he’s on jury duty, but really is surrounded by improv actors pretending to be jurors as they conduct a fake trial over 17 days near Los Angeles.
Unlike the forced laugh track of NBC’s “Night Court” reboot, “Jury Duty” benefits from the edgier, cinema-verite style of director Jake Szymanski (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”). Fans of “The Office” will recognize the handheld cameras, voyeuristic shots through windows and cutaways to interviews for sly character reactions, further proof that Christopher Guest was way ahead of his time with “This is Spinal Tap,” “Waiting for Guffman” and “Best in Show.”
Within this beloved genre framework, a number of cooky characters fill the jury box. Todd (David Brown) is a socially awkward inventor testing out his new contraptions like a feeding-tube backpack and a portable butt chair; Barbara (Susan Berger) is a loopy old lady who keeps falling asleep during trial; and Noah (Mekki Leeper) worries that his girlfriend is hooking up with another dude on a vacation that he had to miss due to jury duty.
Best of all, James Marsden (“X-Men,” “Enchanted,” “The Notebook”) plays a cockier version of himself, the lone celebrity randomly selected for jury duty, reading scripts, practicing his lines and begging bailiff Nikki Wilder (Rashida Olayiwola) not to confiscate his cellphone in case a hotshot director calls. He even stages a paparazzi incident in an attempt to be dismissed, but Judge Alan Rosen (Alan Barinholtz) shrugs off his star power.
While these characters are often hilarious, I wish the court case was spicier than a defendant (Ben Seaward) drunkenly peeing on a pile of factory T-shirts owned by the plaintiff (Whitney Rice). Why not raise the stakes with a theft, murder or Jerry Springer-style domestic dispute? Two angry people would add more zany drama instead of two relatively bland people. Oh well, at least it gives us the laugh-out-loud “JORF” gag at Margaritaville in Episode 4.
In the end, your enjoyment will probably depend on your ability to stomach laughs at someone else’s expense. I’m excited for the Episode 8 reveal to see Ronald’s look of surprise, but I’m also kind of dreading it in case he’s genuinely upset. There’s a fine line between surprising and bullying, like making an April Fool’s joke go on too long.
At one point, Ronald says, “This feels like reality TV,” so maybe he’s onto it. I just hope he’s a good sport about the whole thing.
Marsden, you better keep in touch!
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with 'Chevalier' star Samara Weaving (Part 1) You might remember her as the bloody bride in the hide-and-seek horror flick “Ready or Not” (2019).
Now, Samara Weaving stars in the acclaimed period drama “Chevalier,” in theaters nationwide Friday.
“I feel very grateful,” Weaving told WTOP. “Stephani Robinson’s writing was so powerful.”
Set in 18th century France, the film follows the incredible true story of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner in the Caribbean who rose to the heights of French society as a composer to rival the likes of Mozart and impress the likes of Marie Antoinette.
“He was the son of a slave and a slave owner,” Weaving said. “His father strangely put him in an arts school for talented boys and he learned how to write and perform operas. Marie Antoinette dubbed him a ‘Chevalier’ and he was apparently better than Mozart, but we don’t know who he is, or at least I didn’t know who he was, so I hope that audiences watch this and research him and maybe they’ll teach it in schools one day.”
The film stars Kelvin Harrison Jr., who earned acclaim in “Monsters & Men” (2018), “Luce” (2019), “Waves” (2019) and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (2020). Weaving plays his love interest, Marie-Josephine de Montalembert.
“I thought that she was such a formidable character,” Weaving said. “I love that she was trapped in this toxic relationship and married to a man that she really didn’t want to be married to but took it upon herself at great risk, somewhat naively and somewhat bravely, to defy his wishes. I loved the scene where she stands on the table and chugs a beer and asks, ‘What about women?’ to a group of stuffy men. I just fell in love with her after that.”
Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1992, Weaving has never known anything but an acting career.
“I started working when I was 14 in Australia, which is very different from being a child actor in America — that sounds dramatic — but in Australia, I still had a chill childhood and nobody really knew who I was but I got to work,” Weaving said. “Then, when I finished school, I got offered a role on ‘Home and Away,’ this soap opera in Australia, so I had to choose between university and going straight to work, which was my goal anyway, so I chose that.”
Having worked with the world’s best filmmakers from Martin McDonagh in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017) to Damien Chazelle in “Babylon” (2022), Weaving enjoyed working with director Stephen Williams, who directed the memorable “Cyclops” episode of the HBO miniseries “Watchmen” (2019).
“All directors are different and how you work with them changes,” Weaving said. “I think that’s how I learned. I didn’t go to drama school, so I learned on the job. Stephen was very specific about his vision and that was really interesting to be a part of. I just learned from other actors, so yeah, very lucky in that sense.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Batman' live in concert at Warner Theatre (Part 1) It brought moviegoers back to theaters as one of the Top 10 blockbusters last year.
This Saturday, Warner Theatre presents “The Batman” with a live orchestra at 8 p.m.
That’s right, it’s D.C. Comics in D.C. with Warner Brothers at Warner Theatre.
“A year ago when I watched it in theaters I was blown away by the score,” music director and conductor James Olmstead told WTOP. “I had never seen anything like that in a ‘Batman’ movie, so to think that I get the opportunity to conduct the score less than a year later is pretty exciting for me. … If you even put on your headphones and just listen to this score on Spotify or Apple Music, it really sounds like an epic score.”
A 50-piece orchestra will perform for roughly two hours and 45 minutes with one intermission.
“We have a giant screen above the stage and the orchestra is set up below the stage,” Olmstead said. “We pretty much perform the score in sync with the movie. … You really get a full symphonic experience the entire time you’re there. It’s almost like you’re there to watch a symphony and there happens to be a movie playing above, so if you love symphony and you love this score, it’s an opportunity that you can’t miss.”
Composer Michael Giacchino crafts an eerie atmosphere that differs from Danny Elfman’s theme for Tim Burton’s “Batman” (1989) or Hans Zimmer’s score for Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” (2008).
“I’ve been a fan of Batman since the 1989 Danny Elfman score, but it’s funny though, as I’ve been conducting this show, [Giacchino] is the only score that runs through my head until we end the tour,” Olmstead said. “When there’s a solo, lonely feel, you might hear a little piano and celeste or a solo boy soprano will sing that brings a very eerie (feel) when we have The Riddler or a piece of poetry that he’s written for The Batman with the little clues.”
Audiences will be blown away by the powerful theme for Robert Pattinson, the bass likely shaking the theater.
“It’s a bit of a coming-of-age story for The Batman in this particular piece,” Olmstead said. “He uses a lot of the lower-end brass sections when The Batman is coming in — it’s the ‘bom, bom, bom, bom’ — that is going to happen whenever Robert Pattinson is about to do something with action. Lower horns for him, lower brass, we have a lot of bass clarinets, anything on the low end really brings in The Batman.”
Beyond “The Batman,” Giacchino is an Oscar-winning composer best known for Pixar animated films like “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Inside Out,” as well as action franchises, such as “Star Trek,” “Jurassic World,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Planet of the Apes,” which previously teamed him with Matt Reeves, director of “The Batman.”
“What’s impressive is the breadth of the scores that he writes,” Olmstead said. “He writes across the board. The style that he has is really just high-quality movie music and he completely delivers every time. My personal introduction … was ‘Up.’ That was just a phenomenal score from start to finish.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews The Lebowski Experience at Pearl Street Warehouse (Part 1) This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Coen Brothers’ cult comedy classic “The Big Lebowski” (1998).
Celebrate by jamming with “The Lebowski Experience” at Pearl Street Warehouse in D.C. on Friday at 8 p.m.
“We do this concert every year around the 20th of April, which is an important holiday for ‘Big Lebowski’ fans,” lead performer Christopher Boesen told WTOP. “We’re really excited about this year because so many people are recognizing the importance of this film, which has gone from initially not all that popular to this cult phenomenon.”
The film follows L.A. slacker Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, who is mistaken for a millionaire as he seeks restitution for a rug peed on by debt collectors, all while trying to find the millionaire’s missing wife between frames of bowling.
“I’m old enough to have seen it when it first came out,” said Louis Bayard, who plays Jackie Treehorn. “I’m one of those people who was baffled by it the first time around. I didn’t get it. I loved Jeff Bridges, I loved his character, but it was just so strange. It was kind of like a detective mystery that instead of getting solved, it just generates new mysteries as it goes along. … It kind of took me a while to get that vibe down, but now I’m a big fan.”
Boesen plays The Dude, which has become an alternate persona beyond this annual concert. He recently dressed as The Dude to officiate a wedding at Camden Yards in Baltimore as a “Dudist” priest practicing Dudeism.
“It all started almost accidentally,” Boesen said. “I had stopped getting a haircut. Somebody mentioned that I looked kind of like The Dude. I was in a band with a guy who kind of looked like The Stranger, you know, Sam Elliott. We talked about this as musicians, always trying to find ideas, what do people want to come see at a show? What do people want to hear? So we came up with this idea that we could play the soundtrack to the movie.”
The soundtrack includes Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me,” Kenny Rogers and The First Edition’s “Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was In),” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through the Jungle” and “Lookin’ Out My Backdoor,” and the Gypsy Kings’ cover of “Hotel California” by The Eagles, which of course is The Dude’s least favorite band.
“Everybody thinks of Kenny Rogers, Bob Dylan, CCR, but there’s a lot of other really cool but very obscure stuff whether it’s Esquivel or Mussorgsky. It’s actually a very complicated, very intricate soundtrack,” said Boesen.” As The Dude, I’m singing ‘The Man in Me,’ that’s the entrance song for the whole film. … The floor in Pearl Street Warehouse looks just like the floor of the dream sequence where The Dude is in his white outfit like Karl Hungus.”
Best of all, the musicians all dress up like their respective characters from John Goodman’s Walter Sobchak to Julianne Moore’s Maude Lebowski to John Turturro’s The Jesus. Unlike Donny, they’re all “in their element.”
“We said, alright, we’re going to do this in character, we’re going to do it in costume and turn this into both a celebration of the music but also a celebration of the movie and the characters,” Boesen said. “Chris Brown is The Jesus. He’s a great bass player, but he’s up there in this all-purple costume in a hairnet, licking a bowling ball.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Skye Townsend (Part 1) We’ve seen plenty of male stoner comedies, from Chris Tucker in “Friday” (1995) to Dave Chappelle in “Half Baked” (1998), so it’s time to put some cannabis cracks in that glass ceiling with women smoking weed.
Skye Townsend stars in the new MTV comedy flick “Pretty Stoned” premiering this Wednesday at 8 p.m.
“It basically follows two girls that work together that do not like each other at all and they’re forced to combine forces when they lose $20,000 worth of weed,” Townsend told WTOP. “It’s a really silly stoner comedy, it’s all female-led and it’s just a really spectacular cast. We had so much fun making it, so we hope people have fun watching it … I’m excited for people to watch and decompress and not take themselves too seriously.”
Townsend plays the role of Leila, a new-age hippie who is the middle (wo)man in an Atlanta drug operation. She laughed when asked whether she pulled from personal experience to do some Mary-Jane method acting.
“I am innocent angel, I have never seen marijuana in my life,” Townsend said. “Leila is so fun because she has so many hobbies. She is so wild … I did a lot of stunts, assisted by my amazing stuntwoman Katrina. It was a lot of fun because Leila is a girl who’s always going to make it through to the next round no matter how crazy or how high the stakes … I got to do a lot of character work and be the highest, silliest version of myself on camera.”
You can also catch her in the Emmy-winning series “A Black Lady Sketch Show” (2019-present), which just dropped Season 4 earlier this month. The show has been a comedic launchpad for an array of talent, including Robin Thede, Ashley Nicole Black, Gabrielle Dennis and of course Quinta Brunson (“Abbott Elementary”).
“That just dropped on [April] 14, so that’s now streaming on HBO and HBO Max,” Townsend said. “Then I have another short film coming out called ‘Fake it ‘Til You Make It.’ I’m just keeping busy, going back on the road on [April] 21 to shoot again, so I’m looking forward to continuously doing fun projects. I’m happy to be this busy.”
Born in Santa Monica, California in 1993, Townsend learned her work ethic by watching her groundbreaking father, Robert Townsend, become a comedy force in Hollywood in the late 1980s.
“I grew up around him and his comedian friends and learned at an early age that comedians are super silly but also have a lot of depth and self awareness — just really introspective, interesting people,” Townsend said. “He always says that to be chosen to be a comedian is an honor, but it can be a heavy burden, so I was really schooled on the game from an honest perspective … he’s an O.G., he’s a pioneer, so any time I need advice, he is my first call.”
Her father got his start with an uncredited part in “Cooley High” (1975), which gave Black audiences their own “American Graffiti” (1973) in terms of a coming-of-age flick with a wall-to-wall soundtrack of Motown tunes.
“He had one line in there and it was like his biggest moment ever,” Townsend said. “When I finally saw the footage, I was like, ‘Wow, you were such a little young kid that was a dreamer.’ It’s really special to watch … he put in his 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 hours doing extra work and commercials and then finally get his first line. It’s inspiring to watch that if you put in the work, eventually you’ll get to go where you want to go.”
He tried out for “Saturday Night Live” but lost the gig to Eddie Murphy, then came full circle to direct the iconic standup special “Eddie Murphy Raw” (1987), the follow-up to “Eddie Murphy Delirious” (1983). “He was supposed to be on ‘SNL,’ but then they ended up being really good friends and he directed ‘Raw,'” Townsend said.
Of course, his biggest cultural impact was writing, directing and starring in the cult comedy classic “Hollywood Shuffle” (1987) about an actor limited to stereotypical roles because of his ethnicity. Co-written by Dom Irrera and Keenan Ivory-Wayans, the film influenced other satires to follow, namely Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” (2000).
“It has really held up,” Townsend said. “It was such an intelligent piece of work. It was really silly, but what he had to say in it and just the way that it was shot, the way that he did it off of credit cards and it went to make a hit is really just insane … I think ‘Hollywood Shuffle’ was way ahead of its time. I’m really happy that he’s getting his flowers. I never mind talking about him because we never know what we mean to the industry until we’re gone.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Filmfest D.C. (Part 1) The 37th annual Filmfest DC returns this week at Landmark E Street Cinema in Penn Quarter from April 19 to 30.
However, the festival is so much more than brick-and-mortar screenings, expanding with outreach around town.
“The city is coming out of COVID, and we knew that in this post-COVID world that we had to do some new things to keep people interested,” Festival Director Tony Gittens told WTOP. “Mazza Gallerie is gone, the world has changed, and therefore we have to change with it. … One point we wanted to make this year is the relevance of the festival outside the walls of the movie theater. … We want to cheer people up and we’re here to serve.”
Opening night kicks off at the Embassy of France for a screening of “Chevalier” about Joseph Bologne, the Caribbean son of an African slave and a French plantation owner who rises to become a French composer.
“When I saw this film, I wanted to have D.C. high school kids see it,” Gittens said. “We thought that it would be inspirational, so one of the new things we’re doing is we’re getting busses … and taking these kids to the Embassy of France to see this film on a Wednesday. We think they may not only enjoy the film, but I wanted to encourage young people to feel comfortable in embassies and other cultural institutions not in their neighborhoods.”
Filmfest DC is also working the group Teaching for Change to bring films directly to D.C. Public Schools, sending screening links to the teachers, who screen the movies for their students, discuss the themes in their classes, then welcome the filmmakers for riveting discussions with students who have already formulated their questions.
“We’ve been doing this for a while and it really exposes the kids to films they normally wouldn’t see,” Gittens said. “The filmmakers love it. They’re from all over the world, and they love it because they don’t speak to this kind of audience. They’re not used to this, and they’re moved and energized by kids who are asking great questions.”
The festival is also working with ASL interpreters for an accessible event at Landmark E Street Cinema where deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers are handed balloons to feel the vibrations of the sounds on screen.
“I watched the film ‘CODA,’ which won the Academy Award a couple of years ago, about a deaf family, and I was so moved by the film that we’re doing a program for the hard-of-hearing and deaf community,” Gittens said. “It’s a film called ‘The Tuba Thieves,’ a film by deaf people for people that are hard of hearing. It was a big hit at Sundance and we’re bringing in the film, the director and some special people who know more about this than I do.”
If you’re going to be down at The Wharf, you can watch the special outdoor screenings along the boardwalk adjacent to The Anthem. Filmfest DC materials will also be on display at The Wharf location of Politics and Prose.
“Politics and Prose is creating a reading list around the films and the film festival, which is great,” Gittens said. “They’re looking at our themes and finding books in their collection, then creating a table at their bookstore for people to come in and take a look at these books. It’s a way of them finding the film audience and us finding the literary audience, all of whom are good people who want to learn things and experience different cultures.”
It all builds to the closing night film “BlackBerry,” charting the rise and fall of the world’s first smartphone, followed by a filmmaker Q&A at E Street Cinema. After that, guests are invited to a wrap party at Penn Social.
“It’s a wonderful gathering place,” Gittens said. “It has television screens all over the place, we’re going to play some music so people can dance. We’re hoping to attract some people who normally wouldn’t find the festival.”
If you’re stuck at home, don’t worry. You can still check out “Filmfest DC on TV” on both WETA and WHUT.
“(WETA) will be showing some shorts that have been shown in the festival in past years and they will be broadcasting them several times between now and the end of the festival,” Gittens said. “Then WHUT, which is the Howard University public television station, they’ll also be broadcasting some films from our section that we call ‘Global Rhythms,’ our music-on-film section, so they’ll be broadcasting three films from this year.”
Tickets for opening night are sold out, but closing night tickets cost $25 and most other screenings cost $14. Young viewers ages 25 and under can come to the box office and get a “rush” ticket for just $5.
Find more information on the festival’s website.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with George Stevens Jr. (Part 1) George Stevens Jr. helped his Oscar-winning father create some of Hollywood’s greatest movies before moving to Washington to influence presidents, invent the American Film Institute and create the annual Kennedy Center Honors.
Now, at 91 years old, he pens the must-read autobiography “My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington,” which is available on audio book, but worth grabbing a hard copy for the priceless photos.
“I knew along the road that I would do this one day,” Stevens Jr. told WTOP. “I kept notes and calendars and made an outline of it eight years ago. I started to write it a couple of years later, then COVID sentenced me to finish the book. It enabled me to spend time on it. The care you take and the refinements you make are what make a book work. … The most pleasing thing is for readers to say I read every page, saving it because I didn’t want it to finish.”
The text is broken up into easily consumable chapters with utmost “respect for the audience,” creating a page-turner for anyone who loves movies, politics and the intersection of both worlds for the betterment of humanity.
“Just that idea of respect for the audience,” Stevens Jr. said. “The studios in that Golden Age used to say that the audience has the mentality of 14-year-olds, but my father felt very differently about it. He respected the audience, and he wanted to leave something for the audience to do, not put it all out there in front of you, let your contribution take place. … My father was a wonderful influence. This is not a story of a son with father troubles.”
Born in Los Angeles in 1932, Stevens Jr. grew up just as his father, George Stevens, was becoming Hollywood royalty, directing Katharine Hepburn to her first Oscar in “Alice Adams” (1935), the finest Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers picture “Swing Time” (1936), the action-adventure epic “Gunga Din” (1939), the bittersweet romance “Penny Serenade” (1941) and the very first Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy romantic comedy “Woman of the Year” (1942).
“He had a 16 millimeter projector and I remember when I was 11 or 12 threading up ‘Gunga Din’ on this projector and running it,” Stevens Jr. said. “I so loved that film, the humor, the adventure. … He learned from Laurel and Hardy — he was their cameraman when he was 24 — that comedy could be graceful and human. … That’s what makes ‘Swing Time’ the best of the Astaire-Rogers pictures. There’s a deeper characterization of the two people.”
In 1944, Stevens Jr. attended the 16th annual Academy Awards with his mother and blurted out his disapproval when his father’s movie “The More the Merrier” (1943) lost Best Picture to “Casablanca” (1942).
“My mother and I went to the Oscars because Dad was nominated,” Stevens Jr. said. “When the guy opens the envelope and says, ‘Casablanca,’ in the silence before the applause, I said, ‘We was robbed.'”
His father couldn’t attend. He was busy documenting World War II alongside fellow filmmakers Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Ford and John Huston (I highly recommend the 2017 Netflix docuseries “Five Came Back”). That’s right, George Stevens Sr. actually filmed the D-Day invasion, the liberation of France and the discovery of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. His footage now resides at the Holocaust Museum.
“He was well beyond draft age,” Stevens Jr. said. “He watched Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘Triumph of the Will’ one night in a Columbia Pictures screening room. Riefenstahl made epic films about Hitler and the Third Reich and that night he decided that he couldn’t stay on the sidelines. … Eisenhower put him in charge photographing the invasion. He rode across Europe in a jeep with a pistol on his hip. I’m very proud that he knew what the right thing to do was.”
Having witnessed the darkest side of humanity, his father’s postwar films took on a much more serious tone. The result was some of cinema’s greatest masterpieces, including “A Place in the Sun” (1951), in which Montgomery Clift drowns Shelly Winters in order to date Elizabeth Taylor. Stevens’ soft-focus camera created dreamlike kisses, while showing the transition from night to day with an alarm-clock dissolve, earning his first Best Director Oscar.
“It’s one of the great ones,” Stevens Jr. said.” Mike Nichols’ first film was ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,’ a wonderful picture, and he said, ‘I watched ‘A Place in the Sun’ 150 times. … I was going to college, didn’t have a summer job and he said, ‘You can help me.’ He gave me two assignments: one was to break down Theodore Dreiser’s ‘An American Tragedy’ … because he was about to write the screenplay of ‘A Place in the Sun.'”
The other assignment was to read various books and scripts that Paramount sent over for his father to read, including a bunch of frivolous romances that he found very taxing to a 17-year-old on long summer days.
“One day I picked a book off the pile, read it in the afternoon and went to see my dad at night in bed,” Stevens Jr. said. “He said, ‘Why don’t you tell me the story?’ I found myself pacing around the bedroom trying to reconstruct the story of ‘Shane.’ I now look back and realize that he was giving me an opportunity to find out if I had an interest or aptitude for his profession. The next summer I was in Jackson Hole working on my first movie: ‘Shane.'”
Together, they turned “Shane” (1953) into one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Stevens Jr. idolized his father just like Brandon De Wilde’s character Joey idolized Alan Ladd’s title gunslinger, who rides onto a homestead to help a family win a land war in 1880s Wyoming. The film’s violence felt real thanks to rigging the actors with girdles attached to three wires that would be yanked, sending them flying onto mattresses beneath the mud.
“Dad had come back from the war and he’d seen what a .45 could do to another human being, but he’d see movies and see people get shot, grab their chest, get up and shoot again,” Stevens Jr. said. “In this, when he shot him, he flew back into that mud. Sam Peckinpah said, ‘After Elisha Cook was yanked into the mud, gunplay in movies changed.’ My father wanted to show the power and danger of a weapon, a lesson we are still trying to learn today.”
My personal favorite remains “Giant” (1956), which is 10 times the movie as “Gone with the Wind” (1939) because it’s on the right side of history. The sprawling epic follows a Texas cattle rancher (Rock Hudson), his feminist wife (Elizabeth Taylor) and a cocky oil driller (James Dean in his final role) amid racism on the Mexican border, building to a final shot of their white and brown grandkids in a playpen, earning his father a second Best Director Oscar.
“The important theme in that film is the independent woman — there were not a lot of those in movies in those days,” Stevens Jr. said. “She’s the one who cares about the Latinos in the village. Then of course addressing the condition that continues to trouble us today, which is the equity for Hispanic Americans. … ‘Gone with the Wind’ has got all the production, but it didn’t have the foresight about the truth. ‘Giant’ is about the truth.”
His father kept pursuing the truth in his seminal Holocaust movie “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959), based on “The Diary of a Young Girl,” which had been published in 1947 after the 15-year-old’s death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Stevens Jr. shot pickup footage of exteriors in Amsterdam around the Frank house.
“This child from the ages of 12 to 14 was in hiding and wrote this remarkable diary,” Stevens said. “My father and I went to Amsterdam to see Otto Frank, her father, who had come back from Auschwitz. We sat in a little office and he went to a filing cabinet and took something out wrapped in cloth and opened it in front of us — it was her diary. … Hitler’s voice fell still and this voice (lived on). For us to be able to tell this story, was for us very important.”
His father next directed the Biblical epic “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), but it was up to Stevens Jr. to convince Sidney Poitier to play Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus Christ carry his cross to the crucifixion.
“[He] was usually played by a white character,” Stevens Jr. said. “Dad asked me to talk to Sidney, so I flew to New York and met Sidney for lunch. I was 27 or 28 and he was in his early 30s. … I told the story of what the character did and I said, ‘My father would be greatly appreciative if you would consider playing this role.’ I showed him this illustration. Sidney was silent and then he said, ‘I would be honored to work with your father.'”
Then came his life’s turning point. One day, while directing TV episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Peter Gunn,” Stevens Jr. received an offer he couldn’t refuse on the other side of the country in D.C. Legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow offered him a job at the United States Information Agency (USIA) under John F. Kennedy.
“I used to joke that I’m going to spend my life working to become the second best film director in my family,” Stevens Jr. said. “Then Murrow appeared with the new frontier and John Kennedy and offered me this position. … I went to the studio with Dad and I told him this. He stopped walking and looked at me and said, ‘I think you may have to do it.’ … It was a decision that so broadened my career, being brought into the Kennedy years.”
The autobiography goes into wonderful detail about his USIA contributions, namely creating newsreel documentaries, including “The Five Cities of June” (1963) about JFK’s famous visit to Berlin.
“We made documentaries of presidential trips in 35 millimeter color,” Stevens Jr. said. “We made a really very good film of Kennedy in Berlin speaking to 575,000 people at the Berlin Wall with his personal magnetism and his famous, “ICH bin ein Berliner’ speech. We showed it in many languages overseas. President Kennedy saw it (and called me) saying, ‘It’s one of the best government documentaries I’ve seen. … Keep up the good work.'”
Soon, his soul was forever shaken by the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968 and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 6, 1968.
“My God, just unimaginable,” Stevens Jr. said. “The first tragedy, arguably one of the great assassinations in American history, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, then five years later when we think we’re on the way back. In a way, Bobby’s murder was more consequential because Bobby I believe he would have been elected president. … The working class, young people, African Americans, he could have pulled that together. Instead, we got Nixon.”
After JFK’s assassination, he went to work helping Lyndon B. Johnson create the American Film Institute in 1967.
“President Kennedy initiated the idea of the National Endowment of the Arts but did not live to see it,” Stevens Jr. said. “The National Endowment knew it could sponsor symphony orchestras, opera companies, but didn’t know what to do about film. … I proposed an American Film Institute. We went to the White House and (LBJ) surprised us by saying, ‘We will create an American Film Institute to preserve the great films and train young filmmakers.'”
Thus, Stevens Jr. launched a two-pronged approach, working with the Library of Congress in D.C. to preserve classic films, while opening the AFI Conservatory in Los Angeles to train a new generation of filmmakers.
“I thought I could set it up in three years but it took 12,” Stevens Jr. said. “In that first two years, Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Caleb Deschanel and Paul Schrader, there were only 18 in the first year. … Film preservation became the cornerstone of the AFI for the first 20 years. We would rescue films. … I said we would go find the films and bring them to the library. There are now 50,000 restored films in the AFI collection in the Library of Congress.”
He also created the annual AFI Life Achievement Award, the first going to John Ford, the second going to James Cagney and others going to the likes of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock.
“Bringing something like that to life is a challenge,” Stevens Jr. said. “Ironically, it was Richard Nixon agreeing to come to Hollywood for the John Ford event that gave it a liftoff. … Writing and producing the Life Achievement Award show, I did it for 25 years even after I’d left being director of AFI, it was a creative jewel for me to have that responsibility. It was always a challenge every year, but a delightful one, and people did want to participate.”
After filming an AFI 10th anniversary special on CBS featuring a newly-elected President Jimmy Carter at the Kennedy Center Opera House, Stevens Jr. proposed the idea of launching an annual Kennedy Center Honors.
“I said to Roger Stevens, Chairman of the Kennedy Center, ‘You should have your own event and television show,'” Stevens Jr. said. He said, ‘You got any ideas?’ I said, ‘I do. It’s carved in one sentence on the wall of this building of JFK quotes: ‘I look forward to an America that will not be afraid of grace and beauty, that will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.’ That’s what the Kennedy Center Honors became.”
From 1978 to 2014, Stevens Jr. honored 198 of the nation’s most brilliant creative artists, including an epic performance by Heart paying tribute to Led Zeppelin in 2012. His proverbial “white whale” was Katharine Hepburn, who insisted for years that she wouldn’t do it before finally relenting over a phone call in 1990.
“She didn’t like to do that stuff (but) every year Katharine Hepburn would have more votes than anybody,” Stevens Jr. said. “She said, ‘You can call me Wednesday but don’t get your hopes up.’ I called her back Wednesday and she said, ‘It would just be too painful,’ and I heard myself saying, ‘We hear so much of this Yankee fiber of yours. Why don’t you just summon some of that Yankee fiber and say yes.’ There was a long pause and she said, ‘Alright, yes.'”
In 2014, Stevens Jr. produced his final Kennedy Center Honors. He recounts David Rubenstein and Les Moonves visiting his office to say, “You’re receiving the honor this year,” meaning he was done producing it. After a run of consecutive Emmys, it was like breaking up the Chicago Bulls in 1998 with Michael Jordan still winning titles.
No matter, his legacy speaks for itself, producing the annual “Christmas in Washington” specials at the National Building Museum — a favorite of the Reagans and Bushes — as well as “America’s Millennium” at the Washington Monument for the Clintons. His crowning achievement was President Barack Obama’s inaugural special “We Are One” at the Lincoln Memorial with performances by Bruce Springsteen, Garth Brooks, U2 and Beyoncé.
“Ronald Reagan was born to sit in the box at the Kennedy Center Honors next to Cary Grant,” Stevens Jr. said. “With George W. (Bush) with that rough Supreme Court decision giving it to him over Gore, there was a real thought the artists would not come. We organized that and the Bushes wanted to be responsive and were, but every year, people of different persuasions would be together and I think it did make a difference.”
Make no mistake, this isn’t the story of a Washington politico who gave up on Hollywood dreams; Stevens Jr. cranked out the acclaimed documentary “George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey” (1984), Emmy-winning TV miniseries from “The Murder of Mary Phagan” with Jack Lemmon to “Separate But Equal” with Sidney Poitier and Burt Lancaster, even original stage plays like “Thurgood” starring James Earl Jones and Laurence Fishburne.
Every step of the way, he’s been guided by his father’s perfectionist work ethic that applies to his narrative filmmaking, his live TV specials, his star-studded awards galas, his political maneuvers, writing his memoir pages — and even reserving several hours to conduct this WTOP interview over three back-to-back Zoom calls.
“Another thing I learned from my father from working on ‘Giant,’ editing it for a year … I said, ‘Why don’t we just put it out there?'” Stevens Jr. said. “My father said, ‘Think about how many man and woman hours are going to be spent watching this picture over the years at three hours and 20 minutes a session. Don’t you think it’s better that we spend a little more of our time making it as good as it can be?’ That is something that’s really guided my life.”
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His final chapter is called “Getavasia,” a term he learned from Cagney about leaving a room with a tap-dance. The book’s final flourish is a salute to his family, honoring his late son and producing partner Michael Stevens, as well as his son David, stepdaughter Caroline and wife Elizabeth. Local readers will appreciate his send off story about watching his grandmother’s silent comedy performances at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The book, like his family’s creative work, will stand the “test of time.”
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Come on down, stop on by, hop a carpet and fly to another Broadway night in D.C.
The North American tour of Disney’s “Aladdin” hits National Theatre from April 19 to April 30.
“I was at prime Disney age when the movie came out,” Actor Anand Nagraj told WTOP. “I was 8 or 9, so ‘Aladdin’ was my Disney movie, not least of all because the characters were all people who looked like me. I don’t think I clocked at the time how big of a thing that was … I just ate it up! When I booked this job, my mom dug through the attic and found the old Jafar action figure from a McDonald’s Happy Meal, so I’ve got him now, he tours with me.”
Nagraj, who grew up in Yorktown, Virginia, and attended the University of Richmond, plays the evil sorcerer Jafar. The character was voiced in the Disney flick by Jonathan Freeman, who returned in Broadway’s “Aladdin” (2014).
“I can’t think of another performer who has taken an animated performance and made it a live performance,” Nagraj said. “Absolutely big shoes to fill and it’s an honor to get to do it. For me, I have this wonderful template of the animated movie, not just the vocal performance but also the way that Jafar is drawn and the way that he moves on screen. I’m never going to be a cartoon, but I can take from that and that definitely informs what I do.”
Adapted by Chad Beguelin from the 1992 Disney film, the story is set in the fictional Middle East city of Agrabah where a kindhearted pauper Aladdin (Adi Roy) finds a magic lamp in the Cave of Wonders. Here, a Genie (Marcus Martin) grants him three wishes, turning him into a prince to woo Princess Jasmine (Senzel Ahmady).
“It’s a guy really down on his luck making some poor life choices and he stumbles upon the thing we all wonder about: If we could have any wish we could possibly desire granted to us,” Nagraj said. “We follow Aladdin along as he figures his way out and ultimately becomes a better person, the person he is supposed to be.”
The iconic songbook was written by the legendary duo of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (“The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast”), as well as Tim Rice, who stepped in for Ashman when he died in 1991. You’ll hear all of your favorite songs, like The Genie’s “Friend Like Me,” initially performed by the late Robin Williams.
“The phrase ‘tour-de-force’ is all that comes to mind,” Nagraj said. “It is nonstop and it’s a fairly long song, so when you consider what he’s doing for all of that time, it is incredible what Marcus does and also what our brilliant and wonderful ensemble does. I think the real star of our entire show is our ensemble, who is singing and dancing and playing parts throughout … ‘Friend Like Me’ is a particularly cool showcase for all of them.”
The ensemble gets another spotlight during “Prince Ali,” as Aladdin flaunts his new Prince Ali makeover to Jasmine with extravagant fanfare. Jafar mockingly reprises the song later when he exposes Aladdin’s true identity.
“It is a parade of people,” Nagraj said. “It showcases Marcus’ performance as the Genie a lot, he’s front and center, but again the ensemble is just filling the stage and doing these remarkable things that I don’t know how any human being can dance like that and also sing beautiful at the same time, but they do … I have a big 11:00 number (reprise), but also in this stage production, Jafar has a big number early in the show called ‘Diamond in the Rough.'”
Of course, the big show-stopping number is Aladdin and Jasmine singing to each other on a magic carpet ride for the love duet “A Whole New World,” which won the Oscar, along with a second Oscar for Best Original Score.
“It’s a truly remarkable thing to see on stage,” Nagraj said. “Everybody is caught up in the story, you know that big song is coming, but we are so rooting for Aladdin and Jasmine in that moment that you want to cheer, but also you want to stay quiet so you can hear every word … it’s a beautiful moment.”
The production also features new songs that didn’t make the cut for the animated film but finally got their flowers on Broadway, including “Proud of Your Boy.”
“He’s singing to his mother who has recently passed,” Nagraj said. “It is such a beautiful song and Adi performs it so brilliantly. That’s a big highlight for me of the stuff you won’t recognize from the original film … Ashman and Menken wrote it for the original film and when you hear it, you’ll be like, how did this not wind up in the movie? But the way the movie was flowing, they didn’t have time or space for it, but we’re the beneficiaries now.”
The beautiful music is paired with a visual feast for the eyes by Tony-winning director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw (“The Book of Mormon,” “Something Rotten!”), featuring sets by Bob Crowley (“Mary Poppins”), costumes by Gregg Barnes (“Kinky Boots”) and lighting by Natasha Katz (“An American in Paris”).
“The costumes are gorgeous, the sets are beautiful, and there’s some awesome projection work,” Nagraj said. “Apart from how cool the story is, just as a theatrical experience, it’s something that you don’t want to miss.”
The show runs for two hours and 30 minutes, including one intermission.
It is recommended for children ages 6 or older.
Find more information here.
Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Bill Maher at MGM National Harbor (Part 1) New rule: When Bill Maher performs in your town, you have to buy a ticket.
OK, you clearly don’t have to, but who literally follows Maher’s new rules anyway?
The prolific political comedian performs live at MGM National Harbor in Maryland this Saturday, April 22.
“My act isn’t just all political, but I have the luxury of having a constantly changing flow of material,” Maher told WTOP. “I don’t have to be sitting in a diner looking at the ketchup bottle going, ‘What’s funny about this?’ I have the luxury of letting the players in Washington change all the time and provide new material. I think people just need a release, having somebody out there expressing what they’re thinking.”
Maher has no shortage of material, coming to the nation’s capital at one of most politically-charged times in American history. After all, Donald Trump just became the first former president of the U.S. to be indicted on criminal charges for allegedly using campaign funds for hush money payments to a porn star.
“I thought I was going to be done with Trump, but you’re never done with Trump,” Maher said. “I talk to my liberal friends and the first thing they always say is, ‘Maybe he’ll die,’ like that’s a plan! First of all, he’s a city roach, he’ll never die. The worse he treats himself, the stronger he gets, so I wouldn’t count on that. I don’t think anyone is harder on Donald Trump, he’s constantly insulting me at his rallies to this day, which I take as a badge of honor.”
However, he still thinks it was a mistake to indict Trump on these particular charges first, worrying that Americans won’t understand the nuance of campaign finance fraud and might shrug off his alleged marital digressions once again — compared to much larger, more serious charges of sedition that may be coming down the pike.
“It just makes him into a martyr,” Maher said. “It was a giant mistake to go after him for this. They could have — and they are — going after him for cases that are much more relevant. The one in Georgia where he asked somebody to find votes, the insurrection, trying to overthrow the government in a coup! They have areas to go after him, but to bring this case, the people in this country do not do nuance, they’re just going to see it like (Bill) Clinton in 1998.”
As for the current leader of the free world, Maher views President Joe Biden as a necessary tonic after the bluster of the Trump years. He insists that Biden doesn’t get enough credit after inheriting a pandemic-tanked economy.
“If you ask Democrats, ‘How has Biden done?’ ‘Great, he got us out of Afghanistan, handled Ukraine well, all that money toward climate change.’ ‘So should he run again?’ ‘Absolutely not!'” Maher said. “He’s done fine and brought us back to normality. You don’t have to be the most energetic guy … Joe’s like nondairy creamer. Nobody’s first choice, but he gets the job done. I don’t see anybody else out there who guarantees they can beat Trump.”
Indeed, Maher predicts that Trump will win the GOP nomination but lose the 2024 presidential election.
“He’s going to be the nominee for the Republican Party next time for president, I would bet my house on it,” Maher said. “Biden has beat him once, he would beat him again, then comes the fun part where Trump doesn’t concede the election and hopefully this time he won’t have more people in power. He tried it last time, he just didn’t have enough Republicans in power willing to sell their country down the river … so it should be fun in 2025.”
Maher says his show is fun for both sides of the political aisle, particularly in recent years as he rolls his eyes at shifting societal norms. If conservatives are in the audience on Saturday, which jokes might they agree with?
“People say to me all the time, ‘Why do you make fun of the left more than you used to?’ Because you’re more ridiculous than you used to be!” Maher said. “There are colleges now who put out lists of words that you can’t say like ‘master bedroom,’ ‘peanut gallery,’ ‘white paper’ and ‘insane.’ You can’t say ‘insane?’ That’s insane! There’s way too much identity politics, oversensitivity, victimization and pointless white self loathing that doesn’t help.”
Maher’s self loathing (or lack thereof) began with his birth in New York City in 1956. His mother was a nurse and his father was a network news editor and radio announcer, so he grew up with a healthy diet of comedy and news.
“Johnny Carson, when I was a kid, people my age will remember, he was like a lord of comedy and I tried to see his show every night, even if I had to sneak it because it was on late,” Maher said. “Then, as far as the kind of standup that I do, that would be Robert Klein and George Carlin. They were the guys back then. There’s different styles. On my TV show, I’m more Johnny Carson, but in my standup, I’m more like Carlin and Klein, at least I try to be.”
In 1979, Maher began emceeing at the famous Catch a Rising Star comedy club in New York.
“You wanted to be the emcee,” Maher said. “That was the guy who made the decisions about who went on stage, you got all the stage time you wanted, you went on between every act. All we were looking for back then was stage time, that’s how you got better … It was a great time when comedy clubs were in ascendance in this country and there was this new thing called the ‘urban comedy club.’ It just fostered a whole generation of different comedy.”
Not only did he meet his hero, he appeared roughly 35 times on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” which paved the way for him being cast in various film and TV roles in “D.C. Cab” (1983), “Sara” (1985), “Ratboy” (1986), “Max Headroom” (1987), “Murder, She Wrote” (1989), “Charlie Hoover” (1991) and “Pizza Man” (1991).
In 1993, Maher began hosting “Politically Incorrect” on Comedy Central, the first episode featuring Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Quivers, Ed Rollins and Larry Miller. The talk show soon moved to ABC where it ran until 2003.
“I always knew I wanted to do something with news, so luckily Comedy Central, which was new in the early ’90s, was looking for some programming,” Maher said. “We had like 0.2 of a rating but we got a lot of press because it was new and different. Nobody had ever done a talk show where the host gave his opinion. The template for Carson, Letterman, Leno was don’t tell them your political opinions because you’ll alienate half of your audience.”
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In 2003, he launched a new late-night cable program with HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the same year as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which joined Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession to swing voters from George W. Bush to Barack Obama in 2008. Featuring a kickass instrumental intro, recently redone by Green Day, Maher’s formula has become an institution from his opening monologue to his celebrity guests to his “New Rules” finale.
“We’re in our 21st season; how do you keep it going? You work,” Maher said. “I put in the time. That ending that you mentioned, ‘New Rules,’ just that editorial, which takes about eight to 10 minutes to deliver, I probably put in about 20 hours a week writing it and finishing it, so there’s no secret. Perspiration.”
Whether you watch his show or not, he hopes Americans can find a way to get over themselves and get along.
“What this country needs to get back to is understanding that you don’t have to agree with everybody or make them agree with you,” Maher said. “Everybody needs to shut up in this country about their political opinions 24/7 on Facebook. You’re not going to convince them anyway, and if you don’t agree on everything, so what? It’s a big country with lots of people who don’t think like you. Get over it.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Bill Maher at MGM National Harbor (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Paint' “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” returns for its final season Friday on Amazon Prime Video, while “Barry” is back for its last season Sunday night on HBO, but what if you need something else to watch on Saturday afternoon?
It’s time to break down Owen Wilson’s quirky new Bob Ross parody “Paint,” in movie theaters nationwide.
Let me say at the top: I grew up a massive fan of Bob Ross, who died when I was 11 years old. I watched “The Joy of Painting” constantly on PBS in the ’90s, admiring his beautiful brush strokes, knife-edged details and “happy little” comments as he chose colors between “Cad Yellow” and “Van Dyke Brown.” In fact, my grandfather learned to paint on an easel using Ross’ official kit, so when my Pap Pap died, I lovingly hung his paintings on my walls.
Suffice to say, I was very intrigued when I heard IFC Films was distributing Owen Wilson’s new film “Paint,” which I had hoped would be an actual biopic of Ross, either chronicling his entire life’s journey or at least highlighting his legacy like Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers in Marielle Heller’s “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” (2019).
Imagine my disappointment as I sat down to watch “Paint,” only to discover that it isn’t about Ross at all but rather the fictional (and unlikable) Carl Nargle, a painter at the local PBS affiliate in Burlington, Vermont. Driving around womanizing in his custom van, Nargle thinks that he’s on top of the world, until a younger, more talented artist named Ambrosia (Ciara Renée) steals both his TV show and his ex-lover Katherine (Michaela Watkins).
I’m still rooting hard for Wilson, who has shined in mainstream comedies (“Meet the Parents” and “Wedding Crashers”) and awards contenders (“The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Midnight in Paris”). I hope that he keeps taking risks in choosing unique roles like “Paint,” sporting Ross’ signature afro and flowery shirts but adding a wooden pipe, which TV producer Tony (Stephen Root of “Barry”) is forced to digitally blur for anti-tobacco activists.
Written and directed by Brit McAdams (“Tosh.0”), the script made the 2010 Blacklist of the best unproduced screenplays — more than most films can say. I suppose there are interesting themes of painting from your heart versus what you think museums want, as Carl dreams of the (fictional) Burlington Museum of Art showcasing his Mount Mansfield landscapes (the University of Vermont does have such a painting by Charles Louis Heyde).
The character study might work on paper, but it never truly comes to life as a movie. While John C. Reilly’s “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” (2007) spoofed the Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line” (2005), “Paint” lacks a recent biopic to roast unless you count the Netflix documentary “Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed” (2021). As a result, the film feels borderline mean-spirited, as if it’s making fun of him.
I won’t go as far as to say, “It’s like watching paint dry.” Such a pun is low-hanging fruit for critics to ding a movie that does have some redeeming qualities and a few amusing moments that made me laugh. Overall, though, I found it to be a lifeless canvas, disappointing my expectations for an artist who gifted my family many personal memories. See it if you want, but my advice is to stay home and stream the rom-com “Rye Lane” on Hulu instead.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Mrs. Maisel' & 'Barry' (Part 1) Grab your popcorn — this weekend marks the double end of an era for two of the biggest dramedies on television.
Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” returns for its fifth and final season on Friday, while HBO’s “Barry” returns for its fourth and final season on Sunday, building to their respective series finales on May 26 and May 28.
Here’s a primer for both with plot details from previous seasons, but no spoilers for the upcoming final seasons:
‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” premiered on Amazon Prime Video on March 17, 2017. Set in the late 1950s, the series follows New York housewife Miriam “Midge” Maisel, who discovers a surprise knack for stand-up comedy and decides to make it her career, exploring 20th century gender dynamics.
I still remember when season one debuted. Believe it or not, the ability to stream original TV series only started in 2013, so Amazon had just gotten into the streaming game with “Transparent” (2014), “Mozart in the Jungle” (2014), “Bosch” (2015) and “Sneaky Pete” (2015). When the phenomenal “Mrs. Maisel” pilot premiered in March, we couldn’t wait for the remaining seven episodes to drop all at once in November for our new binge craze.
In 2018, “Maisel” became the first streaming series to win the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series, ending a run of three straight victories by HBO’s “Veep.” It never returned to the top of the Emmy mountain, giving way to “Fleabag” in 2019, “Schitt’s Creek” in 2020 and “Ted Lasso” in both 2021 and 2022, but its legacy was already enshrined. The record was already its to cherish as it became the answer to pub trivia questions for decades to come.
After her breakthrough role as the ill-fated prostitute Rachel Posner on Netflix’s “House of Cards” (2013-2015), actress Rachel Brosnahan found an all-timer part as Midge, winning the Emmy for Best Actress in 2018 to end a streak of six straight victories by Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “Veep.” Brosnahan also won back to back Golden Globes in 2018 and 2019, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award in 2019, meaning she was officially a made woman.
Equally acclaimed was Alex Borstein, who won back to back Emmys in 2018 and 2019 as Midge’s wisecracking manager Susie Myerson at The Gaslight Cafe, while Tony Shalhoub won in 2019 as Midge’s father Abe Weissman and Luke Kirby won in 2019 as Lenny Bruce. The rest of the cast, including Michael Zegen, Marin Hinkle, Kevin Pollak, Caroline Aaron and Jane Lynch, together celebrated Best Comedy Ensemble at the SAG Awards twice.
The series scrapped its binge-all-at-once model last season, leaving fans wanting more by dropping two episodes at a time over four weeks. The season four finale “How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?” saw Midge turn down Lenny’s offer to replace him as How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall’s opener at the Copacabana, staggering out into a blizzard to see a billboard reading “Go Forward,” then blinking to instead read “The Gordon Ford Show.” May she break a leg in season five.
‘Barry’Created by Alec Berg and Bill Hader, “Barry” premiered on HBO on March 25, 2018, following an ex-Marine turned ruthless hitman who suddenly pursues a Hollywood career after stumbling into an L.A. acting class. It was instantly one of the most unique genre-bending shows I’ve ever seen, balancing comedy and drama with flashes of horror (that wild little girl scaling walls in season two) and action flicks (that motorcycle chase in season three).
After hilarious sketches on “Saturday Night Live” (2005-2013) and comedy movies like “Trainwreck” (2015), Hader found his most complex role as Barry Berkman, also known as Barry Block, juggling his newfound creative dreams against lingering impulses for bloodlust. He deservedly won the Emmy for Best Comedy Actor in both 2018 and 2019 before losing to Jason Sudeikis of “Ted Lasso” in 2022 after “Barry” returned from its two-year pandemic hiatus.
The supporting cast is a delight from Stephen Root as Barry’s hitman mentor Monroe Fuches to Sarah Goldberg as Barry’s actress girlfriend Sally Reed. The most laugh-out-loud character is the deliciously optimistic NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), a member of the Chechen mafia who was so damn funny with random zingers in the early seasons that the writers couldn’t help but expand his character to date Cristobal and the leader of the Bolivian mob.
Of course, the biggest casting coup is the comeback story of Henry Winkler, who refused to be typecast as The Fonz in “Happy Days” by creating arguably his career-best role as acting teacher Gene Cousineau, earning three Emmy nominations and winning Best Supporting Actor in 2018. Winkler crafts an adorable character trying to rebuild his washed-up Hollywood career by building new proverbial trusses on bridges that he burned years ago.
Gene’s relationship with Barry is the heartbeat of the show, evolving from proud teacher to grief-stricken revenge. Remember, season one ended with a thrilling scene at Gene’s lake house as his lover, Detective Janice Moss, was killed by Barry for nearly uncovering his crimes. Despite Barry’s attempt to plant Hank’s Chechen pin on her body, season two saw his plan unravel as Fuches whispered in Gene’s ear that Barry indeed killed Janice.
Season three saw Barry plunge into a deeper and darker persona, from violent outbursts toward Sally, who is losing patience on the set of her semi-autobiographical TV series “Joplin,” to desperately uttering a teary-eyed “I love you” to Gene on the couch as a pack of dogs randomly ran outside. It all built to a masterful season three finale as Gene set up Barry with the help of Janice’s father Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom, Bunny Colvin in “The Wire”).
I urge everyone to go back and watch the final shot of last season, noting how the camera holds on its intentional widescreen composition, featuring symbolic elements within the frame. You’d think that it was the high art of a prestige drama like “The Sopranos,” but instead it’s a half-hour comedy that can simultaneously appeal to the most lowbrow among us. I can’t wait for Sunday to hear those wailing horns to start the show. May Barry find peace.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Hexagon (Part 1) The Hexagon political comedy troupe has been a D.C. staple for decades, but it unfortunately shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the group lost President Joe Kaplan to the disease in 2020.
Next week, the show hopes to launch a new era with eight live performances from April 21 to April 29.
“Spring of 2019 was the last show we had before the pandemic and our President Joe Kaplan called everything off,” Hexagon’s Gene Tighe told WTOP. “We haven’t really been in active mode since then, so it’s just been in the last eight to nine months that we’ve had a groundswell of people who have come forward and said, ‘Let’s do the show. We think Joe would have wanted that,’ so we’ve kind of dedicated the show to him.”
Kaplan’s widow Ellen teams with Neil McElroy to craft a new show in a new location at the Cultural Arts Center of Montgomery College, located at 7995 Georgia Ave. in Silver Spring, Maryland. It’s a more intimate venue than previous cstes at the former Woodrow Wilson High School in Tenleytown, D.C. and Synetic Theater in Crystal City, Virginia.
“The show is going to be smaller, it’s going to be more intimate, but it’ll be back to the old tradition of getting original music and material together of the political ilk, so we’ll see how it goes,” Tighe said. “We’re ready for a new try here in 2023, brought to you by a somewhat lesser group of folks who are part of Washington’s only original political satirical musical comedy revue that’s been going since 1955.”
This year’s theme is “Sedition Edition,” riffing on the latest current events in our heated politics.
“It’s going to bring some of the hot issues of the day,” Tighe said. “Across the board, both sides, we’re hoping to get some belly laughs from people … needless to say, the 800-ton gorilla is the War in Ukraine. We have a ton of stuff going on with President Biden and of course his nemesis (Donald Trump). A lot of folks are wondering about the economy, looking behind our backs, and of course civil unrest has become an issue for young people.”
The sketches are interrupted by “breaking news” updates similar to the “Weekend Update” segments on “Saturday Night Live,” including local media personalities Christine Brennan of USA Today, Loo Katz of Hound Radio, Jim Lokay of FOX-5, Tony Perkins of NBC-4 and WTOP’s own Shawn Anderson and Hillary Howard.
“Four times during the show, about 45 minutes or so, media folks who are wonderful volunteers get up on stage and deliver ‘Weekend Update’ style entertainment, similar to what you see on ‘Saturday Night Live,'” Tighe said. “They get up there for about five minutes, tell funny jokes and try to get some laughs from a live audience.”
Hexagon is a non-profit organization founded in 1955 by an alum of the Princeton Triangle Club (three members = triangle). The new group was dubbed Hexagon (six members = hexagon), featuring three men and three women. It now has roughly 100 members consisting of volunteers who hold various day jobs across the nation’s capital.
“We have military people, we have folks all across the board from Capitol Hill to civil contractors, consultants, people who are doing work for everybody, property managers,” Tighe said. “We’ve got school teachers, musicians, you name it … all of these different government folks who are still with us. We always have a good time.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Pauly Shore at the DC Comedy Loft (Part 1) When Brendan Fraser and Ke Huy Quan both won Academy Awards last month for “The Whale” and “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” respectively, their “Encino Man” colleague Pauly Shore was ecstatic to see his old pals persevere to achieve Oscar glory.
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“You can never stop believing, you can never stop dreaming,” Shore told WTOP.
“That’s what life is about. This life is about dreaming and believing. Everyone is going to tell you ‘no,’ everyone’s going to tell you you’re not worthy or you’re not good enough or this or that, but you have to believe in you. That’s what these guys did. Brendan got the sh*t beat out of him for 20 years, then this director called him up. It’s one phone call. Same with Ke.”
That’s right, all it takes is one phone call — which is probably why Shore made time to call into WTOP to promote his upcoming standup gigs at the D.C. Comedy Loft & Bier Baron Tavern this Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
“Someone hears this in Washington, and they’ll want me to run for president. Just like that. But the problem is if I ran for president with a straight face, I’d probably win,” Shore said.
“I’m the kind of comic who doesn’t know where he’s going to go. My whole life and career has been very spontaneous, so I’ve gotta feel the stage. Once I get on stage, the audience will tell me where to go. I don’t sit and look at my notes before I go on, I just sort of rock ‘n roll.”
Born in Los Angeles in 1968, Shore grew up in Beverly Hills surrounded by standup comedians since his parents Sammy and Mitzi Shore owned The Comedy Store, a famous comedy club in West Hollywood founded in 1972.
“My mom is very intense with her work, and my dad was a comedian. So I’m kind of like Frankenstein where I’m a combination of my parents,” Shore said.
“It’s kind of in my veins, so I got the bug growing up in it. … Back in the day, I would watch guys like Robin Williams or Sam (Kinison) or (David) Letterman. Now, I’m watching these kids and they’re so f’n lazy. I’m not saying they’re bad. It’s just my eyeballs have seen the best, so I’m kind of jaded.”
Shore made his standup debut when he was a 17-year-old the Alley Cat Bistro in Culver City before landing TV roles on “21 Jump Street,” “St. Elsewhere” and “Married … with Children.” His big break came as an MTV video jockey between and 1989 and 1994, hosting the annual “Spring Break” broadcasts and even getting his own show called “Totally Pauly” (1990-2003).
“It’s just a timing thing,” Shore said.
“I bring up Justin Bieber a lot. He was on the stairs and someone filmed it and sent it to Usher. … For me, that YouTube video was MTV. That’s where we were at the time in the early ’90s. When I got on camera, for some reason it resonated with people. … MTV was the biggest thing back then, it’s where everyone wanted to go, it’s what all the kids were watching, and I was right there holding a microphone.”
Movie roles followed, teaming with Sean Astin to unearth a cave man under a swimming pool in “Encino Man” (1992); visiting Carla Gugino’s family for Thanksgiving in “Son-in-Law” (1993); joining Andy Dick as impromptu military grunts in “In the Army Now” (1993); prolonging a serial killer’s trial as freeloading juror in “Jury Duty” (1995); and getting trapped in a science experiment bubble with Stephen Baldwin in “Bio-Dome” (1996).
“I think ‘Bio-Dome’ seems like the biggest cult classic,” Shore said. “As an actor, I just go off and I become this character. And I engage in the story and then I walk away. What happens after that, I don’t know, I don’t have the answer of why people resonated with that one.”
His personal favorite work remains the mockumentary “Pauly Shore is Dead” (2003) about his fictional attempt to fake his own death to fundraise films.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the film featured cameos by Pamela Anderson, Tommy Chong, Carson Daly, Ellen DeGeneres, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Fred Durst, Corey Feldman, Paris Hilton, Mario Lopez, Sean Penn, Chris Rock, Charlie Sheen, Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears and Ben Stiller.
“I think that was my best movie because it was the first time that I had control of the whole thing,” Shore said.
“It was fun to try to figure out what the f— it was and the tone and painting the picture with all the cameos. Once I got Sean Penn … I was able to use that to get other people in there and say, ‘Hey, I got Sean Penn,’ and they were like, ‘F—, really?’ … It was the first part of the second part of my career.”
He played himself again in “Entourage” (2005-2007) and the documentary “Pauly Shore Stands Alone” (2014).
“I don’t always want to play myself, but these particular projects lent themselves for me to play myself, so it’s case by case, project by project,” Shore said.
“I don’t have kids, I don’t have a wife, I don’t have that whole thing that most people do. I have a dog and that’s enough for me right now. … His name is Buster, half lab, half chow and husky. He’s a great dog, he’s like my guy. It’s a lot of responsibility. … My dog is so big that he walks me now.”
Today, he’s mostly focused on being the funniest stand-up comedian possible.
“I’m 55, and I’m just as into it now and I was 10, 15 years ago,” Shore said.
“I’m flying on a plane all the way from Los Angeles to see you guys. That’s a long flight, that’s not enjoyable, but once I get on that stage, there’s the reason. … Standup comedy is a way of life, it’s not a job, it’s not a hobby. If you come at it with expectations that things will work out if you do it half-assed, it’s not going to happen. It’s seven days a week, 24 hours, I just love it.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Pauly Shore at the DC Comedy Loft (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Grease' at Toby's Dinner Theatre (Part 1) The 1972 musical was a Broadway smash before the 1978 movie cemented it in our pop culture.
This spring, Toby’s Dinner Theatre stages “Grease” now through June 11 in Columbia, Maryland.
“We opened on March 24, and every performance has been sold out,” Director Mark Minnick told WTOP. “The people are loving it. They are cheering after every number, not just polite applause, but cheering. At the end, we get standing ovations, screaming and cheering, because we do this great hand-jive finale. We do have seats available almost any show … but Tuesday and Wednesday nights actually have the best availability at this time.”
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Set at the fictional Rydell High School in 1959, the timeless story follows the budding teenage romance between Danny Zuko, a leather-jacket-wearing member of a bad-boy gang of Greasers, and Sandy Dombrowski, a prim and proper suburban girl who joins the popular clique The Pink Ladies led by the sassy Rizzo.
“It’s a nostalgic tour through the ’50s,” Minnick said. “A lot of people in the arts tend to poo poo ‘Grease,’ oh, it’s not Sondheim, it’s not heavy. … Everything doesn’t need to be so deep and heavy-handed; sometimes a nice laugh and a joyous memory is just what you need. The value in ‘Grease’ is there are characters everyone can relate to, it’s humorous, there are some serious moments and the music is just feel-good music, just song after song after song.”
The songbook features numbers from the original Broadway production by Jim Jacobs, Warren Casey and John Farrar, including “Summer Nights,” “Greased Lightnin’,” “Beauty School Dropout,” “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” and “We Go Together.” You’ll also hear songs that Farrar added for the movie from “Hopelessly Devoted To You” to “You’re the One That I Want,” made famous by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, who died in 2022.
“When the first beats of the music ‘bum, ba da, ba da’ start of ‘Summer Nights,’ you see people sit up in their seats, their heads start to go and their bodies start to bop,” Minnick said. “We do have a (‘Greased Lightnin’) car that lights up. … The finale on Broadway was ‘All Choked Up,’ but we’re doing ‘You’re the One That I Want.’ In the movie, it takes place at the carnival, but here at Toby’s Dinner Theatre it takes place at the Burger Palace.”
If you want a bite to eat, you can grab themed food and drinks at the buffet during intermission.
“Our drink for this show is called The Pink Lady and you get a take-home souvenir ‘Grease’ goblet with that,” Minnick said. “We do have a little fun and name each entrée after a character. … We always have our signature spinach phunque, so it’s called Spinach Phunque: It’s the One That You Want. That’s our main one for this.”
Minnick has a long history with “Grease,” having staged various productions around the world from China to Istanbul, as well as the U.S. national tour with Phoenix Entertainment, starring Frankie Avalon as Teen Angel. No matter where he takes the show, he always makes sure to include cast members from the DMV.
“The talent here in the D.C. area can’t be matched,” Minnick said. “Our Danny Zuko is Patrick Gover. Anybody who saw ‘Rocky’ or ‘Ghost,’ he played Rocky and Sam, the Patrick Swayze role. … Our Sandy is Cassie Saunders, who grew up through Toby’s Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts, CCTA. I had a chance to work with her a couple times. She graduated college, came back and I said, ‘You know what? I think Cassie would make a great Sandy.”
In the end, it’s all about creating nostalgic memories for the audience.
“I personally love ‘Grease,'” Minnick said. “I think there’s such value in the title because it brings such joy. … At intermission, people are talking, ‘I was a Sandy in high school’ or ‘I was a Rizzo.’ They just love it. People come in their T-Bird jackets, their Pink Lady shirts and jackets, they’re just there to celebrate and have a good time.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the National Philharmonic (Part 1) The spring season is blossoming with orchestral music around the nation’s capital.
It’s the perfect time to enjoy the National Philharmonic in Maryland and Virginia.
“People are coming back to the concerts,” National Philharmonic Music Director & Conductor Piotr Gajewski told WTOP. “In the last three concerts that we gave, one was a complete sell-out at Strathmore, every ticket; one was almost a full sell-out; and the one that we just did just a few weeks ago also [had] huge audiences. It’s time to come hear concerts, everything is good and safe with great music and it’s great to hear it live again.”
This Saturday, April 15 brings “Beethoven’s 7th” at Strathmore in North Bethesda. The night begins with Valerie Coleman’s “Umoja, Anthem for Unity for Orchestra” and violinist Melissa White (Jordan Peele’s “Us”) performing Florence Price’s “Violin Concerto No. 2.” The second half features “Fate Now Conquers” by Carlos Simon, who was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra to write a response to Beethoven’s legendary “7th Symphony.”
“It’s got a really famous second movement and, interestingly enough, that’s the first piece I ever conducted standing in front of an orchestra when I was 17 years old, so it’s got a good place in my heart,” Gajewski said. “It’s one of those pieces that you’ve heard it somewhere and you don’t know where, but it’s in the pop culture. It was under several movies like ‘Mr. Holland’s Opus’ and ‘The King’s Speech,’ so you recognize it as soon as you hear it.”
On April 27, the philharmonic will perform “When I Fall in Love: The Music of Nat King Cole” at Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia. Principal Pops Conductor Luke Frazier will welcome Tony nominee Christopher Jackson (“In the Heights, “Hamilton”), Aisha Jackson (“Frozen,” “Paradise Square”) and piano duo Steven Mann and Ray Wong.
Next month, the National Philharmonic brings the special multimedia presentation “Cosmic Cycles” to both Capital One Hall in Tysons on May 11 and Strathmore on May 13. It’s the group’s second collaboration with NASA after performing Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” set to stunning telescope images last year.
“They have all this fabulous new material from the new Webb Telescope,” Gajewski said. “They put together seven short movies between five and 10 minutes. We commissioned a composer, Henry Dehlinger, a Virginia composer, to compose a symphony in seven movements. Each movement focuses on a different part of space: it starts out on the sun, then the Earth, then the moon, then different planets, then different NASA travelers or probes.”
Finally, June 4 brings the world premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s “5th Symphony.” It’s followed by Carl Orf’s “Carmina Burana,” best known for its famous movements “Oh Fortuna” and “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi,” with guest soloists soprano Danielle Talamantes, tenor Robert Baker and baritone Brandon Hendrickson.
“‘Carmina Burana’ hopefully doesn’t need a huge introduction, other than Handel’s ‘Messiah’ it’s probably the most-known choral piece as a backdrop of many commercials and movies,” Gajewski said. “Adolphus Hailstork is an American composer, who’s getting up in age, he’s 81, but he’s enjoying tremendous success. … Last season we premiered a work of his entitled ‘A Knee on the Neck,’ which will be broadcast on TV locally [on WETA].”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Les Miserables' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) In 1986, the Kennedy Center hosted the pre-Broadway debut of what would become the “world’s most popular musical,” seen by over 130 million people worldwide in 53 countries and 22 languages.
Starting Tuesday, “Les Misérables” returns to the Kennedy Center in D.C. for three weeks from April 11-29.
“It’s been running on the West End for 37 years, it’s played in every country imaginable, it’s been translated into practically every language imaginable and it is still the world’s most popular musical,” lead actor Nick Cartell told WTOP. “I think there is a connection that audiences have with this show because of what Victor Hugo wrote. He wrote about characters that people can relate to at all different points in their lives.”
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Based on Hugo’s 1862 novel, the redemption story is set in early 19th century France where peasant Jean Valjean gets parole after 19 years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving child. When he’s caught stealing again, a merciful bishop doesn’t report him but rather gives Valjean two silver candlesticks, insisting that he must now do good in the world. Valjean vows a new life, but the police inspector Javert is hot on his trail.
“It really sets his life on a different trajectory than it was originally supposed to be on,” Cartell said. “It really transforms Valjean and it makes him become compassionate to others. … When he meets Fantine, who passes away, he adopts her daughter, so it’s all this story of redemption, sacrifice, love and survival of the human spirit.”
It’s all set against the backdrop of young idealists overthrowing the government at a Paris street barricade.
“What the students are fighting for in the show is education for all,” Cartell said. “Regardless of when we set the show, regardless of what side of the aisle you sit on, there is something about this show that is people fighting to be heard, fighting for their place in this world. … Then you see the war that’s happening in Ukraine and that group of people fighting for their country, fighting to be heard. … It’s one of the staying powers of ‘Les Mis.'”
Cartell feels a deep personal connection to the character’s song “Bring Him Home,” having lost his own mom to ovarian cancer in 2017 after a five-year battle of undergoing chemotherapy before flying on plane to visit him.
“Such a strong force in my life, so to sit on that barricade as Valjean and think about the sacrifices that Valjean was going to make for his daughter and that he’s going to protect this boy, I was able to connect that to the sacrifices my mom made for me,” Cartell said. “My wife and I had a daughter during the pandemic, a little girl, so now me sitting on that barricade as Valjean thinking about my own daughter … it means so much to me.”
Rather than intermittent musical numbers broken up by scenes of dialogue, “Les Mis” is entirely sung-through for the three-hour duration, featuring timeless music by Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyrics by Alain Boublil.
“You have songs like ‘I Dreamed a Dream,’ ‘Stars,’ ‘On My Own,’ ‘Bring Him Home’ and ‘One Day More’ … it’s hit after hit after hit,” Cartell said. “These songs have been recorded by pop stars, so it’s in the ether. You might not even know that you know this song until you start hearing the music. … You are transported with this music. There is something physically that happens every night to me when I hear the beginning of ‘One Day More.'”
The iconic music is paired with detailed period visuals recreating 19th century France. In fact, when “Les Misérables” premiered in the 1980s, its set design was equally revolutionary using a giant turntable on stage.
“People were walking on stage and the stage was moving underneath them, so you got that sense of movement,” Cartell said. “When they went back and were reimagining the show, they did away with the turntable but what they added were these beautiful projections. Many people don’t know that Victor Hugo was also an incredible artist. … When you walk in, you see this beautiful watercolor [back]drop of his version of what Paris looked like.”
Of course, millennials best remember the 2012 movie musical directed by Tom Hooper and starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne and an Oscar-winning Anne Hathaway.
“Watching him do that role, you’ve got big shoes to fill,” Cartell said. “The fact that I am playing a role that Hugh Jackman played on film is not lost on me, that is a big undertaking, but it’s cool that we’re in a brotherhood now, that I’m in a brotherhood of actors that have played a role in a musical that has run the longest of any other show.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Tesla at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) They were a staple of the U.S. rock scene throughout the ’80s and ’90s, but Tesla is still going strong, having just played their first-ever residency in Las Vegas at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
This Friday night, the band travels to play a sold-out show at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in Charles Town, West Virginia, just over the border for our Maryland and Virginia listeners.
“We’re in a cool position with the legacy of the band,” guitarist Dave Rude told WTOP. “We’ve got a lot of records and songs that people demand to hear, so we always do the hits and some particular live fan favorites that everyone expects … we also like to keep it interesting. We have a lot of diehards who come to a lot of shows, so we’ll throw in some deep tracks, new songs, old songs we haven’t done in a long time, covers just to spice it up.”
The band formed in Sacramento, California, in 1981 under the original name City Kidd with a lineup featuring vocalist Jeff Keith, guitarist Frank Hannon, bassist Brian Wheat, guitarist Tommy Skeoch and drummer Troy Luccketta.
Signed by Geffen Records, the band changed its name to Tesla and released its debut album, “Mechanical Resonance,” including hit singles “Modern Day Cowboy” and “Little Suzi.”
“Those songs are a blast to play live,” Rude said. “To hear that electricity when people hear their favorite Tesla song, it’s always really exciting … in 2016, we did a live record of ‘Mechanical Resonance’ in its entirety, so we went through and learned all the old album tracks. That was fun to do a more recent interpretation of those classics.”
In 1989, Tesla’s second album, “Great Radio Controversy,” went double platinum, including the songs “Heaven’s Trail” and “Love Song.”
“There’s a good amount of songs that I think we’d get run out of town if we didn’t play every show, so ‘Love Song,’ all that stuff, we definitely gotta do,” Rude said. “One fun one on ‘Great Radio’ that we learned for Vegas was ‘Lady Luck.’ We’ve been doing that a lot since Vegas and that one is really fun to do live because it’s an album track, it wasn’t a huge hit, but all of the fans know it and love it and we haven’t done it in forever.”
In 1990, the band released its live album “Five Man Acoustical Jam,” which featured the badass cover of The Five-Man Electrical Band’s “Signs,” which was first released back in 1971.
“‘Signs’ was not a big departure arrangement-wise, but the fact that it’s Jeff singing and has a lot more hard-rock energy, even being acoustic, that just made it unique,” Rude said. “Honestly, I don’t think the majority of people know that ‘Signs’ is a cover … it’s so just linked to the band … as soon as Frank hits the first [hums a few notes], people lose their minds. That one gets one of, if not the biggest, reactions of the night.”
In 1991, the band released another platinum album with “Psychotic Supper,” which was actually the band’s highest position on the U.S. Albums Chart, including the hit song “Edison’s Medicine.”
“Dude, ‘Psychotic’ is still my favorite Tesla record, hands down,” Rude said. “Every song on that record I think is a classic. Everything, the production, the performance, that was really a band at their peak. It was just magic. ‘What You Give’ is one of my favorite songs ever by anyone. It’s up there with The Beatles and Zeppelin to me … that initial opening guitar line, the acoustic, is so weird and so unique, it just really resonates with me.”
After “Bust a Nut” (1994) and “Into the Now” (2004), Rude joined the band in 2006, just in time for “Real to Reel” (2007) and “Forever More” (2008), a dream come true after a life of Tesla fandom.
“I grew up listening to Tesla,” Rude said. “I got the ‘Five Man Acoustical Jam’ record when I was in seventh grade and I had it on a cassette, I had no CD player yet, and I literally wore it out to where the writing was gone and it was like a blank piece of plastic with music inside and followed the band ever since … that was my gateway drug to Tesla … it all just happened really randomly when Frank Hannon found me on MySpace in 2006.”
Since then, the band has dropped new albums every few years, including “Twisted Wires & The Acoustic Sessions” (2011), “Simplicity” (2014) and “Shock” (2019), co-written and produced by Phil Collen of Def Leppard.
“Just working with such a great musician and song smith, I think that really upped our game in just the writing of the songs before we even got to recording, then putting all of the extra time into making a really well-produced record and have it be so sonically big, that’s a really good memory for me and I really love that record,” Rude said.
Thankfully, the band has avoided copyright battles with Elon Musk, founder of the Tesla electric car company, both named after Thomas Edison’s rival, the inventor Nikola Tesla.
“I had just joined the band when the car company just started to blow up,” Rude said. “There was a little bit of like, hmm, is there any legal things here? But I think it was just sort of all right. If it was another band it would be different, but it’s such a different field of business, so there’s no issue. It’s kind of cool. Elon [Musk] knows about us. There’s a photo of him wearing an old-school Tesla t-shirt on a red carpet, pointing at his shirt.”
Could Rude’s electric guitar take Musk’s electric car?
“Ooh yes, can we plug it into the car? Can we power a Marshall amp with a Tesla battery?”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Shout Sister Shout!' at Ford's Theatre (Part 1) We’ve all heard of Elvis Presley, so why haven’t more folks heard of Sister Rosetta Tharpe?
The musical “Shout Sister Shout!” aims to educate the unenlightened at D.C.’s Ford’s Theatre, now through May 13.
“This was a huge revelation,” actress Carrie Compere told WTOP. “I had no idea who this woman was, where she came from and her impact and influence, not just on American music but on world music history.”
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“Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a Black queer musician born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, on March 20, 1915,” Compere said. “We definitely dig into some of her music, but even more so we dig into who she was, her humanity, the flesh and bone of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, where she came from, her life and journey. … It spans about four decades.”
“The first time I heard her name, I was on the first national tour of ‘Shrek: The Musical.’ Our cast went to visit Graceland in Memphis … and there was a distinguished-looking older white gentleman [who] mentioned her name as an influence of Elvis,” she added.
The play was adapted by playwright Cheryl L. West from Gayle F. Wald’s book ‘Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.’ The story charts Tharpe’s journey from young adulthood, all the way to her death at age 58. It also details how she became one of America’s most influential (and underrated) rock, R&B and gospel artists.
Compere originally auditioned for the supporting role of Mahalia Jackson, and was surprised when the casting director asked her to stay and read for the lead role of Tharpe. It’s safe to say that Jackson and Tharpe paved the way for the gospel-pop crossover artists that followed, from Aretha Franklin to Amy Grant.
“She was one of the first people to bring sacred music to secular venues, who many consider to be the godmother or queen of rock ‘n roll,” Compere said. “She was a guitarist and a vocalist. What set her apart from so many during that time was that her style of playing and singing was so different from what had been done up until that point.”
Music director Sheilah V. Walker teams with choreographer William Carlos Angulo to stage an array of energetic musical numbers, including “Four or Five Times,” “How About You,” “Precious Memories” and “Sit Down.”
“The show is full of music that people know and love, and music that some people have never heard before,” Compere said. “There are songs that are going to be brand new to their ear, but it’s still going to be a little familiar.
“Whenever I tell people to come see the show, I always say, ‘Come see a woman that you never knew you already knew,’ because when you hear the music, you’re like, ‘Oh wait! This is where this comes from!'”
Director Kenneth L. Roberson works with scenic designer Tim Mackabee and costume designer Alejo Vietti to recreate American period visuals from the 1930s through 1970s on the historic stage of Ford’s Theatre.
“You’re definitely seeing things that are true to [the] period, even down to a little lipstick pack,” Compere said. “They have really paid attention to detail when it comes to the costuming, the wigs, the makeup, the furniture, the microphones that are set up, it’s all very much true as we could be to the time.
“A lot of it is about Rosetta’s memories so we jump through time, sometimes at lightning speed, but at a pace that is digestible for the audience.”
In the end, she hopes audiences walk away aware of this uniquely American legend who was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, alongside Nina Simone, Bon Jovi, The Cars, Dire Straits and The Moody Blues.
“The fact that I did not learn anything about her until my adulthood, it was a little saddening,” Compere said. “She really was not given her due. … She died in Philadelphia and her grave was unmarked for about 30 years. It blows my mind, but now she has a beautiful tombstone and her name is being spoken so much more now than ever before.
“I’m really blessed and proud to be part of this movement, this resurgence of bringing her name back to the forefront.”
“Shout Sister Shout!” runs at Ford’s Theater until May 13, 2023. For tickets or more information, visit its website.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Hello Tomorrow' The sci-fi comedy/drama series “Hello Tomorrow!” drops its Season 1 finale on Apple TV+ this Friday, bringing an end to weekly exchange between me and my wife: “Do you want to watch Moon Show?” (That’s what we call it).
Turns out, it was a misnomer for a misleading moonshot that barely achieves liftoff. We started out excited to watch it, but it quickly took a backseat to other shows until we threw on the finale just to see how Season 1 ends. Our fading interest in the plot tells you a lot about “Hello Tomorrow!,” boasting a premise that is far juicer than its actual story rollout, holding its cards way too close to its vest for way too long during an overlong 10 episodes.
Created by Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen, the retro-futuristic series follows a traveling huckster, Jack Billings, whose small business sends door-to-door salesmen to hawk timeshares on the moon. Seeing a way out of their humdrum lives, the unsuspecting customers fork over payments, while Jack repeatedly postpones the date of his fictional rocket launch. That’s right, there is no moon habitat! Just empty promises to poor earthling suckers.
It’s great seeing Billy Crudup land a lead role after his stellar support in both films (“Jackie”) and Emmy-winning TV roles (“The Morning Show”). This time, his performance as Jack is once again Emmy-worthy, reminiscent of William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard, who fudged the numbers as a slimy used car salesman in “Fargo” (1996), only Crudup is more charismatic with a contagious dreamer’s spirit and a starry-eyed twinkle of hope in his lying eyes.
Nicholas Podany (Broadway’s “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”) is equally good as his long-lost son Joey Shorter, who goes to work for Jack without realizing that they’re father and son. This “cat’s in the cradle” dynamic is the beating heart of the series as we watch to see whether Joey is a chip off the old block or will forge his own path. Will he ever learn the truth about his absent father, who is now ironically his biggest professional mentor?
Other subplots include gambler Eddie (Hank Azaria) dating Jack’s suspicious secretary Shirley (Haneefah Wood), salesman Herb Porter (Dewshane Williams) reconnecting with wife Betty (Susan Heyward) and scorned divorcee Myrtle (Alison Pill) wooing lisping investigator Lester (Matthew Maher). Rounding out the cast are Jacki Weaver as Jack’s opinionated mom and Frankie Faison as the mentally-challenged Buck, who could sink or sell the scheme.
Of course, the best character in “Hello Tomorrow!” is the retro-futuristic setting. The classic yet creative production design provides a unique atmosphere of 1950s-style suburbia but with the benefit of racial diversity and the conveniences of future technology. Robots take out the trash, while black-and-white televisions broadcast the new sport jetball (similar to baseball). It’s like mankind invented devices but preferred throwback designs.
Unfortunately, the award-worthy atmosphere and performances are betrayed by story beats that sell out the viewers. In a way, the writers pull the very same scheme as their slimy lead character, tricking us into thinking we’re watching something that we’re not. We buy into the pilot for one reason, then watch a completely different story unfold. We remain earthbound. We never reach the moon. We feel hoodwinked like Jack’s customers.
It’s telling that “Hello Tomorrow!” hasn’t been renewed yet for a second season, while other Apple series like “Severance,” “Shrinking” and “The Big Door Prize” have already been renewed for a Season 2. If it is somehow renewed, I suppose I’ll still watch to see the outcome of the finale’s cleverly-constructed cliffhangers, but something tells me that the reaction from viewers is a bit of a letdown from this series’ failure to launch.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley covers 'Mario' & 'Tetris' (Part 1) Hollywood delivers a double dose of Nintendo nostalgia this week with a pair of video game adaptations. One is a fictional tale set inside the animated fantasy world of the game itself, the other is a true story of the real-life maneuvering and cutthroat business deals behind the scenes that brought the game to homes around the world.
Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” opens in theaters nationwide, while the biopic “Tetris” is now streaming on Apple TV+. I’ve been a huge fan of both games since my very first Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. Many gamers had to blow on the cartridge to get it to work, but our console was so peculiar that it only worked if you pushed the cartridge in but didn’t push it down. Suffice it to say, the Gameboy was an upgrade!
Thankfully, the two new movies don’t require blowing on any cartridges or charging the batteries of your handheld device — simply buy a ticket to the multiplex or press play on your remote to fire up your Apple TV+ subscription.
As Mario would say, “Here we go!”
‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’
The 1993 live-action flick was a flop, despite the best efforts of Bob Hoskins as Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi and Dennis Hopper as Bowser. It only makes sense now that Hollywood turns to computer animation for the new “Super Mario Bros. Movie,” directed by the duo of Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic of the Cartoon Network series “Teen Titans Go!” with animation rendered by Illumination, best known for “Despicable Me” and “Sing.”
Chris Pratt (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) and Charlie Day (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) voice Mario and Luigi, who battle the evil Bowser (Jack Black, “School of Rock”) with the help of Toad (Keegan-Michael Key, “Keanu”) and Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy, already a royal from “The Queen’s Gambit”). While the princess was always “in another castle” in the original 1985 game, her ability to fly made her the best choice in the 1988 sequel game.
Is the movie as exciting as the video games? Can it top Pedro Pascal’s recent “Mario Kart” spoof on “Saturday Night Live?” Or is that merely a pipe dream? I’ll let y’all know when I see it. Until then, let’s talk “Tetris.”
‘Tetris’
If you don’t feel like suspending your disbelief to enter a fictional “Super Mario World,” you might instead try streaming the Apple original “Tetris,” which is a surprisingly compelling look at the making-of the game.
Taron Egerton (“Rocketman,” “Black Bird”) plays Henk Rogers, an American entrepreneur who lives with his wife in Japan but is constantly traveling. He first eyes Tetris at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, trying to obtain the rights for Bullet-Proof Software in a race against Andromeda Software rep Robert Stein (Toby Jones) and Mirrorsoft C.E.O. Kevin Maxwell (Anthony Boyle) and his British media mogul father Robert (Roger Allam).
The tension escalates when Henk flies behind enemy lines to Moscow in an attempt to obtain the international licensing rights to the rotating block game created by Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), who works for the state-owned Elektronorgtechnica (ELORG). The Soviet Union is a suspenseful “Damocles Sword” of danger where Oleg Stefan shines as Nikolai Belikov with a stone-faced knack for bluffing contract negotiations.
Who knew that sterile business meetings could be this riveting? Director Jon S. Baird (BAFTA nominee for “Stan & Ollie”) and screenwriter Noah Pink (Emmy nominee for Nat Geo’s “Genius”) convince us that Henk helped the U.S. win the Cold War as much as Ronald Reagan vs. Mikhail Gorbachev or Rocky Balboa vs. Ivan Drago. As pixilated Tetris pieces dissolve into real buildings, we fully believe that tumbling blocks helped “tear down this wall.”
It might not win Oscars like “The Social Network” (2010), the definitive tech biopic with the generational talents of director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, not to mention a career-best performance by Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zukerberg, Andrew Garfield as scorned friend Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake as Napster founder Sean Parker, and Rooney Mara as “refreshing” ex-girlfriend Erica Albright.
Still, “Tetris” is darn good. As the credits roll, you’ll understand why the classic video game always boasted Russian music, as film composer Lorne Balfe cleverly mixes the Nintendo theme “Korobeiniki” with Europe’s rock hit “The Final Countdown” to rousing, almost euphoric effect. Good luck getting the music out of your head — on second thought, let it linger as a reminder that compelling characters are the building blocks of any stellar adaptation.
I’d keep writing but the lines are filling up and I can’t flip the pieces quickly enough.
Oh no, a long piece!
A block piece!
Fast music!
Game over.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Al Snow at DC Comedy Loft (Part 1) He’s best known for talking to a mannequin head, then using it to bludgeon his opponents in the ring.
