Tag: Kennedy Center

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Kennedy Center Announces Special Live Concert Series

Vanessa Williams to perform in special concert series at Kennedy Center (via official website)
Since the permanent audience seating can’t be moved for proper social distancing, the Kennedy Center’s famed Opera House is planning a series of concerts putting a limited-size audience onstage spread apart and the artist on an extension built on the front of the stage. From the Kennedy Center official website:

Artists will perform from a stage extension built into the front of the Orchestra-seating level of the hall while concert-goers, entering through the wide loading doors on the Center’s front plaza, are seated in physically distanced pairs on the Opera House stage to watch performances set against the iconic red interior of the theater.

These hour-long, intermission-less concerts will take place approximately once per week for a ticketed audience of under 200 once the District of Columbia reaches phase three of reopening.

Select concerts, including performances by four-time Grammy Award® winner and National Medal of the Arts recipient Renée Fleming; Emmy®, Grammy®, and Tony Award® nominee Vanessa Williams; award-winning Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet and Broadway actress Tiler Peck; and award-winning choreographer and Artistic Director of Camille A. Brown and Dancers, Camille A. Brown, will be streamed digitally via the Kennedy Center website.

Additional artists from the worlds of jazz, hip hop, comedy, and Broadway will be announced at a later date. Performance details and ticketing information will be announced as D.C. approaches phase three of reopening. Imagine being your view as you take in these special concerts:

The Kennedy Center Opera House

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Rave review for Kennedy Center’s “Side Show”

It looks like the Kennedy Center may have one of it’s biggest successes with the reworking of the Broadway cult hit “Side Show.”

Capped by two climactic, heartbreaking songs and two tender, epic performances, the “Side Show” that has been given a new life by the Kennedy Center is an intoxicating experience — a poignant statement about the brutal rite of achieving self-acceptance and a glorious comeback for an important American musical.

[snip]

Erin Davie and Emily Padgett portray Violet and Daisy Hilton, Siamese twins who go from being a tawdry carnival act to celebrated vaudeville stars but never what they truly desire: people seen as separate from their abnormal condition.

In this new version of the 1997 musical, reworked by composer Henry Krieger, book writer and lyricist Bill Russell and director Bill Condon, the distance the sisters travel from a cruel childhood of exploitation has been clarified. The mystical nature of their connection has been deepened, too, via a more concerted consideration of loneliness and freedom, themes that envelop them and many of the other hauntingly conceived “freaks” who fill the Eisenhower Theater stage.

Read the entire review at the Washington Post.

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Broadway’s cult fave Side Show to be reimagined at La Jolla and Kennedy Center

Great news! I would love to see this show come back to Broadway and receive the acclaim it deserves. I saw the original and was moved by the story and the gorgeous score. The production was nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Musical.

From Playbill:

Erin Davie and Emily Padgett will co-star as conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton in the La Jolla Playhouse-Kennedy Center co-production of Side Show, the Tony Award-nominated musical by Henry Krieger and Bill Russell, which will return to the stage in a new incarnation directed by Academy Award winner Bill Condon this fall.

Condon (“Dreamgirls”) has given new dramatic shape to the dark, pop-driven musical that has a score by Krieger (Dreamgirls) and Russell (Elegies for Angels…), who also wrote the book, and contains numerous stand-out songs, including “Who Will Love Me As I Am?”

A source close to the production told Playbill.com that the creative team is hopeful for a Broadway run following Side Show’s engagements at the La Jolla Playhouse (Nov. 5-Dec. 15) and The Kennedy Center (June 14-July 13, 2014).

My personal feeling is that the original lacked a cohesive marketing campaign. Everyone who eventually saw the show loved it, it seemed. But getting butts in the seats was difficult as the campaign didn’t really make clear the content of the show (see the original at left). Most people just heard the phrase “freak show” and thought it would be creepy or something.

Over the past 15 years the show has developed quite the cult following. And deservedly so.

Good luck to Condon and the cast. Hope to see the show soon.