“The Kennedy Center is my favorite place to work in the U.S.,” crows Randy Graff. “Two of the most meaningful shows in my professional life happened there and the Opera House is where it all began for me as a musical theater actor.” The year was 1986, with the pre-Broadway American premiere of Les Miserables. And Graff played the pivotal role of Fantine, whose “I Dreamed a Dream” is one of the musical’s biggest, most heartbreaking, showstoppers. The second moment came sixteen years later, in 2002, with A Little Night Music, the closing production of the Sondheim Celebration festival, in which Graff played Charlotte.
Graff’s one-woman cabaret, Made in Brooklyn, will include a nod to her KenCen roots. “I am singing ‘I Dreamed a Dream,'” she notes, in honor of Les Miz. But the October 30 appearance — her fifth in the venue — is mainly a tribute to the place where she spent her childhood.
“It’s the story of me growing up in Brooklyn, singing on street corners and eventually getting to Broadway,” she says. “Every song I sing was either written or made famous by a Brooklynite — foremost Barbra Streisand, but so many composers, lyricists and movie stars.”
Graff has appeared in countless hits on the Great White Way, including 1989’s City of Angels, for which she won a Tony, 1992’s Falsettos and revivals of A Class Act and Fiddler on the Roof. Through it all, she’s noticed her “very large gay fanbase” is among the most engaged.
“They’re the most accepting — perhaps that comes from living their own self-acceptance,” she says. “No matter what I do — I could fall on my face, I could crack on a high note, whatever I do, they’re just with me for the ride. I just so appreciate it.”
Randy Graff performs as part of the Barbara Cook Spotlight series on Friday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m., at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Tickets are $50. Call 202-467-4600 or visit kennedy-center.org.
The atmosphere is not the same at the Kennedy Center since we’ve entered the era when many who love the institution show their love and support by not going there. This might create a heavier lift for the artists and performers welcomed into the space, like the cast and company of the musical drama Parade.
A touring production of Michael Arden’s Tony-winning 2023 Broadway revival, which starred Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, this Parade trudges a bit through openers “The Old Red Hills of Home” and “The Dream of Atlanta” before the show really gets marching.
That’s when Max Chernin brings the spark of urgency to his vivid portrayal of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager from Brooklyn, New York making a go of it in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife Lucille (Talia Suskauer), who was born and raised Jewish in the South.
Metro Weekly magazine was barely a year and a half old when, in 1995, we were offered the chance to interview — and photograph — Broadway legend Carol Channing, then appearing at the Kennedy Center in Hello, Dolly! that fall. Two moments from that experience stand out, the first at the photo shoot with Annie Adjchavanich.
We'd set up a black velvet backdrop in the Hall of States and were waiting for Miss Channing to arrive. When she finally swept in, she looked radiant. Except… she refused to remove her enormous sunglasses. Indoors.
I begged her to take them off, but she firmly declined. "I don't have my eyelashes on," she said. "You are not seeing me without my eyelashes!" And that was that — sunglasses it would be. The result was a cover that was both thrilling (Carol Channing!) and oddly surreal (Carol Channing in giant sunglasses!).
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