WWE and ECW alum Al Snow performs live at the D.C. Comedy Loft at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
“I’m still pretty much a (standup comedy) virgin, a babe of the woods, so to speak, so if anybody shows up, please take it easy on me,” Snow told WTOP. “I’ve been enjoying it, it’s been a lot of fun. Nobody’s thrown fruits or vegetables at me while I’m on stage yet, but I think I’m doing OK.”
When I said that WTOP recently spoke to Mick Foley about his show at DC Improv, Snow’s joking response was, “I’m sorry,” keeping up the tradition of the two always roasting each other.
He then added in all seriousness, “When Mick was a professional wrestler, he would tell everybody in the locker room, ‘When I get done I’m gonna be a standup comedian.’ We would all laugh and laugh, but now he’s a standup comedian and nobody’s laughing.”
Located above the Bier Baron Tavern, the D.C. Comedy Loft is an intimate setting to hear the wildest stories from his recent book, “Self Help: Life Lessons from the Bizarre Wrestling Career of Al Snow,” which was published in 2019.
“My brain’s basically scrambled eggs. CTE is a real issue, so I talk about everything. I tell jokes, I tell road stories, some of them very bizarre, but they’re from my perspective completely hilarious. And I also interact with the audience,” Snow said. “I can’t really call it standup because I always sit on a stool and just sit back and start talking and whatever comes in my head is what I basically put out there. It’s sit-down comedy. I’m 60 for God’s sake!”
Born in Lima, Ohio, in 1963, he grew up watching professional wrestling on TV back in the old territory days.
“I grew up watching Ed Farhat, who was the original Sheik, and he had Big Time Wrestling out of Detroit,” Snow said. “We had maybe one or two channels, then when we got cable television, we were able to access all 13 channels … one of those was TBS, Turner Broadcasting, so Saturday nights was Georgia Championship Wrestling at 6:00 or 6:05, and that was it — at 14 I was like, ‘I’m gonna be a professional wrestler.'”
In the early ’90s, he became a WWF “jobber” losing to The Undertaker before facing Sabu in ECW and training Dan Severn for UFC.
This caught the eye of Jim Cornette at Smoky Mountain Wrestling, teaming with Glenn Jacobs (i.e. Kane) to beat the Rock N Roll Express.
He returned to WWF playing characters like Avatar, Shinobi and joining Leif Cassidy as The New Rockers, a spin on the classic tag team of Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty.
“I had the moniker of ‘The Best Kept Secret in Professional Wrestling,’ which is a wonderful compliment for a year, then you’re like, ‘Hey, let’s start telling the secret,'” Snow said. “That parlayed into an opportunity with WWF. After about two years, I tried to quit … I knew I had to go somewhere else so they could see me as something else … they put me on loan to ECW so I could reinvent myself. That’s where I met Head and it was love at first sight.”
Head was the name of his beloved mannequin head prop in ECW circa 1997, a gimmick he brought with him back to WWF with a theme song that saw Snow shout, “What does everybody want?” to which the crowd would yell, “Head!” (WWF’s so-called “Attitude Era” routinely pushed the envelope with sexual innuendo, folks).
“I was reading a book on abnormal psychology,” Snow said. “I found a styrofoam head in the ECW locker room in Philadelphia … and I remembered a case study of a woman who was schizophrenic who had transference disorder where she transferred her illness onto the object she heard voices from. She thought they were crazy, not her, so I thought that’s what I’m going to do — carry this styrofoam head to the ring and treat it as if it’s insane and I’m not.”
Donning a white “J.O.B. Squad” T-shirt for a faction with Bob Holly, Scorpio and The Blue Meanie, Snow became a six-time WWE Hardcore Champion, as well as WWE European Champion and WWE Tag Team Champion with Mick Foley.
Along the way, he battled rivals like Steve Blackman, Billy Gunn, Christian and The Big Boss Man, who in an infamous storyline, fed him his own dog, the cute chihuahua Pepper (no dogs were actually harmed).
“It was inspired by a real story, a professional wrestler named Mr. Fuji,” Snow said. “His neighbor went to work, Mr. Fuji kidnapped his dog, (then) invited him over for dinner and what he served to the neighbor was his dog. We ended up in the Kennel from Hell (a steel cage filled with dogs). Little did we know the name would be so apropos. They were literally urinating, defecating and fornicating to the point where they couldn’t show them on camera.”
Since then, Snow has served as head trainer on “WWE Tough Enough” from 2001 to 2005, joined TNA from 2010 to 2017, and became owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling from 2018 to present. He still follows WWE, including The Bloodline storyline of The Usos finally losing their tag titles to Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens at “WrestleMania,” though fans were surprised Roman Reigns retained his Undisputed WWE Universal title against Cody Rhodes.
“What a testament to what an entertainment powerhouse WWE is to be able to draw 81,000 people not one night, but two nights concurrently, just insane,” Snow said. “What a great story: to now watch Cody have to climb that hill, that mountain … if that had already been done for Cody, where do you go? Do you create a new mountain to climb, or do you make the mountain steeper? Do you put more rocks in the way? That’s what they’re doing.”
He says it will mean much more when Rhodes finally wins the title, rather than prematurely winning the top prize after leaving rival AEW to join WWE just a year ago. Rhodes was sidelined by a gruesome pectoral injury, only to return at the “Royal Rumble” in January for a fast-tracked shot at Reigns’ title, which he ultimately lost last week.
“From a business standpoint, you have a talent who is not totally 100% integrated into WWE,” Snow said. “He left, he literally established a company (AEW) that is running in opposition to WWE. The last thing you want to do as a wrestling promoter, you never want to take one of their (guys), let him waltz in and go to the very top because now you’ve just psychologically told all of the fans that their upper-mid card guy is now better than all of yours.”
In his spare time, Snow also runs a clothing brand, COLLARxELBOW (as in a collar-elbow tie-up wrestling hold).
“We decided to try to make a clothing brand for professional wrestling fans, something that was cool and had designs that conveyed a certain message if you’re a wrestling fan. But if you’re not a wrestling fan you can wear it to any type of function so you don’t get that, ‘Oh, you like wrestling? You know that’s stuff’s fake.’ It’s like, ‘Hey, congratulations, ‘Murder She Wrote,’ how long did it take for you to put the clues together, Angela Lansbury?'”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Al Snow at DC Comedy Loft (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews CFG Bank Arena (Part 1) If you’re a local baseball fan — or just a fan of classic rock — it’s a great weekend to visit Baltimore, Maryland.
Not only does Friday mark the home opener at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, it also marks the launch of the newly renovated CFG Bank Arena with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performing on Friday and the Eagles band on Saturday.
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“Baseball has doubleheaders; I’m offering you a triple header: You have the Orioles, Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles all in one weekend,” CFG Bank Arena General Manager Frank Remesch told WTOP. “If you’re going to do it, go big or go home. Between Bruce and the Eagles, can you get any better of a weekend? Are you kidding me?”
His personal favorite Springsteen song is “Glory Days,” but he says it’s impossible to pick a favorite Eagles tune.
“I have friends that I hang out with, we’re very eclectic from country to rock ‘n roll, from Megadeath to John Denver, and the one group that everyone agrees upon is the Eagles,” Remesch said. “You forget how many No. 1 songs that they’ve had until you just sit back and listen, so this one-two punch is a bucket list for me.”
It should be a bucket list for everybody. The Boss ranks No. 12 all-time on the RIAA’s list of artists with the most albums sold, while the Eagles rank as high as No. 4, behind only The Beatles, Garth Brooks and Elvis Presley. All of those legends have played the venue since it first opened as the Baltimore Civic Center back in 1962.
“Elvis has played here, Led Zeppelin has played here, The Beatles have played here and Garth Brooks has played here,” Remesch said. “That’s what’s great about doing what they did and keeping the history of this building. I can still go back and say, ‘The Beatles walked right where that stage was, Martin Luther King gave a speech on that stage,’ and then I have a new building on top of it, so somewhere in these hallowed halls are those souls.”
The venue has had numerous names from Baltimore Arena to 1st Mariner Arena to Royal Farms Arena before sitting empty during the COVID-19 pandemic. After a Guns N’ Roses concert in fall 2021, it hosted the CIAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments before being bought by the Oak View Group for 11 months of renovations.
“This isn’t lipstick on a pig, this was a 100% evisceration of the inside of the building, nothing was left but the pillars,” Remesch said. “It’s absolutely beautiful, the amenities are first-rate, it looks like a brand-new building on the inside, the bars, bathrooms, hallways, suites — we only had two suites before, now we have 38 — and the acoustics were totally overhauled. … The worst seat in my house is pretty much the suite level in other buildings.”
The exterior of the building also got a makeover with two outdoor terraces on the third and fourth floors holding 160 and 140 people each. These aren’t some exclusive VIP experience; they’re open to anyone with a general admission ticket, featuring a bar window to order your favorite beverage as you sip outside with city views.
“The outside is going to be gorgeous,” Remesch said. “We’re doing a brand new marquee and lighting system that basically covers two sides of the building that’s all electronic, you’ve got to see it at night, nothing like it, totally modern. Then we did a total green space outside, as much as you can in the city surrounded by four streets.”
The spring and summer lineup also features:
- Adam Sandler on April 21
- New Edition on April 22
- Lizzo on May 9
- Janet Jackson on May 13
- Anita Baker on May 14
- Blink-182 on May 26
- Bryan Adams on June 6
- Chris Stapleton on July 15
- Thomas Rhett on July 21
- Lionel Richie with Earth, Wind & Fire on Aug. 19
- Queen with Adam Lambert on Oct. 4
- John Mayer on Oct. 20
- KISS farewell tour on Nov. 29
“Pre-COVID, I was probably doing about 105 shows a year, 20 to 25 concerts and maybe one or two A-listers; now I’ll do 130 a year, 60 concerts and 40 A-listers — that shows you the difference,” Remesch said. “We (previously) drew about 560,000 (people per year); we’ll be over a million now. You can extrapolate those numbers out about what it does for the local economy. … Just like the MCI Center did for Chinatown, you’ll see that here too.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'My Fair Lady' at National Theatre (Part 1) Stanley Holloway was an iconic Alfred P. Doolittle in both the 1956 Broadway musical and the 1964 Hollywood adaptation, the former winning the Tony for Best Musical and the latter winning the Oscar for Best Picture.
Now, actor Michael Hegarty dons the famous London top hat to “get us to the church on time” in Lincoln Center’s North American Tour of “My Fair Lady,” playing National Theatre in D.C. this Thursday through Sunday.
“The biggest star of the show is the costumes, which won the Tony,” Hegarty told WTOP. “They do a beautiful job with the set, the lighting. (Director Bartlett Sher) is very famous for working with specific set designers to come up with a look that is both impressionistic and realistic. Higgins’ house is very realistic-looking, but a lot of the other stuff is impressionistic where you see just a part of a house or building that almost looks like a painting.”
Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion,” the story follows Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl in Edwardian London who takes speech lessons from a rigid phonetician, Professor Henry Higgins, so that she may pass as a “proper lady.” Along the way, Eliza passes some money to her jovial, drunken father, Alfred P. Doolittle.
“He works just enough to keep himself out of jail and give himself money to go to the pub,” Hegarty said. “When we first meet him he’s coming out of the pub having spent all of his money and being thrown out. He’s immediately looking for money when his daughter comes along, who has just come into money from Professor Higgins. That’s where we meet him: he’s dirty, he’s scruffy, but he’s also a talker, a philosopher and lives by a very strict code.”
Hegarty gets to perform two major musical numbers starting with “With a Little Bit of Luck.”
“In the movie, I think they combined it all into one song, but in the play, it’s sung in two different scenes,” Hegarty said. “It’s him saying life can be hard and life can throw things in your way, but with a little bit of luck, you can get around that stuff. With a little bit of luck, you’ll never work because someone else will do it for you … It’s all luck.”
Of course, his most memorable number is “Get Me to the Church on Time,” which comes after newfound wealth.
“He’s kind of a victim of Higgins in that he’s now cursed with money and he’s not happy about it,” Hegarty said. “He now has no excuse not to get married to Eliza’s ‘stepmother,’ he now has to make a respectable woman of her, so ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’ is kind of his bachelor party. The way that it’s staged, it’s definitely a party, a lot of drinking, dancing, can-can girls and all kinds of stuff, but the undertone is that this guy is going off to his death.”
The Lerner-and-Loewe songbook is iconic, from “Rain in Spain” to “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”
“The number that gets the biggest applause is ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ — our actress who plays Eliza just sings her face off,” Hegarty said. “Another song a lot of people are going to know because it was on the radio all the time back in the day is ‘On the Street Where You Live.’ … My favorite is ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,’ which is Eliza’s first song in the show before she becomes a ‘lady,’ she’s just a flower girl hanging out … around a fire in a barrel.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews The Atlantis lineup (Part 1) Last week, WTOP reported that a replica of the original 9:30 Club was about to open in D.C.
We now know the 450-capacity venue, The Atlantis, will open on May 30 — the anniversary of the original 9:30 Club’s opening — with a show by the Foo Fighters, followed by a star-studded array of artists.
The Foo Fighters also opened I.M.P.’s other venue The Anthem in 2017. Frontman Dave Grohl grew up in Springfield, Virginia and often attended the original 9:30 Club at 930 F Street, Northwest, which closed in 1995 before reopening at 815 V Street, Northwest in 1996.
Grohl first hinted at resurrecting the old club at a surprise concert in D.C. in September 2021, saying, “That’s where we all played first. That’s where REM played first. That’s where the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers played first. That’s where Nirvana played first. … It wasn’t the friendliest live environment, but magic happened in that room.”
In a nod to the club’s gritty history, a news release Tuesday from venue owner I.M.P. Concerts said, “Walk in and prepare to turn the clock back to the original 9:30 Club, sans the gargantuan rats and notorious stench, but with a nod to the infamous pole.”
Magic will continue to happen during the opening week of The Atlantis, including The Walkmen on Wednesday, May 31; Hot Chip on Friday, June 2; Rainbow Kitten Surprise on Saturday, June 3; and Modern English on Sunday, June 4.
The month of June will also bring Franz Ferdinand, Pixies, Tank and the Bangas, Yo La Tengo, Marc Roberge of O.A.R., Hannibal Buress + Eshu Tune, Sylvan Esso, Darius Rucker, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, X and Jeff Tweedy.
Summer fun continues in July with Barenaked Ladies, Tegan and Sara, The Head and the Heart, The Magnetic Fields, Clutch, Jenny Lewis, The Struts, Third Eye Blind, Portugal. the Man, Living Colour and Iron & Wine.
August brings more big names, including Gogol Bordello, Bush, Shakey Graves, Drive-By Truckers, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Thievery Corporation, Joan Jett and Gary Clark Jr.
And as we head into the fall, September delivers Ben Gibbard, Luna, Bartees Strange, Spoon, Tove Lo, Billy Idol, Bastille, Matt & Kim and Maggie Rogers.
In total, the venue promises 44 artists to mark 44 years at $44 each.
The Atlantis will be located adjacent to the current 9:30 Club spot.
The 450-seat venue will provide intimate views of the stage.
See the full lineup announcement below:
44 Years, 44 Artists, $44 Eachhttps://t.co/T661AwXpeR pic.twitter.com/cQ8QMtKtBL
— TheAtlantisDC (@TheAtlantisDC) April 4, 2023
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reports on 'Imagining the Indian' (Part 1) The Washington Commanders just completed a name change after protests by Native Americans, so why does the National Football League still allow the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs to do the “Tomahawk Chop?”
The contrast was again on display during baseball’s opening weekend in D.C. as the Washington Nationals hosted the Atlanta Braves, whose fans weren’t granted an opportunity to do “The Chop” as they do down in Georgia.
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The next day, The Avalon Theatre in Chevy Chase, D.C., hosted a Monday night press screening of the new documentary “Imagining the Indian,” which argues for the removal of all native mascots, names and imagery.
“Remember when Dan Snyder said, ‘Never?’ Well, that didn’t hold true,” Director Aviva Kempner told WTOP. “We have a couple of psychologists in the film that make a direct correlation between demeaning mascots and things on the field that really affect the emotional and psychological profiles of young Native Americans or older ones.”
Kempner will join co-producer, co-writer and ESPN panelist Kevin Blackistone for Q&As after public screenings this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at both The Avalon Theatre and Cinema Arts Theatres in Fairfax, Virginia.
“We started this project with Sam Bardley, who made the 30:30 doc on Len Bias, and his friend Kali McIver back in 2014,” Blackistone told WTOP.” Since 2014, the Washington football team has changed its name, the Cleveland baseball team has changed its name, so there has been change along the way. I can’t take credit for it … but there’s been an increasing groundswell of support on the streets and among fans and allyship with native people.”
The documentary features Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee activist Suzan Harjo, who has led the charge to change the name since the 1970s, as well as others who have fought since the 1940s. Blackistone grew up a fan of the burgundy and gold, but first noticed the protests outside the Super Bowl in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1992.
“I came up in a very progressive household which happened to hold season tickets to the Washington football team forever, but this was never really an issue,” Blackistone said. “I didn’t think about it until the 1990s and really begin to study it and understand a connection between Black folks and what we feel is a misappropriation of our culture in greater society and what native people feel is a misappropriation of their culture in greater society.”
Just as he appreciated the fight song changing from “Fight for old Dixie” in the 1930s to “Fight for old D.C.” in the 1960s, he now understood why many Native Americans were offended, particularly white fans performing native chants: “That sort of performance in the stands by fans is really mocking native culture,” Blackistone said.
Team officials defend “Braves” or “Chiefs” as names of pride different from “Indians,” which reflects Christopher Columbus being dead wrong about where he landed, or the most overt example, “Rdskns,” which paired a specific color with the word “skin.” How does Blackistone address these devil’s advocate points of view?
“It’s insulting for a majority of people in this country whose forefathers were out to eradicate or remove native people from this land, which was theirs, to then make a decision to use their likeness,” Blackistone said. “That’s White Supremacy 101. I’m always interested in how racism started. The seed on this continent is the arrival of Europeans and their attempt to erase native people and culture. That is the beginning, then enslaved Africans.”
As for Kempner, she previously directed the documentary “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” (1998) about the Detroit Tigers’ Hall of Fame Jewish first baseman who faced antisemitism by choosing not to play on Yom Kippur during a heated pennant race in 1934, then nearly broke Babe Ruth’s then-record of 60 home runs by smashing 58 homers in 1938. Fittingly, Kempner attended Opening Day at Nationals Park against the Braves.
“The most egregious in baseball is Atlanta and The Chop — as Kevin Gover says in the film, ‘Native Americans do not do The Chop. It’s a whole made up thing,'” Kempner said. “For me, it reminds me of like a Hitler rally. … I, who have always made films about antisemitism or countering negative stereotypes about Jews, and Kevin about Blacks, we realized in working with [co-director] Ben West, who is Cheyenne himself, that together we have to counter this.”
She says it’s a more important issue than other Major League Baseball rule changes like adding a pitch clock.
“They’re changing the rules,” Kempner said. “It seems to me they could easily say there shouldn’t be racist names.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews MLK concert at Kennedy Center (Part 1) This August will mark the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
The Washington Chorus will commemorate the occasion with the special concert “Free at Last! A Musical Tribute to Dr. King’s Legacy” at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday, April 4, which is also the anniversary of his death.
“This anniversary is the 55th year of the assassination … I didn’t realize until a couple of weeks ago that it coincided with that, but the 60th anniversary for the speech is quite incredible because it is probably his most famous speech, the one that everybody references,” baritone Kenneth Overton told WTOP.
The first half of the concert features “Scenes from the Life of a Martyr,” a 16-part oratorio by Undine Smith Moore, the granddaughter of slaves who grew up in Petersburg, Virginia, before studying music at Juilliard.
“It’s so incredibly under-performed, so I’m glad that it’s getting a Kennedy Center premiere after all of these years,” Overton said. “This is my first time doing it and I’m very excited about doing it … I am the narrator of this particular piece. It is scored for solo voices for soprano, tenor, mezzo-soprano, full chorus and narration. She probably did that because Martin Luther King was such a great orator that she infused some of that in this piece.”
The second half of the concert features “Requiem” by French composer Maurice Duruflé.
“It is so incredibly gorgeous,” Overton said. “As we know, requiems are musical remembrances to honor the deceased … Duruflé’s ‘Requiem’ is one of the staples in the classical music canon. It is so beautiful, so gorgeous. Again, it is scored for a full orchestra and two soloists, which is where you’ll hear me sing [as baritone] and a mezzo-soprano soloist … This one is laid back and plaintive and meditative with only a few dramatic outbursts.”
It’s all conducted by Washington Chorus Artistic Director Dr. Eugene Rogers.
“This is the first time I’ve worked with him as a conductor,” Overton said. “He’s such a great musician, such a great human being and he just radiates joy. I cannot wait to sing with him.”
Overton also finds special symbolism in performing at the Kennedy Center as Dr. King sparked John F. Kennedy’s commitment to the Civil Rights Movement, while Robert F. Kennedy famously announced King’s death in 1968.
“It’s one of the greatest concert halls on the planet,” Overton said. “Anytime I get to sing there is just really special, but this particular concert, I’m definitely going to take a trip to his statue. … He’s one of my favorite people that’s ever lived and somebody I try to emulate in my own life. He was a man for every man, not just for one particular group of people. He wanted peace and equality for anybody and that, more than anything, that’s what this music does.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews April entertainment (Part 1) April showers bring May flowers, but first they bring tons of entertainment!
Here’s a roundup of fun events around the D.C. area in the month of April:
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April Entertainment Guide
April 3: Lewis Capaldi at The Anthem
April 3 – 6: “The Bard, The Griot and the Hip-Hop Tradition” at the Folger Shakespeare Library
April 3 – 7: “Push the Button” at Keegan Theatre
March 18 – April 16: National Cherry Blossom Festival
April 3 – 16: “Clyde’s” at Studio Theatre
April 3 – 16: “King Lear” at Shakespeare Theatre
April 3 – 16: “The Jungle” at Shakespeare Theatre
April 3 – 22: RiverRun Festival at The Kennedy Center
April 3 – 23: “Angels in America” at Arena Stage
April 3 – 23: “Nosebleed” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
April 3 – 30: “Unseen” at Mosaic Theater
April 3 – May 7: “On the Far End” at Round House Theatre
April 3 – May 13: “Shout Sister Shout!” at Ford’s Theatre
April 3 – June 11: “Grease” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
April 4: “Free at Last! A Musical Tribute to Dr. King’s Legacy” at The Kennedy Center
April 4 – 6: Bikini Kill at The Fillmore
April 5: “Air” opens in movie theaters
April 5 – 9: The Joffrey Ballet’s “Anna Karenina” at Kennedy Center
April 6: Dave Kline Band at Blues Alley Jazz club
April 6 – 7: Marty Stuart at Wolf Trap
April 6 – 9: “My Fair Lady” at The National Theatre
April 7: “Paint” opens in movie theaters
April 7: “Imagining the Indian” documentary premieres at The Avalon
April 7: “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” opens in movie theaters
April 7: Bruce Springsteen at CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore
April 7 – 9: The Washington Ballet’s “Aurora’s Wedding” at Capital One Hall
April 7 – 8: Catherine Russell at Blues Alley Jazz club
April 7 – 8: Brian Regan at The Kennedy Center
April 8: The Eagles at CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore
April 8: Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees at Wolf Trap
April 8: Al Snow at D.C. Comedy Loft
April 9: Easter Sunday with “My Block” at The Kennedy Center
April 10: Tink & Friends at The Howard Theatre
April 11: Queensryche at Baltimore Soundstage
April 11-29: “Les Miserables” at The Kennedy Center
April 12: Booker T. Jones at Wolf Trap
April 12: The Temptations at Weinberg Center
April 12: Little Feat at Rams Head Annapolis
April 12 – 16: Stanley Jordan at Blues Alley Jazz club
April 13 – 15: Pauley Shore at D.C. Comedy Loft
April 13 – 16: Craig Robinson at D.C. Improv
April 13 – 30: “The Wilting Point” at The Keegan Theatre
April 14: “Mafia Mamma” opens in movie theaters
April 14: Fozzy at Baltimore Soundstage
April 14: Tesla at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
April 14: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” returns for final season on Amazon
April 15: National Cherry Blossom Parade
April 15: San Holo at Echostage
April 15: Debbie Allen’s Red Birds at Kennedy Center
April 15: National Philharmonic performs “Beethoven’s 7th” at Strathmore
April 15: Grupo Firme: ¡Hay Que Conectarla! Tour at Capital One Arena
April 16: “Barry” returns for final season on HBO
April 16: Be’la Dona at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
April 16: Three Dog Night at Weinberg Center
April 16-17: The Wailin’ Jennys at The Birchmere
April 18: Lil Wayne at The Fillmore Silver Spring
April 18 – 19: Graham Nash at The Birchmere
April 19: Snarky Puppy at Warner Theatre
April 19: Karla Bonoff at Wolf Trap
April 19: The Verve Pipe at The Hamilton
April 19-30: Filmfest D.C.
April 19-30: “Aladdin” at The National Theatre
April 20: The Verve Pipe at Tally Ho Theater
April 21: Chris Tucker at MGM National Harbor
April 21: The Gibson Brothers at AMP Pike & Rose
April 21: The English Beat at Rams Head Annapolis
April 21: National Philharmonic salutes Nat King Cole at Capital One Hall
April 21: “The Big Lebowski Experience” at Pearl Street Warehouse
April 21: Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog at Union Stage
April 21: “Chevalier” opens in movie theaters
April 21: “Beau is Afraid” opens in movie theaters
April 21 – 22: Average White Band at The Birchmere
April 21 – 23: National Symphony Orchestra performs Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo & Juliet”
April 21 – 23: “On Your Feet!” at Capital One Hall
April 21 – 29: Hexagon political comedy shows
April 21 – 30: “The Taming of the Shrew” at Synetic Theater
April 22: Bill Maher at MGM National Harbor
April 22: M83 at The Anthem
April 22: Brett Young at The Fillmore
April 22: Library of Congress honors Barbra Streisand
April 22: Joshua Bell at Strathmore
April 22: Washington National Opera’s “BravO Bash” at The Kennedy Center
April 22: “The Batman” live in concert at Warner Theatre
April 23: Rory Scovel at 9:30 Club
April 23: Béla Fleck at Strathmore
April 25: The Wailers at The Howard Theatre
April 25 – June 18: “Passing Strange” at Signature Theatre
April 26: Tony Woods at D.C. Comedy Loft
April 26: Jamie Cullum at The Anthem
April 26: Suzanne Vega at The Birchmere
April 27 – 29: Pablo Francisco at D.C. Comedy Loft
April 27 – 29: NSO performs Schubert & Mendelssohn
April 27- May 28: “The School for Lies” at Constellation Theatre
April 28: Samantha Bee at Kennedy Center
April 28: Ohio Players at The Birchmere
April 28: “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” opens in movie theaters
April 28 – 30: Tina Fey & Amy Poehler at DAR Constitution Hall
April 28 – 30: “The Giz” at Lincoln Theatre
April 29: Chico Bean at MGM National Harbor
April 29: Brian McKnight at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
April 29 – 30: Project Glow at RFK Stadium Grounds
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Susan Whiting, National Women’s History Museum Board Chair, and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton explore the exhibit. (Lisa Helfert/National Women’s History Museum) toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reports on Women's History Museum events (Part 1) The nation’s capital is sending Women’s History Month out in style with back-to-back events in Northwest D.C.
On Thursday night, the National Women’s History Museum opened its first brick-and-mortar exhibit, “We Who Believe in Freedom: Black Feminist DC,” at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on G Street, Northwest.
“We had opening remarks and a series of short speeches, including Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, then we had the ribbon-cutting and the public was welcomed in to see this exhibit,” curator Kendra Field told WTOP.
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The exhibit is on view for the next 18 months, honoring Black feminists from Mary Treadwell to Nkenge Touré.
“We bring them through post-Emancipation to the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power,” curator Sherie M. Randolph told WTOP. “There are images from those time periods of women like Anna Julia Cooper and Bernice Johnson Reagon and Sweet Honey in the Rock. … We place all of these Black feminists together to tell the rich history of both the local community and national community that supported ending lynching and police violence.”
On Friday night, the celebration continues at the Women Making History Awards Gala presented in The Schuyler at The Hamilton Hotel on 14th Street, Northwest from 7 to 11 p.m.
Hosted by Zarna Garg, the ceremony will feature cocktails, a formal seated dinner and live entertainment by Tony Award nominee Laura Bell Bundy (“Legally Blonde”) and Broadway star Shayna Steele (“Hairspray”).
This year’s class includes model and designer Ashley Graham, actress and humanitarian Sharon Stone (“Basic Instinct,” “Casino”), actress and activist Uma Thurman (“Pulp Fiction,” “Kill Bill”), political activist Willie Pearl Mackey King, who typed Dr. King’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a third-generation Washingtonian and D.C.’s longest serving Congressional representative.
“[Eleanor Holmes Norton] is phenomenal and has had a long history of being a civil rights activist,” Randolph said. “She really was a Black feminist and used the title in the mid ’60s, so we look at her work early on when she was in her 20s supporting legislation, working with various Black feminist organizations from the Third World Women’s Alliance to NOW [National Organization for Women].”
This is the sixth awards gala and the first since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Find more information about the awards gala here.
Find more information about the library exhibit here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'A Thousand and One' (Part 1) It earned the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, joining an exclusive club of winners this decade that includes “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Fruitvale Station,” “Whiplash,” “Minari” and “CODA.”
The indie sensation “A Thousand and One” opens Friday in movie theaters nationwide.
“It’s been incredible,” feature debut writer/director A.V. Rockwell told WTOP. “It’s definitely been a whirlwind for sure, but I’m just staying present. I’m staying grateful for all of it and just enjoying the moment.”
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The gritty drama follows single mom Inez de la Paz (Teyana Taylor), who kidnaps her son Terry from the foster care system. Together, the mother and son try to reclaim their sense of home amid the gentrification of New York City.
“Inez has just gotten out of jail when we first meet her and she immediately tries to reconnect with her son Terry, who’s in the foster care system,” Rockwell said. “When we first find them, she is feeling at risk of losing him again, so she just impulsively decides to take matters into her own hands and abduct him. You see them rebuild their lives together, somewhat hiding in plain sight in a New York City that is rapidly beginning to change around them.”
Best known for her music collaborations with Beyoncé, Kanye West, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Missy Elliott and Doja Cat, Teyana Taylor has shown her comedic acting chops in Tyler Perry’s “Madea’s Big Happy Family” and Eddie Murphy’s “Coming 2 America.” Who knew she could deliver this powerful of a dramatic performance?
“I needed an actress who could handle the demands of this type of performance,” Rockwell said. “By the time I saw Teyana’s tape, I had seen so many women that she really stuck out like a gem. It was so exciting, so pure, so raw and so honest. Just reading a few pages from the screenplay, you could tell that she really understood the psychology of this woman, including being a mom. She’s tough as nails, but she also had the ability to be vulnerable.”
It was a bigger challenge casting the role of Terry, requiring three different actors to play him at different ages, similar to Chiron in “Moonlight” (2016). Here, Aaron Kingsley Adetola plays Terry at six years old, Aven Courtney plays Terry at 13 years old and Josiah Cross plays Terry at 17 years old, delivering some heartbreaking scenes of raw emotion.
“It was a little bit of a puzzle,” said Rockwell. “I just wanted to be mindful of this little boy who starts off so withdrawn and so smart … but little by little as his life gets more stable and the apartment becomes a home for them, you see him getting space to just be a boy. Each of the boys do a good job showing him slowly but surely getting more self-actualized into the man that he is by the time we’re saying goodbye to him at the end of the film.”
As for the title, “A Thousand and One” refers to their apartment number, proving the adage that “home is where the heart is,” no matter your complicated family history or the changing neighborhood around you.
“The city is the third main character,” Rockwell said. “I really loved the idea of Inez being New York personified. What if the spirit of New York City is a Black woman? The way that inner-city women like Inez are seen reminds me of how New York was seen when we first see it in 1994. The way that she is pushed to change and be more palatable for people is the same thing that the city goes through. They both transform and are both tested.”
Rockwell is a New York native herself, born and raised in Queens before attending NYU.
“I loved ‘Goodfellas,’ ‘Crooklyn,’ ‘Do the Right Thing,’ ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ Those were my favorites as a kid, then as I began my journey into filmmaking, I expanded and gained new favorites like ‘Battle of Algiers,’ ‘Z’ and ‘Seven Beauties.’ … Especially the ones by Spike and Scorsese, before I even knew what filmmaking was as a career path. They gave me a sense of how to balance great art with entertainment — and have something to say.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Wammies (Part 1) Are you looking for a more localized music celebration after last month’s star-studded Grammys?
The Wammies will honor DMV musicians at the Capital Turnaround in Southeast D.C., this Saturday from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
The sold-out event is produced by the nonprofit organization The MusicianShip, which took over the ceremony from the Washington Area Music Association in 2019 and held virtual ceremonies during the pandemic.
“This is our second year back in person,” Executive Director & C.E.O. Eric Liley told WTOP. “This year we’re proud to be producing the 35th annual Wammie Music Awards, also known this year as The Hitmakers Ball where music, fashion and culture in the DMV come together.”
Local music fans submitted over 1,000 nominations, after which 20,000 people voted online for the finalists. The MusicianShip will reveal 51 winners throughout the day in pre-show festivities before the actual ceremony hands out 20 awards in person. That includes 15 genre categories and five honorees for creative community service, including a special Lifetime Achievement Award for Sugar Bear and The Hitmakers Awards for MuMu Fresh.
The two-and-a-half-hour show will also feature live performances by DJ D-REX, go-go band EU, Grammy nominee MuMu Fresh, Latin-Rock sensation Perro Sombra, Howard University’s S.H.O.W.T.I.M.E. Marching Band, Rayshun LaMarr from NBC’s “The Voice,” country/Americana duet 3 Exits to Memphis, The MusicianShip’s Washington Youth Choir, hip-hop artist Marc2Ray with trap-operatic soprano Alexandria Chrichlow and guitarist Nessa Dove.
There will also be a special 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop tribute — similar to what you saw at the Grammys — this time locally curated by Beau Young Prince, featuring D.C. rap pioneers Whistle, as well as contemporary artists like Nonchalant, Uptown X.O., Pinky Killacorn, Innanet James and D.C. dancer LOSO accompanied by DJ Reddz.
The afterparty is hosted by Steph Lova and P Stew of The Original Live Squad.
Check out the Spotify playlist of this year’s finalists below:
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews NSYNC at Westfield Montgomery (Part 1) Your favorite boy bands are gathering in Bethesda, Maryland, to celebrate the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
Members of NSYNC, LFO, O-Town and 98 Degrees will visit Westfield Montgomery for the “Y2K Pink Party” Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m. Tickets are still available online, and visitors are encouraged to wear their best cherry blossom pink attire to the free concert.
Interfaith Works will collect new or lightly used spring and summer gear for families in need, while American Eagle will collect old jeans for insulating homes and L’Occitane will collect beauty product bottles for recycling.
“It’s just always a lot of fun, and it’s great to get out and see the fans,” Chris Kirkpatrick of NSYNC told WTOP. “It’s funny how it’s shifted from back in the day the kids dragging their parents to our shows and now the parents dragging their kids to our shows, but that’s the evolution of getting old I guess. … It’s just very nostalgic.”
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Born in Pennsylvania in 1971, Kirkpatrick lived with his mother and attended high school in Ohio before moving to Orlando to live with his father during college. While in Florida, he met musician Charlie Edwards, who had quit an early iteration of The Backstreet Boys and who introduced him to record producer Lou Pearlman.
“Lou was looking for a band,” Kirkpatrick said. “I was like, ‘Pick me, I do these quartets all the time.’ I brought him a couple of quartets that he didn’t like, then finally found the right group of guys that he liked and got signed.”
The group’s standout leaders, Justin Timberlake and J.C. Chasez, were instantly apparent.
“When I first met [Justin] when he was 14, I was like, ‘This kid’s a star,'” Kirkpatrick said. “Right away he brought in J.C., so he could continue on with J.C., same thing with him. They both beat out so many kids to be on ‘The Mickey Mouse Club,’ so they had to have some kind of talent and you can see it. They can act, they can sing, they can dance, they’re performers, but mostly amazing vocalists. The two of them are just absolutely amazing vocalists.”
Rounding out the group were Joey Fatone, Lance Bass and Kirkpatrick himself.
“Joey’s a ham, that’s what he brings to the group, he brings this personality,” Kirkpatrick said. “Lance had this voice, it was just so low. We needed that bass voice. … [For me], being the best looking in the band was difficult. It was a burden. … No, on a serious note, it was mostly my high register. It was a very distinct sound, so when you got the five of us together, you could hear the sounds in there and it just added to the mix.”
The group’s self-titled debut album “‘N Sync” (1997) was a smash success, featuring the hit ballad “(God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time On You” and upbeat pop bangers from “I Want You Back” to “Tearin’ Up My Heart.”
“We had two or three tours in Europe before we broke the States,” Kirkpatrick said. “‘I Want You Back’ was the first one we recorded in Europe. … It was really cool to finally have a song we wanted to listen to over and over, not these cheesy ones we were doing. We weren’t really a ballad-type group, we liked dancing, performing, high-energy songs, so when those two came out it was different for us and we knew what type of band we would be.”
They followed up with the festive album “Home for Christmas” (1998), harmonizing on classics like “The First Noel” and “O Holy Night,” as well as the catchy original tune “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays.”
“That Christmas album was thrown together pretty quick, we probably recorded the whole thing in less than two weeks,” Kirkpatrick said. “Just throwing our spin on there, the a cappella, range and vocals that we did on stuff, it was a really special record. J.C. wrote that song and it’s cool to hear that song again when other people cover it because it’s like, ‘Wow, we have a Christmas song that’s now becoming a standard that other people cover!'”
Their next studio album “No Strings Attached” (2000) was even bigger than the first, boasting a marionette CD cover. It featured the pop ballad “This I Promise You,” the meme-inspiring “It’s Gonna Be Me,” and the iconic dance craze of “Bye Bye Bye,” featuring the guys waving goodbye, pumping fists in the air and stomping the ground.
“Over time, it’s probably why I threw my rotator cuff out,” Kirkpatrick said. “I knew that song was special. … It just kind of changed music a bit. It was really one of those things where after that song I started calling what we were doing not pop music but ‘dirty pop.’ It’s a little meaner than normal pop. It’s still bubble-gummy pop, but it’s not your parents’ bubble-gum pop. It was a little bit meaner. That’s what ‘Bye Bye Bye’ encompassed.”
They went out with a bag on their final album “Celebrity” (2001) with hits like “Pop,” “Gone” and “Girlfriend.”
“It wasn’t something that we recorded going, ‘Man, this was a fun ride,’ we were kind of still going and moving,” Kirkpatrick said. “Me more than anyone was really pushing to keep everything on pace and put out another record and keep working, but it just wasn’t in the cards.”
The band soon disbanded as Timberlake broke off into massive solo success on “Justified” (2002) with hits like “Cry Me a River” and “Rock Your Body,” while Kirkpatrick made appearances on “Celebrity Big Brother” and “The Masked Singer.” Today, he’s made peace with Eminem, who sang, “Chris Kirkpatrick you can get your ass kicked.”
“That to me is the most flattering thing,” Kirkpatrick said. “That goes up there with ‘The Simpsons’ and things in your life that have happened. If that’s the case, I’d like to get him mad again so he puts me in another song!”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews NSYNC at Westfield Montgomery (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Gershwin Prize for Joni Mitchell on PBS (Part 1) On March 1, legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell received the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in a star-studded concert filmed at DAR Constitution Hall in the nation’s capital.
Now, viewers at home can finally watch it with the PBS broadcast this Friday, March 31, at 9 p.m.
“It’s so exciting because Joni is an icon in music, she has crossed so many genres, of course, folk, pop, jazz, classical,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden told WTOP. “She really redefined the role of women musicians. She oversaw all aspects of her albums and this was back in the time of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s when that wasn’t happening. She did the arrangements, the production, her own artwork, because she’s an amazing artist.”
The concert kicks off with Grammy winner Annie Lennox donning a sparkling black jacket to sing “Both Sides Now” from Mitchell’s groundbreaking sophomore album “Clouds” (1969). “To hear Annie Lennox sing ‘Both Sides Now,’ that starts the concert off and you think it can’t get any better than this,” Hayden said.
Indeed, it just keeps getting better and better as Beninese singer-songwriter Angelique Kidjo performs “Help Me” from Mitchell’s 1974 album “Court and Spark,” followed by James Taylor performing “California” from her 1971 album “Blue,” which recently ranked No. 3 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Fans of the “Blue” album will also get to hear Cyndi Lauper performing the title track, Herbie Hancock playing piano to “River,” and former flame Graham Nash singing “A Case of You.”
Meanwhile, Diana Krall sings “For the Roses,” the title song off of Mitchell’s 1972 album, while Brandi Carlile sings “Shine” from the eponymous 2007 album, which turned out to be Mitchell’s final album.
Ledisi also leads Lauper, Lennox, Carlile and Kidjo in a singalong to Mitchell’s environmental anthem “Big Yellow Taxi” off her iconic album “Ladies of the Canyon” (1970). The crowd roars as Carlile hands the mic to Mitchell in the front row to sing the lyric, “Put up a parking lot.”
It all builds to Mitchell taking the stage with bipartisan members of Congress standing beside her.
“It’s overwhelming,” Mitchell says in her acceptance speech. “It’s just a beautiful event for me. So many people that I care about are here tonight from different parts of my life, new friends, old friends, it’s kind of thrilling.”
Mitchell then performs the Gershwin standard “Summertime,” followed by a singalong of “The Circle Game” with all of the night’s performers. It marks a comeback for Mitchell, who suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015.
“She had polio as a child, so this isn’t her first fight,” Hayden said. “There were tears, frankly, when she got up on stage and sang one of her favorite Gershwin songs. … The broadcast is going to really grab at your heartstrings, but also you’ll be singing along at home.”
The concert airs at 9 p.m. on PBS. The Library of Congress will also be hosting a Twitter viewing party. If you miss it, the show will be available on PBS streaming platforms.
Past recipients include Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Carole King, Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson, Tony Bennett, Gloria & Emilio Estefan, Garth Brooks and Lionel Richie.
“That’s the power of music and the power of someone like Joni Mitchell, who can epitomize what the prize is about: timeliness, relevance over time, she is the perfect one,” Hayden said.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Lukas Nelson at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) He’s deftly followed in his father’s footsteps, making distinct tracks from those iconic outlaw boots by crafting his own career of country-rock music, including writing many of the tunes for the movie “A Star is Born” (2018).
This Saturday, Lukas Nelson plays Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia.
“Every once in a while, I’ll throw in one of my dad’s tunes, but now we’ve got a pretty strong following of fans who really want to hear my stuff,” Nelson told WTOP. “Luckily, Dad’s still out there touring, so you can go see him! But as far as our shows go, we’ve really got an eclectic mix of the old stuff and new stuff and combine it to put together a really dynamic, fun show. A lot of people come away from the show feeling like they’ve gone to church.”
Born in 1988, Lukas Nelson’s signature sound was cultivated growing up between rural Texas and tropical Maui.
“I was born in Austin but had my first birthday in Hawaii and went back and forth between the two, so I got a little bit of both upbringings. And I went to school in both places, so it was very interesting,” Nelson said. “Also, all through the United States, even Europe and all over, so I got an education in the cities of the nation, as Dad says.”
He got his first guitar around age nine and wrote his first song called “You Are It.” “My dad liked it so much that he put it on a record of his … from the 2000s called ‘It Always Will Be,'” Nelson said. “There’s a song on there called ‘You Are It.’ The chorus is (singing): ‘But now I’m fine, all the pain is gone, I once had a heart, now I have a song.'”
He’s long admired his father’s songwriting, saying, “‘Healing Hands of Time’ is a great song. ‘Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground’ is probably one of my favorite songs that he wrote. ‘Crazy’ is another song that a lot of people think Patsy Cline wrote, but he wrote that. It’s one of the greatest songs of all time. He’s one of the great songwriters.”
Nelson also learned a thing or two from listening to his father’s iconic country supergroup The Highwaymen, including the great Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings (died in 2002) and Johnny Cash (died in 2003).
“Kris gave me the most mentorship, I suppose, as a songwriter, but Waylon and Johnny passed before I got a chance,” Nelson said. “I knew them as uncles, but I didn’t know them as mentors. Kris has always given me good advice and just basic encouragement, liking the songs that I’ve written, telling me that, so that’s helped me out.”
In 2007, Nelson moved to Los Angeles to briefly attend Loyola Marymount University; but he soon began touring instead with his band the Promise of the Real. The band name references the Neil Young song “Walk On,” which features the lyric: “Some get stoned, some get strange, sooner or later, it all gets real.”
“We started little fires in a lot of different places, then did 300 shows a year for about 15 years,” Nelson said. “My percussionist and I have known each other for 25 years now. … The newest member of the band I’ve known for 15 years, so we’ve been playing together for a long time and we have good chemistry.”
While touring with Young, he caught the attention of Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga during the making of the movie “A Star is Born” (2018). Not only did Nelson write eight or nine songs for the film, including the introductory lick for the Oscar-winning song “Shallow,” his band actually appears in the movie alongside Cooper.
“Bradley had seen me playing with Neil Young and called me up and asked me to help him look the part and play the part authentically,” Nelson said. He really did take a lot of my mannerisms from, and then I taught him how to pretend to play guitar, although the guitar you hear is me. I did sit with him while he practiced singing. I think that was the most impressive thing that he did. He was actually singing — and well — in that film.”
If you’re new to his music, he suggests checking out the 2017 album “Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real,” including songs “Just Outside of Austin,” “Find Yourself,” “Forget About Georgia” and “Set Me Down on a Cloud,” which have all become staples of his live show. He also suggests the 2019 album “Turn off the News (Build a Garden).”
“On both sides of the aisle, there’s a bunch of bullsh*t,” Nelson said. “I saw the news media as this bad actor. It just seems like it creates more problems than it solves. While I think it’s important to stay informed. I would see my parents sitting there watching the news all day long. This is a bipartisan issue. At a certain point, I wanted them to go outside and enjoy life. Instead of hearing about your neighbor on TV, try getting to know your neighbor.”
He just released a Lainey Wilson duet called “More Than Friends” ahead of the band’s next album July 14.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Lukas Nelson at Hollywood Casino (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio Get ready to step into real-life video games where it’s not only “game over” if you lose, you get blasted by paint.
Beat the Bomb is now open in the 10,000-square-foot Hecht Warehouse located in the Ivy City neighborhood of Northeast D.C. It’s the third location since launching in Brooklyn in 2018 and expanding to Atlanta in 2022.
“Beat the Bomb is the world’s craziest team game,” Marketing Director Michon van As told WTOP. “It’s a one-hour challenge where teams of four to six players suit up in hazmat protective gear from head to toe and you advance together through five high-tech, immersive video game rooms.”
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The first room is Hack Attack, where teams crack a computer terminal. The second room is Laser Maze, like something out of “Mission Impossible.” The third room is Echo Chamber, a sound pattern game like Simon Says. Finally, the fourth room is Floor Grid, where teams work together to cover different shapes projected on the wall.
The grand finale is the Bomb Room for the challenging Cyberbot game. Teams work together to drive a robot as one player controls the front, another player controls the back, a third player makes it turn right, a fourth player makes it turn left, a fifth player aims and a sixth player shoots various targets — all against a ticking time bomb.
“You have to work together to drive this robot to hit different targets in the amount of time that you’ve earned to be in that room — or else you get blasted by 50 gallons of paint or foam,” van As said. “It’s hitting your body, it’s vibrant, it’s neon, it’s absolutely epic. It doesn’t hurt, don’t worry, nothing is going to get on your clothes.”
People should be aware that only 10% of teams actually “beat the bomb,” but if you manage to pull it off, you will earn “Pro League status,” unlocking exclusive promotions and the ability to enter tournament nights to win $1,000 in prizes.
“Losing is half the fun,” van As said. “If you win, awesome. If you lose, awesome. … It transforms into your team’s personal photo and video booth where all of a sudden there’s music, you’re dancing, you’re taking photos. We send those photos and videos for free right after you finish your mission and tell people to share on social.”
Win or lose, the Bomb Room is surrounded by glass walls, allowing other guests to watch the paint explosion as they wait their turns in the dynamic Game Bay, featuring a lounge area to eat, drink and play 15 arcade games.
Groups require a minimum of four players and a maximum of 12 players.
Tickets are $44.95 per person, or $14.95 for just the Game Bay arcade.
“We dare you,” van As said. “We’re looking forward to meeting you.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Antonia Bennett at Blues Alley (Part 1) The phrase “jazz cat” usually describes a musician or fan of the genre, but it’s actually real in the nation’s capital.
Antonia Bennett found a black-and-white stray feline wandering outside of the historic supper club Blues Alley in the Georgetown neighborhood of D.C., which was hosting a concert by her legendary father, Tony Bennett, back in the early 1980s.
“I’ve been going to Blues Alley my whole life,” Bennett told WTOP. “My dad played Blues Alley when I was a kid. Amazingly enough, the first time I was there I found a cat in the alley in Blues Alley, so I actually literally found a jazz cat! We found someone to adopt the cat, so it was really cute. I think she was a regular patron of Blues Alley.”
That night, her father reportedly opened with “Rags to Riches” and crooned “Fly Me To The Moon” in a night of American standards, the likes of which Antonia will sing live at Blues Alley for four shows this Friday and Saturday.
“I think it would be impossible to do the American Songbook without doing something that my dad recorded, but everything is really my own version,” Bennett said. “I do have a couple of originals that I will be throwing in there as well. I haven’t actually created the set list yet, but probably ‘Teach Me Tonight’ or ‘From This Moment On.’ I love Cole Porter and George Gershwin, so you’ll probably hear a lot of that in my show.”
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Born in New York in 1974, Bennett grew up in Los Angeles a decade after her father left his heart in San Francisco. At a very young age, she shared the stage with the likes of Rosemary Clooney, Count Basie, Regis Philbin and Don Rickles, while Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and Gene Kelly were her mentors.
“My dad would bring me out on the road ever since I could walk and talk,” Bennett said. “I grew up listening to a lot of different things, not just singers, but musicians as well. I loved musical theater as well, so I was watching a lot of shows like ‘Oklahoma!’ We had a lot of scores in our house, so I would have like the actual score and I would just memorize all the songs from a musical and walk around the house singing them. That’s how I got my start.”
Her love of musical theater inspired her to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City before graduating from Berklee College of Music in Boston. In the mid-2000s, she began appearing at her father’s shows, opening for him at Radio City Music Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Umbria Jazz Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival, The Greek Theatre, Royal Albert Hall in London and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
“Honestly, it was very special to be able to play those places and also just be in an environment where everything was taken care of,” Bennett said. “We had a great sound man with us and we always stayed in very nice hotels, so really I got to tour under the best circumstances, which was amazing because life on the road can be a grind, so doing it like that is very special to be able to travel with your family and be together.”
She also traveled to D.C. with her father when he was saluted at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005 and the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2017. In between, she was featured on her father’s acclaimed holiday album “A Swingin’ Christmas” (2008), singing a duet of Irving Berlin’s “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” The festive album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
“I just got a call a few days before saying, ‘Will you do this duet with me?'” Bennett said. “I went into the studio and we did it and that was that. It was a kind of fast thing that we threw together. It’s great that we got to do that and sing together. It was very meaningful to be able to have a duet with my dad that was recorded, because sometimes we would do it in live shows but we had never actually recorded anything until that point.”
Speaking of recordings, she recorded her own original EP called “Natural” in 2010, followed by her debut full-length album “Embrace Me” in 2014, and another original album “Ordinary Girl” in 2017.
“When I did the ‘Embrace Me’ record, that kind of came off the cuff,” Bennett said. “I had been working with these guys in New York and my brother had some studio time for me available … he’s a Grammy-winning recording engineer, Dave Bennett. I was thinking of calling it ‘Embraceable You’ because that was one of the tracks on there, but then my dad said, ‘You should call it ‘Embrace You’ because that’s what you want the people to do.'”
And embrace her they did as Jazz Times wrote: “Liza Minnelli. Natalie Cole. Norah Jones. Now, Antonia Bennett can be added to the list of second-generation vocalists with the potential to rival an iconic parent’s pizazz.”
They forgot one important accolade: finder of lost cats.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Antonia Bennett at Blues Alley Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Season 4 of 'Succession' NOTE: The following article contains plot details from Seasons 1-3, but no spoilers for Season 4.
Pour a glass of your finest wine, don your slickest suit and clear your calendar for Sunday night. HBO means business as the fourth and final season of the Emmy-winning TV drama “Succession” premieres at 9 p.m.
Fans were stunned last month when it was announced that it would be the final season, though the news was not all that surprising to me. The first two seasons were masterfully done; some of the best television we’ve ever seen. But Season 3 began spinning its wheels a little. In fact, it was so repetitive in the first few episodes that I bailed on it for several months, before finally returning to discover a few surprisingly gripping episodes down the stretch.
Here’s hoping that Season 4 ramps up the urgency as it brings these complex characters to a close.
Created by Jesse Armstrong, the series weaves a family power struggle with echoes of “The Lion in Winter” (1968) and “The Godfather” (1972). Rather than Peter O’Toole or Marlon Brando, we have Brian Cox as patriarch Logan Roy, commanding his media empire like Rupert Murdoch. Waystar’s ATN is essentially News Corporation’s Fox News with bonus parallels to Donald Trump as Shiv, Roman and Kendall stand in for Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr.
It’s hard to believe that Cox hasn’t won an Emmy yet as Logan. He is clearly the linchpin of the series — the shrewd molten rock that the other characters orbit. Season 1 established his grip on power after surviving a brain aneurysm in the pilot; Season 2 won him a Golden Globe for a slight smile at his son becoming a “killer;” and Season 3 showed cracks in his armor, endangering a business deal by going off his meds to spout gibberish.
The Emmy love has instead gone to Jeremy Strong as heir apparent Kendall Roy, who was cocky in Season 1 until a Chappaquiddick twist made him depressed in Season 2. His finest hour came confronting his dad on national TV in the Season 2 finale (life imitated art as Strong beat Cox for Best Actor). The Season 3 payoff was disappointing as Ken’s coup attempts didn’t amount to much, plunging back into depression as he confessed his sins to his siblings.
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Roman (Kieran Culkin) was surprisingly forgiving, perhaps because he requires so much forgiveness himself. Nicknamed “Romulus,” after Rome’s founder, Roman is the slimy king of snarky insults but can’t stop humiliating himself due to deep-seated sexual issues. This dichotomy finds him winning a pissing match at a urinal, but then watching his deal fall apart after sending private photos to the wrong person during a key business meeting.
The aptly named Shiv (Sarah Snook) remains the smartest, but she isn’t immune to tactical errors. Her fierce performance just earned a Golden Globe, while Matthew Macfadyen won an Emmy as husband Tom, who senses Shiv’s disappointment that he’s not going to jail for a cruise ship scandal. His celebratory office trashing is another wonderfully weird moment between him and Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), who keeps gaining confidence.
Shiv and Tom aren’t the only marriage of convenience. Aloof sibling Connor just got engaged to former escort and aspiring playwright Willa (Justine Lupe), who clearly doesn’t love him. Alan Ruck plays Connor with unique social awkwardness, an elder sibling passed over like Fredo. Recent episodes found him angling to become president in a subplot that almost made Season 3 feel fresh. Alas, that fizzled out, again leaving Connor flailing on the margins.
Can Season 4 actually commit to a hostile takeover, allowing one of the siblings to finally win this game of musical chairs? To me, “Succession” is a prime example of how episodic TV series are less satisfying than self-contained films. Once a show is a runaway hit, its creators are forced to keep cranking out episodes with characters who keep making the same mistakes and subplots that go nowhere, despite being written by the best writers in the biz.
Various writers have contributed episodes with the sharpest “F-off” dialogue in the game, but the Emmys keep going to climatic chapters written by Armstrong himself: the Season 1 finale “Nobody is Ever Missing” (Kendall’s coked-up water incident), Season 2 finale “This is Not for Tears” (Kendall’s TV coup attempt), and Season 3 finale “All the Bells Say” (ending with Tom giving Logan a glance, having tipped him off about his children’s revolt).
In total, the series has landed 48 Emmy nominations and 13 wins, scoring the top prize twice. Season 1 should have won Outstanding Drama Series, but lost to the disappointing final season of “Game of Thrones.” Season 2 deservedly won the top prize, while Season 3 won the top prize again, though “Severance” and “Squid Game” were more gripping television. I would have rather even seen it go to the final seasons of “Ozark” or “Better Call Saul.”
Let’s see if “Succession” can stick the landing. The thing I’ll miss the most is the theme song by Emmy-winning composer Nicholas Britell, unfolding over grainy sepia images of the kids growing up at the family estate. Rarely do we get opening credits that we don’t want to skip, savoring every last piano note and transcendent violin.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'The Boston Strangler' In 1968, Richard Fleischer (“Soylent Green”) directed an adaptation of Gerold Frank’s 1966 crime book “The Boston Strangler” starring Henry Fonda as a detective tracking down a serial killer played by Tony Curtis.
Now, the true crime story gets retold from the perspective of the two women reporters who covered the case in “The Boston Strangler,” which premiered as a Hulu original film last Friday in time for St. Patrick’s Day.
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Based on an actual series of murders that sent shock waves through 1960s Boston, the film follows journalists Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon), who first broke the story of The Boston Strangler, a notorious serial killer who used his victims’ stockings to tie neat bows around their lifeless necks.
While best known for action blockbusters like “Pirates of the Caribbean” (2003-2007), Knightley has proven her dramatic chops, earning Oscar nominations for “Pride & Prejudice” (2005) and “The Imitation Game” (2014). This time her face tells the story, nervously deciding whether to proceed into the backroom of a suspect’s home or flee out the front the door, then trying to keep her composure when a stranger makes threatening calls to her home.
Coon is a formidable screen partner, having carried one of the greatest TV series ever in HBO’s “The Leftovers” (2014-2017). Her role in “The Boston Strangler” is inspired casting, combining the mystery of David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” (2014), where she played Ben Affleck’s twin sister, with the journalism of Steven Spielberg’s “The Post” (2017), where she played The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial editor Meg Greenfield.
Together, they form a sharp duo of investigative reporters, starting as mere newsroom acquaintances, and then bonding over shared empathy for the victims and outrage over the crimes. By the end, they can sit at a bar, raise a glass and not say a word to each other, yet know exactly what the other is thinking. Their expressions say it all.
It’s refreshing to see two women cracking the case after a century of male detectives from Sam Spade to Philip Marlowe to Jake Gittes. I suppose you could say Jodie Foster worked with Kasi Lemmons to catch Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), proving that film was way ahead of its time, but examples are rare and recent, such as Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan exposing Harvey Weinstein in the highly underrated “She Said” (2022).
The thematic subtext of “The Boston Strangler” is the extreme misogyny these reporters face. When their editor Jack MacLaine (Chris Cooper) says, “You don’t have a story, you have a grudge,” they fire back, “How many women have to die before it’s a story?” It’s a fair question. They have a right to hold a grudge after decades of male predators, wondering just how quickly it would become a front-page story if it were men being killed every day.
Here, the prime suspects include George Nassar and Albert DeSalvo, respectively played by Greg Vrotsos and David Dastmalchian, the latter of whom was an excellent red herring for Hugh Jackman to interrogate in “Prisoners” (2013), a masterpiece of the genre and for my money the best film by director Denis Villeneuve.
A female filmmaker might have added a fresh spin to stand apart from the “male gaze” of countless past entries. Instead, writer/director Matt Ruskin will no doubt be unfairly compared to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Frenzy” (1972), which featured a similar plot of a necktie murderer of women and far more elaborate shots, including a long single-take backing down the staircase of a victim’s apartment and out into the street of complicit bystanders.
It’s tough being compared to the G.O.A.T. (as the upcoming “Vertigo” remake is about to find out).
Even so, Ruskin still remains a talented filmmaker, having won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival for “Crown Heights” (2017) starring LaKeith Stanfield. In “The Boston Strangler,” he gets the mood right, the tone is effective, the atmosphere is freaky, but the script simply leaves us wanting more. Perhaps it would have been better fleshed out as a TV series like “True Detective” (2014). As is, the film ends on a less than satisfying note.
Conclusions don’t always need to have shocking twists like David Fincher’s “Se7en” (1995), but even the ambiguous ending of “Zodiac” (2007) hinted with knowing mischief. Alas, not every serial-killer movie can be a Fincher home run, and “The Boston Strangler” is at least on the level of John Lee Hancock’s “The Little Things” (2021). That means true-crime fans will probably still enjoy it, even if regular folks don’t find it as compelling.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Singin' in the Rain' by the Arlington Players (Part 1) The American Film Institute voted the 1952 film the greatest movie musical ever made — and I don’t disagree.
Now, a new generation makes a splash as the nonprofit Arlington Players stage “Singin’ in the Rain” from March 25 through April 8 at the Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre located at 125 S. Old Glebe Road.
Set in 1920s Hollywood, the story follows silent film stars Don Lockwood and Lena Lamont, who struggle with the industry’s sudden transition into talking pictures. Don hatches a plan with his old vaudeville pal Cosmo Brown and budding love interest Cathy Selden to turn their upcoming movie “The Dueling Cavalier” into a musical.
“I’m the kind of person who already sung and danced in the rain on a regular basis, so this felt like home to me,” actor Tim Lewis told WTOP. “It really is iconic. I’ve asked a lot of people in the last few months if they’ve seen the movie ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’ Surprisingly, a lot of people have not seen it, but I haven’t met a single person who isn’t familiar with the image of Gene Kelly hanging on that lamp post in the rain with his suit on. It is just so classic.”
While Lewis fills Gene Kelly’s tap dancing shoes for the iconic title number, splashing in puddles and posing on a lamp post, Preston Meche tackles the zany, exhausting “Make ‘Em Laugh” made famous by Donald O’Connor.
“I’m not quite at the ‘American Ninja Warrior’ stage of flipping over the walls, but I do quite a bit that he did in the movie,” Meche said. “There is some riding of boards, some interactions with other cast members and high jinks ensue of course. It takes a lot out of me physically, but it is such a joyful number to perform. Even though I’m extremely out of breath by the time it’s over, it’s still really fun to do, knowing I’m having a good time with the audience.”
Filling in for Debbie Reynolds, Rachael Fine enjoys crooning “Good Morning” as a turning point in the show.
“It’s a thrill,” Fine said. “That song is more than just fun, it’s that pivotal moment where they have this idea. Don thinks his career is over and he’s done, then they just get an idea and they run with it and have a blast with it. It also establishes so many great relationships as well, where you really see Don and Cathy’s relationship step forward, their love relationship, and also getting to play with Preston and be buddy-buddy with him as Cosmo.”
Finally, Stacey Yvonne Clayton presents Lena as an antagonistic foil with nasally comic relief (“I can’t stain ’em!”).
“When I auditioned for this show, I didn’t anticipate being cast as Lena Lamont,” Clayton said. “When I got that phone call, I was laughing hysterically and also crying at the same time because it’s such a cool role. I’m just really excited to have the opportunity to bring her to life on stage. She’s such a hoot, she’s all over the place, she’s such a diva, she’s figuring out life now that talkies are here, she’s lost in love, she’s got a lot of different things going on.”
The Arlington Players have also had a lot going on in its nearly 75-year history in Northern Virginia.
“We are a completely volunteer-run organization, so everyone has separate lives outside of the theater and we all come together because it’s great fun and a great community-building opportunity,” Meche said. “With this group, the camaraderie that we have and the experience that we all have together, it really is a bonding experience.”
DISCLAIMER: WTOP’s Sandy Kozel is a member of the volunteer production for the nonprofit organization.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'King Lear' at Shakespeare Theatre (Part 1) The fourth and final season of the Emmy-winning drama “Succession” premieres this weekend on HBO.
If you dig family dynasty dramas, Patrick Page stars in “King Lear” at Shakespeare Theatre in D.C. through April 16.
“If you picture Stonehenge, you won’t be picturing our production,” Page told WTOP. “This is a production that is set very much in our modern moment. If you watch ‘Succession’ on HBO, imagine it looking like that. If you’re thinking of a lumbering, slow, four-hour, boring production of Shakespeare, put that out of your mind! This is a propulsive, filmic thriller that’s under 2 1/2 hours that goes by like that! People think it’s over before it’s begun.”
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Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy follows King Lear, who divides his kingdom among his daughters, Cordelia, Goneril and Regan, while trusty adviser Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund over his natural-born son Edgar.
“The basic plot is almost out of a fairy tale,” Page said. “There’s a king who needs to retire. He’s going to hand the running of the state over to his three children. He doesn’t have a son, so he’s going to split it up between his three daughters and their husbands. … The daughters have to say which one loves him the most. He thinks his youngest daughter will win this contest easily, but she refuses to play, refuses to flatter him, so he flies off the handle.”
This jockeying for power is extra poignant being performed in the nation’s capital.
“This is a play about power structures, about government,” Page said. “The arguments that we’re having every day in the newspapers, on Twitter, on social media, how much should government do, how little should government do, these are the questions that Shakespeare is raising in ‘King Lear.’ To do this in front of an audience filled with Congress people, senators, Supreme Court judges and lobbyists, it was just an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
It marks Page’s return to Shakespeare Theatre after his one-man show “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain” in 2021. Playbill dubbed him “The Villain of Broadway,” having played villains in “Saint Joan,” “Casa Valentina,” “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “Spider-Man” and even a Tony nomination as Hades in “Hadestown.”
“The role of Hades was a wonderful role,” Page said. “In characters, I look for the place where the character is broken, I look for the hurt place, and in Hades, it’s in his relationship with his wife. He loves Persephone so dearly and this chasm has begun to open up between them and he’ll really do anything to get her back.”
He also just filmed the second seasons of HBO’s “The Gilded Age” and Apple’s “Schmigadoon!”
“‘The Gilded Age’ is now in post-production and it will air sometime later this year, we shot the whole second season and I can’t tell you much about it other than it is great,” Page said. “In ‘Schmigadoon,’ my character is Octavious Kratt. The town they find this year is not Schmigadoon, it’s the town of Schmicago and Octavious Kratt is a very important man in the town. I think you will laugh your head off.”
Until then, check out “King Lear,” which he calls the role of a lifetime.
“‘Lear’ has been a central play in my life,” Page said. “It was when I really understood the greatness of Shakespeare in a visceral way, reading the play, seeing the questions of the play: how we relate to one another, how should we organize ourselves, what kind of government should we have, who should be in charge and finally who are we? … I remember thinking, ‘This is the most extraordinary play imaginable and I could spend my life exploring it.'”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Annapolis Film Festival (Part 1) The 11th annual Annapolis Film Festival returns to Annapolis, Maryland, this Thursday through Sunday.
Over 70 films will screen at Maryland Hall on Chase Street, as well as Annapolis Elementary School, Asbury United Methodist Church and a new 30-foot screen inside the gymnasium of the Boys & Girls Club.
“This year, we have two world premieres and nine films from Sundance — that’s a record for us,” co-founder Lee Anderson told WTOP. “We just want people to come out, explore a little, be bold, try some new things, we will not disappoint. We’ve worked so hard … on getting an amazing slate. We’re so proud. We’ve kind of leveled up here.”
The festival kicks off Thursday with “Chevalier,” starring Kelvin Harrison Jr.
“It takes place in Paris in the mid-1700s before the French Revolution,” co-founder Patti White said. “It’s the true story of Chevalier Joseph Bologne, the son of Caribbean-Guadeloupean slave and her plantation owner. The father drops the kid off at a boarding school for gifted musicians in Paris and leaves him there and he grows up an incredible violinist challenging Mozart.”
Friday brings the Sundance hit “Little Richard: I Am Everything” directed by Lisa Cortes.
“He was part of that ‘Chitlin’ Circuit,’ they called it, that came through towns like Annapolis and all up and down our area in the Mid-Atlantic,” White said. “It really takes you back to the beginning of rock ‘n roll, the founding of it, the really interesting gender issues he had, his storytelling, where he came from and how he made it onto the scene.”
Friday also brings “Somewhere in Queens,” directed by Ray Romano and starring across Laurie Metcalf. “It’s a great story of an Italian family and just the power of one family and the effect that it has on all of its family members and a father who is overly interested in his son’s basketball career,” White said, to which Anderson added, “Mostly because he doesn’t want him to be a third-generation construction company employee in the family business.”
The Friday spotlight film is Joanna Gleeson’s “The Grotto.”
“It’s a wonderful film that stars Betsy Brandt, who you may recognize from ‘Breaking Bad,’ and it’s just a perfect little indie, it’s so nicely done, an unusual story with poignancy and humor all wrapped into one,” Anderson said. White added, “A woman finds herself, her fiancee has passed away, and she’s coming to terms with that and finds out some secrets, so this is her journey through that.”
Friday also includes “Judy Blume Forever,” which White calls “a really cool documentary,” adding, “Many young girls and boys who read her books know how she took you through growing up, sexuality, all of those things that were never discussed, it’s all discussed in this film. It’s all in there and she gives her reasons. We find out more about Judy Blume and how she became the author she became and why she was writing about all of these things.”
The reading theme continues Saturday with the documentary “Butterfly in the Sky.”
“We all know LeVar Burton, some know him from ‘Star Trek,’ but many know him from ‘Reading Rainbow,'” Anderson said. “This film is a nostalgic walk down memory lane of ‘Reading Rainbow’ and its impact on generations of young kids.”
Saturday also brings “What’s Love Got to Do With It” starring Emma Thompson and Lily James. “Lily James plays the next-door neighbor to a doctor, whose parents are arranging a marriage. It’s a very charming film,” White said.
Don’t miss Saturday’s sailing showcase featuring “MELGES: The Wizard of Zenda.” “This film is about America’s Cup, the races that went on, the old footage is phenomenal and I think sailors are going to love this,” White said.
Sunday features “Farewell, Mr. Haffmann.” “It’s set in World War II in Paris, France where a jewelry-store owner realizes he’s Jewish and has to get out of dodge,” White said. “He lets the guy who’s working for him take over the shop and his family moves in, but what happens is Mr. Haffmann can’t escape, so he has to be hidden.”
Sunday also brings “A Thousand and One,” the Grand Jury Prize winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. “It’s so compelling, it’s the story of a mother who basically kidnaps her child out of foster care,” Anderson said. White added, “It’s their journey and I think it tells you in the right kind of way the things we need to know about this.”
The closing film is “Two Tickets to Greece” starring Kristin Scott Thomas. “Two old schoolmates who have lost touch after they were 10 years old find each other again after one of them has had a very bad divorce,” Anderson said. “They go to Greece together, the problem is they’re not the same people they were when they were kids.”
No matter which screening you pick, the festival makes for a fun weekend in a historic bay town.
“This festival is the true jewel of the Chesapeake,” White said. “It’s really a gem.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews The Manhattan Transfer at Strathmore (Part 1) The Manhattan Transfer is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a final farewell world tour.
The 10-time Grammy winners will perform at the Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, on Friday.
“We’ll be performing with the great DIVA Jazz Orchestra, so you can expect some early big-band numbers that we haven’t really been doing live in the past 10 or 20 years, so that’s been a lot of fun,” singer Janis Siegel told WTOP. “It’s a little bit of a retrospective, though it’s hard to do 50 years’ worth in 90 minutes, but we’ll do our best.”
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Founded by Tim Hauser in 1969 with Erin Dickins, Marty Nelson, Pat Rosalia and Gene Pistilli, the best-known lineup began in 1972 with Hauser, Alan Paul, Janis Siegel and Laurel Massé, who was replaced by Cheryl Bentyne.
“Tim was a cab driver and he actually picked up Laurel in the cab — and I also met him through the cab as well, funny enough,” Siegel said. “Tim, Laurel and I found ourselves together and decided to form a new iteration of The Manhattan Transfer. We wanted another man to make it two men and two women to make it even. … We found Alan swinging on a rope in Broadway in the original cast of ‘Grease.’ … He was Johnny Casino and Teen Angel.”
In the early years, the group developed a cult following around Manhattan before recording their self-titled breakthrough album in 1975 — the same year they landed their own CBS variety series on television.
“We were playing a lot of small clubs in New York City, underground clubs, late night shows, three shows a night,” Siegel said. “We performed a lot in these little cabarets that were popping up. Timing is everything. It was the time when glitter rock was starting and people were starting to dress up again after the jeans-and-t-shirt era of the introspective folk singer-songwriter. We were the perfect group for that. We dressed up in vintage clothes.”
The group won Grammy Awards for “Birdland” (1980), “Boy from New York City” (1981), “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” (1981), “Until I Met You (Corner Pocket)” (1981), “Route 66” (1982), “Why Not! (Manhattan Carnival)” (1983), “Vocalese” (1986), “Another Night in Tunisia” (1986), “Brasil” (1989) and “Sassy” (1992).
In fact, their album “Vocalese,” received a near-record 12 Grammy nominations, making it second only to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (1982) as the most nominated individual album in music history.
In 1992, the group recorded “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street” for the soundtrack of “A League of Their Own.” That same year, they appeared on a Christmas episode of TV’s “Home Improvement” as guests on “Tool Time,” singing “Santa Claus is Coming’ to Town” as Tim Taylor used a chainsaw to free Al Borland from a makeshift chimney. After being asked, “Tim and Al? Do you assist him?,” Paul replies, “I don’t think so, Tim.”
“It was great,” Siegel said. “Tim Allen was wonderful, really. They made us feel very special.”
In 1998, The Manhattan Transfer was inducted into the prestigious Vocal Group Hall of Fame, cementing the lineup as one of the greatest four-part harmonizers to ever grace the industry.
“Alan is a pure, real entertainer,” Siegel said. “He was a role model for me to learn how to entertain because I came from just purely the music side of things in recording. Alan gives 1,000% on stage every show. … Cheryl is our super soprano. She’s also an incredible entertainer. … [Tim] had vision and he had knowledge. He knew so much about a wide array of music from doo-wop to bluegrass to bee-bop to swing, he just was a fountain of knowledge.”
Sadly, Hauser died in 2014, so Trist Curless stepped up to join the group, including at Strathmore.
“Trist was actually subbing for Tim when Tim was ill, so Trist has been with us for quite a while,” Siegel said. “Trist is an awesome musician. He really is the reason we could keep going after Tim’s passing, because that was pretty tragic and life-changing. He’s been a great, great companion in these final years of The Transfer.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Gloria: A Life' at Theater J (Part 1) Women’s History Month is the perfect time to celebrate feminist icon Gloria Steinem.
Theater J in D.C. is staging the play “Gloria: A Life,” running now through April 2.
“The show really focuses on Gloria’s career as an activist in the women’s movement, but it also focuses a lot on her as a human being,” Actress Awa Sal Secka told WTOP. “You learn things about her childhood that you may have never known or things about her in her older age that you wouldn’t know right off the bat … things that really were such a huge part of who she was and influenced the way she fought for women’s rights.”
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Written by Emily Mann, the play follows Steinem’s journey, from childhood taking care of her sick mother, to later in life marrying animal welfare activist David Bale, making Steinem the stepmother of actor Christian Bale.
“She says in the play, ‘I was always looking for a way to be useful,’ because she was always so used to taking care of someone,” Secka said. “In her older age, she met the love of her life. For a long time she wasn’t planning on getting married and didn’t really want to be married, but at age 66 she met the love of her life. She’s led such a beautiful, full life and you learn really about all of it, not just her activism, so you get to see the full human being.”
Actress Susan Lynskey portrays Steinem alongside co-stars Sherri L. Edelen as Bella Abzug, Mani Yangilmau as Wilma Mankiller and Debora Crabbe as both Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Coretta Scott King.
“They are a part of her, what she calls her ‘chosen family’ in the women’s movement,” Secka said. “At the end of her reflection, she looks back and says, ‘I always wanted a family and I found that family in the women’s movement.’ She refers to Bella Abzug as the mother figure, everything her mother couldn’t be because of her sickness.”
As for Secka, she has a ball playing Flo Kennedy, the African-American activist from Kansas City.
“When I hear the phrase ‘stick it to the man,’ I think of Flo Kennedy,” Secka said. “She does everything in her power to make people hear her. … Her thing about the movement was bridging the gap of showing people that the injustices toward people of color were absolutely connected to the injustices happening to women and that women of all colors should not sit back, they should stand up and make sure that their voices were heard.”
It all unfolds with period visuals that transport audiences back in time to the movement.
“We actually use a lot of projections in this production, which are so wonderfully transformative because there are a lot of pictures from that time,” Secka said. “You see pictures of Gloria and her mom … you see pictures and videos of the most recent women’s march, you see pictures and videos of what people consider the ‘bra burning’ in the protest of the Miss America pageant and a ton of other things that really put us in the world.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Bill Bellamy at MGM National Harbor (Part 1) He coined the pop-culture phrase “booty call” on HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam” in the 1990s.
This Saturday, comedian Bill Bellamy crack ups MGM National Harbor near the nation’s capital.
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“I’m really excited,” Bellamy told WTOP. “D.C. has been one of my favorite cities my whole career. You guys love comedy. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what funny stuff you put in the soup! … Let me tell you what it’s like to come to a Bill Bellamy show: imagine a party with a lot of laughter. That’s the type of energy that I bring.”
Bellamy said the DMV is still buzzing over Chris Rock’s live Netflix special earlier this month at The Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore where Rock reacted to Will Smith slapping him on stage at the 2022 Oscars.
“He shot it in Baltimore and Jada Pinkett [Smith] was from Baltimore, so everyone was like, ‘Oh my God!’ That’s like if you had a beef with Batman and you did the show in Gotham,” Bellamy said. “It was one of those moments that people will remember. It’s something that people will talk about and people have a feeling about it.”
Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1965, Bellamy fell in love with comedy watching Eddie Murphy.
“Eddie Murphy was somebody that lived right across the water in New York. I was like, ‘Yo, he lives in New York! Wow, I might see him one day!'” Bellamy said. “Then I had guys I was watching and listening to like Richard Pryor. People sleep on Flip Wilson. He had this TV show and he was hysterical … Robin Williams was my idol!”
Bellamy started doing stand-up himself as a student at Rutgers University before making a name for himself on HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam” (1992-1997), inventing the aforementioned phrase, “booty call.”
“That’s definitely legacy,” Bellamy said. “There was also a lot of booty that got made off of me. There was a lot of calls during the ’90s that nobody really gave me money for, but when you made a booty call between 2 and 4 in the morning, that was me! You know how we get notifications in our phones? Wouldn’t it be crazy if every time that somebody made a booty call in the world, it would be like, ‘Ding! Ding!’ Mo booty, mo booty, mo booty, baby!”
He also became an MTV VJ and hosted “MTV Jamz” and “MTV Beach House.”
“When I was doing MTV, that was more just my natural personality,” Bellamy said. “I didn’t have to do jokes, I could just be me and be funny, so that was a blessing because I could do the music, I could interview somebody, I could be funny, like if I thought of a funny idea about the video or something crazy, I could say it in real time. That’s what was dope. That’s what people liked about it like, ‘Yo, every time I watch Bill, he says something crazy!'”
Bellamy reached a wider network television audience by hosting two seasons of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing,” including Season 5 with Amy Schumer and Season 6 won by Iliza Shlesinger.
“Iliza has blown up, Amy Schumer has blown up,” Bellamy said. “They were brand new, trying to get on, ladies trying to get in this comedy game. Now they both make movies and a lot of money doing what they do. Iliza Shlesinger used to open up for me, so it’s so cool to see them be successful. ‘Last Comic Standing’ was a great platform for guys and girls to go mainstream. You want to be funny and get a lot of people to come see you.”
He also hit the big screen in “Love Jones” (1997), “Love Stinks” (1999) and “Any Given Sunday” (1999).
“I always dreamed of being able to be in a movie, I just didn’t know how I could get there,” Bellamy said. “I was like, ‘What if I was in a movie with Tom Cruise or what if I was in a movie with Keanu Reeves?’ I used to see these guys in these movies, I remember seeing Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in ‘Good Will Hunting’ and I remember saying, ‘These are some cool-ass Boston boys, they’re best friends and they made a movie together. That’s dope!'”
Most recently, he appeared on the hit HBO sitcom “Insecure” (2016-2021).
“I got a chance to be on the show with Issa Rae,” Bellamy said. “They did a show within the show and did a ’90s sitcom and I was the star of the sitcom. Everything was so ’90s, so I thought I went back in time. It was so funny.”
Stay tuned for his upcoming memoir to publish on April 25.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Philippe Petit at National Building Museum (Part 1) His stunning 1974 high-wire walk across New York City’s ill-fated Twin Towers was chronicled in the Oscar-winning documentary “Man on Wire” (2008), and again in the narrative flick “The Walk” (2015).
This week, Philippe Petit will perform “Wonder on the Wire” twice at D.C.’s National Building Museum.
The first performance is Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Great Hall. After cocktails on the second floor with photos and videos of Philippe’s past performances, dinner will be served in the center court. From here, guests will watch Philippe’s performance on a wire above them, accompanied by jazz clarinetist Anat Cohen with Tal Mashiach on guitar.
Tickets to the fundraising event must be bought in advance.
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“My wire is 50 feet high and roughly 100 feet across, I am four stories high, so it calls people’s attention,” Petit told WTOP.
“I am going to pay my homage to one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, which has the tallest and largest columns in the world inside. It’s a gorgeous space that not enough people, in my opinion, know about in Washington, D.C. I am very happy to be offering my talent to this prestigious institution.”
Philippe will perform again on Friday, this time at a private show for local invited school children, primarily from Title 1 schools. Each class will receive a copy of the Caldecott Medal-winning children’s book, “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers,” as well as supplemental learning activities and lesson plans about the art of engineering.
“I love to direct my art toward kids,” Petit said.
“I am a magician, and it is wonderful to do magic tricks to kids. They are a tough audience. Kids sometimes these days, with all of their electronic devices, are hard to focus on things, so it will be interesting to see a few hundred kids sitting on the floor in awe of a man walking above in thin air. I love the fact that a book that was inspired by me, ‘The Man Who Walked Between the Towers,’ got a Caldecott award!”
In both cases, there will be no safety net beneath him, but Petit insists that he doesn’t need one.
“There is a very strong safety net inside of my mind, which I have woven over 50 years,” Petit said.
“I am in a place of self-made zen. I have found out that the best equilibrium for focus is to not forget about the world around you, but to keep your antennas open. Obviously, my entire being, my entire body and soul is focused on that wire, but by experience I can smell, I can hear, I can see all around me.”
Born in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne, France in 1949, Petit began practicing on wires tied between trees.
“When you look at a master of an art, it’s always interesting: how did they start?” Petit said.
“My story is very strange and unconventional because my parents were not in the circus world. I had to fight my family and my surrounding authorities to become a self-taught wire-walker. I think it came from the love to climb, and maybe psychiatrists will say when I am dead, the love to look at life from a different perspective, thus to fly.”
He gained global attention with his surprise high-wire act between the two bell towers at the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, on June 6, 1971, a stunt that would have made even Quasimodo jealous.
“I was a young kid and nobody wanted to hire me, so I thought, well, I don’t really need permission,” Petit said.
“After a long time of finding out how I could put a wire illegally between the towers of Notre Dame, I displayed myself one morning and a giant crowd came out. The police, of course, arrested me. After that, I was on the front page all over the world. A few years later, I was between pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia.”
He upped the ante by walking between the Twin Towers in New York City on Aug. 7, 1974, just a year after the World Trade Center technically opened in 1973. The surprise stunt was pulled off by a crack team of cohorts who snuck into the building under the cover of night to string the wire across the two towers, allowing Petit to cross.
“They were finishing up the top of the building and that’s what allowed me to disguise myself with a borrowed helmet, become a construction worker and sneak through,” Petit said. “I can assure you it was not a James Bond type of team. It was friends found from the sidewalk or somebody you bump into on an elevator by accident!”
What did he feel while standing out on the wire, maintaining his balance amid the wind?
“I made a very important discovery for mankind: I discovered that the earth is round!” Petit said. “As I looked at the horizon past the Verrazzano Bridge, I could see the faint line between the sky and the sea and it was not a straight, horizontal line, it was slightly curved, so I realized after Galileo many hundreds of years later, oh, our planet is a sphere!”
On a more intimate note, he claims that he even spoke to a skeptical bird.
