Come September, if all goes as planned, Manhattan will have a new gay bar. Well, not new, exactly, a reboot. But oh, what a reboot. The popular gay bar Eastern Bloc, situated in the lower East Village and co-owned by Anderson Cooper’s beau Benjamin Maisani, is taking the surname of a new incoming partner: Alan Cumming.
“We’re planning to change it a little bit so we can have a piano,” the award-winning performer says, quite ebulliently, of Club Cumming. “I want it to feel like anything could happen. Somebody might get up and sing a song…. Or we might just have a man come playing the theremin for an hour. Stuff like that. Try to think outside the box.”
Cumming wants the establishment to extend beyond gay moorings. “I want it to be an omnisexual bar. Obviously, I want gay people to come, but I want straight people, I want anyone who wants to have fun and let go and be non-judgmental. Come in with an open heart and be wanting to have fun.”
Fun is in store this weekend at the Kennedy Center as Cumming returns to the area with his immensely popular Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs, part of the Renée Fleming’s Voices series. Even though Cumming has been performing Sappy Songs for over two years, he’s “still so loving doing it…. It’s so different to how I’ve ever felt doing a play. Because it’s me and I’m being very vulnerable and it’s very personal and authentic, it still feels as fresh and fun to do. I want it to feel like I’m just telling you stories and singing you songs, and having quite an old-fashioned experience, really.”
The Scottish-born actor, who became a household name after seven seasons on The Good Wife playing ambitious, crafty political operative Eli Gold on The Good Wife, holds an American citizenship, so when asked his views on the current administration, he doesn’t hold back.
“Well, I’m devastated,” he says. “I think it’s just terrifying. It’s just a mess. It’s embarrassing as well. I, as an American, am absolutely ashamed and embarrassed that this is what’s happening, and some of the decisions that are being made and the behavior — it’s just so awful.
“The thing that got me the other day was the company that makes the missiles that were sent to Syria, Trump has shares in. So, he actually made money off that missile attack! It’s just so corrupt, it’s so wrong. Every decision that’s made is based on greed.”
Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs is Saturday, April 29 at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Tickets are $29 to $99. Call 202-467-4600 or visit Kennedy-Center.org.
Opera may not be the nimblest of the arts, but in choosing Beethoven’s Fidelio, Francesca Zambello’s production lands right on time.
From the opera’s theme of political imprisonment to S. Katy Tucker’s haunting intro projections of prisons, actual political prisoners, and snippets of poignant Constitutional rights, its relevance is given in no uncertain terms.
Indeed, reports that a particular presidential candidate has discussed using the military to control the “enemy within” only adds to its prescience.
That said, Zambello’s potent vision isn’t quite enough to lift this production beyond more than a few inspired moments and the chance to hear conductor Robert Spano deliver the composer’s only opera (an experience Beethoven hated so much, he vowed never to attempt another one).
“It's all about nourishing yourself -- mind, body, and soul through the arts,” says Kate Villa. The Kennedy Center’s Director of Comedy and Institutional Programming is telling me about “Nourish,” an array of events centered on “the profound impact of food and artistic expression on our lives.”
The arts and wellness festival, which places a strong emphasis on food, runs through the end of October at the nation’s performing arts center in Washington, D.C.
“I'm excited to bring in the culinary arts because it's something that's underappreciated as an art form,” Villa, her jet-black hair styled in a short, Ina Garten-inspired bob, says during an energetic and wide-ranging conversation one crisp fall morning.
Imaginative and powerfully delivered, the Washington National Opera's Macbeth is the opera to drop everything and see. Verdi's gorgeously dramatic distillation of Shakespeare's tragedy is already ever-so-accessible, the dark and swooping grandeur of his score the perfect medium for the tale's high drama and mystery.
Add director Brenna Corner's elegantly innovative vision and this is classical opera for the 21st century at its best: so good it needs no compromises. If you have even the slightest interest in seeing the real deal, this is the one for you. If you are already in, this will be a treasure trove of pleasures.
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