Getting Cultured: Musicals, concerts, and plays, oh my!

I am thrilled to have entertainment venues reopen after nearly two years of not being able to support the arts in person! I have been buying up any tickets I can get my hands on, and I have been very busy this past week showing my love for the arts and the great venues here in D.C.!

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I hadn't been to the Kennedy Center since the beginning of the pandemic, and I was so excited to go back! It's one of my favorite venues in D.C., and I've been a member for years now.

I'm normally not a musical person (unless it's by Disney), but when I listened to the soundtrack of Hadestown on YouTube, I knew I had to see the show. Blues music? Sign me up!

Nicholas Barasch (Orpheus) did have a baby face, but his voice wasn't the strongest. Image found here

The musical is a show that intertwines the tales of Hades and Persephone and the love story between Euridice and Orpheus. So if you were familiar with ancient myths, it was pretty easy to follow along. But that also meant you knew how it was going to end!

I was especially impressed with some of the performers. I think Levi Kreis, who played Hermes, actually sings better than the voice recorded from the original cast! And Kevyn Morrow was an excellent Hades; he had the best evil laugh!

Morrow is a great Hades! Image found here

I loved the music, and the way the characters moved across the stage really brought the set to life. For example, at one point the chorus was moving around in a circle almost as if they themselves were cogs in a wheel. I really was transformed to a different place! And most of the musicians were on stage the entire time, so it was fun to watch them, too.

Kimberly Marable was so fun as Persephone! Image found here

I really enjoyed experiencing a new Broadway show that I had never heard of before. Highly recommend!

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Then last Friday, I went to the 9:30 Club to see the 90's cover band White Ford Bronco. I had heard of them before, but I hadn't had the chance to see them live. I love the 80's cover band The Legwarmers, so I was hoping to have a similar experience, just with different music. And they did not disappoint! It was so fun hearing the songs I grew up listening to, and it was especially cool to hear them sing songs of bands I have seen in person (like the Backstreet Boys and Alanis Morissette. Read those blog posts here and here). I liked the variety of songs they played, and their energy was great. At the end, they gave the audience the option to either hear one encore song, or hear five additional songs without an encore. Of course we went with the latter! It was such a fun time to be back at the 9:30 Club (I even wore the tank-top I bought over the pandemic to show my support) and hear live music again like in "the before times."

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And then last night I went to Ford's Theatre to see "My Lord, What a Night," a play about the real life friendship between physicist Albert Einstein and the singer Marian Anderson. I had only been to this venue once before in 2018 (read that blog post here), and my boyfriend had never been, so it was fun rediscovering this venue together.

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This was only a four-person show, and I liked all of the characters! Christopher Bloch played Einstein; while his accent probably wasn't as thick as it should have been, I still liked how he played the famous genius. Felicia Curry as Anderson was a little affected in the beginning (maybe trying to sound like Viola Davis?), but she grew on me as the performance went along. Michael Russotto as fellow Princeton scientist Abraham Flexner was quite strong, and Franchelle Stewart Dorn as civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell was powerful. The four actors played well off of each other and nicely expressed their opposing opinions related to standing up for civil rights or simply keeping your head down.

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I appreciated the amount of comic relief in this play! Although the show focuses on issues of racism, discrimination, and prejudice, there were still light parts where you could laugh. The play ended with Curry singing as Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which really did happen in 1939:

I feel so cultured after this week! I have tickets to a few more shows throughout this fall, and I am very much looking forward to that!