“I laid down on the cable to salute the sky, to feel my presence between the towers, then a sea bird came hovering over me with a red eye,” Petit said. “It was not a friendly face on that bird. It was like, ‘What are you doing in our territory? You are trespassing!’ And the bird was right, I was trespassing, but I remember this silent dialogue. I won’t tell anyone what I said to the bird or what the bird said to me, but it was an other-worldly encounter.”
When the towers fell in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Petit felt a whirlwind of emotions.
“One can imagine my feeling of me losing the monument that I would call ‘My Towers’ — now I would call them ‘Our Towers,’ of course — but you cannot compare this soul-like feeling of losing a structure with losing thousands of human lives, so I have decided in front of the press to keep those two things separate,” Petit said.
Seven years later, filmmaker James Marsh chronicled Petit in the Oscar-winning documentary “Man on Wire” (2008), followed by Robert Zemeckis’ narrative film “The Walk” (2015), starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
“It was wonderful,” Petit said. “The documentary because of its style was a small film and we filmed in my estate, I had built a barn, so we filmed in the barn … then Zemeckis was the opposite. It was Hollywood in all its grandeur. I was very happy when I could teach Joseph Gordon-Levitt to walk on a tight-rope, on a little piece of cable. That made Zemeckis’ life easier because the actor can actually do some of the action instead of a stuntman.”
This August, Petit will turn 74 years old, but he is not done yet, saying, “I am thinking of celebrating in a very beautiful, unusual way the 50th anniversary of my walk between the Twin Towers, so more to come.”
Until then, he is starting to think about the legacy that he will someday leave behind.
“It is nice when people are inspired by not so much what you have done, but your spirit,” Petit said. “I have a spirit of someone who breaks the rules, somebody who moved mountains to make his dreams come true. That is contagious. When people say, ‘I saw your performance yesterday and now I feel that nothing is impossible,’ that is the greatest compliment. That is what I would like to leave on earth after I fly away and go back to my planet.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Adam Sandler's Mark Twain Prize (Part 1) Adam Sandler will receive the 24th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor this Sunday at the Kennedy Center, bringing some “high-quality H2O” to the Potomac River as Bobby Boucher sacks the nation’s capital.
Allow me to speak for a wide swath of Generation X and Millennials when I say this — it’s about damn time.
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Sandler deserves it alone for his run on “Saturday Night Live” (1990-1995) with characters from Opera Man to Cajun Man, as well as Chris Farley collabs on The Herlihy Boy and Hank & Beverly Gelfand. His most lasting legacy is strumming a guitar to “Lunch Lady Land” (“Slop, Sloppy Joe”) and the instant holiday standard “The Hanukkah Song” (“Paul Newman’s half Jewish, Goldie Hawn’s half too, put them together, what a fine lookin’ Jew!”).
After bit parts in “Coneheads” (1993) and “Airheads” (1994), Sandler made his big-screen breakthrough in “Billy Madison” (1995), playing a grown man going back to elementary school. The premise created arguably the most quoted comedy of my generation: “Back to school, back to school, to prove to Dad that I’m not a fool,” “If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis,” “O’Doyle rules” and most ridiculous “Stop looking at me, swan!”
My favorite remains “Happy Gilmore” (1996), the best golf comedy since “Caddyshack” (1980) with Christopher McDonald’s Shooter McGavin, Julie Bowen’s love interest, Carl Weathers’ wooden-handed mentor Chubbs Peterson (“It’s all in the hips”), Ben Stiller’s nursing home warden (“look at the name tag, you’re in my world now, grandma”), Kevin Nealon’s golfer (“feel the flow, do the bull dance”) and an iconic fight scene with Bob Barker.
He returned to sports comedies for the critically-panned but publicly-adored football flick “The Waterboy” (1998), playing the dorky waterboy-turned-menacing linebacker Bobby Boucher, squealing with each tackle. The film revived Henry Winkler’s career long before his Emmy-winning role in HBO’s “Barry,” while giving Kathy Bates motherly zingers like “foosball is the devil” and Rob Schneider his career line from the bleachers, “You can do it!”
Many of Sandler’s pals kept returning for zany sidekick roles, but it wasn’t all lowbrow comedy. Sandler showed a surprising knack for romance across Drew Barrymore in both “The Wedding Singer” (1998) and “50 First Dates” (2004), two of the better romantic comedies of the past 25 years. Who can forget him singing “Grow Old With You” on the airplane or making a video to remind his amnesic girlfriend about their daily rediscovery of love?
By the turn of the millennium, some critics argued that Sandler had lost his fastball, but the public was too busy laughing along with his blockbuster comedy “Big Daddy” (1999), the remake of Frank Capra’s “Mr. Deeds” (2002) and the remake of “The Longest Yard” (2005), not to mention “Funny People” (2008) and “Grown Ups” (2010).
While the funnyman never earned an Oscar like Robin Williams in “Good Will Hunting” (1997), Sandler has earned plenty of acclaim for his serious side, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch Drunk Love” (2002), winning an Independent Spirit Award for the Safdie Brothers’ “Uncut Gems” (2019) and earning a SAG Award nomination for Jeremiah Zagar’s inspiring basketball scouting flick “Hustle” (2022).
His career came full circle with a 2019 “SNL” return for a tearjerking tribute to his late pal Farley. To this day, the logo of his company “Happy Madison Productions” flashes on screens everywhere. It’s a body of work that snobs dismissed as sophomoric in real time, but which has had a cumulative cultural effect that is impossible to ignore.
Now, it’s time for the nation’s capital to roll out the red carpet to honor an underrated treasure. In our best Cajun Man accent, let’s call it a D.C. “RECEPTION,” which should end by someone taking the Kennedy Center stage to say, “Everyone in this room is now dumber. I award you no points — and may God have mercy on your soul.”
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The 31st annual Environmental Film Festival returns to the nation’s capital from March 16 to March 26.
This year marks the festival’s first event back in person since 2019 as it emerges from pandemic restrictions.
“I’m incredibly excited that we’re back in theaters,” Founder Brad Forder told WTOP. “We’re going to showcase over 100 films in person and have over 100 different filmmakers and special guests. We’ll host these programs at 20 different venues. … Smithsonian museums, government buildings like Department of the Interior, embassies, universities like American and Georgetown, and commercial theaters like E Street Cinema and AFI Silver.”
The lineup kicks off with Matthieu Rytz’s “Deep Rising,” narrated by Jason Momoa (“Aquaman”). The film explores a deep ocean threat as a secret organization plans to extract seabed metals to address the world’s energy crisis.
“I love documentaries and narrative films when they take me somewhere I haven’t been — and sometimes somewhere I’m not going to go,” Forder said. “In this case, it takes us to the deepest fathoms of the sea floor. Matthieu does a great job of reflecting these captivating images of what it’s like down there, the beauty of sea life. It also emphasizes this mystery. There’s so much that’s unexplored that we don’t know about yet down there.”
You can also see see the Oscar-nominated documentary “All That Breathes,” co-produced by Tangled Bank Studios in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The film follows two brothers in Delhi, India, who find and heal injured kite birds.
“This is a film that you definitely need to see in the theater [instead of streaming on HBO Max],” Forder said. “It is gorgeous on the big screen, it’s just amazing observational filmmaking, but it’s also this heartwarming story of these brothers in New Delhi, India, that are running a clinic that rehabilitates wild birds. We’re so thrilled that the two brothers, Nadeem and Mohammed, will be joining us for a conversation after the film.”
Don’t miss the inspirational and surprisingly tearjerking “Good Night Oppy,” which was recently named Best Documentary by the Washington Area Film Critics Association. Directed by Ryan White and narrated by Angela Bassett, the film follows Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover affectionately dubbed Oppy by NASA.
“It was sent to Mars for a 90-day mission, so three months, but it ended up surviving for 15 years!” Forder said. “It uses interviews from the NASA team, then this animated interpretation of the rover’s journey. You fall in love with this cute robot that almost reminds you of the Pixar film ‘WALL-E.'”
If “Good Night Oppy” is the crowd pleaser, “Geographies of Solitude” is the artful gem, having won the festival’s Award for Artistry. Directed by Jacquelyn Mills, the film chronicles the life of environmentalist Zoe Lucas, who has lived over 40 years on Sable Island, a remote strip of sand off the Canadian coast near Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“It was shot on 16 millimeter, a feature-length experimental documentary but very accessible as well,” Forder said. “It really does flip the script on a typical biopic. It’s one of the most unique, creative films in the lineup — and we’re so thrilled to partner with our friends at the National Museum of Natural History. They have an amazing theater.”
It all culminates with the closing night film “To the End.” Directed by Rachel Lears (“Knock Down the House”), the documentary follows four young women, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are fighting for a Green New Deal to dramatically change U.S. policies to combat the growing threat of climate change.
“AOC is featured in this new film, along with three other extremely inspiring women, all with the same goal, basically pushing for sweeping climate legislation on Capitol Hill — not an easy task,” Forder said. “This is amazing fly-on-the-wall filmmaking where you really get a sense of what’s going on behind the scenes.”
Find more information here.
Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley celebrates the return of 'Ted Lasso' (Season 3) It’s a bittersweet feeling knowing that a beloved TV sitcom is returning for its final season. On the one hand, we can’t wait to dive back in to laugh with our favorite characters. On the other, we really don’t want it to end.
That’s the case with the adorable sports sitcom “Ted Lasso,” which returns for its third and final season this Wednesday on Apple TV+ with new episodes dropping every week until the series finale on May 31.
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If you’ve somehow been living under a soccer-ball-sized rock, the series began in 2020 with American football coach Ted Lasso being hired to coach a British soccer team, AFC Richmond. Unbeknownst to him, he was hired to lose by a scheming owner trying to tank her ex-husband’s team in order to sell it like “Major League” (1989).
“SNL” alum Jason Sudeikis has won two Emmys as the pollyannish coach with a heart of gold, a character initially created for NBC Sports promos. Season 1 introduced us to Ted’s aw-shucks demeanor with corny Diamond Dog jokes, while Season 2 showed the darker side of Ted’s panic attacks with his therapist (Sarah Niles). The Season 3 premiere finds him putting his son back on a plane to America, asking for assurances that he’s doing the right thing.
“Do you understand why I’m still here?” Ted asks.
“Of course,” his son says. “To win the whole thing!”
“Now don’t forget, winning ain’t everything.”
“Yeah, Dad, but you’ve gotta try, right?”
The pressure of that task is getting to owner Rebecca Welton, a role that won Hannah Waddingham an Emmy for the best character arc of Season 1 as her cold villainy thawed one shortbread biscuit at a time. Season 2 oddly gave her an inappropriate relationship with her employee, Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh), but Season 3 gets back on track with Rebecca’s lovable odd-couple friendship with cockney publicist Keeley Jones (Juno Temple).
Until now, Keeley’s romantic relationship with grouchy soccer vet Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) has been the best subplot, especially when Roy retired after Season 1 to become a smartass coach in Season 2. Sadly, Season 3 might pose some problems for the couple with more demanding jobs. In real life, it’s great to see both pivoting to extra success with Temple starring in “The Offer” (Paramount+) and Goldstein producing “Shrinking” (Apple TV+).
While Goldstein is clearly the show’s secret weapon as a two-time Emmy winner, the biggest transformation has been Phil Dunster as cocky soccer superstar Jamie Tart (“doo doo doo doo doo”). While we were conditioned to hate him in Season 1, we were allowed to see a more sympathetic side to his character in Season 2 by seeing his father’s harsh treatment. Believe it or not, he’s a voice of reason in Season 3 with a “poopy” locker-room pep talk.
Mostly, Season 3 relies on goodwill (and ill will) built up from back story episodes of the assistant coaches in Season 2. Episode 9 (“Beard After Hours”) endeared us to Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), who hit the town to drink away ex-girlfriend Jane (Phoebe Walsh), while Episode 5 (“Rainbow”) followed the personal life of waterboy-turned-coach Nate “the Great” Shelley (Nick Mohammed), setting him up for a heel turn to coach a rival team.
The central tension of the Season 3 premiere finds Nate reveling in his media “genius” (though headlines call him “wonder kid” instead of “wunderkind”). When asked why his former team is ranked No. 20 to start the season, he trashes them at a press conference by replying, “Because there aren’t 21 teams.” True to character, Ted takes the high road, which only gets under Nate’s skin more and only causes we the viewers to love Ted even more.
At this rate, Season 3 is shaping up to be a true underdog story. Here’s hoping the rivalry builds all the way to Ted’s AFC Richmond facing Nate’s West Ham United in the championship, so that Ted can fulfill his promise of “winning the whole thing.” Dog-gone-it, the humble man deserves to win, if only because he doesn’t think he does. Emmy voters agree, bestowing Outstanding Comedy Series on the first two seasons. Can it go 3 for 3 for a three-peat?
Win, lose or draw, the true winners are we the viewers, who have one last season to bask in streaming sitcom glory. Soak it up, folks. Enjoy it. Shows this smart, this funny and this heartfelt don’t come around very often.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews College Park Aviation Museum tribute to Harriet Quimby (Part 1) Everyone knows the Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and Chuck Yeager, but you can’t write the history of aviation without Harriet Quimby.
Not only was Quimby the first American woman to earn a pilot’s license, she was also the first woman in the world to fly across the English Channel.
The College Park Aviation Museum in College Park, Maryland, is honoring Quimby this Saturday, March 18, with a special free event called “Harriet Quimby, America’s First Aviatrix.”
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“Harriet Quimby is an incredible woman who kind of got lost in history,” actress Sara Sincell told WTOP. “In fact, Amelia Earhart boasts that Harriet Quimby was her idol, the person that she looked up to.”
Sincell, a Western Maryland native, now based in Los Angeles, will land at the College Park Airport at 10:30 a.m. to portray Quimby in a 35-minute program that she wrote. Quimby would have appreciated such a performance, as she was also one of the first female journalists and theater critics, a true Renaissance Woman, if you will.
“She also was an amazing artist and activist,” Sincell said. “She was the first female screenwriter in America, writing seven screenplays from 1909 to 1911. She was a journalist and photojournalist, she traveled all over the world in the early 1900s taking photos and writing about controversial topics. … Before researching this, I had never heard of her! That’s one of my missions with this: How have we never heard of this woman?”
After the show, guests can take a free 30-minute “Women in Aviation” tour of the 27,000-square-foot College Park Aviation Museum, which was founded in 1991. It’s attached to the College Park Airport, which was founded in 1909 by the Wright Brothers, who arrived from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to receive a U.S. Army contract.
“It is the world’s oldest continuously operated airfield,” Museum Director Kevin Cabrera told WTOP. “[The Wright Brothers] did some initial tests in Fort Myer, Virginia, where Lieutenant [Thomas] Selfridge died in a plane crash flying with Orville Wright. It was the first death in aviation history. … Fort Myer was not a great location, so they went up in a hot-air balloon to scope out the surrounding landscape and they found College Park.”
The same year that the museum was founded in 1991, the U.S. Postal Service dedicated a stamp honoring Quimby, who died at age 37 in 1912. She was killed during an accident at the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet in Squantum, Massachusetts, where she and passenger William A.P. Willard were ejected from their seats.
“This was really the beginning of aviation, so many pilots were flying brand new models of airplanes for the first time at air shows,” Sincell said. “Unfortunately, many of them met tragic deaths. Her young death is partly why we didn’t learn of her. I can’t imagine what she would have gone on and done if she had lived longer.”
If you miss the 10:30 a.m. event, an encore performance will be held at 1:30 p.m., but if you want to see the plane landing at College Park Airport, be sure to come to the first showtime.
The event is presented by the Field of Firsts Foundation.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Storehouse' at Perisphere Theater (Part 1) Harriet Beecher Stowe coined the phrase “Uncle Tom” in her fictional novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852), while Harriet Jacobs chronicled her own escape from slavery in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” (1861).
Now, the two Harriets collide in the world premiere of the new play “The Storehouse” by Perisphere Theater at the Silver Spring Black Box Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, running now through March 25.
“These two women had a series of interactions together that few people know about,” Playwright Joanna Castle Miller told WTOP. “Essentially, Jacobs came to Harriet Beecher Stowe and asked for her help and support as a writer. The response was not exactly what she was looking for. … Their relationship happened mostly by letters. I’ve taken some dramatic liberties in putting them in the same room.”
Directed by Amberrain Andrews, the play exposes societal forces that control who gets to tell their stories.
“There’s a very familiar attitude from Stowe that I’ve seen amongst progressives, then and now,” Castle Miller said. “There’s a sense that progress is acceptable when we are the ones who make it happen and a reluctance to cede power to someone else … even if the other person could make that change better.”
Born in Connecticut in 1811, Stowe became one of the world’s wealthiest authors.
“Harriet Beecher Stowe grew up in New England to a relatively wealthy family, a hyper religious Calvinist family,” Castle Miller said. “She had a huge success in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ it outsold the Bible, she was extremely wealthy from that experience and she toured the world because of it. … She was credited with changing the attitude of white people enough to make abolition a possibility.”
On the other hand, she created a monster that even she couldn’t control. In the book, she attempted to portray Uncle Tom as a hero or martyr, but there’s a pitiful tone between Eliza and Tom that Castle Miller finds “difficult.” It’s only grown more problematic over the years due to offensive and stereotypical performances in blackface.
“Stowe was not able to control what happened to that story,” Castle Miller said. “To this day, you will see #UncleTom trending on Twitter on a regular basis, part of common parlance, but they’ve never read the book. … Our understanding of it today has been shaped by minstrel performances … that Stowe not only never approved but actively fought her entire life and begged people to stop performing. She abhorred blackface.”
It’s a truly incomparable experience to Jacobs, who was born into slavery in North Carolina around 1813.
“She experienced an enormous amount of harassment under the hands of her master and then eventually fled successfully,” Castle Miller said. “She hid out in a small crawl space that’s about the size of a coffin for seven years. By the time she made it up to the north, she desperately wanted to tell her story, not just about her escape … but to use that as a launching point to have a larger conversation about what life was actually about down south.”
Jacobs is portrayed by Howard University’s Ahdis Beruk, who brings “sensitivity and grace” to an “incredible writer and activist,” Castle Miller said. “She also worked with Union soldiers during the Civil War, she built a school during Reconstruction and ran it with her daughter. She was a very kind, sensitive, nurturing presence.”
D.C.-based actor Allison McAlister portrays Stowe. “You wouldn’t imagine this would be necessary for the role, but she is just so funny,” Castle Miller said. “She is bringing such a great sense of humor, which is critical.”
The show only runs for 10 performances, so get tickets while you can.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Jagged Little Pill' at National Theatre (Part 1) In 1995, singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette released one of the all-time great albums in “Jagged Little Pill.”
In 2019, it inspired a Tony Award-winning Broadway production, the national tour of which rocks National Theatre in D.C. from March 14 to March 26.
“The show is not about Alanis Morissette; it takes the songs from the album and tells the story of this family,” D.C.-native and actor Daniel Thimm told WTOP. “It’s not like ‘Jersey Boys,’ it’s not like ‘Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,’ it’s more like ‘Mamma Mia!’ It takes her music and uses her music as a tool to tell a new story and to create new characters.”
Written by Oscar winner Diablo Cody (“Juno”), the story follows Mary Jane, a modern housewife struggling with addiction while trying to raise her daughter and her son.
“The story follows a modern American family and we watch them go through a journey that addresses topics that millions of people are dealing with today like mental health, addiction, identity,” Thimm said. “It’s a wonderful story that deals with pain, healing, empowerment. … It’s high energy, it’s funny, it’s emotional — there’s something for everybody to connect to.”
The songbook features numerous hits from the album, including “All I Really Want,” which Thimm calls “my favorite number in the show. It’s the first moment that we see this family in crisis. It centers around M.J. and her daughter Frankie (and) it’s really showing how they’re butting heads and how their relationship is off balance. … It’s really confrontational but in a fun way.”
Act 1 also includes the hit song “Hand in My Pocket,” which Thimm said is “obviously one of her most iconic songs.” In this story, it’s used to introduce a relationship between Frankie and Jo.
“It’s a wonderful number. This number is really uplifting. It’s about acceptance, it celebrates the song, but it’s just a really joyful number that celebrates love,” Thim said.
Of course, you’ll also hear the iconic pop hit “Ironic,” which pokes fun at itself.
“It’s super silly,” Thimm said. “Frankie is presenting her poetry in class, presenting this idea of what is and what isn’t ironic. … It’s the first time we break the fourth wall with the audience because (there have) been arguments about whether or not what Alanis is saying is ironic.”
Act 2 features “Head Over Feet,” which Thimm calls “a wonderful, romantic moment between Frankie and the love interest Phoenix. It’s a moment when they are just celebrating their new love, being young and having that new, wonderful feeling. They’re on a swing set that’s spinning round and round. It’s absolutely beautiful. … It’s an amazing pop-rock song.”
The most badass feminist anthem is “You Oughta Know.” “It’s the number of the show,” Thimm said. “I think it steals the show. When I saw the show on Broadway, that’s the number where people are standing up and you’re just brought to this moment of extreme power and catharsis. It’s absolutely amazing. How do you live up to that song? It’s so powerful!”
Fittingly, the show closes with “You Learn,” which Thimm calls, “Such a perfect ending. It ties together everything you’ve just experienced. It’s a way for the performers and the audience to just connect like we’ve both been on this journey together, we’ve gotten to this final place, let’s sing this song that most of you know. …We’ve got to this point. We can breathe now.”
Find more ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley predicts the Oscars (Part 1) The 95th annual Academy Awards air this Sunday night on ABC, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.
It’s a battle of blockbusters vs. indie gems — and hopefully no one will slap anyone this year.
If you still need to catch up, here’s a guide to how you can watch this year’s top nominees.
Which of your favorite movies have the best shot at winning? Are any upsets brewing?
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Time for some official Oscar predictions by WTOP Film Critic Jason Fraley:
Best PictureNominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Women Talking.”
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” has won everything everywhere at DGA, PGA, SAG and WGA. There’s an outside chance that ranked preferential ballots could cause older members to pick a more traditional alternative like “The Fabelmans” or “Top Gun: Maverick” (Steven Spielberg thanked Tom Cruise for saving the industry), but “E.E.A.A.O.” is as close to a lock as it gets, providing a litmus test for just how bonkers Oscar is willing to go.
Prediction: “Everything Everywhere All At Once”
Spoiler: “Top Gun: Maverick”
Best DirectorNominees: Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”), Todd Field (“Tár”), Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”)
A lack of women is jarring with snubs for Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”) and Charlotte Wells (“Aftersun”), the year’s best director. Without them, I’ll pick The Daniels, who won at DGA and could become just the third duo ever to win. I admire directors swinging for the fences, but I worry future filmmakers will learn the wrong lessons of quantity over quality. I’d love a Spielberg upset for his most personal film, “The Fabelmans.”
Prediction: The Daniels (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”)
Spoiler: Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”)
Best ActorNominees: Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”), Paul Mescal (“Aftersun”), Bill Nighy (“Living”)
Despite a terribly miscast Tom Hanks, Austin Butler embodied The King in “Elvis,” becoming a frontrunner champion at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs. Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) stepped on his blue-suede shoes by winning SAG, so now the race is all shook up. This one is too close to call, but I think Butler holds on like Rami Malek in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which rode a Best Picture nomination like “Elvis,” unlike “The Whale.”
Prediction: Austin Butler (“Elvis”)
Spoiler: Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”)
Best ActressNominees: Cate Blanchett (“Tár”), Ana de Armas (“Blonde”), Andrea Riseborough (“To Leslie”), Michelle Williams (“The Fabelmans”), Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”)
Michelle Williams could have won her first Oscar if she slid over to Supporting Actress like Viola Davis in “Fences,” but Best Actress is too competitive. Cate Blanchett was the early frontrunner with countless critics circles, but she’s already won two Oscars for “The Aviator” and “Blue Jasmine,” causing a momentum shift to the overdue Michelle Yeoh, who just won at SAG for playing a dozen different versions of her same character over time.
Prediction: Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”)
Spoiler: Cate Blanchett (“Tar”)
Best Supporting ActorNominees: Brendan Gleeson (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Brian Tyree Henry (“Causeway”), Judd Hirsch (“The Fabelmans”), Barry Keoghan (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”)
The most feel-good story this award season has been watching the resurgence of Ke Huy Quan, who we all adored as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies.” Like Yeoh, he impressively played countless versions of the same role, earning wins at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice and SAG. Barry Keoghan has gone viral for his heartbreaking scene, but co-star Brendan Gleeson will split the “Banshees” vote.
Prediction: Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”)
Spoiler: Barry Keoghan (“The Banshees of Inisherin”)
Best Supporting ActressNominees: Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”), Hong Chau (“The Whale”), Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Jamie Lee Curtis (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Stephanie Hsu (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”)
After wins at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, Angela Bassett looked unstoppable as grieving Queen Ramonda, until SAG picked Jamie Lee Curtis for “E.E.A.A.O.” Both feel like make-up “career” Oscars for Tina Turner and Laurie Strode, which could cause a last-minute upset by BAFTA champ Kerry Condon. In the end, I think the Academy tries to fix its botched Chadwick Boseman tribute by picking Bassett as Rihanna sings “Lift Me Up” live.
Prediction: Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”)
Spoiler: Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”)
Best Original ScreenplayNominees: “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Martin McDonagh), “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), “The Fabelmans” (Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner), “Tár” (Todd Field), “Triangle of Sadness” (Ruben Östlund)
From a screenplay-structure standpoint, Tony Kushner, Todd Field and Ruben Östlund are hard to beat, but Academy voters often like to reward brash originality, which means this is a race between The Daniels and Martin McDonagh. If voters decide to “spread the wealth,” we could see a “Banshees” win for Original Screenplay just so “E.E.A.A.O.” doesn’t sweep every category. It’s that sparkling of a screenplay, even if the tone is not for everybody.
Prediction: The Daniels (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”)
Spoiler: Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”)
Best Adapted ScreenplayNominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell), “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (Rian Johnson), “Living” (Kazuo Ishiguro), “Top Gun: Maverick” (Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, Peter Craig and Justin Marks), “Women Talking” (Sarah Polley)
The year’s most accurate film title is “Women Talking,” as it is indeed an ensemble of women talking, but the film is about so much more. Sarah Polley’s dialogue-heavy treatise will likely be awarded Adapted Screenplay to offset the injustice of an all-male Best Director lineup. If I had to pick a spoiler it would be “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won a record seven BAFTAs, but that overseas success doesn’t always translate across the pond.
Prediction: Sarah Polley (“Women Talking”)
Spoiler: “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell)
Follow my live tweets @JFrayWTOP starting at 8 p.m. Sunday for the 95th annual Oscars.
See the full list of nominees here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with 'Wakanda Forever' hairstylist Camille Friend (Part 1) “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is nominated for five Academy Awards on Sunday night.
That includes Camille Friend and Joel Harlow for Best Achievement in Makeup & Hairstyling.
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“I’ve been on the shortlist three times, then you go on to the bake-off three times, then you wake up in the morning of Oscar day three times and two times I woke up and no go, so you go back to bed and cry,” Friend told WTOP. “Third time was the charm! … I heard ‘Black,’ and that’s all I heard, I saw it on the screen and I was just over the moon. It’s so, so exciting!”
Last time, Ruth E. Carter became the first African American to win the Oscar for costume design for the original “Black Panther” (2018), which Friend also worked on for the hair.
“‘Black Panther 1’ was a love letter to Black hair,” Friend said. “We got to experience so many things building our tribes, using so many looks from braids to locks, all kinds of Black hairstyling on natural hair. That was something that hadn’t been done or people hadn’t seen, so on the first one they were probably shocked, but now they’re with us on the hair.”
After the death of Chadwick Boseman, Friend wasn’t sure the franchise would continue.
“There could have been no ‘Black Panther 2.’ When a franchise loses its star, Marvel could have scrapped it and go on, they have many great properties, they could have just moved on. A lot of people felt that way like, ‘What are you guys gonna do?’ When they announced they weren’t going to recast T’Challa, that really helped the fans and it gave us all a sigh of relief.”
Instead, T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) assumes the Black Panther mantle after visiting the ancestral plane and redesigning the superhero suit. As such, Friend’s goal was to change Shuri’s hairstyle from a youthful look to a more mature appearance.
“In the first one, she had braids but shaved sides. She was a young kid,” Friend said. “In this movie, she’s a different woman who is evolving, who is in the grieving process, who is discovering who she is. We wanted to give her something more grown-up, so we used her hair texture, still a 4C texture, two-strand twisted it, but we left the side and back shaved.”
It was also a fun challenge styling T’Challa’s grieving mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Friend said.
“In West African culture, people cut their hair in mourning, so if we went into that theory, what would Shuri and Ramonda look like if they were in mourning and cut their hair?” Friend said. “Ramonda in the first movie had this beautiful platinum silvery locks … but giving her hair a shape that mimics the crowns that she wears, so making her hair look like a crown.”
Friend insists that “this is the time” for Bassett to finally win her Oscar, adding, “Go, Angie, go!” If she does indeed win Best Supporting Actress on Sunday night, it’ll be the latest Friend-styled performance to win an acting Oscars after past wins for Jamie Foxx in “Ray” (2004), Jennifer Hudson in “Dreamgirls” (2006) and Octavia Spencer in “The Help” (2011).
She’s also worked in the hair departments of such blockbusters as “The Hangover” (2009), “Django Unchained” (2012), “Captain America: The Winter Solider” (2014), “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” (2014-2015) and “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2” (2017), the original “Black Panther” (2018), “Captain Marvel” (2019), “Us” (2019) and “Tenet” (2020).
“‘Winter Soldier’ is my favorite Marvel movie,” Friend said. “I so remember we were right there going to the Smithsonian at lunchtime like running from the trailer to get into the museum and do everything in the short time we were there. I love D.C. I was also in D.C., Madam C.J. Walker’s Foundation gave me an award there, shout out to D.C., I love you guys!”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Swingers in Navy Yard (Part 1) In 2021, Swingers Crazy Golf opened its first U.S. location in D.C.’s Dupont Circle, taking over the former popular spaces of The Front Page upstairs, and Buffalo Billiards downstairs.
This Friday, Swingers opens its second D.C. location, in the Navy Yard neighborhood inside The Kelvin luxury apartment building on Half Street SE near Nationals Park.
“This new concept is mini-golf with cocktails and gourmet street food in a very upscale environment,” CEO Matt Grech-Smith told WTOP. “We’ve been open in Dupont for over 18 months and people love it. It’s a great way to socialize and have competitive fun … we’ve got this incredible space that’s 25,000 square feet, Dupont is a bit more compact at 19,000.”
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The company opened its first two locations in London before opening the spot in Dupont Circle, followed by a fourth location in Manhattan, and now a fifth spot in Navy Yard.
“Initially, when we came to the U.S., we were looking for great cities on the Eastern Seaboard because obviously proximity to London was something we were looking for,” Grech-Smith said. “We discovered D.C. and fell in love with the city. It’s got a very discerning population who likes to go out, have fun and enjoy good food … the reaction has been fantastic.”
The Navy Yard venue offers three nine-hole mini-golf courses at $19 per person.
“Each of them have got a whole array of different moving obstacles: tricks, jumps, loops, you name it, we’ve got plenty to keep you entertained and slightly frustrated as well,” Grech-Smith said. “It takes about 30 to 40 minutes to play through each course and the cool thing is we have caddies on the course to give you tips and tricks … and they’ll also bring you drinks.”
You can also grab a drink at “The Swingers Arm” bar, which is styled as a classic English pub. You can also grab a bite of gourmet food from D.C.’s KNEAD Hospitality And Design, including Mexican street food from Tu Taco, a southern take on burgers and sandwiches from Lil’ Succotash, oven-fired pizza from KNEADZA Pizza and sweet treats from Mah-Ze-Dahr.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews NSO 'In Your Neighborhood' (Part 1) The National Symphony Orchestra is best known for its ticketed events at the Kennedy Center or Wolf Trap, but it’s also become an orchestra of the people in recent years.
The NSO’s “In Your Neighborhood” series brings free concerts this week to Ward 5 in D.C.
“This is the 13th year that the National Symphony Orchestra has been doing our ‘In Your Neighborhood’ program,” Manager of Community Engagement Xavier Joseph told WTOP. “The mission is to bring music to areas of Washington D.C. that have been historically excluded from music or areas that the orchestra has not had a chance to visit yet.”
Thursday brings a string duo to the D.C. Public Library at Woodridge on Hamlin Street, Northeast; a flute duo at District Clay Center on Douglas Street, Northeast; a string duo at Lincoln’s Cottage on Rock Creek Church Road, Northwest; and a special NSO performance with a local author at the Creative Grounds coffee shop on North Capitol Street, Northwest.
Friday offers a full orchestra concert conducted by Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on Michigan Avenue, Northeast.
Saturday brings a brass quintet to Busboys & Poets Brookland on Monroe Street, Northeast; a clarinet-violin duo at Bluebird Sky Yoga on 12th Street, Northeast; violin at The Spice Suite on Channing Street, Northeast; a brass quintet at Norooz Market on Monroe Street, Northeast; and a full orchestra at the Turkey Thicket Recreation Center on Michigan Avenue, Northeast.
Sunday brings a lunchtime brass quintet to La Cosecha on 4th Street, Northeast, followed by a piano trio at the 4th St. Friendship Church on 4th Street, Northwest; a special collaborative performance with local poets at the American Poetry Museum on Monroe Street, Northeast; and finally a violin duo at the Art Enables art gallery on Rhode Island Avenue, Northeast.
The free shows wrap up Monday with a string quartet at the Arts Compound studio on Wells Avenue in Mount Rainier, Maryland, just over the D.C. border in Prince George’s County.
Events are open to the public with first-come, first-served seating.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Washington National Opera's 'Blue' (Part 1) It was named the Best New Opera of 2020 by the Music Critics Association of North America and was ready to rock the nation’s capital before the pandemic unfortunately shut it down.
This week, the Washington National Opera finally gets to stage the D.C. premiere of the powerhouse production “Blue” at the Kennedy Center. It runs from March 11 through March 25.
“It’s a beautiful show that explores the highest of highs and lowest of lows of the human experience,” mezzo-soprano performer Briana Hunter told WTOP. “We see a family and community embrace new life into the world and what happens when that light is snuffed out too soon.”
Hunter plays the mother of a Black teenager (Aaron Crouch) who is murdered by a police officer in present-day Harlem. Things are further complicated by the fact that the victim’s father (Kenneth Kellogg) is also a police officer, a proverbial Black man in blue, hence the title.
“It takes something that is a daily experience in today’s life unfortunately and puts it on that operatic scale,” Hunter said. “One of the devices used is making them archetypal characters, so no one has a name specifically. It’s just The Mother, The Father, The Son, it’s almost Biblical. … It’s a way for you not to be able to distance yourself from the story. It could be you.”
The music is composed by Tony Award winner Jeanine Tesori, while the libretto is composed by NAACP Theater Award winner Tazewell Thompson. They were inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” and James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time.”
“She wrote an incredibly intelligent, beautiful, vast, all-encompassing score and Tazewell’s words are just so beautiful,” Hunter said. “It’s just really lush and incorporates so many influences, from contemporary influences to old ones. You’re gonna hear notes from Stravinsky or composers of that ilk … as well as modern-day songs and jazz influences.”
Visually, set designer Donald Eastman and costume designer Jessica Jahn create the atmosphere of the 21st century Harlem, starting in the year 2000 and then 2020.
“Donald Eastman has definitely put us in that New York setting,” Hunter said. “With the backdrop, you’re going to see outlines of apartment windows and things you’d see out a New York City window. … Don’t expect like a cinematic rendering of New York, but you’re definitely going to have those elements — and the costumes Jessica Jahn designed are so spot-on.”
She hopes that folks of all political stripes will come see it, whether your flag reads “Black Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter,” because this is a very sensitive, complex topic.
“We see repeatedly our children, brothers and sisters being executed at the hands of police,” Hunter said. “It confronts the common argument that there are good cops, too. … I hope this show provides a space for us to meet on a human level and actually have deeper conversations and hopefully more productive conversations around the issue of police brutality.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the ABC sitcom 'Not Dead Yet' In the ’90s, families waited all week for ABC’s sitcom lineup TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday).
Now, it’s TGIW (Thank God It’s Wednesday) as ABC airs a block of “The Conners” at 8 p.m., followed by “The Goldbergs” at 8:30 p.m., the award-winning “Abbott Elementary” at 9 p.m. and the new supernatural journalism sitcom “Not Dead Yet,” which airs Episode 6 at 9:30 p.m.
Created by “This Is Us” alumni Casey Johnson and David Windsor, the clever premise follows American newspaper reporter Nell Serrano (Gina Rodriguez), who recently moved to London with her boyfriend but now returns to Los Angeles after their breakup. Her new assignment is to write obituaries, causing her to suddenly see the ghosts of the folks she’s writing about.
Fans of Rodriguez will cheer her return after “Jane the Virgin” (2014-2019), which won her a 2015 Golden Globe over Edie Falco (“Nurse Jackie”), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Veep”), Lena Dunham (“Girls”) and Taylor Schilling (“Orange is the New Black”). In “Not Dead Yet,” she is totally relatable again as the wounded but resilient Nell, sporting blazers over graphic tees.
Inside the newsroom, Hannah Simone (“New Girl”) plays the reliable best friend Sam, while Joshua Banday (“Upload”) plays their jocular co-worker Dennis. They all bond over their hatred of their boss Lexi (Lauren Ash of “Superstore”), who is demanding but not exactly evil like Patricia Arquette in “Severance” (2022). Hopefully she gets some character growth soon.
Outside of the office, Rick Glassman is lovably nerdy as Nell’s roommate Edward, who steals her bad first date Ross (Trent Garrett) for his own video game pal. Nell’s dating life fuels the show, with some suitors showing promise (Langston Kerman’s Jesse), and others failing or ghosting. Angela E. Gibbs shines as Cricket, the bartender widow of Nell’s first obit subject.
Speaking of which, it’s fun to see which guest stars show up as the weekly ghosts, who only disappear when she hits publish. Martin Mull plays Monty in Episode 1; Mo Collins plays Jane Marvell in Episode 2; Brittany Snow plays Piper in Episode 3 and Don Lake plays Rand in Episode 4. I refuse to reveal the ghost in Episode 5 because the twist is too good to spoil.
It’s highly possible that I’m biased toward any show based in journalism, but even if you’ve never stepped foot in a newsroom, you can enjoy the funny antics of this half-hour sitcom. It doesn’t hurt to have “Abbott Elementary” as its lead-in show, though I doubt it’ll win awards like that show or, say, “Ted Lasso,” which returns to Apple TV+, wait for it, next WEDNESDAY!
TGIW is a legit phrase to coin, folks. After all, Wednesday is often called Hump Day, which was once quoted by the GEICO camel, who was voiced by Chris Sullivan, who played Toby in “This Is Us,” whose producers have now created “Not Dead Yet.” See what I mean? TGIW, baby.
At least until Thursday, when more funny “Ghosts” arrive on CBS.
Appointment television is “not dead yet.”
Hold off on the obituary.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Black Girls Rock' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) In 2006, Black Girls Rock! launched at a small art gallery in Brooklyn, New York, as an awards show to honor hip-hop pioneers DJ Jazzy Joyce and MC Lyte. The follow year it moved to Lincoln Center in Manhattan, and in 2010, Viacom began airing the awards on BET.
This week, “BGR! Fest” hits D.C. at the Kennedy Center from Thursday through Sunday.
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“I wanted to create another platform to be able to elevate the voices and the art of so many women who still don’t get the opportunities to have their work showcased,” said founder Beverly Bond, who told WTOP she started BGR! Fest in partnership with the Kennedy Center four years ago.
The event kicks off Thursday with a free Millennium Stage show from L.A. harpist-singer Kayla Ortiz at 6 p.m., followed by an opening night party dubbed “Black Girls Bond” at Studio K at 7 p.m.
The Black Girls Rock! Fest takes place at the Kennedy Center. (Courtesy BGR! Fest)“That will kick off with Mumu Fresh, who is from D.C., and also D.C.’s all-girl go-go band Be’la Dona and Ty Alexander out of Baltimore, Maryland, as well as DJ Aktive, who is also Janet Jackson’s DJ, and myself — I am a DJ. In fact, some people thought my first name was ‘DJ.'”
The lineup continues Friday with “Who Rocks Next?” at 9:30 p.m. at Studio K.
“These artists are not always new, sometimes they’re regrouping,” Bond said. “We have a really strong Philly night. A group out of Philadelphia known as AAries has a new project coming out. … Another artist who has revamped her career is Res. … Then we have this new artist Kenya Vaun out of Philadelphia. She is going to be one of those game-changing artists.”
Saturday brings another free Millennium Stage performance by D.C. group The Amours at 6 p.m., followed by the main-stage “BGR! Concert” in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall at 8 p.m.
“We have Jade Novah, who is an artist-comedian, she’s really, really creative and super dope; Alice Smith, who’s from D.C. and is just a powerhouse, phenomenal, four-octave vocalist; and Estelle, who is an incredible artist and rapper … a British powerhouse,” Bond said.
Saturday night brings the “After Dark” show “Black Men Rock” at Studio K at 9:30 p.m.
“We’re celebrating the contributions of male music artists,” Bond said. “One is the indie-rock artist, Bazaar Royale, who also happens to be my husband, but he’s been a rock-hip-hop artist signed to DMX for a long time and is continuing to do his whole ghetto-metal movement. We also have hip-hop luminaries, the legendary group Dead Prez headlining that stage.”
Finally, Sunday moves to The REACH for the “BGR! Fest Film Forum: A Soul Sunday Movie Matinee” with a free Q&A and screening of “Giving Hope: The Ni’Cola Mitchell Story.”
“It’s a story about her life as an author and inspirational speaker who, after experiencing sexual violence as a young girl, founded this organization dedicated to helping other at-risk girls,” Bond said. “We’re doing a talkback with the cast and creators: Ni’Cola will be there, Tatyana Ali will be there, the director will be there, a great way to wind down your Sunday.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes 10 years of 'Maryland Farm & Harvest' (Part 1) For a decade, “Maryland Farm & Harvest” has been a staple of Maryland Public Television.
On Tuesday, it airs a special 10th anniversary episode for its season finale at 7 p.m. on MPT.
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“It really is about paying tribute to not only the farmers and our farming community but to the folks here at MPT who have brought this series to viewers over the past decade,” Series Producer Robert Ferrier told WTOP. “Host Joanne [Clendining], Al Spoler and past show producers get together to talk about their favorite moments. … A stroll down memory lane.”
A decade ago, the Maryland Department of Agriculture approached the show’s creator Michael English about creating a new nonfiction series that would spotlight local farmers.
“In the beginning, no one really knew how the show would go,” Ferrier said. “People were like, ‘Are people really going to find corn growing interesting?’ But I think the show’s creator and early producers realized that it’s not about the crops … it’s about the lives, it’s about telling the stories of the people who are doing this — and that’s what resonated with viewers.”
More than 15 million viewers have watched the 127 episodes since its fall 2013 debut.
“If this series does anything at all, it’s to make people aware of where their food comes from,” Ferrier said. “When they drive past those bucolic farm fields, amber waves of grain, if you will, a lot of people have no idea what goes on the other side of that field. This show pulls back the curtain on the world of agriculture and lets people in on these hardworking people.”
Indeed, it’s backbreaking work starting well before dawn and lasting well after dusk.
“I’m a television producer; I could never be a farmer, are you kidding me?” Ferrier said. “They are the hardest working people, dedicated 24/7, 365 days a year. They never stop because the work doesn’t stop. I just have mad respect for these folks and anything I can do to turn a spotlight on them and allow their stories out there … it’s just an honor for me to do that.”
The series has visited over 400 farms, fisheries, wineries and other agriculture-related locations during its 10 seasons, covering all 23 Maryland counties plus Baltimore and D.C.
“It’s important to give viewers a cross-section of the state,” Ferrier said. “We’ve done 118 stories on the Eastern Shore, over 50 in Western Maryland, the same in Southern Maryland. … 14 stories in Prince George’s County, 21 stories in Montgomery County … Our bread basket — Washington, Frederick, Carroll counties — you can’t throw a stone and not hit a farm.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Smithsonian movie props (Part 1) Oscar week is upon us with the 95th Academy Awards airing on Sunday night.
You can celebrate locally with props from Oscar-winning movies at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History as part of the new exhibit “Entertainment Nation,” which opened in December on the third floor and will rotate items for at least 20 years.
“It is the museum’s first permanent exhibit that’s dedicated to the history of entertainment, music and sports,” Curator Ryan Lintelman told WTOP. “These things are part of the nation’s history. They’re not separate from political and military events, they actually shape our conversations about what’s happening in the world and our understanding of ourselves.”
The nearly 200 objects include Dorothy’s sparkling ruby slippers from the classic MGM musical “The Wizard of Oz” (1939). The film was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, winning two for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “Over the Rainbow,” which was voted the greatest movie song of all time by the American Film Institute.
“One of the things that people request the most are the ruby slippers,” Lintelman said. “The pair that we have is one of four that are known to have survived production of the film. … This is one of the pairs of slippers worn by Judy Garland in the making of the film. They are the Holy Grail of movie props; the most coveted movie props; the most famous pair of shoes.”
The exhibit also includes Sylvester Stallone’s signature boxing robe from “Rocky” (1976), which not only topped the year’s box office but was also nominated for 10 Oscars, winning three prizes for Best Picture, Best Directing and Best Film Editing. The film’s pop-culture legacy endures as the ninth installment “Creed III” just topped the box office this weekend.
“This is the original Italian Stallion robe worn by Stallone in the first ‘Rocky’ film,” Lintelman said. “There’s an ad on there from Shamrock Meats and it’s just so iconic. We’ve got it dressed on a mannequin, so it looks like Rocky is in the room with you. The movie really came out of nowhere to win Best Picture against ‘All the President’s Men,’ ‘Network’ and ‘Taxi Driver.'”
This year’s Oscar nominees include Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”) and James Cameron (“Avatar: The Way of Water”), who both have props in the exhibit. Visitors can see the mosquito-in-amber from Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” (1993), which won three technical Oscars, as well as the egg from Cameron’s “Aliens” (1986), which won two technical Oscars.
“One of the props that has really surprised people when they come into the exhibit so far is the amber with the insect inside from the original ‘Jurassic Park’ where they extract the DNA to create the dinosaurs,” Lintelman said. “We also have this really cool, giant egg from the ‘Alien’ franchise.”
For “Star Wars” fans, the exhibit has the drones you’re looking for with the costumes of R2-D2 and C-3PO from “Return of the Jedi” (1983). The 1977 original won six Oscars for Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound, Film Editing, Visual Effects and Original Score, as well as a Special Achievement Award for “the creation of the alien, creature and robot voices.”
“They are film-used droids, larger than life,” Lintelman said. “When you see them you can’t believe they’re right in front of you, but they’re the costumes worn by the actors who portrayed them. … Those have rarely been on display.”
Other movie items include Irving Berlin’s uniform hat from the wartime musical, “This is the Army” (1943); Bette Davis’ overcoat from the iconic romance, “Now Voyager” (1942); original sketches from the original Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie” (1928); and Jim Henson’s original Kermit puppet from “Sam and Friends” before creating “The Muppets.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Chadwick Stokes at Rams Head in Annapolis (Part 1) Best known as the frontman for the band Dispatch, and other projects like State Radio, Chadwick Stokes performs live at Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland, on Wednesday.
“There’s usually a couple of State Radio tunes, a couple of Dispatch tunes, then the rest are from the solo repertoire,” Stokes told WTOP.
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“I just started working on a rock opera, so we may play a chunk of three new songs in a row because they’re telling a story,” he said. “This is the first time I’m really talking about it to anyone besides my family and bandmates. Breaking news!”
The rock opera doesn’t have a title yet because it’s still in the early stages, but Stokes is toying with calling it “American Refugee,” as in a refugee fleeing U.S. politics.
“I think the rock opera is going to be set in the early 70s,” he said. “Now I’m at a stage where I need to know what part of the story [the songs] are furthering, so it’s a lot of lyrical jockeying.
“My brother and I, who plays in The Pintos, we’ve done some riding of the rails, some freight-train jumping, so that’s where a lot of this rock opera takes place.”
Born in 1976 in Massachusetts, Stokes grew up listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival before discovering grunge music in high school.
“It was a beautiful age to witness this new feeling,” he said. “I grew up on a small farm in a very small town. To be a sophomore and have everything land with Nirvana and Pearl Jam … it was an amazing time to feel like we had music of our own.”
Stokes formed the band Dispatch in 1996 and they released their debut album “Silent Steeples” in 1996. But it was their second album “Bang Bang” (1997) that cemented their legacy.
The song “The General” features the catchy refrain “Take a shower and shine your shoes” amid the pacifist anti-war message of “I have seen the others and I have discovered that this fight is not worth fighting.”
“I was always fascinated by war, the idea of the draft and young men and women going to do the bidding of some person who was in their safe mansion,” Stokes said. “It’s always about humanizing war and how absurd it is to be shooting or trying to kill someone you don’t know or haven’t met who’s doing the same thing you’re doing, just following orders for [your] country.”
It was the opposite of a sophomore slump as the album also featured the romantic song “Out Loud” with the memorable line, “You know I’d be proud if you’d call my name out loud.”
“I was in Zimbabwe when I wrote it actually,” Stokes said. “Right after high school, I took a gap year and I was thinking about a girl I had a crush on many thousands of miles away. I had a lot of time in Zimbabwe to wander around with my guitar — that song just came out of that.”
The band continued to evolve across their third album “Four-Day Trials” (1999), their fourth album “Who Are We Living For?” (2000) and fifth album “Circles Around the Sun” (2012). After a brief hiatus, the band reunited for their sixth album, “America, Location 12” (2017), featuring songs like “Only the Wild Ones,” “Skin the Rabbit” and “Painted Yellow Lines.”
“We were recording that up in Stinson Beach, just north of San Francisco,” Stokes said. “There was a missile silo that we discovered … they’re almost covered with dirt right on the water. These hills that you think they’re regular hills, but you see this big iron door and you can kind of walk inside some of them. On the inside of one of those was written, ‘Location 12.'”
While continuing to record albums with Dispatch, Stokes also records with his other band State Radio, which has toured with the likes of Dave Matthews Band and, for a more political bend, Rage Against the Machine.
“When there’s a big election coming up, or the sh*t was so crazy with Trump — he was such a buffoon — it was like ‘what can I do?’ I’m like, ‘Enough of this other stuff, let’s get to it!'” Stokes said.
“I have a batch of songs for a new State Radio record. I can either do that or the rock opera. So there’s a bit of juggling going on, but it’s what the songs are telling me.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Shrinking' on Apple TV+ Are you looking for a great new comedy to watch while waiting for “Ted Lasso” to return?
The Apple TV+ folks have done it again with “Shrinking,” which drops episode seven on Friday.
When I first heard the title, I thought it was a “Seinfeld” reference like George Costanza shouting, “I was in the pool!” Turns out, it’s not “shrinkage,” it’s “Shrinking,” as in going to see a therapist “shrink” like Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos,” only funnier and without the whacks.
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The story follows a widowed therapist, Jimmy Laird, played by Jason Segal, grieving the death of his wife and raising a teenage daughter. With nothing left to lose, he shatters the standard ethical barriers between doctor and patient by telling them what he really thinks and giving them outside-the-box advice on how to fix their own lives, even though he still hasn’t fixed his.
Segal might be the most underrated comedy force of the past 15 years, with “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (2008), “I Love You, Man” (2009) and “The Five-Year Engagement” (2012). His fans will love his maturing take here, grieving his wife like Ricky Gervais in “After Life,” while raising a teenage daughter Alice, played by Lukita Maxwell, and giving stunning advice to his patients.
While we already knew Segal’s comedic chops, the dry humor of Harrison Ford is a revelation as Jimmy’s boss, Dr. Paul Rhoades. When Ford says, “Get out of here,” Segal replies, “This is my office,” to which Ford quips, “That took you longer than it should’ve.” We’ve seen flashes of humor in Han Solo and Indiana Jones, but who knew that Richard Kimball or Jack Ryan was this funny?
The ensemble cast around them is equally fantastic, from Jessica Williams (“The Daily Show”) as fellow therapist Gabby with a giant water bottle, to Luke Tennie (“Players”) as Jimmy’s patient Sean dealing with anger management from military PTSD. His one friend is Jimmy’s daughter Alice, both are cynical about the world.
In Jimmy’s absence, Alice has practically been raised by her neighbor Liz, warmly played by Christa Miller (“The Drew Carey Show”), who’s always ready with a sarcastic quip and a glass of wine. Her goofy husband Derek is played by Ted McGinley (“Married … with Children”), who greets a neighbor in the driveway for an exchange that is laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Still, the show-stealer is Michael Urie (“Ugly Betty”), who visited WTOP in 2018. It’s great seeing Urie’s star rise from his Netflix holiday flick “Single All the Way” to his role as Jimmy’s rambunctious lawyer Brian, who pulls a “Banshees of Inisherin” to ask why Jimmy is avoiding his toxic positivity, while kicking the can on proposing to boyfriend Charlie, played by Devin Kawaoka.
There’s a reason folks are comparing it to “Ted Lasso,” whose creator Bill Lawrence and actor Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent) co-created “Shrinking” alongside Segal. That’s a trio of hilarity as the first six episodes are consistently funny with plenty of pathos for complex characters. Realizing that episode seven dropped Friday is like a present arriving at the end of every week.
When “Ted Lasso” returns for season three on March 15, we’ll have two weeks of overlap where we can watch “Ted Lasso” on Wednesdays and “Shrinking” on Fridays. The latter finishes its 10-episode first season on March 24, after which we’ll shift to Coach Ted to carry us into the spring.
Thank you Apple TV+ for doing the damned thing and making us laugh, cry and care.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley referees 'Creed III' vs. 'Rocky III' The “Rocky” franchise is still slugging away as it enters its action-packed ninth installment.
“Creed III” is sure to win the weekend box-office title as it hits movie theaters on Friday.
How will “Creed III” compare to “Rocky III?” It’s time for boxing’s “tale of the tape.”
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The Star DirectorNot only did Sylvester Stallone write the screenplay for “Rocky III” (1982) as he had in the two previous pictures, Sly also directed himself again. He previously helmed “Rocky II” (1979), inheriting the director’s chair from John G. Avildsen, who won the Best Director Oscar for the original “Rocky” (1976) before spending the early ’80s shooting “The Karate Kid” (1984).
Similarly, Michael B. Jordan directs himself in “Creed III,” taking the reign from Steven Caple Jr. of “Creed II” (2018). They both stand in the shadow of Ryan Coogler, who directed the original “Creed” (2015) before leaving to make “Black Panther” (2018). You can bet Jordan has been taking notes from Coogler since their masterful debut “Fruitvale Station” (2013).
The Opponent“Rocky III” featured one of the Italian Stallion’s most ferocious opponents in Clubber Lang, who was a hungry brawler at a time when Rocky had lost his edge. Lang was played by the iconic Mr. T (“I pity the fool”), who soon starred in NBC’s “The A-Team” (1983-1987) and teamed with Hulk Hogan (a.k.a. Thunderlips in “Rocky III”) at the first “WrestleMania” (1984).
Similarly, Jonathan Majors (“Lovecraft Country”) now stars as the hungry new opponent Damian “Dame” Anderson, a former boxing prodigy and childhood friend of Adonis before serving a long prison sentence. “You think you’re mad? Try spending half of your life in a cell watching somebody else live your life,” Damian tells Adonis. “I’m coming for everything!”
The TrainerAfter coaching the underdog in the first two fights against Apollo Creed, Rocky’s trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith) realized that Balboa had gotten too comfortable: “The worst thing happened to you that could happen to any fighter: you got civilized.” When Mickey died of a heart attack after being shoved by Lang, Rocky bawled like a baby in the locker room.
Now, Adonis has to find a way to win without Rocky, who sadly disappears from “Creed III” without much explanation. It’s hard to imagine a “Rocky” flick without Rocky, but Stallone decided not to return due to creative differences. Instead, Adonis must rely on cornerman Little Duke (Wood Harris) and the spirit of his father, who also trained Rocky in “Rocky III.”
The Love StoryThe secret weapon of this franchise is always its love story. The 1976 original saw Rocky and Adrian (Talia Shire) fall in love, ice skating before the film’s final words: “I love you!” They got married in “Rocky II” (1979), while Rocky prayed at Adrian’s side during a childbirth-induced coma. In “Rocky III,” Rocky defended her honor after Lang’s insults at a Philly statue unveiling.
The “Creed” trilogy smartly infused romance into its storyline as well, casting Tessa Thompson (“Passing”) as Bianca. Rather than a quiet pet-shop worker, Bianca moonlights as a DJ and is in many ways a stronger character than the shy Adrian. In “Creed II,” they gave birth to a daughter, Amara Creed, who should be the next character to get her own reboot trilogy.
The SoundtrackFinally,” Rocky III” introduced the hit song “Eye of the Tiger” by the Chicago band Survivor. The guitar-shredding tune transcended just a movie soundtrack to become a massive radio hit that actually topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In many ways, it became synonymous with the franchise, rivaling Bill Conti’s Oscar-nominated tune “Gonna Fly Now” from the original.
“Creed III” drops “Sinner & Saint” by hip-hop artist Tommee Profitt, featuring Beacon Light & Moiba Mustapha. Fun fact: There was a real British boxer named Tommy Proffitt who fought in the bantamweight division at the 1948 Olympic Games. The song goes hard, ramping up to an inspirational gear, but I doubt it’ll come to symbolize the franchise like “Eye of the Tiger.”
That’s the tale of the tape! Which “three-quel” lands the knockout?
Let me know your favorite by tweeting me.
Will this be the final chapter of Jordan’s “Rocky” reboot trilogy?
As Apollo said in the original Best Picture winner: “Creed in 3.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes NAACP Image Literary Award winner in D.C. (Part 1) The 54th annual NAACP Image Awards were held last week, and among the big winners was a Memphis-born but D.C.-based author and creative writing professor at American University.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez won an NAACP Image Literary Award for her novel “Take My Hand,” her first win after a previous nomination for her 2011 novel “Wench.” BET only televises eight categories, so her literature category was revealed in a virtual ceremony earlier in the week.
“At the time, I was on a flight, and I thought I could get Wi-Fi on the flight, but I couldn’t — I could only text message,” Perkins-Valdez told WTOP. “All of my friends and family started texting me saying, ‘You won!’ I thought it was a joke, but then I realized it was real, so as soon as I landed, I immediately connected to the Wi-Fi to see the announcement myself!”
This cover image released by Berkley shows “Take My Hand” by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. (Berkley via AP)The novel is based on the tragic true story of Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Relf, two sisters in Montgomery, Alabama, who were sterilized by a federally-funded family-planning clinic.
“The sisters, at age 12 and 14, were sterilized without the family’s consent,” Perkins-Valdez said. “The nurses came to their house on a June morning in 1973 and did not explain to their parents, who were both illiterate, why they were taking them. They thought they were taking them for birth control, but they took them to the hospital and permanently sterilized them.”
In the novel, the story follows the fictional Civil Townsend, who is fresh out of nursing school and works at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic with the Relf sisters as her patients.
“I used this novel as a way to ask and answer my own questions about how did we as a society and we as individuals allow this to happen and how did the nurses live with themselves in the aftermath of that?” Perkins-Valdez said. “This happened to tens of thousands of women, primarily poor women of color, but also to poor white women all over the country.”
As we spoke on Wednesday, Perkins-Valdez was actually visiting Montgomery, Alabama, to honor the Relf sisters, who are both still alive and still live together as best friends.
“The mayor of Montgomery issued a proclamation on their behalf — and they were delighted,” Perkins-Valdez said. “My call to action to the readers today is that these women have never received a presidential apology. My hope is that we can all raise our voices to the rooftops to demand that the federal government and the president deliver a presidential apology.”
Her co-winner this year is Viola Davis for her autobiography, “Finding Me.”
“If anyone knows Viola, I’d love to talk to her about adapting the book,” Perkins-Valdez said.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes NAACP Image Literary Award winner in D.C. (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with WWE superstar Gunther (Part 1) Gunther is the longest-running reigning WWE Intercontinental Champion of the 21st century.
You can witness him on Friday on “WWE SmackDown” at Capital One Arena in D.C.
Last week, the Scottish Warrior Drew McIntyre appeared to challenge Gunther to a title match at WrestleMania, but Gunther merely shrugged it off by saying, “Get in line.”
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“I’m not losing my thoughts on that,” Gunther told WTOP. “Let’s see what happens.”
This week’s “SmackDown” will also feature a preview of the WrestleMania event between No. 1 contender Cody Rhodes and undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns.
Rhodes earned the spot by entering the Royal Rumble at No. 30 and winning by eliminating Gunther, who had entered at No. 1 and set a record by lasting 71 minutes and 25 seconds.
“That’s the way it goes,” Gunther said. “You can make yourself a legend by going from No. one until the end, but there’s somebody joining that match at No. 30 an hour later. … Still, it was a special night for me, having the end bit in the ring with Cody. I think Cody’s an ideal opponent for me for the future, so it was good that we could give them a 7-or-8-minute teaser.”
It’s not who “goes over” by winning, it’s who “gets over” with the fans — and Gunther is on fire as the leader of the faction “Imperium.” Featuring Ludwig Kaiser of Germany and Giovanni Vinci of Italy, the trio coordinates a militaristic posture with arms behind their backs.
“Ludwig and I have been in the ring together for over 10 years,” Gunther said. “Ludwig’s father Axel Dieter was a popular wrestler in Germany. He’s passed away, but he was popular in the ’70s and ’80s. … My parents used to watch Ludwig’s father wrestle when they were young in Vienna. He’d always raise his glass and say, ‘The mat is sacred.’ We were inspired by that.”
Born in 1987 in Vienna, Austria, Walter Hahn grew up a long-distance fan of the WWF.
“In the mid-90s, WWF was very popular in the German-speaking countries,” he said. “Bret Hart was a pop-culture superstar in Germany. Everybody knew him, so I was able to watch like VHS tapes and stuff like that. Also, when I was a kid, the tournaments in Vienna would still be going on, so my parents would take me there to watch it live.”
He made his professional wrestling debut in Germany’s Westside Xtreme Wrestling, also known as wXw, in 2007 under the name of Walter. Gunther signed with WWE in 2019, enjoyed an 870-day reign as NXT UK Champion, and then joined the main NXT roster in 2002. He made his “SmackDown” debut in April 2022, and just two months later, defeated Ricochet to become the Intercontinental Champion.
“That’s when the work starts,” Gunther said. “It’s not like something that you can rest on. For me, it was clear the moment I won the Intercontinental Championship, it was like, ‘OK, now it’s on. Now you have to make something out of this. It’s on you now.’ I enjoy those situations when there’s pressure or expectations on me. That’s the challenge to fulfill or surpass that.”
His most physical match was against Sheamus at WWE’s Clash at the Castle event in September in Wales.
“Over there, it’s a fantastic atmosphere,” said Gunther. “It’s really influenced by the football or soccer culture, their chants. … It has that sports competition feel. The match itself was enjoyable. That’s the thing with Sheamus, he’s a very physical wrestler as well, he has a lot of energy and that guy doesn’t stay down. He won’t stop coming back at you. That was intense.”
He’s also defended his title against Shinsuke Nakamura, Rey Mysterio and Braun Strowman, breaking Shelton Benjamin’s record for the longest Intercontinental reign of the 21st century. Long reigns are all the rage these days, with Roman Reigns being the longest WWE Universal champ of the past three decades, while The Usos are the longest WWE Tag Team champions ever.
“If I make time to follow something it’s definitely The Bloodline,” Gunther said. “It’s one of the best storylines the company has ever produced. It’s entertaining to watch because of the happenings, the drama. Everyone’s had a best friend, everyone’s been betrayed. Having Sami [Zayn] as the outcast underdog, it’s a great story. I’m excited to see how it’s going to end.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with WWE superstar Gunther (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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Zana Gankhuyag and Irinka Kavsadze play “Beauty and the Beast” at Synetic Theater. (Courtesy Synetic Theater) toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Beauty and the Beast' at Synetic Theater (Part 1) If you’ve never seen Jean Cocteau’s French fantasy film “La Belle et la Bête” (1946), it’s fascinating to track the differences from the 1991 Disney animated version, from diamond teardrops to magical gloves, to a different ending for the villain (named Avenant, not Gaston).
That’s the uniquely magical spirit of the original 1740 fairy tale and Synetic Theater’s new staging of “Beauty and the Beast” in Crystal City, Virginia, from March 3 through April 2.
“Our production of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is not the Disney version, it’s based more on the French novel ‘La Belle et la Bête,'” Lead Actress Irinka Kavsadze told WTOP. “It is darker, it is more mysterious and it is more gothic … yes there is love in this story obviously, but to me it is all about self-discovery and finding your strength.”
Kavsadze plays Belle, a poor, provincial French girl who selflessly trades places with her father (Irakli Kavsadze) to become a prisoner in the castle of the Beast (Zana Gankhuyag), who is actually a prince transformed into a monster. Can the Beast win Belle’s love to reverse this curse? Or will the narcissistic suitor Avenant (Jacob Thompson) spoil their romance?
“Yes, there are (Disney) similarities that Belle goes in place of her father, goes to stay with the Beast and they do find love, but it is a darker version, there is a twist in our version as well, and there are some surprises that I don’t want to give away beforehand,” Kavsadze said.
Not only does Gankhuyag play the Beast, he also doubles as the show’s scenic designer. How cool is that? Imagine performing on stage in front of the very visuals that you created!
“Zana actually created the shadow puppetry,” Kavsadze said. “These shadows are bringing previous history forth or a journey that a character goes through … there are forests, castles, creatures, roses, flowers and gardens. It’s really everything, the symbolic rose, the transformation of the Beast. … It’s a whole production of its own behind that screen!”
In addition to the shadows, there are tactile elements like the intricate costumes.
“The horns, the makeup, there’s a lot of fur, kind of like hooves as well to have this animalistic style that really does enhance the movement,” Kavsadze said. “It’s kind of like an animal-human hybrid the way that they move, especially with Zana’s plasticity in his movement, it’s so beautiful. The costume, the straps and the fur, it’s quite terrifying but also really beautiful.”
Born in the Republic of Georgia — the same home of Synetic Theater founders Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili — Kavsadze moved to the Washington D.C. area when her father got a job at Synetic, where he remains the sound designer for various productions.
“The thing that really connected me to Belle is her relationship to her father and her family, that’s something that’s very important to me personally,” Kavsadze said. “For me, it is that constant self-discovery and finding that inner strength and doing it all for your family.”
Now, the team at Synetic Theater is her family — and has been for nearly two decades.
“It is such a magical production, honestly, from beginning to end,” Kavsadze said. “I encourage all of you to come see it and join us for a truly unforgettable evening.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Beauty and the Beast' at Synetic Theater (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews March entertainment (Part 1) We all know the old March weather idiom of “in like a lion, out like a lamb.”
Warmer weather means more entertainment options around the D.C. area.
Mark your calendar with our March Entertainment Guide below:
March Entertainment Guide
March 1: “The Mandalorian” Season 3 hits Disney+
March 1: Journey at Capital One Arena
March 1: Vanessa Carlton at Rams Head Annapolis
March 1: Joni Mitchell receives Gershwin Prize at DAR Constitution Hall
March 1-5: “Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
March 1-5: “Ride the Cyclone” at Arena Stage
March 1-12: “Incognito” at Constellation Theatre
March 1-15: D.C. Independent Film Forum at E Street Cinema
March 1-19: “Into the Woods” at Kennedy Center
March 1-April 2: “King Lear” at Shakespeare Theatre
March 1-April 2: “The High Ground” at Arena Stage
March 1-April 2: “Selling Kabul” at Signature Theatre
March 1-April 9: “Clyde’s” at Studio Theatre
March 2: The Weight Band at The Hamilton
March 2: Vanessa Carlton at The Birchmere
March 2: Dreamcatcher at MGM National Harbor
March 2-4: Chaunte Wayans at DC Comedy Loft
March 2-4: Tedeschi Trucks Band at Warner Theatre
March 2-5: Tracy Morgan at the DC Improv
March 3: “Creed III” hits movie theaters
March 3: GZA at Baltimore Soundstage
March 3: WWE “Smackdown” at Capital One Arena
March 3-April 2: “Beauty and the Beast” at Synetic Theater
March 4: Chris Rock livestream on Netflix filmed at Hippodrome
March 7: John Lodge of The Moody Blues at Rams Head Annapolis
March 7: “The Simon & Garfunkel Story” at Strathmore
March 7-April 9: “Pacific Overtures” at Signature Theatre
March 8: Chadwick Stokes of Dispatch at Rams Head Annapolis
March 8-9: Lyle Lovett at The Birchmere
March 9: Elvis Costello at Warner Theatre
March 9-11: Black Girls Rock Fest at Kennedy Center
March 9-11: Jay Mohr at DC Comedy Loft
March 10: Patti LaBelle at The Hall at Maryland Live
March 10: Margaret Cho at Warner Theatre
March 10: Betty Who at The Anthem
March 10: Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony at The Fillmore Silver Spring
March 10: “Champions” hits movie theaters
March 10: Swingers Mini-Golf opens in Navy Yard
March 10: NSO “In Your Neighborhood” series returns
March 10-11: Stephanie Mills at The Birchmere
March 11: Air Supply at The Hall at Maryland Live
March 11: Kelli O’Hara at Wolf Trap
March 11: Paula Poundstone at Rams Head Annapolis
March 11-12: Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington’s “Whitney” at Lincoln Theatre
March 11-25: Washington National Opera’s “Blue” at Kennedy Center
March 12: Academy Awards a.k.a. the Oscars
March 14: J Boog at Howard Theatre
March 14-19: “To Kill a Mockingbird” at The Hippodrome
March 14-26: “Jagged Little Pill” at National Theatre
March 15: “Ted Lasso” Season 3 hits Apple TV+
March 15: Stephen Marley at The Fillmore Silver Spring
March 15: Regina Spektor at Warner Theatre
March 15: Alt-J at Rams Head Baltimore
March 15-May 13: “Shout Sister Shout” at Ford’s Theatre
March 16: New Edition at Capital One Arena
March 16-17: The Washington Ballet’s Professional Training Winter Showcase
March 16-26: D.C. Environmental Film Festival
March 17: Static-X at Baltimore Soundstage
March 17: “The Boston Strangler” hits Hulu
March 17: “The Magician’s Elephant” hits Netflix
March 17: EU featuring Sugar Bear at The Fillmore Silver Spring
March 17-19: Folger presents “Shakespeare in Step & Song”
March 18: Tom Rush at The Birchmere
March 18: Kix at State Theatre
March 18: Gracie Abrams at Howard Theatre
March 19: Yo La Tengo at 9:30 Club
March 19: The Sugarhill Gang & Rob Base at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
March 19: Washington Area Theatre Community Honors at The Birchmere
March 19: Adam Sandler receives Mark Twain Prize at Kennedy Center
March 20: The English Beat at The Birchmere
March 20-April 16: National Cherry Blossom Festival
March 22: “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.” at Capital One Hall
March 23: “Blippi: Wonderful World Tour” at EagleBank Arena
March 23-26: Annapolis Film Festival
March 23-24: Sara Evans at Wolf Trap
March 24: “John Wick 4” hits movie theaters
March 24: The Manhattan Transfer at Strathmore
March 24: Virginia National Ballet’s “Aladdin” at Capital One Hall
March 24-April 23: “Angels in America” at Arena Stage
March 24-June 11: “Grease” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
March 25: Ashanti & Ja Rule at Capital One Arena
March 25: “Sounds of the DMV: Hip-Hop Showcase” at Kennedy Center
March 25: Bill Bellamy at MGM National Harbor
March 25: Vance Joy at The Anthem
March 25-26: Ari Lennox at The Fillmore Silver Spring
March 25-April 7: “Push the Button” at Keegan Theatre
March 25-April 8: “Singin’ in the Rain” by Arlington Players
March 26: Tony Woods at the DC Improv
March 26: “Yellowjackets” Season 2 hits Showtime
March 26: “Succession” Season 4 hits HBO
March 26: CNN airs Mark Twain Prize for Adam Sandler
March 27: Bruce Springsteen at Capital One Arena
March 28: Hazel Mitchell Bell at Blues Alley
March 28-29: Ari Lennox at Howard Theatre
March 28-April 16: “The Jungle” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
March 28-May 7: National Capital New Play Festival at Round House Theatre
March 30: Sister Hazel at State Theatre
March 30: Sophie B. Hawkins at Rams Head Annapolis
March 30-April 23: “Unseen” by Mosaic Theatre at Atlas Performing Arts Center
March 31: Sundance champ “A Thousand and One” hits movie theaters
March 31: The Mavericks at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
March 31: PBS airs Gershwin Prize for Joni Mitchell
March 31-April 1: Midori plays Korngold at Kennedy Center
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews March entertainment (Part 2) Source
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the D.C. Independent Film Forum (Part 1) The 24th annual D.C. Independent Film Forum returns to the nation’s capital this week.
Over 70 filmmakers will visit Landmark E Street Cinema from Wednesday to Sunday.
“It started in 1999 to give a voice to independent filmmakers at a time when it was hard for them to get noticed; it’s still quite hard, so here we are,” Executive Director Deirdre Evans Pritchard told WTOP. “We just had our high school film festival, we are teaching animation nowadays, so our interest is in helping the general public see what goes on behind the films.”
It all kicks off Wednesday, with the opening night screening of “Divine Instinct” by Maryland filmmaker James Gossard.
“He’s made a film that’s very spiritual and artistic about taking time and thinking about life,” Pritchard said. “It’s a documentary about a sculptor named Gary Spinosa, who makes fantastic work and has sort of retreated into the woods to live his life.”
Thursday brings “The Smoke Master” by Brazilian directors Andre Sigwalt and Augusto Soares. “That is a wild ride screening both Thursday and Friday of kung-fu with the Chinese mafia thrown in and the argument that you must be high to be good at kung-fu,” Pritchard said.
Next, you can enjoy Fright night frights with a slate of scary flicks, along with Ellie Foumbi’s “Our Father, the Devil,” which is simultaneously competing this weekend at the Indie Spirit Awards for Best Feature against “Bones and All,” “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” “Tar” and Women Talking.”
“This is a thriller about the issue of child soldiers,” Pritchard said.
Saturday brings a variety of animated films, as well as the world premiere of “City of Love” directed by Èric Boadella.
“It’s a film about the difficulties of readjusting to society when things have gone really wrong in life,” Pritchard said. “It’s a riff on the ride-share culture as well. I like to think of it as having a ‘Fight Club’ feel to it, slightly behind the scenes of life.”
It all wraps Sunday with Paul Daisuke Goodman’s “No No Girl” about a Japanese-American family burying a big secret, and Michael Rainin’s “Run Raven Run” about “Gypsy music in Romania. It follows a lot of the historical background and some of the difficult treatment that gypsies have been through, their inspiring music and how it’s moved into popular culture.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the D.C. Independent Film Forum (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Black Broadway' on PBS (Part 1) Last fall, a group of Black Broadway stars gathered for a concert at Howard University.
On Tuesday, “Black Broadway: A Proud History, A Limitless Future” airs at 8 p.m. on PBS.
“The idea is to celebrate Black Broadway,” D.C. native Nova Payton told WTOP. “All of the songs were from shows performed by legendary Black artists on Broadway. … We had a huge cast of phenomenal people who came together for one night only to perform this spectacular show. … Please join the ‘Black Broadway’ celebration. You are not going to want to miss this.”
Payton will perform “I’m Here” from “The Color Purple,” in which she played Celie last year at Signature Theatre, before closing the concert with “I’m Not Going” from “Dreamgirls.”
The set also includes Corbin Bleu’s “Make Them Hear You” from “Ragtime,” Nikki Renée Daniels’ “Being Alive” from “Company” and “Come Rain Or Come Shine” from “St. Louis Woman,” Tiffany Mann’s “Fools Fall In Love” from “Smokey Joe’s Café” and “I Got Love” from “Purlie,” and Stephanie Mills’ “Home” from “The Wiz,” which inspired Payton as a kid.
“She was the original Dorothy on Broadway, and when the national tour came through D.C. at Warner Theatre, that’s when I knew that I wanted to do musical theater,” Payton said.
You’ll also see Norm Lewis’ “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’” from “Porgy & Bess” and “Waiting For Life” from “Once On This Island,” John Manzari’s “Low Down Blues” from “Shuffle Along,” Leah Flynn’s “Summertime” from “Porgy & Bess,” Amber Iman’s “Learn To Love” from “Goddess,” Sydney James Harcourt’s “Stan’ Up An’ Fight” from “Carmen Jones,” and Peppermint’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”
They’re all joined by student choirs from Howard University and Morgan State University.
“I’m honored to be on the faculty at Howard University right now, so a lot of my babies in the musical theater department auditioned,” Payton said. “It was a huge thing for them. They were so excited. I know I would have been excited at that age to live my dream singing and working with such amazing artists. Who wouldn’t want to perform with an orchestra?”
That’s right, it’s all backed by the American Pops Orchestra under Music Director Luke Frazier, who passes the baton to guest conductors, including Dr. Eric Conway (Morgan State University), Brittany Chanell Johnson (Howard University), Sean Mayes (Broadway’s “Hadestown” and “Michael Jackson: the Musical”) and Dr. Eric Poole (Howard University).
The broadcast will also feature interviews with Tony-winning actor Brian Stokes Mitchell and Broadway veterans E. Clayton Cornelious, Allyson Tucker and Ephraim Sykes.
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Black Broadway' on PBS (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley remembers Mr. Rogers and the documentary 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Forget “Make America Great Again.” How about we make America kind? What if we dial back the shouting, the bullying and the name-calling to embrace our inner goodness and truly become our brother’s keeper with the simple loving question: “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
That was the wish of Fred Rogers, who died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on this day 20 years ago on Feb. 27, 2003, at age 74. His legacy lives on as a father figure tossing his loafer from hand to hand, casually zipping up his sweater and inviting us into his home, always just a trolley away from the world of make believe on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” (1968-2001).
However, beneath the famous aw-shucks demeanor — hilariously spoofed by Eddie Murphy on “Saturday Night Live” — there was far more depth to Fred Rogers, as revealed in the tear-jerking documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018) currently streaming on Netflix.
“There’s been a remarkable interest in Fred and his legacy, in particular his ability to craft over 30 years a message that unified Americans from all parts of the country,” producer Nicholas Ma told WTOP in 2018. “From the ages of 2 to 6, children would sit in front of his television and understand something profound (about) what it means to be a kind person.”
Directed by Oscar winner Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”), the film follows Rogers from his meek childhood to his pioneering television ideas to his altruistic life philosophy.
“The first thing his widow said was, ‘Please don’t make him out to be a saint,'” Ma said. “He was someone who tried incredibly hard and took the work he did incredibly seriously, but it wasn’t that it was easy and it wasn’t that he was born that way. He said, ‘This is something that’s important — important for me and important for others — so I’m going do it.'”
Ma, who happens to be the son of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, paints Rogers as both a strong father figure to millions and a fragile man pulling inspiration from his own childhood insecurities.
“He was able with this small puppet to bring to the surface the fears that he had as a child,” Ma said. “One of my favorite moments (is) Daniel Tiger talking to Lady Aberlin about feeling like a mistake. … I think that shows the vulnerability he was willing to bring to the show at all times and also the doubt that spurred him to keep doing it for so many years.”
His philosophy was to never talk down to kids, but rather treating them with mutual respect and the assumption that they’re mature enough to handle any subject matter.
“Fred talked about all sorts of issues, from Bobby Kennedy’s assassination to divorce, anything a child might encounter in life,” Ma said. “He was one of the first people on television to feature children with special needs. … Fear is at the root of so many ills in this world. He wanted to give children for whom the world can be a scary place the tools to understand.”
Along the way, Rogers represented a cross-section of America that was hard to put in a political box. On the one hand, he was a devout Christian and lifelong Republican. On the other, he was subversively progressive, inviting his gay African-American co-star François Clemmons to wash his feet with him at a time when some swimming pools were segregated.
“He challenged an audience that perhaps had lost their faith to see faith as something that could be a source of strength,” Ma said. “He challenged audiences that perhaps were less inclusive to see inclusion as a core component of what it means to be human. … He was an ordained Presbyterian minister, but he never wanted to preach. He wanted to teach, elevate.”
That elevated conversation provides the film’s most inspiring moment, when Rogers testifies before Congress about the importance of children’s programming to save funding for PBS. It was a mission that he continued into his final years, televising messages of hope after 9/11.
“He would see hope in the future, but he would also see a responsibility on each of us, not just on our leaders, to bring the best of who we are to the world,” Ma said. “He put it so lovely in his commencement speech at Dartmouth at the end of his life, in which he asked us to thank those people who have encouraged us to be the best within us.”
It’s a message built into the fictional address of Mister Rogers’ home, “143,” which he chose because each digit represents the number of letters in each of the words “I love you.”
Prepare to shed 143 tears as you revisit this documentary on Netflix.
Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Cocaine Bear' & 'M3GAN' (Part 1) Get ready to pop some popcorn at home — or lather on that butter at the multiplex.
Whether you’re staying in or going out, there’s a double dose of freaky film options this weekend with “Cocaine Bear” in theaters and “M3GAN” streaming Friday on Peacock.
The former is the latest in a long line of creature features, from genuine horror in “Jaws” (1975) to much campier takes in “Snakes on a Plane” (2006) and “Sharknado” (2013).
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In other words, if you ever wanted to see Tony Montana’s booger sugar snorted by Leonardo DiCaprio’s nemesis in “The Revenant” (2015), you might like “Cocaine Bear.”
Directed by Elizabeth Banks, the script by Jimmy Warden is loosely based on a true story in 1985 when drug smugglers dropped a duffle bag of cocaine, which was accidentally consumed by an American black bear as it roamed from Tennessee to Georgia.
In this fictionalized version, a ragtag group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converge to take on the bear, allowing plenty of cheesy zingers from a cast of Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Margo Martindale, Matthew Rhys and the late Ray Liotta in one of his final performances.
Hip-hop star Pusha-T even provides a remix of Melle Mel’s 1983 cocaine tune “White Lines,” which was memorably used in the Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic “Basquiat” (1996).
Unlike that film, “Cocaine Bear” doesn’t pretend to be high art; it’s a goofy B-movie that attempts to juggle horror and comedy. If you want a more realistic survival thriller, check out Idris Elba battling killer lions in “Beast” (2022), which was surprisingly gripping last summer.
Meanwhile, if you’re staying home this weekend, the sci-fi horror flick “M3GAN” makes its streaming premiere on Peacock after a successful box-office run last month, proving that clever horror movies can keep the industry afloat beyond standard superhero tent-poles.
Peacock is a fitting platform for the daughter of former NBC News anchor Brian Williams, but by now, Allison Williams is a household name in her own right after her brilliantly creepy performance as Rose Armitage in Jordan Peele’s masterpiece “Get Out” (2017).
Here, Williams plays Seattle toy company roboticist Gemma, whose niece Cady (Violet McGraw) has been orphaned by a car accident. To help Cady cope, Gemma introduces her to a child-sized A.I. doll named M3GAN (physically portrayed by Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis), which becomes dangerously protective of Cady to the point of murder.
Directed by Gerard Johnstone from a script by Akela Cooper (“Malignant”), the film is well paced, but it’s hard to award originality points in the shadow of Chucky from “Child’s Play” (1988), which still holds up surprisingly well. Even the famous line, “Hi, I’m Chucky, wanna play?” is replicated by M3GAN, who says, “Nice to meet you, Cady. Wanna hang out?”
Either way, the formula still works for freaky fun, especially for teen viewers, who will no doubt dig the Taylor Swift soundtrack song “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” though the scarier tune is M3GAN singing a literal rendition of Sia: “I am titanium!” The end result was so popular that a sequel, “M3GAN 2.0,” is already set to be released on Jan. 17, 2025.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Severance' on Apple TV+ The 29th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards are Sunday night in Los Angeles, where Outstanding TV Drama Series will be a battle between HBO’s “The White Lotus,” Netflix’s “The Crown” and the final seasons of both AMC’s “Better Call Saul” and Netflix’s “Ozark.”
