POP PICKS: We shudder to think how old Joanne Germanatta was when she first heard the music of Morrissey or Bruce Springsteen. Nevertheless, the disco diva who calls herself Lady Gaga time-shares this spring's stages with luminaries from back in the day, as well as with contemporary pop icons such as Katy Perry and Britney Spears. Meanwhile, in scruffier locales, hipster stars Neko Case, A.C. Newman, and Peter Bjorn and John are due to enchant the Converse-wearing masses.
The biggest name on this season's slate comes with tons of baggage. But whatever your musical taste, you can't deny the towering tabloid-luring talents of Miss Britney Spears. She takes her "Circus" act to Verizon Center on March 24, so expect energetic dancing, convincing lip-syncing and "Womanizer."
On the indie beat, expect fewer backup dancers and more angst. Things heat up in May with a 9:30 Club performance by everybody's favorite Swedish whistlers (and Kanye West's favorite band), Peter Bjorn and John, on May 2. The band tries to prove it can get past "Young Folks" with new album, "Living Things," out March 31. On May 11, the same venue gets weird with a visit from Animal Collective. The band released "Merriweather Post Pavilion" in January, a pop-minded change of tune for the noise-prone Baltimoreans.
ROBERTO SAVIANO IS a writer on the run. The Italian author of "Gomorrah: Italy's Other Mafia" as received numerous death threats for his riveting exploration of the Camorra, the Neopolitan mafia with strands in virtually every aspect of Southern Italian society and commerce, and has gone into hiding.
The release of "Gomorrah," the equally riveting - and bloody, heartbreaking and enraging - film based on Saviano's book won't help lower the man's profile. Matteo Garrone worked with Saviano and other writers on distilling the tale into five stories that demonstrate with maximum hopelessness how deeply embedded the Camorra is the lifeblood of communities around Naples.
The setting itself is a character, the ugliest and meanest. The landscape is scarred and charred, bleak as the veldt, with hideous housing projects, crater-like quarries and a leaden sea. It is among these unprepossessing sites that our main players are buffeted by fate.
Continue Reading "Spring Arts Preview: Scene of the Crimes" »
RICHARD LLOYD HAS LIVED has lived the rock star life. Not only as the guitarist in seminal post-punk band Television, but years before as a Greenwich Village youth.
Lloyd's teenage years changed when he met Velvert Turner at 14 or 15 (he's unsure exactly). Turner wasn't just some ordinary kid from Brooklyn — he was Jimi Hendrix's one-and-only protege.
Well, technically.
At the time, Hendrix lived a few blocks from Lloyd, so after getting a lesson from Hendrix, Turner would head over to Lloyd's and teach him what Hendrix just taught.
Continue Reading "Spring Arts Preview: Tuning In to Hendrix" »
THIS SEASON'S SIGHTS ARE as diverse as the artists who created them. No unifying themes emerge from studying the lineup as a whole, but we did unearth one clue: This year, politics have been put aside in exchange for aesthetics, history and experimentation. In other words, there's a whole lotta stuff to look at.
Big names: Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial is still exploring landscape and geology in her art, nearly three decades later. The Corcoran presents "Systematic Landscapes" (March 14-July 12) three of Lin's large-scale installations for viewers to walk around, under and through. In addition, Lin will create a topographic representation of the Chesapeake Bay — made entirely of pins.
There's more to Marcel Duchamp than that oft-cited urinal, and the National Portrait Gallery is inviting Washington to see another side of the man. One hundred other sides, to be exact. "Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture" (March 27-Aug. 2) showcases self-portraits of Duchamp as well as portraits by Richard Avedon, Joseph Cornell, Jasper Johns, Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz and Andy Warhol.
POLITICS & PROSE IS a community resource without peer. With the disheartening demise of the Olsson's book and record stores and the general vanishing of independent bookstores, the Connecticut Avenue mainstay is one of D.C.'s only bulwarks against the big boxification of the written word, and a terrific place to hear authors read from their works just about every night. Best of all, after the readings, the writers are expected to take audience questions and give autographs.
Among the most noteworthy writers visiting P&P this spring are Rashid Khalidi (March 5), the distinguished scholar and focus of a minor 2008 campaign kerfuffle, Baltimore's own Laura Lippman (March 24), author of the Tess Monaghan mystery series; and the food critic, guru and memoirist Ruth Reichel (April 7).
Politics & Prose is, of course, challenged in its bookish supremacy by competitors like restaurant/bookstore Busboys & Poets, presenting Derek Hyra, author of"The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville" (Feb. 26), and Randy Shaw, author of "Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century" (March 31), among others.
