Stage Banter: The Arena Stage Blog

Citizen Review (Audio): ELLA

Click here for a Citizen Review of Ella from caller Caresse Hudson on Triscina Grey's program for Howard University Radio WHUR 96.3.

Citizen Review: Ella

by Susan Williams

When I was a theater student “back in the day,” we learned about the “suspension of disbelief,” an ancient Greek concept that basically states that in order for a play to work, the audience must suspend their disbelief that “this is not really happening,” and believe it’s true, at least for the duration of the play. Of course, this is much easier to do for some plays than others, depending on the writing of the piece as well as the truthfulness of the acting, skill of the director, etc.

Well, I have to say, my disbelief was totally suspended yesterday as I watched Tina Fabrique perform as the great Ella Fitzgerald. It may be corny and redundant to say, but she really did “channel” Ella. I was transported out of this time and place back to another, easier time when jazz singers were still popular and actually PRONOUNCED THEIR WORDS DISTINCTLY….did anyone else pick up on that? You could easily hear and understand every word Ms. Fabrique sang and spoke. It seems we’ve lost that ability, not only for singers, but as a society today.

I enjoyed Ms. Fabrique in The Women of Brewster Place as well, but her rendition of Ella was extraordinary. I’m sitting here listening to one of the Ella Fitzgerald cd’s I bought after the performance, and I could be hearing either Ms. Fabrique or Ms. Fitzgerald. They will be forever interchangeable in my mind now.

Kudos to the rest of the cast as well…I was impressed with the back up band and Harold Dixon who played Ella’s manager. They did well with the small parts they had (although the band had to do double duty as musicians and actors…good job!!).

The set was impressive, but simple. The use of mood lighting, including the revolving crystal ball, was perfect.

A word about the Crystal City Forum…that is a great space for the time being. I wasn’t sure until I actually went, but I really enjoyed being there. My friend and I ate in the restaurant at the Marriott hotel after the show, and the food was terrific. We plan to eat there again.

Citizen Review: ELLA and The Crystal City Experience

by Bob Poogach

Through the graciousness of incredibly friendly Arena personnel, I had the opportunity to catch the run through of ELLA at the new Arena "Restaged" in Crystal City before its official opening on Friday.  My most important suggestion to the good people at Arena is an addition to their obligatory pre-performance announcements about the do's and don'ts of cell phones and candy wrappers. For this show, "If you can't feel the beat and you aren't tapping your feet, please proceed to the lobby and dial 911."

Tina Fabrique as Ella Fitzgerald IS the show and quite a show she is.  A bandstand stage provides the setting for Ms. Fabrique to showcase her own talents in imitating the style and sound of the First Lady as she delivers a broad range of song standards from the likes of Porter, the Gershwins, and  Berlin. The thin construct of the play has Ella telling her story through between-songs "patter" encouraged by her long-time manager. All well and good but the play is the music and the music is s'wonderful. Hard to pick a personal favorite in this nightclub concert but a sassy A-tisket, A-tasket rendition of Ella's youthful classic highlighted the second act for me.  There are some rough and slow spots that still need to be smoothed out with the backup combo and the dialogue (not sure the homage to Satchmo was necessary), but one can't walk away without being a little lighter, a little happier, and a whole lot impressed with Tina Fabrique's talent.

For anyone worried about the trek to Crystal City while the Arena goes through its renovation, don't be.  We drove and parked a short block and a half away. Street parking is available but not sufficient to handle a full crowd. There's apparently free parking at the Marriott lot around the corner but the better bet is just to take the Metro to the Crystal City stop -- it's right there and a short underground walk away from the theatre. Crystal City can be a deserted place after work hours but the long list of nearby restaurants and hotels and the sanitized brick surroundings makes this temporary home a safe and inviting environment. The theatre itself is arranged in more traditional orchestra seating but the seats and leg room are more than ample for any Redskin or Wizard taking in a show.

One final thought. Upon returning home, I dug out an old cassette of Ella Fitzgerald performing "The Irving Berlin Songbook." Was it live or was it Memorex? Was it Ella or was it Tina? I knew. But the theatre experience blurs those lines. Arena has chosen well with its inaugural "remote" performance.

Citizen Review: Ella and the Crystal City Experience

By Steve from Bethesda

What an incredible show!

I was lucky enough to catch the final rehearsal of “Ella” last night, and it is wonderful!  Tina Fabrique was great in “The Women of Brewster Place” but she is incredible as Ella Fitzgerald.  Ms. Fabrique has the chops to accept the challenge of comparison to the great Ella.  She can scat and swing, hit the high notes and take on the blues.  The stage band is tight, and the set and lighting are top notch.  With apologies to the Gershwin brothers, this is no lady be good – this lady be great!

The new space in Crystal City will be good for theater goers from across the region.  The seats are comfortable with good leg room (for those of us with long legs).  The best part of the temporary quarters for Arena – it is accessible by METRO.  Actually “METRO accessible” is a gross understatement – the theater lobby is a short walk from the train stop – through a tunnel.  There will be no excuse to miss this show when the weather is bad. 

I took the METRO from Bethesda to the show and got a ride from friends back.  The drive to my home was about as long as the trip from Arena’s Southwest DC home – with many fewer traffic lights.

Citizen Review: The Women of Brewster Place

posted by Jacqueline E. Lawton

[Editors' Note: We'll be featuring "Citizen Reviews" of our productions all season. We want to illuminate the experience of people who are not professional critics, creating a dialogue between the 'pros' and the 'regular joes.' We invite you to share your own reviews with us through the Comments feature at the end of this posting.]