And yet, deep down, I’m rooting for the Apple TV+ series “Severance” to land an upset.
That probably isn’t going to happen — it only won for Main Title Design and Score at the Emmy Awards despite 14 nominations last fall — but I would cheer out loud if it did. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend binge-watching it before Sunday’s SAG Awards.
Created by Dan Erickson, the sci-fi series explores an extreme case of work-life balance. Set in the near future, a biotech corporation, Lumon Industries, uses a special mindwipe procedure to “sever” its employees’ consciousness between work and personal lives. When the workers begin to question their existence, they uncover a web of conspiracy.
Nominated for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series, Adam Scott carries the load as Mark S., who portrays the best character arc of the series. Scott’s quiet demeanor and subtle mannerisms convince us that he’s evolving from a dutiful employee to a skeptical populist who gradually wonders why his best friend, Petey Kilmer (Yul Vazquez), was abruptly fired.
Petey’s replacement, Helly R., is played with unflinching determination by Britt Lower as a cynical new arrival who fights back from the very start when she wakes up on a table and smashes Scott with a speaker. She feels so trapped in the office that she makes multiple heartbreaking attempts to sneak messages outside, begging her real-world self to free her.
Glancing over the cubicles is Zach Cherry, who provides comic relief as Dylan G., a pencil pusher who loves video games and comic books. Best of all is John Turturro as Irving Bailiff, a by-the-book company man who thaws when he develops feelings for upper-floor designer Burt Goodman, played by Christopher Walken with brilliant scenes of longing.
The ensemble’s camaraderie grows amid the daily monotony of staring at numbers on computers like magic-eye puzzles. We have no clue what their clicks do — they could launch drone strikes for all we know — but if they falter, they’re reprimanded in another room, forced to repeat ad-nauseam slogans by Lumon’s cult-like founder, Kier Eagan.
Lead antagonist Patricia Arquette shows a sinister side as boss Harmony Cobel, who lives undercover as Mark’s neighbor, Mrs. Selvig. She recalls Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) with henchman Seth Milchick (Tramel Tillman), security chief Doug Graner (Michael Cumpsty) and wellness counselor Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman).
On the outside of Lumon Industries, Jen Tullock provides exposition as Mark’s pregnant sister Devon, who helps fill in Mark’s tragic backstory. Her husband Ricken Hale (Michael Chernus) is the author of a self-help book that is cheesy in the real world but reads like Karl Marx’s profound “Communist Manifesto” to the enslaved workers kept in captivity.
Mark’s internal monologues while reading his brother-in-law’s smuggled chapters are laugh-out-loud hilarious, a surprising element to the otherwise serious tone of the series. There are several examples of this throughout, namely how the severed workers are called “innies” and “outies” like some sort of belly-button humor amid a cerebral sci-fi thriller.
Thus, it should be no surprise that six episodes are directed by Ben Stiller, who initially read it as a workplace comedy before mining the dramatic elements. Stiller directs the first three episodes with long tracking shots down a maze of hallways, followed by Aoife McArdle directing the middle three episodes and Stiller returning for the final three.
The Season 1 finale will blow you away with the best cliffhanger in recent memory. In fact, it’s a triple cliffhanger of three parallel stories, each of which has us shouting at the screen for the characters to hurry up. When the screen cuts to black, you’ll stand up clapping and immediately Google to see when Season 2 arrives (later this year with release date TBD).
Until then, can we manifest an upset victory at the SAG Awards on Sunday? Probably not. The momentum isn’t there based on previous award shows and current odds makers. Maybe we can perform a “severance” procedure on voters to cast ballots for the Apple series before their other selves realize what happened. Innies vs. outies, baby!
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Into the Woods' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) In 1987, Stephen Sondheim’s original musical was nominated for 10 Tonys, winning three.
Starting Thursday, “Into the Woods” visits Kennedy Center with the cast reprising its Broadway roles, including Stephanie J. Block as The Baker’s Wife, Sebastian Arcelus as The Baker, Montego Glover as The Witch and Gavin Creel as Cinderella’s Prince/Wolf.
“We’re direct from Broadway. Everybody in our cast was a part of the Broadway company,” actor Cole Thompson told WTOP. “When I found out these people were going to be joining us in this cast, I was in disbelief. I have looked up to them for so long, since high school when I first got into musical theater. I have been obsessed with each of these actors!”
The magical story interweaves the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Cinderella) with the story of a childless baker and his wife. A witch promises to lift their curse of infertility if they can find “the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold.”
Thompson plays the rambunctious young Jack, joined by charming bovine puppetry.
“It’s really so much fun because Jack is so childlike and energetic,” Thompson said. “It’s fun to just get up on stage and run around and interact with Milky White, who is Jack’s cow. In this production, it’s this big puppet and it’s always so fun to interact with that.”
Beyond the cow, the scenic design is very minimalistic with the orchestra on stage.
“Our set is stripped down because we started at New York City Encores, a concert series with minimal sets focused on staging, actors and music,” Thompson said. “We have trees that represent the woods scattered around the stage. It’s really one backdrop; we have a moon that comes in and out and a backdrop that can be a bunch of different colors.”
Elevating James Lapine’s book is the iconic score by Sondheim, including such memorable songs as “Giants in the Sky,” “No One Is Alone” and “Children Will Listen.”
“‘Giants in the Sky’ is just one example where so much is being said in such a short amount of time, I feel like I’m spewing words,” Thompson said. “I’ve been listening to this show since I was in middle school, and even now when I’m listening backstage, I still hear new little nuances or instruments in songs I haven’t heard before. His music is so dense!”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Kinky Boots' at Olney Theatre (Part 1) In 2013, the original Broadway production won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
Now, you can enjoy “Kinky Boots” at Olney Theatre Center running through March 26.
“I’m really hoping that people who don’t have queer friends that are part of the LGBTQ community, who don’t have exposure, who look in their hearts and admit they don’t know aabout this community and want to see examples of happy, well-adjusted, successful, healthy straight and gay people on stage together, please come,” Solomon Parker III said.
Written by Harvey Fierstein (book) and Cyndi Lauper (music/lyrics), the story follows Charlie Price (Vincent Kempski), who is trying to save his family’s shoe factory when he meets Lola (Solomon Parker III), a London drag queen in need of a boot repair. Together, they help Charlie’s macho industrial hometown co-exist with Lola’s gender-fluid queens.
“Charlie and Lola go through the same thing, realizing that what plagues them isn’t what the world is putting in front of them today, but what people expected of them in the past,” Parker said. “Charlie and Lola’s relationship is so awesome. You see two people who you think couldn’t be more different connecting because … we deal with the same issues.”
Solomon has big shoes, or kinky boots, to fill after Billy Porter, who originated the role of Lola on Broadway before becoming a TV star on “Pose.” No matter, Solomon is up to the challenge, providing a fresh approach to one of theater’s most electrifying roles.
“Lola is filled with so much energy and sass and gets to command the audience in a way that I don’t think a character since Ben Vereen as Leading Player in ‘Pippin’ has gotten to do,” Parker said. “Billy Porter is an icon … but I’m only 28, so my Lola comes with a younger, more fiery energy. No one can do the moment the way that you do the moment!”
The Olney production is directed by Jason Loewith and choreographed by Tara Jeanne Vallee, paying exciting homage to Jerry Mitchell’s original conveyer-belt staging.
“The staging is fantastic,” Parker said. “We do use the conveyer belts, but we use them differently. … The set looks amazing, dude. The lights are bananas. The lights are insane. If the beats in the songs don’t get you, the lights (will). You’ll be like, ‘These people put a lot of work and time into it.’ … We have moving stairs, everything is choreographed to a T.”
Of course, the main attraction is the dynamite songbook by the legendary Cyndi Lauper.
“Cyndi Lauper’s music style isn’t like any other musical that you can think of,” Parker said. “The genres range from old folk music to fierce funk to amazing disco to awesome ballads. … If you want to hear an insane pop vocal rock performance, you have got to hear Charlie sing ‘Not My Father’s Son,’ you’ve got to hear him sing, ‘Step One.’ The score is so dope.”
Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, Parker graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland and attended Montgomery College before working at Ford’s Theatre in D.C. and Signature Theatre in Virginia, insisting that his hometown is equal to Broadway.
“Broadway is fantastic and is obviously where we live stage artists hope to work one day, but it’s just the real estate that you’re working on,” Parker said. “The people I’ve worked with in this city are the best performers on the planet. … D.C. has the money, D.C. has the resources, D.C. has the talent, D.C. has the stages. We have everything you need here.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Ice Yards at Yards Park (Part 1) Are you craving some winter vibes after our unseasonably warm weather in D. C.?
The ninth annual Ice Yards returns to Yards Park on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
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“The Yards will be transformed into a winter wonderland,” Marketing Director Jill Fredrick told WTOP. “I think the weather is supposed to be cold on Saturday, but if not, they will feel like they’re in a winter wonderland! … It’s going to be a lot of fun and a great cause.”
Located near Nationals Park in the bustling Navy Yard neighborhood, Yards Park will host an array of winter-themed activities, from ice Jenga to live ice carving of ice sculptures.
“There’ll be tons of activities to do,” Fredrick said. “We have a snowboard simulator, we have ax throwing, we have iceless curling, live music, tons of yummy food and winter beverages, and then tons of Instagrammable moments if you like to take pictures.”
Of course, the main event is the Polar Plunge to raise money for Special Olympics D.C.
“We’ll have a pool set up on the boardwalk next to the Anacostia River,” Fredrick said. “We have plungers who come out in costume. We have plungers who come out year after year. … The Polar Plunge has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars because not only do you get proceeds from the ticket sales, but every single plunger has raised funds on their own.”
You can also warm up at several toasty fire pits with snacks from participating restaurants:
- La Famosa
- Due South
- Osteria Morini
- Shilling Canning Company
- Agua 301
- Maxwell Park
- Ice Cream Jubilee
Your complimentary drink ticket can be redeemed for one of the following:
- Trouble Bird — Ice Yards Daiquiri
- Agua 301 — Blood Orange Margarita
- Shilling Canning Company — High Noon
- Due South — Selected Beer/Seltzer
- La Famosa — Spiked Apple Cider
- Osteria Morini — Vin Brule OR Cioccolata Calda
Tickets cost $15 for admission, including a $5 donation to Special Olympics D.C.
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Ice Yards at Yards Park (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Selling Kabul' at Signature Theatre (Part 1) From 2001 to 2021, the War in Afghanistan was the longest war in American history.
The consequences are explored in “Selling Kabul,” opening Tuesday at Signature Theatre.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever watched or read a play that reads so much like a suspense thriller,” Actress Awesta Zarif told WTOP. “You’re on the edge of your seat the whole time. It’s still so intimate, real, heartbreaking and beautiful, but it feels like watching a suspense movie. The dialogue is so sharp and snappy like you’re watching a ping-pong match.”
Set in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2013, the play follows a sister named Afiya (Awesta Zarif), who secretly shelters her translator brother, Taroon (Mazin Akar), from the Taliban while he awaits the much-delayed arrival of a special American visa on the eve of his son’s birth.
“He’s waiting for an SIV, Special Immigrant Visa, granted to American allies,” Zarif said. “There’s a lot of pressure on this evening because I let him know that his wife went into early labor and his son is in the world now. That makes him even more eager to leave, but he can’t because as soon as he leaves the apartment he might be caught by the Taliban.”
A finalist for last year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, the play is written by playwright Sylvia Khoury, who based the story on a real experience she overheard living in New York City.
“She’s actually a doctor who is also a playwright, and her husband is a lawyer who was doing some pro-bono work with somebody in a very similar situation to our character,” Zarif said. “She overheard the Afghan person complaining about being stuck in their sibling’s home … and it kind of inspired this story, so it’s very much based on something real.”
While it’s set in 2013, it could easily be set today after the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, when the world saw horrific images of Afghan refugees clinging to U.S. airplanes pleading to evacuate.
“It’s incredibly apropos,” Zarif said. “There are still so many people who are eligible for the visa, but there’s an 18,000-person backlog. … They were all hoping for a better ending. Everyone believed that this was going to lead to a better future. I don’t think anyone expected for things to turn out how they did, how quickly and drastically it went downhill.”
The immersive production runs 95 minutes without an intermission.
“We are in the sister’s apartment that she shares with her husband, Joey, and the entire thing takes place in their living room,” Zarif said. “Think hyper-realism, we’ve got a real kitchen on stage, we’ve got a real living room, we’ve got a real bedroom in the back. We’re in the ARK Theatre, which is the smaller space at Signature, so it’s incredibly intimate.”
It’s extra special for Zarif and castmate Yousof Sultani, who both hail from Afghanistan.
“I was born in Kabul and I was there until I was about 2,” Zarif said. “I was so excited to see that this play is being done in the DMV area because this is the second-highest Afghan diaspora in the country. … Not to mention, we’re next to D.C. where there are lots of policies being made that can have a very real impact on a lot of new Afghan arrivals.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Selling Kabul' at Signature Theatre (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Incognito' by Constellation Theatre (Part 1) Constellation Theatre is probably the crown jewel of the numerous D.C. performing arts groups that regularly perform at The Source Theatre on 14th Street, Northwest.
For proof, check out Constellation’s newest play, “Incognito” now through March 12.
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“It’s a fascinating, trans-Atlantic mystery that interweaves three stories and 20 characters played by an ensemble of four actors,” Artistic Director Allison Stockman told WTOP. “Nick Payne has written realistic dialogue in about 40 scenes that are very short. … If I had to categorize it, I’d say it’s primarily a drama, but plenty of humor sprinkled throughout.”
The first storyline follows Thomas Harvey, the pathologist at Albert Einstein’s autopsy who stole his brain for scientific research. “Marcus Kyd is playing the scientist,” Stockman said. “He is very charismatic and passionate, which is wonderful because his character winds up being self-deluded. We are still rooting for him because Marcus brings such energy.”
The second storyline follows a seizure-suffering musician who has brain surgery to remove his hippocampi. “He can’t form any more short-term memories, so he spends his whole life waiting for his fiancee to return so they can go on a honeymoon,” Stockman said. “The musician is played by Gerrad Alex Taylor, who is a musician himself. He plays piano.”
The third storyline follows a neuropsychologist in her first relationship with another woman. “That is played by Kari Ginsburg, who brings both so much strength and vulnerability to this brilliant woman who is struggling with a sense of her own identity,” Stockman said.
The play runs 100 minutes with no intermission for a whirlwind experience of versatile actors swapping roles and playing characters aging over the span of 40 years.
“What’s wild is there are no costume changes,” Stockman said. “Nephelie [Andonyadis] has created a beautiful scenic design, a back wall painted with starlings, these birds that are a theme in the play with paper birds. … On the silver floor are four translucent boxes that can light up in different colors that help us tell changes in location and mood.”
In the end, the title “Incognito” speaks to the deep mysteries of the human brain.
“It’s ultimately about the unknown and how everything in life is ephemeral and can’t be fully understood because our thoughts are changing as our synapses fire away. It’s an ever-shifting landscape that makes it difficult for us to truly know who we are.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Incognito' by Constellation Theatre (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Vanessa Carlton in Annapolis & Alexandria (Part 1) Her piano-driven pop single “A Thousand Miles” instantly made her a household name.
Next week, Vanessa Carlton performs twice in our area — at the Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland, on March 1 and The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on March 2.
“I like that idea that when I go to a show, it feels like a very safe space to feel all of the spectrum of things that are going on in my life — the good, the bad, the pain, the joy,” Carlton told WTOP. “Even if you’re singing about stuff that is hard, if you have a set list that goes through all of the realms, it feels joyful when you leave the show.”
She’ll perform her new album “Love is an Art,” including “Future Pain” about cycles of self-destruction with the lyric, “I’ve got nothing to lose and nothing to gain but future pain.”
“So uplifting, right?” Carlton said. “I love that song and I never got the opportunity to tour that album, so I thought that it was a cheeky and somewhat appropriate name for the tour. … You know the decision that you’re going to make is not good for you, but you’re going to do it anyway. I think everyone has had that moment, so we wanted to write that song.”
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If “Future Pain” is cynical, the flip side is “The Only Way to Love” with the lyric, “I want to run but I won’t get very far, ’cause I can’t fight the force of my young beating heart.”
“That’s for all of the romantics out there that really are so honest with their feelings,” Carlton said. “That song in particular is about going all in. … Being overly protective of myself has always held me back from connection. It’s more about trusting yourself. That’s what allows someone to jump off of the cliff and say, ‘OK, I’m gonna try this with you!'”
The album also includes “Back to Life” about the human body rebounding from addiction.
“‘Back to Life,’ that particular song, that was really about coming out of a lot of drug and alcohol abuse and really coming back into breaking patterns,” Carlton said. “It takes practice to really break some patterns and really just come back into the world again in the way that I wanted to — and I hope that other people can relate to that moment, too.”
The album’s most political or socially-conscious song is “Die, Dinosaur” about a young generation waiting for older, out-of-touch dinosaurs in power to die off so youth can lead.
“Just the old guard guarding progress,” Carlton said. “It’s not about age, I’m not an ageist, I’m old, I feel like a dinosaur myself sometimes — it’s about the way that you think. I think we are on the precipice of a whole new era of communication.”
Indeed, Carlton is a forward-thinking Gen-X artist, born in Milford, Pennsylvania, in 1980. Growing up, her father was a classic-rock fan and her mother was a piano teacher.
“A lot of the pieces that I started becoming interested in were classical pieces,” Carlton said. “She was really smart and would bring in songbooks of records like Neil Young, you could learn how to play ‘Harvest Moon,’ but you were also learning a Debussy piece, or ‘Top of the Pops,’ so you could learn the ‘Cheers’ (theme), that’s what a kid wants to play!”
She attended the School of American Ballet in New York, then dropped out of Columbia University to perform gigs around town while paying the bills as a “hit-or-miss waitress.”
“I wrote my own songs in my dorm room when I was 15 or 16 and that was the beginning of my first record,” Carlton said. “My dad’s a pilot and was flying someone who was friends with (Atlantic Records President) Ahmet Ertegun*.* I made a cassette tape, he gave the tape to Ahmet’s friend, who gave it to Ahmet, and Ahmet left a message for me at my dorm.”
Her debut album “Be That Nobody” (2002) included the hit single “A Thousand Miles,” earning three Grammy nominations including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
“It changed my life forever,” Carlton said. “It’s allowed me to have such freedom to step outside of the mainstream, take big risks and engage in collaborations. It’s given me a level of artistic freedom and room to explore. It is amazing. … I don’t know how that happened, but I think it’s a piano thing that I’m just very lucky that people just love it.”
Since then, she’s recorded a handful of other albums: “Harmonium” (2004), “Heroes & Thieves” (2007), “Rabbits on the Run” (2011) and “Liberman” (2015) named after her late grandfather. If you want to do a deeper dive into her music, where is the best entry point?
“‘Rabbits on the Run’ is probably a good place to start,” Carlton said. “It’s a short record, all recorded to tape. … That was recorded in the English countryside. Then ‘Liberman’ is the brain-bath meditation, put it on in the morning when you have coffee or in the evening with tea, wine, just a vibey background that affects your mood, makes you calm and chill.”
In 2019, she also made her Broadway debut in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.”
“It was so scary,” Carlton said. “I reached out to Sara (Bareilles of ‘Waitress’) because I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ She is a musical-theater master and very experienced and she was like, ‘Listen, once you do that first show and just jump off the cliff, you’re just gonna go.’ … It was one of the greatest, most challenging experiences of my life.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Vanessa Carlton in Annapolis & Alexandria (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Golden Girls' at Warner Theatre (Part 1) In all of TV history, it’s hard to find a sitcom that was ever funnier than “The Golden Girls.”
Now, you can celebrate the series’ hilarious legacy with the live stage show “The Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue” at the Warner Theatre in D.C. Thursday, Feb. 23 through Sunday, Feb. 26.
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“‘The Golden Girls’ transcends multiple generations, so we wanted to write a fresh, new storyline,” director Eric Swanson told WTOP. “This is not a parody, this is not making fun of the existing show. Our goal is to have the superfans and new fans come into the audience and feel like they have their favorite Golden Girls back in a brand new storyline.”
While brainstorming the production, Swanson binge-watched the entire series with playwright Robert Leleux during a pandemic streaming session back in December 2021.
“My home is in South Florida and he came down for about two weeks and we watched every single episode,” Swanson said. “We binged the whole thing. The whole thing! I will never forget we had all of these sticky Post-it notes on our walls just trying to find what we called ‘Golden Girl-isms,’ things we wanted to retain and things we didn’t want to copy.”
Sadly, all four original cast members have since passed away, creating a casting dilemma.
“We were faced with the incredible challenge of how are you going to replace Bea Arthur? Rue McClanahan? Betty White? Estelle Getty? These are legendary actresses,” Swanson said. “It felt like a slap in the face to do a national search for female-identifying actresses, so we thought we could get away with it if we put cis-male-identifying actors in the roles.”
Thus, Ryan Bernier plays the sarcastic Dorothy, Vince Kelley plays the amorous Blanche, Adam Graber plays the ditsy Rose and Christopher Kamm plays the wisecracking Sophia.
“When he opens his mouth and says, ‘Ma, aren’t you forgetting something?’ the audience goes nuts because he sounds just like Bea Arthur,” Swanson said. “We hate the term … that they’re in drag, because [in] theater in Shakespearean times, men played everything, male or female. Our goal is to suspend your disbelief and have everybody have a great time.”
While the beloved characters are the same, the fresh storyline follows brand new antics of elderly women tackling modern-day problems, including keeping up with technology.
“The plot is that Sophia has come back from Shady Pines, she’s been busted for running a senior-citizen drug ring and Blanche has started a sex app for seniors,” Swanson said.
The show premiered last fall at The Hippodrome in Baltimore before launching a national tour, traveling down the road and back again, to quote the famous TV theme song.
“The audience heard that first ‘ba-da-da, thank you being a friend,’ and they just went nuts,” Swanson said. “From the moment that music starts, our goal was to make it look like you’re watching an episode, like you’re getting an hour-and-a-half special of ‘Golden Girls.'”
Find ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'English' (Part 1) When two eloquent D.C. institutions team up, you should hang on their every word.
That’s the case with the new play “English,” running now through March 12 at Studio Theatre in Logan Circle in a special partnership with Planet Word Museum.
“This is not a play that wears its topical events very loudly, but to give a sense of what it’s like to decide you have to leave your country because you can’t make the life you want to there — that’s a space of tenderness and pain,” Studio Theatre Literary Director Adrien-Alice Hansel told WTOP.
“Funny people making hard choices is what I would say.”
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Written by Iranian-American playwright Sanaz Toossi, the play is set in the spring of 2009 in Karaj, Iran where four adults study for the Test of English as a Foreign Language, which is the key to their green card, medical school admission or family reunification. A comedy of miscommunication ensues over a serious of lessons and word games lost in translation.
“[Toossi] is a comic at heart and believes very deeply, especially as an Iranian-American writing this play in 2017 just as the Muslim ban was getting started, I think in that moment she was like, ‘I want to put the people that I love — the people of the Iranian diaspora — on stage with their full sense of humor and how hard it is to live your life in translation.'”
Beyond the play, Planet Word is hosting a free virtual Q&A on Feb. 21 at 6:30 p.m.
“Adrien and the playwright Sanaz Toossi are going to join us and talk through the themes of the play and the artistry and how the play was written, trying to express these ideas of identity and language, which was so closely related to our mission and goals in the museum,” Planet Word Director of Education Caitlin Miller told WTOP.
It’s a symbiotic relationship between Studio Theatre, which used the pandemic for a huge renovation, and Planet Word, which opened at the historic Franklin School in 2020.
“We’re excited by the chance to connect with experts,” Hansel said. “Planet Word is a whole, beautiful museum about the details of language, but also the complexity of what’s spoken and unspoken in the ways that we communicate. It’s a chance to connect with word nerds!”
Register to attend the free Planet Word virtual event here.
Learn more about the Studio Theatre play and tickets here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the documentary 'The Other Fellow' (Part 1) In the 007 flick “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969), Australian actor George Lazenby replaced Sean Connery and famously quipped, “This never happened to the other fellow.”
Now, “The Other Fellow” is the title of an intriguing new documentary by Australian filmmaker Matthew Bauer, who follows real-life people with the name of James Bond.
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“It’s one of those ideas that just came to me,” Director Matthew Bauer told WTOP. “I jumped on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Before I knew it, I had messaged a bunch of dudes named James Bond. … I thought it was going to be all Aston Martin jokes! Very quickly they were telling me about running from police, stalkers and cases of identity theft.”
The documentary opens in 1952 as British author Ian Fleming creates 007 for his first novel “Casino Royale,” ironically naming James Bond after a Philadelphia ornithologist.
“Heroes of the time in fiction were called Peregrine Carruthers or Bulldog Drummond,” Bauer said. “He didn’t want that because Bond was supposed to be this anonymous secret agent. He wanted the flattest, quietest name he could find. He looked up and saw on his bookshelf ‘Birds of the West Indies’ by the Philadelphia ornithologist James Bond.”
Now, the Philadelphia ornithologist Bond is just one of four main characters in the documentary, including James Alexander Bond, a gay theater director in New York City. “He obviously has to deal with constant jokes of being compared to the world’s most famous womanizer,” Bauer said. “He’s the first James Bond in the New York phone book!”
There’s also James Bond Jr., a Black man awaiting trial for murder in Indiana State Prison. “He complains a lot of being given, as he says, ‘the whitest name in the world,'” Bauer said. “He very proudly says he’s only ever seen like half of one of these movies.”
Most bizarre is Gunnar James Bond Schäfer, the son of a Nazi who opened a Bond Museum in Sweden. “He wanted to establish himself a new identity for himself given his family’s history. Over the course of 60 years, he’s slowly turned himself into James Bond. He drives around his snowy community in Sweden in an Aston Martin drinking martinis.”
It all builds to another surprise James Bond, but we won’t spoil it here.
“It’s best to let the viewers discover that story for themselves,” Bauer said.
The film opens in select theaters and is available on Video on Demand on Friday.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the documentary 'The Other Fellow' (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Duran Duran (Part 1) Duran Duran was just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2022.
At 10 a.m. Thursday, tickets go on sale for the band at Capital One Arena on Sept. 13.
“It is the first tour since our induction into the illustrious Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” lead singer Simon Le Bon told WTOP. “It’s just bumped us up into a slightly more stratospheric level of celebrity. It’s a seal of approval and we feel it very much. Very, very proud of it.”
Formed in Birmingham, England, in 1978, Duran Duran originally featured singer/bassist Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor before adding drummer Roger Taylor, guitarist Andy Taylor and lead vocalist Simon Le Bon.
“They were looking for a singer for ages,” Le Bon said. “I had heard through somebody at university where I was studying drama in theater arts that there was a band looking for a singer and I turned up and I was the missing link. I was the key to Duran Duran!”
Their debut album “Duran Duran” (1981) arrived the same year as the founding of MTV. Duran Duran exemplified the new-wave sound of the Second British Invasion.
“We had a meteoric rise to success,” Le Bon said. “Lucky dogs we were! We had no idea that MTV was going to start. We made our first video because we were told that they wanted something to show on the Australian chart show called ‘Countdown.’ … Around the same time, MTV started. It was extraordinary. What a coincidence! You might even call it serendipitous.”
Their second album “Rio” (1982) featured several hit singles with “Say a Prayer,” “Rio” and their instant classic “Hungry Like the Wolf,” arguably their most recognizable tune.
“It’s the wolf inside all of us,” Le Bon said. “It’s quite a sinister lyric, but it does have that ‘doo-doo-doo-doo’ and the ‘ha-ha-ha’ at the beginning … It has an incredible rhythm track. It really does, and a great riff. What more could you want?”
The same year as their third album “Seven and the Ragged Tiger” (1983), Duran Duran also released the stand-alone single “Is There Something I Should Know?” It went straight to No. 1 in the UK, becoming only the third song in music history to do so.
“I think it was kind of like suddenly we had come to a point of doubt, self doubt, and it expressed that,” Le Bon said. “I do remember recording it. We did it in one night in central London and we came out and I just knew. I was flying to Canada the next day to see my girlfriend, I took that cassette with me and I thought, ‘This is going to be something special.'”
In 1985, the band recorded the title track of Roger Moore’s final James Bond film “A View to a Kill,” becoming the only Bond song to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Mate, we were made up,” Le Bon said. “It was such a great experience for us and it was such a great opportunity. We were all secret Bond fans. We all had our favorite Bond. It just gave us a little je ne sais quoi — that’s French, by the way. It was fun. It was great fun to do and we did that silly video with Godley & Creme on the Eiffel Tower. That was hilarious.”
Their fourth studio album, “Notorious,” (1986) featured an opening title track that was later famously sampled by Notorious B.I.G. for the posthumous album “Born Again” (1999).
“I don’t mind who they think it is,” Le Bon said. “It really doesn’t matter to me, as long as they listen to the song. ‘No, no, notorious’ has just become part of the parlance, hasn’t it? We’ve become a part of the wallpaper of people’s lives!”
After their fifth album “Big Thing” (1988) and sixth album “Liberty” (1990), the band delivered the platinum album “Duran Duran (The Wedding Album)” (1993), with hits like “Come Undone” and “Ordinary World,” which is my personal favorite Duran Duran song.
“I did have something in mind when I wrote it, but that’s become superseded so much more poignantly by how it’s affected other people in their lives, how it’s made people feel that they’re not alone in their troubles sometimes and there is somebody out there with their voice,” Le Bon said. “Everybody has their own interpretation and that is a wonderful thing.”
You can hear all of these songs and more at Capital One Arena in D.C. in September.
“Hey D.C., come on out, it’s exciting out there, it’s the best place to be, Duran Duran on tour, can you miss it? The answer is, ‘No!’ I’m gonna be there — and so are you.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Duran Duran (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews CBS sitcom 'Ghosts' Streaming may be where the action is, but network television isn’t dead yet thanks to ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” winning Best Comedy Series at the Golden Globes.
If there’s one other network sitcom that rivals “Abbott” for weekly laugh-out-loud viewing, it’s the hauntingly hilarious “Ghosts” on CBS. Season 2 continues Thursday with Episode 15 titled “A Date to Remember,” capitalizing on the romantic mojo of Valentine’s Day.
Based on the BBC original, the American version by Joe Port and Joe Wiseman follows a married New York couple, Samantha and Jay Arondekar, who inherit a country mansion from a distant relative, only to discover that it is inhabited by ghosts who died on the grounds. There’s just one catch: Jay can’t see or hear the ghosts, but Samantha can.
Rose McIver became known to holiday rom-com fans in Netflix’s “A Christmas Prince” and does the heavy lifting here as Sam. Her acting shines the most whenever outside guests visit the mansion as she delivers a performance within a performance, her face showing us that she’s hearing the ghosts, but trying to not to let others see that she does.
Utkarsh Ambudkar (“The Mindy Project,” “Brittany Runs a Marathon”) has the opposite acting challenge as Jay, standing next to a roomful of ghosts but pretending that he can’t hear their dialogue. This allows him to make naive comments or sarcastic quips about being left out of the loop. Bonus points for his lovable comic-book nerdiness.
Freak events allow them both a chance to show their comedic chops. At one point in Season one, Jay gets inhabited by an elderly woman ghost, forcing Ambudkar to speak in a high voice with dainty body movements. Likewise in Season two, Rose gets inhabited by a viking ghost, having to speak in a gruff, cave man voice with a hunched macho posture.
As great as the two leads routinely are, the biggest treat of “Ghosts” is the title ensemble cast of ghosts, which has to be one of the greatest supporting casts ever in a sitcom (i.e. “The Office”) in terms of a deep bench of regular characters with distinct personalities.
Leading the charge is Brandon Scott Jones as Captain Isaac Higgintoot, an American Revolution officer who is jealous of Alexander Hamilton. He died of dysentery, so he emits a foul odor if any human walks through him. He also gradually comes out of the closet in a budding romance with a British redcoat Nigel (John Hartman) living out in the shed.
Danielle Pinnock is bubbly as Alberta Haynes, a Ma Rainey-style lounge singer who was murdered by poisonous moonshine during Prohibition. Finding the culprit becomes a running thread throughout the series, including a creepy podcast host who collects her toenails and other memorabilia. Her gift is that her humming can be heard by humans.
Pete Partino (Richie Moriarty) carries a torch for Alberta, but he probably isn’t her type as an awkward Boy Scout leader who died from a bow-and-arrow accident in 1985. He now walks around with an arrow sticking out of his neck, the most difficult prop to maneuver of the bunch. A running gag is that he is Jay’s favorite ghost, despite not being to see him.
The youngest ghost is Trevor Lefkowitz (Asher Grodman), a Wall Street frat boy who died from a cocaine overdose in 2000. The funny catch is that he died while not wearing pants, meaning he’s destined to wander for eternity with no pants beneath his tie and blazer. His gift is that he can actually move objects and type on computers if he focuses hard enough.
The oldest ghost is Thor (Devan Chandler Long), a Viking who was abandoned by his shipmates while exploring North America over 1,000 years ago. Having been killed by a lightning strike, his talent is being able to affect electricity. He is the funniest character, blurting out macho claims of killing Danes, eating cod and a newfound love of watching TV.
He has a crush on Flower Montero (Sheila Carrasco), who hates monogamy. She’s super smart but lacks short-term memory due to dropping so much acid in a 1960s hippie commune. In fact, she was high when she tried to hug a bear that mauled her to death — and still has the scars to prove it. If the living pass through her, they get high too.
The best character arc belongs to Sam’s great-great-great-great-grandmother Hetty Woodstone (Rebecca Wisocky), the wife of the estate’s original philandering owner. She evolves from an uptight aristocrat who looks down on peasants to a kinder heart with feminist ideas after seeing more freedoms for women in modern society.
Last but not least is Sasappis (Román Zaragoza), a cynical Native American of the Lenape tribe, who is wiser than the other ghosts. He oddly disappears for stretches of Season one before becoming a permanent fixture in Season two, carving marks in a tree each time he sees his long-lost native love before falling for a new “car ghost” parked in the driveway.
With so many dynamic characters, “Ghosts” has an endless supply of fun story lines and back stories to mine over the course of its run on CBS. The British series ran four seasons with just 27 total episodes, whereas the American version is already on Episode 33 this week with no sign of stopping anytime soon. Here’s hoping it haunts us for a long time.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The High Ground' at Arena Stage (Part 1) In 2021, America marked the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, which killed hundreds of innocent people and burnt Black Wall Street to the ground.
Rising from the ashes, a timeless love story emerges in the new play “The High Ground,” which kicked off last week and runs through April 2 at Arena Stage in Southwest D.C.
“It’s about what happens when someone gets stuck in a loop of historical violence, focusing on that history as opposed to being able to process it,” Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian told WTOP. “It’s also a romance, it’s a love story between two characters who were there in 1921 and, in a way, find each other again now in 2023.”
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The two romantic leads are a World War I veteran named Soldier (Phillip James Brannon), whose spirit has magically stood on Tulsa’s Standpipe Hill for 100 years, and his wife Victoria (Nehassaiu deGannes), who also appears as Vicky, Vee and The Woman in Black.
“He’s been standing on this hill for 100 years trying to prevent this tragedy,” Sandberg-Zakian said. “He died in 1921 trying to prevent it and he’s been fighting ever since against other types of violence against the Black community in Tulsa, including gentrification, redlining and other kinds of violence both to the neighborhood and to the Black citizens.”
Written by Nathan Alan Davis, the lean play covers tons of ground in just 70 minutes, magically bending time in present day to tackle a century’s worth of past heartache.
“There is some time travel and there are some leaps of theatricality in terms of what’s possible on stage and in a play that maybe isn’t exactly possible in real life,” Sandberg-Zakian said. “How do we travel through storytelling and through theater? How does theater let us as someone in 2023 be part of something that happened in 1921?”
In the end, Arena Stage hopes to entertain folks with Valentine’s Day romance, while enlightening them for Black History Month with events not taught enough in schools.
“There are so many parts of our history that been untold,” Sandberg-Zakian said. “It was called Black Wall Street, there were giant mansions, people wearing furs, playing opera records, playing pianos, thriving businesses. … It links to the love story: what kind of love and relationships existed in the context of that thriving, beautiful Black Wall Street?”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Romeo & Juliet' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) Are you still looking for something romantic to do for the week of Valentine’s Day?
The acclaimed American Ballet Theatre of New York City brings a special performance of “Romeo & Juliet” to the Kennedy Center in D.C. from Wednesday through Sunday.
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“‘Romeo & Juliet’ is one of the most passionate, deep love stories ever,” Artistic Director Susan Jaffe told WTOP. “It is about a young girl and boy who fall in love and will be together at all costs even if it requires them to die. Their story through the ballet is filled with heartfelt depth and humanity. Truly it is one of the most romantic stories in the world.”
Based on William Shakespeare’s classic 1594 play, the iconic story unfolds in Verona, Italy, where young lovers Romeo and Juliet fall in love despite the violent, tribal mindsets between their respective families and sworn enemies, the Montagues and Capulets.
This version was created by and choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan, who first staged it at London’s Royal Ballet in the 1960s before American Ballet Theatre brought it to the Kennedy Center in 1985. Each time it features unforgettable music by Sergei Prokofiev.
“What’s great about the music is that it’s so deep and rich,” Jaffe said. “The choreography is so in line with the music that the music just adds to the emotional impact of what the audience is seeing and it really brings your emotions all the way through the ballet.”
You’ll also enjoy Nicholas Georgiadis’ colossal sets and lavish costumes.
“Huge sets that really depict Italy: Huge, sprawling staircases, arches, colors very much like what you would see in a piazza, doorways, it really evokes the time,” Jaffe said. “The costumes are very much in the period, so you are taken back to that century, experiencing it as if you were there. Who wouldn’t want to run down that staircase as Juliet?”
The Kennedy Center is a homecoming for Jaffe, who grew up in this area.
“I am from Bethesda, Maryland, and had my first performance at the Kennedy Center when I was a child for the New York City Ballet as a big bug in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,'” Jaffe said. “When I joined ABT, I had my company premiere at the Kennedy Center in 1980. So coming back now as artistic director … I get to have my family come watch.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley gets local reaction to AMC's tiered ticket plan (Part 1) Last week, AMC Theatres announced a new tiered ticketing system based on seat location, charging different amounts for “value” vs. “premium” seats.
Under the new plan, moviegoers can pay more for middle seats with better views, less for seats in the front row, or the current “traditional” price for all other remaining seats.
Both the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Avalon Theatre in D.C.’s Chevy Chase neighborhood tell WTOP that they have no plans to mimic AMC’s new tiered pricing plan. However, Avalon Director of Programming Andrew Mencher understands AMC’s logic and hopes that moviegoers will consider the context before complaining.
“I don’t know if they should be outraged,” Mencher said. “It’s a natural extension of what other performing arts and sporting venues do already: you have some seats that are more expensive. It is somewhat logical that a movie theater chain would take this approach. … Some people love to sit close to the screen, so hopefully those folks get a discount.”
Like any change to a business model, there are always pros and cons.
“Lord of the Rings” star Elijah Wood tweeted his outrage: “The movie theater is and always has been a sacred democratic space for all and this new initiative by AMC Theatres would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income.”
The movie theater is and always has been a sacred democratic space for all and this new initiative by @AMCTheatres would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income.
— Elijah Wood (@elijahwood) February 6, 2023
On the flip side, if audiences have to pee during Frodo’s four-hour film, front-row patrons would have quicker access to the bathroom, as well as the concession stand and parking garage without needing to arrive early to claim a prime seat and sit through trailers.
Many theaters, including The Avalon, had already switched to assigned seating, an idea that began well before the COVID-19 pandemic but was increasingly solidified during recent pandemic restrictions when viewers were required to sit at least six feet apart.
“The Avalon had been general seating all before the pandemic, but we needed a new box-office approach to separate our patrons for health reasons,” Mencher said. “There’s a big advantage to assigned seating: people know where they’re gonna be, they can buy that exact seat and they don’t have to get there 30 minutes ahead of time and wait in line.”
The movie theater industry has been struggling to recover from the double whammy of the pandemic and streaming, which have driven many viewers to watch movies at home.
“During the pandemic is when Disney+, HBO Max started,” Mencher said. “Yeah, there was Netflix and Hulu, but the other film distributors came up with their own platforms during the pandemic, so it was a serious one-two punch all at the same time. A lot of people are learning how to stream and the ease with doing that. … You really can’t stop progress.”
The seismic shift has landed Regal Cinemas in bankruptcy, forcing it to close theaters, including popular local multiplexes at Gallery Place in D.C. and Rockville, Maryland.
“We may have been over-screened prior to the pandemic — this might be a correction, to some extent,” Muncher said. “For the three years right before the pandemic — 2017, 2018, 2019 — each one of those years was averaging about $11.4 billion, then last year in 2022, industry-wide was around $7.4 billion. So we’re still running at about 65% of normal.”
As a nonprofit organization, The Avalon has a much different business model than chain theaters, such as AMC Theatres, which operates roughly 950 movie theaters nationwide.
“Our specialty is playing stuff that is harder to find, movies that are independent, foreign, smaller-scale for older, adult audiences,” Mencher said. “The Avalon has one of the absolute best grosses on ‘The Fabelmans’ within the United States of America — I think we’re Top 10, and we’re No. 1 in the Washington-Baltimore-Richmond-Mid-Atlantic region.”
In the end, he tries to remain hopeful but realistic about the future of moviegoing.
“I remain optimistic that there is always a place for the movie theater, the experience of going to a dark theater with other people and experiencing something all together at the same time. I think there is something magical about that, but it would be dishonest to say there aren’t a lot of challenges ahead,” Mencher said.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley gets local reaction to AMC's tiered ticket plan (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley breaks down Super Bowl entertainment (Part 1) The Kansas City Chiefs went down to the wire with the Philadelphia Eagles but ultimately emerged Super Bowl champions again on Sunday night in Glendale, Arizona.
For non-football fans — or those who pride themselves on being well-rounded — there was also plenty of great music entertainment of every kind surrounding the big game.
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Fans of the ABC sitcom “Abbott Elementary” enjoyed Emmy Award winner Sheryl Lee Ralph kicking off the night with the civil rights anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
She was followed by 12-time Grammy-winning R&B icon Babyface, who strummed a patriotic red, white and blue guitar during “America the Beautiful.”
Oscar winner Troy Kotsur (“CODA”) provided American Sign Language for country superstar Chris Stapleton’s smooth southern-fried rendition of the National Anthem.
It all culminated with Rihanna belting her hits at the halftime show, along with a surprise pregnancy reveal, giving new meaning to the phrase “playoff berth.”
Prior to the Super Bowl, Rihanna had teased on a podcast that there would be a surprise guest at halftime — and it was apparently baby number two. She welcomed her first child last May with rapper A$AP Rocky.
Social media exploded with speculation about a “baby bump” under her baggy red outfit, and later in the night, a representative confirmed the pregnancy to The Hollywood Reporter.
Naturally, it affected the halftime performance, but before you complain that her dance moves were limited, I’d like to see you perform pregnant on national television.
Descending from the rafters on a mechanical platform, Rihanna kicked off a flashy set with her 2015 hit “B*tch Better Have My Money.”
The pride of Barbados then launched into the bumping beat of “Only Girl in the World.”
As the 34-year-old moved into “We Found Love,” we heard a snippet of “S&M,” which was probably deemed too risqué as she returned to the delirious dance beat of “We Found Love.”
I’m surprised that she didn’t sing “Shut Up and Drive” and “Don’t Stop the Music,” which would have been tailor-made for a mainstream Super Bowl audience, but I honestly don’t envy whoever had to whittle down a setlist from her insane catalogue of radio hits.
Fans got to hear most of them, including “Work,” “All of the Lights,” “Run This Town” and “Umbrella,” which is probably her best known tune. Jay-Z was present in the stadium, but didn’t take the stage to join her like so many crowded halftime shows in the past.
Paul McCartney was also in attendance, but his Rihanna collaboration “FourFiveSeconds” didn’t make the cut. Instead, to paraphrase The Beatles, it was “Rihanna in the sky with ‘Diamonds'” as fireworks exploded above the stadium to her fitting lyrics, “Shine bright like a diamond.” I can’t think of a better closing song for a sparkling culmination.
In the end, there were obviously a few pregnant pauses, but how cool is it that Rihanna’s second child will someday get to claim that they performed at the Super Bowl?
FUN LOCAL FACT: Back in 2005, Rihanna performed a free concert at City Place Mall (now Ellsworth Place) in Silver Spring, Maryland, before becoming a music superstar.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews HBO's 'The Last of Us' The hottest show on television isn’t airing Sunday night because of the Super Bowl.
Instead, HBO’s “The Last of Us” will drop Episode 5 a few days early, on Friday at 9 p.m.
That’s great news for those of us who can’t wait to watch, after four powerful episodes that have been simultaneously thrilling, heartbreaking and even thought-provoking.
Based on the 2013 video game, the series is set in 2023, but in this post-apocalyptic version, it’s 20 years into a pandemic caused by a dangerous fungus that turns its hosts into zombies. While grieving the death of his daughter, Joel (Pedro Pascal), must escort a fearless teenager, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), who just might hold the key to a vaccine.
Clearly, the premise hits close to home after three years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann were forced to quarantine their cast and crew for two weeks after entering Canada, which stood in for the United States during the 200-day shoot in 180 locations.Directing alongside Peter Hoar and Jeremy Webb, Mazin and Druckmann craft a tone that is more serious than “Zombieland” (2009) but more realistic than “I Am Legend” (2007). It’s the best post-apocalyptic filmmaking since Alfonso Cuarón‘s “Children of Men” (2006), which similarly escorted a young person who represented humanity’s last hope.
Humanity is the key word to the success of “The Last of Us,” which features deeply human performances. Pascal portrays a man who has been burned so many times by grief that he doesn’t want to grow close to another kid, and yet he can’t resist Ramsey’s spunk as the precocious Ellie. Who knew that a video game could inspire such great acting?
Episode 1, “When You’re Lost in the Darkness,” opens with 1960s scientists debating future pandemics. In 2003, empty streets and low-flying planes recall 9/11 during Joel’s back story. Flash forward to 2023, as he and partner Tess (Anna Torv) rescue Ellie from the QZ (Quarantine Zone), managed by FEDRA (Federal Disaster Response Agency).
Episode 2, “Infection,” opens with another flashback, this time to the outbreak’s origin in Jakarta, Indonesia, with parallels to Wuhan, China. In 2023, the zombie action really picks up as we learn the infected are called “Clickers,” with terrifying fungi oozing from their mouths, as Joel and Tess escort Ellie out of Boston with an explosive, sacrificial ending.
You might think this is just another “Walking Dead” show until Episode 3, “Long, Long Time,” shattering our preconceptions with one of TV’s finest hours. Burly survivalist Bill (Nick Offerman) welcomes a surprise lover, Frank (Murray Bartlett), who grow old together like “Up” (2009). The final shot through a bedroom window is heart-wrenchingly poignant.
Detractors complain that it’s a tangent, pulling focus from the zombie action, but such “bottle episodes” have given us TV gold in “Pine Barrens” (“The Sopranos”), “Fly” (“Breaking Bad”) and “The Suitcase” (“Mad Men”). The Bill-and-Frank hate is just homophobia. God forbid viewers feel empathy for a gay romance. It’s life. Grow up.
In fact, the Bill-and-Frank digression brilliantly sets up all of the supplies that Joel is able to gather, including a pickup truck, gasoline and weapons that would have felt forced had the show not set up Bill as a doomsday prepper. Episode 4, “Please Hold Onto My Hand,” hits the road for adventure, including Ellie’s pun book with zingers about hereditary diarrhea.
After a cut-to-black cliffhanger, I can’t wait to see what happens in Episode 5, “Endure and Survive,” on Friday. Judging by the title, you can bet Joel will overcome this obstacle and continue moving west to bring Ellie to his brother Tommy’s house in Wyoming. We just have one piece of advice: stick to the highways and stop taking shortcuts through cities!
It would be wild if their journey brings them to Glendale, Arizona, where the Super Bowl is being held. It was smart to move Episode 5 to Friday, as zombies are tough enough opponents without having to face the Chiefs, the Eagles and Rihanna, who is “friends with the monster under her bed and gets along with voices inside of her head,” zombie style!
I’m curious to see the ratings for Friday’s episode, but so far audiences are eating it up. The pilot was HBO’s second most-watched premiere, with 4.7 million viewers on the first day and 22 million viewers within the first 12 days. The nine-episode first season will end March 12, and it’s already been renewed for a second season. So grab your popcorn.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley covers 'Among the Beasts' (Part 1) Tory Kittles is known as Laroy Wayne in “Sons of Anarchy” (2008-2011), Detective Thomas Papania in “True Detective” (2013), Frederick Douglass in “Harriet” (2019) and currently across Queen Latifah in the CBS crime drama “The Equalizer” (2021-present).
On Friday, his new film, “Among the Beasts,” hits select theaters and Video on Demand.
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The action thriller follows a former Marine, L.T., who reluctantly teams with a gangster’s daughter to find her kidnapped cousin, overcoming his own demons as a combat veteran.
“It’s a story of a flawed hero, a former Marine dealing with PTSD,” Kittles told WTOP. “I love the flawed hero. I feel like we are all the flawed heroes of our own stories. I’m also from a military family. My mother was a captain in the military, both of my grandfathers served in wars, so any time a military character comes my way, I give it extra reverence.”
It’s a character like Liam Neeson in “Taken” (2008) or Hugh Jackman in “Prisoners” (2013).
“The fact that we got to explore what it would be like to go looking for a loved one that’s gone missing, what you’d have to do to even get a lead on where they might be, what lines would you cross and what would you do if you came face to face with the people that took them?” Kittles said. “How does that change you? Where does your moral compass go?”
Playing the gangster’s daughter Lola is talented rising star Libe Barer.
“There was a determination, an intelligence, a ferocity inside this very kind, quiet person,” Director Matthew Newton told WTOP. “There was an internal strength that I thought would be great to discover as the movie goes on. She doesn’t walk on screen and you go, ‘Oh, wow, this is a badass.’ … By the end of the film, we discover what that internal strength is.”
Newton previously won the Audience Award at the South By Southwest Film Fest for “From Nowhere” (2016) and directed Julianne Nicholson in “Who We Are Now” (2017).
“When I made ‘From Nowhere’ about three undocumented kids in the Bronx trying to stay in the country and finish high school at the height of 2015, when all those issues came to the forefront, I discovered that if I grounded the story in an issue that meant something to me and made my heart tick, it just made the storytelling a lot more potent,” Newton said.
The slow-burn thriller evolves from an abduction mystery to an action-packed climax, brilliantly using parallel action cutting between two locations for maximum suspense.
“Time is what we use in film, that is our clay,” Newton said, “Having that is a great practical thing, but given the situation that they’re in, there are two enemies. There’s the actual enemy they have to face and there’s also the enemy of making sure that the people they’re trying to save are still alive and well, so they’re fighting both enemies simultaneously.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley covers 'Among the Beasts' (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes Super Bowl Halftime Shows (Part 1) Rihanna is ready to rock the stage at the Super Bowl Halftime Show on Sunday.
Fans are already trying to guess the setlist with countless hits: “SOS,” “Umbrella,” “Shut Up and Drive,” “Don’t Stop the Music,” “Take a Bow,” “Disturbia,” “Rude Boy,” “Only Girl (In the World),” “What’s My Name?,” “S&M,” “We Found Love,” “Diamonds” and “Work.”
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In the meantime, it’s time for our fun annual tradition on WTOP ranking the best Super Bowl Halftime Show performances ever. Each year, some performances rise, others fall, but it’s all subjective and mostly just a fun way to get excited for the Super Bowl.
Here’s my personal top 10 ranking, alternating between classic and modern artists:
Singer Paul McCartney performs during the Super Bowl XXXIX halftime show at Alltel Stadium, Feb. 6, 2005, in Jacksonville, Fla. (Brian Bahr/Getty Images)The Rolling Stones perform at the Super Bowl. (MICHAEL ZAGARIS/GETTY IMAGES)10. Paul McCartney (2005) vs. The Rolling Stones (2006) — TIE
After Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” the Super Bowl turned to safer throwbacks with Paul McCartney, who sang “Live and Let Die” before a stadium sing-a-long to “Hey Jude.” The next year, The Beatles’ rivals The Rolling Stones rocked out to “Start Me Up” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” If only both were in their prime, but their showmanship deserves a spot.
Eminem, from left, performs with Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg during halftime of the NFL Super Bowl 56 football game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)9. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar & Eminem (2021)
Who cares if this performance was just last year? The hip-hop showcase was fire. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg kicked it off with “The Next Episode” and “California Love,” followed by 50 Cent hanging upside-down for “In da Club,” Mary J. Blige crooning “Family Affair” and Kendrick Lamar rapping “Alright” before culminating with Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” and Dre’s “Still D.R.E.”
In this Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008 file photo, Tom Petty, of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, performs during halftime of the Super Bowl XLII football game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)8. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (2008)
After years of cluttered stages, it was refreshing to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers hit the stage alone. “American Girl” kicked off a superb set list of “I Won’t Back Down,” “Free Fallin'” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream.” Now that Petty has passed away, it should make fans realize that they took his Super Bowl concert for granted. Play it back and see.
This Feb. 1, 1993 file photo shows Pop superstar Michael Jackson performing during the halftime show at the Super Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Rusty Kennedy, File)7. Michael Jackson (1993)
Despite obvious lip-syncing, The King of Pop put the halftime show on the map. He shot up through the stage and stood like a statue for 90 seconds as the roaring crowd hung on his every head turn, before launching into “Billie Jean” and “Black or White.” Alas, the kids on stage for “Heal the World” feels awkward after the “Leaving Neverland” documentary.
Musician Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform at the Bridgestone halftime show during Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers on February 1, 2009 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. (JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES)6. Bruce Springsteen (2009)
Springsteen regularly performs four-hour sets with his E Street Band, so the Super Bowl was a cake walk. The Boss mixed new tunes (“Working on a Dream”) with classics (“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Born to Run,” “Glory Days”) and slid on his knees right into the camera before a final exchange with Stevie Van Zandt: “What time is it?” “It’s Boss time.”
NEW ORLEANS, LA – FEBRUARY 03: Kelly Rowland, Beyonce and Michelle Williams perform during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on February 3, 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)5. Beyoncé (2013)
If future generations want to know why Beyoncé was a star, just play them her halftime show. From the “Crazy in Love” opener to the “Halo” closing, Bey owned the stage, even dancing to “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” with Destiny’s Child. It was so electric that it caused a stadium blackout in the game’s second half, shifting momentum from the 49ers to the Ravens.
In this Feb. 5, 2017 file photo, singer Lady Gaga performs during the halftime show of the NFL Super Bowl 51 football game between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons, in Houston. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)4. Lady Gaga (2017)
After declaring “I’m on the edge” to “leap” off the stadium roof, Gaga froze like a statue to sing, “I wanna hold ’em like they do in Texas, please,” rattled off “Poker Face,” “Born This Way” and “Telephone,” played keyboard on “Just Dance,” piano on “Million Reasons” and ended with “Bad Romance,” donning shoulder pads to catch a pass and fly off stage. Wow.
Bruno Mars performs during the halftime show of the NFL Super Bowl XLVIII football game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos Sunday, Feb. 2, 2014, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun)3. Bruno Mars (2014)
If anyone doubted whether Bruno Mars was ready for prime time, his halftime show was proof. After a killer drum solo, Mars launched into “Locked Out of Heaven” with Motown moves, slick jackets and brass instruments that were both nostalgic and fresh. It was a “star is born” moment that catapulted him Grammys for “Uptown Funk” and “24K Magic.”
In this Feb. 3, 2002 file photo, The Edge, from left, Bono and Adam Clayton, of U2, perform during the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVI at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)2. U2 — 9/11 Tribute (2002)
Not only is U2 one of the most prolific rock bands in history, the Irish group crossed the pond to help America heal after 9/11. We got goosebumps watching the victims’ names rise as The Edge played “Where the Streets Have No Name” before Bono let out a primal scream as the names tumbled down like the Twin Towers. Words don’t do it justice.
In this Feb. 4, 2007, file photo, Prince performs during the halftime show at the Super Bowl XLI football game in Miami. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara, File)1. Prince (2007)
Topping the list is Prince, whose 2016 death cements this performance for the ages. Standing on his giant symbol, Prince shredded guitar on “Let’s Go Crazy” before killer covers of “Best of You,” “We Will Rock You” and “All Along the Watchtower.” The climax was “Purple Rain” in a Miami thunderstorm wearing eight-inch platform heels. When officials asked how to handle the rain, Prince replied, “Can you make it rain harder?”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes Super Bowl Halftime Shows (Part 2) Below is a full chronological list of Super Bowl halftime performances:
1967 — University of Arizona and Grambling State University Marching Bands, Al Hirt
1968 — Grambling State University Marching Band
1969 — Florida A&M University and Miami-area high school bands
1970 — Carol Channing, Southern University Marching Band
1971 — Southeast Missouri State Marching Band, Up with People
1972 — Ella Fitzgerald, Carol Channing, Al Hirt, U.S. Marine Corps Drill Team
1973 — University of Michigan Marching Band, Woody Herman, Andy Williams
1974 — University of Texas Marching Band, Miss Texas Judy Mallett
1975 — Mercer Ellington, Grambling State University Marching Band
1976 — Up with People
1977 — Los Angeles Unified All-City Band
1978 — Tyler Apache Belles Drill Team, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt
1979 — Ken Hamilton, Various Bands from the Caribbean
1980 — Up with People, Grambling State University Marching Band
1981 — Southern University Marching Band, Helen O’Connell
1982 — Up with People (Tribute to Motown)
1983 — Los Angeles Super Drill Team
1984 — University of Florida Marching Band and Florida State University Marching Bands
1985 — Tops in Blue
1986 — Up with People
1987 — George Burns, Mickey Rooney, Grambling State University and USC Marching Bands
1988 — Chubby Checker, The Rockettes, San Diego State Marching Band, USC Marching Band
1989 — Elvis Presto
1990 — Pete Fountain, Doug Kershaw, Irma Thomas, Nicholls State University, Southern University and USL Marching Bands
1991 — New Kids on the Block
1992 — Gloria Estefan with Olympic figure skaters Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill
1993 — Michael Jackson
1994 — Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt, The Judds
1995 — Patti LaBelle, Teddy Pendergrass, Tony Bennett, Arturo Sandoval, Miami Sound Machine
1996 — Diana Ross
1997 — The Blues Brothers, James Brown, ZZ Top
1998 — Boyz II Men, Smokey Robinson, Temptations, Queen Latifah, Grambling State University Band
1999 — Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Savion Glover
2000 — Tina Turner, Phil Collins, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias, Toni Braxton
2001 — Aerosmith, *NSYNC, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, Nelly
2002 — U2 (9/11 Tribute)
2003 — Shania Twain, No Doubt, Sting
2004 — Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock
2005 — Paul McCartney
2006 — The Rolling Stones
2007 — Prince
2008 — Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
2009 — Bruce Springsteen
2010 — The Who
2011 — The Black Eyed Peas, Usher, Slash
2012 — Madonna, LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., Cee Lo Green
2013 — Beyoncé with Destiny’s Child
2014 — Bruno Mars, The Red Hot Chili Peppers
2015 — Katy Perry, Missy Elliot
2016 — Coldplay, Bruno Mars, Beyoncé
2017 — Lady Gaga
2018 — Justin Timberlake
2019 — Maroon 5
2020 — Jennifer Lopez, Shakira
2021 — Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Something Rotten' at Toby's Dinner Theatre (Part 1) It earned 10 Tony nods on Broadway in 2015 as one of the funniest shows ever staged.
If you somehow missed it, there’s a great chance to see a version here locally as Toby’s Dinner Theatre stages “Something Rotten!” in Columbia, Maryland through March 19.
“The show is a blast, it is funny, it is heartfelt with tons of dancing, tons of spectacle, so if you’re into musical theater and Shakespeare or if you’re not, you’re gonna have an awesome time,” Actor Ben Ribler told WTOP. “This show makes fun of Shakespeare as much as it compliments him. … The second song is, ‘God, I Hate Shakespeare!'”
Just as Salieri saw his creative thunder stolen by piano prodigy Mozart in the movie “Amadeus” (1984), “Something Rotten!” similarly follows a pair of playwright brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom (Jeffrey Shankle and Ben Ribler), who struggle to compete with their rockstar peer Will Shakespeare, a cocky genius smothering the competition in 1595.
“They’re both trying to write in the age of Shakespeare — and how are you going to beat Shakespeare, right?” Ribler said. “Shakespeare is this big (David) Bowie type, a Mick Jagger rock star, he’s got all these fans, so of course there’s that pressure. … Justin Calhoun, another Toby’s regular, looks like he’s having the time of his life in that role.”
When Nostradamus’ nephew predicts that the “next big thing” will be a combo of singing, dancing and acting, the brothers set out to write the world’s very first musical. Thus, the Act 1 number “A Musical” hilariously offers mistaken visions of theater’s future.
“The soothsayer isn’t very good and gives them a lot of wrong information, so that’s where a lot of the show’s humor comes in,” Ribler said. “That’s the big number where we see him throw all these references to all of these different musicals we know and love. … If you know musicals, you’re going to love this show, all of the little references, it’s very funny.”
Fittingly, the show is written by two real-life brothers: Karey Kirkpatrick (“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”), who co-writes the stage book with bestselling author John O’Farrell, and Wayne Kirkpatrick, who won a Grammy penning Eric Clapton’s “Change the World.”
While the songbook features brilliant musical numbers like “Welcome to the Renaissance,” the lavish period visuals will transport you all the way back to Shakespeare’s era.
“The time of the show is the Renaissance, so there’s a lot of Tudor-style wall coverings and that sort of thing,” Ribler said. “We also have the original Broadway costumes in this production. We’ve been able to get those, so that’s really cool quite literally stepping into Josh Grisetti or John Cariani’s shoes, who played Nigel professionally in the past.”
As always, Toby’s Dinner Theatre will provide a themed buffet for audiences during intermission, and if you know anything about the show, get ready to crack up with eggs.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Blake Aria Hendricks (Part 1) February means both Valentine’s Day and Black History Month, and for many Americans, you can’t spell either without “The Best Man” (1999) and “The Best Man Holiday” (2013).
Now, you can stream all eight episodes of “The Best Man: The Final Chapters,” which premiered on Peacock back in December, starring D.C. native Blake Aria Hendricks as Mia Stewart, the daughter of Harper (Taye Diggs) and Robyn (Sanaa Lathan).
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“You should really tune in and watch ‘The Best Man: Final Chapters,'” Hendricks, 9, told WTOP. “The series is really great, and I think you’ll love it!”
The original film followed a successful Chicago author who attends his best friend’s wedding in New York City, only for the wedding party to realize that his hit book is based on their past exploits. The beloved sequel was set 15 years later, reuniting the old college friends for Christmas festivities, reigniting old rivalries and rekindling old romances.
“I prepared by watching parts of ‘The Best Man Holiday,'” Hendricks said. “I watched it with my mom, then the parts that I couldn’t watch, I would go to my room and come back.”
Hendricks said Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan were nurturing on set as her on-screen parents saying, “I did some bonding before we started, and they’re just really nice people.”
She also loved meeting the rest of the cast: Morris Chestnut as Lance Sullivan, Melissa De Sousa as Shelby Taylor, Terrence Howard as Quentin Spivey, Nia Long as Jordan Armstrong, Regina Hall as Candy Sparks and Harold Perrineau as Julian Murchison.
“I got to meet all of those people,” Hendricks said. “I also bonded with the younger cast. We played games, ate snacks and made TikToks. I was really excited to get back on set instead of waiting in my trailer because I had to wait and do tutoring the whole time.”
She’ll never forget working with directors Robert Townsend (“Hollywood Shuffle”) and Malcolm D. Lee (Spike Lee’s cousin), who directed both films before creating the TV show.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Blake Aria Hendricks (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley recaps the Black Reel Awards (Part 1) The 23rd annual Black Reel Awards announced its winners in a livestream Monday night.
The top prize went to “The Woman King,” which also topped WTOP’s Best Movies of 2022.
It’s vindication for Viola Davis’ action war epic, which was snubbed by the Academy with zero Oscar nominations last month but is now getting its due at the Black Reel Awards.
“The Woman King” not only won the top prize of Outstanding Film, it also won Outstanding Director for Gina-Prince Bythewood. Best known for her sports romance “Love & Basketball” (2000), Bythewood added the thrill of diversity to good old-fashioned spectacle storytelling for the best war epic since “Braveheart” (1995) and “Gladiator” (2000).
Jeremy Pope won Outstanding Actor as a young, gay, Black man who is rejected by his mother and decides to join the Marines in “The Inspection.” Pope visited WTOP in 2018 when he starred in The Temptations musical “Ain’t Too Proud” at the Kennedy Center.
Danielle Deadwyler deservedly won Outstanding Actress for “Till” as the grieving mother of Emmett Till, who was infamously lynched in 1955. Deadwyler was also snubbed by the Oscars, despite a harrowing courtroom scene trying to bring the perpetrators to justice. WTOP spoke with 14-year-old Jalyn Hall back in October about working with Deadwyler.
Brian Tyree Henry won Outstanding Supporting Actor for “Causeway,” playing an auto mechanic traumatized by a family car accident as he bonds with Jennifer Lawrence’s U.S. Army veteran who suffered a traumatic brain injury fighting in the War in Afghanistan.
Angela Bassett won Outstanding Supporting Actress for Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” playing T’Challa’s grieving mother Ramonda trying to hold it together after the real-life death of Chadwick Boseman. Bassett is now widely considered the frontrunner to win her first Oscar, having lost previously for “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993).
Zoe Saldana won Outstanding Voice Performance for her motion-capture performance as the blue Na’vi heroine Neytiri in James Cameron’s blockbuster “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
Outstanding Emerging Director went to George Mason University film professor Nikyatu Jusu, who became just the second Black female filmmaker to win the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival for her horror flick “Nanny.”
Based in D.C., the Black Reel Awards were founded by Tim Gordon, president of the Washington Area Film Critics Association, to shine a light on filmmakers of color, who too often go unnoticed or overlooked by members of the Academy.
See all the winners here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley teases 'Sunset Blvd' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) Filmmaker Billy Wilder made countless classics from “Double Indemnity” (1944) to “The Lost Weekend” (1945), “Some Like it Hot” (1959) to “The Apartment” (1960), but if you had to pick just one masterpiece, it’s probably “Sunset Boulevard” (1950), starring William Holden and Gloria Swanson, who delivered the iconic line, “I’m ready for my close-up.”
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical version opening on London’s West End in 1993, before winning a whopping seven Tony Awards on Broadway, including Best Musical and Best Leading Actress for Glenn Close.
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There’s just two nights left to catch it at the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage on Tuesday and Wednesday nights as it ends its weeklong run from Feb. 1 to 8.
Based on the Oscar-winning screenplay by Wilder, Charles Brackets and D.M. Marshman Jr., the Tony-winning book by Don Black and Christopher Hampton follows struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis, who arrives at the decaying Hollywood mansion of delusional former silent-film actress Norma Desmond, who remains a star only in her own mind.
The 2023 tour stars Tony winner Stephanie J. Block (“The Cher Show”) as Norma Desmond, Tony nominee Derek Klena (“Jagged Little Pill”) as Joe Gillis, Auli’i Cravalho (“Moana”) as Betty Schaefer and Grammy winner Nathan Gunn as Max Von Mayerling, a role that won a Tony for George Hearn as Best Featured Actor in the original cast.
The Tony-winning score by Webber, Black and Hampton features the song “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” which has since been recorded by Barbra Streisand and Elaine Paige.
The original Broadway show also won Tony Awards for Best Scenic Design (John Napier) and Best Lighting Design (Andrew Bridge), adding dimension to a production that you don’t want to miss at the Kennedy Center before it leaves town later this week.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews February entertainment (Part 1) From Valentine’s Day to the Super Bowl, February is a big month for entertainment.
There are plenty of fun local events around D.C., Maryland and Virginia this month.
We’ve compiled a list for you in our February Entertainment Guide.
February Entertainment GuideFeb. 6: Black Reel Awards
Feb. 6: Fitz & The Tantrums at 9:30 Club
Feb. 6-8: “Sunset Boulevard” musical at Kennedy Center
Feb. 6-12: “The Tempest” at Folger Theatre
Feb. 6-19: “Ride the Cyclone” at Arena Stage
Feb. 6-25: “The Lifespan of a Fact” at Keegan Theatre
Feb. 6-26: “Jardín Salvaje (Native Gardens)” at GALA Hispanic Theatre
Feb. 6-March 3: “Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
Feb. 6-March 12: “English” at Studio Theatre
Feb. 7: “All That Breathes” documentary drops on Hulu
Feb. 7: Sheila E. at Howard Theatre
Feb. 7: Macy Gray at The Birchmere
Feb. 7: Drifters, Platters & Coasters at Rams Head Annapolis
Feb. 7: National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day Event at Anacostia Playhouse
Feb. 7-8: The 5th Dimension at Wolf Trap
Feb. 8: Joshua Bell at Kennedy Center
Feb. 8: Soul Asylum & Corey Glover at Tally Ho Theatre
Feb. 8: Macy Gray at Rams Head Annapolis
Feb. 8-March 19: “Something Rotten” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Feb. 9-11: NSO performs Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 10: Chuck Brown Band at Rams Head Annapolis
Feb. 10: “Beat the Bomb” giant paintball experience in Northeast D.C.
Feb. 10: “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” hits movie theaters
Feb. 10: “Somebody I Used to Know” on Apple TV+
Feb. 10: “Your Place or Mine” on Netflix
Feb. 10: Allison Miller’s “Rivers in Our Veins” at Strathmore
Feb. 10-11: Jerry Seinfeld at The Anthem
Feb. 10-March 12: “Incognito” at Constellation Theatre
Feb. 10-March 19: “Kinky Boots” at Olney Theatre
Feb. 10-April 2: “The High Ground” at Arena Stage
Feb. 11: Jodeci at MGM National Harbor
Feb. 11: Story District’s “Sucker for Love” at Lincoln Theater
Feb. 11: Quiet Storm Valentine’s Celebration at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
Feb. 12: “Amadeus Strings” at Capital One Hall
Feb. 12: Super Bowl with Rihanna Halftime Show
Feb. 12: Kimbra at 9:30 Club
Feb. 13: Keb’ Mo’ at Rams Head Annapolis
Feb. 13-14: Maggie Rogers at The Anthem
Feb. 14: “Couple’s Therapy” Valentine’s Day at DC Improv
Feb. 14: “My Funny Valentine” Sinatra Tribute at The Hamilton
Feb. 14: Capital Comedy Festival at DAR Constitution Hall
Feb. 14: Our Lady Peace at Rams Head Baltimore
Feb. 14: “A Date with John Waters” at Baltimore Soundstage
Feb. 15: Carrie Underwood at Capital One Arena
Feb. 15: “Marlowe” hits movie theaters
Feb. 15: Bush at The Anthem
Feb. 15-19: American Ballet Theatre’s “Romeo & Juliet” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 16-18: Aida Rodriguez at DC Comedy Loft
Feb. 16-March 4: Tedeschi Trucks at Warner Theatre
Feb. 19: “Impractical Jokers” at Capital One Arena
Feb. 19: Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn & Sarah Jarosz at Warner Theatre
Feb. 16-18: “New Jack City” at National Theatre
Feb. 17: “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” hits movie theaters
Feb. 17: Wolf Trap summer concert tickets go on sale
Feb. 17: “Sharper” on Apple TV+
Feb. 17: Wynonna Judd & Tanya Tucker at EagleBank Arena
Feb. 17-19: “Girlhood” at Round House Theatre
Feb. 18: Valentine’s Soul Jam at DAR Constitution Hall
Feb. 18: Danny Ocean at Howard Theatre
Feb. 19: Boyz II Men at MGM National Harbor
Feb. 20-21: Keb’ Mo’ at The Birchmere
Feb. 21: Elle King at The Fillmore Silver Spring
Feb. 21-April 2: “Selling Kabul” at Signature Theatre
Feb. 22-26: The Washington Ballet presents “Balanchine!” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 23: Pat Green & Josh Abbott Band at 9:30 Club
Feb. 23-25: Finesse Mitchell at DC Improv
Feb. 23-26: “The Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue” at Warner Theatre
Feb. 23-March 19: “Into the Woods” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 23-April 2: “King Lear” at Shakespeare Theatre
Feb. 24: DJ Kool & Rare Essence at Rams Head Baltimore
Feb. 24: KRS-One at Rams Head Baltimore
Feb. 25: Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick at Rams Head Baltimore
Feb. 25: Crash Test Dummies at Rams Head Annapolis
Feb. 26: Crash Test Dummies at The Hamilton
Feb. 24: Capital City Blues Festival at DAR Constitution Hall
Feb. 24: “Cocaine Bear” hits movie theaters
Feb. 25: Hardy at The Fillmore Silver Spring
Feb. 25: Brian Ganz plays Chopin at Strathmore
Feb. 25: Polar Plunge at The Yards D.C.
Feb. 25: NAACP Image Awards
Feb. 26: SAG Awards
Feb. 26: Wynton Marsalis at Kennedy Center
Feb. 26: GZA at Howard Theatre
Feb. 27: SZA at Capital One Arena
Feb. 27-28: Lalah Hathaway at The Birchmere
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'You People' In 1967, Sidney Poitier changed the world by meeting his white girlfriend’s parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” (1967), a film that may feel regressive in hindsight but holds a revolutionary place in movie history.
Since then, there have been countless imitations of the in-law concept, from hilarious comedies like “Meet the Parents” (2000) to racially-charged commentaries like “Guess Who” (2005) where the white Ashton Kutcher met Zoe Saldaña’s Black father Bernie Mac.
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On Friday, Netflix dropped the latest version, “You People,” set in modern times where Black parents wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts, Jewish parents desperately attempt to appear woke and cousins make offensive jokes on the fringes. It’s a biting romantic comedy with an awfully rushed ending, but enough laugh-out-loud moments to recommend.
Directed by Kenya Barris, who created the TV sitcom “black-ish” (2014-2022), the story follows banker-turned-podcaster Ezra Cohen (Jonah Hill) and fashion designer Amira (Lauren London), who meet during an Uber mix-up. Their whirlwind romance leads them to meet each other’s parents, igniting a quagmire of culture clashes and generational divides.
Any romantic comedy hinges on the believability of the young couple. Hill (“Superbad”) and London (“This Christmas”) may seem like an odd pairing at first, and while their initial attraction is mostly covered in a montage, their chemistry shines through in ensuing scenes. London’s eyes roll while Hill’s eyes bulge, wishing their parents would just shut up.
On one side, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is perfectly cringeworthy as Ezra’s overbearing mother Shelley, trying way too hard to prove her liberal credentials. Listen how the sitcom queen annunciates “A-mi-ra” and her comedic timing discussing police brutality (“Couldn’t get enough!”). David Duchovny is aloof as Ezra’s father Arnold, quietly professing his love for the rapper Xzibit.
On the other side, Eddie Murphy digs in as Amira’s rigid father Akbar Mohammed, wearing a Muslim kufi gifted to him by the controversial Louis Farrakhan. It’s fun seeing Murphy as the straight man, making subversive jabs rather than zany jokes, while Nia Long is passive aggressive as Amira’s mother, claiming to carry her family’s “slavery receipts” in her purse.
Cowritten by Barris and Hill, the first half of the script is a domino effect of momentum — boy meets girl, girl meets boy’s parents, boy meets girl’s parents, then both parents meeting. Their dinner table scene recalls “Meet the Parents” with abrasive comments, awkward religious prayers, and even a slapstick mishap ruining a prized possession.
Folks of a certain age obviously won’t get every pop-culture reference, particularly a scene where Ezra and best friend Mo (Sam Jay) relate their love lives to different Drake albums, but their podcast raises thought-provoking points about whether two races can ever truly get along, comparing America’s racial history to a marriage trying to reestablish trust.
While these conversations can feel like “Crash” (2005) with characters speaking exactly what’s on their mind and wearing their emotions on their sleeve, it’s so timely that it works all the way up to the believable “all is lost” moment. Sadly, after a well-earned fade out and fade back in, the final 20 minutes is the most rushed ending I can recall in recent memory.
The screenwriters find a specific way to have the young lovers face each other again, and while we won’t spoil what happens, it’s disappointing to see how the script suddenly abandons its careful construction of scenes to tack on a hurried Act Three. As the credits conveniently roll, you’ll say, “Wait, that’s it? They’re just gonna end it like that?!?”
Grabbing your remote, you’ll shake your head at the disappointing ending, but you’ll still be glad that you took the journey, especially because there are so few good rom-coms released nowadays.
Best case scenario: You might even think about the film’s salient points and take steps to be less cringe yourself. Overall, that’s a win in my book.
Now can you all stop bickering and pass Jonah Hill the mashed potatoes?!?
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Ella Fitzgerald cabaret at Signature Theatre (Part 1) Signature Theatre is best known for its first-rate musical productions in Shirlingon, Virginia, but they also sprinkle in some dynamite cabaret tributes to legendary musicians.
Next week, Signature hosts “First Lady of Song: Ella Fitzgerald” from Jan. 31 to Feb. 5.
“It’s a cabaret celebrating Ella Fitzgerald’s music,” Music Director Mark G. Meadows told WTOP. “She was the Beyoncé of her day or even bigger than Beyoncé is now. She’s broken so many barriers all around the world and it’s time that we just celebrate this amazing Black woman’s music. I can’t wait for you all to hear these arrangements.”
It’s a full-circle moment considering that Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1917, before her family moved to Yonkers, New York. As a teenager, she sang on the streets of Harlem before making her debut at the Apollo Theater on Nov. 21, 1934.
“She sang with Louis [Armstrong] and collaborated with so many amazing artists,” Meadows said. “She toured around the world as a Black woman in Berlin when nobody who was ‘colored’ wanted to be in Germany. She sang ‘Mack the Knife’ to an audience that loved that song. She was fearless and went around the world being her childlike self.”
Local vocalists Rochelle Rice and Ayo will perform classics like “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Mack the Knife,” “Blue Skies,” “I’m Somebody Nobody Loves,” “The Very Thought of You” and “You Belong to Me.”
“They scat their faces off on classics like ‘Blue Skies,'” Meadows said. “You’ll hear ‘Air Mail Special,’ which is Ella’s most acrobatic display of virtuosity where she scats. … Her scat solos were improvising, but they were also melodies. … Everything she sings is in pitch, she doesn’t sing a thing out of tune. It’s easy, free, childlike, fun, it’s got emotion.”
In total, she racked up 14 Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, the NAACP’s inaugural President’s Award, and the White House Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“If you heard her, you fell in love with her immediately,” Meadows said. “Everyone from our grandparents’ generation to our parents’ generation to our generation, you hear that music and it’s comforting, it’s playful, it’s incredible.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Ella Fitzgerald cabaret at Signature Theatre (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Denny Laine at Rams Head in Annapolis (Part 1) He cofounded two iconic bands with The Moody Blues and Paul McCartney’s Wings.
Next week, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Denny Laine plays an intimate solo acoustic concert at Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis, Maryland, on Sunday, Feb. 5.
“I’m not doing a Wings tribute or a Moody Blues tribute,” Laine told WTOP. But he said he will do “Go Now” and a few others Moody Blues tunes, as well as “No Words” from Wings’ “Band on the Run” album and “Mull of Kintyre.”
He added, “The audience might shout out a couple of titles that I might have a go at.”
Born in Birmingham, England, in 1944, he formed his first band at age 12 called Denny Laine and The Diplomats, featuring Bev Bevan, future drummer of Electric Light Orchestra.
“Bev didn’t join the Moodys, but he was the only one in The Diplomats that would have been prepared to turn professional — that’s the reason I packed that band up, because they didn’t want to go to London; you had to get to London in those days,” Laine said.
In 1964, Laine joined Mike Pinder and Ray Thomas to form The M&B 5, which would soon become The Moody Blues for their debut album “The Magnificent Moodies.” Laine sang lead vocals on the group’s first No. 1 British hit, “Go Now.” He claims that it inspired The Beatles’ hit “Penny Lane,” which sounds like “Denny Laine.” Coincidence? I think not.
“I’m pretty sure Paul thought of me when he was writing it,” Laine said. “The bass line of ‘Penny Lane’ is the same bass line as ‘Go Now.’ Paul used to stand at the side of the stage and watch us doing ‘Go Now’ every night we toured with The Beatles’ second British tour.”
While the Moodys blew up on their next album “Days of Future Passed” (1967) with Justin Hayward’s “Nights in White Satin,” Laine left to form the Electric String Band, while also penning solo hits like “Say You Don’t Mind” for Colin Blunstone of The Zombies.
“I wanted to do my own thing for a while,” Laine said. “I started being a songwriter more on my own, so I decided to go in and record some of my own stuff.”
Of his exit from The Moody Blues, Laine said, “I didn’t really leave; I just kind of drifted away. I was still friendly and staying with a couple of them. I said, ‘You might as well try to get somebody else and see what happens.'”
In 1971, Laine reunited with his old pal Paul McCartney to form Wings, but their first album “Wild Life” (1971) got mixed reviews, suffering unfair comparisons to The Beatles.
“Paul didn’t want to be around people that treated him like a superstar, so he picked me,” Laine said. “I knew all of The Beatles, I wasn’t intimidated by their fame. It was all about doing something new. … He wanted to do a band, but what do you do after The Beatles? What do you do after The Moody Blues? It had to be a new approach of original stuff.”
Their second album, “Red Rose Speedway” (1973), fared much better with the ballad “My Love,” released the same year as their James Bond track “Live and Let Die” (1973).
It seemed like everybody was a Bond fan and a lot of artists were doing the themes, Laine recalled.
“Paul got approached, then the next thing I know I’m playing bass on a live recording! … It was great because it was live with a big orchestra. … Of course, with a James Bond theme, they start off like a story, then they turn into crash, bang, excitement.”
Wings followed up with their iconic album “Band on the Run” (1973), featuring such hits as “Jet,” which clearly inspired the “woo woo” backing vocals of Kenny Chesney’s “Young,” not to mention the beautifully complex title track with multiple gear shifts throughout.
“We were all into this fusion stuff; you’d do a song that wouldn’t be just one song, it would be like three songs joined together,” Laine said. “That one was something that we already knew because we rehearsed it before we went. Paul got the tapes of our demos, I played a bit of guitar and he played drums, that’s the way we put that album together.”
Other hits followed with “Silly Love Songs,” “Let ‘Em In,” “Mull of Kintyre,” “With a Little Luck,” and a live version of Paul’s solo hit “Maybe I’m Amazed.” Despite such pop-culture impact, Laine doubts that Wings will enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame since McCartney is already inducted twice as a member of The Beatles (1988) and as a solo artist (1999).
Still, after years of solo work, Laine was inducted with The Moody Blues in 2018. He was honored to be included as a key founding member, despite leaving the band early on.
“‘Go Now’ got us there. Remember that,” he said. “You can’t get into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame unless you’ve got a No. 1 hit, and that was the only No. 1 hit the Moodys ever had. That got us there.”
You can hear all of these behind-the-scenes stories and more live at the Rams Head in Annapolis, but whatever you do, when you meet Denny Laine, don’t call him “Penny Lane.”
“I kill people who call me Penny Lane,” he joked.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Denny Laine at Rams Head in Annapolis (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Architecture & Design Film Fest (Part 1) If you’ve never been to the National Building Museum, this is the perfect week to go.
The D.C. museum is hosting the fifth annual Architecture & Design Film Festival in Judiciary Square, screening a slate of 16 films from Thursday through Sunday.
“It is the world’s largest film festival about architecture,” President & Executive Director Aileen Fuchs told WTOP. “It’s really about the impact of design on fashion, on sustainability, on urban planning, on the environment, so it’s an amazing lineup of content.”
The festival kicks off Thursday with the opening night screening of Spencer Wilkinson’s documentary “Alice Street,” chronicling community activism around a mural.
“That’s really a film about the power of public art and the complexities of gentrification in an Oakland, California, neighborhood,” Fuchs said. “We’ve been partnering D.C. public high school students with this filmmaker, who’s been working with them on public-art activism, they’re making public art, which will be on display at the museum this summer.”
