The DC Traveler

With over 100 films to her credit and ten Academy Award nominations, plus two wins for Best Actress in Jezebel and Dangerous, Bette Davis is one of Hollywood’s most recognized icons.
Over the summer, the National Theatre in Washington, DC is screening some of her more famous films in their free Summer Cinema 2008 series.
Films in the series include:
July 7 – Jezebel Davis plays a Southern Belle who enjoys publicly breaking social rules of “proper” behavior and thus loses her banker fiancé.  She then goes on a mission to win him back.
July 14 – Dark VictoryThe carefree and hedonistic …read more

2 Comments

Here’s the challenge – take one of the most globally successful pop band’s library of hits, and make a high-energy, campy, fun musical that makes people smile, laugh and leave feeling great.
Try it with just about any band and the expected result would be total disaster. 
Nut take the music of Abba, and add some ingenious choreography, mixed with a funny storyline and you end up with the global sensation, Mamma Mia. 
Mamma Mia just opened at the National Theatre in Washington, DC for a 3-week run and I had a chance to see the opening.
WARNING – Plot …read more

1 Comment

Before it closed in 2006, Ziegfeld’s cabaret on O Street in Washington, DC’s Navy Yard area was famous, or perhaps infamous, for its campy and saucy female illusionist “drag” shows.  But the club closed to make way for the new National’s baseball stadium.
Yet Donnell Robinson (Ella Fitzgerald), DC’s longest performing drag artists, keeps the campiness alive for Valentine’s Day with a special free performance of Ella and Company: Call Me Madame, complete with song, fun and racy “beauties”, at the National Theatre.
It all started for Robinson when, for a high school talent show, he dressed in a costume that …read more

Comments Off