Arena Stage states as part of their core purpose an intention “to produce huge plays of all that is passionate, exuberant, profound, deep and dangerous in the American spirit.” With The Women of Brewster Place, their co-production with the Alliance Theatre, currently playing in the Kreeger Theater, I feel that they’ve accomplished this. It’s easy to tell the story of a disenfranchised group of people who go from poverty, misery and despair to fortune, fame and success. These stories are filled with hope, a sense of duty and purpose, and the overwhelming assurance that the American Dream is alive, well, and achievable for all. While this is a great feeling for an audience to return home with, it’s just misleading. Much like the novel by Gloria Naylor, Arena Stage’s production of The Women of Brewster Place resists this simple telling.

The African-American women presented in The Women of Brewster Place are fierce, vulnerable and passionate. With courage, good intentions and grace they meet racism, poverty and sexism head on, and much like it happens in real life, they don’t always succeed. Regardless, they find the strength within themselves to sing through and of their frustration, hopes, heartache, misery, disappointments, joys, pleasures and fears. They push through their setbacks and are united in their sense of humor, a strident belief in God, the power of the blues, and the strength of their community. These women are so beautifully funny, flawed, sad, witty, overlooked and forgotten.

Citizen Review: The Women of Brewster Place

[Editors' Note: We'll be featuring "Citizen Reviews" of our productions all season. We want to illuminate the experience of people who are not professional critics, creating a dialogue between the 'pros' and the 'regular joes.' We invite you to share your own reviews with us through the Comments feature at the end of this posting.]

reviewed by Alexis Vaughan

The Women of Brewster Place is a captivating, character-driven piece that left me deep in thought about the complexities of our human and societal connections. The beauty of this play rests in how well the actresses convey struggle in the many different dimensions of identity politics. From the young dreamer who excites in crafting her own identity around those of several Black Power icons, to the gay couple who fight over how much of themselves is safe to reveal to their neighbors, Brewster Place plays with the idea of balancing who we really are and who society tells us we are, in a way that really challenges us to consider whether it is better to be like everyone else, or just be.

Seeing what happens in each of the women's lives as they make that decision reflects the realities women of color live with daily. When society's definition of you superceeds your own, it sucks the life out of you and hardens your heart to everyone around you. You become nothing but a shell of yourself of no use to yourself or anyone around you. It's in these times when the world gets into us that we need each other to remind us of who we really are and our worth in this world.

Citizen Review: The Women of Brewster Place

[Editors' Note: We'll be featuring "Citizen Reviews" of our productions all season. We want to illuminate the experience of people who are not professional critics, creating a dialogue between the 'pros' and the 'regular joes.' We invite you to share your own reviews with us through the Comments feature at the end of this posting.]

posted by Susan Williams

When I truly experience a good play or musical, writing a review or even putting my thoughts on paper become more difficult. I learned years ago that if you really experience something in life on a visceral level, you don't fully remember it.

Having not read the novel or seen the movie of this story, I only knew what I'd read about it in the media. Sometimes the story in a musical gets lost in the music or other aspects of the production. This is not the case here. I was instantly caught up in the story and stayed there through most of the play. (At the preview I attended, there were a few slow moments but overall it moved forward nicely.)

Citizen Review: Well

posted by Jacqueline E. Lawton

In the play Well, currently in production at Arena Stage, playwright Lisa Kron examines the nature of sickness and wellness in the body, one’s family and community, and interestingly, the process of writing a play. With bravery and humor, Kron shares semi-autobiographical familial and childhood experiences that are at times breathtaking, candid, surprising, funny, and for the most part, universally, true.

Interwoven in this story is Kron’s mother’s quest for social justice and racial equality in Lansing, Michigan during the 1960s and 70s. Historically, we know that while some communities successfully adapted to racial integration as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, many communities did not. In Well, we are shown a community in the overall successful struggle and acceptance of racial integration. Lisa, who is white and Jewish, grew up as a minority in a mostly Black and Christian community. She shares with us her experience through stories that reveal moments of acceptance, bitterness, joy, confusion, excitement, fear, and loneliness.

Citizen Review: Well

posted by Mia Chung

Emily Ackerman is a brave, remarkable actress. Sure, she has charm and experience and technique and red hair. But to take on the role of “Lisa Kron” in the autobiographical play WELL, which was written by Lisa Kron to be performed by Lisa Kron…that takes something more than the usual guts necessary to walk on a stage. Within seconds of the performance, however, I ceased to marvel at her bravery and simply enjoyed a truthful, exciting play. This is due of course to Ackerman’s inordinate likeability and skill, which is well-matched by Nancy Robinette and the rest of the cast, and Lisa Kron’s knack for revealing how all of us move directly and indirectly around what’s most important to us all the time. This play is worth a second visit.

Citizen Review: 33 Variations

posted by Mia Chung

Music is powerful magic. And for me (despite eleven years of perfunctory piano lessons) classical music is still shrouded in mystery—a glorious, elite magic that I respond to viscerally, instinctively…yet always with a limited vocabulary (“that was so nice and… and well, it was just brilliant and nice”) and self-conscious trepidation (“I don’t know anything about this”).  Kind of like how I feel when I hear French.

Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations is an accessible invitation to appreciate Beethoven at his most mysterious: after all, why did he write thirty-three variations of the Diabelli waltz?  And for those, like myself, who didn’t even know of the Diabelli Variations, Kaufman’s play offers a guided tour into a musical classic, as well as the mystery of obsessive genius at work. I’m not surprised that Moisés Kaufman was sucked into this magical obsession.

As I watched 33 Variations, I was so grateful for the layered experience of hearing the Variations played live by concert pianist Diane Walsh while seeing actor Graeme Malcolme’s dramatization of musicologist William Kinderman’s interpretation of the music. A unique opportunity to witness all these elements in the same space!