Friday brings Mark Lopez’s animated documentary “Segregated By Design,” which “really examines the forgotten history of how our federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America,” Fuchs said.
Saturday brings Becky Hunter’s documentary “Fashion Reimagined,” which “follows a designer named Amy Powney, her brand is London-based called Mother of Pearl. It follows her trying to create a collection that is ethical sustainable at every level,” Fuchs said.
It all wraps Sunday with the documentary “Barry Farm: Community, Land and Justice in Washington D.C.,” directed by local filmmakers Samuel George and Sabiyha Prince.
“Barry Farm in Anacostia in Southeast D.C. is the site of one our first thriving Black communities that later became a public housing complex and now is under redevelopment with real housing affordability goals. … It’s a national story, but for our residents talking about something here.”
See the full lineup here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Sheila McCarthy about 'Women Talking' (Part 1) Aside from “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” the year’s most aptly-named movie is “Women Talking,” as it is indeed two hours of women talking. However, the subject of their discussion is some of the most powerful filmmaking you’ll see all year — or any year.
After a limited release in December, the film opens in movie theaters everywhere on Friday, so actress Sheila McCarthy joined WTOP to discuss the Oscar contender.
“People have come up to me after seeing the movie and they’re very moved by it,” McCarthy told WTOP. “This movie is about people talking to people and starting a conversation so change can happen … This movie demands a certain patience to sit and watch it, but get your popcorn because the payoff, the joy at the end, I think is worth it.”
Set in 2010, the film follows eight women from an isolated Mennonite colony who grapple with reconciling their reality with their faith after discovering that men from their community have been drugging and raping the women at night for years, claiming it was the Devil.
The horrific premise is based on the true story of a Mennonite colony in Bolivia where over 150 women were raped by nine men for four years from 2005 to 2009. This loosely inspired Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, which is now adapted by writer/director Sarah Polley.
“Several women finally communicated to their elders that they were being sexually abused, horse tranquilized and raped,” McCarthy said. “The men were arrested by the Bolivian government and are still incarcerated. … It’s an incredibly horrific situation, Miriam took that truth and turned it into a fable of what would happen if women could have a vote.”
That vote, cast by an “X” from women who can’t read or write, has three options: (1) stay and do nothing, (2) stay and fight, or (3) leave the colony. We hear compelling arguments for each approach from the powerful ensemble cast, including McCarthy, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand.
“When my agent told me who was in the cast, I went, ‘Shut up! What?’ I really fan-girled for the first couple of weeks,” McCarthy said. “We were doing 11-page scenes for two or three days, we did 120 takes because the cameras had to roll around nine of us, one at a time, and everybody brought their ‘A’ game every single time. It was like being at the Olympics!”
The women’s faces and body language speak volumes, while the dialogue is riveting with masterful monologues that somehow manage to feel organic despite being so eloquent.
“That was our concern — it rolls out like theater and could be a play,” McCarthy said. “She’s woven such an incredible mosaic of dialogue into scenes into music into tension. I equate this movie like doing one long hymn. … She took tons from the book, it was a reverent script. … The line ‘you can’t stay, so you must leave’ is something I said to her.”
As a director, Polley presents a desaturated color palette to show the muted existence of the trapped women. The camera is often static inside a barn, allowing the blocking of the characters to convey meaning, broken up by quick flashbacks of the assaults. Polley intentionally never shows the faces of the male abusers, focusing on the women’s trauma.
“Just when the (audience) is going ‘where can this go?’ she cuts away to the most beautiful and sometimes horrific visuals … the children in the field, the boots of the men,” McCarthy said. “She very deliberately does not show the actual (abuse), it’s the aftermath, the before and after, which I think is a really compelling and more moving way to show those crimes.”
Here’s hoping Academy members reward the effort when casting their Oscar votes.
“When you see us at the film festivals and there’s 20 women on stage, that’s a powerful optic to look at, it speaks for itself,” McCarthy said. “I’m so proud to be part of this film and I think Sarah (Polley) deserves every Oscar on the planet for this creation of hers. … We’ve already been given the Robert Altman Award at the Spirit Awards, so that’s huge!”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Sheila McCarthy about 'Women Talking' (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Fire & Ice Festival (Part 1) Get ready to sip some hot drinks while you enjoy chilly activities in Southwest D.C.
The Fire & Ice Festival returns to The Wharf this Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m.
“This is our third year hosting the Fire & Ice Festival,” The Wharf’s Marketing & Communications Manager Julie Keleti told WTOP. “We hosted it in 2019 and 2020, then took a little break for COVID and now we’re finally back!”
The Wharf is partnering with Washington Gas to raise money for the Washington Area Fuel Fund, which helps people heat their homes if they can’t afford their bills.
“We will have an ice house on District Pier and guests will go in and experience what it’s like to not have heat in their homes and they’ll be able to make a donation,” Keleti said.
There will also be plenty of frosty games, including ice cornhole and ice shuffle board.
“The actual shuffle boards will be made completely out of ice,” Keleti said. “The entire cornhole boards will be made out of ice.”
What’s it like to pay cornhole on an icy surface?
“I’ve been told that you need to throw the bean bag up super high so that it lands straight down on the ice — that way it doesn’t come in at an angle and slide in and miss the hole,” she said.
After enjoying such chilly activities, you can warm up by dancing to a DJ, watching a performance of dazzling fire twirlers, scarfing down s’mores at the firepit and sipping whiskey at the waterfront bar, be it a Jack Daniel’s Hot Toddy or Guinness Old Fashion Beer.
Whiskey sampling tickets can be purchased at $15 for five tickets, including Jack Daniel’s, Uncle Nearest, District Made Spirits, Larceny Bourbon, Evan Williams, Filibuster Distillery, KO Distilling, Virginia Distillery Company, Sagamore Spirit, Shmidt Spirits and Lost Whiskey Distillery.
You can also purchase a bonus ticket to sip whiskey out of the ice luge.
The rest of the festival is free to attend.
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Fire & Ice Festival (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Ron Campbell art exhibit in Alexandria (Part 1) If you ever watched Saturday morning cartoons, you grew up on the work of Ron Campbell, who directed, storyboarded or animated episodes of such beloved shows as “Scooby Doo,” “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” “Yogi Bear” and countless others.
Sadly, Campbell died at age 81 in 2021; but fortunately for fans, he left behind dozens of original paintings that he created at home in Phoenix, Arizona, after his 2008 retirement.
“When he retired, he kept thinking to himself, ‘I need to stay active, I don’t want to sit on the couch,'” curator and publisher Scott Segelbaum told WTOP. “He thought, ‘Well, I’ll do paintings. Should I paint the cactus in my backyard?’ Then he thought, ‘Why don’t I do the cartoon characters that I worked on?’ All of a sudden, people were like, ‘I want to buy that!'”
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This week, those paintings are on display at a pop-up art exhibit at Nepenthe Gallery on Fort Hunt Road in Alexandria, Virginia. After a reception at 5 p.m. Thursday, the gallery opens from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday.
“It’s bright, you walk in and you smile,” Segelbaum said. “There’s no way you can walk in and not put on a happy face because it’s just so cheerful and fun and it’s something for the entire family. … He did a piece of ‘The Jetsons’ and he made Judy Jetson holding an iPhone! … It’s all artistic interpretations, they’re not just cels from a TV show.”
Everything is available to purchase from $25 posters to artwork starting at $295.
“Our gallery is named Nepenthe, a Greek term that translates into ‘a place with no sorrow,'” owner Carrie Garland told WTOP. “Every Thursday, Nepenthe Gallery hosts a wine and cheese event; then this exhibit will be up the rest of the weekend. … My favorite is ‘The Flintstones.’ I have four kids and collectively I think their favorite would be ‘Scooby Doo.'”
Born in Australia, Campbell was awakened by a phone call from King Features’ producer Al Brodax in 1964. Brodax informed Campbell that they had just sold a new show and he would like him to direct it. When Campbell asked the name of the show, Brodax replied, “The Beatles,” a Saturday morning cartoon that aired on ABC from 1965 to 1969.
After moving to America, Campbell was once again approached by Brodax to help in the animating of The Beatles’ feature length animated film “Yellow Submarine.” Campbell went on to animate many scenes, including the Sea of Time sequence, the Nowhere Man character and much of the action between the Chief Blue Meanie and his sidekick Max.
His studio, Ron Campbell Films Inc., was involved in creating beloved cartoons spanning three generations, including “Scooby Doo,” “Winnie the Pooh,” “Krazy Kat,” “George of the Jungle,” “The Jetsons,” “The Flintstones,” “Yogi Bear,” “The Smurfs,” “Goof Troop,” “Sesame Street,” “Captain Caveman,” “Rugrats” and “Ed, Edd n Eddy.”
His show “The Big Blue Marble” won a Peabody for Excellence in Broadcasting and an Emmy for Best Children’s Show of the Year. His Cartoon Pop Art has been featured in galleries worldwide.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Give a Hoot Comedy Club (Part 1) This weekend brings the first full-time comedy club ever in Montgomery County, Maryland.
The Give a Hoot Comedy Club opens this Friday on Shady Grove Road, as the brainchild of longtime stand-up comedians and philanthropists Irwin Weinstein and Ken Watter.
“Ken and I have been friends for probably 15 years,” Weinstein told WTOP. “We started doing open-mic comedy together. Somewhere in the last seven or eight years, we kept toying with the idea of opening a comedy club … it was much more of a challenge than we thought it would be finding a venue that was open to having a comedy club inside.”
Ultimately, they found La Mexicana Restaurant as an eager and excited host, allowing folks to order their favorite Mexican dishes before enjoying a night of belly laughs.
“They have a really nice private room that they let us have and they have a full menu,” Watter said. “They are as into the concept as we are. They are really excited about having us.”
The grand opening festivities kick off with a special ribbon-cutting at 3 p.m., followed by comedian Chris Coccia performing standup sets on Friday and Saturday nights.
Other upcoming comedians include John Knight on Jan. 27-28, Moody McCarthy on Feb. 3-4, Howard “G” Gaskins of the “Kiss My Bumper” commercials on Feb. 10-11, Jay Black on Feb. 17-18, Kevin Lee on Feb. 24-25, and Rahmein Mostafavi on March 3-4.
“We came up with the idea that when we open a comedy club … we wanted it to give back to the community … the idea being that each show each weekend we would donate part of our proceeds to local Montgomery County nonprofits,” Weinstein said.
Half of this week’s proceeds will benefit Comfort Cases, while next week will benefit Stepping Stones Shelter, and the following week will benefit A Wider Circle.
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Give a Hoot Comedy Club (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews NBC's 'Night Court' reboot After mining laughs from a police department in “Barney Miller” (1975-1982) and a military surgical unit in “MAS*H” (1972-1983), TV writer Reinhold Weege created the beloved sitcom “Night Court” (1984-1992) about the night shift of a Manhattan municipal court.
Nominated for 31 Emmys and winner of seven, the sitcom sadly never won the top prize of Outstanding Comedy Series despite three nominations in 1985, 1987 and 1988, losing to three classics in “The Cosby Show,” “The Golden Girls,” and “The Wonder Years.”
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Now, a whole new generation can watch the new NBC reboot of “Night Court,” which premiered its first two half-hour episodes back to back on Tuesday night. Nostalgia is a double-edged sword, providing fun callbacks but also reminding us how hard it is to recapture the magic. You may laugh, but not as much as the laugh track wants you to.
While the original starred Harry Anderson as fun-loving judge Harry T. Stone, the reboot follows his daughter Abby, played by Melissa Rauch a.k.a. Bernadette in “The Big Bang Theory,” but this time her voice isn’t as high-pitched. Her chipper personality will endear her to optimistic viewers, but it might be too Pollyannish for cynical viewers to embrace.
Abby spends much of the introductory episodes reminiscing about her late great father (Anderson died in 2018), but no matter how many exploding box pranks he left behind from the grave, his absence is apparent with one of the best characters left off screen. At least his memory succeeds in drawing an old familiar friend back to work in the courtroom.
That’s right, fans will be thrilled to see John Larroquette return as Dan Fielding, this time as a public defender instead of prosecutor. The role won him four straight Emmys for Best Supporting Actor from 1985 to 1988 before he withdrew his name from the Emmy ballot in 1989, allowing Woody Harrelson to finally win for NBC’s smash hit “Cheers” (1982-1993).
Larroquette’s scenes are the best part of the reboot. Writer Dan Rubin (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”) seems to have the most fun writing Fielding’s antics, be it serving summons as a fake barista at a coffee shop, stacking steaks in the freezer of his widower apartment or packing the court with folks who look identical to his guilty defendant.
On the downside, the script is often too cute by half with characters speaking obvious exposition about their wants and needs in life. It’s all a little too on the nose, making certain sentimental scenes feel awkward amid potty humor like Abby’s clerk Neil (Kapil Talwalkar) writing Bart Simpson-style “Seymour Butts” jokes on the lobby bulletin board.
Director Pamela Fryman (“How I Met Your Mother”) delivers slapstick gags with repairmen falling off ladders and swinging on light fixtures in the background, but comedic cutaways work better as the bailiff (Lacretta) drops her keys, while assistant district attorney Olivia (India de Beaufort) dodges “girls trip” invitations from colleague Nora (Angela Giarratana).
It remains to be seen how the rest of the season will play out. It could turn out to be a wacky show to have on in the background while you scroll your phone, but it’s not exactly appointment viewing. You’re probably better off bingeing the original series for free on Amazon Prime. I’ll give the reboot a few more episodes before I bail. The jury is still out.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Cats' at National Theatre (Part 1) Growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland, Michelle E. Carter was a fan of National Theatre.
Now, she takes the stage herself in the national tour of “Cats” from Tuesday to Sunday.
“I grew up coming into D.C. I saw shows at the National; I saw shows at the Kennedy Center,” Carter told WTOP. “It’s really important and really special to me to be able to bring this show that I’ve been with for two years home to everyone that I care about.”
Based on T.S. Eliot’s 1931 poetry collection “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” the story follows a tribe of London cats called the Jellicles. On this night, they gather to make the “Jellicle Choice,” deciding which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer to be reborn.
“It is actually a very cool story if you can manage to find it when you’re watching it,” Carter said. “All of these neighborhood cats, who form this clan that come together every year, come together on one night a year. It’s sort of the equivalent of their Kitty Christmas, if you will, to see who will be picked by the tribe’s leader to ascend to this higher level.”
Carter plays Jennyanydots, one of the many unique cats, including Rumpleteazer, Rum Tum Tugger, Skimbleshanks, Mungojerrie, Old Deuteronomy and, of course, Grizabella.
“Other shows at the time were these big dance musicals where the ensemble dances backup to the leads,” Carter said. “‘Cats’ is truly an ensemble piece. The entirety of every single dancer is working towards telling the story on stage. There are no backup parts. … An entire ensemble of 30-whatever people in unitards was new for Broadway at the time.”
In addition to the detailed feline costumes, the urban backdrops envelop audiences into a gritty back-alley vibe bathed in moonlight and filled with oversized junkyard objects.
“It was one of Broadway’s first truly immersive pieces of theater where the audience was invited in to bear witness to this night,” Carter said. “The lighting really immerses you into the junkyard. … We have life-size Coca Cola bottles, we have Pepsodent bottles, we have radiators, we have tires, we have a big paint can that’s life-size that we get to play with.”
It’s all set to Webber’s unforgettable songbook, namely the iconic showtune “Memory.”
“Grizabella has been with this tribe for a long time and has fallen on really tough times in her life and she comes back yearning to be accepted again and sings this heartbreaking song of yearning, begging them that if no one accepts her, this will be her last night on earth,” Carter said. “She’s messed up in her life, but she needs them, she’s begging them.”
The 1981 West End production won two Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical. The 1982 Broadway show won seven Tonys, including Best Musical, breaking the record of “A Chorus Line” as the longest-running Broadway show. Today, it ranks fourth behind “The Phantom of the Opera” (1988), the revival of “Chicago” (1996) and “The Lion King” (1997).
“The intention was for it to be the rundown streets of London, but the really cool thing about ‘Cats’ is that it’s very interpretive,” Carter said. “That’s part of the reason why it’s existed for 40 years. People in their minds can transform it into whatever they want. You see the junkyard and you say, ‘Oh, this could be in New York, this could be in D.C.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Cats' at National Theatre (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Paul Reiser at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) You know him from memorable roles in “Diner,” “Mad About You” and “Stranger Things.”
This Saturday, Paul Reiser performs live at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia, so load up a car of friends for a hilarious road trip across the DMV border.
“I guarantee if you come Saturday and you don’t have a good time, I will come back next year and take you to see somebody funnier,” Reiser told WTOP. “I just tell people what’s happening to me in my house with my family. … People know me from TV and don’t know that when I started, that’s all I wanted to do, to be a standup and I kind of got distracted.”
Born in New York City in 1956, Reiser studied piano and music composition at Binghamton University, where he also performed in campus theater productions and stand-up gigs.
His breakthrough role came in Barry Levinson’s Baltimore-based coming-of-age comedy “Diner” (1982), launching the careers of Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, Timothy Daly and Ellen Barkin. His character memorably mocks the word “nuance,” so he made it the name of his production company Nuance Productions.
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“I was surprised to have landed that role,” Reiser said. “I got to Baltimore, the other guys had all done something, but I had done nothing. … It was a road trip, we were all in Baltimore away from our homes, just 23, and idiots in a hotel having fun. We recently had an event commemorating the 40th anniversary and went out to dinner shaking our heads.”
This catapulted him to blockbuster action comedies, such as “Beverly Hills Cop” (1984) and “Beverly Hills Cop II” (1987), playing Det. Jeffrey Friedman across Eddie Murphy.
“I knew Eddie from the comedy clubs, so it was very easy to play,” Reiser said. “I had one scene, two scenes in that first one. That scene in the locker room where I have to get out, but they didn’t have any line written, so I just made that up, ‘This is not my locker.’ … More than any line in my career people come over to me and say, ‘Hey, this is not my locker!'”
He next played the greedy Carter Burke in James Cameron’s blockbuster “Aliens” (1986), co-starring Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley and the late Bill Paxton as Hudson.
“I went and met James Cameron and I’d seen ‘Terminator,’ so I knew that he was really talented, and I had seen [Ridley Scott’s] ‘Alien,’ and I read the script, which was fantastic,” Reiser said. “It’s rare that you can read a movie script and see the movie. This one you could really see it, so I was thrilled to get to do that because it’s not my usual sweet spot.”
Reiser entered our living rooms in “My Two Dads” (1987-1990), as he and co-star Greg Evigan raised an orphaned teenager. But his most iconic TV role came playing Paul Buchman with Helen Hunt in the beloved NBC sitcom “Mad About You” (1992-1999), which won 12 Primetime Emmy Awards.
“I was writing the pilot for ‘Mad About You,’ and I didn’t have any actors in mind,” Reiser said. “My wife is friends with a woman who is friends with Helen, they had a dinner party together and I met Helen. I thought Helen was funny and charming. As we were leaving, I said to my wife, ‘What do you think about her as you?’ She said she would be great.”
Over the past decade, he’s played Miles Teller’s dad in the Oscar-winning film “Whiplash” (2014), earned an Emmy nomination for “The Kominsky Method” (2018-2021) and wowed a new young generation as Dr. Sam Owens in Netflix’s “Stranger Things” (2016-present).
“Somebody told me that their kid, who’s a big ‘Stranger Things’ fan, said, ‘Wait a minute, Dr. Owens, the guy with the white lab coat is going to try to be funny?’ and I said, ‘Would you please tell him that he missed the memo?’ I know what I’m doing,” Reiser said.
Most recently, he’s starring in the self-aware Hulu comedy series “Reboot” (2022).
“I think it confuses people like, ‘It’s a reboot of what?’ No, it’s called ‘Reboot.’ It’s about an ’80s show sort of like ‘Full House’ or something that is rebooted,” Reiser said. “It’s Keegan-Michael Key, Johnny Knoxville, Judy Greer, Rachel Bloom — funny, funny people.”
For it all, Comedy Central ranked him one of the “100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.”
“They actually called it the ‘100 Greatest Comics of All Time‘ — that’s going back to like the 1200s, so that’s quite a swath,” Reiser said. “Even in Egypt, there were a couple of funny guys in Egypt and I beat them out, so I’m very proud of that. Live from the Nile!”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Let Freedom Ring' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) This MLK Day, the Kennedy Center and Georgetown University are celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with the free, ticketed musical tribute, “Let Freedom Ring!”
The annual concert will be held Monday at 6 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall as part of the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage free daily performance series.
This year’s headliner is Leslie Odom Jr., who won a Tony Award as Aaron Burr in Broadway’s “Hamilton” (2016) before earning a pair of Oscar nominations for his role as Sam Cooke and his song “Speak Now” in the movie “One Night in Miami” (2020). He has also starred in “Harriet” (2019) and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (2022).
He’ll be joined by the Let Freedom Ring Choir led by Music Producer Nolan Williams Jr.
During the ceremony, Georgetown University will present the annual John Thompson Jr. Legacy of a Dream Award to Paula Fitzgerald, executive director of Ayuda. Since 1973, Ayuda has served more than 150,000 low-income immigrants throughout D.C., Maryland and Virginia. The award is given to a local individual who exemplifies the spirit of Dr. King.
Free tickets — up to two per person — will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis at the Hall of Nations box office, beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Monday.
This performance will be close-captioned and will be live streamed on the Kennedy Center website and its Facebook and YouTube pages.
Watch the concert below starting at 6 p.m.:
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley recaps the Critics Choice Awards (Part 1) Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” got the glory last week at the Golden Globes, but the 28th annual Critics Choice Awards shook up the Oscar race on Sunday.
The bonkers sci-fi action comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once” dominated the film side, winning Best Picture, Best Director for Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan, Best Original Screenplay for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, and Best Editing for Paul Rogers for intercutting alternate universes.
While Austin Butler won at the Globes for “Elvis,” Brendan Fraser stepped on his blue suede shoes by winning Best Actor at the Critics Choice Awards for his comeback role in “The Whale,” in which he played an obese English professor teaching remotely.
Cate Blanchett solidified her march to an Oscar by winning Best Actress for “Tar,” while Angela Bassett won Best Supporting Actress for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The latter gave Washington D.C. a shoutout by saying that she was inspired to pursue acting after a class field trip to the Kennedy Center to watch James Earl Jones in “Of Mice and Men.”
On the TV side, “Better Call Saul” took home three trophies, winning Best Drama Series, Best Actor in a Drama Series for Bob Odenkirk, and Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Giancarlo Esposito. The wins solidified its victorious final season on AMC.
Meanwhile, ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” won two awards for Best Comedy Series and Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Sheryl Lee Ralph.
Jeremy Allen White earned Best Actor in a Comedy Series for making us all hungry in Hulu’s “The Bear,” while “The Dropout” won Best Limited Series and Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television for Amanda Seyfried.
To mark the 25th anniversary of “The Big Lebowski” (1998), John Goodman presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Jeff Bridges, while Kate Hudson presented this year’s SeeHer Award to Janelle Monáe, honoring a woman who advocates for gender equality.
See all of the winners below:
WINNERS OF THE 28th ANNUAL CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS:FILM CATEGORIES:
BEST PICTURE
Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
BEST ACTOR
Brendan Fraser – The Whale (A24)
BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett – Tár (Focus Features)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Angela Bassett – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
BEST YOUNG ACTOR
Gabriel LaBelle – The Fabelmans (Universal Pictures)
BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix)
BEST DIRECTOR
Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert – Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert – Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Sarah Polley – Women Talking (United Artists Releasing)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Claudio Miranda – Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures)
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Florencia Martin, Anthony Carlino – Babylon (Paramount Pictures)
BEST EDITING
Paul Rogers – Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Ruth E. Carter – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP
Elvis (Warner Bros. Pictures)
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century Studios)
BEST COMEDY
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix)
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
RRR (Sarigama Cinemas)
BEST SONG
Naatu Naatu – RRR (Sarigama Cinemas)
BEST SCORE
Hildur Guðnadóttir – Tár (Focus Features)
TELEVISION SERIES CATEGORIES:
BEST DRAMA SERIES
Better Call Saul (AMC)
BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Bob Odenkirk – Better Call Saul (AMC)
BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Zendaya – Euphoria (HBO Max)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Giancarlo Esposito – Better Call Saul (AMC)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Jennifer Coolidge – The White Lotus (HBO Max)
BEST COMEDY SERIES
Abbott Elementary (ABC)
BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Jeremy Allen White – The Bear (FX)
BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Jean Smart – Hacks (HBO Max)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Henry Winkler – Barry (HBO Max)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Sheryl Lee Ralph – Abbott Elementary (ABC)
BEST LIMITED SERIES
The Dropout (Hulu)
BEST MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (The Roku Channel)
BEST ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Daniel Radcliffe – Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (The Roku Channel)
BEST ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Amanda Seyfried – The Dropout (Hulu)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Paul Walter Hauser – Black Bird (Apple TV+)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Niecy Nash-Betts – Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (Netflix)
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE SERIES
Pachinko (Apple TV+)
BEST ANIMATED SERIES
Harley Quinn (HBO Max)
BEST TALK SHOW
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO Max)
BEST COMEDY SPECIAL
Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special (Netflix)
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'A Man Called Otto' In 2008, Clint Eastwood played a “get off of my lawn” curmudgeon in “Gran Torino.”
Now, it’s Tom Hanks’ turn in “A Man Called Otto” (a.k.a. Forrest “Grump”) a movie that is often depressing but ultimately pays off as life affirming as it opens in theaters Friday.
Based on Fredrik Backman’s 2012 novel “A Man Called Ove,” this is the second screen adaptation after Hannes Holm’s 2015 Swedish Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. The new remake follows Otto Anderson, a grumpy old man living in the suburbs of Pittsburgh who is constantly being interrupted during attempts to commit suicide.
It’s one of Hanks’ darkest roles, a man at the end of his rope, and at the end of his exhaust pipe, and standing on train tracks. His suicide attempts are like Bill Murray in the bleakest stretch of “Groundhog Day” (1993), only this time the annoyingly cheery Ned Ryerson is an exercising neighbor in a track suit named Jimmy (Cameron Britton) inviting him for meals.
Unlike Eastwood’s “Torino,” Hanks isn’t socially backwards. He’s actually progressive, standing up for a trans kid on the street. Technologically, however, he is a proud Luddite, repping common sense and handyman skills as he fetches ladders from his garage or bleeds his neighbor’s radiators to heat their homes, while rolling his eyes at selfie culture.
Of course, his grumpiness is for a reason. Director Marc Forster (“The Kite Runner,” “Stranger Than Fiction,” “World War Z”) skillfully uses slow disclosure to reveal Otto’s grief as he grabs a teacup and the camera lingers on a second teacup on the shelf. We later see an empty side of the bed, while a lucky coin also becomes a telling familiar image.
After these subtle visual clues, Forster intercuts flashbacks of Otto’s wife Sonya (Rachel Keller) and Young Otto (Tom’s son Truman Hanks). Their initial meeting is adorable (I did my best Forrest Gump impression: “Ma’am, you dropped your book!”), but their first kiss and proposal feel a tad rushed. Then again, we’re only seeing Otto’s standout memories.
Screenwriter David Magee, a two-time Oscar nominee for adapting “Finding Neverland” (2004) and “Life of Pi” (2012), does a nice job developing the rest of the neighborhood, particularly a Hispanic couple (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Mariana Treviño) and their two cute daughters who crack kid jokes while playing with their lucha-libre action figures.
On the downside, Otto’s falling out with his Black neighbor Rueben (Peter Lawson Jones) isn’t explained well enough, seemingly boiling down to a rivalry over their Ford vs. Chevrolet cars. Reuben’s wife Anita (Juanita Jennings) is such a likable character that it seems odd that she wouldn’t have stepped in to squash such a small spat over cars.
Occasionally, the script is a little too on the nose. The corrupt realtor is named Dye & Merica, as in “Die America,” suggesting that gentrification is killing the working people of this country. The real estate agents are clearly the antagonists of this movie, turning a once authentic American neighborhood into a cookie-cutter series of lifeless townhomes.
Most of us can get behind this underdog subplot and the overall theme of triumphing over grief. It’s inherently tricky making a feel-good movie with so many traumatic moments. The Ricky Gervais TV series “After Life” did a slightly better job of juggling the light and dark, but “A Man Called Otto” is a decent enough American remake of the Swedish original.
As for this D.C. sports fan, I wish they didn’t change the title from “Ove” to “Otto.” How cool would it have been to have a hero named “Ove” set in Pittsburgh? Take that, Crosby.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Ride the Cyclone' at Arena Stage (Part 1) Arena Stage is arguably the best place to see exciting new theater in the nation’s capital.
This Friday, the musical “Ride the Cyclone” hits Arena Stage from Jan. 13 to Feb. 19.
“It’s a wild ride of a new musical,” Director Sarah Rasmussen told WTOP. “It’s quirky, it’s culty, it has such a wild fan base. It is the story of six kids who go on a roller coaster and, in a wild freak accident, end up in a purgatory where they are in this contest to see which of them gets to come back to life. That’s the weird setup, but it’s so funny and heartfelt.”
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Indeed, the story follows six teen chamber choir singers, whose lives are cut short in a freak roller coaster accident. Stuck in the afterlife, the adolescent singers encounter a mechanical fortuneteller who gives them a chance to sing their way back to earth.
“It’s an intense setup, that’s the frame of it, but then it becomes one of the most life-affirming theater pieces I’ve ever seen,” Rasmussen said. “At its heart, it’s really asking: when our lives go off the rails, as they do, what makes life worth living?’ It’s such a beautiful, heartfelt journey of these kids discovering what truly matters in their world.”
The six teenagers each have their own unique personality. Ocean is a straight-A student with a Type-A personality; Constance has an R&B soul with a goofy sense of humor; Noel offers a film-noir throwback vibe; Ricky wildly pushes boundaries like Davie Bowie or Prince; and Mischa is a Ukrainian rapper — written 15 years before Russia’s invasion.
The songbook features music and lyrics by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell.
“This is a really unique new musical in that we have an amazing live band playing,” Rasmussen said. “The musical really incorporates the best of technology in prerecorded tracks, so it’s got that feeling as if you were a pop concert of Taylor Swift, Beyoncé. … Our opening number ‘What the World Needs’ is such a bop in everyone’s heads all the time.”
The catchy songs are paired with dazzling visuals to create the purgatory atmosphere.
“It’s got kind of a Tim Burton feel to it,” Rasmussen said. “It’s a little creepy, it’s a little dark, but it’s also visually lush. … Arena has done an amazing job of creating this immersive carnival warehouse that has all of the crazy stuff that would be packed up at a Carnival. We’ve got video projections too. … Our costumes are so beautiful but also ridiculous.”
This is Rasmussen’s third time directing the show, having previously staged it at Jungle Theater in Minneapolis and McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey. She currently serves as artistic director of the latter, which is coproducing the show at Arena.
“If you love musical theater, you’re gonna love ‘Ride the Cyclone,’ but I’ve heard so many people come out of the theater saying, ‘I didn’t think I liked musicals, but that was great.'”
Click here for more ticket information.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes Joni Mitchell's Gershwin Prize (Part 1) The Library of Congress has named its next recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
The prestigious honor will go this year to the legendary folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.
Born in Alberta, Canada, in 1943, Mitchell later moved to California in the 1960s to sign with Reprise Records and release her first album “Song to a Seagull” (1968).
Her second album “Clouds” (1969) featured iconic folk tunes like “Chelsea Morning” and “Both Sides, Now,” providing dual perspectives on life’s ups and downs.
Her third album “Ladies of the Canyon” (1970) included hits like “Woodstock,” “The Circle Game” and “Big Yellow Taxi,” turning urban sprawl into an environmental anthem.
Her 1971 album “Blue” featured iconic songs like “California” and recently ranked No. 3 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
That same year, Robert Plant paid homage to Mitchell with the Led Zeppelin hit “Going to California” with the lyric, “A girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.”
Mitchell was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2021.
Now, she will add a Gershwin Prize to her mantle with an all-star tribute concert at DAR Constitution Hall on March 1 that will air on PBS on March 31.
Past recipients include the cream of the songwriting crop: Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Carole King, Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson, Tony Bennett, Gloria & Emilio Estefan, Garth Brooks and Lionel Richie.
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Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Glen Phillips at Union Stage (Part 1) He’s best known as the lead singer of the alternative-rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket.
Next week, Glen Phillips hits Union Stage in D.C. on Wednesday, Jan. 18, playing Sprocket’s biggest hits and stuff from his new solo album “There Is So Much Here” (2022).
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“It’s a little bit of everything,” Phillips told WTOP. “I enjoy playing the Toad stuff, stuff from the new Toad record, stuff from solo albums, some stuff from side projects, so it’s a little smorgasbord. … One of the things that I like about a solo show is that it tends to be a little less structured than a Toad show, though I will be joined by my friend Jonathan Kingham.”
Born in Santa Barbara, California in 1970, Phillips formed Toad the Wet Sprocket in 1986 with high school pals Todd Nichols (guitar), Dean Dinning (bass) and Randy Guss (drums).
“We were all theater nerds, we were all in choir, we did ‘Oklahoma,’ ‘Our Town,'” Phillips said. “They were seniors, I was a freshman. Todd lived a couple blocks from me. He had a big station wagon, so I could throw my bike in the back and get a ride home from school.”
The band got its unique name from the Monty Python sketch “Rock Notes,” which was fake music news show that listed phony band names, including Toad the Wet Sprocket.
“Eric Idle sent a notice saying, ‘I heard you on the radio and almost drove my car off the side of the road. I promise not to sue if you if you send me a gold record,'” Phillips said.
After their debut album “Bread & Circus” (1988) and sophomore effort “Pale” (1990), the band broke through on alternative radio with their third album “Fear” (1991). The album featured the opening track “Walk on the Ocean,” which hit No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“I have no idea what the chorus means,” Phillips said. “There’s rumors that it’s about Young Life, a Christian summer camp youth group, but I went to Camp Judaea so it probably wasn’t that. … I’ve had other people be like, ‘That song’s about coming out of the closet, right?’ Neither are my experience … People have such a variety of interpretation.”
The same album also featured “All I Want,” reaching No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, which sounds like one of the band’s happier songs but was actually hell to make.
“I broke down and cried in studio,” Phillips said. “I couldn’t get it in tune. … We were overdubbing a 12 string and I couldn’t get it. Then I recorded harmonies and they sounded sour. … Finally, the producer was like, ‘Let me solo the bass.’ Turns out, the bass was out of tune! … As happy a song as it was, it was a mind-wreckingly difficult song to record.”
Ironically, a song that didn’t make the “Fear” album cut went on to become their most recognizable hit as “Good Intentions” was released on a compilation album of rare tracks called “In Light Syrup” (1995) before gaining fame on the “Friends” soundtrack (1995).
“We did ‘Good Intentions’ and we were like, ‘Eh, it’s too pop, it’s not what we are, we’re edgy,'” Phillips said. “The bands that we loved were The Replacements or Hüsker Dü or R.E.M. before R.E.M. was on the radio. There was this period of ‘college music,’ as it was called before people started calling it ‘alternative.’ … We didn’t want to be a pop band.”
Mainstream success gave way to their fourth album “Dulcinea” (1994) with hits like “Something’s Always Wrong” and “Fall Down,” while their fifth album “Coil” (1997) delivered the hit “Come Down,” but the band broke up over creative differences in 1998.
“Looking back at it, I wish that some people in our camp had sat us down and said, ‘Get a mediator, get into counseling as a group and go do some other stuff and come back in a couple years, you only get one chance at this,’ but at the time, we were a little bit entitled,” Phillips said. “We were just highly dysfunctional and needed to get away from each other.”
So, Phillips turned solo albums: “Abulum” (2000), “Winter Pays for Summer” (2005), “Unlucky 7” (2006), which included the song “The Hole” on AMC’s “Breaking Bad.” He followed with “Mr. Lemons” (2006), “Secrets of the New Explorers” (2008), “Tornillo” (2010), “Coyote Sessions” (2012) and “Options: B-Sides & Demos” (2014).
He also contributed to side projects, including Works Progress Administration, Mutual Admiration Society, Flapping Flapping, Plover and Remote Tree Children before Toad the Wet Sprocket reunited for “New Constellation” (2013) and “Starting Now” (2021).
If you missed any of his solo stuff, he suggests checking out his two recent albums: “Swallowed by the New” (2016), which grappled with his divorce, and “There Is So Much Here” (2022), which proved that he was in a more positive place moving forward.
“‘Swallowed by the New’ is thematically my favorite, written post-divorce, an album about grief and what happens when things you love change, it was a time my nest was empty, my kids were moving out,” Phillips said. “During lockdown I got my edges pushed by being in one place, moved in with my fiancee and learned how to appreciate subtle changes.”
Find more ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'My Fair Lady' at the Hippodrome (Part 1) The original 1956 stage version won six Tony Awards on Broadway, including Best Musical, before the 1964 Hollywood adaptation won eight Oscars, including Best Picture.
This week, New York City’s Lincoln Center brings its tour of “My Fair Lady” to the historic Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland, from Tuesday, Jan. 10, through Sunday, Jan. 14.
“It sounds like such a fresh, new show, but nothing has actually changed,” Actor Jonathan Grunert told WTOP.
So while the rain stays mostly in the plain, to quote from one of the show’s famous tunes, “it will be briefly in Baltimore!” Grunert added
Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion,” the story follows Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl in Edwardian London who takes speech lessons from a no-nonsense phonetician, Professor Henry Higgins, so that she may pass as a “proper lady.”
“‘My Fair Lady’ is a classic Cinderella story,” Grunert said. Beyond that, “It’s a story about two characters who are learning to speak the same language and a woman literally finding her own voice.”
While the role of Henry Higgins was made famous on stage and screen by Rex Harrison, Madeline Powell has big shoes to fill as Eliza Doolittle. The role was originated on Broadway by Julie Andrews, but she was replaced in the movie by “a bigger star” in Audrey Hepburn, who ironically lost the Oscar to Andrews for “Mary Poppins” (1964).
Grunert raved about Powell’s beautiful voice, which he said has a classic Broadway sound. “There’s a great moment in the show where I get to stand there and listen to her while she sings her song at me,” he said. “It’s like getting a private concert every night right on stage. It’s terrific.”
The Lerner-and-Loewe songbook is iconic.
“The audience just erupts” at the conclusion of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” Grunert said.
Other famous songs include “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?,” “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “Rain in Spain,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Get Me to the Church on Time” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”
Directed by the acclaimed Bartlett Sher, the production’s visuals promise to be quite “loverly,” from the elaborate period costumes to the detailed London backdrops.
“It is a feast for the eyes,” Grunert said. “Every one of the original sets and costumes from the Broadway show, you are getting them live on stage now. Seeing them twirl around during the ballroom scene, seeing them dance across the stage across these beautiful sets under beautiful lights — it’s a classic, full Broadway musical brought to beautiful life.”
Find more ticket information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Golden Globes (Part 1) It’s been two years since the Golden Globes aired on primetime television in 2021, but the award show will be broadcast live from Beverly Hills on Tuesday night on NBC.
Last year, the network pulled the plug on the telecast due to a lack of diversity within the voting membership of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which the L.A. Times exposed for not having a single Black voter in its 87 members from over 40 countries.
The association has since issued an apology and announced new members of color, but many in the film industry remain skeptical of its sudden “change of heart.” I can’t wait to hear host Jerrod Carmichael crack jokes about the Globes being forced to take a “timeout.”
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Television
Expect a course correction as ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” will likely win Best Comedy over “Only Murders in the Building,” “Wednesday” and “Hacks.” This isn’t mere award-season reparations; it also happens to be the funniest show on TV. The only potential alternative is “The Bear,” which is more stressful than funny, so it might be hard to earn comedy votes.
Instead, “The Bear” will more likely earn acting prizes like Jeremy Allen White winning Best Actor (Comedy) as a frantic Chicago chef. Bill Hader is tough to beat for HBO’s “Barry” and Donald Glover hopes for a final-season send-off win for FX’s “Atlanta,” while Steve Martin and Martin Short will cancel each other out for Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.”
Best Actress (Comedy) will likely go to Quinta Brunson (“Abbott Elementary”), and a deserving win it would be. I’m also noticing recent buzz for Jenna Ortega (“Wednesday”), while Jean Smart (“Hacks”) boasts several Emmys for her role. Rounding out the group are Selena Gomez (“Only Murders in the Building”) and Kaley Cuoco (“The Flight Attendant”).
On the TV drama side, Zendaya is on fire with “Euphoria,” but Imelda Staunton (“The Crown”) has momentum from the Queen’s real-life death. Emma D’Arcy joined midseason for “House of the Dragon,” so I doubt she’ll win, but it would be cool to see Laura Linney finally win for the last season of “Ozark.” There’s also Hilary Swank (“Alaska Daily”).
For Best Actor (TV Drama), I’m expecting Bob Odenkirk to get a well-deserved curtain call for his final season of “Better Call Saul,” beating other veterans like Jeff Bridges (“The Old Man”) and Kevin Costner (“Yellowstone”). Adam Scott (“Severance”) and Diego Luna (“Andor”) have the benefit of rave reviews, but both will probably have to wait their turn.
Movies
On the movie side, I’m curious to see if Steven Spielberg’s intimate “The Fabelmans” can fend off blockbusters like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of the Water.” After all, Spielberg invented the modern summer blockbuster before ironically becoming specialty cinema in his later years, so it would be ironic if he were swallowed by sequels.
Cate Blanchett is a deserving Best Actress (Drama) front-runner for her riveting title role in “Tár,” while Michelle Williams could triumph as Spielberg’s home-wrecking mom in “The Fabelmans.” Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) and Olivia Colman (“Empire of Light”) have no shot because their films bombed, but I’m rooting for a Viola Davis upset for “The Woman King.”
Best Actor (Drama) is really a two-person race between Austin Butler’s uncanny turn as the King of Rock & Roll in “Elvis” and Brendan Fraser’s obese professor in “The Whale.” This is the toughest to call, but my money is on Butler. It’s odd how “Elvis” isn’t on the “musical” side, which is why the Globes remain so weird in how they categorize things.
For Best Actor (Comedy), I’m rooting for Colin Farrell in the bittersweet “The Banshees of Inisherin,” a performance that is more complex than Daniel Craig in “Glass Onion.” The latter could benefit from recency bias; same with Ralph Fiennes in “The Menu.” While Diego Calva and Adam Driver are talented, their films stunk (“Babylon” and “White Noise”).
Best Actress (Comedy) better go to Michelle Yoeh for playing multiple versions in “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Of the other nominees — Emma Thompson (“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”), Lesley Manville (“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”), Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Menu”) — her only real competition is Margot Robbie in a bad movie (“Babylon”).
Finally, Best Picture (Comedy) will either go to “The Banshees of Inisherin” or “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Keep an eye on the supporting actor categories for early clues. If Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis beat Kerry Condon and Brendan Gleeson, you’ll know which way it’s leaning. Who knows, maybe we’ll get “Triangle of Sadness” as a fun spoiler?
Nah, probably not. I have a hunch it’ll be the year of the multiverse, especially when you factor in the Asian cast of “EEAAO” as a way to address the ceremony’s diversity crisis.
Let the Oscar race begin.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'George & Tammy' miniseries on Showtime Long before Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, long before Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, country music fans adored the legendary George Jones and Tammy Wynette, who got married in 1969, just a year after Johnny Cash and June Carter tied the knot in 1968.
Their volatile relationship is chronicled in the six-episode miniseries “George & Tammy,” which just dropped its finale Sunday night on Showtime with dramatic acting that’s the best in the world but singing that obviously can’t touch the powerful voices of the two legends.
Created by Abe Sylvia and directed by John Hillcoat, the series opens in 1967 with Jones already a massive star with hits like “The Race is On” but also with an alcoholic reputation for missing gigs as “No Show Jones.” Meanwhile, Virginia Wynette Pugh is just starting to embrace her middle name as a stage name as she idolizes Jones at the Grand Ole Opry.
After George sings Tammy’s hit “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” at the dinner table of her second husband Don Chapel, Tammy runs off with George for a hot-and-heavy love affair filled with duets. It eventually falls apart due to his drinking, forcing her to leave him to marry songwriter George Richey, who injects her with painkillers as George pines for her the rest of his life.
The mysterious Michael Shannon, Oscar nominee for “Revolutionary Road” and “Nocturnal Animals,” works as Jones during drunken outbursts and his voice is surprisingly good, but he doesn’t really look the part. In fact, co-star Walton Goggins, who plays Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery, looks more like Jones with close-set eyes fitting the nickname “The Possum.”
Oscar winner Jessica Chastain, defending champ for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” takes on another Tammy. As expected, she’s great in the acting scenes, but her singing is off-key belting “Stand By Your Man.” Even so, she is nominated for a Golden Globe as Tammy, though I would have rather seen her nominated for her role in “The Good Nurse” (2022).
It’s impossible to top Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980) or Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash in “Walk the Line” (2005), just as it’s hard not to think of “That Thing You Do!” (1996) when we see Steve Zahn as George Richey or “O Brother Where Art Thou” (2000) when we see Tim Blake Nelson as the icon Roy Acuff.
By comparison, it makes Austin Butler’s performance as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” (2022) all the more impressive as the actor looked and sounded just like The King of Rock & Roll, making us forget that we were watching a movie (unlike a miscast Tom Hanks). I’m rooting for Butler to win the Oscar over Brendan Fraser in “The Whale” (2022).
While “Elvis” ran three hours, “George & Tammy” asks us to watch two people self-destruct for six hours. The show carefully portrays George’s domestic violence, making him passed out drunk when he strikes Tammy for waking him. We feel bad for her as he trashes the Christmas tree with shotgun blasts, while Tammy develops her own drug-addict demons.
We’ve seen this “at what price fame” morality play before, but that’s because it routinely happens in real life. By the time we get to “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” it packs an emotional wallop, reminding us why it’s arguably the best country song ever written. Every fan remembers the first time that they realized the song was about a wreath on his coffin.
Which brings me to one Rotten Tomatoes critic who wrote, “What you get are lots of musical sequences, featuring songs you don’t really know.” This stupid take says more about the reviewer than the TV series. Ignorance of music history isn’t a badge of honor, the same as Boomers not knowing Dr. Dre songs at the Super Bowl. Study history!
Thankfully, the final credits remind us just how influential George and Tammy were, boasting one last subversive feminist jab: “As a solo artist, George had more than 160 singles hit the Hot 100. Ten went to number one…just 10 shy of Tammy’s 20.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'White Noise' Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel “White Noise” has long been deemed “unfilmable.” Now we know why — Noah Baumbach’s adaptation is a tonally-confused misfire streaming on Netflix.
Set in 1984, Ohio, the film follows Jack Gladney (Adam Driver), a Jewish college professor of Hitler studies. He lives with his fourth wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), and their blended family of four kids, two from Jack’s previous marriages (Heinrich and Steffie), one from Babette’s previous marriage (Denise) and one that they conceived together (Wilder).
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The family struggles when Babette begins acting strangely, zoning out with a fear of death as she pops pills of the experimental drug Dylar, while Jack has visions of a mysterious man trying to kill him. At the same time, a cataclysmic train accident causes a toxic cloud of chemical waste to hover over the town, forcing a mass evacuation of all residents.
Driver reunites with Baumbach after “Marriage Story” (2019), but rather than an explosive jerk, he’s a moping pushover. His best scene comes with Don Cheadle, a professor of Elvis studies, trading a back-and-forth lecture of Hitler vs. Elvis that is more provocative than anything in the film. This scene alone is why Driver earned a Golden Globe nod.Baumbach also reunites with wife Gerwig, who cowrote and starred in “Frances Ha” (2012) and “Mistress America” (2015) before becoming a director in her own right with “Lady Bird” (2017), “Little Women” (2019) and the upcoming “Barbie” (2023). She might as well be a plastic doll in “White Noise,” zoning out with a blank stare masking unlikable decisions.
Of course, you don’t need every character to be likable. Plenty of great films follow anti-heroes. Baumbach himself has turned selfish, quirky characters into compelling stories plenty of times before, with Laura Linney cheating on Jeff Daniels in “The Squid and the Whale” (2005) or Adam Driver cheating on Scarlett Johansson in “Marriage Story” (2019).
The difference is that those movies picked a lane. One was a coming-of-age dramedy. The other was a divorce drama. The genres were solid. “White Noise” is billed as an absurdist drama comedy, but it’s also randomly a disaster movie like “Independence Day” (1996), a family road comedy like “Vacation” (1983) and a revenge thriller like “Unfaithful” (2002).
Baumbach has four interesting movies inside this script, but they don’t work when crammed together. At one point, I thought the “Airborne Toxic Event” would become a COVID-19 allegory, but the evacuation/quarantine sequence is a tangent that evaporates as the family returns home like nothing happened. Pandemic? What pandemic?
By the time Baumbach reaches a seedy motel in Act Three, I was completely out of the movie, frustrated by its tonal inconsistency. It’s a shame because I’ve had high hopes for “White Noise” since it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. Don’t bother, folks. Save yourself two hours, pop some Dylar and watch something else on Netflix.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'She Said' In October 2017, the #MeToo movement ignited from the spark of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, when the Miramax founder was accused of raping and sexually assaulting 80 women over a span of 30 years as the most monstrous bully gatekeeper in all of Hollywood.
This Friday, “She Said” hits streaming on Peacock after a tepid November release in theaters, earning back just $12 million of its $32 million budget in an era where superhero spectacles swallow adult dramas. It’s proof that a film’s success should not be measured solely by box office as “She Said” has something powerful to say about the world today.
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Just as the movie masterpiece “All the Presidents Men” (1976) was based on the 1974 book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, “She Said” is based on the 2019 book by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who pound the pavement gathering sources and trying to convince victims to go on record.
Carey Mulligan carries clout as Twohey, fresh off an Oscar nomination as a #MeToo vigilante in “Promising Young Woman” (2020). “She Said” likely won’t win her the gold, but anyone who’s seen “An Education” (2009), “Drive” (2011), “Shame” (2011), “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013) or “Mudbound” (2017) knows her skill, seen here in mother-daughter scenes.
Likewise, Zoe Kazan is inspired casting as Kantor. Her grandfather Elia Kazan directed Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) and “On the Waterfront” (1954), but the brutish Stanley Kowalski no longer flies for Zoe, who found love in a coma in “The Big Sick” (2017) without the #MeToo coma nurse of Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her” (2002).
Together, Mulligan and Kazan form a formidable investigative duo following in the gumshoe footsteps of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman’s Woodward and Bernstein. Their Ben Bradlee editor is Dean Baquet (Andre Braugher, “Homicide: Life on the Street”), insisting that they button-up loose ends before printing anything, knowing these revelations will be explosive.
Still, the performances that really stick out are those of the victims: Samantha Morton as Zelda Perkins, Patricia Clarkson as Rebecca Corbett, Angela Yeoh as Rowena Chiu and Jennifer Ehle as Laura Madden. “Succession” star Peter Friedman is also great as Weinstein’s lawyer Lanny Davis, who acknowledges wrongdoing but can’t divulge the NDAs.
The mystery is doled out by British playwright turned screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who wrote Paweł Pawlikowski’s Polish masterpiece “Ida” (2013). The hush-hush secrets gradually unravel, starting with claims by Rose McGowan, followed by Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow, who are hesitant to go on record and initially ask to remain anonymous.
It’s odd that some of these big-named stars play themselves (Judd) but others are played by different actors (Keilly McQuail as McGowan), while Paltrow provides voice overs for a stunt double. While this approach is inherently inconsistent, critics should allow grace considering it must be hard for victims to come forward and play themselves on screen.
Director Maria Schrader of the Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox” (2020) isn’t going for flashy camera moves, jarring angles or rapid cuts. This is a straight-ahead journalism procedural like Tom McCarthy’s masterpiece “Spotlight” (2015), featuring a muted palette, static hallway shots and a somber tone befitting of the serious subject matter at hand.
I doubt that “She Said” will win Best Picture like “Spotlight,” which masterfully chronicled The Boston Globe’s reporting on the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. However, I would love to see “She Said” at least nominated for Best Picture and a few acting prizes.
While “All the President’s Men” screened after Nixon resigned over Watergate, “She Said” arrives with the 70-year-old Weinstein already in prison with more charges pending. In both cases, audiences already know the ending, but the films remain riveting, the latter helping female viewers heal and male viewers learn the dangers of a male-gaze industry.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Norm Lewis about 'A Soldier's Play' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) On stage, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1982 and the Tony for Best Revival in 2020. On screen, Charles Fuller adapted his own play into a 1984 film that earned an Oscar nomination for Adolph Caesar and launched the career of Denzel Washington.
This weekend is your last chance to see “A Soldier’s Play” at the Kennedy Center, starring Norm Lewis of Broadway’s “The Phantom of the Opera” and Hollywood’s “Da 5 Bloods.”
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“Charles Fuller passed away a few months ago, so we’re really honoring him on this tour,” Lewis told WTOP. “It’s such a poignant story. It has so many layers to it. It’s a murder mystery … but it also dives deep into racism and self-hatred within the race, things like that, so you’ve gotta see it because it really has so many different layers.”
Set on a Louisiana Army base in 1944, the play explores the murder of a sergeant of an all-Black unit, triggering questions about service and sacrifice during the Jim Crow era.
“It’s a whodunit, so there’s a possibility of a very racist soldier who might have done it,” Lewis said. “These soldiers want to fight for their country, feeling that if they were able to be hailed as a hero that maybe they could be a little more accepted in a society that hates them so much. Back then there were different water fountains, bathrooms, a hierarchy.”
Lewis plays the role of Capt. Richard Davenport, a pioneering Black military officer. “At that time, you didn’t have a lot of people of color who were officers and this is the highest rank that any of the people on this base have seen, so there’s a lot of excitement from the soldiers to see me in this uniform and be taking care of this case and this investigation.”
Playing Sgt. Vernon Waters is Eugene Lee, who played Corporal Cobb in the original play. Over the years, the ensemble has included Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and David Alan Grier, but matter who plays which role, the text is distinctly Fuller’s.
“It is very poetic,” Lewis said. “I say certain things that I normally wouldn’t say in my real life and I have to really concentrate on how to say them because it just sounds almost Shakespearean in the way that it’s executed. … It’s very strong language, but that’s necessary for the story. Charles Fuller did a dynamic job. The more I dive into it, the more I find.”
Find more ticket information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Norm Lewis about 'A Soldier's Play' at Kennedy Center (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Babylon' He rattled off three masterpieces with the gritty drumming drama “Whiplash” (2014), the nostalgic musical romance “La La Land” (2016) and the underrated space biopic “First Man” (2018), but there must come a time that even Damien Chazelle soils the bed.
“Babylon” is his excessive critique of Hollywood excess during the industry’s transition from silents to talkies, opening with a circus elephant crapping on its handler before reveling in an extended orgy sequence of sex, cocaine and a little person bouncing on a penis-shaped pogo stick — released just in time for Christmas Day. Happy holidays.
It’s shocking for prudes and perverts alike. If you’re a discerning film reviewer trying to sort through the cinephile rubble, you may appreciate a director doing an epic swing and miss that works wonders in brief moments that never form a cohesive whole, ultimately forced to admit a hard truth about a great filmmaker: his latest Oscar bait is an unfortunate mess.
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Set in Los Angeles during the Roaring Twenties, a Mexican immigrant named Manny Torres (Diego Calva) helps transport an elephant to a lavish sex party at the mansion of Kinoscope Studios executive Don Wallach where he meets divorced actor Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) and grows smitten with rowdy New Jersey starlet Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie).
If you complained that Robbie didn’t get enough screen time in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019), then “Babylon” gives her plenty of scenery to chew with a snakebite scene that’s one of the most badass displays of liquid courage ever filmed. Calva adoringly watches her deliriously uncouth behavior like Nick Calloway in “Gatsby.”
Less belligerent but equally sauced is her Oscar-winning “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” co-star Pitt, whose character self-medicates a two-pronged depression of marital issues and a changing film industry, respectively mirroring his real-life divorce from Angelina Jolie and transition from theatrical to streaming, the most seismic shift since silents to talkies.
Pitt is tasked with regurgitating the script’s verbose speeches about cinema’s superiority as a high art, delivering monologues like, “A hundred thousand people see you on Broadway and it’s the smash of the century, right? Well, here it’s a flop!” He’s a drunk like James Mason or Bradley Cooper in “A Star is Born,” fated to the depths of the shallow.
For comparison’s sake, the first hour plays like Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!” (2001), howling at showbiz parties; the second hour plays like Stanley Donen’s “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), replicating the stress of rustling microphones (“roll ’em!”); and the third hour plays like David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” (2001), plunging into Hollywood’s underbelly.
This Lynchian tangent is what sinks the movie, featuring Tobey Maguire as a sort of rat king in underground tunnels like something out of “Barbarian” (2022). Chazelle seems hellbent on proving he’s a bad boy after haters dubbed “La La Land” too bubbly (he similarly casts Jovan Adepo of “Fences” as a jazz trumpeter instead of Ryan Gosling).
The think pieces got to him, which is a shame because “La La Land” was wonderfully whimsical in its nostalgic ode to Golden Age musicals, joining Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” (2016) as my favorite movies of that year. I was backstage covering the Oscars during the infamous envelope gaffe and later interviewed Jenkins and Chazelle as rising filmmakers.
Boasting such talent, Chazelle has a great movie hidden somewhere in “Babylon,” but it’s too much, too long. The film takes three hours to accomplish what Vincente Minnelli’s “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952) did in two. I would have preferred a theatrical cut that trimmed the opening orgy and removed the Maguire detour. Save it for the director’s cut.
To quote Chazelle’s script, “I hate it when people put toppings on ice cream. It doesn’t need it.” Nothing exceeds like excess, and like Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013), it becomes the very thing it criticizes. Released a month after “She Said” destroyed Harvey Weinstein, it’s a weird time for such a male-gaze critique of Hollywood decadence.
It all builds to a final 20 minutes that’s worth the wait as a world-weary Manny staggers into a movie palace like Mia Farrow in “The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985) or Olivia Colman in “Empire of Light” (2022). Watching the Technicolor images on screen, Manny notices similarities to his own life as his tear-stained cheeks transform into a cathartic smile.
We won’t spoil which movie but you can bet that it’s a Golden Age musical, launching a montage of clips throughout movie history mixed with experimental lava-lamp globs for a Kubrick or Malick-style mind trip. It’s a cinephile’s dream, but not as comprehensive as Chuck Workman’s “100 Years at the Movies,” which everyone should watch immediately.
The finale is proof that Chazelle’s still got it, but I wish he would explore new territory like Neil Armstrong in “First Man” rather than return to movies about movies. So far, the $80 million film has grossed only $11 million, meaning fewer chances for other directors to take similar big swings. “Babylon” is a flop, but I can’t wait to see what Chazelle does next.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' In 2019, Rian Johnson’s twisty-turny “Knives Out” became a surprise mainstream hit, infusing fresh creativity into the whodunit genre with a candy-colored “Clue” mystery.
Now, the sequel “Glass Onion” has become the No. 1 movie on Netflix since it dropped over Christmas weekend, providing folks some delicious detective work over the holidays.
Fans are hailing the movie as a cleverly-written Oscar contender for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, while detractors (let’s call them Elon Musketeers) are entering with their knives out, ready to pick it apart for satirizing the tech mogul. I shrug at both takes, peeling “Glass Onion” as a fun puzzle box that’s preposterous fun — no more, no less.
The film once again follows brilliant Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who receives a mysterious wooden-box gadget from tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton). You see, Bron has invited a group of his friends and frenemies to his remote island for a murder mystery party, but when actual bodies drop, the investigation takes on life-or-death stakes.
It’s wonderful that Craig has found a new recurring role as Blanc, giving him a post-Bond franchise after retiring his 007 in “No Time to Die” (2021). He delightfully joins a long line of British film detectives from Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes to Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau to Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, a role revived by Kenneth Branagh.
In “Glass Onion,” his character’s gay marriage to stay-at-home hubby Hugh Grant is handled with admirable matter of factness (a 93% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes offers hope that most folks aren’t homophobic), but Craig’s attempt at a Southern accent is awfully reminiscent of Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood in “House of Cards” (2013).
Craig is surrounded by a stellar ensemble: Dave Bautista plays a gun-toting Twitch star filming from his mom’s basement; Kate Hudson is a “canceled” fashion designer who complains of wokeness but thinks sweatshops make sweatpants; Kathryn Hahn is the ambitious Governor of Connecticut; and Leslie Odom Jr. is a scientist at Bron’s company.
SPOILER ALERT: I’m about to discuss spoilers below, so only read after watching.
Turns out, they all owe Bron a debt for past favors, dating back to the night that his tech company design was drawn on a bar napkin. Enter Janelle Monáe, who steals the show as his ex-business partner, wearing sunglasses to hide her suspicious glances. Even Bron, played by a deliciously scheming Ed Norton, looks surprised to see her on the island.
Like Jordan Peele’s “Us” (2019), Monáe deserves credit for dual roles as twins Helen and Andi Brand. However, as a twin myself, I find the “secret twin sister” plot device to be way too convenient. It was original when Claudette Colbert did it in Preston Sturges’ screwball comedy “The Palm Beach Story” (1942), but 80 years later, it feels like a cheap twist.
To maintain credibility with audiences, a writer really should establish twin characters right from the start, like Jeremy Irons in “Dead Ringers” (1988) or Nicolas Cage in “Adaptation” (2002). Otherwise, it feels like the screenwriter pulling a fast one that’s not really earned, a sneaky “gotcha” attempt that weakens practically everything we’ve seen up until that point.
You could say this about much of “Glass Onion,” as Johnson repeatedly yanks the rug out to mixed results. I’ll admit that he can play audiences like a fiddle as the sharply talented filmmaker of “Brick” (2005), “Looper” (2012) and episodes of “Breaking Bad” (2010-2013) before killing off Luke Skywalker in the controversial “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (2017).
His final signature on this “Glass Onion” painting is to destroy the Mona Lisa, which succeeds in making Norton’s villain go down in infamy but unintentionally makes Monáe’s heroine unlikable. Surely, Bron blowing up his island mansion with his own experimental energy would have been embarrassing enough without destroying da Vinci’s priceless art.
I guess you could call the film “pop art,” but it’s nowhere near as profound as its fans think it is, nor is it as egregious as its detractors claim. It’s not great. It’s not trash. It’s fine, an entertaining ride that probably doesn’t deserve to be nominated for Best Picture over “The Woman King,” “Triangle of Sadness” or “RRR,” though that situation is sadly looking likely.
Oh well, at least it would be an excuse to nominate something people actually watched this year, bringing popcorn pictures back to the Oscars race, which is long overdue. I’m happy for Johnson, I’m happy for his fans, but for me, “Glass Onion” was a blast until it wasn’t.
The reveal doesn’t work, but it’s a lot of fun getting there.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews January entertainment (Part 1) Can you believe it’s already 2023? Is your New Year’s resolution to see more live shows?
You’ve come to the right place as a new year brings a new month of events around town.
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Mark your calendars with our January Entertainment Guide:
January Entertainment Guide:Jan. 1: “Beauty and the Beast” at Olney Theatre
Jan. 1-8: “A Soldier’s Play” at Kennedy Center
Jan. 1-8: “Jane Anger” at Shakespeare Theatre
Jan. 1-15: “It’s a Wonderful Life” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Jan. 1-22: “Wicked” musical at Kennedy Center
Jan. 1-22: “Which Way to the Stage” at Signature Theatre
Jan. 1-29: “The Tempest” at Round House Theatre
Jan. 1-29: “Into the Woods” at Signature Theatre
Jan. 5: Ricky Skaggs at Rams Head Annapolis
Jan. 6: “Dancing with the Stars” at MGM National Harbor
Jan. 6: “Women Talking” hits movie theaters
Jan. 6-7: Chante Moore at Howard Theatre
Jan. 6-7: Ricky Skaggs at The Birchmere
Jan. 7: Kathleen Madigan at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Jan. 8: Judy Collins at The Birchmere
Jan. 8: Spank Horton at DC Improv
Jan. 9: “Merrily We Sing-Along: West Side Story” at Signature Theatre
Jan. 10: Golden Globes on NBC
Jan. 10-31: Thad Wilson Jazz Orchestra at Blues Alley
Jan. 11-Feb. 12: “English” at Studio Theatre
Jan. 13: “A Man Called Otto” hits movie theaters
Jan. 13: Junior Marvin & The Legendary Wailers at The Hamilton
Jan. 13-Feb. 19: “Ride the Cyclone” at Arena Stage
Jan. 14: Vivien Green at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
Jan. 14: America at Capital One Hall
Jan. 15: Magic City Hippies at 9:30 Club
Jan. 15: Rare Essence at The Hamilton
Jan. 15: Critics Choice Awards
Jan. 16: “Let Freedom Ring” with Leslie Odom Jr. at Kennedy Center
Jan. 17-22: “Cats” at National Theatre
Jan. 18: Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket at Union Stage
Jan. 19: “Not Another D&D Podcast” at Lincoln Theatre
Jan. 19-20: “Max & Willy’s Last Laugh” at Atlas Performing Arts Center
Jan. 19-21: Del McCoury Band at Wolf Trap
Jan. 19-21: “The Reading Room” at Folger Theatre
Jan. 19-21: The Washington Chorus performs Verdi’s “Requiem”
Jan. 20: Lady Wray at The Black Cat
Jan. 20: Terry Crews at Weinberg Center
Jan. 20: Obsessed with Disappeared at Capital Turnaround
Jan. 20-22: “Hairspray” musical at Capital One Hall
Jan. 20-March 19: “Something Rotten” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Jan. 21: Shordie Shordie at The Fillmore Silver Spring
Jan. 21: Paul Reiser at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Jan. 22: Future & Friends at Capital One Arena
Jan. 24: Oscar nominees announced
Jan. 24-25: Ben Rector & Cody Fry at Kennedy Center
Jan. 24-29: “Shen Yun” at Kennedy Center
Jan. 25: Louis C.K. at DAR Constitution Hall
Jan. 26: A.J. Croce at Wolf Trap
Jan. 27: Raheem DeVaughn at The Birchmere
Jan. 27-28: Ne-Yo with NSO Pops at Kennedy Center
Jan. 27-28: Madison Sinclair at DC Comedy Loft
Jan. 27-28: Greensky Bluegrass at The Anthem
Jan. 28: Im Chang Jung at The Hall at Live! Casino & Hotel
Jan. 28: Mandy Patinkin at Strathmore
Jan. 28: Noel Miller at Warner Theatre
Jan. 28-Feb. 25: “The Lifespan of a Fact” at Keegan Theatre
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews January entertainment (Part 2) Source
Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Anthony Hamilton at Capital One Hall The Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, presents “A Very Merry Come As You Are Christmas Concert” with Grammy-winning R&B artist Anthony Hamilton.
The concert will be held at Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia, this Sunday at 7 p.m.
Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley told WTOP that it was a huge honor to bring in Hamilton, whom he called “one of the greatest voices of our generation,” to sing “the soulful songs that touch our hearts and remind us of Christmas.”
He added, “Imagine singing in the church choir and finding out that you now get to back up Anthony Hamilton. Man, it don’t get no better!”
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Hamilton says he was honored to be asked.
“They’re gonna hear some classic soul songs and some Christmas songs that are new and old classics,” Hamilton told WTOP. “I guess they saw that I was fitting for the occasion and I had the spirit and the music that the people of the church wanted to hear. They asked me and I was like, ‘It makes sense, I’m a Baptist boy from Charlotte, getting back to my roots.”
Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1971, Hamilton grew up singing in church.
“The church was one of the first places I ever allowed me to hear myself,” Hamilton said.
In 1992, he moved to New York City to release his debut album, “XTC” (1996), but he became a household name with his second album, “Comin’ From Where I’m From” (2003), featuring the hit title track and the follow-up single “Charlene.”
“I had a bad breakup in between that and I’d go down to New York on 34th Street to work with a producer, Mark Madsen, who produced ‘Charlene’ and ‘Comin’ From Where I’m From,'” Hamilton said. “These are the songs that came out through a broken heart and feeling like I was at my lowest point career-wise. This is what came out and what people needed.”
Other hits followed, including “Pass Me Over” (2005), “The Point of It All” (2009) and his acclaimed collaboration with Al Green on “You’ve Got the Love I Need” (2008).
“Anthony has a very unique voice that we needed in that time,” Wesley said. “It wasn’t hip-hoppy, it was a balladeer going back to the Luther Vandrosses, who would just stand up and sing. Anthony’s got that deep soulful voice, but then the songs connect. I love ‘Charlene,’ but my top is ‘The Point of It All.’ … That’s in my top five love songs ever.”
Hamilton also contributed to the posthumous 2Pac remixes of “Thugz Mansion” and “Dear Mama” (2002) and sang the chorus of the Nappy Roots hit single “Po’ Folks” (2003).
“It was like a family reunion, man — some cousins that I had never met,” he said. “That was a magical time in my life that actually set the whole scene for everybody to put the voice and the name together.”
He also sang the chorus of the Jadakiss hit single “Why” (2004).
“Jadakiss is one of the best to ever touch the mic, man — one of the most prolific lyricists, writers, rappers, poets,” Hamilton said. “He’s classic. He’ll go down as one of the best to have ever done it. That song was historic and it touched on a lot of things. Being a part of that was sealing my deal in history in the hip-hop community.”
The pastor himself loves him some Jadakiss.
“Top five lyricists all time,” Pastor Wesley said. “I gotta put Eric B. on there; I gotta put Jay-Z; I gotta put Big on my list; I gotta put Pac; I wanna put Jada — and believe it or not, I love Eminem. I think Eminem as a lyricist is up there.”
On the silver screen, Hamilton worked with Diane Warren to record “Do You Feel Me” on the soundtrack of Ridley Scott’s “American Gangster” (2009) starring Denzel Washington. He also joined indie soul singer Elayna Boynton to record the song “Freedom” on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino’s “Django: Unchained” (2012) starring Jamie Foxx.
This weekend’s Christmas concert will be hosted by Sirius XM Radio’s Isaac Carree, who is also an American gospel singer, songwriter, producer, actor and author himself.
It’s part of the church’s “Come As You Are” series, providing unique worship that focuses on the issues and struggles that millennials encounter on a daily basis.
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'A Magical Cirque Christmas' at National Theatre (Part 1) Legendary magician David Copperfield called Lucy Darling “a true original — hilarious and delightful. An EXCEPTIONAL new talent in magic.”
Now, performer Carisa Hendrix brings the Darling character to “A Magical Cirque Christmas,” at National Theatre from Dec. 16 through Dec. 18.
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“The character is a magical character I’ve been performing for about five years,” performer Carisa Hendrix told WTOP. “I created it based on my inspiration from old-time movies, so Mae West, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eartha Kitt — people like that I thought were really fabulous. That old Hollywood aesthetic is slowly going out of our culture and I’m obsessed with it.”
The fabulous Darling character uses her glitz, glamour and holiday spirit to lead audiences on a magical time-travel narrative that she invented during the pandemic.
“During the pandemic, we felt isolated from each other, so we wanted to tell a story about what happens when it doesn’t feel like Christmas,” Hendrix said. The Guardian of Time usually turns a key to start the Christmas season, “but he’s a little too sad this year. The safeguard of the machine is Lucy Darling, who pops out to fix it.”
Amid this storyline, you’ll be dazzled by classic and cutting-edge circus acts.
“Everybody loves a good high-energy juggler, hand-to-hand traditional acrobatics and aerial acts. … Our contortionist does foot archery, so with her feet she has a bow and arrow and she can hit a target — which is incredible, but she invented doing that while suspended hanging from the ceiling.”
The time-travel narrative provides unlimited possibilities for holiday tunes.
“You hear amazing Christmas music from the last 100 years,” Hendrix said. “Mariah Carey, ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,’ ‘Underneath the Tree.'” Hendrix raved about singer Audri Bartholomew, a former contestant on “The Voice,” and says “It’s not just a recording you’re sick of hearing at the mall.”
The sets and costumes depict different eras of Christmas: “costumes and visuals from a 1950s Christmas — so, a jukebox and sock-hop outfits. Later, you see a reimagining of the disco era — crazy mirror balls and roller skates with a huge LED screen.”
Find more information here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Story District's 'It's a Wonderful Life' (Part 1) Seventy six years after its release, “It’s a Wonderful Life” remains a holiday classic.
This Saturday, Story District hosts local true stories inspired by the film at Union Stage.
“All of our shows have six to eight people telling true stories on a common theme,” artistic executive director Amy Saidman told WTOP. “I wanted something that could cover a lot of different angles on the holiday season. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is a long movie, but you have a lot about community, transformation, self-reflection, family and just the holiday spirit.”
You’ll hear true stories from seven local residents: Ginny Simmons; Christian Richardson; Derek Hills; Hilary Landfried; Mike Kane; Dorothy Matlis; and Maurice Lethbridge.
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“Most folks are not writers, not artists, maybe have never been on stage in any capacity,” Saidman said. “We put out a theme, anybody in the general public can pitch their story idea, if we like their idea, then we work with people for several weeks [or] months to get them ready for a stage story. We don’t call them monologues because we ask people to be real.”
Their stories range from their own Bedford Falls hometowns to their own nasty Mr. Potters.
“Ginny’s story is about the neighborhood villain when she was growing up, Hilary overcomes her fear of talking to strangers, Mike accidentally told his daughter that Santa wasn’t real, and then a couple of moving stories about the support of community and family getting our storytellers through some pretty profound life changes,” Saidman said.
Story District is celebrating its 25th anniversary season with similar shows year-round, but the “It’s a Wonderful Life” show is the perfect way to feel community during the holidays.
“You will definitely laugh and probably cry,” Saidman said.
Click to find more information and tickets.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'A Candlelight Christmas' (Part 1) Nothing will get you into the holiday spirit like singing Christmas carols by candlelight.
The Washington Chorus presents its annual “A Candlelight Christmas” at the Kennedy Center and the Strathmore.
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“We are so excited about this concert,” Artistic Director Eugene Rogers told WTOP. “We’ve got so many surprises and guests. I can’t wait for folks to come and experience this concert with us. … Over 150 singers together on stage with organ and National Capital Brass & Percussion, quite a sound to have all of those voices of different backgrounds.”
The set list includes beloved Christmas classics and several new compositions. Old favorites include “Good King Wenceslas,” O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Silent Night.” The concert also features a new processional arranged by J. David Moore, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” There’s also a “haunting beautiful piece” by Becky McGlade, called “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Roggers said.
Rounding out the repertoire are “Reindeer Jive,” “The Dream Isaiah Saw” and Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas.”
The Washington Chorus will be joined by two local high-school choirs at the different venues with Stafford High School at the Kennedy Center and Reservoir High School at Strathmore, accompanied by organist Paul Byssainthe Jr. and pianist Rod Vester.
The concert runs for 75 minutes with no intermission.
At the Kennedy Center, the concert showtimes are Saturday, Dec. 17, at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., with a final show on Sunday, Dec. 18, at 7 p.m.
There are two shows at the Strathmore: One on Friday, Dec. 16, at 8 p.m. and another on Friday, Dec. 23, at 11 a.m.
Find more information on the Washington Chorus website.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes the National Film Registry (Part 1) The Library of Congress has revealed 25 new selections for the National Film Registry.
Each year, the library identifies 25 motion pictures that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” for preservation in the nation’s official library collection.
“We just try to pick a film that has ongoing significance, be it for its aesthetics or historic importance, or a director or a personality,” National Film Preservation Board Programming Coordinator Steve Leggett told WTOP. “The congressional language is very broad, so we just look for stuff and try to have a diverse group of films that also remains significant.”
This year’s list includes the animated classic “The Little Mermaid” (1989), as “Part of Your World,” “Under the Sea” and “Kiss the Girl” kicked off the Disney Renaissance of musicals with “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992) and “The Lion King” (1994).
“This was after Disney had a lapse in popularity, so it’s a kind of rebirth,” Leggett said. “They also started introducing Broadway-type songs, so it really launched a new genre.”
The registry is also adding Marvel’s “Iron Man” (2008), which kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe starring Robert Downey Jr. as the sarcastic Tony Stark.
“We were just trying to recognize the beginning of the MCU, and Marvel has had a big impact starting with this one, the first feature,” Leggett said.
An overdue addition is Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Stephen King’s “Carrie” (1976).
“We picked it for a couple of reasons,” Leggett said. “I think it’s a key touchstone film in the horror genre and also we also didn’t have any Brian De Palma films.”Rom-com fans will be glad to see the registry welcome “When Harry Met Sally” (1989), written by Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle”) and directed by Rob Reiner (“The Princess Bride”), whose mother delivered the iconic line, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
“We’ve had some Rob Reiner films before and he was in such a great streak here of hit after hit,” Leggett said. “This one is just a great romantic comedy, the script is just magnificent, it just really works with the chemistry between Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan.”
The list also includes “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1950), which made José Ferrer the first Hispanic to win a Best Actor Oscar; John Waters’ dance film “Hairspray” (1988), which became a hit Broadway musical; Frederick Wiseman’s searing mental-home documentary “Titicut Follies” (1967); and the most recent film, “Pariah “(2011), directed by Dee Rees.
This year’s selections include at least 15 films directed or co-directed by filmmakers of color, women or LGBTQ+ filmmakers. The selections bring the number of films in the registry to 850, though there are 1.7 million total films in the Library’s collections.
Turner Classic Movies will host a TV special on Tuesday, Dec. 27 at 8 p.m. to screen several of this year’s registry films. Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden will discuss the film with TCM host, film historian and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Director and President Jacqueline Stewart, who is also chair of the National Film Preservation Board.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews National Philharmonic benefit for local Black church (Part 1) Handel’s “Messiah” is performed by orchestras every Christmas with its famed “Hallelujah” chorus, but when the National Philharmonic learned that the 18th century piece was in fact financed by the slave trade, Music Director Piotr Gajewski knew he had to do something.
“National Philharmonic has been performing ‘Messiah’ for decades,” Gajewski told WTOP. “New scholarship reveals that Handel made handsome money investing in the slave trade, so the question is: how do we in the 21st century respond to having learned that? Do we stop playing his music? Or is there some more constructive way of moving forward?”
He chose the constructive path as the philharmonic will donate half of the proceeds from its “Messiah” concerts to the Scotland African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church in Potomac, Maryland. Founded in 1905, the building was built in 1924 and became a perennial flood victim due to questionable county planning with racial ramifications.
“The county decided to straighten out Seven Locks Road and went through church land,” member Chuck Williams said. “Because of historic treatment of African Americans after the Civil War in the Jim Crow era … we found records of contracts signed by people with the letter ‘X’ because they could not read or write. … The church wound up in a flood plain.”
Scotland African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church welcomes members of the community to the Phase I Groundbreaking for the restoration of its historic worship site and the building of a new space for worship. (Paul Tukey)In 2019, a severe rainstorm flooded the basement so bad that it took out one of the walls, making it unsafe for the congregation to go back into the building. Today, the community has launched the 2nd Century Project, which aims to raise $9 million for renovations.
“We’re looking at an opportunity to rebuild, to look back at how these things happened and restore the ground so that we’re able to mitigate the damage,” Williams said. “Then we’re looking at an expansion project to build something that can better serve the community.”
The National Philharmonic benefit concerts take place on Saturday, Dec. 17 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 18 at 3 p.m. at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, followed by another concert on Friday, Dec. 23 at 7:30 p.m. at Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia.
“We invite everyone to come out, hear some great music and know that half of what you’re paying for your ticket is going to support this project,” Gajewski said. “We have a fabulous cast of soloists that incidentally is all African American, a quartet of soloists conducted by Stan Engebretson, our chorale artistic director at the National Philharmonic.”
The Black soloists include soprano Kearstin Piper Brown, mezzo soprano Lucia Bradford, tenor Norman Shankle and baritone Jorell Williams, along with the full orchestra. The church’s choir will also perform in the lobby of Strathmore ahead of the concerts.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Best New Artist nominee Molly Tuttle (Part 1) Molly Tuttle hoped that she’d compete for Best Bluegrass Album at the Grammys next February, but she had no idea that she’d also vie for the overall prize of Best New Artist.
“I woke up like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Grammy nomination day!'” Tuttle told WTOP. “People were texting me congrats. We saw ‘Bluegrass Album’ and were like, ‘Great! We got it!’ … Then, I wasn’t really paying attention anymore and suddenly I got a new wave of text messages in all caps like, ‘HOLY CRAP.’ … We saw Best New Artist. It was surreal.”
Her family and friends can’t wait to see if she actually wins in February, but first, Tuttle is stocking stuffings with the deluxe version of her acclaimed album “Crooked Tree.”
“We had our album release show in April where we played The Station Inn, which is kind of a historic venue here in Nashville for bluegrass,” Tuttle said. “We recorded the whole show and had [lap-steel legend] Jerry Douglas sit in as a special guest, my dad even came and played with us, so we took two tracks from that release show and put it in with the album.”
The deluxe album features those live recordings of “Dooley’s Farm” and “Catilleja,” as well as two brand new covers of The Grateful Dead with “Cold Rain and Snow” and “Dire Wolf.” The song selections provide a fascinating window into her family’s musical influences.
Born in Santa Clara, California in 1993, Tuttle grew up in Palo Alto performing with her family. At age 13, she released an album of duets with her dad Jack, “The Old Apple Tree” (2006). A few years later, she formed The Tuttles with siblings Sullivan (guitar) and Michael (mandolin), along with musician AJ Lee for the album “Introducing the Tuttles” (2011).
“My grandfather played banjo and loved bluegrass, so my dad learned from his dad,” Tuttle said. “After he finished college, he didn’t want to stay on the [Illinois] farm, so he moved to California where there was this great music scene in the Bay Area. … My dad started teaching banjo, guitar, all the bluegrass instruments. … He taught me how to play.”
While at Berkeley College of Music in Boston, she joined the all-female bluegrass group The Goodbye Girls. In 2015, she moved to Nashville with Billy Strings as a roommate.
“He was a great roommate, but his career was already exploding and he had more and more boxes of Billy Strings merch filling up the house, so after a while, he had to get a bigger place,” Tuttle said. “We had neighbors who were musicians too. Lindsay Lou had a big house where she would host jam sessions and house concerts. It was so much fun.”
While crowdfunding her first seven-track EP, “Rise” (2017), Tuttle became the first woman to win Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association. The next year, she won Instrumentalist of the Year by the Americana Music Association before signing with Compass Records for her first full-length album, “When You’re Ready” (2019).
“My first EP was all of the songs that I’d written since I started writing songs when I was 15, I had many years to collect those songs and pick the best ones,” Tuttle said. “‘When You’re Ready’ was songs that I’d written just since Nashville. … That felt like my first real album where we went into a real studio, it was a full-length record, it was so exciting.”
She followed up with the album ‘but I’d rather be with you again” (2020), including covers of The National’s “Fake Empire,” Rancid’s “Olympia, WA,” Grateful Dead’s “Standing on the Moon,” The Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” and Cat Stevens’ “How Can I Tell You.”
“That came out of the pandemic, we did it all quarantine style, so I was learning to record my own parts in my house, then I sent them to Tony Berg in L.A., he produced them, got people to play on the tracks in their home studios,” Tuttle said. “It was all covers, so that was an exploration for me, picking songs that people might not expect from me.”
In 2021, Tuttle collaborated on three tracks for Béla Fleck’s acclaimed album “My Bluegrass Heart,” which won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album earlier this year.
“It was such an honor,” Tuttle said. “It was scary though. He writes such complex songs, I’ve been a huge fan of his music for a long time. He’s such a big hero and legend on the banjo that it’s hard not to feel intimidated. … I had to keep reminding myself: Béla knows what I sound like, he wouldn’t ask me to play if he didn’t want it to sound like me.”
The favors flipped as Billy Strings and Old Crow Medicine Show guested on her latest album, the aforementioned “Crooked Tree” (2022). It’s an album filled with great songs, but the lyrics of the title track is the most personal: “Oh, can’t you see? A crooked tree won’t fit into the mill machine. They’re left to grow wild and free. Oh, I’d rather be a crooked tree.”
“I developed alopecia areata when I was 3 years old, lost all my hair, it never grew back, I’m still completely bald,” Tuttle said. “I started wearing wigs when I was a teenager, but it took me years to accept that part of myself and open up about it. … It actually made me a way stronger person and have a lot more empathy and be someone who can help others.”
Does she have any advice for all of the other “crooked trees” out there?