ONE TIP ON "A Delicate Balance": Don't call it Edward Albee's first Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
"It was my second," Albee corrected in a recent phone interview, citing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" as his first. The jurors gave that play the prize, he said, but the board rejected it.
"I don't know; they thought the play was too good," Albee said, then amended: "I call it a half."
However one refers to it, the 1967 Pulitzer-winning "A Delicate Balance" takes the stage at Arena in Crystal City this month as part of Arena Restaged, a two-year festival featuring American playwrights.
Continue Reading "Spring Arts Preview: He Hears America Sniping" »
D.C. STAGES THIS SPRING provide quite the crash course in history. We go from Greek tragedy to the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to World War II. There's even a play weaving the Civil War AND World War II together. But even history anti-buffs will find something to enjoy in the myriad offerings the D.C. theater scene provides over the next few months, including fantastical allegory, politically minded works, dark workplace dramas and a Tennessee Williams play.
Do You Yahoo? Catalyst's 'Roundheads And Peakheads'
Catalyst Theater presents a story of the mythical land of Yahoo. It's not a place where you feel inferior to Google; it's a country facing civil war, with a government of rich landowners whose poor tenants are going to revolt. To combat this, the government tells the Roundheads that their problems are caused by the Peakheads, a minority. Somewhere, Karl Rove is taking notes.
» Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE; through March 15, $10; 202-399-7993.
She's No Pam: 'The Receptionist'
Studio Theatre Stage 4 is all about the dark comedies. In Adam Bock's "The Receptionist," the title character starts the play as smiling office savior, but things change when a visitor makes waves.
» Studio Theatre, Stage 4, 1501 14th St. NW; Feb. 25-March 22, $30; 202-332-3300, studiotheatre.org. (U St.-Cardozo)
Mommy Issues: 'Ion'
Poor Ion. Abandoned by his parents. He grows up at Apollo's temple as an orphan, until his mother arrives and (naturally) wants something. A Euripides play, "Ion," takes the Shakespeare Theatre Company's stage in this David Lan adaptation, directed by Ethan McSweeny.
» Shakespeare Theatre Company, Harman Hall, 610 F St. NW; March 10- April 12, $20- $79.75; 202-547-1122.
IT'S NEARLY SPRING, when a young man's fancy - and plenty of young women's as well - turns to thoughts of films. (Because, frankly, they're a bargain compared to what the young man will spend on Valentine's Day gifts for the young woman.) An international array of flickers is coming our way over the next few months, as well as many delightful homegrown treats, and
you don't have to either break the bank or learn the language to enjoy what's onscreen.
If you want to keep the Valentine's spirit for a little longer, the AFI Silver is offering "Screen Valentines: Great Movie Romances" through March 5. "Moulin Rouge" is more of a valentine to color than anything else, so if you want an actual romantic comedy, opt for something timeless like "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or "Say Anything." (No danger of remaking these today - Lloyd Dobler blasting "In Your Eyes" outside a window while holding up his iPod isn't exactly an iconic image.)
For a more twisted, NC-17 take on romance, wait until mid-April for "In the Realm of the Senses," Nagisa Oshima's 1976 true-story-based tale of a obsessive couple keeping the miseries of war at bay in their own violent way in 1930s Japan. And while it's not romantic, Oshima's 1983 English-language debut "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" is more mainstream, featuring David Bowie in a dramatic turn as a WWII POW and soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also plays the POW camp commandant).
REMEMBER WHEN YOUR kindergarten music room had all your favorite instruments: the xylophone, the woodblock, the sandpaper, the oscillating string-o-phone?
The oscillating what, you ask?
Robbert Bobbert, children's musician alter ego of the Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider, is trying to make that and other crazy words part of your everyday lingo during his stop at Jammin' Java on Feb. 21 as part of his Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine tour.
If it sounds like pure fun, that's what Schneider wants. "I'm really trying to entertain and get laughs."
"Before writing this book, I had no belief in the paranormal," said Stacy Horn, author of "Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, and Other Phenomena of the Unseen World."
The events Horn describes, however, are enough to give determined skeptics qualms: "Unbelievable" is a fount of thought-provoking information about physics, psychology and great American ghost stories.
The history of Duke University's parapsychology labs — which began exploring the paranormal in the 1920s — is Horn's entry into a shadowy world; the author follows the researchers assembled by Dr. J.B. Rhine through exorcisms, séances, psychedelic trips and contentious academic conventions.
"I'm still agnostic," said Horn, but, "I found no reason to reject their experiments. There's something that has to be explained. ... 'Telepathy' was how the Duke lab guys tried to explain it." Horn discusses and signs the book at Borders Bailey's Crossroads on March 26.
Continue Reading "Spring Arts Preview: She Wants to Believe" »
Addison Road