Sharpenicity

  JUST WHAT THE GOOD DOCTOR ORDERED  AT WASHINGTON STAGE GUILD  Washington Stage Guild has just the thing to cure  whatever may ail you!  The Good Doctor   with its  pokes at the foibles of human nature. After all laughter  is the best of medicines.  All sorts of people inhabit Chekhov’s world of short stories which Neil Simon adapted in this play. There is the sexton with a toothache  in “Surgery” who visits an overzealous dentist  or desperate situations like  “A Defenseless Creature” where a a nervous woman harasses a banker  with a sore foot to extort money supposedly on behalf of  her injured husband. Special note to fight choreographer John Gurski for the fight scene in that one. There are accidents that lead to a nervous breakdown like  “The Sneeze”  and there are ordinary life events that escalate like when a mother tries to cheat payment due as in “The Governess.” Sometimes t...

               TINA - THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL  at The National Theatre              In the 1970s, I  had spent weeks climbing around ruins in Peru.  I heard music of the Andes all over.  I  was  finally at  Machu Picchu to spend the night so I could get up early  and climb to see the sunrise from the top of the ruins.   As I got to steps by the gatekeepe,  I could hear his boom box blaring across the Andes “I Wanna Take You Higher”  by Tina Turner.   You don’t have to go climbing the Andes to hear her songs — Tina-The Tina Turner Musical  isright here  at the National Theatre, Washington DC,  until  Oct. 23, 2022.    The show has broken all records with the awards it has received since in premiered in April 2018 in London.  No one questions that Tina is a musical legend but  for this show  accola...

  Washington Stage Guild does it again with outstanding   Mrs. Warren’s Profession None of the characters in  George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession   agree with what  a woman should  do with her life.   No one will disagree that  the 2022 Washington Stage Guild production makes  it very clear that it is about CHOOSING their OWN  destinies. First written in 1893,  the play was not performed until 1902  because of government censorship over prostitution. Later the cast and crew were arrested by police in a 1905 performance for violating NYC’s version of the Comstock laws. The police report said it was shocking, but what was upsetting was not the profession (which is never stated)  but that society's treatment of women, that what drove them into that line of  work  should even be in question. Fast forward to the fight for the ERA, and change in law  that is long overdue, and that guarantees ...

  Welcome back to Sharpenicity         This week specials are something to sing about!   A Medieval Christmas concert         A  jazz opera MET in HD opera

  Eurydice — The Met Opera’s production  In Live in HD Opera —is stunning.  There is so much to say for the cast:  the amazing Erin Morley as Eurydice, Barry Banks  properly evil as  Hades, Nathan Berg  as her beloved father, Josha Hopkins as her lover/husband as Orpheus one.  Sticking by his side is his musical self, countertenor  (and breakdancer) Jakub Józef Orliński, The Three Stones —Chad Shelton, Ronnita Miller and Stacey Tappan—are an updated but essential addition to the  classic story.  Sarah Ruhl wrote the play, Mary Zimmerman the staging, Jakub Józef Orliński conducts.  Matthew Aucoin, the  31 year old composer now joins the Who’s Who list  of composers who have  written about Orphesus.  ( He  has a new book, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera.) About Eurydice, there is no connect with any possible divine or  historical character. She was born in stories that became poems ...

  Fairytale operas end so happily—Cinderella gets to marry the prince, Mythical figures on the other hand usually end up in a  bloody grusesome death scene.  We know from the news that while Cinderella might have gone off to be a princess, that is far from the happy ending for real life princesses!  But what to be made of the mythical females, like the princess Iphigenia who gets slain so that  Greek ships will  to have wind for their sails to Troy.  The opera  “. . . (Iphigenia)”  opens to ancient sailors thundering and roaring, drinking  and cavorting.  One Iphigenia after another is brought on stage, and led to the altar to be slaughtered like a goat for a celebratory feast to appease the female goddess Arthmis for the slaying of her favorite deer.     How wlll this ever end?   The myth spinners who go on for centuries have offered many versions in opera and paintings and movies (ione happy ending favorite is ...

  “Time is relative.” While the two year break from a live concert is a long time, the selections for The Folger Consort’s A Medieval Christmas   go back a thousand years, from late 11th century   Aquitaine and Catalonia to 14th century Italy   and 13th and 15th-century England.   The program included  exciting vocal music in Latin and early English as well as instrumental arrangements  Lesser-known earlier carols, such as “Miri it is” and “Edi beo thu hevene queene” flowed  into  later familiar English carols such as “Ah, my dear son,” “There is no rose,” and “Lullay, lullow,”  Soprano Emily Noël was exquisite in delivering vocal music selections. Multi-instrumentalists Dan Meyers on medieval winds and percussions and Mary Springfels on vielle and citole  were in top form.  Special thanks to Artistic Directors Robert Eisenstein and Christopher Kendall for this tradition by the Folger Consort. While modern music is an ind...