“Hang in there,” Tuttle said. “I think everyone has something that makes them a crooked tree. It’s all about just being who you are and letting your freak flag fly when you need to.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'A Boy Band Christmas' (Part 1) If you came of age in the ’90s and early 2000s, boy bands were all the rage in pop music. This past Christmas, some of them gave you their hearts in the ABC special “A Very Boy Band Holiday.”
This Friday, “A Boy Band Christmas” lands at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia, combining Drew Lachey, Justin Jeffre and Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees, Erik Michael Estrada of O-Town, Jamie Jones of All-4-One and solo artist Ryan Cabrera.
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“This is one of the most eclectic Christmas shows you’ll see,” Cabrera told WTOP. “We’re covering not only Christmas songs that you wouldn’t expect us to do, but everybody’s doing different renditions of their own hits. You’re gonna get part of a 98 Degrees show, part of an O-Town show, part of a Ryan Cabrera show and part of an All-4-One show.”
Drew Lachey says the setlist will include contemporary Christmas hits and classic carols presented in a range of styles from acoustic to piano to more heavily produced tracks.
“You turn on the radio around Christmastime and you can’t help but hear Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas,’ so you got to throw that in there. Then you’ve also got your classics, ‘Silent Night,’ ‘Run Run Rudolph,’ things like that,” Lachey said, to which Estrada added, “Don’t forget ‘O Holy Night,’ a song we all recorded together right before we started this tour.”
Lachey has fond Christmas memories from growing up in Ohio with his older brother Nick.
“When you grow up with a brother, pretty much every big gift is split between the two of you,” said Lachey. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we got the basketball hoop for you to share.'”
“But the main holiday tradition was the Christmas Eve service,” he said. “Our grandparents would take us to church with them. That’s a big part of what everyone loves about the holidays, the nostalgia.”
In 1996, they formed 98 Degrees with Jeff Timmons and Justin Jeffre in Los Angeles before landing hits like “Invisible Man,” “Because of You,” “The Hardest Thing,” “I Do (Cherish You),” “This Gift,” “Thank God I Found You” and “Give Me Just One Night.”
“Us and Backstreet [Boys] came out within a month of each other, so ‘Invisible Man’ and ‘Quit Playing Games’ came out around the same time,” Lachey said. “NSYNC was a little further down the road. The fact that you’re saying the soundtrack of people’s junior high dance, it was the soundtrack of our lives too! We were growing up at that same time, too!”
As for O-Town, Estrada formed the group with Trevor Penick, Jacob Underwood and Dan Miller as the winning group from the first season of the ABC/MTV reality series “Making the Band” in 2000. Their self-titled debut album included the hits “Liquid Dreams” and “All or Nothing.”
“I was in high school listening to these guys, coming home at 4:00 to watch ‘TRL,'” Estrada said. “I went to an audition in Orlando, came home and my life was never the same. We felt like the younger brother looking up to our older brothers who had a lot of success: Backstreet Boys going triple diamond, NSYNC selling more copies than anyone else.”
Cabrera started in the Dallas band Rubix Groove but gained fame by going solo for his first major-label album “Take It All Away,” featuring hits like “On the Way Down” and “True.”
“I was just a dude with a guitar,” Cabrera said. “Singer/songwriters weren’t really the most popular thing in the world, it was boy bands. So going around trying to get a record deal was tough. I didn’t even have a pair of shoes. I was in record-label meetings with a pair of flip-flops and everybody being like ‘that’s not a thing,’ but it’s not a thing until it is a thing.”
Rounding out the concert lineup is All-4-One,(who didn’t join us for the interview). That group famously turned a pair of John Michael Montgomery country songs into smash R&B hits with “I Swear” and “I Can Love You Like That,” the former earning them a Grammy in 1994.
“Us being all together, people are starting to realize how good that time period — late ’90s, early 2000s, mid-2000s — how good the songs were,” Cabrera said.
Indeed, boy bands fell out of favor around the time that Eminem said, “I’m sick of you little girl and boy groups. All you do is annoy me, so I have been sent here to destroy you.”
The genre would later make a comeback with the likes of the Jonas Brothers, One Direction and BTS.
“Music in general is cyclical,” Lachey said. “If it’s popular one day, it’s going to go away. But guess what? It’s going to come back. That’s just the way that people view music. It’s just there. I think pop now has become more R&B and more urban, so now there’s just a melding of the styles.”
In the end, the groups who remain are the ones with the catchiest, most heartfelt songs.
“A lot of boy bands came out at that time, but there are only a few boy bands that have really great songs,” Estrada said.
“The ones that have great songs are the ones that are still doing what we’re doing and still on tour. It’s the power of those songs that is timeless.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'The Whale' Hit or miss, Darren Aronofsky remains one of our most darkly fascinating filmmakers.
Between his bizarre Biblical misfires, such as “Noah” (2014) and “mother!” (2017), he has given us at least three masterpieces in “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “The Wrestler” (2008) and “Black Swan” (2010), gritty films about addiction: to drugs, to pain, to ballet.
Now he tackles a man’s addiction to food in “The Whale,” which could be considered Oscar bait on a fat-suit hook, cast by a manipulative angler with tons of cinematic chum in the water. That is, until you see the deeply human performance of Brendan Fraser, who is parting the waves to make a serious swim toward the Oscars in a welcome comeback.
Adapted by Samuel Hunter from his own play, the film follows a reclusive, 600-pound English professor named Charlie, who teaches remote classes on his laptop from his couch. It’s his only joy in life, spending the rest of his days binge eating, masturbating and attempting to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter, who lives with his ex-wife.
This is Fraser like you’ve never seen him before, a far cry from his matinee idol days in the ’90s when “Encino Man” (1992), “George of the Jungle” (1997) and “The Mummy” (1999) were a fun diversion from obesity dramas like “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” (1993).
Now, after years of relative obscurity, Fraser returns with the type of performance that often wins Oscars for its extreme makeover (shout out to digital makeup artist Adrien Morot). Lazy voters think, “He gained weight; give him the prize,” but thankfully, Fraser is so authentic that we forget we’re watching a movie and think we’re watching a real soul.
Charlie wasn’t always this way; his gluttony is fueled by grief, articulated by his devoted caretaker Liz (Hong Chau, “The Menu”). We won’t spoil her relation to Charlie, but the revelation packs a wallop. It helps to explain why she’s simultaneously his nurse and enabler, taking his blood pressure one moment, then bringing him sloppy meatball subs.
She’s far more understanding than his resentful daughter Ellie, played with fury by Sadie Sink (“Stranger Things”) as the brattiest teenager ever, mocking her dad’s attempt at reconnecting after being an absent father. If the film feels too mean-spirited by half, it’s because of her absolutely brutal behavior, sinking to new lows with each passing scene.
At one point, she’s actually called “evil” by her single mother, Mary, played by Samantha Morton, who you’ll remember as the pre-cog Agatha in “Minority Report” (2002). Morton only appears in one scene in “The Whale,” but she goes for broke, pacing around the room, drinking liquor and airing her grievances at Charlie for ruining their marriage.
Rounding out the cast is Ty Simpkins (“Insidious”) as the evangelical Thomas, who knocks on the door professing the Word of Jesus Christ. His association with the local New Life church conjures up bad memories for Charlie, but Thomas won’t take no for an answer — reading Bible verses, fetching things for Charlie and even spilling a secret of his own.
Set entirely in Charlie’s apartment, you can tell that the script is based on a play. It’s refreshing to see a single-location drama fueled by dialogue (similar to Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking”), although the spacious interior of Charlie’s home looks more like an Idaho rancher. The first exterior shot is jarring as we realize it’s a second-story apartment.
The outdoor staircases make it virtually impossible for Charlie to leave his apartment; his balcony gets more foot traffic from Dan The Pizza Man (Sathya Sridharan). The shock on his face at finally seeing Charlie’s obesity is truly heartbreaking, reinforcing why Charlie doesn’t turn his laptop camera on when teaching his English classes via headset.
He’s scared what his students might think and doesn’t want to distract them from the literary themes. You could say the same about Aronofsky’s film, as its title is both a reference to Charlie’s obesity and Herman Melville’s novel “Moby Dick.” In fact, Charlie routinely calms himself by reading his favorite term paper, laminated for safe keeping.
“My favorite parts are when the author goes into detail about the whale,” the term paper reads. “You can tell that he’s distracting himself from his own sad story.”
In these profound moments, the film lifts off the ground to earn a Golden Lion nod at the Venice Film Fest, but I’m curious how mainstream viewers will gauge its tone in an era of body positivity. Is the film as mean-spirited as Charlie’s daughter with a gross-out montage of gluttony? How will a morbidly obese America react to a film about morbid obesity?
It might be hard to look in the mirror, but “The Whale” will leave you blubbering.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Bob Newhart (Part 1) Exactly 20 years ago, the Christmas classic “Elf” went into production on Dec. 9, 2002.
A year later, it became an instant comedy classic, telling a “fish out of water” tale about Buddy the Elf, who travels from the North Pole to New York to meet his biological father.
Comedy legend Bob Newhart, 93, joined WTOP to reflect on his dual role as Papa Elf and the film’s narrator, as well as his long career of standup comedy and TV sitcom glory.
“I read it and I told my wife, ‘I think this is going to be a perennial, this is going to be the same as ‘Miracle on 34th Street,'” Newhart told WTOP. “It was warm, it was well-written, well-directed by Jon Favreau. … People wanted to believe in it. … People need that charming, wonderful thing about the Christmas spirit and its way of powering the sleigh.”
He remains in awe of what Will Ferrell was able to pull off as Buddy, creating a childlike innocence saying, “Smiling is my favorite,” and shouting, “Santa! Oh my God! I know him!”
“Will was marvelous,” Newhart said. “It could have been a jerk, a guy you dismiss right away, but with Will’s charm, you believed him and wanted him to succeed. … All those years on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ that’s sketch acting, and this is acting, they’re two different forms of acting, sketch is much broader, and Will was able to make that transition.”
To this day, he believes Favreau (“Iron Man”) doesn’t get enough credit as a director.
“What Jon did in the movie, another example of how wise he was, it’s what they call forced perception,” Newhart said. “All of my scenes with Will, I’m 10 to 12 feet behind him, so I look smaller,” similar to what Peter Jackson did with the Hobbits in “Lord of the Rings.”
Playing Buddy’s dad, Walter Hobbs, was the late James Caan, who died this year.
“I took several of my grandkids along with my wife and my daughter and went to a screening of it,” Newhart said. “We were laughing and having a great time. Jimmy Caan was there with his wife. I’m pretty much all in the front part of the movie, so at my final scene, I got up and started to leave and said, ‘Well, that’s all I’m in.’ He laughed!”
He also misses the late Ed Asner, who played Santa Claus and died last year.
“We were on the same lot, the Radford Lot, which was ‘Mary Tyler Moore,’ our show and then ‘Seinfeld’ later on,” Newhart said. “We’d see each other, we’d go to the commissary, it was, ‘Hi, Ed,’ ‘Hi, Bob,’ and we’d have lunch and they were great times.”
Born in Illinois in 1929, Newhart became a household name with his 1960 comedy album “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” which won the Grammy for Album of the Year. For the next 12 years, he hit the road performing standup with his stammering delivery, as well as playing Major Major in the Mike Nichols film “Catch-22” (1970).
“I was so thrilled to be asked to be in a Mike Nichols film, along with Buck Henry and Alan Arkin, Dick Benjamin, Paula Prentiss, Jon Voight, Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles,” Newhart said. “Arthur Price from MGM came to me and he said, ‘Would you like to do television?’ I said, ‘I’d love to, because I’d like to get off the road and be with my family.'”
Enter “The Bob Newhart Show” (1972-1978) on CBS in which he played the Chicago psychologist Robert Hartley. Created by David Davis and Lorenzo Music, the series ranked No. 41 on the WGA Greatest TV Shows with beloved episodes like “Over the River and Through the Woods” and “Death Be My Destiny.” What is his personal favorite episode?
“There was a show where I walk in and Carol says, ‘You have a new patient.’ I go in and a guy is there with his dummy. I say, ‘What can I do for you?’ He says, ‘Danny wants to go out on his own.’ It’s impossible because the guy who’s telling me is applying the voice for Danny! It was wonderful to do the takes. The hardest part was looking at the ventriloquist.”
He next starred in “Newhart” (1982-1990), playing Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon. It culminated in an all-time great series finale as the town is turned into a golf course. Dick and his wife Joanna decide to stay and keep running the inn in the middle of the golf course, getting hit by balls before finally waking up to realize that it was just a dream.
“It was my wife’s idea,” Newhart said. “We were going to a Christmas party, waiting in line to get a picture taken, I said to my wife, ‘I think this is going to be my last year.’ … She said without a second’s pause, ‘You ought to end the show in a dream sequence because there’s so many inexplicable people: Larry, Daryl and Daryl were right out of ‘Deliverance!'”
Along the way, Newhart also voiced the animated mouse Bernard across Eva Gabor’s Miss Bianca in Disney’s “The Rescuers” (1977) and “The Rescuers Down Under” (1990).
“It’s just your voice, so we’d do four or five pages, then that’s animated, so it would be maybe two or three months and then you’d be back there,” Newhart said. “They’d say, ‘OK, you’ve just flown on the back of an albatross from D.C. to Louisiana. How do you think you’d feel?’ I’d say, ‘I’d be tired.’ We’d have these serious discussions. I had to bite my lip!”
In the end, how does he want to be remembered?
“When you devote a career to making people laugh, what better thing in the world is that?” Newhart said. “I feel very good about my career. One of the greatest sounds in the world is laughter. I fell in love with it the first time I heard it and 60 years later I was still doing it.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Empire of Light' For over 20 years, I’ve insisted that director Sam Mendes doesn’t miss: the family tragedy “American Beauty” (1999), the gangster picture “Road to Perdition” (2002), the Desert Storm flick “Jarhead” (2005), the domestic drama “Revolutionary Road” (2008), the Bond action flick “Skyfall” (2012) and the World War I single-take masterpiece “1917” (2019).
Well, I was finally proven wrong with “Empire of Light.” As much as I admire the film’s elite craftsmanship, the story is nowhere near as magical as “Cinema Paradiso” (1988). Based on the trailers, I was hoping for “The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985) and instead got “Blue Jasmine” (2015). Instead of a love note to cinema, it’s more an ode to broken characters.
Set in an English coastal town in the early 1980s, the film follows the employees of the Empire movie theater. Here, 48-year-old manager Hilary (Olivia Colman) suffers #MeToo advances from her very pushy and very married boss, Donald (Colin Firth), before finding a new intimate companion in the theater’s new 25-year-old usher, Stephen (Michael Ward).
No one doubts Olivia Colman’s talent. Her resume includes an Oscar as Queen Anne in “The Favourite” (2018) and an Emmy as Queen Elizabeth in “The Crown” (2019). Here, she erratically portrays Hilary’s mental health decline, demolishing sand castles and muttering to herself like a Thatcher-era version of “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974).
While her character is intended as a sympathetic victim telling off her boss, her ensuing decisions aren’t very likable. Rather than learn from the situation, she perpetuates similar misconduct against her young coworker. While obviously consensual, the consequences are barely explored regarding his new 20-something girlfriend Ruby (Crystal Clarke).
If Stephen were truly serious about his new relationship, he would be an open book about his past, giving Ruby the courtesy of transparency. Instead, he’s evasive. His mother Delia (Tanya Moodie) is the only one who knows what’s up, but even she keeps her cards close to her vest. She simply says, “He’s lived some life,” seeking grace after a look of shame.
Even so, Ward gives an impressive performance. The Jamaican-born actor won the BAFTA Rising Star Award after “Small Axe” (2020) and could earn an Oscar nod here. His reaction to race riots outside the theater lobby is heartbreaking, but it feels (at worst) forced and (at best) stale after Kenneth Branagh’s street riots and flickering projectors in “Belfast” (2021).
The best scenes come when Ward enters the projection booth, staring with wide-eyed wonder at the various moviestar posters and magazine clippings that line the wall. It’s here that veteran projectionist Norman (Toby Jones) articulates the magic of movies while showing him how to change reels when a circle appears at the top right of the screen.
Written by Mendes, the projectionist gets the script’s best monologue: “Film is just static frames with darkness in between, but there’s a little flaw in your optic nerve, so if I run the film at 24 frames per second, it creates the illusion of motion, the illusion of life, so you don’t see the darkness, you just see a beam of light — and nothing happens without light.”
Now that’s what I’m talking about. I craved more of these cinephile scenes. Film history is filled with broken characters staggering into dark theaters to escape life’s troubles like Isaac watching “Duck Soup” in “Manhattan” (1979). This time, Colman watches Peter Sellers walk on water as Chance the Gardener in Hal Ashby’s “Being There” (1979).
“Empire of Light” never elevates to such magic, though cinematographer Roger Deakins (“Fargo”) shows Norman and Stephen through projection booth windows for aesthetically pleasing “frames within frames.” Notice how Norman (White) and Stephen (Black) appear on the left and right to mirror Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor on the silver screen.
Deakins also brilliantly captures the blue glow of the projector light emanating out over the audience. Once outside the theater, he captures the glow of the “EMPIRE” marquee at night and mesmerizing fireworks on the rooftop that would make anyone steal a kiss.
Likewise, Production Designer Mark Tildesley (“Phantom Thread”) delivers top-notch work, recreating 1980s England from the skyline to the boardwalks to the beaches. It’s all carried along by a wistful, timeless score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (“Mank”), who consistently prove that they are arguably the best film-scoring duo working today.
And yet, despite amazing craftsmanship from such proven artisans, the end result didn’t quite add up for me. In full disclosure, I had a hard time watching the movie without picturing my own original screenplay “Cinemagic” about a movie theater on the brink of closure in 1946 America — until a magical package delivers iconic films from the future.
Granted, not every film about an old movie palace requires magical realism, but it’s highly possible that the constant mental comparisons altered my expectations as to what “Empire of Light” could be. Fine, I’ll fall on the sword this time, Mr. Mendes. It’s not you, it’s me.
Here’s hoping your work clicks for me next time.
After all, you rarely miss.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Single and Ready to Jingle' (Part 1) A 40-year dream is finally coming true for Brian Ruberry of Kensington, Maryland.
After decades toiling as an aspiring screenwriter, Ruberry finally sold his first movie. And his second movie. And his third movie. All in the past year. Talk about a happy holiday!
“Forty years of rejection, and 2022, I end up selling three,” Ruberry told WTOP. “I actually sold them last year, but I had three movies made in 2022 after 40 years of rejection. For all of the writers out there, it’s never too late. Just keep on plugging. It can happen.”
His latest, “Single and Ready to Jingle,” airs on Lifetime this Sunday at 8 p.m.
“It’s going to be a few more people than my wife and kids,” Ruberry said. “It’s actually going to be like 25 people. We’re having a watch party! Everybody is going to get a little bell when they arrive, so they can be ready to jingle during the movie. … I don’t know how many single people are going to be there, but everybody will be ready to jingle.”
The film follows Emma Warner, who spends 12 months a year focusing on Christmas as the senior vice president of a toy company. This year, she plans a tropical trip to a singles resort, but a booking mistake lands her in a Christmas-obsessed town in Alaska.
“There’s a scene on the airplane where she’s in a summer dress and this big floppy hat and sandals,” Ruberry said. “She sits next to a big, burly guy in one of these big fur caps and a heavy winter coat. She’s like, ‘What’s he doing on this plane?’ Of course, she arrives in Alaska, it’s 20 below, the wind is blowing, it’s snowing and she’s in a little sundress.”
Amid the comedy, a holiday romance ensues — as required by the genre.
“It’s very much a comedy,” Ruberry said. “She’s stranded at the airport because there’s a big snowstorm. She can’t fly out and she meets a guy there who takes her to the inn run by his sister and he ends up being her love interest, so yeah, it’s a romantic comedy.”
Born in Chicago, Ruberry grew up in Virginia, graduating from Bishop Ireton High School in Arlington and James Madison University in Harrisonburg. He attended film school at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, then came home to work in public relations for the American Heart Association and American Red Cross, but his screenwriting dream burned.
“I’ve been trying to do this since I went to film school in the ’80s,” Ruberry said. “A few years ago, I read an article in a screenwriting magazine that said, ‘Hey, a great way to break in is to write these TV movies because Hallmark and Lifetime — for just Christmas alone — do dozens of movies every year, so they’re in constant need of production.”
He immediately contacted the article’s author, who suggested that he watch a bunch of TV movies in that specific genre. During his binge watch, a certain formula emerged.
“No sex, no cursing, cute, cute, cute,” Ruberry said. “They’re like nothing else you’ll see certainly at the movie theaters, Netflix, Amazon or Apple. They’re their own beast. You have to understand the nine-act structure. You can buy all these screenwriting books that talk about three acts, but not for TV movies. There’s nine acts [for] commercial breaks.”
After writing a script, he sent it to the author of the magazine article, who was intrigued.
“I don’t think she realized that I’m actually an experienced writer, so I banged out a script and sent it to her,” Ruberry said. “She called me a week later and said, ‘I think you can sell this.’ That got the ball rolling, I went to L.A., met with some producers, one I met with owes Lifetime six Christmas movies every year. Eventually, she ended up producing my first.”
He first sold “The Attraction Test,” which aired on UPtv in April. He next sold “Stepping Into Love,” but he’s not sure where it’ll air yet. Finally, Lifetime contacted him with a title.
“Lifetime said, ‘Hey, we like this title, ‘Single and Ready to Jingle,’ but we don’t have a story for it. Would you pitch us a few concepts for the story?’ I of course said, ‘Sure.'”
The rest is history, as his wife, adult children and friends have their popcorn ready.
“I live in Maryland, a whole other side of the country,” Ruberry said. “You don’t need to be in L.A. You don’t need to be in New York. If you have good ideas and you have a talent for writing, they’ll be interested in reading your scripts. You can write from anywhere.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Single and Ready to Jingle' (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Abbott Elementary' Season 2 Sitcoms have a hilarious track record for special episodes during the holidays, from the Thanksgiving episodes of “Friends” to the Christmas episodes of “Home Improvement.”
As such, I can’t wait to see what ABC’s adorably hilarious “Abbott Elementary” has in store for Wednesday night’s festive episode “Holiday Hookah,” which serves as the midseason finale of Season Two before returning from winter break next semester on Jan. 4.
If you’re not caught up yet, this midseason break is the perfect time to watch the entire series on Hulu. At 22 minutes per episode, it’s a breezy binge with easy laughs.
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The mockumentary hasn’t showed any signs of slowing down in Season Two. In fact, it has somehow gotten funnier since Season One deservedly won a pair of Emmys: Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series (Quinta Brunson for the “Pilot” episode) and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Sheryl Lee Ralph as teacher Barbara Howard).
Created by Brunson, the series follows the fictional Willard R. Abbott Elementary School, a small-budget, predominantly Black school with plenty of faculty turnover in Philadelphia. The opening credits are simple with no fancy theme song. Just a kid with a backpack entering the front steps of the school as the title appears. And boom, we’re into the story.
Brunson plays protagonist Janine Teagues, the Pollyannaish second-grade teacher who loves helping students with her bubbly personality. She’s also fresh out of an unhealthy relationship with rapper Tariq Temple (Zack Fox), whose immaturity makes him unreliable.
Instead, viewers are rooting for her to date Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams), the mild-mannered substitute teacher who earns his way into a full-time role as a second-grade teacher. The “will they, won’t they” subplot between Janine and Gregory recalls Ross and Rachel in “Friends” or Jim and Pam in “The Office,” which makes Tariq our Joey/Roy.
Professionally, we’re rooting for Gregory to someday become principal after being passed over in favor of the outlandishly tone-deaf Ava Coleman (standup comedian Janelle James), who blackmailed the county superintendent to get the gig. Her shady job security allows her to waste time at her desk watching Instagram videos and shopping online.
Far more responsible is Sheryl Lee Ralph as the experienced kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard, whose stern, old-school, by-the-book approach is effective at reaching her students and provides a motherly wisdom to the young faculty. Ralph’s Emmy Award victory was the night’s most pleasant surprise, capped by a speech for the ages.
Silver Spring native and Catholic University grad Lisa Ann Walter plays second-grade teacher Melissa Schemmenti, who is tough as nails with a Bette Midler sassiness and potential mob connections. Her character feels like someone out of “The Sopranos,” threatening anyone who crosses her, but she also has an underdog blue-collar charm.
The corniest lines intentionally belong to Chris Perfetti as the awkward history teacher Jacob Hill, who tries to stay hip by quoting the latest hip-hop lyrics and street jargon of his students. Usually, he earns eye rolls or roasts, but we realize that his students actually appreciate him during his dorky “Story Samurai” improv group performance on the school stage.
Best of all is William Stanford Davis as the eccentric, wisecracking janitor Mr. Johnson, who is always pushing a trashcan and ready to pop into a doorway to tell kids to clean up a mess. He boasts the longest tenure of anyone, so if he says the basement is haunted by the ghost of a previous janitor, Jacob is bound to believe it based on his wily seniority.
The plot lines are cleverly drawn, be it a healthier juice option causing students to flock to the bathroom, or kids getting hopped-up on sugar after eating too much Halloween treats in “Candy Zombies.” The best plot is probably the “Attack Ad” episode when a former student (Leslie Odom Jr.) leads a rival school in filming a negative commercial about Abbott.
In the end, the secret sauce is that it’s all shot in a mockumentary style like “The Office” or “Parks and Rec.” The handheld punch-ins, zooms and pans to characters’ reactions keep the show alive with kinetic energy, while hilarious cutaways “interviewing” the characters allow us to see what they are really thinking outside the confines of the classroom.
Will I miss the show during its midseason break?
Definitely.
Is it the best sitcom currently on television?
Probably.
Should you get caught up immediately?
Absolutely.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Wicked' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) It remains the second-highest grossing Broadway musical ever with over $1 billion in revenue, surpassing “The Phantom of the Opera” and trailing only “The Lion King.”
Starting on Thursday, the national tour of “Wicked” flies into the prestigious Kennedy Center in D.C. for a long run this holiday season from Dec. 8 through Jan. 22.
“It is a beautiful piece of work in musical theater, but it is also this social commentary that goes deeper than anyone could ever imagine,” Actor Michael Genet told WTOP. “It touches upon what we’re dealing with in society today of inclusion vs. exclusion, people who are popular for no other reason than they’re popular. … Elphaba would be the immigrant.”
Based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” the story is set long before Dorothy arrives in L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and the 1939 MGM musical “The Wizard of Oz” that we all know and love.
Before being dubbed The Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba is a student with emerald-green skin who is misunderstood for her smart, fiery, extraordinary talents. When she meets the bubbly blonde “popular girl” Glinda, their rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships — until the world decides to call one “good” and the other one “wicked.”
“The creators flipped it,” Genet said. “Glinda is so pompous and full of herself that she pronounces her name bougie-bougie as ‘Ga-linda,'” Genet said. “When Elphaba shows up, they’re all petrified. They think she is an abnormal monster or something. As fate would have it, the school ends up making Elphaba share a room with Ga-linda.”
Genet plays their mentor Doctor Dillamond, which he played on Broadway in 2016 and 2017. The role is an important one as the goat-like professor of the two young witches.
“Doctor Dillamond is like her; he is the only animal on the faculty,” Genet said. “They’ve been phasing out all of the animals because the animals are different. They don’t want ‘different’ under their sky. He sees the storm clouds blowing in, he knows that change is upon us at Shiz University, he’s trying to sound the alarm and finds an ally in Elphaba.”
In addition to the deep social commentary, you also get some all-time great Broadway showtunes by Stephen Schwartz, including “Defying Gravity,” “Popular” and “For Good.”
“At the very end of ‘Defying Gravity,’ there’s just this roar throughout the audience because it’s just visually stunning of her flying in the air,” Genet said. “‘Popular’ is this comic tour-de-force for Glinda when she’s trying to give Elphaba this physical makeover. … [Last week, a fan ran up to say], ‘I saw ‘Wicked’ last week! I’ve been changed ‘For Good!'”
Genet has defied gravity his entire career. Born in D.C. in 1958, he studied at Juilliard before starring Spike Lee’s “25th Hour” and writing Lee’s “She Hate Me.” It’s such a fascinating story that you have to listen to our full conversation at the podcast link below.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Wicked' at Kennedy Center (Part 2) Hear our entire conversation about his career on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews National Chamber Ensemble's 'Holiday Cheer' (Part 1) Last month, the National Chamber Ensemble held a timely concert to mark the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht amid the recent rise of antisemitic rhetoric in America.
This Saturday, the ensemble performs “Holiday Cheer” at 7:30 p.m. in Arlington, Virginia.
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“It’s the finest classical masterpieces and holiday favorites,” Artistic Director Leo Sushansky told WTOP. “Everybody gets to start the holiday season on a joyful note.”
The program begins with Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” and “Chanukkah Festival.”
“‘Chanukkah Festival’ is a piece for all strings, an arrangement of the most popular Chanukkah tunes, folk songs and popular selections, it’s really a medley,” Sushansky said. “‘Sleigh Ride,’ you have the bells and whips. There’s an instrument called the whip; it’s two pieces of wood, but when you smack them together it sounds like a whip.”
After that, you’ll hear popular sections from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” from “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” to “The Waltz of the Flowers.”
You’ll also hear talented young instrumentalists, including 13-year-old violinist Yixuan Li of Rockville, Maryland, winner of the ensemble’s Outstanding Young Artist Award for musicians 12 to 18.
Sushansky said the competition was a combination of YouTube submissions and live finals. “The level was extraordinarily high; it was really hard to decide a winner,” he said. Li and the second- and third-prize winners will perform.
In the second half of the show, soprano Nancy Peery Marriott will perform holiday selections, then lead the Carols Sing-Along.
“‘Joy to the World,’ ‘Jingle Bells,’ ‘Silent Night,'” Sushansky said. “The words to the carols will in the program, so everybody will be able to follow along. Last year we did it, everybody kind of hummed because [the pandemic] wasn’t really the time to sing. It’s going to be nice to see everybody live participating in the season.”
The concert will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, on Route 50.
“I’m sure there will be Christmas trees; everything will be decked out.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews National Chamber Ensemble's 'Holiday Cheer' (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Pam Tillis at Rams Head in Annapolis (Part 1) She’s the daughter of country legend Mel Tillis who became a Nashville star herself.
Sunday, the powerful Pam Tillis brings her “Belles and Bows: Country Hits & Christmas Favorites” tour to the Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland.
“‘Belles’ is an all-female trio [and] ‘Bows’ is the fiddle and violin that are so prevalent,” Tillis told WTOP. “I’m going to be doing a lot of my country hits and some Christmas songs. … I’ve got a version of ‘Three Ships,’ ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas,’ ‘Christmas Time Is Here.'”
Born in Florida, she mostly grew up in Nashville where her father, Mel Tillis, was a household name. As such, she was invited to sing at the Grand Ole Opry at 8 years old.
“I grew up in Nashville in this incredible creative community and it just kind of rubbed off me, so I’ve been following in his footsteps for many, many years,” Tillis said.
Ironically, she initially avoided her father’s twangy brand of country music, instead releasing her debut album “Above and Beyond the Doll of Cute” (1983) as a pop record.
“I thought I was gonna be the next Madonna,” Tillis said. “[Country] seemed like my dad’s music, old people music, and it took me a while to appreciate it. Sometimes you overlook what’s in your backyard. It slowly dawned on me how rich my roots were. … I came back to country because it’s just who I am and my songwriting is a lot more in a country vein.”
Soon, her country single “One of Those Things” (1986) earned Top New Female Vocalist at the ACM Awards. This paved the way for her second album “Put Yourself in My Place” (1991), featuring the hit song “Don’t Tell Me What To Do,” co-written by Harlan Howard.
“As prolific as my dad was with his songwriting, his very first No. 1 was a Harlan Howard record, so it just worked out, it was fate that it happened that way,” Tillis said. “That was a song about being hardheaded and it seemed to fit. … It fit the attitude, the attitude was right for the times, although it was a very simply-told, straight-up, no-frills country song.”
The album also featured “Maybe It Was Memphis,” which earned Tillis her first Grammy nomination and became an all-time classic in the annals of country music history.
“I had to bring it,” Tillis said. “There was nobody else around, just me and the engineer at the seat. We turned off all the lights in the studio and I just went to some other place. I closed my eyes in the vocal booth and I just let the whole song play out in my mind like a movie. I went there. I was in Nashville when I sang it, but in my mind, I was in Memphis!”
Her third album “Homeward Looking Angel” (1992) had the hit “Shake the Sugar Tree,” her fourth album “Sweetheart’s Dance” featured “When You Walk in the Room,” “Mi Vida Loca” and “In Between Dances” and her fifth album “All of This Love” included “Deep Down.”
In 1998, she received another Grammy nomination for “All the Good Ones Are Gone” before winning the Grammy in 1999 for the collaboration “Same Old Train.” Her most recent album is called “Looking for a Feeling” (2020), featuring a throwback sound.
“My musical coming-of-age was during the late ’70s,” Tillis said. “I want to mention how sad I am about Christie McVie. I was a complete, rabid fanatic. Fleetwood Mac was part of musical DNA. I had ’70s influences on this ‘Looking for a Feeling’ record [with] a lot more original songs. I think I wrote 8 out of 11, so it’s a fun patchwork of styles and stories.”
Most recently, she dropped “Christmas Time is Here” on Spotify on Thanksgiving.
“Put it on, sip some eggnog and look up how far it is from you to the Rams Head,” Tillis said. “Come on down and see us. We’ll have a cup of cheer.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Pam Tillis at Rams Head in Annapolis (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Kenny G at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) His signature saxophone made him the top-selling instrumentalist of all time.
This Friday, Kenny G brings his “Miracles Holiday & Hits Tour” to Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia, including “Songbird” and plenty of holiday tunes.
“We have five or six holiday songs that we really like to play, so I think we put a nice mix together. It’s not all holiday,” Kenny G told WTOP. “We’ll do ‘White Christmas,’ ‘Deck the Halls,’ ‘Sleigh Ride,’ ‘Winter Wonderland.’ Those are fun! The melodies are beautiful, everybody knows them, it’s fun, so we do that and we really enjoy it.”
Born in Seattle in 1956, he grew up in a Jewish family so he never celebrated Christmas, but he came to love the melodies and family spirit. In high school, he saw a saxophone performance on TV, and he has been playing his same saxophone for nearly 50 years.
“It is my longest relationship,” Kenny G said. “We have a good relationship. I think we love each other. I love the sax, I think the sax loves me, we never fight, it’s always a respectful discussion about why a note didn’t come out. … It doesn’t have a name. I don’t think I’ve wanted to cross that line! I don’t know what that means, but I don’t want to cross it.”
His career launched by performing with Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra in 1973.
“For your younger listeners, he was the biggest, most popular male R&B singer in the world — not in the country, in the world,” Kenny G said. “To be able to play with him and get featured, for a high school white kid, was pretty great, so I got noticed a lot and that kind of helped me get established as a guy who could play the instrument.”
Clive Davis signed him to Arista Records for his self-titled debut album “Kenny G” (1982), which got good reviews and reached No. 10 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart.
His fourth album “Duotones” (1986) earned his first of many Grammy nominations off the strength of the song “Songbird,” which he promises to play on the tour Friday night.
“That was my first record where I actually was in charge,” Kenny G said. “The record company really didn’t put me in charge, but I really took charge and did the instrumentals the way I wanted to play them. ‘Songbird’ was me just, I did all of the instruments on that song, so when you hear the keyboard parts, the bass parts, I did everything.”
In fact, “Songbird” is the famous song that he performed on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” against the wishes of everybody who booked him on the show.
“The Johnny Carson show was everything — it was Kimmel, it was Fallon, it was Oprah, it was Ellen, all of them combined times like 100,” Kenny G said. “If you were on that show and you got featured and you did well, that really made your career.”
His sixth album “Breathless” (1992) won his first and only Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition for “Forever in Love,” which reached No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100. To this day, “Breathless” remains the top-selling instrumental album ever — a point of pride.
“By far,” Kenny G said. “I don’t say that with any ego, it’s just numbers. That record sold 12 million in the states. And in the world, it’s probably 15 or 16 million. I don’t think any other instrumental record comes close to that. … I don’t see that ever being broken because people don’t buy records anymore, so I don’t think it’s possible to break that record.”
That’s right. If you followed pop music in the ’90s, you probably owned a Kenny G album.
His album “Miracles” (1994) was the top-selling holiday album of the Nielsen SoundScan era (1991-present), with “Winter Wonderland,” “White Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Silent Night,” “Greensleeves,” “Miracles,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “The Chanukah Song,” “Silver Bells,” “Away in a Manger” and “Brahm’s Lullaby.”
“Sometimes you just nail the right kind of arrangement on the song, and that album really just did it, so we do stuff from ‘Miracles’ [on our tour], and then I’ve done a couple of other Christmas records since, so if you like ‘Miracles’ and if you like the way that sounds, all of the Christmas songs that I do have that similar vibe, so it’s all going to be great.”
Ironically, some music critics didn’t dig his sound, especially after his newfound fame.
“That’s the downside of being popular,” Kenny G said. “When you’re popular, the instrumental world kind of looks down at you like, ‘Well, you went commercial.’ That’s just not even true. Yes, it went commercial, but not because the artist went commercial. It went commercial because people liked it and they bought it, but that wasn’t how it started.”
He was disappointed not to earn a Grammy nod for his recent album “New Standards” (2021), featuring 11 original compositions inspired by jazz ballads of the ’50s and ’60s.
“I have not had success with the Grammys, even though my instrumentals are probably the most-heard instrumentals on our planet, and yet I couldn’t get arrested trying to play one of them on the Grammys — they would never let that happen,” Kenny G said.
Either way, he still practices his saxophone three hours every morning with dedication.
“I’m in the middle of practicing right now as we speak,” Kenny G said. “I do that every day and that’s pretty much what’s led me to where I am, just working really hard at what I do, getting really good at it and not taking ‘no’ for an answer most of the time.”
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Kenny G at Hollywood Casino (Part 2) Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Step Afrika at Arena Stage (Part 1) Over the summer, Step Afrika! launched an exciting new partnership with Arena Stage.
This month, it performs its “Magical Musical Holiday Step Show” from Dec. 9 to 18 in D.C.
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“This show is one of my favorite shows we’ve ever created,” Founder C. Brian Williams told WTOP. “It’s really about celebrating the holidays in a unique, special way. This holiday show we’ve been doing for over 10 years. … The place I’ve always wanted to bring this performance was in the round at Arena Stage in the Fichandler, so it’s a dream come true.”
Unlike a typical Arena Stage performance where you sit in the audience and watch the actors, this show actually invites you down on stage to participate in the dancing.
“The dance floor is a place that we invite the entire community to come out and join us,” Williams said. “We have a DJ, we call him DJ Nutcracker, he is on the ones and twos, playing all of your favorite holiday music and he does something called ‘The Nutcracker Slide’ where we invite the audience to come down and learn how to do a special dance.”
In addition to the DJ, you’ll also see Step Afrika! making music with their bodies for a dazzling 70-minute performance danced straight through with no intermission.
“This is the first holiday show in the world that’s centered around the African American tradition of stepping,” Williams said. “You’ll see us making music with our hands, our feet, our voices and our bodies, but we’ll have a DJ there just to kind of take us to a different space, so sometimes we’ll be the music and sometimes we’ll be dancing to the music.”
Make sure you bring your kids to see some special winter critters.
“We have our friends from the Arctic Kingdom there: Popper the Penguin and Polo the Polar Bear,” Williams said. “These are our friends. They come and join us every year for the holiday show. At this point, they’re pretty good steppers, but they’re still learning, so they learn how to step throughout the show along with the audience.”
Founded in 1994, Step Afrika! is the first professional company dedicated to the tradition of stepping. Not only will you become more cultured, you’ll get into the holiday spirit, get some exercise and get some energy out of your system in the best possible way.
“What we always say is: Who wants to sit still and be quiet for the holidays?” Williams said. “We want to get out and have some fun and be with our families and be with our with friends. That’s the kind of environment that Step Afrika! is creating here. … We even have little special gifts for the audience members to help them make music with us.”
Find more information here.
toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Step Afrika at Arena Stage (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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The Sight & Sound Magazine revealed its latest global critics poll of The Greatest Films of All Time. WTOP's Jason Fraley shares his thoughts about them.
In 1988, Ron Howard directed a George Lucas story into the dark fantasy “Willow,” which received mixed reviews from critics…
Get ready to unwrap plenty of festive events around D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Here's your monthly entertainment guide.
The 45th annual Kennedy Center Honors returns to Sunday to the nation's capital, and the president of the center shares what makes each artist worthy of the award.
Are you looking for something fun and festive to do with the family this holiday season? The Boro in Tysons is hosting "Winter Boroland" events over the next two Saturdays.
Imagine Shakespeare words mixed with Tom Waits music and Penn & Teller magic. That's the dazzling conceit of "The Tempest" at Round House Theatre in Bethesda.
Legendary cult filmmaker John Waters is most synonymous with his Baltimore hometown, but folks in the D.C. area can catch his live holiday show "A John Waters Christmas" at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on Dec. 21 -- just days before Christmas.
It's time to head over the river and through the woods to Wolf Trap National Park for the free annual Holiday Sing-A-Long on Saturday, Dec. 3.
You remember her from the “Footloose” soundtrack, but did you know she also wrote hits for Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Lynn Anderson, Aaron Neville and Wynonna Judd?
Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" is an annual television tradition on Thanksgiving. You can also see it as a stage musical at Toby's Dinner Theatre through Jan. 15.
WTOP Film Critic Jason Fraley invited the two most legendary broadcast names in the history of D.C. movie criticism to break down Steven Spielberg's entire career in order: longtime Channel 4 movie critic Arch Campbell and L.A.-based Observer film critic Oliver Jones, son the late Davey Marlin-Jones of Channel 9.
This weekend, the NSO Pops will perform Disney's "Frozen" in concert at the Kennedy Center for three screenings on Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at both 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Are you looking for something festive to do with the family this Thanksgiving weekend? Take them to "The Nutcracker" at the Kennedy Center this Thanksgiving weekend.
The beloved annual "A Christmas Carol" runs at the historic Ford's Theatre now through Dec. 31.
Expect to see a new spin on classic puppets like the curmudgeon Walter, who dons aviators as President Joe Biden after similarly spoofing Donald Trump a few years ago.
"F*k You and Eat Sht." No, not you. That's the name of Episode 6 of "The Peripheral," which drops Friday on Amazon Prime.
The novel "The Wonder" isn't nearly as accessible to mainstream audiences but is beautifully shot with plenty of dark religious themes to chew on -- or not chew on, depending on your belief in divine fasting.
"Much Ado About Nothing" remains one of William Shakespeare's most beloved comedies, and a new version at Shakespeare Theatre sets it in a TV newsroom in the nation's capital.
Leslie Iwerks chronicles the history of Walt Disney Imagineering in a new book called "The Imagineering Story."
Ford's Theatre's Senior Artistic Advisor Sheldon Epps shares his artistic journey in the new memoir "My Own Directions: A Black Man's Journey in the American Theatre."
The DMV has a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell from nearby West Virginia. Blue Öyster Cult is ready to rock Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races on Nov. 19.
Northern Virginia native Katie Frieden dreamed of performing at National Theatre. Now, it'll be a reality as the iconic musical "Chicago" hits Broadway at the National on Tuesday and runs through Nov. 27, celebrating 25 years of its national tour.
Mario Lopez is coming to Westfield Montgomery in Bethesda, Maryland for “Home for the Holidays” on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The American Veterans Center presents "American Valor: A Salute to Our Heroes," airing this Friday on the American Forces Network, as well as broadcasting on the major networks NBC, FOX, ABC and CBS throughout the month (check your local listings).
This Veterans Day, you can watch the remake of "All Quiet on the Western Front" on Netflix, a new version of a classic whose old ideas still stand.
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," which opens in movie theaters nationwide this weekend. What's the verdict from a Marvel super-fan?
You've seen his face on local TV and heard his voice on local radio around the DMV. Now, Tony Harris hosts "The Proof Is Out There" on the History Channel on Fridays.
Paula Poundstone is ready to bring some post-election standup comedy to the historic Birchmere in Alexandria on Friday, Nov. 11 and Saturday, Nov. 12.
Last December, Olney Theatre Center had started performances of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" in Olney, Maryland when the COVID-19 variants sadly shut down the production. This fall, the same cast takes another crack at the Disney classic.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of Stephen Sondheim's death on Nov. 26, Signature Theatre performs his iconic musical "Into the Woods" in Shirlington, Virginia, starting Wednesday and running through Jan. 29.
Maxwell talks with WTOP's Jason Fraley about his neo-soul hits and viral dance moves to the MGM National Harbor.
True-crime junkies get their fix this week, as "Unsolved Mysteries" drops the remaining batch of its nine-episode season delivered in three chunks.
"Aftersun" is a shining example of a film that takes a more impressionistic approach for a mood piece that you won't soon forget.
The month brings plenty of events around D.C., Maryland and Virginia, and we're rounding them up in our WTOP November Entertainment Guide.
David Baldacci, one of the most successful thriller authors of the past 30 years, discusses his love for Washington's football team and his new novel "Long Shadows."
Would you like an early look at this season's biggest Oscar contenders? The 35th annual Virginia Film Festival returns to Charlottesville, Virginia, Wednesday through Sunday.
Jalyn Hall talks with WTOP about a new film chronicling the story of Emmett Till — a 14-year-old Black boy who was abducted and lynched.
Scorpio Entertainment hosts the third annual Nightmare in Navy Yard at 8 p.m. Saturday.
Charlie Brown and Linus may be looking for the Great Pumpkin again this year, but you won't have to look very hard to spot giant pumpkins on the streets of Annapolis, Maryland.
"Game of Thrones" fans had every right to be skeptical of a prequel series set 172 years earlier, during House Targaryen's war of succession.
After earning a Tony nomination for portraying Smokey Robinson in "Motown: The Musical," Charl Brown saluted the legendary singer and songwriter with his touring show "Smokey & Me," at the Weinberg Center in Frederick, Maryland on Sunday night.
Molly Smith's final season at Arena Stage begins with a 1928 play that she says really resonates with people living through the pandemic.
WTOP caught up with new executive chef LaTasha Stevenson to discuss the fall menu at the Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland which is known for its beautiful, state-of-the-art music hall.
The Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton is scaring visitors at its eighth annual Workhouse Haunt, a walking trail experience that opened on Oct. 1 and runs through Nov. 5.
In 1992, R.L. Stine published his first book in the "Goosebumps" series, launching 30 years of frights and selling more children's books than anyone other than J.K. Rowling.
Romanian actor Dan Istrate stars in a play about Dracula at the Synetic Theater in Crystal City.
Jim Messina looks back with WTOP's Jason Fraley ahead of his show at Rams Head on Sunday.
Pardon their French! The renowned National Philharmonic kicks off its exciting fall season this week with a pair of concerts under the banner theme, "Vive La France," on Thursday and Saturday this week.
Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.” He’s best known as the lead guitarist of Hootie &…
The Medal of Honor is the ultimate symbol of military bravery, but a new documentary insists that too many service members have been passed over due to prejudice.
The New Era Orchestra of Kyiv has been scattered across the globe since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. This month, they'll reunite at the Kennedy Center alongside world-renowned violinist Joshua Bel
We're less than a week away from the Middleburg Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday Oct. 13 through Sunday, Oct. 16 at the Salamander Resort in Middleburg, Virginia.
The nation's capital has plenty of film festivals, but only one gives all proceeds to charity. The 11th annual Washington West Film Festival returns next week to keep giving back.
The Down in the Reeds music festival, which celebrates the healing power of music, returns Saturday to The Parks at Walter Reed.
The Down in the Reeds music festival, which celebrates the healing power of music, returns Saturday to The Parks at Walter Reed.
The Double Exposure: Investigative Film Festival returns from Oct. 13 to 16 at the U.S. Navy Memorial Visitor Center and National Geographic's Grosvenor Auditorium.
The Double Exposure: Investigative Film Festival returns from Oct. 13 to 16 at the U.S. Navy Memorial Visitor Center and National Geographic's Grosvenor Auditorium.
After earning 12 Tony Award nominations on Broadway in 2020, the North American tour of "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical" arrives at National Theatre from Oct. 4-23.
After earning 12 Tony Award nominations on Broadway in 2020, the North American tour of "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical" arrives at National Theatre from Oct. 4-23.
The 24th annual Bethesda Row Arts Festival returns on Saturday and Sunday on four streets in Bethesda.
The 24th annual Bethesda Row Arts Festival returns on Saturday and Sunday on four streets in Bethesda.
Six-time Pro Bowler Brandon Marshall now co-hosts “Inside the NFL” at D.C. on Showtime and he's bringing NFL alumni to City Winery for “I Am Athlete" this Thursday.
Six-time Pro Bowler Brandon Marshall now co-hosts “Inside the NFL” at D.C. on Showtime and he's bringing NFL alumni to City Winery for “I Am Athlete" this Thursday.
Time for your "top of the month" guide of events around town from WTOP's entertainment reporter, Jason Fraley.
Time for your "top of the month" guide of events around town from WTOP's entertainment reporter, Jason Fraley.
Lauryn Hill is known for hit records like "Killing Me Softly" and "Doo Wop (That Thing)." Now, she's narrating and executive producing the documentary "Why Is We Americans?" that will screen at Planet Word Museum at 13th Street Northwest D.C. on Friday at 5:30 p.m.
Lauryn Hill is known for hit records like "Killing Me Softly" and "Doo Wop (That Thing)." Now, she's narrating and executive producing the documentary "Why Is We Americans?" that will screen at Planet Word Museum at 13th Street Northwest D.C. on Friday at 5:30 p.m.
After earning a Grammy nomination this year for Best Traditional Blues Album, Blues Traveler rocks Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia on Oct. 7.
After earning a Grammy nomination this year for Best Traditional Blues Album, Blues Traveler rocks Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia on Oct. 7.
Get your beer-and-schnitzel taste buds ready and unpack your finest lederhosen or dirndl. It's time for Oktoberfest at The Wharf
Get your beer-and-schnitzel taste buds ready and unpack your finest lederhosen or dirndl. It's time for Oktoberfest at The Wharf
In the classic comedy "Hollywood Shuffle" (1987), a pair of Black movie critics gave their takes on predominantly white blockbusters. A similar idea fuels Jordan Black's hilarious improv show "The Black Version" at the Kennedy Center this Thursday through Saturday.
In the classic comedy "Hollywood Shuffle" (1987), a pair of Black movie critics gave their takes on predominantly white blockbusters. A similar idea fuels Jordan Black's hilarious improv show "The Black Version" at the Kennedy Center this Thursday through Saturday.
He's a glam-metal icon who's sold over 100 million records and streams worldwide. Poison's Bret Michaels brings the hits to Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races this Saturday.
He's a glam-metal icon who's sold over 100 million records and streams worldwide. Poison's Bret Michaels brings the hits to Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races this Saturday.
When you hear the phrase "improv theater," you most likely think of the short-form games that you would see on TV's "Whose Line is it Anyway?" Now imagine if the audience threw out a suggestion and the actors had to spontaneously stage a feature-length musical?
When you hear the phrase "improv theater," you most likely think of the short-form games that you would see on TV's "Whose Line is it Anyway?" Now imagine if the audience threw out a suggestion and the actors had to spontaneously stage a feature-length musical?
Glenn Tilbrook visits D.C.'s City Winery on Thursday, playing all of the Squeeze hits that drew early comparisons to The Beatles.
Glenn Tilbrook visits D.C.'s City Winery on Thursday, playing all of the Squeeze hits that drew early comparisons to The Beatles.
The March on Washington Film Festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary here in D.C. You can enjoy virtual and in-person…
The festival kicks off Wednesday at Union Market Dock 5 with an Opening Night Gala celebrating Rep. Barbara Lee, Broadway producer Irene Gandy and playwright/director George C. Wolfe
Over the last five years, the whodunit genre has seen a surprise resurgence. Now it's Tom George's turn with "See How They Run."
His life off the court and career on the court are both explored in the gripping new documentary "McEnroe," which premieres on Showtime this Friday.
The National Book Festival returns to the Washington Convention Center on Saturday for free events on 10 stages from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. with the theme "Books Bring Us Together."
Actress Cynthia Addai-Robinson told WTOP that she's gone from playing Annie at Montgomery Blair High School's production of 'Annie' to a queen in "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power."
On Thursday night, Jon Taffer hosts a special ribbon-cutting for the grand opening of Taffer's Tavern near Capitol One Arena in the Gallery Place-Chinatown area.
Craig Wallace directs the National Players' touring production of "Fences" at the Olney Theatre Center, in Olney, Maryland, Thursday through Sunday.
They rewrote music history by introducing hip-hop fans to rock music -- and vice versa. On Friday, Cypress Hill rocks Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia.
The 18th annual D.C. Jazz Festival delivers tons of free live music from Wednesday through Sunday.
He's been steadily rattling off hits on country music radio for years. Next week, Chris Janson plays Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia on Sept. 9.
This week, "Dear Evan Hansen" comes home to the nation's capital for a run at the Kennedy Center from Aug. 30 to Sept. 25.
Boy George talks with WTOP's Jason Fraley before his show at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, on Thursday.
This Friday, Sylvester Stallone similarly plays a plainclothes garbage man whom a little kid believes to be a former superhero in the United Artists-Amazon Studios collab "Samaritan," which exceeds all expectations for what a superhero movie can and should be.
WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews the first episodes of the Hulu miniseries "Mike," which tackle the controversial story of boxer Mike Tyson.
Insurance agency Choice Mutual is launching the Full House Dream Job campaign, giving one lucky fan $1,000 to binge-watch 10 hours of the show over the course of 24 hours.
How far would you be willing to move for your job? How about Mars? That's the premise of Ethan Lipton's musical "No Place to Go."
WTOP spoke with stars Rafe Spall and Esther Smith about Season 3 of "Trying" now on Apple TV+.
Part engineering project, part light show and part EDM concert, The Fluffy Cloud comes to D.C. in Ovtober.
Thirty years go, "FernGully: The Last Rainforest" (1992) became one of the last gems of hand-drawn animation. On Tuesday, fans can pick up the 30th anniversary Blu-Ray.
Bobby McKey's, the dueling-piano bar at National Harbor, hosted regular livestream events to keep the music going when live events were shut down. Now, folks from across the country are making the journey to hang out with their new friends in person.
Three years after HBO's "Game of Thrones" ended in controversy, fans can tune in Sunday for the prequel "House of the Dragon," created by George R.R. Martin and Ryan J. Condal.
On Friday, Olney Theatre Center in Olney, Maryland, hosts a "Celebration of Sondheim" at its outdoor Root Family Stage at 7:30 p.m. as part of its Olney Outdoors cabaret series.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Chuck Brown in 2012, so D.C. is honoring "The Godfather of Go-Go" with the eighth annual Chuck Brown Day festival.
A new generation discovered their music when "Come a Little Bit Closer" made the "Awesome Mix-Tape" of the superhero flick "Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2" (2017).
"Fantastagirl and the Math Monster" tells the story of a second-grade superhero who uses words to save the day until she comes face-to-face with her worst nightmare -- who turns out not to be so bad once you understand.
Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.” It’s been a blessed, broken road for Marcus Hummon that…
After two years of virtual films during the pandemic, the D.C. Black Film Festival returns to the historic Miracle Theatre, on Barracks Row in Southeast D.C., for its sixth year.
Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.” She put the “C” in “TLC,” but Chilli doesn’t want…
The Baltimore Sun reports that Martin Whittier and Nate Brubaker died Thursday night when a box truck collided with their car.
Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Color Purple" became a 1985 Steven Spielberg movie that earned 11 Academy Award nominations, before being adapted as a 2005 Broadway musical that earned 11 Tony Award nominations as well.
It’s a summer of celebration at Woolly Mammoth Theatre after cultivating a show in D.C. that eventually took Broadway by storm. “A Strange…
Jamie Foxx's new L.A. movie "Day Shift" is an action-horror-comedy with killer fight choreography but confusing blood-sucking rules.
Jamie Foxx's new L.A. movie "Day Shift" is an action-horror-comedy with killer fight choreography but confusing blood-sucking rules.
Major League Baseball hosts its second annual "Field of Dreams Game" on Thursday night in Dyersville, Iowa.
The Smithsonian museum is hosting its inaugural Hip-Hop Block Party indoors and outdoors on Madison Drive to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its hip-hop anthology.
The Smithsonian museum is hosting its inaugural Hip-Hop Block Party indoors and outdoors on Madison Drive to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its hip-hop anthology.
After two years of virtual events due to the pandemic, Strathmore's annual UkeFest returns in person to North Bethesda, Maryland, from Saturday through Tuesday.
For 50 years, it's become a summer tradition in Southeast D.C. This weekend, you can once again enjoy the Fort Dupont Park Summer Events Series free and open to the public.
Her victory on Season 3 of "American Idol" made her a household name. Now, Fantasia Barrino is bringing her signature sound to Wolf Trap in Virginia on Aug. 19.
The third annual Lakefront Film Festival is headed to D.C., and Festival Director Tim Gordon said he's excited about moving the festival to the District.
Lady Gaga's "Chromatica Ball" tour rocks Nationals Park on Monday night, and her Born This Way Foundation is helping local charities.
Don't throw away your shot to see the hit musical "Hamilton" in the nation's capital. Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway smash is at the Kennedy Center through Oct. 9.
"Prey" is daresay a better film than the 1987 flick, but the original is still "greater" because it invented the iconic character and birthed the franchise. However, if there's one I'd like to rewatch over and over again, it might just be "Prey."
It's a fitting time to celebrate the music and culture of Ukraine with the Ukrainian folk band DakhaBrakha at Strathmore on Saturday.
They were a standout in Questlove's Oscar-winning documentary "Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)" about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.
On Wednesday, the Buzz Lightyear origin story finally hits Disney+, and it's worth the wait to enjoy watching at home -- even if you didn't really miss that much in the theater.
The Folger Shakespeare Library is staging the timeless tale of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the National Building Museum now through Aug. 28.
The six wives of Henry VIII finally get their payback as modern-day pop stars in the Broadway smash "Six: The Musical," at the National Theatre through Sept. 4.
His successful podcast "83 Weeks" details exactly how he beat Vince McMahon's WWF (now WWE) in the ratings for 83 straight weeks. Now, WCW legend Eric Bischoff has penned his second memoir "Grateful," which is available for presale before its release in November.
Country music superstar Maren Morris rocks Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland on Thursday night. She joined WTOP to preview her "Humble Quest" tour.
Joe and Anthony Russo reunite with Chris Evans, only this time as a sinister bad guy battling Ryan Gosling for a dream match of Cap vs. K in “The Gray Man
The best D.C.-area chefs and restaurants will be honored Sunday when the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington hosts the 40th annual RAMMYS.
The honorees for the 45th annual Kennedy Center Honors on Dec. 4 have been announced. Read what this year's recipients have to say.
Cirque du Soleil is bringing "KURIOS: Cabinet of Curiosities" to Tysons, Virginia from July 29 to Aug. 27.
A musical based upon American abolitionist hero Frederick Douglass is getting its world premiere in the nation's capital. Arena Stage is presenting "American Prophet" now through Aug. 28.
She recorded radio hits in the 1970s from "Band of Gold" to "Bring the Boys Home." This weekend, Rhythm & Blues Hall of Famer Freda Payne preforms live at Blues Alley in Georgetown for four shows on Friday and Saturday at the historic supper club in D.C.
His record seven no-hitters and 5,714 strikeouts will likely never be matched in baseball. All aboard the Ryan Express as the documentary "Facing Nolan" hits streaming Tuesday.
Gordon Lightfoot will perform at the Weinberg Center in Frederick, Maryland, on Wednesday, July 20, followed by Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia, on Monday, July 25.
The history is chronicled in the new documentary "Barry Farm: Community, Land & Justice in Washington D.C.," which screens for free Thursday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s Just Economy Club at 740 15th Street, Northwest.
He celebrates his 25th anniversary by coming to City Winery in D.C. on Sunday, July 21.
On Friday, Dennis Leane drops the true-crime mystery "Black Bird" on Apple TV+, a gripping six-episode miniseries that brilliantly blurs the lines of truth and fiction in a sinister world.
His parents fled the collapsing Soviet Union to found Synetic Theater in Virginia.
Vato Tsikurishvili performs in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" now through July 24.
Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.” Ashanti dominated the radio with R&B, pop and hip-hop hits…
The James Beard Foundation is visiting 20 cities in its 10th annual “Taste America” series. This Thursday, the tour stops by…
The Capital Fringe Festival was canceled in 2020 and shifted to a visual art program in 2021. Starting Thursday, it returns live in-person for two weekends July 14-17 and July 21-24.
"CODA" paved the way for deaf actors on screen by winning the Best Picture Oscar. Now, the deaf community hits the stage in "The Music Man" at Olney Theatre Center.
Bello Nock presents "Funambula" at MGM National Harbor in Prince George's County, Maryland, near D.C. from June 29 to July 13.
Gospel artist Yolanda Adams previews "A Capitol Fourth," which returns in-person to the U.S. Capitol on July Fourth.
America has Hollywood and India has Bollywood, but Nigeria makes magic in Nollywood. The journey to Nigerian movie stardom is…
He grew up in Virginia before making hoops history at Duke University and Detroit Pistons. NBA legend Grant Hill joined WTOP to discuss his new memoir “Game: An Autobiography."
Disney+ chronicles the Antetokounmpo brothers in "Rise," a movie that dominates its first three quarters, fades in the fourth quarter but still holds on for the inspirational win.
He won two Grammys for voicing two of Disney's greatest Oscar-winning songs. On Saturday, Peabo Bryson performs live at Bethesda Blues & Jazz Supper Club in Maryland.
A classic soul supergroup comprising of members from the Platters, Drifters, Temptations and Four Tops will serenade D.C. this weekend.
The touring stage version of "Blippi: The Musical" brings the YouTube phenomenon to the historic National Theatre in D.C. for a pair of shows Saturday at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Is Fido looking for something entertaining to do this weekend? Grab a leash and head to the Dog Days of Summer at The Boro in Tysons.
John Williams is arguably the greatest film composer ever in the history of movies. The Kennedy Center is welcoming Williams…
After playing the original Scout Finch in the 1962 movie classic "To Kill a Mockingbird," Mary Badham stars in the theatrical performance at the Kennedy Center in the national tour of the 2018 Broadway production.
On Wednesday night, Fantastic Negrito plays the renowned 9:30 Club in the nation's capital, where he'll perform songs from his newest album, “White Jesus Black Problems."
At age 22, hometown hero Myles Frost cemented his place in Broadway history last week by becoming the youngest ever to win a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. Now, Frost shares what it was like to win the prize on Tony night.
Joseph Kosinski has already directed the hit of the summer with "Top Gun: Maverick." His new sci-fi thriller, "Spiderhead," which drops on Netflix Friday, is a thematically thought-provoking but overly familiar addition to the genre of "Black Mirror" and "Ex Machina."
He inspires hockey fans to "rock the red" as the arena announcer for Washington Capitals. Now, Wes Johnson is lending his voice to an important cause.
This Friday, Georgetown University music professor and Kennedy Center resident artist Carlos Simon drops his streaming album "Requiem for the Enslaved" ahead of Juneteenth.
Happy Throwback Thursday! It's time to crank some golden oldies from Paul Anka. Strathmore presents "Anka Sings Sinatra: His Songs, My Songs, My Way" on June 21.
In 1833 London, Ira Aldridge became the first Black actor to play Shakespeare's Othello. Shakespeare Theatre Company tells his story in "Red Velvet," opening Thursday in D.C.
Frank Zappa's former bandmates carry on his legacy with The Zappa Band at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia on Sunday and Ram's Head in Annapolis, Maryland on Tuesday.
Wednesday's free DC/DOX documentary film festival will feature music, technology, social and political documentaries.
Do you already miss the Tonys? You can still enjoy Broadway next week at Wolf Trap. Tony winners Kelli O'Hara and Adrienne Warren bring "Broadway in the Park" on June 24.
The acclaimed jukebox musical "Jersey Boys" arrives at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday and runs through June 26.
For years, Adam Sandler has built basketball hoops on set for his cast and crew to play. Now, it’s his…
On Friday, Mark Rylance's new golf comedy "The Phantom of the Open" opens in D.C., telling the true story of Maurice Flitcroft, who shot the worst round ever in British Open.
The Nickelodeon cartoon was adapted into an acclaimed Broadway musical in 2017, and this Friday, "SpongeBob SquarePants" hits Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia, Maryland.
The duo behind "One Destiny" at historic Ford's Theatre give their final run revisiting the events of President Lincoln's assassination.
You can celebrate her life in "Princess Diana: Accredited Access Exhibition," a new walk-through experience at Tysons Corner Center starting this Wednesday through the summer.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the iconic monster truck Grave Digger. On Saturday, the truck revs into Monster Jam at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland.
"Mr. Popper's Penguins" hits Imagination Stage in Bethesda, Maryland, starting June 22.
This Saturday, Liberty DeVitto plays the annual Rock & Roll for Children Foundation concert at The Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland, to benefit The Children's Inn at NIH.
Sidra Bell joins Jamar Roberts and Justin Peck for "Visionary Voices," followed by "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from Thursday to Sunday, at the Kennedy Center.
Before DJ Jazzy Jeff joins Robin Thicke and Tamia for "Célébrez en Rosé" at National Harbor, he talks to WTOP.
Outdoor movies under the stars are a summer tradition in the nation's capital, and the series at Gateway Park in Rosslyn starts Friday.
Scotty McCreery catches up with WTOP before he plays Hollywood Casino in Charles Town on June 11.
The PBR Challenger Series brings Bulls on the Beach to Ocean City, Maryland, for three straight days this Friday at 6 p.m., Saturday at 6 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Don't be surprised if you see folks wearing superhero costumes on the Metro this week. Awesome Con hits the Walter E. Washington Convention Center this Friday to Sunday.
The weather is warming up with summer events on the horizon, and the D.C. region has plenty of fun activities over the next month.
It's a big week for Kenny Loggins as "Danger Zone" is featured in the No. 1 box-office blockbuster "Top Gun: Maverick" at the same time as his new book "Still Alright: A Memoir."
The five-year partnership between Step Afrika! and Arena Stage in D.C. kicks off Tuesday with "Drumfolk," running through June 26.
Imagine watching a family-friendly flick on a picnic blanket on a professional soccer field. The Capitol Riverfront presents free screenings with Movies on the Pitch at Audi Field.
The National Memorial Day Concert returns in person on Sunday night after two years of virtual events. It will broadcast…
If you missed its local premiere at the DC Environmental Film Festival back in March, the inspirational new documentary “We Feed People” finally drops on Disney+ on Friday.
All Elite Wrestling airs its "Double or Nothing" pay-per-view this Sunday in Las Vegas. AEW President and CEO Tony Khan joined WTOP to get jacked up for the big event.
On Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m., the History Channel premieres the two-night documentary "Theodore Roosevelt," executive produced by Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio and Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Dinosaurs are returning from extinction with The Jurassic Encounter at the Bull Run Events Center.
In 2021, The Escape Game acquired Escape Room Live for a renovation in Georgetown. Now, the same company has opened a new downtown location at 950 F Street Northwest.
This Thursday to Sunday, Del McCoury brings the 14th Delfest to the Allegany County Fairgrounds in Cumberland, Maryland, for the first time since 2019 due to the pandemic.
A brand new music festival is coming to Ocean City, Maryland later this year. The first-ever Oceans Calling Festival arrives on Sept. 30, Oct. 1 and Oct. 2.
The Kennedy Center salutes singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell with the NSO Pops concert "Love: A Joni Mitchell Songbook" featuring five-time Grammy winner Lalah Hathaway
On Monday night, the Choral Arts Society of Washington presents the East Coast premiere of Damien Geter's "An African American Requiem" 7 p.m. at the Kennedy Center.
In 1984, a young Drew Barrymore starred in the sci-fi horror flick "Firestarter." WTOP's Jason Fraley checks out the the Blumhouse remake, which opens Friday.
The Washington National Opera is making its return to the Kennedy Center Opera House. It's doing so in grand style by staging the iconic tragedy "Carmen" from May 14 to 28.
Wootton High School and Bowie State University alumni Myles Frost, who just earned a Tony nomination for his role as Michael Jackson in "MJ," talks with WTOP.
Calling all readers! The Books in Bloom festival returns to Columbia, Maryland on Sunday.
"It's a strange dynamic to be this broken and this blessed," Wynonna Judd said upon accepting The Judds' induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville on May 1, just one day after her mother, Naomi Judd, reportedly committed suicide at age 76.
GZA talks about the enduring appeal of Wu-Tang Clan, his solo work, science, martial arts and more, ahead of his City Winery shows.
For a decade now, it's served as the only drive-in movie theater in the nation's capital. The Union Market Drive-In returns to D.C. this Friday for six months of movie classics.
Before he originated the roles of Benny in "In the Heights" and George Washington in "Hamilton," Christopher Jackson got his start with a freestyle rap crew in New York City. Next week, he brings "Freestyle Love Supreme" to the Kennedy Center.
Grab a running buddy and get ready to drink some bubbly after some exercise. The Yards D.C. is hosting Brunch on the Go every Saturday for three weeks.
The Kennedy Center hosts the NSO's "Disney Princess" concert on Friday and Saturday as Broadway’s Belle, Jasmine, Anastasia and Nala sing your favorite Disney songs.
May 4 has recently become an annual holiday for "Star Wars" fans, and if you live here in the D.C. area, there are plenty of ways to celebrate your fandom on Wednesday, May 4.
Get ready to dance, gather and inspire the community with a decadelong tradition in D.C. The Broccoli City Music Fest returns to RFK Stadium this weekend.
Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with the director of 'Encanto' (Part 1) Growing up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Jared Bush dreamed of one day making movies.
On Sunday, he won Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards for writing and directing Disney’s “Encanto.”
“Sitting there, my heart’s beating out of my chest because you truly don’t know,” Bush told WTOP. “When they said it, your heart stops for a second, then you realize I should probably get up there quickly. … You have very limited time to talk.”
He headed backstage after winning his Oscar and missed the entire Will Smith vs. Chris Rock controversy.
“I had no idea,” Bush said. “After you win, you go do a bunch of interviews and pictures. I was back there for an hour, so I had no idea it happened. We got back to our seats and something was different and I was trying to figure out what was going on. My friends were like, ‘You missed something kind of big.’ … I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.”
It’s his second time missing an Oscars controversy after the 2017 envelope gaffe.
“The only time I’ve been to the Oscars prior to this was on ‘Zootopia,'” Bush said. “My friends said, ‘There’s a party after this. We need you to get out really quick and get a place in line,’ so I missed the last 10 minutes the year of Warren Beatty, ‘Moonlight’ and ‘La La Land.’ Whenever I go to the Oscars and leave the room, something major happens.”
Either way, he wouldn’t miss the change to chat with his hometown radio station.
“WTOP! On my commute in, my parents would be like ‘boop’ [punches dial], always listened to it, it was a morning routine,” Bush said. “Later when I had a job in D.C., my dad would drive me to work and we’d listen to it all the way in, so this is a treat for me.”
What was his favorite Disney movie as a kid in Montgomery County?
“‘The Jungle Book,’ 100%,” Bush said. “It was the first one I remember seeing in the theater, also it’s a musical and I loved the villain, who wanted to eat the main character, who is a child! I was like, ‘I don’t know how you got me to like that character.’ Amazing.”
Soon, he began making their own home movies, including “Hot Cop Part 2.”
“When I was 12, my dad got a video camera,” Bush said. “My brother and my good friends would make home movies all the time. They were all ridiculous. … We shot them around D.C. Several times we were pulled over by the police asking what we were doing, why we were wearing wigs, racing across bridges, tossing bungie-jump dummies over highways.”
He graduated from the inaugural four-year class at Quince Orchard High School in 1992.
“Mr. Angelo, my music teacher, was someone I always looked up to,” Bush said. “The principal at the time, Dr. Warren, was always a good friend. … Mrs. Versel [said], ‘I think English would be good for you.’ … My love of creative writing came out of that. … The right teacher who sees something in you that you don’t see yourself can be a life changer.”
Eventually, he decided to “go west, young man” and move to Los Angeles.
“After college, I was like, ‘I want to move to Hollywood and get into the industry,'” Bush said. “People were like, ‘And do what?’ I was like, ‘I have no idea!’ Luckily, my parents were supportive of this crazy notion like, ‘Follow your dreams, whatever those are.'”
It took him years to slowly work his way up the ladder in Hollywood.
“I started working at a talent agency,” Bush said. “My biggest job was to read scripts and write coverage. … I read hundreds of scripts, which turned out to be the best education. … Shortly after that, I started in television. … I was lucky enough to get hired on a TV show as a writer’s assistant … then I got onto a different show and became a staff writer.”
His big break came at Disney, writing and co-directing the Oscar-winning animated film “Zootopia” (2016), a cleverly subversive social commentary on race in America.
“I bugged and bugged Disney to give me an interview and got hired by Byron Howard, who was working on a movie about animals,” Bush said. “We have prey and we have predators. What is that dynamic like? What are those parallels to what we know in our human lives? … There’s one group in charge of things and one group that’s been marginalized.”
That same year, Bush also wrote the script for Disney’s “Moana” (2016).
“Ron Clements and John Musker, the most famous Disney directors ever, ‘Little Mermaid,’ ‘Aladdin,’ had been working on it for a while,” Bush said. “‘Moana’ had cast Dwayne Johnson as Maui and Auli’i Cravalho as Moana. … Having specific actors in mind for those voices made a lot of difference. … I love writing fun character back and forth.”
His script wove in hit songs like “How Far I’ll Go” and “You’re Welcome,” written by Broadway icon Lin-Manuel Miranda, with whom he’d reunite on “Encanto” (2021).
“Working with Lin was fantastic; he was like, ‘I want to do something else, something set in Latin America,'” Bush said. “Co-director and co-writer Charise Castro Smith has an encyclopedic knowledge of magical realism and a deep family connection. Her family is Cuban American and emigrated here. … That whole opening core was written by her.”
The opening song, “The Family Madrigal,” packs in tons of character introductions.
“Lin wrote the first song, ‘Family Madrigal,’ for the first screening, knowing it would change 1,000 times before the movie came out,” Bush said. “He gave us a version of, ‘Let’s meet all the characters, here’s what they might sound like.’ … My great joy in life is, early on, I will sometimes write fake lyrics that are really terrible to intentionally mess with Lin.”
One of the film’s catchiest songs was Luisa’s number “Surface Pressure.”
“We were trying to figure out this character of Luisa,” Bush said. “Early on, he was like, ‘It’s gotta be Reggaeton.’ … When we heard the lyrics, they were actually a much more clear window into Luisa’s issues than we initially thought the song was going to do. As soon as we heard it … we actually went through the entire script and adjusted all of Luisa’s lines.”
Of course, the big pop-culture phenomenon was “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”
“Every Friday night for two-and-a-half years, we’d get together with Lin,” Bush said. “He goes, ‘It feels like a spooky montuno song.’ He turned from Zoom to his keyboard and wrote it in real time in front of us. … I didn’t have TikTok at the time. … I went on and I couldn’t believe it. It was so exciting because so many found their way into the song.”
Ironically, it wasn’t submitted for the Oscars, instead giving the nod to “Dos Oruguitas.”
“In retrospect … not a thing different,” Bush said. “To hear ‘Dos Oruguitas,’ the emotional core of our story, sung completely in Spanish was important. … The fact that it was the No. 1 album for weeks worldwide is insane! … All of our songs were in the Top 100 Billboard concurrently! … I’m not worried about Lin achieving an EGOT. It’s a matter of time.”
Beyond the music, “Encanto” features universal themes of generational trauma.
“Our research was our own families,” Bush said. “We hadn’t seen a story that talked about different generations, how one generation affects the next, how we don’t really see each other in our families. We have one view. It’s really hard for me to see my mother as anything other than my mom, but there’s a whole person there, a whole life.”
In other words, have empathy for your outcast family members like Bruno.
“That character we had very early on,” Bush said. “There’s a black sheep of the family that is what Mirabel could eventually become if she wasn’t healed and couldn’t make her way through. We needed that character to be there. The specificity of Bruno … got more and more interesting as we went. We found that he’s very funny. John Leguizamo kills it.”
Kids will relate to the main character, Mirabel, as they try to find their place.
“When magical realism in Colombia came into the conversation, ‘Oh man, it could be this family who has these gifts, and what if one member of the family doesn’t have it, how would that feel?'” Bush said. “Many of us look around like, ‘Everyone else has it together, why don’t I?’ But everyone else is dealing with that same thing, we just don’t talk about it.”
What’s his advice to local kids dreaming of a future in Hollywood?
“What I would say to anyone who is interested is — we need new voices,” Bush said. “Your specific voice is really, really important. Much more important than trying to figure out what Hollywood might want is this: we want you. We want individual, unique perspectives. That’s critical. If I can be here having this conversation with you, anyone can do that.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Annapolis Film Festival (Part 1) The Oscars may now be over, but Maryland is still celebrating the art of filmmaking.
The Annapolis Film Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary this Thursday to Sunday.
“Ten years, we still can’t believe it,” co-founder Patti White told WTOP. “It all started in a little back room of 49 West on West Street in Annapolis. … Here we are 10 years later with a big, heavy lift of coming back after two years of virtual, but to quite a grand festival as it’s become. We’re really proud of it. We’re proud of how the community has embraced it.”
This year’s slate incudes over 70 films over four days in various venues downtown.
“We’re walkable, accessible,” White said. “We’ve built our movie theaters inside old churches, inside Maryland Hall, which is an old building, we’ve done them in an elementary school, and now this year … we’re going to the United States Naval Institute, their theater there in the Jack C. Taylor Auditorium in the Lockheed Martin Theater.”
It kicks off with the biopic “To Olivia” based on a novel by Stephen Michael Shearer.
“‘To Olivia’ is a British film that tells the story of Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal,” co-founder Lee Anderson told WTOP. “He wrote ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’ It’s a film directed by John Hay and it stars Hugh Bonneville from ‘Downton Abbey’ and Keeley Hawes, who people might know from ‘The Bodyguard.'”
Friday brings Abi Damaris Corbin’s “892” starring John Bodega and Nicole Beharie.
“Based on a true story of Brian Easley from Atlanta in 2014,” Anderson said. “He was a veteran struggling to get his benefits paid by the V.A. and resorts to drastic measures.”
Saturday includes the Sundance documentary “Fire of Love.”
“‘Fire of Love’ is a great story of a volcanologist French couple who travel the world chasing and studying volcanoes,” White said. “The real-life footage that goes back into the ’70s and earlier maybe is phenomenal. You just feel like you’re there at these volcanoes. It’s their story, I don’t want to go too far into that or where it goes, but it’s quite a journey.”
Saturday also includes the documentary “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over.”
“The new documentary that hasn’t come out yet, it’ll be on CNN at some point,” White said, to which Anderson added, “Not only do we have the documentary, we have the director and producer of the film Dave Wooley. … That’s one not to miss.”
Saturday also includes “Emily the Criminal” starring Aubrey Plaza.
“It’s a drama, not her usual comedy, but it’s so well done,” White said. “It grabs you and takes you in that story, twirls you around a few times as Aubrey can, and then brings you out on the other side. She’s down on her luck, people are letting her down and disappointing her. Somebody presents her with an opportunity but she finds out it’s a fraud.”
Sunday includes “The Story of Us” produced by Monica Levinson.
“Monica produced the opening night film ‘Beirut’ a few years ago,” Levinson said. “She took 12 years to capture her big, loud, wonderful, Jewish family’s stories at every family gathering, every bat mitzvah, every Thanksgiving, every time they go together for a wedding and has compiled almost like a home movie where they share their family story.”
It all culminates Monday with the closing night film “Peace by Chocolate.”
“A young guy who’s been in medical school in Syria,” Anderson said. “He moves to Nova Scotia and finds that his medical credits don’t transfer, so in frustration, he ends up doing his family business with his father, which is making chocolate.”
Proof of vaccination is required and masks are required indoors.
Tickets are $15.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Steve Hackett at Warner Theatre (Part 1) He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the former lead guitarist of Genesis.
On April 13, Steve Hackett hits Warner Theatre with his “Seconds Out + More Tour,” featuring a solo set, then a recreation of Genesis’ full live album “Seconds Out” (1977).
“We do a couple of things from ‘Surrender of Silence,’ ‘Spectral Mornings’ … about 30-40 minutes of that, then put on the Genesis hat and do the whole ‘Seconds Out,’ including ‘Supper’s Ready,’ ‘Cinema Show’ and ‘Firth of Fifth,'” Hackett told WTOP. “There’s a break in the middle, 15-20 minutes for people to powder their nose, get hammered at the bar.”
Born in London in 1950, Hackett was exposed to music at a very early age.
“My dad played a lot of instruments,” Hackett said. “From the age of 2, I was trying to play the harmonica. … Early influences: cowboy tunes, Davy Crockett, then there was a bit of opera, Mario Lanza, Glenn Miller, Elvis, then The Shadows came along and that’s when I first heard electric guitar. The rest is history. I took up electric guitar at age 14.”
In 1970, he placed an ad in Melody Maker magazine seeking a band, reading, “Imaginative guitarist/writer seeks involvement with receptive musicians, determined to strive beyond existing stagnant musical forms.” Peter Gabriel read it and invited him to join Genesis.
“Peter Gabriel realized I was either completely crazy or another idealist,” Hackett said. “It sounded like Winston Churchill does rock! ‘We will fight them on the beaches, on the frets!’ … He was as crazy as I was, so we worked well together for a number of years.”
The lineup was Gabriel (lead vocals), Phil Collins (drums), Tony Banks (keys), Mike Rutherford (bass) and Hackett, lead guitarist from 1971-1977 across six studio albums.
Hackett’s first album with Genesis was “Nursery Cryme” (1971) where he invented a two-handed tapping style on the guitar that later influenced Eddie Van Halen and Brian May.
“I was trying to work out something to play on a track called ‘[The] Musical Box’ … using tapping on that, then there was a track, ‘The Return of the Giant Hogweed,’ that had a tapping intro,” Hackett said. “I was grateful to J.S. Bach, who was born in 1685, but I was trying to play a line from ‘Toccata and Fugue’ and felt the easiest thing was to play it on one string!”
Their next album, “Foxtrot” (1972), featured the epic length of “Supper’s Ready.”
“It’s the band’s longest recorded song,” Hackett said. “I do an even longer version because I do a long guitar solo at the end. The original is something in excess of 22 minutes and mine sometimes goes up to 25 minutes. That’s what happens when you’re having fun with guitars! … ‘Supper’s Ready’ was an idea I had … a musical odyssey to get lost in.”
His third album with Genesis was “Selling England by the Pound” (1973), a No. 3 album in the UK, including his signature guitar solo in the fan-favorite song “Firth of Fifth.”
“The song was already written by Tony Banks,” Hackett said. “The melody he originally played was on piano. … I said, ‘How about I do it on guitar?’ I made it sound a little more Eastern, there was something Indian about the scale when you start to bend notes. … I said, ‘If we do it like this with Mellotron, it’ll serve the melody more than acoustic.'”
Indeed, the Mellotron added a completely different sound to Genesis.
“The Beatles used it famously on the introduction of ‘Strawberry Fields [Forever],'” Hackett said. “I remember seeing King Crimson and Moody Blues using a Mellotron live. It sounded stunning live. I knew I had to work with a Mellotron. For my first six months with Genesis, we didn’t have [one]. ‘We’ve gotta get one of these things.'”
Their next album, “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” (1974), would be Gabriel’s last.
“Pete never believed in the idea of composition by committee,” Hackett said. “He wanted to write his own stuff. … Pete was always headed toward a solo career. I think you can hear the competition, the clash of horns between Pete and Tony, very busy keyboard passages and very busy lyrical passages. … It’s more of a wrestling match than an album.”
Collins became lead vocalist on the next album “A Trick of the Tail” (1976).
“One of the first things that I wrote with Phil was ‘For Absent Friends,’ and he was the one who sang it, but his voice was sufficiently similar to Peter, so no one realized Phil was doing it,” Hackett said. “He had a good voice, no doubt about it, but I don’t think anyone realized at that time what a global superstar he was to become.”
Hackett would record one final album with Genesis called “Wind & Wuthering” (1976), featuring the band’s first charting hit in the U.S. with “Your Own Special Way.”
“I did a solo album when I was still a part of the band; Mike and Phil were on it,” Hackett said. “The album started to take off in the interim after Pete left and no one really knew the band’s future. … I was told either you can’t do any more solo albums or you’ve got to leave the band. … I didn’t want to be told what to do. My allegiance is to music itself.”
Genesis’ next album referenced his departure, “And Then There Were Three,” featuring the hit song “Follow You Follow Me.” It was the first of many Collins-fronted hits: “That’s All,” “Invisible Touch,” “Throwing It All Away,” “In Too Deep,” “Land of Confusion,” “Tonight Tonight Tonight” and “I Can’t Dance,” not to mention solo work like “In the Air Tonight.”
What’s Hackett’s favorite song released by Genesis after his departure?
“I quite like ‘Abacab,'” Hackett said. “I would have done a guitar solo on it.”
No matter, Hackett was busy rattling off 27 studio albums of his own, as well as forming the rock supergroup GTR with former Yes lead guitarist Steve Howe.
“There have been many more if you count all the live ones,” Hackett said. “I’ve lost count of the amount of albums I’ve shown up on of other people’s, it must be hundreds by now.”
Which of Hackett’s solo albums should we pick up en route to Warner Theatre?
“There’s ‘Spectral Mornings,’ those songs work very well live,” Hackett said. “There’s also ‘Surrender of Silence,’ the most recent album, which I’m very fond of, particularly the orchestral work. You get orchestral metal. It’s part of what I do, seeing a band live and thinking, ‘I think I’m watching an orchestra, but it’s coming at me like sheet metal.'”
In 1996, Hackett released his throwback album “Genesis Revisited” before being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame beside his former Genesis bandmates in 2010.
“It’s great that the early work was celebrated in that way,” Hackett said. “It’s a great institution, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, no doubt about it. I wish we had something like that in England. … Genesis is saying, ‘These are our last concerts. That’s it,’ then they hang up their spurs. I’m just getting going because I want these songs to be played.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Mosaic Theater's 'Private' (Part 1) Work-life balance has long been an important subject even before futuristic technology, but when you add the eye of constant company surveillance, things quickly get complicated.
That’s the theme of Mosaic Theater’s new production called “Private,” running now through April 17 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street, Northeast.
“It’s a relationship play about a married couple navigating a change in their life when the husband gets a new job,” Director Knud Adams told WTOP. “That job disrupts their lives by (raising) private, vulnerable questions about the value of privacy in one’s home, in the near future if it’s possible to leave work at work, if that distinction even exists anymore.”
Mona Pirnot’s play follows Corbin (Eric Berryman), who lands the job of his dreams, so his wife Georgia (Temídayo Amay) quits her day job and focus on her passion for music. What Corbin hasn’t told her is that he has given up all rights to the couple’s privacy as a condition of employment. Will the surveillance be too much for their marriage to survive?
“Mona has extrapolated technologies that are very popular now and put those in the hands of the individual and the corporation,” Adams said. “The ability to be listened to at all times, to have yourself recorded at all times, to play back memories from your life, from your partner’s life, to grant access to your aural history to your partner and to your job.”
Set in the near future, it’s more “science reality” than “science fiction.”
“We eschew the ‘sci-fi’ term because it normalizes that technology very quickly and starts to focus on the relationships for a classic marriage story like ‘Kramer vs. Kramer,’ ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ or ‘A Woman Under the Influence,'” Adams said. “It’s responding to current events and changes in social customs through the lens of a particular relationship.”
The onstage marriage is brought to life by familiar local actors.
“We have Eric Berryman, who was born and raised in Baltimore and has been back and forth between D.C. and New York his entire career, fantastic,” Adams said. “As Georgia, we have Temídayo Amay, who is a D.C. superstar. Together, just seeing them play off each other is worth the price of admission alone. It’s been a thrill watching them work.”
How is their near-future world visualized for the stage?
“Creating a very specific world that serves the many locations, but avoiding the cliché ideas about what the future looks like, which is sometimes about plexiglass, steel and body suits,” Adams said. “What we’ve done is look to the past. Interior design, just like fashion, is very cyclical, so what you see is a surprising throwback to … the late ’60s, early ’70s.”
Mosaic Artistic Director Reg Douglas has loved watching Adams realize his vision.
“We are very lucky to have Knud with us; his production of ‘English’ off-Broadway is a big critics’ hit, a real master of new plays,” Douglas told WTOP. “Something you’ve done so wonderfully with the designers is use bold colors and really sharp design choices. … I find myself leaning in. I’m excited for audiences to experience a very different take of what future means.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Judas Priest at MGM National Harbor (Part 1) Their hard-charging riffs pioneered the heavy metal genre for countless bands to follow.
On Thursday, Judas Priest’s “50 Heavy Metal Years Tour” hits MGM National Harbor.
“It was delayed for two years, it’s now 52 coming onto 53 years, but we’re determined to get through it, pandemic or not,” founding bass player Ian Hill told WTOP. “We’re back to doing it now, even if it’s a couple years later — better late than never!”
Expect to hear a mix of new songs and the band’s greatest hits.
“We like to put a cross section in,” Hill said. “There’s fan favorites that you can’t drop that we all love to play and love to listen to, but we like to throw a curveball in here and there. There’s something off the first album, ‘Rocka Rolla,’ we’re opening with ‘One Shot at Glory’ from ‘Painkiller,’ that’s something we’re never played before, so a mixture of old and new.”
Born in West Bromwich, England in 1951, Hill learned music from his father.
“My dad played double bass in jazz bands,” Hill said. “I got the gene from him, but I wasn’t interested in playing really. My dad unfortunately died at [age] 46 when I was only 15. He had just started teaching me the rudiments of the double bass. That knocked the wind out of my sails for a while, then I started listening to the contemporary music: Cream, Hendrix.”
He still thinks of his late father every time he picks up the guitar.
“He’d love what became of Judas Priest,” Hill said. “I don’t think he’d like [the music], but he’d love the success. … He’s looking down on us with a big smile. … I come from a pretty musical family. My dad’s sister had four boys, all of which are musicians … [but] I’m the only person that ever made a go of it. I was the only one that took it more seriously.”
He began playing with future bandmate K.K. Downing in 1969.
“We were only 16 or 17,” Hill said. “We were just picking the notes out and keeping the beats together. There was a rehearsal facility in the local area and Al Atkins, who was the vocalist in the original Judas Priest, there was one before us that only lasted a few months, he walked past our rehearsal room, liked what he heard … and the rest is history.”
Who came up with the Biblical irony to name the band Judas Priest?
“Brian Stapenhill, the bass player with the first Judas Priest, he thought of it,” Hill said. “I think he got it off a Bob Dylan song called ‘[The Ballad of Frankie Lee and] Judas Priest.’ … I’m not a Dylan fan, so I don’t really know. … When I joined the band, I said, ‘Should we call it Judas Priest?’ It already had a bit of a name in the area — and we agreed on it.”
Soon, Atkis was replaced by now-iconic lead singer Rob Halford.
“We were doing alright … earning a very modest living gigging here and there,” Hill said. “Al’s wife got pregnant and based on what we were earning at the time, it wouldn’t have covered [raising a kid], so he had to leave and go get a job. I was dating Rob’s sister, Sue, who I subsequently married. … Sue said, ‘Why don’t you try my brother?'”
Judas Priest recorded their first two albums, “Rocka Rolla” (1974) and “Sad Wings of Destiny” (1976), under the independent label Gull with extremely low budgets.
“Heavy metal didn’t exist; we were what they’d say was heavy rock,” Hill said. “The first album was done at night because the studio time was cheaper! We slept in a van outside and cleaned ourselves up in the bathrooms in the studios and recorded throughout the night. That’s how we made the first album. The second one wasn’t much different.”
They next signed with CBS Records to release “Sin After Sin” (1977), “Stained Class” (1978) and “Killing Machine” (1978), all three of which went gold and charted in the U.K.
“When CBS signed us, there was a bit more of cash,” Hill said. “We could record during the day and afford to stay in a modest hotel. … The first time you went to America, you were No. 1 on the bill. The second time you might have moved up a notch. Then the third time, you’re playing your own small gigs and special guests on large ones [like] Kiss in ’79.”
Ultimately, it was their sixth album “British Steel” (1980) that became a worldwide hit.
“Everything gelled with ‘British Steel,'” Hill said. “It was called heavy metal then. That’s when not just the music, but the image and attitude and the rest that went with it all sort of came together with ‘British Steel.’ It was the basis for what came afterwards, basically.”
The album featured the defiant hit single “Breaking the Law.”
“It’s a sign of the times, a guy couldn’t get [a] job, down and out, no money, and his only way out was to go rob banks,” Hill said. “It was the single, a comparatively commercial song, ‘radio-friendly’ they’d call it these days. … We did a video with [Director] Julien Temple at the helm, which is a classic in itself. … It did a lot to further the band’s cause.”
The same album featured another hit with “Living After Midnight.”
“It speaks to everybody,” Hill said. “You get out of work on a Friday night, you’re not going to go home, put your slippers on and watch TV, are you? You’re going to be down at the bar having fun! … We were doing this at Ringo Starr’s old house, a big Georgian mansion [at] Starland Studios. It used to belong to John Lennon, but he [gave] it to Ringo.”
In fact, the band was there the night John Lennon was killed.
“When John Lennon was killed,” Hill said. “Remember the song ‘Imagine’ and the video he did? The video was John sitting at a grand piano in a house and Yoko was walking around opening these curtains. We were sitting in that room when the news came through! They played the video and we thought, ‘Sh*t, this is the room!’ … It was a spooky, spooky time.”
In 1982, they found another hit with “You Got Another Thing Coming.”
“We had finished the album and were just a few minutes short,” Hill said. “That was thrown together in a few hours and it was down in a day. It was just one of those songs that was magical really, the way it all came together. This was the one that really broke us in the states. They played the hell out of it! People were going to work listening to it on the radio.”
In 1989, the Grammys finally invented a heavy metal category in leading to nominations for “Painkiller” (1991), “Bullet Train” (1997), “Visions” (2009) and “Nostradamus” (2009) before finally winning the Grammy for “Dissident Aggressor” (2010).
“Very few metal bands were getting Grammys anyway,” Hill said. “When these things come along it’s very flattering because it means you’re being recognized by your peers, but it never registered until we were actually nominated. ‘Oh, Grammys! That’ll be nice.’ Just to be nominated is a great honor, but to actually win one, that came out of the blue.”
The band is currently nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. They find out in May.
Will this finally be the year they get inducted?
“It could be,” Hill said. “It’s something we haven’t really thought about. It’ll be nice. When you’re recognized by your peers, it’s always an honor, but it’s not something you lose sleep over necessarily if it doesn’t happen. It would be great if it happened, but the people you really need to keep happy are your fans, without whom none of us would be here anyway.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Joan Osborne at The Birchmere (Part 1) She became a household name in 1995 by asking, “What if God was one of us?”
On Thursday, Joan Osborne performs live at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia.
“I definitely have a long history of playing The Birchmere, I think it goes back to before I had a record deal,” Osborne told WTOP. “I love the way the sound system is. It’s just a very comfortable place, you step out on stage and it’s one of those rooms that pulls the music out of you, you don’t have to work super hard to feel like you’re reaching people.”
She’ll perform songs she discovered while home during the pandemic.
“Like a lot of people, I was stuck at home,” Osborne said. “I actually did a lot of cleaning and I found some things in my closets like old CDs, old cassettes, old files and I started going through them and eventually was able to put together a new release from this ‘back from the vault’s kind of stuff. It’s out on CD, we don’t have vinyl yet, called ‘Radio Waves.'”
Born in 1962, Osborne grew up in Anchorage, Kentucky, just outside of Louisville.
“It was a very small town,” Osborne said. “It was one of those places where you never locked your doors and you kind of knew everybody. I’m one of six kids, so the six of us felt like we could run around in the woods, build forts and climb trees. There wasn’t a whole lot of sense of being restricted, it was a very free way to grow up, so I’m really grateful.”
She sang in school productions and even toured the region at age 12.
“I did sing when I was in school growing up and had a great music teacher named Carolyn Browning who really challenged the choir in school,” Osborne said. “We would do these really complicated five and six-part harmonies and we did English madrigals at Christmastime and we even traveled to Colonial Williamsburg and sang in churches.”
She moved to the Big Apple to attend film school at New York University in the late ’80s.
“I gravitated toward documentary because the characters and situations are so unique,” Osborne said. “I loved Errol Morris, I loved Barbara Kopple, who did ‘Harlan County, USA,’ an incredible film about the war between the coal miners and coal companies erupting in this small, rural area in Kentucky. … It was an accident that I even ended up doing music.”
She got pulled into an open-mic night to perform “God Bless the Child” by Billie Holiday.
“I went out for a drink one night with a friend and he dared me to go up and sing,” Osborne said. “It’s not like there was a big producer in the audience who said, ‘I’m going to make you a star,’ but it was an introduction to this musical milieu and I slowly but surely got drawn into it to the point where I was playing shows myself in New York City.”
Before long, she had founded her own independent label called Womanly Hips to release the live album, “Soul Show: Live at Delta 88,” before signing with Mercury Records.
Her first studio album, “Relish” (1994), was a smash, going triple platinum and reaching No. 9 on the Billboard Album Charts off the strength of its massive hit “One of Us.”
“It was written by a guy named Eric Brazilian,” Osborne said. “It reminded me of one of those questions a little kid would tug on your sleeve and ask that you don’t necessarily have an answer for. When my daughter was very young, she asked me, ‘Mommy, when did time start.’ It’s that kind of thing! You can’t really answer that … but it makes you think.”
The song was ranked No. 54 on VH1’s Top 100 Songs of the ’90s and earned three Grammy nominations: Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal.
“The reason that it connects with people is not that it denies God is this infinite being, but also that He also is the person next to you on the bus and also is the ordinary thing in your day,” Osborne said. “If you can see the sacred in the ordinary, that’s a valuable thing.”
Since then, Osborne has explored a number of genres, from performing with the Funk Brothers in the documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown” (2002) to touring with The Dixie Chicks in 2003, and even performing live at the Grand Ole Opry in 2007.
Just when you thought she couldn’t master any other musical styles, her acclaimed blues album “Bring it On Home” earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Blues Album.
“I’ve done 10 studio records at this point, so it’s kind of like asking what your favorite child is,” Osborne said. “If you really liked the ‘Relish’ album, then there’s a record called ‘Little Wild One’ that came out about 10 years after and it was a lot of the same people on the team that made ‘Relish,’ so it’s kind of like a sister album to the ‘Relish’ album.”
But first, pick up a copy of “Radio Waves” and catch her live at The Birchmere.
“I’m so grateful to be able to do music for my living,” Osborne said. “I know what a privilege it is and the only reason I can still be out here after 30 years is because of the fans that I have and the people who come out and support live music. I don’t take them for granted and every time I come out I try and give 110%. I hope I can do this for years to come.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley recaps the Oscars (Part 1) It was a shocking night last night at the 94th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
“CODA” completed its underdog knockout of “The Power of the Dog” to win Best Picture, but it was overshadowed by an actual “smack heard round the world” as Will Smith got out of his seat to slap Chris Rock on stage for joking about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Will Smith, right, hits presenter Chris Rock on stage while presenting the award for best documentary feature at the Oscars on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) “Oh wow, Will Smith just slapped the sh*t out of me,” Rock said.
“Keep my wife’s name out your [bleeping] mouth!” Smith yelled twice from his seat.
A teary-eyed Smith addressed the outburst when he won Best Actor for “King Richard.”
“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” Smith said. “I want to apologize to the Academy. I want to apologize to all of my fellow nominees. Love will make you do crazy things. … Denzel said to me a few minutes ago, ‘At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.’ … Thank you, I hope the Academy invites me back.”
It was a moment we could have hailed Smith as only the fifth Black actor to win Best Actor, joining Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker, the crowning achievement after “Independence Day,” “Men in Black,” “Ali” and “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Instead, it made everyone forget he was even there for “King Richard.”
Most tragic, the attack overshadowed a historic win from “CODA,” an Apple TV+ film that made history as the first predominantly-deaf cast to win the top prize, the first streaming release to win the top prize and the first Sundance champ to go the distance.
Troy Kotsur, winner of the award for best performance by an actor in a supporting role for “CODA,” poses in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) In addition to Best Picture, it also won Best Adapted Screenplay for Sian Heder and Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur, who attended Gallaudet University in D.C.
“This is for the Deaf community, the CODA community and the disabled community,” Kotsur said, signing from the stage. “This is our moment.”
This entire awards season, pundits deemed the esoteric “The Power of the Dog” the front-runner, but I’ve had a gut feeling about the Sundance underdog “CODA” since giving it a 5-star rave review in August and naming it my No. 1 movie of the year in late December.
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How did I know “CODA” would land the upset?
First, the Academy needed to reward a feel-good film during the pandemic rather than two heavy dramas in a row. Last year’s winner “Nomadland” was Hollywood saying, “We understand your pandemic grief and isolation,” but this year’s choice of “CODA” was Hollywood saying, “We can still provide a heartwarming crowd pleaser for the masses.”
Second, “CODA” took a distribution route that’s less threatening to Hollywood’s model. Academy voters decided they would rather embrace “CODA,” which was independently made, premiered traditionally at a film festival and was purchased for distribution on a streamer, rather than “The Power of the Dog,” which was originally produced by Netflix.
Finally, word-of-mouth. It’s one thing to review films for cinephile magazines and Twitter echo chambers. It’s another to recommend movies to mainstream listeners on WTOP and hear their feedback. “CODA” was the one movie I could recommend to anyone (family, friends, fellow critics) where they all came back raving (until it threatened your Oscar pool).
In the end,” CODA” entered the night tied for the lowest number of nominations (3) and managed to upset the film with the most nominations, “The Power of the Dog” (12).
Jane Campion, winner of the award for best director for “The Power of the Dog,” poses in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) The Netflix western wound up winning only one award on the night, but that one win was a major milestone, as Jane Campion became just the third woman ever to win Best Director and the second back-to-back after Chloe Zhao won last year for “Nomadland.” Campion got revenge on Steven Spielberg after “Schindler’s List” topped “The Piano” (1993).
“I love directing because it’s a deep dive into story, yet the task of manifesting a world can be overwhelming,” Campion said in her speech.
Jessica Chastain accepts the award for best performance by an actress in a leading role for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” at the Oscars on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) Jessica Chastain won Best Actress for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” exactly 10 years after she should have won for “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012) as “the mother [bleeper] who found bin Laden.” She dedicated her win to suicide victims, particularly in the LGBTQ+ community.
That community includes Ariana DeBose, who won Best Supporting Actress for Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” becoming the first queer woman and second Latina ever to win after Rita Moreno won for the same role in the classic 1961 Best Picture winner.
“You see a queer woman of color, an Afro-Latina who found her strength in life through art — and that’s what I believe we are here to celebrate,” DeBose said in her speech.
Anita is now the third character to win for two different actors, joining Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro) and The Joker (Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix).
Ariana DeBose, winner of the award for best performance by an actress in a supporting role for “West Side Story,” poses in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Speaking of which, a special 50th anniversary tribute to “The Godfather” brought Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro out on stage to roaring applause.
It was preceded by a special 60th anniversary tribute to James Bond, a prolific franchise that saw Billie Eilish & Finneas win Best Original Song for “No Time to Die.”
The win prevented Lin-Manuel Miranda from becoming an EGOT (Disney shot itself in the foot by submitting “Dos Oruguitas” instead of pop-culture phenomenon “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”). However, “Encanto” won Best Animated Feature over stiff competition.
Eilish wasn’t the only famous Grammy winner to add Oscar gold to her trophy case. The Roots drummer Questlove won Best Documentary Feature for directing “Summer of Soul.”
Meanwhile, Kenneth Branagh finally won his Oscar for the semi-autobiographical Irish comedy/drama “Belfast,” which won Best Original Screenplay over Paul Thomas Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”) in a race to see which overdue filmmaker would win first.
Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi blockbuster “Dune” won the most Oscars of the night with six, dominating the technical categories to win Best Production Design, Cinematography, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Sound and Original Score, though Hans Zimmer didn’t show up.
Why should he? Most of the technical categories were presented during a controversial hourlong preshow where the winners were filmed ahead of time and highlights shown during the live broadcast. Ironically, the broadcast still ran over three hours, time you could have spent watching Japan’s “Drive My Car,” which won Best International Feature.
All the while, the trio of hosts, Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer and Regina Hall, spit jokes like, “You know what’s in the In Memoriam this year? The Golden Globes.”
The Oscars have themselves been on life support in recent years. Last year’s ratings fell to a record low of 9.85 million viewers, a nearly 59% percent drop from the 23.6 million viewers that tuned in the previous year, according to Nielsen.
We’ll have to wait and see how many folks tuned in to see Smith smack Rock.
It’s the one thing that none of us could have predicted.
As for the awards, read ’em and weep. Your boy went 10 for 10:
Predicted. Them. All. #Oscars https://t.co/QaBejk6O2R
— Jason Fraley (@JFrayWTOP) March 28, 2022
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WTOP's Jason Fraley recaps the Oscars (Part 2) Source
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WTOP's Jason Fraley predicts the Oscars (Part 1) Break out the red carpet! The 94th annual Academy Awards are Sunday night.
It’s been a long awards season filled with twists and turns, sparking bizarre social media tribalism around the various films in a horse race to the finish line.
It looks like it will be a photo finish, so who will leave the Oscars victorious?
Time for some predictions:
Best Picture Prediction: “CODA”
This entire awards season, pundits have deemed “The Power of the Dog” the frontrunner after wins at the BAFTAs, Directors Guild Awards, Critics Choice Awards and non-televised Golden Globes. All the while, I’ve kept pulling for the Sundance underdog “CODA,” giving it a 5-star rave review in August and naming it my No. 1 movie of the year in late December.
So you can imagine my joy at seeing “CODA” land three upsets over the past month, first at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, then at the Producers Guild Awards and Writers Guild Awards. Twitter “experts” called me crazy, but I felt a surge for a feel-good film during a pandemic. It’s the one movie I can recommend to folks where they come back raving.
The win would be historic for the streaming service Apple TV+. Voters may rather embrace “CODA,” which was independently made, premiered traditionally at a film festival and was purchased for distribution on a streamer, rather than “The Power of the Dog,” which was originally produced by Netflix. “CODA” will be the first Sundance champ to go the distance.
Best Director Prediction: Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”)
The Academy loves Best Picture vs. Best Director splits (“12 Years a Slave” vs. “Gravity,” “Spotlight” vs. “The Revenant,” “Moonlight” vs. “La La Land”), so it may happen again this year. Best Director is the place to reward Campion’s visual foreshadowing, showing ropes and saddles that appear to mean one thing but mean something else on second viewing.
Jane Campion has already made history as the first woman to earn two Best Director nominations, previously nominated for “The Piano” (1993), which lost to Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List.” This time, Campion will beat Spielberg (“West Side Story”) to win her Oscar, making history with back-to-back female winners (Chloe Zhao, “Nomadland”).
It would be wild for “The Power of the Dog” to enter with the most nominations (12) and only emerge with Best Director, but it wouldn’t be unprecedented. George Stevens’ masterpiece “Giant” (1956) landed 10 nominations but only won Best Director. Everyone should stop right now and go rewatch “Giant” to see exactly how movies should be made.
Best Actor Prediction: Will Smith (“King Richard”)
Since his screen debut in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” Will Smith has become a beloved blockbuster favorite, from popcorn flicks like “Independence Day” and “Men in Black” to acclaimed roles in “The Pursuit of Happyness” and “Ali,” for which he would have won an Oscar if it weren’t for Denzel Washington’s harrowing performance in “Training Day.”
This year, Smith will finally top Denzel (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”), as well as previous winner Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), musical powerhouse Andrew Garfield (“Tick…Tick…Boom!”) and acting genius Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), whose role has drawn comparisons to Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood.”
Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena Williams, is the type of feel-good sports role that won Sandra Bullock an Oscar for “The Blind Side.” Last year, Chadwick Boseman was upset by Anthony Hopkins, but this year the Black icon wins to become the fifth Black Best Actor: Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker and Will Smith.
Best Actress Prediction: Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”)
This is the hardest category to predict because there has been no real consensus across the other award ceremonies and none of the films were nominated for Best Picture, making it hard to judge momentum behind any of these roles. I also can’t get over the fact that Tessa Thompson (“Passing”) and Martha Plimpton (“Mass”) were both snubbed here.
Kristen Stewart appeared to be the early frontrunner as Princess Diana in “Spencer,” but that narrative shifted when Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”) won at the non-televised Golden Globes. Olivia Colman (“The Lost Daughter”) could land another upset like she did for “The Favourite,” but Penelope Cruz (“Parallel Mothers”) is the most likely shocker.
Still, I predict Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), who won at the SAG Awards and Critics Choice Awards, then announced that she’ll skip the red carpet to support her hair and makeup team in the #PresentAll23 controversy. It also marks 10 years since she should have won for “Zero Dark Thirty” as “the mother [bleeper] who found Bin Laden.”
Best Supporting Actor Prediction: Troy Kotsur (“CODA”)
Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee delivered acclaimed performances in “The Power of the Dog,” but they may cancel each other out on the ballot. J.K Simmons (“Being the Ricardos”) has already won an Oscar for “Whiplash,” so I doubt he wins again, while veteran Ciarán Hinds is a deserving nominee as Buddy’s charming grandpa in “Belfast.”
However, this category is a lock for Troy Kotsur (“CODA”), who has cleaned up at the SAG Awards, BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards, Gotham Awards and Independent Spirit Awards. His role as the deaf father of a hearing daughter was simultaneously hilarious and heartwarming, particularly that scene with Emilia Jones on the tailgate of his truck.
His Oscar win will be the culmination of a feel-good story for an actor who slept in his car trying to make it in Hollywood with hardly any deaf roles to play. He will now become the first deaf actor to win Best Actor, fittingly playing the husband of Marlee Matlin, who became the first deaf actress to win Best Actress for her role in “Children of a Lesser God.”
Best Supporting Actress Prediction: Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”)
Finally, this is the category with the most snubs. Ruth Negga and Ann Dowd should have been here for their roles in “Passing” and “Mass.” Instead, the nominations went to Jessie Buckley (“The Lost Daughter”), Judi Dench (“Belfast”), Kirsten Dunst (“The Power of the Dog”), Aunjanue Ellis (“King Richard”) and Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”).
Ellis is the only potential upset winner here, but I’m going with DeBose, who has dominated at SAG, BAFTAs, Critics Choice and the non-televised Golden Globes. Her role as Anita was a revelation, particularly during the reimagined dance number “America.”
DeBose will make history as the first openly LGBTQ star to win and just the second Latin American actress to win after Rita Moreno in “West Side Story” (1961). Anita will thus become the third character to have two stars win for the same role, joining Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro) and The Joker (Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix).
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WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Russell Williams (Part 1) In an attempt to trim the Oscar telecast to three hours, ABC pressured the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to move eight technical categories to the pre-telecast.
The categories of Documentary Short, Film Editing, Makeup & Hairstyling, Original Score, Production Design, Animated Short, Live-Action Short and Sound will be awarded in a taped ceremony before the live show, then aired as a montage of acceptance speeches.
D.C. native Russell Williams, longtime professor at American University, took the news hard, having won Best Sound for “Glory” and “Dances with Wolves” and donated his statues to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture.
“First, I ran to the bathroom and threw up,” Williams told WTOP. “I call these categories The Irate Eight. … The producers decided they were going to excise or trim the fat. … Maybe the word came down from the network, ABC, owned by Disney. … The Academy leadership also played a role saying we need to do something to increase viewership.”
Last year’s ratings fell to a record low of 9.85 million viewers, a nearly 59% percent drop from the 23.6 million viewers that tuned in the previous year, according to Nielsen.
“I understand the pressure to get the numbers from Nielsen up and keep the show moving, but I don’t think getting rid of these eight categories is going to make the difference,” Williams said. “No one suggested they take the President of the Academy’s speech, pre-tape it, edit it and run it as a package, because I’m sure that’s why everybody tunes in.”
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In reality, the ratings drop has more to do with larger societal forces, from political divisions to network television tanking across the board due to our splintered streaming world.
“There’s not very much appointment television that the younger generations are really interested in,” Williams said. “If we’re talking the Super Bowl, OK, those are numbers that, depending on the teams, generally speaking they stay much higher than anything else on appointment TV and the ad revenue generated is going to be higher than anything else.”
Under the new format, the eight technical categories will receive their Oscars inside the auditorium while the actors are still posing for photographs outside on the red carpet.
“I can’t even imagine how that would look,” Williams said. “What does that mean? You go to an empty auditorium, you accept your award and you speak to a group of empty seats? In my speeches … I’m actually pointing, gesturing and looking right at Kevin Costner and saying, ‘I want to thank Jim and Kevin, Jim Wilson the producer, for giving me the call.”
Granted, the move is not unprecedented.
“It’s not unheard of in other award shows,” Williams said. “The Grammys have done it for decades because they have so many more categories. The Emmys have done this for decades because they have two or maybe even three nights that they need to present all the awards. … The [Oscars are] the granddaddy of the entertainment industry awards.”
The idea is that the pre-taped categories will change on a rotating basis every year.
“Who’s it going to be next year?” Williams said. “Are they going to drop Cinematography? Will they drop Supporting Actor? I doubt any of the SAG categories are going to get dropped. … Whoever is at ABC on Oscar night should cut the sound off the broadcast and force us to read lips for three hours. Then all of a sudden, sound will be important again.”
Several craftspeople have resigned from the Academy in protest, while hardcore fans are tweeting the hashtag #PresentAll23. It all comes down to a simple question: should the Oscars be a big tent to bring in more people? Or should they cater to their devoted fans?
“Hardcore viewers and folks who know the inner-workings of each craft appreciate the fact that these names that we know, the big stars that give awesome performances each year, we wouldn’t know any of their names without the technology needed to bring them to the screen,” Williams said. “You need lighting … you need to hear what they’re saying.”
He says this year’s nominees in particular deserve recognition for their crafts.
“Look at the production design of ‘Nightmare Alley,'” Williams said. “Are you saying that’s not important enough to be on the show and see those people who put their lives into their respective crafts? … I don’t think it’s fair to just start pointing at certain crafts and saying, ‘You don’t deserve to have your life’s work … acknowledged by your peers.'”
The change also upsets local feel-good stories. For instance, the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, Maryland, was excited to hold an Oscar viewing party to see if their Netflix film “Audible” would win Best Documentary Short. Now, it’s not part of the live show.
“We are devaluing the arts community,” Williams said.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the 'HOORAE Takeover' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) Are you looking for something fun to do this weekend in the nation’s capital?
The Kennedy Center hosts the HOORAE Takeover by HOORAE and RAEDIO Events.
“I started at RAEDIO three years ago and it has been nothing but rewarding and amazing,” Director of Brand Partnerships, Events & Artist Relations Mo Davis told WTOP. “Seeing the vision and the ethos of working together, building community, collaborating across and seeing creativity blossom in full, giving that to people and showing people how they can in turn do that.”
It all kicks off with the “Welcoming Party” on Thursday night.
“Just as a thank you to the lovely sponsors and brands who have agreed to be part of this week, who saw the vision, who wanted to support and lean in, as well as the community partners, the folks who have been so kind and gracious who have welcomed me, welcomed this idea, welcomed Hoorae to the city,” Davis said. Just doing something to show appreciation.”
Friday brings the intimate music series “Pieces.”
“Super excited about that,” Davis said. “‘Pieces’ is a more stripped-down, intimate series giving the audiences a look into the storytelling of the songs. In between the songs there’s different commentaries and stories, leaning in to find out what made this become a thing. … We have great talent … sponsored by Spotify Frequency, their home for Black music expression.”
Friday also invites you to dance at the “No Weird Sh*t Party.”
“We want to bring back the fun when we were all dancing, having fun, not caring about who was doing what, not caring about who was looking at you,” Davis said. “This is a No Wallflower Zone whatsoever. There’s singalongs, there are twerk-offs, we want to see the lashes falling off, we want the walls sweating, but we’re not going to mess up that beautiful establishment.”
Saturday brings “Short Film Saturday.”
“We have two amazing projects we’re going to show,” Davis said. “One is going to be ‘If These Locks Could Talk’ by filmmakers Brittney [Janae] and Jahbrielle [Henning Rayford], who’s also a Howard [University] alum. … We also have a showing from Kid Fury, who is half of the podcast ‘The Read,’ and his partner Michael Troll, so we’re excited to get more into him and his world.”
Saturday also brings the “Find Your People Party.”
“We want people to find their tribe, we literally want people to find your people, because HOORAE is a group of people who found each other, who’ve built each other up,” Davis said. “We want to be a resource and bring people together. People should leave feeling empowered like, ‘I found my next screenwriter, I found my next producer, I found the people who are going to help my dreams come into fruition.”
Sunday brings “The Read Comedy Album Live Preview.”
“RAEDIO, shoutout gang, we are working on a live comedy album with ‘The Read,’ so we wanted to give D.C. a first-look exclusive on that and go into the world of what they can expect from the project,” Davis said. “We also have a special performer on that, Flo Milli, so really excited to see that and have the crowd be hyped and just show people what’s to come.”
It all builds to “A Sip with Issa Rae” where Rae chats with KeKe Palmer.
“We’ve had an array of great former folks who have been on there, from Barry Jenkins to Zendaya to Ava [DuVernay] … really going into the world of these incredible multiple-hyphenates and seeing what their career trajectory has been, what are their triumphs, what are their lows, how they build themselves up … and giving listeners on how you skill yourself and sell yourself.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Signature Dish' (Part 1) Public television is about to shine a spotlight on the best restaurants in the D.C. area.
The semiweekly series “Signature Dish” premieres on WETA on Monday night.
“The D.C. area is rich with wonderful restaurants,” producer and host Seth Tillman told WTOP. “There’s just so many great places. Most people love food, I’m certainly one of them, but food is also an entry way to learn about the great people, communities, people from different countries and regions who make up this area and this tapestry of food.”
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Episode 1 is called “Cooking with Fire,” airing March 28 at 9:30 p.m.
“We’re kicking it off at a great pizzeria in Kensington, Maryland called Frankly Pizza; their signature dish is the Hot Mess,” Tillman said. “Then we’re gonna go to Maydan, a very popular restaurant in D.C., Middle Eastern [with] incredible spiced lamb shoulder. … We’ll finish off in Riverdale Park … with the best BBQ you’ll find in the D.C. area at 2 [Texas] Fifty BBQ.”
Episode 2 is called “Southeast Asian Specialties,” airing April 11 at 9 p.m.
“We start at Thamee, a terrific restaurant on H Street, Northeast; it unfortunately closed after we wrapped production,” Tillman said. “From there we go up to Rockville to Kuya Ja’s Lechon Belly, which has a phenomenal roasted pork belly dish from the Philippines. … We finish in Centreville, Virginia at … a Malaysian restaurant [with] a fish-head curry.”
Episode 3 is called “Caribbean Favorites,” airing April 18 at 9 p.m.
“We start in Brightwood Park at Andrene’s Caribbean & Soul Food, some authentic Jamaican jerk chicken wings,” Tillman said. “After that, we head to La Famosa in the Navy Yard, a Puerto Rican restaurant where the signature dish is a deep-fried pork chop. … We finish at Cane, a Trinidadian restaurant on H Street. Their signature dish is a beef roti.”
Episode 4 is called “Masters of Spice,” airing April 25 at 9 p.m.
“We start at Thip Khao, we have muu som, a fermented pork belly sautéed with Thai chili peppers,” Tillman said. “From there, we travel to Pappe, an Indian restaurant on 14th Street in Logan Circle. We’re trying junglee laal maas, a spicy red goat curry dish. … We finish at Q by Peter Chang in Bethesda [with] steamed fish fermented with chili paste.”
Finally, Episode 5 is called “West African Cuisine” on May 2 at 9 p.m.
“We’re going to Mansa Kunda, a Gambian restaurant in Takoma Park [with] Ebbeh, a seafood dish heavy on palm oil,” Tillman said. “We’re going to Appioo, a Ghanaian restaurant [with] egusi stew, a spinach dish made with ground melon seeds. … The other restaurant is Chez Dior, a Senegalese restaurant in Hyattsville [with] Yassa chicken.”
The series will resume in the fall with seven more episodes.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Rocky' at Toby's Dinner Theatre (Part 1) Rocky’s trainer Mickey famously declared: “You’re gonna eat lightning and crap thunder!”
That’s not quite on the buffet menu at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia, Maryland, but you can savor the new production of “Rocky: The Musical” from March 26 through June 5.
Playwright Thomas Meehan adapts the show from Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 screenplay.
“Rocky Balboa, a small-town club fighter from Philadelphia working as a debt collector, gets a chance at the world heavyweight championship,” Associate Producer & Co-Director Mark Minnick told WTOP. “‘Rocky’ is not all about boxing. … It’s truly an underdog love story. … They realize that their love for each other is more important than any fight.”
Owner & Co-Director Toby Orenstein was serendipitously inspired to produce the show.
“In 2014, ‘Rocky’ opened on Broadway,” Minnick said. “The actors who played Rocky and Adrian on Broadway, Andy Karl and Margo Seibert, both worked at Toby’s in the early days of their careers. … Toby said, ‘One day, we’re going to do the show at Toby’s.'”
Fast forward to late 2020 when “Rocky” finally became available for community theaters.
“Music Theatre International … announced it was available for licensing,” Minnick said. “That same day, Toby left her apartment to go to the corner bakery and noticed TITLE Boxing Club. She picked up her phone and called me: ‘Mark! “Rocky” is available! I just walked by TITLE Boxing, Margot and Andy worked at Toby’s, it’s a sign! Call them now!'”
Soon, the cast began training at the boxing club in Columbia.
“These guys have been training for months,” Minnick said. “They’ve been up at 5:30 a.m. at TITLE Boxing on Wednesdays working their tails off. … They don’t just need to fight, they need to sing and act as well. That’s a hard package to find, but we found it. … The improvement has been incredible, working with our fight choreographer Justin Calhoun.”
Patrick Gover plays “The Italian Stallion” underdog Rocky Balboa.
“It’s cool not learning dance steps but learning boxing steps, which is so much fun,” Gover said. “This is such a fun role. … I love this character, too. I could feel him when I saw the movie. It’s a great story and I’m having a ball playing him. … When I was looking up Philly accents, it occurred to me that it was kind of like a New York-Maryland sandwich.”
Lydia Gifford plays Adrian with a strong character arc of her own.
“She’s a victim of abuse,” Gifford said. “Her parents were abusive, her brother is abusive, she’s been told all her life that she’s nothing, she’ll never amount to anything. In the musical, she describes herself as a weed that keeps getting stepped on, but she just wants a chance to blossom. … Rocky is the only one to see her inner beauty and potential.”
Gerald Jordan plays his rival Apollo Creed, heavyweight champion of the world.
“He’s standing on top of the world and everyone knows it,” Jordan said. “The one thing he yearns for is a really good fight. It’s something he doesn’t think he can find, because no one can stand toe to toe with him. … Every time you step on stage you are expected to be the best … to capture that aura and push that character to their limit during the final fight.”
Rocky prepares with his grizzled trainer Mickey, played by Robert Biedermann.
“He’s been at Toby’s for a while,” Rocky said. “He’s a great guy. He was a Vietnam vet and he’s a cool guy. … Working together with him was great, he was giving me a lot of great advice and compliments. He’s a really great guy off the stage and on the stage.”
How is it all brought to life visually?
“Our scenic designer has built a boxing ring,” Minnick said. “Our intimate in-the-round setting is perfect. The audience will sit 360 [degrees] around the ring. … It is a 15-round fight. Now, we don’t sit through 15 rounds, there’s a lot of stage artistry and visual effects.”
The musical features a songbook by Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics) from Bill Conti’s theme, voted one of the American Film Institute’s Top 25 Movie Scores.
“‘Eye of the Tiger’ is weaved into a big group number,” Adrian said. “‘Gotta Fly Now’ is obviously incorporated. There’s a stage adaptation of that whole training montage. You see the skyline of Philly. … The whole score is of that era, kind of rock-influenced, a little pop-influenced. Rocky has lots of solos, Adrian has a couple solos, Apollo has a great solo.”
While the movie earned 10 Oscar nominations and won three (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Film Editing), the Broadway adaptation wasn’t nearly as successful, earning four Tony nominations (Best Actor, Best Choreography, Best Scenic Design, Best Lighting Design). However, the space inside Toby’s is uniquely suited for this particular production.
“On Broadway, so much of the show is between Rocky and Adrian that the huge Winter Garden Theatre didn’t do any favors for the intimacy of these scenes,” Minnick said. “Watching the intimacy of these scenes at Toby’s where you are literally 10-15 feet away from the actors really knocks it home. … It’s really going to be something special.”
There’s just one final thing to say: “Yo, Toby! You did it!”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Rent' at National Theatre (Part 1) Playwright Jonathan Larson wrote that the opposite of war isn’t peace; it is creation.
It hits home as National Theatre hosts the national tour of “Rent” from Friday to Sunday.
“I was part of the tour before the pandemic … and we stopped cold turkey,” Actor James Schoppe told WTOP. “None of us take for granted being able to hear the ‘525,600 minutes’ moment. It’s so real. We’ve all experienced so much in the past two years. It’s just such a great reminder and such a great motto to live your life. There’s only so much time.”
Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has parallels to the AIDS epidemic in the show.
“What better message to take away from the show than ‘no day but today?'” Schoppe said. “It’s crazy how relevant this show is. … It’s truly wild that we have something that is such a legacy piece that is still a period piece as a timestamp of what the ’90s were and where we were as a society, but still it’s such an important cultural reference for us today.”
Set in the United States at the end of the millennium, the show follows bohemians in the East Village of New York City struggling with gentrification, love and loss amid the HIV crisis.
“We follow a group of different bohemian artists through their different struggles of equality and we’re all facing a money issue,” Schoppe said. “It’s a really important story of love and relationships and, just at the root of everything, if we can’t all lead and leave the world with love and see all of the love out there, then there’s not much point to the world.”
Larson sadly didn’t live to see it, dying the night before the first Off-Broadway preview.
“Jonathan Larson truly was a visionary in the theater world and just in the world itself, dealing with such important issues of equality and freedom to love whoever you went,” Schoppe said. “He was creating these outlets and amplified voices … to see queer people on stage in a mainstream musical we weren’t necessarily seeing.”
The songbook is iconic, including “Seasons of Love,” “One Song Glory,” “I’ll Cover You,” “Out Tonight,” “La Vie Bohème,” “Take Me or Leave Me” and “What You Own.”
“The musical itself is a rock opera that has various styles,” Schoppe said. “We have a tango, we have all these different things. … It’s awesome that he really crafted a musical that, for everyone’s ear, there is something to hear. You never get tired of the stylings.”
Schoope grew up in Stafford, Virginia, and attended Brooke Point High School.
“I was a young kid in high school in the early 2000s,” Schoppe said. “Our drama teacher said, ‘There’s a really cool musical that’s being made into a movie.’ All of us went out to see the movie in the fall of 2005. … They had the tour in 2006, so I got to go see it with my mom in D.C. … Being a part of the show years later is a cool full-circle moment.”
The proximity also allows family and friends to drive up to watch.
“Any time that my mom can drive up with a busload of people is always exciting,” Schoppe said. “I’ve had high school teachers, I’ve had people from church, people from my parents’ work, different friends that I’ve had the experience of growing up and doing theater with as well. It’s been really exciting for them to be able to come see the show.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Architecture & Design Film Festival (Part 1) The National Building Museum celebrates the great architecture in American history.
This week, it hosts the Architecture & Design Film Festival from Thursday to Saturday.
“We’ve been doing it for 14 years,” Festival Director Kyle Bergman told WTOP. “We’re based in New York, but this is our fourth year in D.C. The Architecture & Design Film Festival is the largest film fest dedicated to the creative spirit of architecture and design.”
The lineup kicks off with the documentary “Mau” by Jono & Benji Bergmann.
“[It’s] about graphic designer Bruce Mau,” Bergman said. “He’s really a global thinker. It’s about how design can save the world. He is a big thinker, it’s a very optimistic film, and everyone coming out of it feels engaged and like they can save the world. It’s going to have a theatrical release across the country in May, so this will be a sneak preview.”
The film will be followed by a Q&A with Mau and opening night reception.
“He did campaigns with Coca Cola [and] the biggest companies in the world,” Bergman said. “He’s also working on really big ideas. He was hired by Mecca to rethink the human flow of people during the Hajj. He’s been hired to rebrand the name of a country. He was hired by people in Guatemala to rethink how people think about their country.”
Friday brings the documentary “Beyond Zero” by Nathan Havey.
“It’s really a story about a man, Ray Anderson, who owns Interface Carpets,” Bergman said. “In the mid ’90s, he realized his company is a major polluter and thought, ‘We have to do something.’ He takes his Fortune 500 company and makes the whole company get on the environmental bandwagon and changes to one of the most sustainable companies.”
Saturday includes seven screenings, including “Holy Frit” by Justin Monroe.
“This stain-glassed artist and his quest to make the largest piece of stained glass in the world,” Bergman said. “It’s for a church in Kansas and it is a fun story about the creative process, the trials and tribulations. It is just a ride from beginning to end. Anyone who’s ever tried to do something bigger than they thought they could do it will appreciate this.”
The closing night screening is the Danish documentary “Another Kind of Knowledge: A Portrait of Dorte Mandrup” by filmmakers Marc-Christoph Wagner and Simon Weyhe.
“She is a Danish architect who is just really well known in Scandinavia and hardly known here in America,” Bergman said. “Dorte is coming in from Denmark to do a Q&A after the screening. She is just someone in the design community that we’re all going to know in America in a few years and her work is fantastic and beautiful.”
Founded in 1980, the National Building Museum is a fitting space for such a festival.
“Inside is one of the grandest spaces in all of D.C.,” Bergman said. “It’s where inaugural balls happen. If you’ve never been there, it’s worth it just to go see this interior space. We set up two big theaters inside the great hall, large screens, and because the audio is not great in there, we give everyone headphones, like silent disco headphones.”
The goal is to reach people regardless of their experience in architecture and design.
“We program films that are both interesting to architects and designers, but [also] just the general public,” Bergman said. “It is for everybody. If you have any interest in architecture, design or anything creative, these films have both a design story and a human story.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Pablo Francisco at DC Comedy Loft (Part 1) One man. One way. One desire to spoof a movie trailer voice and become a star.
Pablo Francisco performs at the DC Comedy Loft from Thursday through Saturday.
“It’ll rip your voice up,” Francisco told WTOP. “I got a callus with a cigarette butt.”
How might the movie trailer voice describe the past two years of the pandemic?
“This summer has misery written all over it,” Francisco said. “Starring Keanu Reeves, ‘Whoa!,’ and Mark Wahlberg, ‘Hey man, you got Delta? You got Omicron?’ [Explosion] This summer, it’s ‘Omicron Delta Corona 2 Virus,’ [explosion], coming to a theater near you!”
Born in Tucson, Arizona in 1974, Francisco started at The Improv and Laff’s Comedy Club.
“I was like 18 years old,” Francisco said. “Every single week, the owner Gary Bynum was bringing in the best headliners. It was Tim Allen and Bobcat Goldthwait. … Then, Pauly Shore came into town … and I opened up for him at the University of Arizona. … I worked it from there and jumped back and forth to Los Angeles. … It was a beautiful thing.”
His comedy colleagues turned out to be important showbiz connections.
“You meet comics like Mark Brazill, we’d go out and party, I dropped him off at the airport, he was like, ‘You’re not gonna see me again, I’ve got a show idea,’ it turned out to be ‘That ’70s Show,'” Francisco said. “You’d see comics that make $250 a week all of a sudden, boom, they write a movie and it’s $1 million. … ‘Hey, man, I just bought a boat!'”
Francisco tried putting together his own development deal.
“Back then it was like, ‘Did you get your development deal yet?'” Francisco said. “Mine was called ‘PABLO: Phoenix Auxiliary Biological Law Officer’ [with] one of the producers of ‘The Simpsons.’ … It was a ‘Mork & Mindy’ thing, a kid who grew up watching TV … came from another country and [learned] these voices by watching TV … but it didn’t go through.”
Instead, he wrote commercials for Coca Cola, content for NFL Films and ultimately, joined the cast and writing team of the hit sketch comedy series “MADtv” from 1996 to 1997.
“My dad saw me and goes, ‘I don’t know what this comedy business is about, but you need to get out of this house’ … kicked me out of the house,” Francisco said. “Five weeks later, I came back. … He goes, ‘I got some bad news for you. There’s a woman on Channel 11 on Fox on ‘MADtv,’ she’s doing your stuff.’ I went, ‘Dad, that’s me. I’m the Mexican girl.'”
What did he enjoy the most about working on “MADtv?”
“The writing was so good,” Francisco said. “They said, ‘Artie [Lange] got a movie deal and is going to leave for the next seven episodes, would you like to join?’ … Talk about a powerhouse of great writers, Patton Oswalt was on the team, Orlando Jones. … You’d go to Warner Bros. Studios and every week was someone different: Mark Hamill, Ike Turner.”
It was around this time that he discovered his movie trailer talent.
“Kevin James just got ‘Star Search,’ so we’re in Vegas … and I kept going, ‘One man, one desire,’ and he goes, ‘You really need to start doing more of that,'” Francisco said. “Frank Caliendo was doing it, so I talked to Frank. … He goes, ‘I’ve got this show, ‘Frank TV.’ Why don’t you come down. We’re doing The Three Tenors of Movie Guys.”
The third guy in the sketch was real-life movie trailer king, Don LaFontaine, who invited Francisco over to see his house during a five-hour break from filming the show.
“He says, ‘Let’s go downstairs and do some voiceover,” Francisco said. “He said, ‘I go do three of these a day and I live like a king.’ … He takes me around his house and goes, ‘This was my first movie.’ Then he goes, ‘We need to work on your voice.’ He picks out a camera and goes, ‘I want to take a picture with you because you do me better than I do.'”
LaFontaine died in 2008, but Francisco carries on the legacy.
“I used to call him like every week, then he asked if I wanted to do voiceovers,” Francisco said. “He gave me his own recording stuff. It’s in my house right now! It’s where he did all of his movie previews. … Now, it’s starting to pick up great, so I’m activating the studio. … A guy is building a studio in my house. … At the time, he treated me better than my dad.”
Today, his father finally believes that he actually made it.
“When you come home drunk and go, ‘Hey, Dad! I’m a star!’ … your dad is like, ‘Yeah, right,'” Francisco said. “I was pulling out in my Corvette and he said, ‘How much drugs did you sell for that?’ After a while, we flew into Washington one time at the Mayflower [Hotel]. He goes, ‘I gotta hand it to you, I’m so sorry I never backed you up, I had no idea.'”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Ireland at The Wharf' (Part 1) St. Patrick’s Day isn’t just limited to Thursday-night partying or Friday-morning hangovers.
The Wharf and Kirwan’s Irish Pub host “Ireland at The Wharf” Saturday from 12 to 6 p.m.
“We’ve already got our Irish flags up and our pubs are ready, so come on down, but then come back on Saturday!” Director of Programming Jennifer Currie told WTOP. “We do an afternoon festival out on District Pier; it’s a lot of fun — all the Guinness, all the music, everything you want for an Irish festival.”
It kicks off at noon with bagpipes as the Guinness Beer Garden opens on District Pier, with a Guinness truck serving those with an over-21 wristband, as well as snacks for sale — although Currie said “all the restaurants will be open with their patios.”
The Six Nations Rugby Championship, with Ireland taking on Scotland, screens outdoors on a big screen at 12:45 p.m., and the Old Glory Rugby Club will be there to talk about all things rugby. “We’ll have a screen out on District Pier” for that match, Currie said; “then, if you’d rather settle in for the whole day of matches, you can go over to the pub.”
Sports fans can also enjoy some interactive action with the D.C. Gaels Gaelic football team, with a station where you can try your hand at the game.
The 19th Street Band performs on the District Pier Stage at 1 p.m., and the Boyle School of Irish Dance, from Herndon, Virginia, performs at 2:30 p.m.
“The Boyle School of Irish Dance has been a part of this every year since we started,” Currie said. “They are a fantastic local group. They will put on some performances on the pier and then I believe will have some small performances again over at the pub.”
Danny Burns will perform on the District Pier Stage starting at 3 p.m., and thenhead back to the pub to play some more. “He’ll keep the party going,” Currie said.
Finally, Ben-David Warner & Friends will perform on the District Pier Stage at 4:15 p.m.
“Some folks that used to be in the band Scythian, which a lot of folks around here will know,” Currie said.
It all adds up to a coming-back-out party after two years of pandemic restrictions.
“We started in 2018, the first St. Patrick’s when The Wharf was open,” Currie said. “It’s really exciting to have everybody back. It is outdoors, so there’s lots of room for everyone to be wherever they feel comfortable and spread out.”
If you plan to drink alcohol, please don’t drink and drive.
“Our water taxi is back open; we know Metro is running extra hours. We’ve got our free shuttle running, so we encourage you to think of every way to come here without a car,” Currie said.
And don’t forget to wear your festive green attire.
“Everybody deserves a little bit of luck right now,” Currie said. “We’ll give you some luck of the Irish! Come out for a fun, free afternoon, pack the shamrocks and just come enjoy a good time out on the water in the sunshine.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Environmental Film Fest (Part 1) Filmmaking and environmental activism are colliding once again in the nation’s capital.
The Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital returns virtually March 17 to 27.
“This is our 30th anniversary,” Director of Programming Brad Forder told WTOP. “The festival started in the early ’90s. [Founder] Flo Stone created this collaborative model that still exists today, working with partners in the D.C. area — museums, embassies, universities — to showcase a diverse selection of film on environmental topics.”
This year’s slate kicks off with Sara Dosa’s documentary “Fire of Love.”
“This film made a huge splash coming out of Sundance … then was acquired by National Geographic Docs,” Forder said. “It uses an experimental approach in narration … as well archival footage by the film’s subjects, Katia and Maurice Krafft, a married couple who were French volcano scientists from the late ’60s all the way through the ’80s.”
The festival will also screen “Jane” as it honors Dr. Jane Goodall with a special prize.
“We will have a conversation with Dr. Jane Goodall and Gregory McGruder from National Geographic,” Forder said. “We’re just so thrilled to honor Dr. Goodall, who has been such a world-renowned activist. We’ve had so many films come to the festival about her. One in particular that we’ll bring back … is the film ‘Jane,’ Brett Morgan’s amazing archival film.”
The lineup also includes Elizabeth Unger’s urgent animal rights documentary “Tigre Gente.”
“It profiles a Bolivian park ranger and a young journalist from Hong Kong, both of which will be participating in a Q&A, basically as they risk their lives investigating this new, deadly jaguar trade that is sweeping through South America,” Forder said.
You can also check out Tracey Deer’s unique narrative film “Beans.”
“Our films are usually documentaries, but we’re always open to showcasing narrative films,” Forder said. “We’ll co-present this with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. It’s based on true events, the Oka Crisis, which involved Mohawk communities in Quebec in the 1990s. … We will have a conversation with the director.”
You also don’t want to miss Jesse Roesler’s short film “Breaking Trail.”
“‘It follows Emily Ford as she sets out to become the first woman and first person of color to through-hike the 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail in winter,” Forder said. “Temperatures are hitting 50 [degrees] below, she’s doing it with her dog Diggins. It’s an incredible journey, but also it’s just an incredible message about the outdoors being for everyone.”
Closing weekend brings Ron Howard’s “We Feed People” about chef José Andrés.
“This film profiles celebrity chef [and] humanitarian Jose Andrés,” Forder said. “Many of us have been watching him via social media in and around Ukraine, doing incredible things. This film really spotlights his nonprofit World Central Kitchen and its incredible mission and evolution over 12 years. It really has become a humanitarian aid organization.”
This year’s lineup will once again be presented virtually for a third straight year.
“Around this time two years ago was the last time I was in the theater,” Forder said. “March 2020 we were four days away from opening night and canceled. Since then, we’ve pivoted to virtual. … In the last two years, we’ve learned so much about how to support filmmakers virtually, about showcasing films for our audience. … The foundation is still the same.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Environmental Film Fest (Part 2) Listen to our full conversation here.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes local James Beard nominees (Part 1) The James Beard Foundation announced its nominees for its national restaurant and chef awards on Wednesday, including a number of nominees from the D.C. region.
Ashok Bajaj of Knightsbridge Restaurant Group is nominated for Outstanding Restaurateur for such local restaurants as Rasika, Bindaas and Annabelle in D.C.
Peter Chang is nominated for Outstanding Chef for Peter Chang in Virginia and Maryland.
Angel Barreto is nominated for Emerging Chef for Anju in D.C.
Oyster Oyster in D.C. is nominated for Best New Restaurant.
Maydan in D.C. is nominated for Outstanding Wine Program.
José Andrés is nominated for Outstanding Bar Program for barmini in D.C.
Angel Barreto (Anju) and Amy Brandwein (Centrolina) are nominated for Best Chef for the Mid-Atlantic region of D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The winners will be announced June 13 at the Lyric Opera in Chicago.
It will be the first time holding the traditional ceremony since 2019, as the event was scrapped in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic safety concerns and hardship on the restaurant industry.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley reports on 'Downfall: The Case Against Boeing' (Part 1) “Two crashes of brand new airplanes within five months of each other. That doesn’t happen in modern aviation,” says the Netflix film “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing.”
The documentary will screen at the Capitol Visitor Center on Wednesday at 5 p.m., followed by a Q&A with Oscar-nominated director Rory Kennedy (“Last Days in Vietnam”), the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, as well as Congressman Peter DeFazio, Capt. Dan Carey and father Michael Stumo, whose daughter Samya was killed.
“I fly like so many people and had read about the first airplane crashing,” Kennedy told WTOP. “When a second plane crashed and it was the same kind of plane, a 737 Max, within five months of each other … in eerily similar circumstances and 346 people lost their lives, including Samya, I was very upset and shocked about what happened.”
The first crash on Oct. 29, 2018 saw Lion Air Flight 610 plummet into the Java Sea after departing Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 on board the Boeing 737 Max jet.
Five months later on March 10, 2019, another Boeing 737 Max jet, this time Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, tragically crashed in Ethiopia, killing all 157 people on board.
“Instead of responding in the way I would imagine, which is to not only say how deeply sorry they are but also to ground the planes immediately to get to the bottom of what happened … their response was to focus on the pilots, very suggestive of pilot error,” Kennedy said. “I felt like there was much more going on behind the scenes.”
The documentary takes us behind the scenes with background of the case.
“The 737 line is from 1967,” Stumo said. “Instead of building a new plane, they kept tweaking and upgrading, making a very different plane over the years, 14 or so different iterations. This last one, they were putting big, new engines under it, but the plane was set low … so they put the engines forward up from the wings, which made the aircraft tip up.”
To counterbalance this, Boeing installed an anti-stall system called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), but the pilots were never even told about it.
“They put in secret software that would take control … that would push the nose down, so they would never feel that tip-up tendency,” Stumo said. “Two angle-of-attack sensors on each side of the plane are designed to tell what kind of tilt the plane has in relation to the oncoming wind. … That sensor went bad … only one sensor, no redundancy.”
Pilots only had 10 seconds to override the system, but they didn’t know it existed.
“The sensors went bad, sent weird data to the computer, which told the software … to push the nose down,” Stumo said. “It kept pushing down hard and the pilots are wondering why, there’s a lot of alarms going off in the cockpit. … It’s a roller-coaster ride, pilots trying to pull up, software pushing it down, and in both cases, the pilots didn’t have the strength.”
The documentary alleges a giant cover-up by Boeing, which didn’t include MCAS in its flight manuals, balked at requests for flight simulator training, misled the Federal Aviation Administration, and bragged in messages about playing “Jedi mind tricks” on regulators.
“They knew this MCAS system could cause that kind of catastrophe,” Kennedy said. “We know that from internal memos. … As far back as 2016, there was a memo that showed that Boeing knew based on its own research that this MCAS system could cause a catastrophic event, which means everybody on the plane would die from a crash.”
Which discovery upset her the most in making the film?
“After the first crash … there was a report done by the FAA … that concluded this airplane, the 737 Max, would likely crash 15 times over the course of its lifetime, which is on average once every two years,” Kennedy said. “Boeing and the FAA made the decision to keep that airplane in the air! … They knew it would cost so much money to ground it.”
Ultimately, Boeing was fined $2.5 billion in 2021, pocket change compared to its $76.6 billion in sales the same year. The deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice also resolved a criminal charge that Boeing had conspired to defraud the FAA.
“The board never met about safety, but instead granted themselves stock options, more executive compensation, dividend buybacks,” Stumo said. “Boeing got the Department of Justice to throw two pilots under the bus and exonerate everybody at the top. … Dennis Muilenburg, former CEO of Boeing, left with a $63 million golden parachute.”
As the credits roll, audiences will leave the film outraged.
“The third act of the film, we really understand what Boeing knew and when,” Kennedy said. “Boeing knew this airplane was likely going to crash and they still put that airplane in the air. I don’t know how people make that choice and how people who had family on that second airplane are able to reconcile. …. The loss you must go through is beyond words.”
Stumo still misses his daughter, Samya, who died at age 24.
“She was beautiful, smart, charismatic, loving, had it all, taught herself to read at age 3 to 4, she was raising pigs on our farm at age 7, driving a tractor at age 9,” Stumo said. “She got a global health degree and a free-ride scholarship by the Danish government in Copenhagen and had taken this job to set up global health offices in East Africa.”
After flying from D.C. to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, Samya texted her parents that she was about to board a flight to Nairobi, Kenya, but she sadly never made it.
Her parents are still taking the grieving process day by day.
“You don’t move on, you sort of move through,” Stumo said. “It starts as an open wound that’s a sharp, throbbing pain. … It scabs over in time and ultimately you have scar tissue. … My wife, Nadia Milleron, and I, reached out to other crash families around the world and are working with Congress to get legislation passed to hope this never happens again.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Jimmie Allen at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) He was just named Best New Artist at the Country Music Association Awards, and on Saturday, Jimmie Allen performs live at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races.
He joined WTOP to discuss his country music roots in the Delmarva area.
“A lot of people from the South, whether it’s Georgia or Mississippi, write about their style of country living. We have it too, but where we’re from, you’re out in the country but you’ve got a lot more chicken plants; you’ve got the beach — it’s just a whole different vibe,” Allen told WTOP. “We’re not talking about lake fishing; we’re talking about ocean or bay fishing.”
Born in Milton, Delaware, in 1985, Allen regularly visits home in between tours.
“I try to come up there at least four or five times a year during the summer for like two or three days each time, to get some fishing in and just hang out, get some crabs, get some scrapple,” Allen said. “When I eat, I go to Grotto’s [Pizza]; I hit Royal Farms while I can, I hit Wawa while I can … Big Fish Grill … I’m shoving my body with hometown stuff.”
What is his beer of choice while he’s got his toes in the bay?
“I drink a lot of Dogfish Head; they’re right from Milton,” Allen said. “The house I grew up in is literally three minutes from Dogfish Head Brewery. The field where Dogfish Head is now — man, we used to ride our four-wheelers over there, set fires and stuff — good living.”
He was even a guest at the Frederick High School prom in Frederick, Maryland, in 2004.
“Me and my cousin, these girls asked us to be dates to their prom … [dancing to] Tim McGraw, probably some Alan Jackson bumping; that’s when people could still listen to R. Kelly. … The playlist back then was cool. Sawyer Brown was still rocking … Little Texas.”
He played gigs in Delaware, mostly in the Dewey Beach area at places such as the Rusty Rudder and the Bottle and Cork. He decided to move to Nashville in 2007: “I just decided to just get up and go. I was like, ‘I’ve got nothing to lose, only something to gain.'”
He signed a publishing deal with Wide Open Music in 2016, followed by a record deal with Stoney Creek of Broken Bow Records in 2017. His debut country album, 2018’s “Mercury Lane,” featured the No. 1 hit single “Best Shot,” which was filled with beautiful visual storytelling: “When you smile I see the sun sink down on the coast of California.”
“That song worked because at the end of the day, people just want to be their best — whether it’s work, relationships, their kids or whatever, their intent is to be their best, to always give 100% no matter what you’re doing,” Allen said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re riding around all day driving a truck; shoot, I know buddies that are fishermen.”
The album also featured a second No. 1 hit with “Make Me Want To,” featuring a hook of falling in love amid pick-up lines: “What’s your name? What are you drinking? What’s your favorite song? …. Might be too soon to say I love you, but you make me want to.”
“I think of an idea and I try to go as deep as I can lyrically and just try to come up with the best lyrics that will really work to tie that song together,” Allen said. “For me, it was ‘What’s your name? What are you drinking? What’s your favorite song?’ A lot of guys ask that question, but what if the question is leading up to him saying he’s catching feelings fast?”
He delivered a third No. 1 with his Brad Paisley duet “Freedom Was a Highway” (2021).
“Brad Paisley has been writing songs since Davy Crockett was in high school,” Allen said. “It was fun working with Brad — he’s a super cool dude; I learned a lot from him. I’m still surprised that he said yes to the song and yes to the video.”
It all culminated with Allen winning Best New Artist at the CMA Awards last fall.
“It still don’t seem real because it’s something I’ve thought about winning — every new artist does — but to actually win it is just crazy,” Allen said.
He’s since appeared on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and will be a guest mentor on “American Idol,” coming full circle after auditioning with Scotty McCreery in 2010.
“I’m trying to get to the point where people are sick of seeing me on TV,” Allen said.
Last week, he released “Down Home,” a letter to his father, who died in 2019.
“Just telling him that we miss him,” Allen said. “Everything he taught us, we’re holding onto, and everything is still good down home.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley remembers Scott Hall (Part 1) In professional wrestling, there are good guys and bad guys, babyfaces and heels.
Scott Hall made heels look so cool that you wanted to root for him in both the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW), while pulling the curtain back on the business for more reality-based sports entertainment.
On Monday, the WWE legend died after being taken off life support by his family following a series of heart attacks during complications from hip surgery. He was 63.
“My heart is broken,” longtime friend Kevin Nash posted on Instagram.
Born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, in 1958, Hall entered professional wrestling in various territories, including the NWA, AWA and WCW, wrestling under the name The Diamond Stud, before becoming a household name as Razor Ramon in the WWF in 1992.
Throwing his toothpick at the camera, Ramon imitated Tony Montana’s Cuban-American villain from “Scarface” as the self-proclaimed “bad guy” with his catch phrase, “Hey, yo!”
The WWE family will forever remember Scott Hall as a gifted entertainer and 2-time WWE Hall of Famer, a loving father and a dear friend. pic.twitter.com/DC5VVnUsxd
— WWE (@WWE) March 15, 2022
Of course, there was more to Ramon than just his razor-sharp promos, Chico.
In the ring, he dominated his opponents by lifting them up over his head like a power bomb, spreading their helpless bodies across his back like a crucifix, then planting them hard into the mat for a devastating finishing maneuver known as The Razor’s Edge.
Some of his most memorable moments came putting other wrestlers “over” (losing matches as the script called for), including a stunning upset victory by the undersized 1-2-3 Kid (aka X-Pac) during the inaugural weeks of WWF “Monday Night Raw” in 1993.
Ramon won the Intercontinental Championship four times, famously beating Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania X at Madison Square Garden in 1994. The gimmick match has since become commonplace, but the two pioneered creative ladder spots, receiving the first 5-star match in a WWF ring by journalist Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer.
In 1996, Hall and Kevin Nash (aka Diesel) broke character during the infamous “Curtain Call” at Madison Square Garden, hugging their supposed opponents (and backstage buddies in The Kliq) Shawn Michaels and Triple H during a cage match as they left WWF.
Wrestling purists were furious at the foursome for breaking “kayfabe,” the tradition of pretending wrestling was unscripted. Ironically, it gave rise to Stone Cold Steve Austin, who won the King of the Ring tournament in place of Triple H, who was punished by WWF owner Vince McMahon for the incident (Michaels was the champ, so he was untouchable).
As for the departing Hall and Nash, the wily defectors would immediately show up on rival WCW television, playing themselves as the reality-based duo “The Outsiders” invading Ted Turner’s company, taking audiences behind the scenes and into the TV control room.
It all built to “Bash at the Beach” (1996) when Hulk Hogan turned heel to join Hall and Nash, forming the iconic heel group, New World Order (nWo). Its logo was plastered on t-shirts in every school in the United States, rivaling the merchandise sales of “Austin 3:16.”
Together, the trio helped WCW beat the WWF in the television ratings for an impressive 83 weeks during the so-called Monday Night War between WWF’s “Raw” and WCW’s “Nitro.”
Along the way, Hall won the WCW United States Heavyweight Championship twice, first against Roddy Piper, then against Goldberg, Bret Hart and Sid Vicious in a Texas tornado ladder match. He was also a one-time WCW World Television Champion and a nine-time WCW World Tag Team Champion during his tenure as a top star of the company.
Still, he was best remembered for outside-the-ring antics, like dressing as a security guard and “tasing” Goldberg into submission, helping his buddy Nash cheat to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, ending Goldberg’s 173-match unbeaten streak.
Soon, ratings began to fade as nWo membership ballooned, while backstage squabbling ousted the group’s brainchild Eric Bischoff in favor of ex-WWE writer Vince Russo. As Hogan beat Nash with a “Finger Poke of Doom” (yes, really), fans increasingly changed the channel to watch The Rock, Stone Cold, Mick Foley and The Undertaker on WWF.
In 2001, McMahon officially won the Monday Night War and purchased WCW, allowing the nWo to return for WrestleMania 18. The Rock faced Hogan, while Stone Cold Steve Austin faced Hall with Nash in his corner. Hall lost to Austin’s signature Stone Cold Stunner.
The nWo made a surprise return at WrestleMania 31, coming out to help former WCW hero Sting against Triple H with the old warring factions of the nWo and DX at ringside.
His returns were always short-lived as Hall battled drug and alcohol addiction, fueled by PTSD from allegedly killing a man in self defense outside an Orlando nightclub in the 1980s. He was initially charged with second-degree murder, but the charges were dropped. The memories haunted Hall in a checkered pattern of personal-life controversy.
Fans were thrilled to see Hall overcome his proverbial demons with the help of former WCW colleague Diamond Dallas Page, who started DDP Yoga as a detox and healing program for fellow wrestlers (i.e. Jake Roberts) struggling with addiction and depression.
Hall’s rehab was complete when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2014, saying, “Hard work pays off, dreams come true, bad times don’t last, but bad guys do.”
Now, it’s time to say good night to the bad guy by throwing up our “Too Sweet” hand signals one last time, proving that Scott Hall remains “nWo 4 Life,” even in death.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Slaughter at Hollywood Casino (Part 1) You heard them all over the radio in 1990 with hard rock anthems like “Up All Night.”
This Friday, Slaughter rocks Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia.
“We just stay right to the nostalgia-based stuff,” frontman Mark Slaughter told WTOP. “It’s a good time, it’s a trip down memory lane, the band sounds great, the shows have been doing outstanding business and people are walking away with smiles on their face, so it’s nice to entertain again and bring some happiness to a very distraught world, so to speak.”
Rather than touring the road, they fly in for specific gigs, this time with the band Great White.
“We do what we call fly dates, so we fly out,” Slaughter said. “We’ve done a lot of shows with Great White and it’s been awesome. We do shows every week. It’s been like a weekend warrior thing. … We’re jet-setting and earning our Delta points, that’s for sure.”
Born in Las Vegas in 1964, Slaughter grew up listening to the rock ‘n’ roll greats.
“I listened to the radio like crazy: The Beatles, Grand Funk [Railroad], then it became [Peter] Frampton, Boston and [Black] Sabbath — all those classic rock bands [are] a part of my DNA,” Slaughter said. “Being from Vegas, there’s a lot of different influences because that is the entertainment capital of the world, starting from the Rat Pack and forward.”
How did he meet future Slaughter bass player Dana Strum, a D.C. native?
“He was working at the studios in Hollywood out in Burbank. He needed some background vocals and somebody said, ‘You should call this guy,'” Slaughter said. “Next thing you know, I’ve been in a band with him since 1985 and we’re still going strong to this day.”
Slaughter and Strum joined former kiss guitarist Vinnie Vincent for the band Vinnie Vincent Invasion, creating the song “Love Kills” for “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master” (1988).
“It was a great experience,” Slaughter said. “I went from guitar teacher to singer and got a chance to tour with Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper. As a young kid at 22, it was a pretty exciting time. I love being able to reminisce on being a part of all that. I’m very blessed.”
They soon broke off to form their own band, Slaughter.
“Vinnie had a different vision than we did,” Slaughter said. “Everybody’s entitled to how they think their music should be. It wasn’t a talent show. It was just about making music and being the guys next door and not doing the glam thing that Vinnie was very hot on.”
They didn’t waste any time. Their very first show was opening for Kiss in Lubbock, Texas, while their debut album “Stick It To Ya” went double platinum with the hit “Up All Night.”
“Being from Las Vegas, it’s what you do: You end up turning your clock around completely. There are no clocks in the casinos there — that was the whole vibe,” Slaughter said. “When we did our video, we ended up getting a new-coming video director, his name was Michael Bay — might have heard of him! — that was his first start in the entertainment side.”
They saw a spark in Bay, who would direct blockbusters like “Armageddon” (1998).
“We looked at a lot of directors’ reels and I just said, ‘I want like a beer commercial, I want the sexiness, the girls, the nightlife and the whole trip,’ and he got it,” Slaughter said. “It was a winning team and those visions are still in my head to this day.”
The debut album also featured the song “Fly to the Angels.”
“We all lose somebody sometime in our life,” Slaughter said. “It’s about letting go and moving on with your life and keeping their spirit alive in what you do.”
They also recorded “Shout It Out” for the movie “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” (1991).
“We were on the road with Kiss at the time and Jimmy Iovine, the label exec at Interscope, reached out and said, ‘Hey, can you write a song for this movie?’ We said, ‘Absolutely,’ so Dana and I went into a little room at a Day’s Inn hotel and basically wrote the idea. Then we stopped one week later in Vancouver, Canada, and ended up tracking the song.”
You’ll hear all of these nostalgic tunes if you come to Hollywood Casino.
“If they want to party and have a good time and want to smile, come on out,” Slaughter said. “It’s Slaughter, it’s Great White, it’s going to make you smile, come get you some!”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Turning Red' “I like boys, I like loud music, I like gyrating, I’m 13! Deal with it!”
So declares the main character in Disney and Pixar’s new animated film “Turning Red,” a coming-of-age fantasy that serves as an allegory for puberty this weekend on Disney+.
Hats off to the filmmakers for having the guts to wade into this territory, creating one of the most original, refreshing and personal stories that Disney and Pixar have told in years.
Set in Toronto circa 2002, the story follows 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian student Mei Lee (Rosalie Chiang), who turns into a giant red panda whenever she gets too excited over boys, homework or living with her strict mother, Ming (Sandra Oh). Mei must learn to harness her emotions in time to join her friends at a concert by her favorite boy band.
Twitter is littered with male movie critics whose faces are “turning red” at the idea of a Disney movie dealing with (gasp) menstruation, but this says more about critics’ maturity levels than the filmmakers. It shouldn’t be hard to empathize with the concept of puberty, which we’ve all gone through, and see it from a woman’s perspective. Period. Full stop.
If you’re a female viewer, you probably remember fighting with your mom as a teenager. If you’re a male viewer, you may recall your teenage sister fighting with your mom. Hell, even teenage boys fight with their parents during puberty as their testosterone rages. “People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002,” Mei says. “Mom and I just call it growing pains.”
These growing pains reveal deeper family themes of mothers and daughters forgiving each other for outbursts during these hormonal times. Daughters feel the pressure of straight A’s, while mothers just want to prepare them for a competitive world. We even see how the grandmother gives the mother baggage from when she was a teenager. It’s all a cycle.
Could this “cycle” allegory be more subtle? Sure, but the importance of tackling the issue outweighs the nuance. When Mei gets her first red scare, she’s mortified, hiding behind the shower curtain as her mom grabs a box of tampons, unaware that she’s actually turning into a giant red panda. It’s a clever way to “go there” without literally showing it on screen.
Besides, this mother is far more supportive than shouting, “They’re all gonna laugh at you!” like the underrated horror masterpiece “Carrie” (1976). Stephen King actually threw his rough draft in the trash, only for his wife to retrieve it and insist that he finish It, becoming his first published novel. See? Women know what other women want to read and watch.
As groundbreaking as it was in 1976, “Carrie” still remained an interpretation of puberty by two men — King dreamed the idea of a prom queen getting doused in blood, while director Brian De Palma delivered an impressive Figure-8 tracking shot — so it’s refreshing that “Turning Red” finally provides a woman’s perspective telling her own personal journey.
Writer/director Domee Shi bases Mei on her own experiences growing up in Toronto, just like Greta Gerwig did with Sacramento in “Lady Bird” (2017). Shi knows the city well, painting Toronto as a thriving hub of diversity, not only within Mei’s close circle of friends, but also populating the town with background characters that just happen to wear hijabs.
In doing so, Shi completes a heroic journey from being a storyboard artist on “Inside Out” (2015) to becoming the first woman to direct a Pixar short with the Oscar-winning “Bao” (2018) to finally becoming the first woman ever to direct a Pixar film solo in “Turning Red” (2022). May her success story inspire little girls (and boys) of all colors to make movies.
From “Moana” (2016) to “Coco” (2017), “Soul” (2020) to “Encanto” (2021), white critics and viewers are increasingly being asked to relate to other cultures. Good! Welcome to what people of color have been asked to do their entire lives watching Disney movies — or women for that matter, routinely asked to view countless classics through a “male gaze.”
Roger Ebert once called cinema the “ultimate empathy machine” for its unique ability to place us in other people’s shoes. When the lights come up and we exit the movie theater, we magically emerge changed and enlightened, having spent two hours vicariously as Chiron in “Moonlight” (2016), Cleo in “Roma” (2018) or Mei in “Turning Red” (2022).
I personally found it easy to relate to these characters, in part because of the time period in which the animated story takes place. Having graduated high school in 2003, I smiled nostalgically at the film’s setting, providing all of the era’s touchstones, be it feeding your digital pet Tamagotchi, burning CD mixtapes or jamming to boy bands on the radio.
Which brings us to the film’s most hilarious touch, the fictional boy band 4Town, which borrows its name from O-Town and asterisk from NSYNC, but also stands in for every other group from The Backstreet Boys to 98 Degrees, One Direction to the Jonas Brothers. Note that the songs are fittingly written by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell.
Their stadium tour concert is the perfect place for the climax, as Mei’s authentic teen desires collide with her supernatural curse, causing reality and fantasy to explode in a grand finale that’s one of the best in recent memory. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in “Ghostbusters” (1984) has nothing on a giant red panda stomping young concertgoers.
As Mei dances to 4Town in a post-credits scene, you’ll wonder: will a member of 4Town break off for a stellar solo career to bring sexy back like Justin Timberlake? Will they get a reality show like Nick Lachey? Or will the foursome become a trio like Boyz II Men?
Either way, there’s a new animated kid on the block, thy name is Girlz II Women.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Crash Test Dummies at City Winery (Part 1) For over 30 years, they’ve delivered one of music’s most unique sounds.
On Tuesday, Crash Test Dummies perform live at City Winery in D.C.
“I still pinch myself,” Co-vocalist Ellen Reid told WTOP. “I kind of thought it was just going to be a way to help pay my hydro bill as I was going through university.”
Born in Manitoba, Canada in 1966, Reid loved all kinds of music growing up.
“When you’re little, you generally listen to the music your parents listen to, so I listened to a lot of folk music and classical music,” Reid said. “As I got older, I don’t think I was particularly unique, I liked the bands that people were into, rock bands, I was a big Aerosmith fan for a long time, but as I got older I got back to folk music and roots music.”
In 1986, she met Brad Roberts to join Bad Brad Roberts and the St. James Rhythm Pigs.
“I met Brad at the University of Winnipeg,” Reid said. “He had this little group playing at an after-hours club called The Blue Note. He was looking for a keyboard player to play on a few songs and a mutual friend introduced us. I just got up and played a few songs with him and it just went from there. I didn’t even sing for the first full year playing with that band.”
How did the band name evolve into the now-famous Crash Test Dummies?
“It actually came from a medical student friend of Brad’s,” Reid said. “He had been watching crash-test simulations all day long, so he suggested that one. He had also suggested The Oxymorons, which is one that I kind of wanted. I had been leaning toward The Oxymorons, but Crash Test Dummies won out — and I guess we’re stuck with it.”
Roberts took listeners’ ears by storm with his unmistakably deep voice.
“He’s always been a bass baritone,” Reid said. “When we were first starting out, he kind of struggled with that because all of his musical idols had higher voices and could do those heavy-metal high screams. … He like Alice Cooper and Kiss. … Male vocalists at the time had a higher range … but eventually, he just started writing material for his range.”
The band’s debut album “The Ghosts That Haunt Me” (1991) had a powerful title track.
“Everyone has a different interpretation,” Reid said. “For me, it’s more like when you meet someone and they accept you for who you are, you can let go of all these things that have been haunting you. ‘You’re so kind, I know you would not mind, to send away the ghosts that haunt me now.’ I think it’s about being accepted for who you are, warts and all.”
It also featured “Superman’s Song,” which was a huge hit in Canada, creating a political allegory where Superman is a liberal activist and Tarzan is a laissez-faire capitalist.
“It’s a song about the underdog and the behind-the-scenes people that make things happen,” Reid said. “Superman didn’t make money for what he was doing; he did it because he cared about his community … whereas Tarzan was just pounding his chest.”
The band won Group of the Year at the Juno Awards (i.e. the Canadian Grammys). Their second album, “God Shuffled His Feet” (1993), was their biggest, including a title track of biblical proportions about mankind asking God questions on the seventh day of creation.
“Brad was very much hands-on in the recording of this record,” Reid said. “He spent hours and days searching for sounds that he wanted to create. … He really did a huge amount of the production on that record. He worked very hard. There is nothing by accident on that record. That recording of that song, there are 20 tracks of me, background vocals alone.”
The album’s biggest hit was “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” describing a boy’s hair changing pigment after an accident, then describing a girl ashamed of her birthmarks, and saying a third child has it even worse watching his parents convulse at church speaking in tongues.
“Ultimately, it works because it’s just a good song,” Reid said. “Melodically, I think it’s beautiful. Lyrically, it’s easy to go ‘Mmm Mmm Mmm’ in English as in German as in French. Everyone can hum along to that song. It wasn’t like anything else you were hearing on the radio at the time. … A couple of radio stations liked it and just played the crap out of it.”
The album also featured deep existential exposes, from a fear of getting old (“Afternoons & Coffeespoons”) to predicting one’s death (“The Psychic”) and even a warning against hedonism as frolicking medieval men get eaten by tigers (“Two Knights and Maidens”).
“Brad has a very specific viewpoint on life, he has a very particular way of looking at the world and that comes through in all of his lyrics,” Reid said. “He has a lot of questions. He is an English philosophy student in his whole life, so he always asks the big questions.”
Soon, Reid began singing lead on songs like “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” (1994).
“Brad’s always been very conscious of not wanting to present the same record twice,” Reid said. “Bringing my voice more into the fore was just a way of breaking up the bass-baritone thing and showing that we had more stylistic range, not wanting to do the same thing.”
Both “Pumpkinhead” and “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” made their way onto the soundtrack of “Dumb and Dumber” (1994). Just when you thought Crash Test Dummies couldn’t get any “dumber,” they did something like that…AND TOTALLY REDEEMED THEMSELVES.
“I had been singing the song ‘Peter Pumpkinhead’ in our live shows for a while, really just a live-show thing, an opportunity for me to get out front and center,” Reid said. “The people who were putting ‘Dumb and Dumber’ together approached us and asked if we would record it for their movie. We didn’t know anything about it … but we said, ‘Sure. Why not?'”
Their sound continued to evolve across “A Worm’s Life” (1994), “Give Yourself a Hand” (1999), “I Don’t Care That You Don’t Mind” (2001), “Jingle All the Way” (2002), “Puss ‘n’ Boots” (2003), “Song of the Unforgiven” (2004) and Reid’s favorite “Oooh La La!” (2010).
“I can tell you without even hesitating to get ‘Oooh La La,'” Reid said. “That’s the last recording that we did 12 years ago and it’s a beautiful record. I can just say that without hesitation. It’s a beautiful record. We do one or two songs from that, and one of them, last night … we had four people in the front row crying, so we’re going to make you cry.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews New African Film Fest at AFI Silver Theatre (Part 1) We can’t claim to be true film buffs until we’ve explored what every continent has to offer.
Fortunately, we live in the nation’s capital with events to expand our horizons like the New African Film Festival, which hits the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland.
“The Washington, D.C., area is an international city … but in the early 2000s there was no African film festival in the area at all, so Mwiza [Munthali] and I had this grand idea,” co-founder Kishere Mbuya told WTOP. “Essentially, we wanted to bring new African films that captured the complexities, contours and challenges of the continent.”
This year’s festival will screen 28 films from 17 countries from March 18 to 31.
“Another goal was to provide a space for filmmakers, because there’s some great films that have come out of the continent historically, but they have not been distributed as widely,” Munthali said. “It was also the beginnings of what is termed as Nollywood, which has sparked this revolution in African filmmaking the last 20-some years.”
Opening night brings Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s “Neptune Frost.”
“It’s a nice Afrofuturistic vision,” Munthali said. “It’s a film from Rwanda set in the Burundi. … It’s a relationship between a miner and an intersex runaway. … Also looking at the exploitation of coltan, mined heavily in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Congo has the biggest reserves of coltan in the world, like 80%, which we use in computers, cellphones.”
You can also see Chad’s official Oscar submission “Lingui, the Sacred Bonds.”
“That’s about a young teenager who’s pregnant struggling trying to get an abortion in a country and a society where that’s prohibited,” Mbuya said. Munthali added, “Mahamat-Saleh Haroun is a fantastic filmmaker. We’ve had two of his films in the festival before.”
Nana Mensah screens her Tribeca award-winning comedy “Queen of Glory.”
“A doctoral student [had] plans to run off with her married boyfriend, but then her mom died and she inherited this bookstore and she now has to contend with all of that,” Mubya said. Munthali added, “It’s set here in the U.S. in New York City, but it’s a diaspora story, a Ghanaian diaspora story. … It did very well at Tribeca. It won an award at Tribeca.”
Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot’s presents the genre-shifting “Saloum.”
“It’s a Quentin Tarantino western type of film,” Munthali said. “It’s like a western action thriller but in the African setting. It’s dealing with this drug lord from Guinea-Bissau.”
Tunisian filmmaker Leyla Bouzid screens the Cannes film “A Tale of Love and Desire.”
“Two young kids falling in love, juxtaposing their desires with their conservative upbringing,” Mbuya said. Munthali added, “It’s set in Paris and the male was born in France, his parents are from Algeria, and the female has come to France [from] Tunisia. … They have a class together … dealing with 12th century Arabic exotic literature.”
There’s also the Ethiopian documentaries “Among Us Women” and “Stand Up My Beauty.”
“‘Stand Up My Beauty’ was a film that showcased a singer who wanted to tell stories through her artistry and she ends up telling the story of this homeless poet with her children,” Mbuya said. Munthali added, “‘Among Us Women’ is a very powerful film … looking at health care … how traditional midwives deal with child birth in this society.”
Senegal-born French actress-turned-director Aïssa Maïga brings her acclaimed water crisis documentary “Above Water” screening on March 22 for World Water Day.
“It’s a fantastic film,” Munthali said. “It’s really highlighting the lack of water in a village in Niger … and the issue of climate change as well, how this water crisis is because there’s been a long drought in the area, so she’s using this film to speak on those issues.”
See the full lineup of films here.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews America at the Weinberg Center (Part 1) They delivered classic-rock hits from “Horse with No Name” to “Sister Golden Hair.”
On Saturday night, America performs at the Weinberg Center in Frederick, Maryland.
“COVID set us back from celebrating our 50th anniversary, which would have been 2020, we started in 1970, so we had big plans for 2020, but we’ve been on ice,” co-founder Dewey Bunnell told WTOP. “It’s a fantastic milestone. I never would have expected it
Ironically, all three members of the original America trio were technically born in London..”
“We were always American citizens … but we were kids of fathers in the Air Force, so we were stationed over there in London in the late ’60s and went to a high school there, an American school for people like us, for families and civilians,” Bunnell said.
Growing up in London, these American kids loved listening to British rock ‘n roll.
“We were all listening to the British Invasion artists that were coming to the U.S.,” Bunnell said. “Before that, we loved The Beach Boys and surf music, instrumental bands like The Ventures, Dick Dale & The Del-tones, The Safaris. … It was fantastic to be 16, 17, 18, 19 going into London to see shows live from Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd.”
Het met his bandmates Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek at London Central High School.
“Dan’s family was actually coming from Pakistan and Gerry’s family was over in Germany, both of their dads were officers, my dad was a senior master sergeant coming from California,” Bunnell said. “Gerry and I both had British mothers. … We had a common interest in guitar playing and music and Gerry had a little school band. … We hit it off.”
They graduated in 1969 and formed the band in 1970 while working on the military base.
“We were writing songs and playing on the side, we just compared notes and started putting these songs together,” Bunnell said. “One thing led to another, we met this guy and that guy, we went to this office and that office, shopped ourselves around and we got traction right away with what ultimately became the first album of songs.”
After being signed by Warner Bros, the guys released their self-titled debut album “America” in 1971, as Bunnell wrote the No. 1 hit single “Horse with No Name.”
“I was reminiscing about the sights and sounds of the desert,” Bunnell said. “I became very enamored by the desert and the outdoors. … We moved so much that my brother and I spent a lot of time outside. … We’d been there five years in England by then, it was rainy and gloomy at times, not long summers … so I wanted to revisit those sights and sounds.”
How did he come up with the song’s famous “la la la” arrangement?
“I already had the ‘la las’ in there,” Bunnell said. “I thought at the time I might put some lyrics in there, but that particular song just fell out in a two-hour session sitting on a bed at my friend’s house and the ‘la las’ were in there. In the process of arranging the vocal three-part harmonies, we always loved that feature in any song … the ‘la las’ just stayed.”
America won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1973, beating out a collection of future music legends like The Eagles, Harry Chapin, Loggins & Messina and John Prine.
“That year was just a blur,” Bunnell said. “It was a heavy field. John Prine had been a very respected singer/songwriter, Harry Chapin came to our show to give us pointers on making our set better, we knew all The Eagles because we were in the same office … Kenny Loggins we worked with a lot, and Jim Messina, who came out of Buffalo Springfield.”
Their second album “Homecoming” had the Beckley-penned “I Need You” and the Bunnell-penned “Ventura Highway,” while their “Hat Trick” album had a cover of “Muskrat Love.”
“We always made a pact between the three of us, ‘The Three Musketeers’, we’ll all write evenly, if there’s 12 songs on a record, we’d all write three or four each,” Bunnell said.
Their fourth album “Holiday” brought in the legendary Beatles producer George Martin.
“We were so lucky to meet and talk with George Martin,” Bunnell said. “He was a wonderful man. We really wanted to be prepared for that first album, we did seven albums with him all told, including remixing ‘The Greatest Hits.’ … I had this song ‘Tin Man,’ which was loosely based on ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ which was my favorite movie and may still be.”
Their fifth album “Hearts” returned them to the top of the charts with the No. 1 single “Sister Golden Hair” with its opening lyrics, “Well, I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed, that I set my sights on Monday and I got myself undressed.”
“I think that very first line just grabs you,” Bunnell said. “I remember in English class, the teacher would say, ‘You’ve gotta grab them with that first line or paragraph of your poem or book.’ … It’s a great song anyway; structurally it’s really got nice passages in it and the rocking ending and the [opening] slide guitar, which was an homage to George Harrison.”
In 2006, America was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. The band received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012, a year after Peek died at the age of 60.
“When your music gets placed in TV shows or movies … it comes to the office’s desk and we go, ‘Wow, we’re going to be in a ‘Friends’ episode or ‘Breaking Bad’ is using ‘Horse with No Name,’ those are things along the way that are total bonuses,” Bunnell said. “It’s nice to be acknowledged, but the real crowning achievement is that we’re still doing it.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The FRIENDS Experience' (Part 1) There’s a new “Friends” exhibit coming to town — and could you be any more excited?
Superfly X brings “The FRIENDS Experience” to the nation’s capital at 1025 F St. NW, right near Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, from March 17 to June 5.
“It’s a really great opportunity to step inside the world of ‘Friends,’ check out iconic sets, iconic scenes and relive the series,” Superfly X Co-President Stacy Moscatelli told WTOP.
“Fans have the opportunity to go into Joey and Chandler’s apartment. They can sit in their recliners and play foosball. We’ve got Monica’s kitchen, Central Perk and lots of immersive moments.”
Be sure to bring your phones to snap selfies at the famous fountain.
“You have the opportunity to have that opening credits moment and hear the song and dance around the fountain with your friends,” Moscatelli said. “A great photo [opportunity].”
How did Superfly X recreate the sets down to every last detail?
“We had to work really closely with Warner Bros. Consumer Products and the Warner Bros. Archives team that has documented, tracked and memorialized everything related to this series,” Moscatelli said.
“We had the opportunity to work with them to make sure we got every little detail right and even borrowed props and costumes from their archives.”
Anything behind glass is an original prop and anything you can touch is a replica.
“The pivot couch is always a fan favorite, that was a big episode that people love to quote,” Moscatelli said.
“We have the 18-page letter that Rachel wrote to Ross — front and back! — that was more than just a prop, they actually wrote the full letter, front and back, so fans can read that letter. … We’ve got ‘Science Boy,’ the comic that Ross wrote as a child.”
Why does the NBC sitcom still resonate after all these years?
“It really celebrates that time in your life when your friends are your family,” Moscatelli said. “For all of us who have experienced that, that’s a time that we look back on really fondly, and for those who haven’t quite gotten there yet, it’s a time they really look forward to.”
She says D.C. is the seventh stop in this year’s North American tour, including their flagship location in New York City, one of many such experiences by Superfly X.
“We work really closely with entertainment partners to license their television shows, films, games, etc. to offer fans the opportunity step inside the world of their beloved I.P.,” Moscatelli said.” We had the ‘Seinfeld’ couch, we had ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,’ we had Paddy’s Pub. … We actually have ‘The Office’ experience currently in Chicago.”
For now, Dunder Mifflin can wait. It’s all about “The FRIENDS Experience” in D.C.
“It’s really just the best opportunity to step inside the world of ‘Friends,’ to come with your friends and family and recreate those moments you know and love,” Moscatelli said. “It’s accessible to casual fans as well as really big hardcore fans … It’s just a really great opportunity to celebrate that fandom and pretend you’re one of the ‘Friends’ for a day.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews tonight's Gershwin Prize for Lionel Richie (Part 1) The Library of Congress is handing out its annual Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
Lionel Richie will receive the honor Wednesday night in the nation’s capital in a special taping at DAR Constitution Hall that will be broadcast on PBS on Tuesday, May 17.
“I’m actually getting goosebumps because it’s one of my favorite artists, but everyone’s favorites, the superstar Lionel Richie,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden told WTOP.
Past recipients include Paul Simon (2007), Stevie Wonder (2009), Paul McCartney (2010), Burt Bacharach & Hal David (2012), Carole King (2013), Billy Joel (2014), Willie Nelson (2015), Smokey Robinson (2016), Tony Bennett (2017), Gloria & Emilio Estefan (2019) and Garth Brooks (2012), who all provide input into who should be the next honoree each year.
“They get a say,” Hayden said. “These are all superstars, but they respect each other’s achievement in popular music. … When you think about all these people giving input into who they think should win the highest honor in achievement in popular music, you have an all-star selection process and group — and you end up with an all-star like Lionel Richie.”
Richie’s prolific career ranges from his group The Commodores to his solo hits.
“I remember when some of those songs came out, of course, ‘Brick House,’ but also ‘Three Times a Lady’ and ‘Easy’ at the same time he was with The Commodores,” Hayden said. “Then when he went solo, my goodness, ‘Endless Love,’ ‘All Night Long,’ ‘Hello,’ ‘Say You, Say Me,’ and ‘Dancing on the Ceiling,’ then he co-wrote ‘We Are the World.'”
As always, the star-studded concert will include an array of special guest performers.
“We’re really excited because there’s going to be performances by previous honoree Gloria Estefan, Boyz II Men, all of them, Luke Bryan, Chris Stapleton, Andra Day, Miguel, Yolanda Adams and a special performance by Mr. Richie himself,” Hayden said.
Indeed, the event ends with a grand finale performance by the actual recipient.
“He wanted to do, especially at this time and we know it’ll be just as relevant during the broadcast, ‘We Are the World’ — he specifically wanted to be the one to perform that and he’ll probably bring on some of the other performers to help him with that,” Hayden said. “Then we all said, ‘Please, sir, you’ve got to do ‘All Night Long’ as a wrap-up!’”
Richie has had quite the memorable past few years. In 2017, he was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors; in 2018, he became a judge on “American Idol;” and earlier this year, he was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with winners announced in May.
“What Mr. Richie is doing now as a judge on ‘American Idol,’ he is mentoring other young artists,” Hayden said. “With all of his fame and achievement, he’s still helping others.”
Hayden knows a thing or two about helping future generations at the Library of Congress.
“I’m the first person of color to be Librarian of Congress since 1802 and I’m also the first woman,” Hayden said. “It’s significant because librarianship is a female-dominated profession. About 85 to 90% of people who work in libraries are female. … Then as a person of color … people that looked like me were forbidden by law to learn how to read.”
She’s always loved reading and music as her father recorded with The Chi-Lites.
“You can hear him playing violin on some of The Chi-Lites songs,” Hayden said. “That was Dad! … So, it’s a special treat for me to be involved with the Gershwin Prize.”
Wednesday marks the first Gershwin Prize ceremony since March 2020.
“Right before the pandemic, literally a week before, we had Garth Brooks and he just was magnificent, he brought people together, we had bipartisan karaoke,” Hayden said. “For the first Gershwin after the pandemic to have Lionel Richie, who is just as magnificent and can bring people together with music, there will be more bipartisan karaoke.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Fiddler on the Roof' at Capital One Hall (Part 1) A graduate of McLean High School is coming home to Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia.
Alex Stone stars in the national tour of “Fiddler on the Roof” Friday through Sunday.
“This is my first very large, high-caliber, big-boy project,” Stone told WTOP. “This is nice not only for my resume, my career and my artistic side being fulfilled, but also my parents, who supported me in my journey along the way, getting the seal of approval. … It’s nice that this is going to my hometown. I feel so, so blessed and honored to be able to do this.”
He once performed “Fiddler on the Roof” at Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church.
“I played a very, very solid Tevye in eighth grade,” Stone said. “I told my folks that we were doing ‘Fiddler’ and I had never heard of it. They were like: ‘OK, stop! We’re watching the movie!’ So they showed me the classic film. … I was not only enthralled but very amped to do it and surprised that our teacher trusted middle schoolers to do it, but it wasn’t bad!”
Adapted by Joseph Stein from Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye and his Daughters,” the story follows Jewish milkman Tevye raising five daughters in the Russian shtetl of Anatevka during the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia in 1905. He tries to uphold his religious traditions in a changing world as his daughters choose husbands against Jewish heritage.
“He’s dealing with his first daughter going off with someone who makes no money,” Stone said. “His second daughter goes off with someone who has no money, has no job and he’s a [political] radical. … His third daughter wants to get married to Fyedka, who is a perfect choice … has lots of money. He’s well-educated, he’s smart … however, he is not Jewish.”
The show feels even more timely after Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s quite bizarre how suddenly it’s become a very relevant topic,” Stone said. “Anatevka is in fact set in Ukraine. We mention many places like Kyiv and Odesa. It’s also quite jarring for my character … who is in fact a Russian coming into this village and claiming a territory that is not his. … It’s opened my eyes to the atrocities that are going on nowadays.”
In 1964, the original Broadway production won nine Tonys, including Best Musical, en route to an honorary 10th Tony as the longest-running musical in Broadway history. In 1971, the film version starring Topol earned eight Oscar nominations, winning three.
The songbook by Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) is equally timeless, including “Tradition,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” and “To Life.”
“There’s many different numbers that are timeless,” Stone said. “People who don’t even know musical theater, when we’re on the road and I mention to them that I’m in the touring production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ they’re like: ‘Oh, of course! ‘Matchmaker!’ … It’s very fun to be doing all of these classic songs in the new direction of [director] Bartlett Sher.”
Sher’s period visuals transport us to turn-of-the-century Russia.
“I thoroughly enjoy the entire design of this production,” Stone said. “We have different [back]drops for when it’s nighttime or sunset for the wedding number. We have this entire village [back]drop that comes in, so it looks like you see different houses designed after famous paintings from back in the day. … You just get absorbed into the world.”
Dancing across these visual spaces is authentic choreography.
“One of my favorite parts of this production is how gorgeous the choreography is,” Stone said. “It is all grounded, it is very real. They’re either dancing because they’re celebrating their legacy and traditions from a very structured, rigid place … or they’re having a grand old time, celebrating at a bar or wedding, showing off to their friends.”
Now, Stone gets to show off to his friends in his hometown in Virginia.
“I’m excited to see so many of my friends, colleagues and people I’ve worked with over the years,” Stone said. “It just feels so gratifying to come back to the place that gave me a bit of a reason and a bit of an inspiration to do all this. I did shows at not just the high school but at McLean Community Center! It’s truly, truly the stomping grounds.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews KT Tunstall at State Theatre (Part 1) “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” and “Suddenly I See” made her a household name.
This Sunday, KT Tunstall is a one-woman band at State Theatre in Falls Church, Virginia.
“I love doing my solo show,” Tunstall told WTOP. “It’s just me with all of my crazy gadgets so that I sound like a band, even though it’s really just me on stage. … It’s really simple and it’s really cool. It’s called a loop pedal. Basically you’ve got a little box at your feet and two buttons. The left button records and the right button stops recording and it plays.”
Her tangible musicianship was recently challenged by losing hearing in one ear.
“I lost my hearing on my left side, which hasn’t come back,” Tunstall said. “I’ve had Tinnitus and a little top-end hearing loss for 10 years. … I woke up on the tour bus one morning, took my ear plugs out and was like, ‘Whoa, there’s no difference.’ … Everything sounded super tinny. … It took three months and my brain and body just recalibrated.”
Her younger brother, Dan, was born fully deaf, received a cochlear implant at age 23.
“He can’t hear in either ear,” Tunstall said. “We’re not biologically related, so it’s not hereditary. … When I told my brother, Dan, about it, he played this little violin like, ‘Poor you. You can only hear in one ear,’ because being totally deaf is … not even comparable.”
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1975, she was adopted by school teacher Rosemarie Tunstall and physics lecturer David Tunstall of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. However, her first memories are of California where her dad took sabbatical at UCLA.
“It was a really interesting melting pot of family,” Tunstall said. “I was definitely the black sheep when it came to music … because my parents were very academic. … They didn’t know where me and my older brother were from, we were both adopted, so they didn’t know what our talents would be. They were very sensitive to that and let us try anything.”
After discovering a love of music, she began busking around Scotland and London.
“It was very bohemian,” Tunstall said. “It was basically just a super lo-fi life where you didn’t have new clothes or go to restaurants or take vacations. It was just hand-to-mouth scrapping by and loving being a musician. I really loved that life. Even though it was frugal and there wasn’t spare money, I really enjoyed it. I felt very alive. It felt very present.”
She got a scholarship to do her senior year of high school in a “super posh” boarding school called Kent School in Connecticut and began busking around Burlington, Vermont.
“Playing on the street really teaches you that it’s your job to engage an audience,” Tunstall said. “I get kind of worked up when I see buskers playing on the street with an amp turned up to 11. … You’ve got to be good enough to make people stop and listen.”
After earning her B.A. in drama & music in 1996 at Royal Holloway, University of London, she eventually signed with British label Relentless Records at age 29. The name of her debut album “Eye to the Telescope” (2004) was inspired by father’s physics lab.
“He would get us up in the middle of the night if there was something astral happening,” Tunstall said. “We would all in our pajamas just bail into the car. I remember seeing Halley’s Comet through the telescope. He had the keys to the observatory and I was 8 years old like, ‘What the hell? There’s stuff in the sky?’ … I always enjoyed that feeling.”
The album included “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” with its “woo hoo” refrain. She performed it live with a guitar, tambourine and loop pedal on BBC’s “Later…with Jools Holland,” but she only had 24 hours to prepare when filling in for the rapper Nas.
“I had to jump in a van, get down to London,” Tunstall said. “The other artists on that show were Anita Baker, Jackson Browne and The Cure! … My label boss said, ‘Play that weird horse song, the ‘woo hoo’ song.’ … I played it and it went crazy! … The first 10,000 copies are really valuable because … they’ve got the live recording from that show.”
The album also featured “Suddenly I See” in tribute to punk-rock pioneer Patti Smith.
“The whole song is about the Robert Mapplethorpe photograph of Patti Smith on the cover of ‘Horses,'” Tunstall said. “I was just sitting in my basement apartment in London listening to ‘Gloria’ and looking at this album cover. … It was just this gaze from Patti … almost challenging me with that gaze going, ‘Who are you? What are you bringing to the table?'”
The album won her Best British Female Artist at the BRIT Awards and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. “Black Horse” was covered on “American Idol” and “Suddenly I See” was featured in the film “The Devil Wears Prada.”
She continued to evolve across albums like “Drastic Fantastic” (2007), “Tiger Suit” (2010) and “Invisible Empire / Crescent Moon” (2013) before embarking on a trilogy of albums tackling themes of the soul, body and mind. “Kin” (2016) explored the soul, “Wax” (2018) explored the body and a third album will explore the mind later this year.
“The trilogy is like my own self-help book,” Tunstall said. “It’s been very therapeutic.”
Through it all, she remains amazed at all the experiences, from playing Times Square on New Year’s Eve to performing at the White House Correspondents Dinner next month.
“It’s so cool when you have these amazing songs that just take you on these adventures,” Tunstall said. “They are now taking me on adventures. I wrote it and it doesn’t belong to me anymore and they’re like Rudolph pulling the sleigh. I’m like, ‘Where are we going?'”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley predicts the Super Bowl halftime set (Part 1) After years of pop and rock acts, it’s time for hip-hop to shine Sunday at the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show will feature five legends: L.A. natives Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar, New York native Mary J. Blige and Detroit favorite Eminem.
Together, they’ve racked up 43 Grammys with 22 No. 1 Billboard albums.
Which songs might we hear? It’s time to predict the set list!
Halftime shows never feature super deep cuts, so we’re sticking with the hits.
Here’s how I think it will go down:
The most epic, star-studded @Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show trailer is OUT!
Watch these five music titans get ready for the #PepsiHalftime Show on Feb 13th. https://t.co/Zgesis0IWB pic.twitter.com/KiUqUjYZxi
— NFL (@NFL) Jan. 20, 2022
“California Love” — Dr. Dre
The show will most likely open with “California Love” as the Super Bowl is being held in Los Angeles (giving the Rams home-field advantage). I can’t think of a better way to kick things off than “that bomb beat from Dre,” declaring, “California knows how to party,” followed by “city of Compton” in a nod to his N.W.A. roots of “Straight Outta Compton.”
Here’s hoping Dre dons the “Mad Max” garb like the music video to rap, “Now let me welcome everybody to the Wild Wild West, a state that’s untouchable like Eliot Ness.”
It would be wild if the late Tupac Shakur shows up in a hologram for the second verse (a fan can dream, right?), but they’ll likely cut the song after Dre’s first verse to continue the jam-packed medley.
“The Next Episode” — Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg
Since Dre will already be on stage, I predict Snoop Dogg will come out next for the duet “The Next Episode,” an absolute banger from an album I wore out in high school: “The Chronic 2001.” No song is better for Snoop’s entrance: “La da da da da, it’s the mother f’n D-O-double-G.”
It’s also the perfect geographical song for an L.A. Super Bowl: “What hoods?” “Compton, Long Beach, Inglewood!” They might even tease the crowd by cutting the song right before the “highly” quotable final line: “Hey, hey, hey, hey. Smoke weed everyday.”
Medley: “Nuthin’ But a G Thang,” “Still D.R.E.,” “Gin & Juice” — Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg
Next, we’ll get a Snoop-Dre medley starting with “The Chronic” hit “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” with Snoop’s intro, “One, two, three and to the four, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre is at the door.” Ironically, Snoop raps, “Death Row is the label that pays me,” but he just bought the label. The crowd will nod: “It’s like this and like that and like this and uh, Dre creep to the mic like a vandal.”
That will trigger the catchy piano beat of “Still D.R.E.” (memorably used in “Training Day”) as Dre keeps repeating the world “still” in between Snoop’s unique hook, “I’m representing for the gangsters all across the world (still), hitting them corners in those low-lows girl (still),” before Dre drops, “Taking my time to perfect a beat and I still got love for the streets, it’s the D-R-E.”
The medley will close with something from Snoop’s album “Doggystyle,” most likely “Gin & Juice,” simply so they can sing the famous hook,” Rolling down the street, smoking indo, sipping on gin and juice, laid back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind.” Imagine cars bouncing on hydraulics across the 50-yard-line. It’s too juicy not to include in the set!
“Family Affair” — Mary J. Blige
At this point, it’ll be time to change the flow a little bit. Enter some much needed Girl Power with the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul herself Mary J. Blige. No one will ever forget Missy Elliott stealing the show during the 2015 Super Bowl Halftime Show, but now it’s time to oblige Ms. Blige.
She has so many hits to choose from, but I’m guessing she’ll drop “Family Affair.” You may not know it from the title alone, but I promise you’ll know it as soon as the beat drops. The lyrics are perfect for a Super Bowl party: “Let’s get it crunk up on, Have fun up on, up in this dancers. We got ya’ll open, now ya floatin’, so you gots to dance for me. Don’t need no hateration, holleration in this dancers, let’s get it percolatin’, while you’re waiting, so just dance for me.”
“Be Without You” — Mary J. Blige
From here, Blige is certainly entitled to another song. She can’t just get one number while the dudes get multiple tracks! She could possibly do “Real Love,” arguably her most famous overall song, but the vibe doesn’t seem to flow with the previous songs listed in these predictions.
After so many party songs, expect her to slow things down a bit with “Be Without You.” The lyrics are smooth as hell: “Too strong for too long (and I can’t be without you, baby), And I’ll be waiting up until you get home (’cause I can’t sleep without you, baby), Anybody who’s ever loved ya know just what I feel, too hard to fake it, nothing can replace it.”
“Alright” — Kendrick Lamar
Suddenly, the record will start skipping to the catchy ditty: “Da, da, da, da, daaaaa, daaaa, daaaa.” Enter the hottest name in hip-hop today, Mr. Kendrick Lamar declaring, “Alls my life I has to fight, alls my life I, hard times like, yah, bad trips like yah, Nazareth, I’m f’d up homie, you f’d up, but if God got us then we gon’ be all right” — a gritty yet spiritual way to continue the set.
This might be older viewers’ first introduction to Lamar’s music, but I hope they lean in and listen closely to the social commentary: “What you want you, a house? You, a car? 40 acres and a mule? A piano, a guitar?” The album “To Pimp a Butterfly” (2015) ranked No. 19 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Hear a breakdown with former WTOP colleague Marcus Moore.
“HUMBLE” — Kendrick Lamar
From here, Lamar will explore his other albums like “Damn.” (2017), which not only won Best Rap Album at the Grammys, but became the first non-jazz or classical work to earn a Pulitzer Prize for Music. That’s right, the man won a Pulitzer, so if you’re a crotchety old viewer shaking your fist, “Get this rap off my TV,” maybe you should take a cue from Kendrick: Be humble. Sit down.
Young viewers will also benefit from listening to “HUMBLE,” as the poet reminds Millennials to “be humble, sit down,” a much needed antidote to today’s era of look-at-me social media narcissism. Here’s predicting the Super Bowl halftime dancers sit down in chairs around the stage, or if they want to be really subversive, take a knee on the same field that blacklisted Colin Kaepernick.
“The Real Slim Shady” — Eminem
Last but not least comes Eminem, the top-selling artist of the 2000s who was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. “The Real Slim Shady” is the perfect arrival: “Can I have your attention please?” Dancers will all come out dressed like Slim Shady as Eminem raps, “I’m sick of you little girl and boy groups, all you do is annoy me, so I have been sent here to destroy you,” which is exactly what happened to so many Super Bowl halftime pop stars.
“Without Me” — Eminem
From here, Eminem will move to “Without Me,” the perfect follow-up song with the teasing intro, “Guess who’s back? Back again? Shady’s back. Tell a friend.” The song is one of Eminem’s most recognizable, particularly the chorus, “Now this looks like a job for me, so everybody just follow me, ’cause we need a little controversy, ’cause it feels so empty without me.”
Not only is it catchy, it sums up why Eminem became a phenomenon in the first place: “No I’m not the first king of controversy, I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley to do Black music so selfishly and use it to get myself wealthy, hey! There’s a concept that works, 20 million other white rappers emerge, but no matter how many other fish in the sea, it’ll be so empty without me.”
“Lose Yourself” — Eminem
Suddenly, the lights dim to an iconic guitar riff as Eminem says, “Look, if you had, one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it? Or just let it slip?” Expect “8 Mile” imagery of rags-to-riches rap-battle glory: “His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, there’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.”
The entire place will wave hands up and down, knowing every word. The song is that ubiquitous — even featured in a Super Bowl commercial a few years ago. This will be the one that your trying-to-be-hip dad will song along to at his Super Bowl party, which is why it’s the perfect penultimate placement. It will feel like the grand finale. But wait, there’s more …
“Forgot About Dre” — Dr. Dre & Eminem (with everyone)
Just when you “forgot about” the man who opened the show, Dr. Dre will gloriously return to the stage, defying everyone who thought Eminem was serious when he sang, “And Dr. Dre said … nothing you idiots, Dr. Dre’s dead, he’s locked in the basement.” You can’t have a halftime show with Dre and Eminem on the bill and not do “Forgot About Dre.”
As the five hip-hop icons take the stage for a grand finale, it reminds viewers that Dre is indeed the architect of this whole West Coast rap game: “Who you think brought you the oldies, Eazy-E’s, Ice Cubes, and D.O.Cs, the Snoop D-O-double-Gs, and the group [N.W.A.] that said, ‘Mother-f the police?'” That may be controversial, but the rage is understandable from Rodney King to Trayvon Martin to George Floyd, ensuring that no one will forget about Dre.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Erin Jackson at the DC Improv (Part 1) You recognize her from Tiffany Haddish’s comedy showcase “They Ready” on Netflix.
Now, the hilarious Erin Jackson cracks up the D.C. Improv on Friday and Saturday.
“I always think I want to talk politics when I get to D.C., but it’s hit or miss,” Jackson told WTOP. “People are like, ‘I did this all day, can you please talk about something else?’ I do have a lot to say, but it’s not stuff that’ll divide a room. I got some thoughts! I have a couple things to say … but it’s not going to be all that. I’m doing some new things in my life.”
Last April, Jackson helped reopen the venue after a year of COVID-19 restrictions.
“I came back at the beginning when they reopened,” Jackson said. “It’s like you have hope and then it’s dashed. I was hopeful back in April, I had just gotten my vaccine, and now I’ve just gotten another vaccine, so it’s the same but different. I have some thoughts about COVID life, about therapy, which I just began … observations about life, people, family.”
It’s a homecoming for Jackson, who lived in D.C. for years to attend Howard University.
“I went to Howard, but I didn’t start comedy until two or three years later,” Jackson said. “I took a class at the Improv. It was a one-day seminar … Met some friends, started going to open-mics together. … The Improv has been so integral. … Improv was the first stage I ever performed on. I love D.C. … I lived there for quite a while, so D.C. is my other home.”
Not only did she record her chart-topping album “Grudgery” at the D.C. Improv, she also found national success on Comedy Central’s “Last Comic Standing” in 2008.
“It was a huge springboard,” Jackson said. “The producer is actually a good friend now, but she is also Wanda Sykes’ producing partner. … I’ve done a bunch of projects with them. … So it just kind of forged a relationship outside of the exposure that it gave to my standup. You hang around the business long enough, you know enough people and doors open.”
That collaboration led to her writing for Netflix’s “The Upshaws” in 2021.
“‘The Upshaws’ is a show about a Black family in the midwest,” Jackson said. “A married couple [is played by] Mike Epps and Kim Fields. Wanda Sykes plays Kim Fields’ sister. It’s your midwest slice-of-life sitcom. It’s super funny and sharp. It’s not for network TV, that’s why it’s on Netflix, but it’s such a treat to work with those comics every day.”
Still, she’s probably best known for the aforementioned gig on Netflix’s “They Ready.”
“It’s been great,” Jackson said. “We taped it actually in Sept. 2020, so things were still kind of tense and we taped it outside, but it’s been a great opportunity for Tiffany to share her platform with me. We didn’t really know each other in the real world. She knew my comedy, but we had not met, so that was so gracious for her. It’s been great for the career.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews '50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center' (Part 1) They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. There’s always magic in the air. Combine that with the prestige of the nation’s capital, and it’s a truly unique experience of the arts.
Time to celebrate “50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center” this Friday and Saturday.
“We’re celebrating our 50th anniversary season, and there’s no way we could let that go by without celebrating all of the great Broadway shows that have been here,” Vice President Jeffrey Finn told WTOP. “We’ve put together a spectacular night of celebrating Broadway.”
The event salutes shows that started at the Kennedy Center before going to Broadway.
“In the ’70s, ‘Pippin’ was one of the first pre-Broadway engagements here,” Finn said. “‘Annie,’ a family favorite, was here before it transferred to Broadway and became a big hit. Possibly most iconic is ‘Les Mis,’ which premiered in London but came to the Kennedy Center in Dec. 1986 for several weeks before opening in March of ’87 on Broadway.”
The night will also include a number of other Broadway favorites.
“The list includes ‘Annie,’ ‘Cabaret,’ ‘Chess,’ ‘City of Angels,’ ‘Company,’ ‘Crazy for You,’ ‘Follies,’ ‘Funny Girl,’ ‘Guys and Dolls,’ ‘Gypsy,’ ‘Les Mis,’ ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ ‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Phantom,’ ‘Pippin,’ ‘Ragtime,’ ‘Sophisticated Ladies,’ ‘Sunday in the Park with George,’ ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Wicked,'” Finn said.
These show tunes will be performed by some of the originating stars.
“Frances Ruffelle, who played Éponine in the original ‘Les Mis’ and won a Tony for that role, will be back here on the Opera House stage recreating the famous song ‘On My Own,'” Finn said. “Stephanie J. Block, who’s a Tony winner on Broadway, created the role of Elphaba in the national tour of ‘Wicked’ and she’ll be performing ‘Defying Gravity.'”
The lineup also includes Alfie Boe (“Finding Neverland”), Sierra Boggess (“The Little Mermaid”), Gavin Creel (“Hello Dolly!”), Christopher Jackson (“Hamilton”), LaChanze (“The Color Purple”), Beth Leavel (“The Prom”), Norm Lewis (“Phantom of the Opera”), Andrea McArdle (“Annie”), Andrew Rannells (“The Book of Mormon”), Vanessa Williams (“Into the Woods”), Betsy Wolfe (“Waitress”) and Tony Yazbeck (“On the Town”).
“Most everybody is a Tony nominee or a Tony winner,” Finn said. “It’s a group that I’m thrilled to have put together and a group that will possibly never all be seen again together on stage, so it’s really a once-in-a-lifetime moment.”
The entire evening is hosted by Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart (“Aladdin”).
“One of the most energetic guys on Broadway,” Finn said. “He was the original Genie in ‘Aladdin’ on Broadway and won a Tony Award for the role. He is going to be the host of the evening and he’s got more energy than I think I’ve ever seen in one person. He’s going to be a great host for the evening and open up the night performing a number from ‘Pippin.'”
It’s the perfect way to kick off another year of shows, including “Ain’t Too Proud,” “Beautiful,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Mean Girls,” “Hamilton” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“It’s a really special place to see a show,” Finn said. “We really do present and offer our audiences the very best quality and the most important art that can be seen on stage.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews Anais Mitchell at Strathmore (Part 1) She wrote the smash Broadway musical “Hadestown,” which won eight Tonys in 2019.
This Friday, Anaïs Mitchell will perform live at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland.
“It is essentially a two-band bill, but the two bands are very similar,” Mitchell told WTOP. “The first set is from my folk band Bonny Light Horseman with Josh Kaufman and Eric D. Johnson … then we take a break and slightly reconfigure the stage to play my new record.”
Her newest tunes were written during a pandemic getaway to New England.
“This is definitely a pandemic album,” Mitchell said. “The pandemic hit New York City, I was nine-months pregnant with our second kid when New York started to feel like not a place to give birth. We made this 11th-hour decision to leave and go to Vermont where my family is and where I’m born and raised, and I had the baby on my parents’ sheep farm.”
Born in Montpelier, Vermont in 1981, Mitchell grew up a Quaker.
“My parents were hippie back-to-the-landers from the suburbs of New Jersey who bought a sheep farm in Vermont,” Mitchell said. “I was raised on stuff from that culture: folk music, the rise of singing songbook, I studied the violin as a kid. Then in high school I came under the influence of powerful female songwriters like Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, Dar Williams.”
At age 22, she won the New Folk Award at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas. After recording her debut album “The Song They Sang…When Rome Fell” (2002) in Austin, her second album “Hymns for the Exiled” (2004) got her signed by Righteous Babe Records.
“I love storytelling, balladry, British Isles balladry, the Texas songwriter tradition of Townes Van Zandt, very wordy, word-smithy, storyteller type of songs,” Mitchell said. “In that sense, it wasn’t a huge leap to go from writing songs to writing a piece of musical theater.”
In 2006, Mitchell delivered her first draft of her folk opera “Hadestown.”
“I was driving home from one of these gigs, I think I was in Virginia, I’m on the highway and these lines dropped out of the sky,” Mitchell said. “It was the melody of that song ‘Wait for Me’ from ‘Hadestown’ and it went: ‘Wait for me I’m coming, in my garters and pearls, with what melody did you barter me, from the wicked underworld?'”
Those lyrics never made it into the show, but they inspired the musical, adapting the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, who visits the underworld to rescue his lover, Eurydice.
“It was just a story, a myth that I remember from when I was a kid that I always loved and made a big impression on me,” Mitchell said. “I just started to follow the thread into the labyrinth. … 95% of it was me banging my head against a wall at a desk somewhere trying to make a rhyme that would incrementally improve some aspect of the show.”
“Hadestown” unfolded at the New York Theatre Workshop in the summer of 2016.
“It was an extraordinary moment to put the pencil down,” Mitchell said. “There came a moment where I had to do that. I was literally not allowed to change anything else because the show had to be locked to open on Broadway. It was a feeling like, ‘Wow, as much work as I know I personally put into this thing, it doesn’t feel like it’s mine. It’s its own animal.'”
It earned 14 Tony nods, winning eight, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.
“It’s like a dream to me,” Mitchell said. “It’s as if I was sleepwalking. I sometimes look at photos on my phone from that time like, ‘Who was that? How did that happen?’ I’m so grateful for those awards … [but] I’ve stopped looking for the satisfaction of those public recognition moments because you’re just a deer in the headlights — at least I was.”
She was thrilled to see Baltimore native Andre DeShields win Best Supporting Actor.
“Andre is just an extraordinary human,” Mitchell said. “He was in his 70s! Obviously he had been received as a great artist before this, but it was as if him walking up there, that slow walk up there, his beautiful speech to receive this Tony, it was like he was gracefully meeting his destiny. He knew he was destined for it. He just had to wait 73 years.”
Mitchell gracefully returned to her destiny in 2020 by forming the band Bonny Light Horseman, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album in 2021.
“It was like a gateway drug back to the world of music,” Mitchell said. “I found working on ‘Hadestown’ that I didn’t have a lot of bandwidth to write my own songwriter songs. … The exception to that rule was this project, Bonny Light Horseman, especially because our first album was inspired by traditional texts. … It was like drinking from a deep well.”
Will she ever return to Broadway at any point in the future?
“For people who come to [Strathmore], we are doing a couple of ‘Hadestown’ songs,” Mitchell said. “I’m really enjoying just writing songs and making records right now, it feels like right where I want to be, but I don’t like to imagine not writing another musical. … I would love to do it again. It’s just a matter of having to care about that story 1,000%.”
Who knows? Maybe some more lyrics will drop out of the sky en route to Strathmore.
“I’ll keep my net open,” Mitchell said.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'Finding Fellowship' (Part 1) Sunday remains the most segregated day of the week in much of America, but a trio of local churches have proven that social divisions can be overcome with heavenly grace.
That’s the premise of the new one-hour documentary “Finding Fellowship,” which streams nationally on PBS and airs locally on Maryland Public Television (MPT), WHUT-TV and WETA throughout the entire month of February for Black History Month.
“‘Finding Fellowship’ is what I like to call a story of the possible,” Filmmaker Jason Green told WTOP. “It explores how three racially-segregated churches in once rural Quince Orchard, Maryland … happened to come together and merge in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 [and] stayed together for the better part of 53 years.”
They include the Black congregation of Pleasant View Methodist Episcopal Church and the white congregations of Hunting Hill Methodist Episcopal Church and McDonald Chapel.
“[Hunting Hill] was northern and [McDonald Chapel] was southern … split over the issue of slavery,” Green said. “Maryland’s history on the dividing line of Union and Confederate plays out in this story. The merger is between descendants of former slaves and former slave owners. It adds to the dynamism and shows how we can overcome division.”
Green produced the hour-long film with older sister Kisha Davis, both inspired by their grandmother Ida Pearl Green, a longtime member of Pleasant View United Methodist.
“I learned this story from my then 95-year-old grandmother,” Green said. “She was telling me how her church had fallen on hard financial times. All three churches were struggling because this community of Maryland was transitioning from a rural to a suburban community. People were moving off the farms, so churches were losing membership.”
One evening, Pleasant View members gathered to discuss their uncertain future.
“Were they going to merge with another Black congregation? Were they going to merge with white congregations?” Green said. “As those discussions were bouncing around the room, news was delivered into that small room that Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. That meeting was taking place on April 4, 1968.”
Rocked by the news, they decided to be a healing force in their community.
“What would Dr. King want in a situation like this? What should our response be to this moment?” Green said. “Ultimately, the decision of all three congregations was to merge together. … These pioneers wisely decided that they were going to buy new land, build a new church and also take on a new name. … It allowed them to create something new.”
Thus, Fairhaven United Methodist Church was born near North Potomac and Darnestown.
“The name Fairhaven is actually taken from Scripture,” Green said. “There is a story where the Apostle Paul is being taken to Rome and the ship that they’re sailing on meets rough waters, hard seas, and they actually take refuge in the port of Fairhaven. I like to think that it’s actually a really appropriate name because this whole merger was facing rough seas.”
What were some of those early challenges?
“As soon as these three congregations merged together, members of every original church left and decided this social experiment wasn’t for them,” Green said. “But there was a dedicated group of individuals who wanted to make this work. … How do you integrate the physical sanctuary? The church choir? What’s the preaching style? The singing style?”
He hopes other churches might follow this merger model.
“We are creatures of habit and comfort and worship in spaces that have familial or generational ties,” Green said. “This is the pew my mother or grandmother sat in. …. The thing I would challenge us to think about is: when are we going to be uncomfortable? If truly we want to grow … we have to find opportunities to be approximate with one another.”
Green himself worked on the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama and served as economic counsel to help the nation climb out of the Great Recession. Today, he serves as the Chair of Montgomery County’s Remembrance and Reconciliation Commission, but even he found pleasant discoveries about his own family history through making the film.
“We learned that our father desegregated his elementary school [at Travilah Elementary],” Green said. “We learned about desegregating elementary schools in Little Rock, but I never learned about desecrating elementary schools in Montgomery County.”
You’ll also be glad to know that his grandmother is still alive and well.
“She’s now 103,” Green said. “Grandma Pearl is bringing it!”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'A.D. 16' at Olney Theatre (Part 1) Cinco Paul created “Schmigadoon!” and Bekah Brunstetter wrote for “This Is Us.”
Together, they’ve written “A.D. 16” for Olney Theatre Center, which runs through March 6.
“This all started in Cinco’s beautiful mind,” Brunstetter told WTOP. “I had just seen his movie ‘Secret Life of Pets’ [and] worked on some plays about Jesus as a teenager for this acting school for young people in L.A., so my brain was already there. It was one of those emails that felt like divine intervention like, ‘Bekah, you need to work on this.'”
The plot follows teenage Mary Magdalene (Phoenix Best), who crushes on the carpenter’s son next door named Jesus (Ben Fankhauser). In her quest to impress him, she fends off a trio of 1st-Century Mean Girls and Beastie Boys-inspired wise guys from the Sanhedrin.
“It’s teenaged Mary Magdalene crushing on teenaged Jesus,” Paul told WTOP. “It is a fun topic to explore. It’s these missing years from Jesus’ life in the Bible. We’re simply saying what would happen if a girl had a crush on him? … It is for people who believe or people who don’t believe. We’re not out to push the envelope or take potshots at religion.”
Magdalene finds it easy to love Jesus but hard to get him to love her in that way.
“He’s not like any other kid,” Brunstetter said. “He’s not on this earth to find a girlfriend. He hasn’t found his path yet or realized his ultimate calling, but he does have a sense that there is something up with his life. … He’s like the ultimate unattainable dude — very wonderful, charming and easy to crush on because he’s kind and wise beyond his years.”
The story also corrects a longtime misconception that Magdalene was a prostitute, which they call a male-driven myth invented by a Catholic pope in the 16th century.
“She was just a disciple,” Brunstetter said. “There’s a lot of friends in the Bible who were very important people in Jesus’ life that either get misremembered, mislabeled or not talked about. … Putting a young woman at the center of a biblical story is just thrilling.”
While Brunstetter writes the book, Paul writes the musical numbers.
“I decided very early on that I wanted to pay homage to one of my favorite times in music, which is ’80s and ’90s R&B,” Paul said. “It just felt right for this show because Mary is young and also the tie to gospel music that is in R&B, so there’s lot of TLC, En Vogue, Prince, Tony! Toni! Toné!, Janet Jackson — all those sounds you’ll find in the show.”
Audiences will recognize some of the playful song references.
“There’s these three Nazarene girls who warn Mary away from Jesus with a song called ‘That Boy,’ which is very much En Vogue, very much ‘Never Gonna Get It (My Lovin’),'” Paul said. “Then there’s a fantasy sequence in which Mary imagines Jesus crooning to her and it’s very much as if he were Prince, sort of a classic R&B ballad.”
Similarly, the set design brings modern flavor to period visuals.
“You have to feel like you’re really there, but it’s very colorful and has a contemporary vibe to it,” Paul said. “The set is amazing. There’s a giant turntable that spins around. There’s all these old buildings and homes made of rock. It looks as good as it sounds.”
Audiences are lucky to have elite Hollywood talent descend upon Olney, Maryland.
“I worked on the first three seasons [of ‘This Is Us’],” Brunstetter said. “I watch every week while texting all of the other writers who are still really dear friends of mine, so I’m a fan at this point. I also just worked on ‘Maid’ on Netflix. … I also have a musical adaptation of ‘The Notebook’ with Ingrid Michaelson that’s going to be running at Chicago Shakes in the fall.”
As for Paul, he’s affected an entire generation of children with “Despicable Me.”
“The grain of the idea came from this Spanish animator named Sergio Pablos: a villain adopts three little girls, so we took that and ran with it,” Paul said. “I don’t want to take credit or blame entirely for the Minions, because the director really designed those characters, but that’s been a once-in-a-lifetime career experience to have ‘Despicable Me’ take off the way it did.”
He has since moved on from animation to live-action musicals like “Schmigadoon!” which streams on Apple TV+
“Even Apple was surprised by the response,” Paul said. “People underestimate how appealing musicals are to people, how many people love musicals and are starved for that content. … I’m hoping we get a Season 2, because I would love to make more of that show. We had such a phenomenal cast. … Everything I do from now on, I want there to be songs in it.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Folger-Rock Hall collaboration (Part 1) Of all the great programs for Black History Month, arguably the most unique might just be a collaboration between the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Together, the two cultural institutions will present the virtual event “It’s Been Said All Along: Voices of Rage, Hope & Empowerment,” which streams from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday.
“Combining music and poetry isn’t even a combination — it’s already there,” Artistic Curator & Poetry Programs Manager Teri Cross Davis told WTOP. “There’s already music in poetry, so it was really a matter of how can we display poetry to its best self and how can we combine it with music in a way that engages us emotionally and intellectually?”
In 2020, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened the exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio.
“The exhibit was already in place when I contacted the Rock Hall saying, ‘Hey, I’m really interested in working with you and collaborating on a reading for the poetry series,'” Davis said. “They were into the idea. … We thought that going through the exhibit might be the best way to have the poets respond to the exhibit, so I selected four poets to respond.”
Those poets are Reuben Jackson, Ashley M. Jones, Patricia Spears Jones and Nate Marshall, who will read original poems inspired by the lyrics of Black artists like Public Enemy, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke.
“They’re love letters and thematic responses to what these artists meant and still mean to me,” Jackson told WTOP. “My emotional connection to the word [and] music is chronic. I selected artists who are pivotal in what’s sustaining the Black musical tradition with my personal and emotional responses to what they stood for and what they still mean to me.”
The virtual readings will include a poem inspired by Sam Cooke’s “Cupid.”
“I’m a lifelong romantic and my initial connection to that song was feeling all that yearning as a young, love-smitten Black child [wondering], ‘Is it OK to be that person?'” Jackson said. “There’s the beauty of the music, then there’s, for me, the courageousness of people like Sam Cooke, not just musically but all the things that he spoke about socially.”
You’ll also hear a poem inspired by James Brown’s “Licking Sick.”
“The connection there is somewhat whimsical,” Jackson said. “Some of the community viewed what was eventually named R&B kind of like ‘don’t mess with that stuff.’ You think the opening, ‘Mama come here quick and bring me that licking stick.’ Middle-class African Americans and my mother’s side of the family was ‘don’t mess with that stuff.'”
You’ll also hear a poem inspired by Nat King Cole’s “Serenata.”
“It’s longing and espousing the glory of love,” Jackson said. “I don’t know the lyrics right off hand, but it’s something like ‘when you’re in love, love finds a way.’ I’m a kid next to the radio, I took my brother’s transistor radio and stuck a little earbud in, I’m hearing these songs, these beautiful arrangements, all this sentiment and I’m drowning my pillowcase.”
Jackson’s day job is the jazz archivist at the University of the District of Columbia.
“The song is the campfire and I’m the one looking up at the stars,” Jackson said.
The exhibit is all woven together into a one-of-a-kind video presentation.
“I really wanted this to be a poetic mixtape,” Davis said. “In the days of old when we made mixtapes, you listened to the end of one song, then you listened to the beginning of another song to see if there was a conversation. So I took their songs and made a playlist of the songs that they selected, and now I’m actually weaving in their poems.”
After the poetry reading, you’ll see a pop-up exhibition of rare items from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, followed by a moderated Q&A with the audience for Black History Month.
“We are looking for hope and strength right now,” Davis said. “We know we are a resilient country and resilient people, but we need to be reminded. … For Black History Month, what better way to honor your ancestors and tap back into everything that gave them the energy and strength to create the world we live in … to build a better world for tomorrow?”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley reviews 'Afterparty' on Apple TV+ Imagine attending your high school reunion only for your classmate to die that night.
That’s the comedy premise of “Afterparty,” which just dropped Episode 4 on Apple TV+.
Full disclosure: critics were only given access to the first seven out of eight episodes, so I still don’t know “whodunnit.” We’ll all have to watch the finale together on March 4.
However, I can definitely tell you to stick with it even if Episode 1 doesn’t hook you. The pilot features multiple moments where physical humor doesn’t exactly connect, but I promise it gets better in a hurry to the point that you’ll be begging for new episodes.
Created by Christopher Miller (“The Lego Movie”), the story follows Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish), who investigates the death of pop star Xavier (Dave Franco), who was apparently pushed to his death the night of his 15-year high school reunion. His former classmates wake up like “The Hangover” to be interviewed by Danner like “Knives Out.”
Here’s the catch: Every episode is told from a different classmate’s perspective like a comedy version of Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” (1950) or Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel” (2021). There’s another catch: Every episode is also told in a different Hollywood genre.
Episode 1 is a romantic comedy told from the perspective of Aniq (Sam Richardson), a shy escape-room designer trying to win the heart of his high school crush Zoë (Zoë Chao), who friend-zoned him in favor of future ex-husband Brett (Ike Barinholtz). The “rom” works better than the “com,” as we root for Zoë to choose Aniq rather than the cocky Xavier.
Episode 2 is an action movie told from the perspective of Brett, who shows a softer side raising his daughter with Zoë rather than the extreme jealous streak that we saw from Aniq’s perspective in the pilot. This blue-tinted episode begins to show the promise of the premise, how the differing perspectives and genres can unlock real action-packed fun.
Episode 3 is where the show hits its stride as a musical from the perspective of Yasper (Ben Schwartz), who tries to reconnect with former ska bandmate Xavier. If you found Yasper annoying in the first two episodes, he’ll become your favorite character with hilarious numbers: “Two Shots,” “Yeah Sure Whatever” and “Three Dots from Stardom.”
Episode 4 is a thriller from the perspective of Chelsea (Ilana Glazer), a once-popular girl turned social outcast due to a controversial incident in high school. She keeps receiving mysterious text messages from an unknown number and believes she’s being stalked through the hallways during the reunion, all while vowing revenge against Xavier.
Episode 5 is a teen movie from the perspective of wallflower Walt (Jamie Demetriou), who no one seems to remember. In fact, his episode is the only one not named after him, simply called “High School.” It opens with a red-stamp logo like “American Pie” as he hosts a party at his parents’ house, desperately trying to fit in while revealing key backstory.
Episode 6 might be the most creative of all as we see an animated film told from the perspective of Zoë. It cleverly shows Zoë as a two-headed split personality: Fun Zoë wants to hook up with Xavier, while Serious Zoë wants to give Aniq a chance. There’s one point we think the animators mess up, only to realize they’re showing her two sides merging.
The penultimate chapter, Episode 7, is a police procedural told from the perspective of Danner, who explains her back story on the beat, from a series of stolen packages on front porches to a full-fledged Hollywood mansion murder. I watched the clock, thinking they were running out of time to wrap things up, only to realize there is one more episode.
I can’t give it an official grade yet until we see how it ends. My guess is that the culprit is someone we haven’t considered yet, or that it wasn’t a murder at all. Maybe Xavier fell?
Until then, I marvel at how it began as a mediocre pilot that evolved into a promising exercise in genres and perspectives to the point that I can’t wait for the final episode.
In a way, the show itself is like Zoë’s view of Aniq: It starts out cute but not dating material, then the more time you spend with it, you adore it and can’t imagine your life without it.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley tackles 'Audible' on Netflix (Part 1) You can call audibles at the line of scrimmage, but the snap count isn’t always audible.
That’s the theme tackled in the new Oscar-shortlisted documentary “Audible” now on Netflix, chronicling football at the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, Maryland.
“I grew up about 30 minutes away,” director Matthew Ogens told WTOP. “My best friend since I was 7 years old is deaf, so I had a window into the deaf community and saw that there was not much deft storytelling … or it would be conventional ‘about’ and not ‘through’ characters. I wanted to tell a film not about, but with the Maryland School for the Deaf.”
Growing up in D.C., Potomac and Gaithersburg, he heard of the school’s winning streak.
“It took 12 years to get made and connect with Netflix with lots of stops and starts along the way,” Ogens said. “Coach Ryan, who is the head coach in the film, when I first connected with the school wanting to do a film, he was a player on the team. That’s how long the cycle was. … It happened when it happened. It happened at the perfect time.”
Aesthetically, Ogens shows players hitting the sled against sun rays, while using sound design like “Sound of Metal” or “CODA” to put viewers inside the deaf players’ cleats.
“I knew that I wanted to make sound a character in the film,” Ogens said. “It’s a film in some ways about sound and senses, so I wanted to convey to a hearing audience who could never know what it’s like to be deaf. … Also, vibrations. … Going for those bassier, lower, distorted sounds, so if someone who’s deaf turns up the volume, they might feel it.”
Revelatory details include flashing lights in the locker room to get pumped up for a game, hitting a gong on the sideline to start each play with vibrations, and the coach’s belief that deaf players hone their other senses to see the ball better than hearing students.
“It’s not a silent world,” Ogens said. “Go into that locker room before a game. It doesn’t sound so quiet. … I don’t look at them as great football players for being deaf; they’re really good football players who happen to be deaf. There’s a really big difference, proven by their record of playing both deaf and hearing schools for many, many years.”
Ironically, when Ogens finally showed up to film, the team lost its unbeaten streak.
“I showed up on the wrong day!” Ogens said. “No. 23 says, ‘This loss will not define us.’ That’s true literally, they come back to win, but it’s true of them in life. I don’t think of it as a football or sports film. That gives it its arc, its hook, but it’s one element in their life: school, family, relationships. … Football is just a great metaphor for the ups and downs of life.”
- WTOP’s Feb. 2022 entertainment guide
Founded in 1868, the Maryland School for the Deaf has two area campuses, recently celebrating its 100th anniversary in Frederick, while marking 50 years in Columbia this fall.
“We are a state-funded school,” Interim Chief Educational Programs Officer Jennifer Yost Ortiz told WTOP. “We’re free for all deaf and hard-of-hearing students throughout the state. They do not pay tuition. We are fully accredited and we serve students from birth to the age of 21. Right now we’re serving approximately 450 students from all over the state.”
The methods of instruction are just like hearing schools, but in a different language.
“American Sign Language is our language of instruction,” Ortiz said. “About 90% of our teaching faculty is deaf. We use a very rigorous curriculum, the same one used in public schools. Both campuses are nearby to Gallaudet University in D.C., so it’s a very deaf-friendly environment. That’s why we attract so many deaf and hard-of-hearing students.”
Ortiz’s sons play on the team: quarterback Zeke and running back Zion.
“Wait until you see her sons play!” Ogens said. “[Zion] score a lot of the touchdowns.”
Ogens had to recast numerous times over the past decade because the seniors kept graduating. Ultimately, his main character became senior Amaree McKenstry-Hall.
“I wanted to follow a senior because that cusp of graduating is a pivotal moment,” Ogens said. “Imagine if you’re deaf in this beautiful utopia [graduating] into a more exposed, hearing world. … He’s unique in that he was not born deaf; he got meningitis at age 3. Hopefully he represents the relatable experiences that other deaf teens go through.”
In just 40 minutes, the film captures an impressive mosaic of teammates and classmates.
“His relationship with Jalen [Perry], who is a cheerleader [shows] that confidence about being yourself applies to being deaf, not just being gay,” Ogens said. “Also, Teddy [Webster] is very much a catalyst. You can take great lessons out of tragedy.”
The experience was healing and educational for both the school and the film crew.
“They were willing to teach us a lot about the film industry,” Ortiz said. “Both groups worked really hard to minimize distractions … to spotlight our school and maintain a regular academic environment. … We didn’t realize all the nuances in creating a film, then at the end to sit back and watch, it’s a great way to reflect on all of the work we do.”
Filmed in 2019, the film also captured the last of pre-pandemic life.
“The following March was when we locked down for COVID,” Ortiz said. “When I watched it again recently I realized that was our last documentation of our pre-COVID dates. We haven’t had a homecoming dance since because of the pandemic … so that movie gave us a lot of memories and a lot to look forward to when we get back to that no-mask time.”
Area residents will also love seeing Downtown Frederick on display.
“Frederick is an amazing town,” Ortiz said. “Wherever I go, if it’s a cashier or somebody I’m interacting with, they at least know how to finger spell or they have interpreters at the ready. It’s just so deaf-friendly and so accommodating. The Frederick community is so focused on inclusivity and they always make sure that includes the deaf community.”
That community will be watching Tuesday to see if “Audible” is nominated for an Oscar.
“It’s very exciting,” Ogens said. “Of course, we’re going to do something. We’re still going to require social distancing of six feet, we’re still going to require masks and things, we will work out the logistics, but we’re definitely going to do something. We’re very excited.”
Win or lose, it’s an honor to be among the 15 short documentaries on the Oscar shortlist.
“This diverse group of filmmakers from around the world, shortlisted or not, they’re all important,” Ogens said. “I’m humbled to get this far. If it means elevating the deaf community and teaching people to listen about accessibility … that’s amazing to me.”
Here’s hoping “CODA” wins Best Picture, while “Audible” wins Best Documentary Short.
The new CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) might just be a Championship of Deaf Athletes.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews National Philharmonic's 'The Planets' (Part 1) The National Philharmonic is partnering with NASA for a pair of out-of-this-world concerts.
“The Planets” comes to Strathmore this Sunday, and Capital One Hall on Feb. 13.
“There’s a massive screen above the stage where the imagery will be projected and the orchestra underneath,” Music Director Piotr Gajewski told WTOP. “It’s a very large orchestra, maybe 90, almost 100 musicians because there are some very special instruments: harps, celesta, lots of different percussion, English horn, contrabassoon.”
The program opens with Claude Debussy’s “La Mer” set to images of planet Earth.
“‘La Mer’ translates to the sea,” Gajewski said. “When you look at the Earth, especially from space, what’s striking is the blue of the oceans … it was composed about 1905. It’s an impressionistic piece. You hear sounds of the ocean. It’s very easy with music to evoke waves, birds or the sun rising over the ocean from soft calmness to great emotion.”
After intermission, images of other planets are set to Gustav Holst’s “The Planets, Op. 32.”
“He composed (the piece) almost 100 years ago,” Gajewski said. “It’s one movement to present each planet. He was almost guided more by the astrology than the astronomy of it. He created one movement for each planet, not Pluto, which back then wasn’t known and since then has had a checkered history with regard to its status, and not Earth.”
The first planet is Mercury, the swift messenger of communication.
“Mercury is a lot of fleeting music because Mercury is the winged messenger, so a lot of fast flutes, woodwinds, strings and so forth,” Gajewski said.
The second is Venus, the famous goddess of love and beauty.
“Venus is softer imagery and woodwinds and such,” Gajewski said.
The third movement covers Mars, the god of war and aggression.
“Mars is the bringer of war, so it’s a very warlike theme with a pounding (beat),” Gajewski said. “That rhythm goes straight through that movement for six or seven minutes.”
Next up is Jupiter, the guardian of the gods with growth and prosperity.
“Jupiter is probably the best well-known music from ‘The Planets,'” Gajewski said. “Jupiter is the bringer of jollity, so it’s kind of dance-like music with great horn tunes and such.”
Next is the ringed planet Saturn, the god of harvest with focus and nobility.
“Saturn is the bringer of old age,” Gajewski said. “It’s slow with low tones, basses, tired sounding.”
The penultimate planet is Uranus, the god of ingenuity and discoveries.
“Uranus is the magician,” Gajewski said. “Orchestras are really good at magical sounds with percussion things and celesta and those kinds of instruments.”
Finally is Neptune, the god of our collective consciousness, dreams and fantasies.
“Finally Neptune, the mystic, also very much harps and celesta percussion,” Gajewski said. “The very first, I believe in the history of music, fade out. There’s a hidden women’s chorus backstage. They sing this space-sounding music, steady and repeating, getting further and further away, accomplished by a boor backstage being slowly shut.”
All of these movements are set to stunning images by NASA Goddard.
“It gives us a great excuse to share the stunning images that NASA has and creates,” Gajewski said. “I found out they have like seven animators on staff. Who knew? So they were tasked with creating the imagery. They have lots of images to choose from, and videos, and they have the ability to animate stuff, so they get very creative with this.”
Out in the lobby, children can enjoy educational materials.
“We have something called Science on the Sphere, a 68-inch sphere in which moving images are projected,” Gajewski said. “Also, a preconcert lecture from a real astronaut, so that’s really cool for kids and everyone young at heart.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley salutes Virginian making 'Riverdance' history (Part 1) A 22-year-old from Richmond, Virginia is about to make history as a pioneering dancer.
Morgan Bullock will be the first Black female dancer to perform in “Riverdance,” which hits the Kennedy Center this March as part of its 25th anniversary North American Tour.
“It’s really amazing,” Bullock told WTOP. “I’ve grown up as an Irish dancer obsessed with ‘Riverdance,’ so to be the first Black woman in ‘Riverdance’ is such an amazing honor … being that little girl watching ‘Riverdance’ and never seeing someone who looked like me up there, it just means so much for me to be that person for other people.”
Growing up the daughter of NBA referee Ray Bullock and accountant Yolanda Bullock, she discovered “Riverdance” by finding the original 1994 Eurovision performance on YouTube.
“I was obsessed with the video,” Bullock said. “I’d watch it over and over again. I’m lucky to have been able to go to the show so many times … it was definitely love at first sight with ‘Riverdance.’ It was just mesmerizing and I always knew that I wanted to be a part of it.”
What impressed her most about the unique dance style?
“What really drew me to Irish dancing is the really intricate footwork,” Bullock said. “There can be so much going on with the feet and very little happening with the upper body … I had grown up doing ballet and tap-dancing and it was like something I had never seen before. It just looked like a lot of fun … it looked like something I could see myself doing.”
Bullock first attempted Irish dancing at age 10, studying the technique at the Baffa Academy of Irish Dance before graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University.
“It took a lot of dedication and a lot of missing out on things that you’d be doing as a normal teenager, but it was just something I was so in love with and there’s such a community in Irish dancing that I didn’t really think twice about (it),” Bullock said.
She even attended a “Riverdance” summer school in Boston in 2017.
“That was just a way for me to familiarize myself with the choreography,” Bullock said.
During the pandemic, she started posting TikTok videos of her Irish dancing to modern songs, from Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” to Doja Cat & SZA’s “Kiss Me More.”
“Those got the attention of a lot of people that I didn’t expect them to get the attention of, including the Taoiseach and Prime Minister of Ireland, Beyoncé’s mom, so many random people from all over saw my videos,” Bullock said.
These videos ultimately served as her audition tape for the “Riverdance” tour.
“They saw something in those videos that they thought would be a great addition to the show,” Bullock said. “I am very, very fortunate for that. I had just taken a break from dancing, so to be able to come back to dancing and be a part of ‘Riverdance’ is amazing.”
The North American Tour kicks off March 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah, before stopping in Boston; Springfield, Illinois; Pittsburgh; Buffalo, New York; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Toledo, Ohio; Des Moines, Iowa; Kansas City, Missouri and Birmingham, Alabama.
Locally, the tour hits the Kennedy Center from March 15 to March 27 during St. Patrick’s Day.
“It’s a nice long stay in D.C., so I’m excited about it being fairly local,” Bullock said. “That’s the only place we’re going to be for two weeks, so I’m super excited … I actually went to see ‘Riverdance’ with my parents at the Kennedy Center, so it’s a full-circle moment.”
Her family will certainly make the roughly two-hour trip up from Midlothian, Virginia.
“I think they’re going to be extremely proud,” Bullock said. “I’m so fortunate to have such a strong support system. I just can’t wait to see them in the audience. I’m sure there’s going to be tears from both of us. I’m probably going to be crying on stage.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews World Read Aloud Day (Part 1) It’s Groundhog Day, but don’t be surprised if the groundhog pops out holding a book.
That’s because it’s also World Read Aloud Day, a global initiative to inspire youth literacy.
“A non-profit called Lit World started it several years ago and now over 173 countries across the world participate,” Reading is Fundamental President and CEO Alicia Levi told WTOP. “It’s really all about celebrating the power of reading and the sharing of stories. … When the world celebrates on a day to read along, we are thrilled to participate.”
Reading is Fundamental — also known as RIF — is a D.C. organization founded in 1966 by Margaret McNamara, the wife of former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
“RIF celebrates Read Aloud Day every day because we know that reading aloud models good reading behavior for emerging readers,” Levi said. “It builds foundational reading knowledge through things as simple as turning a page, it builds background knowledge and it helps children develop a rich vocabulary. These are such critical skills.”
RIF has created the online portal Literacy Central featuring celebrity read-alouds.
“My personal favorite is by the late great Betty White [who] reads a story about animals,” Levi said. “We’ve partnered with wonderful children’s authors, including LeVar Burton, the wonderful children’s literacy advocate. … My daughter loves Chris Pine.”
There is also a call-to-action, Rally to Read, asking kids to pledge to read 100 books.
“We wanted to create some incentive for students,” Levi said. “We encouraged them to take a pledge [and] say, ‘Yeah, I’ll read 100 books.’ … 65% of children entering fourth grade are not reading proficiently — and the pandemic has exacerbated those tragic numbers. This generation of readers will suffer greatly as they try to catch up.”
There’s also a sweepstakes to donate 100 books to 100 school libraries.
“We’re giving 10,000 books away,” Levi said. “For all those that entered, we are super excited because we’ll be celebrating [the winners] with a podcast on March 2, which is another exciting reading celebration day: Read Across America Day.”
In the end, there is no better cause than inspiring children to read.
“Reading is Fundamental has done amazing work and distributed hundreds of millions of books and literacy resources to over 100 million children in this country,” Levi said. “This has been RIF’s mission for over 55 years. I am beyond proud to carry that on and work until we ensure that every child in this country has the opportunities that reading provides.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Movement Revisited' at Kennedy Center (Part 1) The Kennedy Center has the perfect way to kick off Black History Month this Friday.
Seven-time Grammy winner Christian McBride presents “The Movement Revisited” to honor Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama.
“This was my first-ever long-form opus,” McBride told WTOP.
And to perform it, McBride’s bringing his big band, singer Alicia Olatuja and the Howard University choir, led by McBride’s collaborator, J.D. Steele.
Tamara Tunie (“Law & Order: SVU”) will read the words of Rosa Parks; Vondie Curtis-Hall (“Chicago Hope”) will read Malcolm X; Dion Graham (“The Wire”) will read Muhammad Ali, and Keith David (“Greenleaf”) will read Dr. King, all backed by the Christian McBride Band.
The program features five movements, starting with a tribute to Parks.
“I did my best to capture what I thought were the personalities, the feels of each icon,” McBride said. “Rosa Parks: quiet, but very powerful. … It starts with Rosa — ladies first.”
The second movement honors Malcolm X, specifically focusing on the last year of his life, McBride said.
“When he broke away from the Nation of Islam [and] made his pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, he started to see the world from his own lens. He became a man of such wisdom in his last 12 months, so I wanted to capture the sound of someone awakening [with] late-era Coltrane.”
The third movement honors boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
“Loud, brash, funky,” McBride said, describing the Ali section.
The fourth movement honors King.
“The first part is called ‘Soldiers’ — that’s how I think of him, as a freedom soldier, all the marches he led, all the sit-ins,” McBride said. “He encompasses what we all preach but don’t practice,” McBride said.
“Your beliefs are not what make you a good person; it’s your actions,” he added. “I wanted to capture that in the second [part], which is called ‘A View from the Mountaintop.'”
Finally, it wraps with a salute to former President Barack Obama.
“The fifth and final movement is called ‘Apotheosis: Nov. 4, 2008,'” McBride said. “That piece was written just as Obama was taking office. … We all remember how we felt on that night, Nov. 4, 2008, seeing an African-American person become president of the United States, so that piece is dedicated to that night.”
Born in Philadelphia in 1972, McBride grew up listening to all the greats.
“My father was a professional bass player, and so was my great uncle, so it runs in my family, both of them having played a lot of jazz, rhythm and blues, and soul music,” McBride said. “Motown, James Brown, Al Green, Aretha Franklin — that’s my bone marrow.”
At age 9, he learned electric bass, then switched to acoustic bass in middle school.
“My great uncle was so excited that I was playing the upright bass that he gave me a crash course in jazz,” McBride said. “The way he taught me about the music was so wonderful and so entertaining that he singlehandedly sparked my love of jazz.”
He was dubbed a teen prodigy en route to studying at Juilliard.
“I was aware that I was being called a teen prodigy, and it was for the reason that I wanted to make good on all the potential that everyone thought I had,” McBride said. “My goal was to not be the cliche child star that burns out at age 20. I wanted to be around all the best musicians and take my cues from them.”
He surrounded himself with masters such as Ron Carter, Ray Brown, Ray Drummond, Marcus Miller and Buster Williams, while joining Bobby Watson’s group Teen Horizon.
In 1995, he was finally ready to release his own first album, “Gettin’ to It.”
“There was something they called the Young Lions Era,” McBride said. “The Marsalis Brothers had become very hot in the ’80s. … There was a spinoff group, like me, Roy Hargrove, Joshua Redman, James Carter, Stephen Scott, Greg Hutchinson, Mark Whitfield. Major record labels, for about 15 minutes, were interested in signing jazz artists.”
In 1996, he formed the group SuperBass with Ray Brown and John Clayton.
“I got to meet Ray Brown in 1991 and Ray became one of my greatest mentors, like a second father,” McBride said. “So much of what I learned on bass came from him. It was an honor of a lifetime when in Dec. 1992 he called and said, … ‘Why don’t you and John join me in Pittsburgh and we’ll do a three-bass thing?’ … That’s how SuperBass was born.”
He ultimately transitioned into the Christian McBride Band from 2000 to 2008.
“In the late ’90s, there had been a resurgence of classic soul, the neo-soul era, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, and my homies from Philadelphia, The Roots — Questlove put together a group, The Soul Aquarians,” McBride said. “Also, the jam band movement started to get huge. … I said, ‘Let me put together a band that’s a little of all of that.'”
The band included Terreon Gully (drums), Geoffrey Keezer (keys), Ron Blake (saxophone) and McBride, recording two albums: “Vertical Vision” (2003) and “Live at Tonic” (2006).
“Ron got a job playing with the ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Geoff got married and moved to California. Terreon got married and moved to Atlanta. So real life split the band apart, but we’re all still the best of friends,” McBride said. “One of these days we will play together — what am I talking about?!? We’re playing together Friday night at the Kennedy Center!”
It will be full circle for McBride, who co-produced the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors.
“That was pretty heavy; my first television credit,” McBride said. “That was pretty spectacular being able to do that for Sonny [Rollins] and all of those great legends there.”
Let’s not forget that McBride is a legend himself, having won seven Grammys.
“My first Grammy … I did not know I won,” McBride said. “I get this box in the mail from the Recording Academy, so I just thought it was a Christmas basket, a hoodie, a coffee mug or something. I open it up and it’s a Grammy! I went, ‘What?!?’ I had played on this record by McCoy Tyner. … If your name is on the album cover, then you are eligible for a Grammy!”
He tried the same thing a few years later, but turns out, there are different rules.
“Dee Dee Bridgewater did an album and she said, ‘I’m gonna do the same thing, I’m gonna make sure all of your guys’ names get on the album cover, so in case I win, all of you get Grammys,'” McBride said. “She won the Grammy and we found out the rule only applies to instrumental records, not vocal records. We were like, ‘Man! You guys with all these rules.'”
In 2012, he actually got to go on stage to accept a Grammy for “The Good Feeling.”
“When I finally went to the Grammys and heard my name get called as a winner and had to go up and make a speech, that’s a feeling you’ll never forget,” McBride said. “It’s incredible. That adrenaline goes through you, you tell yourself, ‘OK, be succinct, try not to get up and ramble, there’s a show going on, so get your words together and get on out.'”
And on that note, we’re out.
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'The Movement Revisited' at Kennedy Center (Part 2) Listen to the full conversation on our podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Wolf Trap summer lineup (Part 1) Does this snowy weather have you dreaming of warm summer nights?
Wolf Trap just unveiled its 2022 summer concert lineup.
Mark your calendars for these star-studded acts:
Wolf Trap Summer Concert Lineup
May 28: The Original Kings of Go-Go: Trouble Funk, E.U. with Sugar Bear
June 3: Wolf Trap Opera and National Orchestral Institute + Festival’s “Take the Reins”
June 4: Black Violin
June 5: Gipsy Kings featuring Nicolas Reyes
June 5: Wolf Trap Opera w/ Steven Blier: “Steven Blier and Friends”
June 8: Ben Rector: “The Joy of Music” Live
June 9: The Head and the Heart
June 10 & 11: Bonnie Raitt
June 12: Ana Gabriel
June 15: Belle & Sebastian
June 16-17: Sheryl Crow, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
June 18: Voodoo Threauxdown: Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue
June 18, 24, 26: Wolf Trap Opera’s “Der Freischütz”
June 19: Juneteeth Celebration: Thee Phantom & the Illharmonic Orchestra
June 21 & 22: “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”
June 23: The Black Crowes
June 24: Signature Theatre &Wolf Trap’s “Broadway In The Park”
June 25 & 26: Steely Dan with Amiee Mann
July 8: Pink Martini with National Symphony Orchestra
July 8: Wolf Trap Opera: Kate Lindsey in Recital
July 9: Wolf Trap Opea: Aria Jukebox
July 10: Yacht Rock Revue
July 15: Wolf Trap Opera presents Verdi’s “La traviata”
July 16: Sing-A-Long with “The Sound of Music”
July 17: The Barenaked Ladies, Gin Blossoms & Toad The Wet Sprocket
July 19: The Tedeschi Trucks Band & Los Lobos
July 20: Jackson Browne
July 21: Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen and Julien Baker
July 22 & 23: “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” In Concert
July 24: Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens
July 27: Ziggy Marley + Stephen Marley
July 28: Andrew Bird + Iron & Wine
July 29: “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” in Concert with NSO
July 30: Disney & Pixar’s “Toy Story” in Concert with NSO
Aug. 3: Fitz and the Tantrums
Aug. 4: Little Big Town
Aug. 5: Gil Shaham performs Tchaikovsky with NSO
Aug. 7: “ABBA The Concert”
Aug. 12, 14, 20: Wolf Trap Opera presents Floyd’s “Susannah”
Aug. 13: A.R. Rahman
Aug. 14: David Gray
Aug. 17: Goo Goo Dolls
Aug. 18: Elvis Costello & The Imposters
Aug. 19: Fantasia
Aug. 20-21: Steve Martin and Martin Short
Aug. 24: The Decemberists
Aug. 25-26: “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”
Aug. 27: Mary Chapin Carpenter w/ Emmylou Harris
Aug. 28: The Beach Boys
Sept. 2-4: Sting
Sept. 8: Yo-Yo Ma and Paquito D’Rivera with NSO
Sept. 14: An Evening with The Washington Ballet w/ Wolf Trap Orchestra
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Wolf Trap summer lineup (Part 2) Source
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews February entertainment (Part 1) February isn’t just for Valentine’s Day and the Super Bowl.
It also brings an entire month of entertainment to the D.C. area.
Here’s a roundup of fun events around town in February:
February Entertainment Guide
Feb. 1-March 6: “Change Agent” at Arena Stage
Feb. 1-March 6: “Flight” at Studio Theatre
Feb. 1-March 20: “Spamalot” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Feb. 1-March 20: “Daphne’s Dive” at Signature Theatre
Feb. 1-March 20: “Beethoven Symphonies Abstracted: Mo Willems” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 2: Potomac Phil ceremony on Groundhog Day
Feb. 2: Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes & Will Arnett at DAR Constitution Hall
Feb. 2: Read Aloud Day
Feb. 2: The War on Drugs at The Anthem
Feb. 2: Marc Cohn at The Birchmere
Feb. 2-3: Courtney Barnett at 9:30 Club
Feb. 3: Kacey Musgraves at Capital One Arena
Feb. 3-5: Tedeschi Trucks at Warner Theatre
Feb. 4: Max Weinberg at Rams Head Annapolis
Feb. 4: Colin Quinn at Miracle Theatre
Feb. 4: “Moonfall” in movie theaters
Feb. 4: “Phat Tuesdays” on Amazon Prime
Feb. 4: “The Worst Person in the World” in movie theaters
Feb. 4: “Jackass Forever” in movie theaters
Feb. 4: Christian McBride’s “The Movement Revisited” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 4-5: Roy Wood Jr. at the DC Improv
Feb. 4-6: “Trolls Live” at EagleBank Arena
Feb. 4-20: Winter Olympics in Beijing
Feb. 4-Match 6: “A.D. 16” at Olney Theatre Center
Feb. 5: Clint Black & Lisa-Hartman Black at Capital One Hall
Feb. 6: Be’la Dona at Bethesda Blues & Jazz
Feb. 6: National Philharmonic’s “The Planets” at Strathmore
Feb. 8: Boyz II Men at The Hippodrome
Feb. 8: Folger Theatre & Rock Hall present “It’s Been Said All Along”
Feb. 8: Bruce Dickinson at Warner Theatre
Feb. 8-15: Marshall Keys at Blues Alley
Feb. 9: Kevin Griffin of Better Than Ezra at City Winery
Feb. 9: Billie Eilish at Capital One Arena
Feb. 9-13: The Washington Ballet stages “Swan Lake”
Feb. 10: John Scofield at The Hamilton
Feb. 19: Gordon Lightfoot at Weinberg Center
Feb. 11: Ryan Hurd at The Fillmore
Feb. 11: Anais Mitchell at Strathmore
Feb. 11: “Love is Blind” returns to Netflix
Feb. 11: Fran Lebowitz at Kennedy Center
Feb. 11-12: “50 Years of Broadway” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 11-12: Erin Jackson at the D.C. Improv
Feb. 12: Rodney Carrington at Capital One Hall
Feb. 12: Andy Grammer at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Feb. 13: Super Bowl: Cincinnati Bengals vs. Los Angeles Rams
Feb. 13: National Philharmonic’s “The Planets” at Capital One Hall
Feb. 14: A Date with John Waters at Baltimore Soundstage
Feb. 14: Valentine’s Day Serenade with Ginuwine at MGM National Harbor
Feb. 14: Tony Sands sings Frank Sinatra at The Hamilton
Feb. 14-15: Gregory Porter at Strathmore
Feb. 15: “American Reckoning” on “Frontline”
Feb. 15-20: “Shen Yun” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 16: Whiskey Myers at The Fillmore
Feb. 16: National Geographic Museum reopens
Feb. 17: Amy Helm at Wolf Trap
Feb. 17: Sara Evans at The Birchmere
Feb. 17-19: Tedeschi Trucks at Warner Theatre
Feb. 17-19: David A. Arnold at DC Comedy Loft
Feb. 17-19: Langston Kerman at Pearl Street Warehouse
Feb. 17-20: Aires Spears at the DC Improv
Feb. 17-21: “Disney on Ice” at Capital One Arena
Feb. 19: Sal Volcano at Capital One Hall
Feb. 19: Carbon Leaf at Tally Ho Theater
Feb. 19: Martin Barre of Jethro Tull at Rams Head Annapolis
Feb. 19-20: Atlantic Starr at The Birchmere
Feb. 20: Rare Essence at City Winery
Feb. 20: Marshall Tucker Band at Capital One Hall
Feb. 21: Cordae at The Fillmore
Feb. 22: Tool at Capital One Arena
Feb. 21-23: Mavis Staples at Wolf Trap
Feb. 22-March 13: “Jesus Christ Superstar” at Kennedy Center
Feb. 23: John Mayer at Capital One Arena
Feb. 24: Tony Woods at DC Improv
Feb. 24: Sister Hazel at State Theatre
Feb. 24-25: Gabriel Iglesias at EagleBank Arena
Feb. 25: Jim Jeffries at DAR Constitution Hall
Feb. 25: “Cyrano” in movie theaters
Feb. 25: Kathy Mattea & Suzy Bogguss at Weinberg Center
Feb. 25: Rick Springfield at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
Feb. 25: “The Godfather” in cinemas for 50th anniversary
Feb. 25: DJ Kool & Rare Essence at Rams Head Baltimore
Feb. 25: Rakim & DJ Jazzy Jeff at Rams Head Baltimore
Feb. 25-26: AFI at 9:30 Club
Feb. 25-27: “TikTok: A Period Piece” at Round House Theatre
Feb. 26: National Philharmonic presents Chopin with Brian Ganz
Feb. 26-27: Lyle Lovett at The Birchmere
Feb. 26-27: alt-j and Portugal. the Man at The Anthem
Feb. 28: Renee Fleming & Uma Thurman at Kennedy Center
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WTOP's Jason Fraley previews February entertainment (Part 2) Source